The Irish...and How They Got That Way

My latest review is the revival of Frank McCourt's play with music The Irish...and How They Got That Way at — where else? — Irish Rep.

Dinosaurs!

Today's linkage is a little late but I just came back from an Internet-free long weekend upstate. (I may have to blog about my discovery of water parks at some point!)

I finished off last week with a review of Walking with Dinosaurs, which was at the Garden until Sunday. My technical advisor, ie my ten-year-old nephew, approved, and so did I.

Judgment Day

Ödön von Horváth isn't staged very much in the US so it was a particular thrill to see his last play, Judgment Day (1937). It's part of Bard College's SummerScape 2010, and well worth the trip to Annandale-on-Hudson. Review here.

Teorema

In his latest show, Teorema, Ivo van Hove tackles Pasolini's movie of the same title — the one where Terence Stamp seduces an entire family plus the maid, then leaves them to their alienation. It's an intriguing proposition, and I'm a huge van Hove fan, but the show is oddly blah (see my review).

Falling for Eve

Joe DiPietro — excuse me, Tony-winning Joe DiPietro — strikes again, having written the book for the new musical Falling for Eve at the York. How they managed to work Nazis into the Adam and Eve story, I leave that for you to discover.

A Night at the Tombs

Readers of this blog who don't live in NY need to know that the Tombs is the nickname of the city's detention house. When you need to cool off for a night, that's where you go. It happened to Bianca Leigh after she was arrested for soliciting in 1987, and now she's doing a one-woman show about it, A Night at the Tombs. Review in today's paper.

Musashi

And we're off! The 2010 Lincoln Center Festival started with Hisashi Inoue's Musashi, a Noh-inflected tale of samurai vengeance. I was there, of course.

My favorite New Yorkers

In today's Post, I write about some of the New Yorkers who bought tickets for Peter Stein's 12-hour-long staging of The Demons. (Yes, you read right: 12 hours.) It's basically a way for me to talk about the people who keep theater going in our town: the intellectually curious, the folks always looking for new experiences. I love them all.

Race reboot

Last week I revisited David Mamet's Race, and found it considerably improved thanks to a new cast that includes Eddie Izzard and Dennis Haysbert. Review in today's Post.

The Winter's Tale

The Winter's Tale, the second of this summer's Shakespeare in the Park offerings has opened. Oooh it's bad. Really bad. When I greeted John Simon, who was sitting in front of me, and asked how he was doing at intermission, he replied, "Good, under the circumstances."

The Merchant of Venice

[in booming Moviefone voice] "He's an outcast and a money-lending Jew! His daughter has betrayed him, and everybody hates him! It's payback time! This summer, Al Pacino is SHYLOCK in The Merchant of Venice! Now playing in Central Park! Now reviewed in the New York Post!"

Chatting away

Boy, do I like talking about theater! On WNYC, I'm discussing the dustup that's currently roiling the downtown scene with Time Out's Adam Feldman and PS 122's Vallejo Gantner. The discussion is actually far-ranging and we even touch on my feud with Leslie Jordan.

There's also Theater Talk, which airs on Channel 13 this Friday at 12:30am; and you can watch the show online. I'm revisiting the Broadway spring season with the Daily News' Joe Dziemianowicz, the Times' Charles Isherwood and Bloomberg News' John Simon. (Incidentally, I was sitting behind Simon at The Winter's Tale last night; let's just say it was an entertaining experience.)

On the Levee

Marcus Gardley, Lear deBessonet and Todd Almond's new play with music, On the Levee, opened last night at the Duke. My review's here.

The Grand Manner

Today I reviewed A.R. Gurney's latest, The Grand Manner. Who said summer was slow at the theater? I feel like I'm seeing something every single night!

Why the Eurovision is great

I've been a fan of the Eurovision Song Contest for a long time -- as evidenced in a pair of articles for the Village Voice and The Believer (the latter piece was reprinted in Best Music Writing 2007, which you obviously need to buy right now).

So it was with some trepidation that I read Anthony Lane's piece about the contest in this week's New Yorker (subscription required). Of course, Eurovision is a perfect target for Lane's panache, and he delivered the zingers. But at the same time, saying that lyrics in ESC songs are ridiculous and that performers and fans alike can be over the top is rather predictable: c'est enfoncer des portes ouvertes, as we say in France (ie, stating the obvious).

Lane falls back on the usual tropes, which Eurovision hatas have been trotting out for decades now. In short, the music heard at ESC is bad beyond redemption, the lyrics are ridonkulous (these people can't write in proper English!) and the whole thing is out of touch with popular trends, as if rock and pop (as they are understood in America and the UK) never happened. But that is exactly why the ESC is so great! It's an alternative to a kind of international one-size-fits-all tastemaking cooked up in and exported by those two countries. Lane found himself at this year's contest in Oslo, longing not so much for the Supremes, the Stranglers or R.E.M., but for the Bee Gees -- this to illustrate his view that the proceedings were so dire, he had to lower his standards.

Clearly, readers of this blog know that the Bee Gees are infinitely superior to both R.E.M. and Springsteen, another example Lane trots out. The Supremes and the Stranglers are in my personal pantheon as well, but that is not the point: The point is that one can enjoy all of these artists and the ones at Eurovision. Not all of them, of course -- even I cannot endorse some of the most turgid ballads, and admittedly 2010 wasn't a great vintage. But I love the fact that small countries in the Balkans or central Europe regularly come up with eye- and ear-popping songs, performers and choreographies. Lane mocked the Serbian entry, Milan Stankovic, which I thought was just fantastic: an ambiguous alien doing a super-catchy song by Goran Bregovic, a musician who's performed at Lincoln Center!

What's wonderful and important about Eurovision is precisely that so much of it falls outside of criteria of music and hipness defined in the UK and the US over the past 60 years or so. This is not to denigrate styles rooted in African rhythms -- and let's face it, a lot of the pro and con arguments about ESC revolve around whether or not you think these styles are necessary to make "good" music. But that is just not what the contest is about, and I for one love that it continues to offer an outlet for flamboyance and emotionalism untainted by self-consciousness.

Les Blues

And we're out! France leaves the World Cup in utter disgrace after losing to South Africa today. Honestly, I'm relieved: I just couldn't face another week of this circus. Les Bleus were terrible on the pitch, and even worse off it.

This team is amazing in its own special way: Every time I think it's hit rock bottom, it just gets worse. We got ejected of the 2002 World Cup without scoring a single goal. Then we somehow made it to the 2006 final, only to lose after Zidane's headbutt. Euro 2008: another shameful early exit. And now this -- men without skill, decency or honor.

Dietrich & Chevalier

Incredibly, the World Cup isn't the only thing happening right now. The new musical Dietrich & Chevalier (about Marlene and Maurice's relationship) opened last night off-Broadway. My review's here.

I also contributed to this short article about screen actors tanking in Shakespeare in the Park. I actually like Julia Stiles, but what makes her an interesting actress -- her gravity, her refusal to be panderingly charming -- made her a bad fit for Viola, who needs to be playful.

The French farce

Another day, another catastrophe for the French team — and it didn't even play!

Let's recap the past few months, shall we? Because things actually started going wrong before the World Cup. First, we qualified in a shameful manner on a hand-assisted goal against Ireland. In April, three players were named in a prostitution scandal — and with an underage prostitute at that. One of them was Franck Ribéry, one of the team's leaders. Then secretary of state for sport Rama Yade accused Les Bleus of having picked a prohibitively expensive resort in South Africa, sending an obnoxious signal to French people hit by the recession back home.

The competition started, and we drew a 0-0 tie against Uruguay in the opening game. Then we lost 2-0 against Mexico in a display that can only be described as pathetic.

Yesterday, it surfaced that the reason Nicolas Anelka didn't play the second half against Mexico isn't that he sucked — which he did — but that he insulted coach Raymond Domenech at halftime, and Domenech pulled him out of the team. Anelka was put on the next plane back home. Right away, the players started a witch hunt to figure out who talked to the press about Anelka's outburst. Captain Evra said "The problem isn't Nicolas Anelka, it's the traitor among us. It's someone who wants to hurt the French team."

Today, that team went rogue.

The players picked their camp: They openly revolted against Domenech and refused to practice, in solidarity with Anelka! The fitness coach — who had heatedly denied being the traitor — got into a screaming match with Evra about the aborted practice, threw either his accreditation badge or his stopwatch (accounts diverge) on the ground and stormed off. The team's technical director, reportedly fighting back tears, quit and announced he was returning to France: "I'm ashamed. I'm sick, disgusted, I'm leaving my job, what happened here is a scandal."

What could possibly happen tomorrow?

It can always get worse

France's pathetic display against Mexico has provoked a huge uproar back home, as you can imagine. I listen to a lot of French radio live or on podcast, and the football shows are incredibly entertaining right now. Newspapers are mad as hell too, and I've never seen such an explosion of rage against our own, in any sport. It's so bad that many in France are now rooting for South Africa in our last game!

Adding insult to injury, it's now surfaced that at halftime of the Mexico match, coach Raymond Domenech told the inept Nicolas Anelka that he needed to play more at the front, and Anelka reportedly answered "Go get fucked, you son of a bitch." Domenech then pulled Anelka and replaced him with Gignac for the second half. Le Monde says that the team decided to ship Anelka back to France. Former coach Michel Hidalgo (who oversaw the golden age of Les Bleus in 1978-84) commented that "Anelka's insult is despicable. He can't wear the French jersey anymore. I think he won't wear that jersey ever again."

On the plus side, Australia tied against Ghana in a feisty match, despite having a player red-carded after 20 minutes or so. I don't think the scrappy Socceroos will make it to the next round — they'd have to beat Serbia — but they'll leave with their head high, unlike other teams I could name.

Oh, and England self-combusted against Algeria, losing 0-0 (to borrow a headline from the Post). Unlike France, which went into the Cup with few illusions, England thought themselves hot stuff, so it was particularly satisfying to see Algeria bring them back to reality.

Little Doc

Dan Klores' new play, Little Doc, just opened at the Rattlestick Theatre, on Waverly Place. (I love downtown shows -- good dinner options before a performance.) I wasn't crazy about the production, to say the least. What bugged me the most was how uncommitted the actors felt. They played it way too safe. It was like watching the French soccer team: You can't fake it until you make it -- 'cause you just don't make it.