Dateline Stockholm, part 3

I've been living in New York for 18 years now, and while I have visited the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, I'd never seen Patti Smith live until yesterday evening. She plays regularly in town, including popular New Year's Eve stints, but somehow I'd always managed to miss her. Well actually I did see her once a few years ago, but it was a poetry reading in Central Park, one of her first public appearances after her husband's death. I guess I lacked the motivation to catch an actual show because the whole poetic-priestess bit kinda bored me. But I loved her covers album from last year, Twelve, which really drove home the point that she's a fantastic rock singer.

The crowd at the Stockholm Jazz Festival, where Smith was performing, was much larger than the previous day, and the average age higher (I didn't see any babies in sound-blocking headphones this time). The show got off to a great start ("Dancing Barefoot," a 20-minute version of "Are You Experienced") but then fell into a kind of maudlin, slow-paced rut. Things picked up again, however, with a series of absolute punches in the gut: "Pissing in a River," "Because the Night," "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Rock and Roll Nigger"--she blazed through them all, the band (including classic PSG members Jay Dee Daugherty and Lenny Kaye) pumping mightily behind. And I'm sorry, but you just can't fake that kind of charisma.

On a sartorial note, Ms. Smith spent most of the set in a long coat, explaining at some point that she had a cold. She did take it off a couple of times, revealing not one of her trademark Ann Demeulemeester button-down shirts but a white T and mom-ish jeans (tucked into brown boots).

That was a fitting cap to a day spent exploring the neighborhood of Kungsholmen, then taking the tram around parts of Djurgården. The weather is a bit iffy today, which may provide appropriate atmospherics for a visit to the cemetary of Skogskyrkogården, where Greta Garbo is buried. More later.

Dateline Stockholm, part 2

Of course there is music! Our very first night, we were too bushed to go out so we watched Allsång på Skansen, broadcast live on television every Tuesday evening from the Skansen park in Stockholm. The show essentially consists of artists performing their own hits but also some pop and schlagerish classics and dansbands nuggets. The installment we saw had the Poodles (a glammy band that entered Melodifestivalen a couple of years ago) and some singers and comedians completely unknown to me. The concept is that the crowd sings along (= allsång) on the older tunes. The audience covers a fairly wide age range and it's really fun to watch hipster-looking twentysomethings enthusiastically sing their hearts out next to grannies and children. Allsång's popularity has grown so much that the Dilettante's Special Stockholm Correspondent told us that Robyn and Lena Philipsson have been on it.

Yesterday evening we went to the second night of the Stockholm Jazz Festival. Here, a shout-out to Liisa Tolonen and her crew in the press department, who must be among the most professional, the nicest I've seen in years of doing this job. The fest itself takes place on the grounds of the Museum of Modern Art on the island of Skeppsholmen (a 20-minute walk from where we're staying) and is remarkably run. I was struck by a few things: contrary to American practice, the prices at the concession stands didn't seem jacked up from what they'd be anywhere else in town; everything ran like clockwork despite a bad thunderstorm; the crowd covered a very wide age range, with kids as young as three wearing elaborate sound mufflers (kinda like the ones workers at airports wear); plenty of tidy portaloos. Also striking: people were clearly enjoying themselves but nobody was going wild, even during the Soundrack of Our Lives' awesome set. This last bit wasn't so good.

So, the music. Yesterday must have been Swedish Indie Rock Day because the two main acts on the main stage were Marit Bergman and the aforementioned TSOOL. I'm a big Bergman fan but I wasn't entirely convinced by her experiment: she did her entire set on the piano, backed by the Stockholm Strings quartet. I love her songs because of their bouncy pep and that was kinda lost in those arrangements. It may work better in a more intimate environment.

The most amazing thing is that the aforementioned thunderstorm erupted precisely as Bergman finished her last song, and stopped exactly as TSOOL took the stage. It was uncanny.

I'm not a big fan of TSOOL's albums but live, they smoked. (I realize I'm late to the party as great shows is exactly what's built them a good rep in the US these past few years.) Out of the three acts to emerge from the ashes of the legendary Union Carbide Productions, I'd always preferred the solo projects of guitarist Björn Olsson and drummer Henrik Rylander (so much so that I've interviewed them both for The Wire), but clearly I needed to see TSOOL live to get onboard. Even the Sheila, who displays a very Australian pickiness when it comes to rock & roll, was enthused. Favorite bit: Ian Persson, working a total Tony Iommi look that included super-tight 70s-style pants, 'tache and Gibson SG.

Dateline Stockholm, part 1

The worst thing about going on vacation is that you need to work twice as hard before leaving (hence the lack of posting) and twice as hard when you come back. But it's worth it 'cause I'm now in sunny Stockholm and on my first trip to the supermarket to stock up on lingonberry jam and fish balls, Abba was playing. So there.

After waking up late in the splendid abode of the Dilettante's Stockholm Correspondent, the Sheila and I spent our first day walking around and getting our bearings, refueling along the way with rather good lattes. I like getting them in tall glasses (same as in Kiev), which allows one to stare at the swirling milk. When we were driving in the Queensland countryside a few years ago, we passed a few "Tidy Towns" (a hotly contested award apparently), and yesterday the Sheila reflected that Stockholm was one big Tidy Town. Coming from New York, where trash flies freely around, it feels positively spic and span here.

After walking for a few hours, we finally bought a weeklong public-transportation pass and jumped on the first bus that came around--literally. We had no idea where we were going. We're big fans of buses (the regular ones, not the tourist ones) and they really are the best way to discover a city. Not to mention a great way to get cheaper food; the Sheila pointed out that we were going to feed on the "end of the line specials," which are a lot more affordable to us, crippled by our third-world currency, than the meals in the posh area where we're staying.

Today's program: The lovely Marit Bergman, a longtime Dilettante fave, is playing the Stockhom Jazz Festival (it must be Swedish Indie Rock Day as the Soundtrack of Our Lives is also on the schedule) so we're going to head up that way.

Raging fires

Predictably, Die Soldaten is dividing people. Obviously I stand on the pro side, and very much so, but others didn't care for the show. Anne Midgette's reaction in the Washington Post is interesting.

I won't comment on the specifically musical criticism, not being equipped to do so, so I'll focus on the content and staging. First, she's wrong right off the bat when she says "This is a work that is ready to rebel, even if it is not quite sure against what." Alois Bernd Zimmermann knows exactly what he's criticizing and rebelling against, and he often explicitly states it: the abuse of women by men.

"The exorbitant outlay for the movable seats proved a tremendously expensive gimmick: Pountney could not think of anything more creative to do than move the audience to a different part of the runway for each scene," Midgette writes. Actually, I found the device tremendously effective, and used very well (the seats don't move "for each scene," as she writes). It allows Pountney to play on both space and time, providing a sense of depth as we watch several actions happening either at once or at different moments down the 260-foot length of the runway. It also allows him to explore both a sense of crushing grandeur and intimacy; in that way, the moving seats function like a camera, zooming in and out of particular scenes.

Midgette also says that having Marie raped by men in Santa Claus suits is too obvious an image—but if this stuff was that obvious and easy to come up with, we'd see it (or something similar) more often on our stages. And we just don't. (I'm surprised she doesn't mention the stunning, utterly terrifing pig masks. Obvious, perhaps, but very, very effective—they really scared me.) Those images may look obvious because they are in such adequation with the music and themes, but they really are not that simple. A good director surprises you but also makes you think that what he does is inevitable—which for some may look obvious. Achieving both at the same time is very very difficult, but that's what Pountney did.

That rape scene, in fact, seems to be a problem for many. But it is as horrible as it needs to be. It is nauseating, but not in a way that made me despise the creative team. Unlike torture porn in contemporary horror movies, which makes me find the directors abhorrent, that scene made me despise what the characters did, not what the director did. My esteemed colleague Steve Smith pointed out that the scene doesn't exist in the original, or rather that it happens offstage. Well, it does exist then—Pountney just chose to make us see it. Yes, it is a deliberate decision to hit the audience over the head, to push our collective face into a pit of abjection, but I'd argue that as an audience, we need to go there, we need to descend into stomach-churning hell.

Finally, that Die Soldaten has provoked such arguments is the final proof, if needed, that it has fulfilled its purpose as a piece of art. If you want lukewarm, you can have it any day on any stage in New York. And me, I hate lukewarm.

Home is where Abba is

I've been a lot more excited about the movie version of Mamma Mia! than the stage one, mostly due to Meryl Streep's presence. But for some reason it belatedly occurred to me that I could see it on vacation in about ten days…in Stockholm!

The release of the movie has thrust Abba back in the spotlight, with the four members appearing together at the Swedish premiere. I'm very happy, however, to hear Benny and Björn state one more time that the band isn't going to reunite, no matter how much they get paid. What's a little less good is the avalanche of articles offering backhanded compliment to the band. One in The Independent, at least, looks more closely than usual to the craft behind the glitz. I particularly agree with the line "In Britain and America, bands had – and still have – a huge reverence for tradition and an obsession with authenticity. Scandi-pop doesn't have to pay homage to old bluesmen, or agonise about keeping it real. It can just grab whatever sounds best and feels right."

Of course there's also the usual blather about Abba's lyrics. The author remarks that they're not any more clunky that Chris de Burgh's "Lady in Red," but this is faint praise again—almost anything is swifter than "Lady in Red." It'd be more daring, and more honest, to say Abba's lyrics aren't any clunkier than those by Chris Martin, Duffy, Mariah Carey or, to mention just one major Abba pilferer, Madonna: "I don't like cities, but I like New York/Other places make me feel like a dork/Los Angeles is for people who sleep/Paris and London, baby you can keep." Oy. And unlike Abba, English is these people's native language.

Bitter truths

Charles P. Pierce's essay in Esquire about the Obama candidacy is one of the finest I've read so far. Of course, it helps that I share Pierce's take on Obama's discourse, and the fact that it's basically giving Americans a free-pass card (change without sacrifice, easy charisma over bitter pill). My main qualm is that Pierce's rhetorical gimmicks get a bit grating after a while, but it's easy enough to overlook them and focus on the ideas themselves.

What I like best about this piece is the rage and disappointment that run through it—not at Obama or other politicians, which would be too easy, but at the American people themselves. For despite all the talk about freedom and democracy, Americans do no exercise their most basic rights and do not fulfill their most basic duties as citizens, including voting and holding their elected representatives accountable. But hey, freedom is being able to drive your big-ass car wherever and whenever you want, right?

Pierce comes down harshly on Obama for feeding us bromides about the country's greatness: "The cynic will admit that it’s all great politics. Tell America that it is a great country that simply has lost its way for a spell. Tell the American people that they are a great people who are better than those hucksters who come to divide us. It has a marvelous anesthetic appeal. Swirl down through the clouds of memory and forget that the country allowed itself to follow George Bush over the cliff not merely because it was shocked by the attacks of September 11, 2001, but because it was too pissing-down-the-shoes scared to do anything else. Forget about how eagerly the American people cheered the brutish and the nasty, how simple it was to sell raw animal vengeance dressed up as geopolitical wisdom, and how dumbly everyone followed until well after it was revealed that the people selling it didn’t know enough about the world to throw to a cat. This was the era of complicity. Can Obama end it, thought the cynic, without admitting it ever existed?"

"Why would anyone have faith in America, which is not tough but fearful, not smart but stupid, and not shrewd but willing to fall for almost anything as long it comes wrapped in a flag? Why would anyone have faith in Americans? Barack Obama says that he has that faith because of his own life, because he was able to rise to the point where he can be thought of as president of the United States. He is the country’s walking absolution. That’s his reason, the cynic thinks, but it’s not mine. There has to be confession. There has to be penance. Being Barack Obama is not enough. Not damn close to enough."

Apocalypse now

Words like "genius" and "great"are thrown about regularly these days, but in the case of Die Soldaten at Lincoln Center Festival, they should be used literally. If you're reading these lines, you are likely to have an interest in the arts, so the message is simple: go.

Every time I'm brought down by one more mediocre, bland, utterly pointless show—they are even more lethal than the truly bad ones—I wonder why I'm putting myself through this rigmarole over and over again. Why, why do I feel the urge to stagger back home at 11pm on that slowpoke F train after one more disappointing evening out? It's because as with everything, your chances of hitting on something good are infinitesimal. Just ask anybody trying to date in New York. The odds are against you, so you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the one prince—in the arts, something that transports you to another realm. You might call it transcendence, and when you find it, it makes up for all these wasted hours. That is what Die Soldaten provided on Thursday night, when I was lucky to see a dress rehearsal of that mammoth piece.

On paper, Alois Bernd Zimmermann's 1950s opera looks pretty austere, and it is, of course: 12-tone music isn't my idea of an elevator to bliss; add a storyline dealing with the use and abuse of a young woman by various men in wartime, and Die Soldaten had the making of a big spoon of castor oil. Honestly, I think it'd still be that for me without this new extraordinary staging (I can't say I will ever listen to the music at home for instance).

Lincoln Center Festival threw its financial might behind importing David Pountney's awe-inspiring production from the 2006 Ruhr Triennale, in which the audience sits on metal bleachers that slowly move along a gigantically long stage—in our case, set up in the main hall of the Park Avenue Armory—while the no-less gigantic 110-person orchestra sits on the side. (This helpful video preview explains the basic idea.)

As we made our way along the stem of the T-shaped stage, an optical illusion made it seem as if it was the actors who were on a treadmill while we were static. Pountney would place his cast along the whole length, making for an incredible impression of depth of space and even time. But the large scale was only part of the picture: The particular genius of Pountney's concept is that you get both a sense of mind-numbing grandeur and, because the action moves in and out of focus, so to speak, one of crushing intimacy—we were lucky enough to sit right next to the stage and so we were just about eight feet away from the cast at some of the most harrowing moments.

Die Soldaten is an ultra-rare case of a highly conceptual staging that brings everything out of the work and more, transforming the way we even consider the interconnection between art and life. It threw my head into a major Exorcist 360 spin. I'm pretty sure that I forgot to breathe during the last ten minutes, when the gruesome plot reaches its apex and at least four drummers in the orchestra are going at it in unison (the din was so ferocious that I could see the other musicians covering up their ears with their hands). A local director I know was sitting a few rows ahead of us and looked shellshocked afterwards.

Total hardcore!

It's hot in herre

Another post on the SundayArts blog, this time about the singular Nellie McKay, whose debut fronting a swing band takes place on July 8.

Life and death on the Prairie

Reading James Howard Kunstler's typically apocalyptic latest post, I was reminded of Jericho, the cheeseball, short-lived TV series I've been watching on DVD.

Kunstler, a Peak Oil theorist, argues that the looming economic crisis will be "something at least twice as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s: people with no money in a land with no resources (with manpower that has no discipline), hardly any family farms left, cities that are basket-cases of bottomless need, comatose small towns stripped of their assets and social capital, an aviation industry on the verge of death, and a railroad system that is the laughingstock of the world. Not to mention the mind-boggling liabilities of suburbia and the motoring infrastructure that services it."

The premise of the show is that nuclear explosions have destroyed several American major cities, leading to utter chaos in the entire country; the action is centered on Jericho, a small Kansas town cut off from the rest of the U.S. as communications break down, and power, gas and food run out. The response to the crisis is pretty much exactly as Kunstler described it above—though as I finish watching the first season, I'm entirely unclear as to whether the writers intended to critique the American way of life by showing the citizens of Jericho to be foolish, spoiled, childish, irresponsible and selfish, or if they had no idea they were painting such a damning portrait. A satirical viewpoint does peek at times, as when a teen boy (already established as a bit of a douche) happily explains that once the Internet is back on, everything will be all right again, food will be delivered, etc. But are the town's power couple, the former mayor and his wife (Gerald McRaney and Pamela Reed), really meant to be insufferably self-righteous characters prompt to cast judgment (the stereotypical judgmental heartland) or are they meant to represent good, old-school American values? I truly cannot tell.

It's the way Jericho's citizens adapt—or not—to their new circumstances that most resembles Kunstler's description of "comatose small towns stripped of their assets and social capital." First of all, this is Kansas and these people are starving in the middle of winter because no food is delivered and subsistence agriculture doesn't exist; the sole exception, it seems, is a single corn-growing farm (which, characteristically, is audited by the IRS for debt at the beginning of the show). Second, for several days, even weeks, after the first explosion, a lot of townspeople just hang out at the local bar, waiting for help to magically appear. Similarly, they seem content living in ignorance of what happened, and nobody has any interest in exploring the surrounding area—even though we are shown a landing strip and some small planes. Nobody attempts to find alternative sources of energy until months have passed. The passivity is simply extraordinary.

Now I realize we're talking about a series starring Skeet Ulrich here, but Jericho is one of those products whose anthropological/political interest is larger than its production values (as in the ol' Star Trek days, the show was visibly shot in a handful of Southern California locations and absolutely nothing about it looks either Kansan or post-nuclear). Even when it feels as if the creators' intents and what's on screen diverge, a lesson is taught: If there was a major catastrophe in America, the country would be woefully unprepared. And the idea of a Blackwater-like paramilitary company running amok in a devastated country is chillingly realistic.

Comedy is hard

It ain't easy to make people laugh, as Mike Myers just figured out. And it ain't easy being taken seriously even when you actually succeed in making people laugh. Follow that thought to my latest post on the SundayArts blog.

More fun: Spain winning the Euro yesterday. It wasn't the greatest match, but it was also far from the worst. Spain scored fairly early but instead of retreating and trying to preserve its edge, it kept on attacking. Meanwhile, Germany looked completely listless. A well deserved win for the Reds, and a fitting ending to a topnotch tournament.

Not fun at all: The performance of Macbeth I was scheduled to attend yesterday evening across from St. Ann's Warehouse was rained out. And since it was the last one of the run, I've missed the show altogether.

I won't make a habit of this

I overflow with enthusiasm in the new Time Out New York.

First, I hail the new DVD of Anthony Mann's The Furies, a wonderfully nutty 1950 Western starring Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston.

Then I go gaga over Joey Arias and Basil Twist's new show, Arias with a Twist. Even if the mere thought of puppets sends shivers down your spine—and not good ones—the show resuscitates the gonzo thrills of the downtown of yesteryear. And it's not like there's that many great offerings this summer anyway.

Finally, if you are in New York, free tonight and have a soft spot for pop music, please drop by Solas Bar at 7:30pm for the latest in St Mark's Bookstore's reading series. I will read from my book on Abba Gold, while LD Beghtol will read from his 69 Love Songs and Franklin Bruno from his Armed Forces. I may venture that we all share an appreciation for "Dancing Queen." Solas is at 232 E 9th St between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, in the East Village.

Why should the Times bother with European theater?

There's an expression in French that literally translates as "to call a cat a cat," meaning to not be afraid to call things by their name. I thought of it reading the end of Charles Isherwood's review of Macbeth in today's Times:

"It will surely thrill audiences who get a charge from flashy innovation for its own sake. Others will probably view it as the quintessence of — well, I was hoping to get through this review without using the glib derogatory term for Continental experimentation. You probably know the epithet in question. Begins with a capital E and rhymes with succotash."

You know, if that's what you think of Grzegorz Jarzyna's production, you should have the guts to use the full wording: Eurotrash. The coy phrasing only brings even more attention to the wishy-washy use of a condescending cliché.

I don't dispute Isherwood's critical take on the production, which I haven't seen yet. It's just hard not to get frustrated once again by the desultory tone that creeps in every time a non-naturalistic European import lands in New York. It would help if the Times' two main theater critics didn't come across as so uninterested in what's going on across the Atlantic—and I don't mean in the UK. Why trot out Jerzy Grotowski's 40-year-old "poor theater" when Jarzyna should be talked about in conjunction with his contemporary, Krzysztof Warlikowski? (TONY's own Helen Shaw did just that in her preview of Macbeth.)

I know I sound like a broken record, but at this point I'm actually beyond anger and into disillusion; it just saddens me to see critics with such a huge influence being so disproportionately disinterested in the art form they're supposed to cover. Just like last year, for instance, the newspaper's chief critic, Ben Brantley, is off to a month in London. (I'm sure local producers will read his dispatches with baited breath to see what they can safely import.)

But the Avignon festival is at roughtly the same time, and personally I'd kill to go. To mention just some of the names familiar to New York audiences, in the coming month you could see Romeo Castellucci's trilogy based on Dante's Divine Comedy, Thomas Ostermeier's Hamlet, Ivo van Hove's "Roman Tragedies" (Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra), Jan Fabre's Another Sleepy Dusty Delta Day (a solo for dancer Ivana Jovic, with the title taken from a line in Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe"!), Heiner Goebbels' Stifters Dinge, the Brothers Quay's film installation Night Nursery, plus new pieces by Philippe Quesne and Superamas, who've both been to NY as part of Under the Radar. And then there's the ones familiar mostly to French audiences, like directors Stanislas Nordey and Arthur Nauzyciel, actress Valérie Dreville, choreographer Mathilde Monnier… What an incredible feast! In my spare time, I'd go to panels such as "The spectator's place: What's his responsibility" or "Which return to spirituality?" (Talk amongst yourself…) Ah well, maybe next year.

Karl Lagerfeld saves lives

In France, a new law, effective in October, makes it mandatory for drivers to carry a glow-in-the-dark vest and a reflective safety triangle in their cars at all time. If you break down and have to get out of the car, you're meant to put on the vest and position the triangle 30 meters from the vehicle. The fine if you don't is 135 euros (just over $200).

The best part is that the new campaign hangs around fashion maven Karl Lagerfeld sporting a spiffy vest, and still managing to look like a butler. The slogan: "It's yellow, it's ugly, it doesn't go with anything, but it can save your life."

Lagerfeld, who's also in the new Grand Theft Auto, doesn't have a license and is ferried around by a driver.

North is hot

Some musings about the coolness of Nordicness over at SundayArts: Between Finnish art at P.S.1, Icelandic art at Scandinavia House and Olafur Eliasson's waterfalls about to open for business, the flavor of the summer is decidedly Scandi here in New York.

Many shades of crankiness

At least the misery was brief: France lost to Italy yesterday, and packed its bag to return home, tail between the legs. What a crap Euro we had. In hindsight, not pushing more against Romania was a huge mistake, but one the French squad makes over and over again: underestimating a seemindly modest opponent. Fine, we're out and we deserve it, no question. Now let's fire inane coach Raymond Domenech and hire a guy who can stand up to the overpaid prima donnas who make up half the French team.

And speaking of failure, I talk about the deliciousness of Broadway flops in a new post over on the SundayArts blog. It's pegged to a new book by Bye Bye Birdie and Annie composer Charles Strouse, Put on a Happy Face. One anecdote Strouse related and that I couldn't fit in the other post is his first meeting with Arthur Laurents, the book writer for Gypsy and West Side Story. Now Laurents has been showered with a lot of love lately for directing the current Gypsy revival, but before that, and for several decades, he was known as a legendary crank. Strouse writes that he showed up at Laurents' house in Greenwich Village and was greeted with mirth. Laurents was "barely able to suppress his laughter, as though he'd just heard the funniest joke in the world. 'What's so funny?' I asked. Once he was able to stop chuckling, he said, 'Tony Perkins has AIDS.' (…) I never imagined he was capable of actual cruelty, and I thought little of it at the time."

Strouse, of course, would go on to realize he should have taken that little episode more seriously: "I imagined killing him and being brought to trial," he later writes as their collaboration on the ill-fated musical Nick & Nora unravels. "I could picture the judge peering down at me. 'Are you the one who killed Arthur Laurents?' he'd ask. 'Yes, sir,' I would say, 'I couldn't control myself.' And the judge would smile and say, 'I want the mayor to meet you and shake your hand.'"

The second coming of Teenage Jesus

My review of No Wave, the new history by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore, is out. Moore is playing bass in the reunited Teenage Jesus and the Jerks tonight at the Knitting Factory, though of course the main attraction is Lydia Lunch, flying in from her current home of Barcelona for the gig.

If you have any interest whatsoever in radical hostility, there's no excuse for missing that show. I'm going to the 9pm set myself; see you there. (Of course as with all shows at the Knit, a trip to the Pakistani Tea House is mandatory beforehand. Forget about the actual main dishes, good as they are: That place has my favorite rice pudding in New York—and sad to say, I've tried a lot.)

Patti LuPone slips into something comfortable

I went back to Gypsy yesterday, in the most excellent company of my friend Tristan. Before the curtain came up, the usual announcement about turning off cellphones and unwrapping candy segued into something more ominous: "Ms. Patti LuPone has injured her foot—" (cries of disappointment in the audience) "—so she will do this evening's performance in Isotoners. Her voice, however, is unaffected." (Cries of relief.)

Once I got used to seeing LuPone traipse around in gray slippers, the evening proceeded just fine. But the slippers actually made "Rose's Turn" even better than usual: Wearing a ratty painter's smock, then taking it off as she launched into her final aria, Rose in Isotoners looked like a bag lady in the throes of early dementia. Plus by that point LuPone had whipped herself up in a frenzy, sweaty and disheveled. It was a glorious sight, the kind of reason we go to live theater.

Seeing the show for the third time also confirmed my total stage crush on Laura Benanti, both as the mousey Louise and as the sultry Gypsy Rose Lee. Benanti is a smooth, slinky marvel in her strip montage toward the end; when she winks at the audience, it is both her and Gypsy who are in complete command.

Germany tests would-be citizens

This September, Germany is introducing a test for would-be citizens. This is part of the naturalization process in the US, and I myself prepped by memorizing the questions and answers (pulled from a list you can download from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services) and being quizzed by the Sheila; a new set of questions is going to be introduced in October ’08.

But back to Germany: the test is being implemented for the first time in the fall; applicants will be asked 33 questions and must answer 17 of them correctly to pass. Samples: What's the job of the opposition in the German parliament? When was the Federal Republic of Germany founded? Earlier on, however, the German state of Hesse had come up with its own set of questions, some of which would be unimaginable in the US (and were in Germany too, as it turned out, since they didn't make the final cut). For instance:

- A woman should not be allowed to move freely in public or travel unless escorted by a close male relative. What is your standpoint on this?

- Parents do not always agree with the way their children behave. Which educational methods are permitted and which are not?

- What possibilities do parents have to influence their sons' or daughters' choice of partner? Which practices are forbidden?

- Name two economic or business lobbies.

- The law forbids individual retribution. The victim of a crime may not take revenge on the aggressor. Who decides in matters of punishment?

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller are considered Germany's most famous poetic artists. Name one work by each.

- One of the most famous works by the German painter Caspar David Friedrich shows a landscape on the Baltic island of Rügen. What is the painting's central motif?

- Every five years, the city of Kassel is home to one of the most important exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. What is the name of this exhibition?

- Which German physicist made a discovery in 1895 that has revolutionised medical diagnosis ever since?

These questions would also not pass muster in the US, because they of course are extremely leading in terms of social, political and, last but not least, religious background, but also assume a level of cultural knowledge that would be thought elitist here.

Why Britain should support Sweden

This title is referring to Euro 2008, of course. (Yes, that is all I can think about at the moment.) Thanks to Sasha Frere-Jones's blog for directing me to this Guardian article, in which Robyn explains why English fans should support Sweden in the tornament, since England itself didn't make it. I pretty much agree with everything she says and in fact Sweden is my no. 2 sentimental pick, after France of course.

Actually there is one little thing…she writes "I've never known a country to like Abba as much as Britain. You like them more than we do!" Actually, the country that adores Abba the most has got to be Australia. The band was huge there before it really conquered Sweden, and Oz's passion for Abba has still not abetted.

In any case, Sweden is off to a roaring start, defeating the returning Greek champs today.

At least Italy is down

In Euro 2008 news, France got mired in a craptacular match against Romania yesterday; it was so awful that even the score of 0-0 doesn't reflect the utter pointlessness of those 90 minutes. (And yet I had a better time than watching a good baseball game. That's how it goes.) Our midfield lacked creativity and couldn't create any opportunities. And even when it did, Anelka and Benzema at the front didn't show any flair. Benzema's best occasion was a limp shot straight into the Romania keeper's arms. He's going to have to do a lot better than that.

But the day was redeemed by the utter humiliation of the Italians by the Dutch. I can't stand the Azzuri's playing style and rejoice every time they lose, but this was even better than a mere defeat: they were told a lesson. See the magnificent Dutch goals for yourself. Of course this doesn't bode well for France's own match against the Dutch on Friday; I'm not entirely sure the French defense is up to it (the Romanian attackers didn't pose that big a threat). I feel a first-round exit for les Bleus.