Pass

A Play by John Donnelly

Seen at La Mama

Saturday August 22 at 7pm

The Pass refers to a ball whose movement through a crucial game is steered by the manipulations of a footballer (soccer, I know) who passes for straight. For three short acts without intermission we watch him systematically kill off everything that might save his soul to protect his fame.

He is set in opposition to another player whose life takes a more “normal” trajectory: job and marriage (to a man). In essence this is the plot of The Turning Point (1977 film starring Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine as formerly rival ballerinas surrounded by straight male dancers!) reworked as a parable about closeted gayness on top of the rival life choices.

The theater has excellent sightlines and is small enough to be blessedly unmiked. The set was a hotel room, reset during (semi) blackouts to become three separate locales for three scenes spread over 12 years.

In the first, Jason, hunk extraordinaire, behaves like a crazed no-homo sports bro, playing around with Ade, a wiry man of color. Their sparring leads inevitably to a kiss. Later we learn that it led to a hand job and a night of tender embrace. And a morning of cold rejection.

The second scene, several years later, is a cat-and-mouse game between Jason and the sex worker he has hired—to surreptitiously film their encounter and leak it so that the internet is full of his straightness. Their encounter goes on far too long. And though she gives a good performance I found her speaking voice so grating that I had a hard time staying with them through their scene.

The third act is the completion of a circle. Jason, world star, has summoned Ade to his hotel for…what exactly? Ade actually showed up. Also for what? I’m guessing that the Act 1 kiss was a gay awakening that Ade cannot quite forget even though he has created a satisfying life for himself. And that kiss was Jason’s only chance at being authentic. The antics with the bellboy, who says he has no boundaries and then turns quite homophobic, reinforce the reasonableness of Jason’s fears.

He describes how at the age of 5 he learned that he didn’t like losing and would do anything to win. Winning turns out to be losing. Jason was charming in a raffish way at the start of the play and grew into a tiresome, entitled bully by the end—only to collapse onto his Exercycle and pedal furiously. Destination unknown, scarier than the old-fashioned suicide which might have ended a play like this in bygone years.

The fear of discovery in a field where everyone is supposed to be “manly” was and is real, even now. Using everyone to prop up fame as a cover for shame—there’s a divorced wife (Karen, we actually hear her name!) and two kids—is a standard ploy. It is sad to see that the shame still has such power.

Scene 3 includes two vases of calla lilies. The gayest thing in the play. IYKYK. Second prize goes to Jason’s horizontal stripe briefs….

The Odyssey

A Film by Christopher Nolan

Seen at AMC, 84th and Broadway

July 28, 2026

And

Die Ägyptische Helena

An Opera by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss

Seen at Bard Summerscape

July 29, 2026

Grab something to drink and sit down—this will be long!

There are two paths between historical drama and viewers. One emphasizes empathy and imagination. The other brings the material forward to make it more accessible and “relevant.” One replies on the audience’s ability to reason by analogy and the other tends to lecture. One may allow distance to obscure any implications. And the other may confront the audience with things that cannot be avoided.

Theater has fluctuated between the two paths over centuries. Contemporary dress onstage was so frowned upon in 1853 that Verdi’s La traviata had to be restaged in early 18th century dress in order to be accepted. By the end of the 19th century Verismo erased that issue!

But through most of the 20th century there was a dependable divide between dramas set in the present, costumed and set in the present, acted—and spoken—in the styles of the present, versus period pieces which make attempts at period styles. This ethos continued well into the TV era, sustained by BBC dramatizations of I, Claudius and various Shakespearean and Tudor epics. What eroded the style was microphones, which enabled speech to devolve from oratory to various forms of whispering and otherwise untheatrical non-declamation. When characters sound like “now” they no longer appear to be part of “then.” But even now there is an audience for “then,” in the form of Game of Thrones and such.

All of this is an extensive preamble to The Odyssey, which takes its own time getting going anyway! And the Strauss opera, which occupies time in its own unique way. First the movie….

Settings and costuming are a smorgasbord of many different “thens.” Speech is mostly “now.” And the script is ferociously relevant, with selected themes from Homer, Virgil, and Marlowe wrapped around a message about the collapse of civilization. It is simply ludicrous to think of Odysseus and Penelope referring to their Age being Bronze—or being conscious of any age other than THEIR present. I feel sad supporting the message while being ticked off at the way it is phrased and framed. The law of Zeus is hammered into the audiences skulls throughout the movie. Two references would have sufficed. Those who will get it will get it. Those who need to hear it will be either mystified or annoyed.

The script and the speaking of it are almost entirely “now.” A few actors have timeless delivery styles that don’t draw attention to themselves. But the let-down when Agamemnon lifts his terrifying visor (with a skeleton down the back of the helmet!) and his TV sitcom voice destroys any gravitas he surely ought to have is a splash of cold water. Even worse was Menelaus, who made no attempt to be anything together than a shlumpfy modern guy.

The water, by the way, is rarely Homer’s “wine-dark” but instead mostly gray, except for a few scenes when it is a gorgeous Caribbean turquoise.

Telemachus is the one most hobbled by his words and his way of saying them. He simply doesn’t feel like he’s in the same story. Odysseus himself strays in and out, with a gruff sound that seems acceptably appropriate while using turns of phrase that yank me away from 3000 years ago. Ultimately he connects to timeless concepts of longing while also carrying very modern ideas about the impact of his actions. He seems to think he single-handedly destroyed civilization by tricking the Trojans. He is a very unsubtle avatar for whatever we are doing to the world right now. But he gets to sail away at the end. We don’t. The only part of the movie that seems to be part of Homer is the return to Ithaca, the long, slow reveal of his identity, and the far-too-long massacre of the suitors. As a nod and correction to the misogyny of the original the parallel massacre of the female slaves is downplayed.

The parade of misadventures between Troy and Ithaca includes a lot of storms and waves and running back to the boats and periodic gruesome deaths. Polyphemus has one eye, as advertised, but it and his nose are set at a 90 degree angle, an interesting take that had never occurred to me—I just thought he had an eye above his nose! Circe was marvelous; her misandry thoroughly understandable and her maturity showed life experience to back that hatred of men up. Calypso seemed curiously blank, more therapist than seductress. Indeed the entire movie was amazingly unsexual.

Penelope was a marvel. So contained, restrained, elegant. Perfectly navigating between her own Scylla and Charibdis: the suitors and her loneliness. Her single tear as she realizes who the beggar is was a highlight of the movie, a masterpiece of subtlety, a tiny moment with huge impact.

Another immense tiny moment was the look of recognition on Euricleia’s face as she washed Odysseus’s feet. The moment with the dog Argo didn’t make an equal impact. Eumaeus had plenty of presence and much more “then” feel.

The suitors were mostly pigs, not even needing Circe to remake their images. But Antinous—such amazingly sneering evil, with a jaw line that should get an Oscar of its own. His end is as satisfying as that of Count Rugen in The Princess Bride.

And Sinon. Strayed in from The Aeneid to become the moral center of the movie. Duped twice. Once into taking Antinous’s place and once into deceiving the Trojans. He is the first thing we see in the movie. When Odysseus visits Hades he gets an earful from the shade of Sinon. There are things that cannot be made right, even though they can be avenged.

Finally…. The face that launched a thousand tweets. Helen. And her twin sister Clytemnestra. One actress, much maligned. Totally in command of two opposite characters, twin sisters married to not twin brothers, with diametrically opposed reactions to powerlessness and abuse. As Clytemnestra she was amazing, smoothly deceptive and suddenly volcanic. As Helen, docile with with her husband, she had far less to do. And what she had—the whispered apology into Telemachus’s ear—was one of the most cringe moments of “now” in the whole movie, appallingly written and directed. So out of period and character. Her formidable beauty was essentially irrelevant. The war was an act of inertia, once started it had a life of its own, and destroyed everything in its path. Very much in line with Tolstoy’s defiance against the great man theory of history. But the movie supports that theory by showing us that balance must be restored by the rightful king. Who then sails off and leaves the rightful heir.

The whole thing leaves a reverse Julian Fellowes taste behind. Instead of covert right wing theology boosting the idea that we must let the rich take care of us we get something vague about civilization will come back eventually. Then and Now. And Someday.

The most “now” thing about the movie is the emptiness of the world—abandoned by the gods. They may be perceived in waves and clouds but only Athena can be seen, and then only as a hallucination who periodically looks sadly at Odysseus before vanishing again. “The Great God Pan Is Dead.” But he was very much part of the world when Homer told this tale. Just not now.

Meanwhile…. Was Helen even in Troy? Using Euripides’s play as a source Hugo von Hofmannsthal created a dream fantasy about the conflict between Mr and Mrs Menelaus that plays out in some mythical Egypt after the Trojan War is long over. Confusing and incomprehensible. The sorceress Aithra summons a storm to save Helen from Menelaus’s murderous rage and then provides potions and diversions to reunite them. The original libretto is just the springboard for the director’s imagination and many vivid images fly by too fast to take in. Opera staged for people with no attention span. A men’s dance ensemble played a variety of posses, from Trojan soldiers to Paparazzi. The chorus was costumed as…. Well, I really have no clue. Act 2 added a bunch of characters to cause complications and then be swept away. Menelaus finally appeared in a white outfit that made me want to hear him as Pinkerton. Fake Helen and shadow Paris caused confusion. Which was the point, I realize. Some of it was beautiful. Some of it was impressive. Some of it made me giggle. The fabled “omniscient mollusk” appeared looking not unlike Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton. Aithra spent much of the opera posing in fetching contraposto with one heel elevated, as if doing a TV advertisement. She and Helen got a girl power moment that almost passed the Bechdel Test. And the button at the end was a Helen/Aithra kiss that looked like lesbian awakening.

Strauss provided music that seems to be one long and exhausting orgasm, climax after climax, with two soprano leads who must hurl high notes out endlessly. The crashing chords at the start recalled Agamemnon. Melodic tics like the do re do re MI (Four Last Songs) and SO….fa….re…..DO (bis an meinem Tod, Presentation of the Rose) show up. And all those sweeping unpredictable harmonic switches!

Terrific singing, in extremely demanding roles. Helen had a lush voice and Aithra a silvery one. Menelaus was a heldentenor who filled the house with sound that was beautiful as well as loud. Strauss’s orchestration was as always full of color and effect though this time could have used more polish in terms of balance.

Now is now but there are many thens. In this case the then is mostly art deco 1920s, the era when the opera was created. There was some antique drapery and a raft of mirrors. A mish-mosh. The whole thing is more of a dream grotto than a historical fantasy anyway.

Overall an impressive achievement but not an opera I’m likely to revisit often—if ever!

Death of a Salesman

A Play by Arthur Miller

Seen at The Winter Garden

Rear side mezzanine

July 21, 2026

A play that can be summed up in a single word: Disappointment.

Not about the performance! An intense and brilliant evening in the theater. But the sour stench of disappointment that chokes each of the characters. What a sad story.

There are a bunch of commonplaces about this play:

— It’s about “the American dream”

— Willy Loman is a hero

Nope. Maybe when the play was written it may have felt that way. But by now the characters and the plot connect with ageless fables of toxic fathers whose fear of failure, death, and being forgotten leads them to load their “loved ones” with unrealistic expectations, dragging them all down. King Lear. Henry VIII. And, to fair, Mama Rose!

Maybe the American Dream is just about using success to fend off those fears.

Those poor boys! Biff (who names their kid Biff?) idolizes his dad because his dad overloads him with praise and expectation—until those things can no longer be met. Mostly because Biff is confronted with his father’s imperfection. When the idol is smashed the world falls apart. He has nothing to fall back on in himself, no way to rebound. And Happy, who is ignored and invisible because his dad fixates on his brother. Both have been raised to admire Willy’s life and career, not to find their own ways.

Linda. The glue, the mortar of the family. She is a sad reminder of the sunken cost fallacy: having chosen Willy long ago (was he maybe like Happy, charming and energetic?) she applies herself to justifying his life and her choice. That gets in the way of her having her own authentic relationships with her sons. She harangues them on her husband’s behalf. There is a fleeting moment of her hugging Happy that hints at what ought to be. And when she buries the mortgage document beside Willy’s grave she says “we are free!” Free. Free of Willy, free of his self-mythologizing, free of his imperiousness and expectations. Free to be herself. What happens to her—and her boys—next? Maybe healing; they all need it.

Willy Loman. The child lives out the unlived life of the parents. His father decamped early—he knows what he wants from a father but not how to be one. His brother decamped as well. The only relationship model he has is whatever he had with his brother. He measures himself against his brother’s adventurousness and success. And projects his brother’s achievements onto his sons.

Willy did what he could as well as he could, with both of his emotional arms tied behind his back. His is a sad tale of what happens when men—and I do mean men here—are taught to measure their worth in dollars and renown. High commissions. Football glory. Fleeting and meaningless. (See “To an Athlete Dying Young” by Housman) And even more sad—Willy loves to build things and to grow things. These qualities are things he passed on to Biff, who runs away to do some of them, and are things they could have shared. Love and creativity. Stifled by stories he told himself and his sons.

The scene with the chippy in Boston veered between Willy’s lack of any sense of sexual need and his obvious need for the validation he got by having a box of stockings to give. Though they were meant for Linda—there was a weird echo of “The Right Girl” from Sondheim’s Follies here, maybe Sondheim was paying tribute.

Another stark and gut-wrenching contrast was between Willy’s exhortation to Biff not to act subservient in his pie-in-the-sky interview being followed by Willy’s own lowering his price and stooping to pick up the cup. Do as I say…. And he does quite a bit of giving orders that he cannot enforce.

Not a hero. Just a lost soul surrounded by a world that rushes by.

Terrific cast, creepy lighting, tight direction. The all-purpose “New York ethnic family everybody taking at once” atmosphere captured perfectly. Biff was in a near constant state of extreme volatility, still not enough to pierce Willy’s delusions. Happy started shirtless with black sweatpants and accumulated clothing as the show progressed. Linda managed a state of continuous anxiety with a backbone of steel. I wish Nathan Lane would breathe occasionally instead of lunging through 3 sentences, 5 dependent clauses, and an aside at high speed. When he’s in a musical he has to deal with rests!

The Invite

A Film by Olivia Wilde

Seen at Regal Union Square

July 7, 2026

Review/Reflection by Spoilers Galore

If Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf were a sex comedy….

The movie opens with a long close up of Joe, suffering through a band rehearsal and departing, cursing at his bike, without giving the students any useful feedback. He’s burnt out. They can tell. He radiates disappointment and a sense of shameful failure.

He comes home to his wife Angela, who is burnt out in a different way, frantic and frenzied, throwing together an ill-conceived dinner party for their upstairs neighbors. They bicker. They blame. They only connect through rage. At themselves and each other. At high speed and high volume.

And then Pina and Hawk arrive.

Cross purposes collide with accurate perceptions. Angela tries to restrain Joe from venting his fury at the other two for their riotously loud sex life. His envy is barely concealed. Hers isn’t at all. And the two guests are perfectly well aware of the issue and have come to up the ante: they host sex parties and for reasons I can’t quite fathom think they want to include their downstairs neighbors.

Angela has the faint remnants of a joyous girl inside that they see. Joe is such a schlub that they must see something that I can’t! To be fair given a major make-over he might be a cute bear. But his mulish self-loathing is powerfully unattractive.

He is a failed musician, reduced to teaching—which he obviously despises. He won’t touch his piano. And he lives, with Angela and a daughter who is conveniently away at a sleepover, in a truly fabulous San Francisco apartment that he inherited but could never afford. One major plot hole involves their renovation scheme, including breaking through to the apartment next door, which they managed to pay for anyway….. Another plot hole is Angela telling Joe how she met him by running back to where he was playing, as though he had never heard that story before.

Pina is a sexologist and therapist. Hawk, né Howard, was her client and is now her partner. They do group sex and offer a jump start to fun in Angela and Joe’s lives. Hawk has the gut punch moment of the movie, as Joe mocks his name—which turns out to be his new start after his wife died. Even that doesn’t quite get through to Joe, so that Pina rounds on him for his disrespect. And then on her own partner for correcting her English. Everyone—except Hawk—seems to be seething about something. Hawk by contrast seems almost slimy in a New-Age self-actualized way.

The proposed sex party turns into a partner swap, after much discussion of terminology. Pegging. Anal seems to be limited to men being penetrated by women with strap-ons… even suggesting that the guys touch each other is unmentionable while two girls kissing is still a male gaze fantasy and therefore OK. Homophobia, baked into social acceptability.

Angela has really put herself out to host the party, with a charcuterie spread sufficient for 12 and a soufflé that must have fallen from all the screaming and winds up burnt and tossed, casserole and all, into the garbage. There is, eventually, wine (a bottle saved for a special occasion which this turns out to be), tequila, and weed. Pina takes one toke while Joe puffs as if it’s a cigarette. Which leads to the breakdown moment. He has been loosening up and looking alive and even delighted at the turn-on he is getting from Pina. Then he falls and destroys the mood for all four of them. Not that Angela had been really ready to handle Hawk.

Pina diagnoses everyone’s problems. Great speech. Probably way beyond everyone’s boundaries, including her professional ones. The kicker is her pointing out that the daughter is marinating in anxiety as her parents fight—staying together in their current configuration is a losing proposition. The looks on the faces of those band players at the beginning of the movie tell the same story: kids know.

But new relationships could be healing. Even a new relationship with the same person. And that leads to the magical conclusion of the movie. Joe meanders to his piano and picks out a jazz progression. Angela hears him. Meanwhile the other two simply vanish: their work is done here. Angela leans her head on Joe’s shoulder as his playing picks up energy. Though it isn’t clear if this is a sweet moment of farewell or a new start it is uplifting, a way forward.

Terrific acting, script, direction. Apartment porn. Definitely worth seeing.

Hot Handel

In a Far-off Land

Baroque Opera Workshop

LeFrak Hall at Queens College

July 4, 2026 at 1:00pm

On an insanely hot day which was also a national holiday I journeyed to the eastern part of Queens to attend a concert in which one of my students was singing.

The Baroque Opera Workshop covers all aspects of period style: musical, dramatic, and movement. There was singing, acting, dancing, and instrumental performance. Gesamtkunstwerk long before Wagner!

This year’s subject was a mashup of Handel arias with Gay and Pepusch’s The Beggar’s Opera. Two performers dressed as the rival composers acted as sherpas to guide the plot along. Each singer got to be a character for one (sometimes more) number, passing along props such as a hat or a moneybag to claim the identity as it came to them.

The Handel arias were shorn of B sections and da capos, which mercifully brought the event in at two hours but somewhat disconcertingly bedecked the chaste melodies with complex ornamentation on the first go-round.

On purely musical terms Handel won hands down—Gay’s ditties were utilitarian at best, hardly memorable (Brecht and Weill would at least give Handel a run for his money!), while Handel provided banger after banger (to use current terminology), dense with emotional content and sensuous beauty. Some flew by faster than I would have liked but in context the tempi made sense.

Lots of good singing, beautiful playing, and effective dramatic involvement. Macheath was saved at the end by a Deus-ex-machina: a vote by “the audience” (as in The Mystery of Edwin Drood), which was essentially a vote by the cast, which seriously outnumbered the actual audience.

There were dances interspersed, with glowing looks of delight on the dancers’ faces.

Queens College has a lovely concert hall and is surely a good place for the workshop. But it is not easy to get to. Driving would be unattractive—traffic, bridges…. From where I live it was two subways and a bus. An hour and a half. The location probably explains the audience size.

The trip did however give me a taste of what makes New York New York. The subway is liminal space, filled with all sorts of people expressing themselves in all sorts of ways. And co-existing. Flushing is Koreatown. Signs that I can’t read. People different from me. All going about their lives. All my interactions, buying coffee and asking directions, were pleasant. Difference isn’t frightening. Unless someone chooses to be scared…. Ironically, The Beggar’s Opera triumphed in its day by harnessing Londoners’ fear and prejudice. It all fits together!

There was a joke long ago about spiriting Nancy Reagan away from the White House and making her buy dresses off the rack at a mall! Similarly there are so many prejudiced people selling fear to this country that I wish I could drop them off on a Main Street and tell them to buy their own lunches.

At the end of the program there was an encore, a dance: a tune deeply associated with the day but so different for want of a secondary dominant! Nice touch.

Drunken Noodles

A Film by Lucio Castro

Seen at IFC, June 28, 2026

The perfect button to Pride Month—a gay movie with no agonizing coming out saga and no tragedy. In fact, it presents a world where gayness is simply a normal thing. There is love and there is sex. They overlap. Each feeds the soul of Adnan, whose story this is. He is an art student at Bard, apartment (and cat) sitting in Williamsburg, interning at a gallery, and reminiscing about the previous summer. He has/had encounters with a poetical delivery man (who provides the noodles of the title), random guys in parks, an impromptu orgy, his ex, and a mature (very) artist who also outlines the four sections of the film as he needlepoints the title cards. His unique and very erotic art is displayed at the gallery and spurs Adnan’s recollections of meeting him on a bike excursion alone after leaving his boyfriend at their cabin. Both of these middle sections feature magical events: a visit from the Great God Pan (with pipes and a Ruby slipper!) and a truly weird body double scene where the soon-to-be ex is in two rooms simultaneously.

There is sadness as Adnan’s relationship teeters but also sweetness as they play in a lake and end up snuggling in bed. There is serenity in the artist’s life out in the woods, after the death of his partner and while caring for his very elderly mom. And there is satisfaction in having adventures and meeting bodily needs pretty much every time he has sex.

Adnan leads a solitary life but finds his soul on his own—the last section of the movie, wordless, takes him to a nighttime hookup in McCarren Park and that seemingly takes him to gorgeous daylight lying on his back in the grass.

Much of the fun in watching is parsing what’s happening and when. And the rest is simply in enjoying the unlikely and magical events as they unfold. Highly recommended.

Liza! at 80

A Celebration in Song and Dance

Carnegie Hall

June 25, 2025

Viewed from the balcony

There was pandemonium in front of Carnegie Hall. A melee of ticket holders in various forms of Liza Minnelli cosplay, from black satin outfits to spangles and sequins, and all sorts of drag. Plus a scattering of desperate fans calling out for extra tickets. And a lady selling hers—but she must have been asking too much because nobody seemed to be buying!

It was a sell-out crowd.

Mo Rocca and Marc Shaiman hosted a procession of (mostly) Broadway divas roaring a series of anthems of survival and fierce joy via a pretty good sound system that filled the hall with their voices. The orchestra was brilliant. There was a special overture arranged for the occasion.

It was a very gay evening, in all senses of the word.

So many brilliant performers. Bonnie Milligan started things off with a number from Flora the Red Menace. Belting that ferocious sometimes obscures the words—indeed some of the songs really required the audience to know the lyrics already. Which many of them did. Kristin Chenoweth gave an extremely extroverted version of Maybe This Time. Donna Murphy got so engrossed that she had to stop and reset. Andrew Rannells sang, quite beautifully, Liza’s frenetic reworking of Losing My Mind, which Sondheim supposedly disliked but the song is quite strong enough to survive reinterpretation. Marisha Wallace channeled Liza’s energy full blast.

Most of the music was of course by Kander and Ebb, with John Kander in the audience. But other authors represented included (in addition to Sondheim) the Gershwins and Rodgers and Hammerstein.

There were speeches by a series of guests. Julie Halston told, in a raucous voice reminiscent of Joan Rivers, a long story about what she claimed was the gayest evening of her life—at an event which surely rivaled it!

So many uptempos in a row were exhausting, although the clever banter of the hosts provided breathing room. The payoff was Michael Feinstein, crooning so delicately and intimately. And Lorna Luft, presenting for her whole family. And bringing the house down with the simple, obvious, and welcome words: Happy Pride!

There were tables stacked with copies of Liza’s autobiography in the lobby—included with the ticket price!

A mesmerizing memorial to an entertainment culture by now long past.

La Cage aux Folles

La Cage aux Folles

A musical by Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein

Seen at City Center Encores

Thursday, June 18, 2025

True confession: I had never seen any incarnation of this story before! Second confession: my tastes skew Sondheim….

It was utterly amazing to see how such a retro score drove the audience—including me—to a frenzy of joy. Foursquare songs, structured in the manner of Irving Berlin. Generic melodies, all of which seem calibrated to the style of Angela Lansbury. Rhythms that you could clap on 1 and 3 to. The only harmonic interest was key changes—predictably upward and occasionally enharmonic, to give another singer a more favorable tessitura (as with Jacqueline’s verse in Best of Times). And the signature tic of a long note followed by a pick-up bar with a scramble up 7 eight notes. But absolutely none of my carping matters!

The book contains many zingers, all dependent on performers to make them land. And performers we had. Wayne Brady and Billy Porter were the lead couple, totally committed, even when flipping wrong pages in the script (Encores-style they were on book) and breaking character to account for that. To be honest Albin would crack wise exactly as Billy Porter did! Brady was smooth and secure, what a gorgeous voice with effortless control. Porter was pedal-to-the metal all night, occasionally driving his voice to a place of scary rawness but always coming back from the precipice of hoarseness.

The supporting cast was uniformly excellent. Tonya Pinkins as Jacqueline displayed a formidable baritone! The director contributed some hilarious bits of staging, particularly when the “maid” had to deal with too many suitcases. And the costumer must have had a ball. The set was minimal—but the Act Up banner that flew overhead was a reminder of larger challenges that followed the premiere of this show.

As always with Encores the orchestra is a star, even though the amplification system remains unworthy of them. And as always with Encores the dancing feels like the most finished part of the production. Dazzling.

The story is amusing and touching, although I spent Act 1 annoyed at Jean-Michel. No matter how love-blind he may have been his disrespect for his “mother” seemed inconsistent with 24 years of being used to all those qualities that make Albin Albin. And his apology seemed poorly prepared by the script. But the depth of love between Albin and Georges and the chemistry between Brady and Porter swept any niggling criticisms away. Their duet at the end was simple and true and deeply moving.

La Cage did everything theater is supposed to do. To return to Sondheim, “You know what, Ben, I’m glad we came!”

* * *

Footnote: the name Zaza, Albin’s stage persona, comes from a French play that became a Belasco hit and then a Leoncavallo opera—a starring vehicle for Geraldine Farrar at the Met in 1920. And, inevitably, a silent movie starring Gloria Swanson! By now it is just another cultural reference lost to the mists of time, like Svengali and Love’s Old Sweet Song. Sigh.

Jerome

A Play by John J. Caswell, Jr.

Seen at Playwrights Horizons

Saturday, June 13, 2025

Theater cannot exist if people communicate directly! This play, like so many, depends on secrets kept until they can be no longer. Secrets that eat at their keepers.

A mysterious but very hot man, cutely named Bruin (Bear, get it? But more of a muscle otter) is picked up by an older couple and becomes enmeshed in their lives while obstinately refusing to own why he is there, in a tiny town far from the life he was living.

It’s 1992 and he came from San Francisco, so the secret is at least partially obvious, though not the exact connection to it. And his past also includes Mormonism and a dead wife.

The older characters, in their 60s and looking/acting every minute of it, have been living a monogamous life as a gay couple far from the risks of the big city gay. Con has an array of health issues. Doane seems hale and hearty.

The framing device is three successive Halloween parties, very inexpensively staged. At the first the couple haltingly picks up the man to have an adventure but Con has an underlying motivation: he wants someone to replace himself in Doane’s life after he dies. It is a lovely thought but causes a sequence of awkwardnesses while all three live together.

Bruin is problematic on many levels. Supposedly 50 he doesn’t look 3 minutes older than 37. He gets the obligatory shirtless scene and then the obligatory running around in his briefs scene. There are young men who happily pair up with older men but the discord between his look and his stated age plus his obvious fitness and their advancing decrepitude looks weird.

This is not helped by the supposed love that grows between Bruin and Doane. While Bruin seems fearful of Con, whose declining health reminds Bruin of….

Yes, this is an AIDS play.

It is also a play without a clear structure. All three characters are protagonists, which is very real but is the writing equivalent of too many things happening at once across the stage. And the ending presents one subordinating to the other two, suddenly providing a focus that wasn’t clear for more than two hours.

There are some great lines and good laughs. And a scene of magical realism that leaps into vividness. Stephen Spinella, a fabled veteran actor, gives a performance that ranges from way over the top to deeply intimate genuineness. The other two actors have less material to work with: Doane spends two acts unable to say I love you until he finally does. And Bruin has big but very stagey histrionic fits before letting his secret out.

The Halloween framing device—so perfectly gay, the high holy day—sets up each year’s events. First the opening of the relationship and incorporation of the third. Then the difficulties of balancing their love and sex lives. Finally then the impending presence of death. A voice-over lists the recently departed of the community, setting up the expectation that Con will be among them. He isn’t. Instead there is an epilogue, with them all in white, teasing the possibility that they are all in Heaven. They are not—but Italy is close! The ending is essentially wish fulfillment for all three, tying things together in an almost Dickensian manner. Theatrically satisfying but a bit too easy for everyone.

An interesting evening in the theater.

Love Letters

A Concert by Empire City Men’s Chorus

Friday, June 12, 2026, at 7pm

Church of the Holy Apostles

This is more a reflection than a review.

Music lands on listeners in different ways, depending on where each listener is in their life journey. This may seem obvious, but was brought sharply into focus by the opening number on the concert: Being Alive, from Company.

In context, in the show, it is about letting go of fear and taking the risk of imperfect partnership—to move on from aloneness. A 28 year old might hear it that way. A 48 year old might hear it as a welcome into adulthood. But a 68 year old widower hears the other end of partnership, the return to aloneness. It stung. Mostly because it was something uncontemplated by its original context: it is the price of love.

The ECMC sang it, in unison, so beautifully. Blended voices floating in the hall. Tender, yearning. The rest of the program was a mix of new compositions, new arrangements, and some classics. Occasionally the words were hard to make out, mostly when soloists were singing and needed microphones to piece through the complex choral textures. Also when the two narrators of the awesome piece about trans coming out and recovery from reparative therapy needed to be a lot closer to their mikes!

That piece, Here I Am: I Am Here, a fresh TTBB arrangement of a new composition by Andrea Clearfield, was the heart of the program. Two soloists and two narrators laid out parallel stories of acceptance. A mother coming to know that her son is truly her son. A man learning to be the parent—for himself—his homophobic parents couldn’t be.

Randall Thompson’s Choose Something Like a Star, also in TTBB guise, sounded quite ethereal, with first tenors sustaining those falsetto pedal points. It took me back all those decades to my first encounter with the music, singing it at a holiday concert in the dining hall of the college inevitably to be formerly known as Calhoun, at Yale. Indeed, the male chorus sound itself took me even further into the past, to high school Glee Club, at an all boys school (long since gone coed).

Guest star Brian Nash displayed well-trained classical chops singing To What You Said, from Bernstein’s SongFest, then took the keyboard to lead two rock anthems, leading to the finale: Cut to the Feeling, conducted and arranged by music director Vince Peterson.

It is fascinating to think how each piece of music might have moved each audience member in some unique way. Music is even more necessary than any one’s experience can quantify.

Another World

A Film by Tommy Kai Chung Ng

Seen at Angelika Film Center

June 9, 2025

“The human world is unfathomable”

And full of violence and powerless rage. Powerless rage is poison—it fuels souls that grow into monsters. Only forgiveness and letting go provide salvation. Which in this story is reincarnation. Monsters, called Wraths, cannot be reincarnated. Whatever seed of evil is growing inside a soul must be extracted. And that falls to the Soul Keepers. Such as Gudo.

Gudo encounters Yuri, who doesn’t understand that she is dead and insists that she must find her brother before she can accept anything. The arc of the movie is her growth and eventual reincarnation. Along the way we see several tales of misery and violence, perhaps her previous lives. Gudo swears to be there for her throughout. And is.

The film is beautiful, in the manner of Miyazaki, but there are severed limbs and gruesomeness and even cannibalism. The tales interweave in a way that is at first confusing and then begins to make sense.

Gudo has faith. Yuri has love—and a kernel of danger deep inside. A kernel that almost takes over. But at last she is ready for her journey. Reincarnation is preceded by a trip across the water and through the waterfall, leaving all memories mirrored in the stream as they drain from the mind. For me, that was the saddest image in the movie, touching and gorgeous and rueful all at once.

Gudo, having stood steadfastly by a human, is rewarded with incarnation—to experience the whole range of feelings.

A scary, upsetting, ultimately uplifting story.

Blue Film
A film by Elliot Tuttle
Seen at IFC
Sunday, May 24, 2026

WARNING: disturbing material

First we see Aaron, the Camboy, doing his thing, flaunting his formidable body and hurling abuse at his customers. That’s his shtick and the service that he provides. He boasts that someone is paying him 50 Grand to spend the night. And off he goes to his assignation.

He is met by Hank, an older man, whose face is concealed by a balaclava. 25K down, the balance afterwards. The man initiates a session of filmed questions. The boy is surly and avoidant. The man is needy and nervous. Both have false fronts. The man wants to know the boy, without even showing his face. They dance around who they really are, revealing truths layer by layer but leaving some key things unclear.

The man taught at the school the boy, actually named Alex, attended. The man was fired—and imprisoned—for attempted assault on a different boy. But he loved this one and went to insane lengths to see if he still loves him—as a full-grown man. Because he is a pederast, his preferred word, and loved the boy as a boy.

There is sex, rather unsatisfactory for both of them. And much soul-sharing, fueled by beer and weed. They role-play. The man shaves the boy to restore him to youthful smoothness. The shaven boy resembles Calvin Banks, an adult porn star. That connects him to the world of hairless twinks so popular among gay men. And carries some unsettling implications. But the man cannot carry through with sex, trapped within his own self-hatred.

The boy has learned that there are gay men who thrive on abuse and he builds his online presence on that, having learned it from a violent three-way. He also has a recent trauma, being deserted by the lover he adores and pines for. He flips the evening on its head by demanding that they re-enact that trauma. He Subs. The man cannot Dom.

The key question is: are they made that way or traumatized and perverted as a result. Ultimately the boy seems made that way and the man more a product of a surprising and deeply sad backstory.

The other question is: how does the man pick his objects? He sees the boys who have something in common with him: outsiders. Little gay boys need mentorship in the midst of a heteronormative world and thus draw the attention of men who were already wounded by that world. This is not to excuse abuse but to understand. And that seems to be the raison d’être for this movie.

Note: my real-life memory of a teacher fired for attempted assault on a high school boy did not involve a boy who exuded any need for gay mentorship—he was just very good-looking!

Through the film there are images of an innocent little boy. Perhaps that is the innocence that was stolen from the man. And perhaps it is what he fetishizes. The man asks if setting up their encounter was a bad idea. He selfishly and heedlessly created a situation to satisfy his own needs and possibly retraumatize a boy whose vulnerability he had recognized long ago. So yes. He wants to know the boy and does get much of what he asks for. The boy asks one simple question: do you still love me? That he cannot answer. Or does not.

Having revealed his family secret he clams up and leaves, taking whatever compassion he had engendered with him. The boy is left in the (rented) house to sleep off his experience, count the cash, and wash it all away. In the shower he slowly and shyly begins to sing: possibly the song that the man had long ago encouraged him to sing in a talent show. The song he had angrily refused to sing when asked to earlier in the night. There is no redemption for the man but something has awakened in the boy.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

(Les Parapluies de Cherbourg)

A film by Jacques Demy

Music by Michel Legrand

In French with English subtitles

4K restoration seen at Angelika Film Center

May 23, 2025

Boy and girl, madly in love. Boy must go away and girl must wait. A plot that has undergirded stories for centuries. It is the crux of War and Peace, where Natasha cannot endure the agony of aloneness and falls for the cad Anatole. It forms the middle section of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, where Geneviève is challenged by difficulties beyond what Natasha has to deal with: pregnancy and a two year separation, plus uncertain communications. And so she “falls.”

We first meet her as an impetuous 17 year old, bristling to get free of her mother and her mother’s umbrella shop and run off with an exciting young man. She is played by the luminous but rather grown-up for 17 Catherine Deneuve. The script focusses on their romance as it blossoms and then is threatened by his required military service. They consummate their love and then bid each other farewell in an extended scene with an extended song, a ferocious ear-worm worthy of Puccini. The lines by themselves are sparse, so many repeated Je t’aimes, that I was reminded of the improvised dialogue in Singin’ in the Rain that arouses such hilarity. The acting and the cinematography and the music eliminate any risk of that.

The poor girl has the best of youthful, idealistic intentions. But of course she is pregnant. This causes barely a ripple of resistance from her mother. It isn’t a source of shame but a wedge that can be driven between Geneviève and her absent lover. The rich gem merchant idolizes her, addresses her respectfully using vous, and serenely accepts the idea of parenting a child that isn’t his. Coached by her mother she accepts.

Guy, her now formerly loved, returns to find girl, mother, and even umbrella shop have vanished. He hears about what happened from Madeleine, the girl who nurses his dying aunt and has a crush on him that is obvious from the moment we first see her. And she is the only character in the whole movie who loves someone she actually knows! The other relationships are fantasies. Madeleine can even tell Guy the truth about what she sees happening to him. Bitterness and rage, acting out. He finally sees her. He marries her and restarts his life.

Inevitably Geneviève makes a brief and coincidental appearance in his life several years later. He has moved on enough to send her away with only a moment of regret and turn to his present life with joy. But we last see her eyes moist with what she lost. She gave up passion for companionable marriage. He chose companionable marriage after his passion was denied. Accepting the impermanence of love—so very French!

The dialogue is sung, in the manner of an opera, but with close miked, wispy, dubbed voices. The music occasionally opens out into something emotional enough to require song or intense underscoring. The visuals take two forms: a muted palette for outdoor scenes, overcast, rainy, or snowy; and deeply saturated in-your-face colors indoors. The wallpapers alone are worth seeing the movie for!

Vanessa

Opera by Samuel Barber

Libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti

Seen at HeartBeat Opera

Baruch Performing Arts Center

May 19, 2026

The shadow of Carl Jung hovers over this imaginative intimate recreation of the original large-scale dinosaur of an opera. The back of the stage is a white wall and the lights catch and project the shadows of the characters, emphasizing the repressed feelings that each can hardly contact consciously.

The 7 piece orchestra reduction works well and the conducting is vibrant and sensitive. The direction makes sensible use of the space, a black box theater sunk several levels into the basement, possibly the least ADA-compliant performing space in the city. Omigod those stairs! And the elevator was out of service.

The space was not spacious enough for some of the voices. The climax of the renowned quintet became a blur of vibratos. Vanessa herself, handicapped by jagged vocal writing that hurls words high above the staff, used the univowel to make herself heard but not always understood. There were subtitles, mercifully. Erika was absolutely terrific: firm, clear tone with every word projected. Anatol had a truly brilliant voice, but it needed more room to blossom.

The opera has an unlikely plot with an improbable setting and a libretto full of ornate turns of phrase. Menotti never settles for one metaphor when three can be summoned up. The characters don’t offer much to empathize with. They gaslight themselves and others, denying things they instinctively know and wishing for what cannot be.

Vanessa’s delusion challenges compassion. Anatol is both a cad and a cipher. The doctor in this version has been demoted from eccentric to annoying drunk. The Baroness has one sympathetic scene with Erika before cutting her off, presumably for the same offense that caused the rift with Vanessa: failure to have a baby. Miscarriage? Abortion? Unclear, probably intentionally so. Erika is the heart of the opera. Maria Callas was offered the title role and refused, saying that Erika was the more interesting part. But even Erika makes choices that strain credulity: she waffles melodramatically about her feelings until Anatol marries the one who says yes.

The score (judiciously cut) veers between jagged backwards-looking (Strauss) and melodious backwards-looking (Puccini). My empathy goes to the creators of the opera, longing for an ethos that was already gone.

But then there is that quintet. A few minutes of such simple genius that the whole thing seemed worthwhile. And just as happened at the Met premiere the audience dispersed humming that descending sixth.

Nuremberg
A Film by James Vanderbilt
Seen on Netflix, April 1, 2025

Reflection by Spoilers Galore

“Him I could love til I die!” sings Marian the Librarian in her dream of an ideal husband, in The Music Man. The “Him” she finds is a charismatic narcissist who leaves destruction in his wake. Until he meets her. Hermann Göring does not find any such reformation. And though the “Him” that Göring loves is himself—at crucial moments it is also the Führer. That moment of love beyond one’s self redeems Harold Hill and undoes the Reichsmarschall’s serene and perfect defense.

All of this movie is focussed towards understanding that the distance from Harold Hill and Marian the Librarian to Monster is not as far as we may wish it to seem. As Col. Andrus says, we are better than that. Or so we believe. Reading reviews reveals how uncomfortable being confronted with this possibility can make people. One scoffs at the idea of Frau Göring being portrayed as sympathetic. Others decry the unsubtle implicit warning that we could fall into fascism here or anywhere. These reactions only show me how triggered those writers are by shadows that they hide, repress, and deny.

The movie divides into several episodes, not all of which are really necessary. The set-up for the trial is expository, didactic, and a waste of time. Justice Jackson’s ambition to be Chief Justice has no bearing on the main plot. The scene with the Pope in particular is padding. Things pick up when Dr Kelley does card tricks on the train. Rami Malek drips charisma and quirkiness. The magic and the beautiful lady he charms both come back to bite him. His motives are mixed and his morals are complex and compromised from the start. But not at a world-destroying level.

As opposed to those of his target/patient/friend: the surviving chief Nazi. Russell Crowe endows the monster with wiles and charm and infinite patience. He knows all. And he really does: he has a well-prepared plan for evading the noose and he sizes up Dr Kelley with unfortunately hideous accuracy, as a footnote to himself.

The trial takes up a major section of the film. Showing the authentic concentration camp footage is stomach-churning. From a story-telling perspective I would have preferred to hear the soundtrack while the camera takes in reaction shots from all those watching.

Frau Göring and little Edda, with her piano playing, perfectly represent the banality and the cultural respectability of everything the Nazis were trying to achieve—and demonstrate how utterly human they were and how easily anyone could slip into allowing horrors to happen as long as their tiny world remains intact. Not monsters. Humans who allowed monstrous things.

The symmetry of Kelley’s interactions with Lila, the reporter, which starts with him using a card trick on her and leads to her tricking him into a frank and ill-advised interview (his alcoholism is his addiction, paralleling Göring’s dependence on opiates) is one pleasing framing device. Another is Kelley’s disappearing coin trick, used on Edda and taught to Göring himself, which becomes the aha moment when the condemned man pulls a last trick from his sleeve (or wherever he got that capsule) and quotes Kelley—abracadabra!—before dying on his terms.

Kelley writes a book warning that there’s no special monster quality to the Nazis—this could happen anywhere and be anyone. A warning for now. But that is balanced by the inherent decency of Howard Treist, a Jew who passes easily as Aryan, who had promised to reveal himself to one of the Nazis before hanging him but is moved to compassion by the hysterical man and walks him gently to the scaffold.

The lesson of The Music Man is that a toxic narcissist can find redemption by owning his shadows—when faced with the pure goodness and trust of Winthrop. The sadder but wiser lesson of Nuremberg is that believing we are better than that hides our shadows and makes it possible for those shadows to return.

Tristan und Isolde
By Richard Wagner
Seen at the Metropolitan Opera
March 9, 2025

“Ods bodkins, what does it mean?”

There’s a G&S a quote or a Sondheim quote for all situations. Phoebe’s cry of dismay from The Yeomen of the Guard is where I go instead of WTF and certainly fills the bill after the Met’s new production of T&I. Particularly the last 10 minutes.

First, praise where is is way beyond due. The orchestra, luscious as silk, all those wind solos (and occasionally just a bit too much brass). The conducting was a little restrained at the start but warmed up into Act 2. The only place where the orchestra really overwhelmed the stage was at the end—and that was partly due to the upstage placement of the soprano.

The soprano. An immense, voluminous upper range with a light chest mix below, very much in the German training mode. If Leonie Rysanek had ever sung this role it might have been like this—but a whole lot crazier! Lise Davidsen was impressive in her dignity and her rage and in the whole range of beautiful vocal colors. Tireless in Acts 1 and 2, she ran out of steam near the end and a tremolo set in. Waiting over an hour backstage and then having to deliver some of the most famous pages in opera from a position well upstage over a wall of orchestral sound and while being slowly stripped of her green raiment! Not enviable.

The tenor. Amazing. Michael Spyres had honeyed piano and a reserve of stentorian forte. He went from strength to strength in the absurdity demanding 3rd Act and his last word—Isolde—was the most beautiful sound of the entire evening. He did not look comfortable traversing the set.

Kurvenal was terrific. The King was fine. Brangäne had too much vibrato for my taste and had to trade phrases with someone impossibly louder which cannot have been easy. Steersman and Shepherd both excellent. And the onstage English Horn player was magical, a good example of a crazy staging concept that worked just fine.

Not all of them did.

The plain dreary world of day was on the front flat area of the stage. Behind it and raised above was a curved world of inner being, which I will call The Airlock. It did suggest T&I in space, even as the ocean roared beneath it. It continuously reconfigured itself and took on fluorescent colors that clashed with the natural world of forest green and midnight blue that I hear in the music. That’s the crux—decisions made for conceptual reasons rather than simply hearing what’s there.

The upside of the set was that Act 3 in particular benefited from separating consciousness from vision. Kurvenal tended comatose Tristan, played by a double, while Tristan’s soul, played by the singer, roamed the Airlock hallucinating. Act 2 went from Isolde’s impatience downstage to the fabulous duet in world of spirit only to be yanked back down to the confrontation with Melot and the King.

The entire opera was plastered with projections: waves, clouds, the moon, a huge flame (with Brangäne in the middle like Tinkerbell) to which a moth was way too predictably drawn. There were symbolic elements that came and went: the hourglass in the Act 1 prelude; the blade in Act 1; the flame in Act 2; the pure white dish whose purity the King smashed also in Act 2; the ever extending table that held the blade and the goblets, then the candle and the dinner setting, and finally the comatose hero and an array of surgical implements that I thought were going to be for him but turned out to be prepared for labor and delivery….

A small group of chorus/extras popped up—literally—as sailors and later appeared as white-clad beings, who knows what, in Tristan’s delirium, and finally as midwives.

The overall effect was opera for people with short attention spans who must have something new to look at every few seconds.

The plot is driven by Isolde’s backstory: Morold, Tantris, revenge. The production concept seems to be reverse engineered from Tristan’s backstory: orphan, cause of mother’s death, need for rebirth.

As a result Isolde becomes a vessel, the means of restoring balance to the world through childbirth. King Marke needs an heir and Tristan needs a do-over. Tristan brings Isolde to the King so that he can have an heir, that at least is in the libretto.

But having Isolde die in childbirth. That’s where I passed from being OK with the production to not. It totally objectifies her, for starters. It lands the final tableau in the lap of King Marke, who is nowhere near the focus of the opera. It turns her transfiguration into a means for Tristan’s redemption. And whose child is it? The King’s? He did marry her and presumably consummated the marriage. But no, legend has it that Brangäne took Isolde’s place in the marriage bed. Morold’s? Not impossible! Tristan’s? They had that hot duet—but the WHOLE POINT of the opera is that their love cannot be satisfied on earth. And certainly not consummated. To quote from another, rather shorter opera: Il nostro è amore d’anime! The Liebesnacht leads towards but does not arrive at that point—Melot interrupts! In source materials Tristan lays his sword between them to preserve their chastity. There cannot be a baby. Isolde dies of love, period. Trust the material. Don’t insert a real-world cause of death where an otherworldly one is specified!

The performance concluded with volleys of bravos for the performers and some booing for the production team.

High Spirits

A Musical by Hugh Martin and Timothy Gray

Based on Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward

City Center Encores

February 14, 2025 at 7:30pm

In modern slang ghosting refers to vanishing without a trace. Which is exactly the opposite of what happens in this show. The dead shall be raised, or at least their shades will appear in shimmery silver grey!

Charles Condomine, a novelist, hires a medium, Madame Arcati, to conduct a seance with his second wife and two dinner guests present. He is not a believer in the supernatural. What he gets is a series of bitter pills, couched in dry wit and smooth music.

The original play, an immense hit in the 1940s was broadened and recast for American tastes as a musical comedy in the 1960s. Much of Coward’s text is preserved in the clipped witty style of the dialogue. The musical numbers open out into more varied and brassier styles. The ending has been drastically changed and makes a fine effect, having been set up in a way that is subtle but suddenly inevitable.

Coward disliked seeing Madame Arcati played for “vulgar” laughs. What might he have thought of Andrea Martin’s delightfully way over the top physicality and line readings? The rest of the cast would have probably pleased him more. Philippa Soo channeled Claire Foy in one of her multiple English Queen roles with her locked-jaw spoken dialogue—which blossomed out into lovely soprano sounds. Katrina Lenk was a perfect contrast, with her languid lines and ferocious belt. Steven Pasquale was properly proper, but used a thread of voice for most of his role. Rachel Dratch was riotous in her crossing the stage bits.

The ensemble sang well and danced fabulously. The orchestra was huge and lush. Both brought out the limitations of the space. Sight lines were good. But the sound system was…basic. Hearing the instruments mixed into one wall of sound coming from above not from their ranks was disorienting. The actors were miked less distractingly. But the dancing (and bits of physical comedy) was the only thing unmediated by technology.

Overall an enjoyable evening, well performed. Noel Coward’s zingers were the most memorable part.

Pillion

A Film by Harry Lighton

Based on the Novel Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones

Angelika Film Center

February 15, 2025

Review/Essay by Spoilers Galore

We hear “Chariot” by Betty Curtis at the start of Pillion, when Colin sees the motorcycle speeding by and the song proclaims “I will follow him.” And follow him he does.

Colin is a cute dweeb who gives out parking tickets by day and sings in a modestly accomplished Barbershop quartet by night (I loved how the movie’s producers did not glam up the level of the amateur music-making). He is profoundly English, apologetic and contained. And he longs for something—which he sees in Ray, the impossibly handsome, icy, distant biker dude.

Their first “date,” an encounter in an alley—with both of their dogs left tied to a fence—sets up their Dom/Sub dynamic. Ray orders, Colin obeys. And smiles. And says “I’m sorry” a lot. Whatever enjoyment is visible comes from the exercise of that power dynamic, not from anything remotely sensuous. That lack of pleasure apart from power runs through the movie. The only time anyone looks like they are having fun is the water fight at the biker picnic.

Ray only seems content when polishing his motorcycle or reading with his charming glasses on. When having sex he keeps anything approaching feeling locked inside. He also keeps his temper under strict control, expressing himself in clipped, dry instructions, until a moment of crisis, when we see him lose it—and even see him humanized. Briefly.

Colin’s parents are both the support and the problematic origin of his needs. His dad is goofy and henpecked. His mum is dying—we see her bald from chemo and later with an assortment of wigs and head scarves. Together they show their acceptance of their son’s queerness by meddling in his life, setting him up on dates. He is emotionally stunted by them—and his mum is dealing with her impending death by trying to exercise power beyond life to protect her son. Understandable but unworkable. That said, she is the only one who calls out the dysfunction in Colin’s blind trust of Ray. She wants to know who Ray is. Ray isn’t telling. We never know how he lives, supports himself, anything about him. She wants something to trust him for and calls him that traditional British insult starting with C when he refuses to provide it. Dad flails as Colin and Ray depart.

After being a Sub with no boundaries Colin begins to assert himself. This leads to a series of events that break their dynamic. Colin pokes Ray into a rage—and then flees on Ray’s most prized possession. Without a helmet! The look of utter delight on the face of Colin as he experiences freedom—freedom from Ray AND his parents—is scary and heart-warming. As is the look on Ray’s face as he wakes sleeping Colin on the front steps, offers breakfast, and heads out with him for “a day off.”

Music is part of both of their lives. Ray has a piano, which comes as a surprise to Colin, and plays Satie, haltingly. And one moment of their day off involves Ray asking for a singing lesson, having enough of an ear to mimic Colin’s scale, though in a lower key, while still having such an inflated ego that he can’t handle the two ladies on the bench saying they prefer Colin’s more melodious voice!

The day off is a unique experience. Colin gets a taste of the reciprocal love relationship he wants. Ray gets a taste of vulnerability. And immediately and heart-breakingly ghosts. We never find out where he disappears to. The novel is more explicit. Ray returns, like Mimi in Act 3 of La Boheme, to where he came from, in this case his Barbershop quartet (did they hold his place for him?) to sing “Smile” (from Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin), which may not be subtle but sure tears at the heart strings.

Mum being dead (Ray snubbed the funeral) Dad is left to drive Colin around to various biker events looking for Ray. At one point they pass a biker going the other way (as opposed to passing them as he did at the start of the movie) and whether or not it is Ray that’s the point where Colin starts to let go. He cannot follow by going backwards.

He types his data into an app. And meets another Dom. But this time he has boundaries and things might work out better.

Manon!

Massenet’s Opera

Reimagined by HeartBeat Opera

Irondale Theater

February 13, 2025

Credits in the photos

I have seen the future of opera and it isn’t the Met. With a tiny orchestra and creative use of space, plus a vivid translation and a brilliant cast, this version of a big house classic delivered everything that opera is supposed to provide: beauty, feeling, and entertainment.

First, the exclamation point. Stereotypically using that mark is sign of upping the energy for something that needs help. Here it seems to act as a signal differentiating this piece of musical theater from the opera on which it is closely but creatively based.

The libretto (and thus the music) was translated into modern English that felt character-appropriate and every word came through, both because the singers had clear diction and because they were miked. Which felt unnecessary in the space. But it allowed—encouraged—creative vocal choices which might not have been audible otherwise. The cuts and reorderings of numbers made sense. The original opera keeps the romance in the foreground with the unsavory stuff more suggested than depicted. Here all the toxic abusive sexuality and power dynamics are squarely center stage, right from the “prologue” of Guillot and his babes having a three-way accompanied by Massenet’s Rameau style ballet music. The result is a shift in the emphasis of what happens to Manon—she is trafficked by her cousin and everybody uses her.

The show ran under two hours, with no intermission—though I would have liked one after Des Grieux gets abducted and Manon is left alone. That moment required emotional processing precisely because Manon was so terrific. She has the right voice, a champagne-colored light soprano. She conveyed every feeling so effortlessly, from her naive joy to her anguished discomfort listening to the Dream aria. She was Manon, with and without the !

Des Grieux had more of a Brigadoon-style music theater tenor and used a lot of falsetto (very attractively), but managed even the deadly B flats of the St Sulpice scene efficiently. He completely embodied the goofy, charming, clueless boy—the very vision of “adorkable.” He bought into the excitement of gambling in a way that showed how Manon had changed him. And his freak-out at the end was obvious yet unexpected and gripping.

Guillot and de Bretigny were conflated into one character. He was constantly described as too old for Manon but was quite as attractive as Des Grieux—including his obligatory shirtless scene. Fine voice, excellent actor, and another obvious but unexpected moment when he had EVERYONE arrested at the end of the gambling scene. His accusation, hurled at Manon, that it was all her fault for “making” him love her was the crux of the whole opera. His so-called love was the shadow of Des Grieux’s.

Lescaut was played for foppishness to the point of camp. OK, well beyond that point. He had a big personality and a huge voice. He played up the queerness and the amorality of the character, very much the gold-digger and pimp, which was one aspect of this version that threatened to veer into modern caricature.

Pousette and Javotte (minus Rosette in this version) were amusing but also tended towards the modern side.

Daddy Des Grieux filled out the cast with a grounded presence—and played various supporting characters as needed. I want his long blue coat!

Translation and direction really dug into the heart of the material. As beautiful as it is in French on a huge stage with a big orchestra it really hits home this way.

The set was essentially a black box with some moveable items. There was, of course, a little table. The cast was the set crew. Very nice costumes, fancy 18th century frock coats and gowns.

The reduced orchestration preserved all the colors of the original and added an aspect of intimacy properly scaled to the stage and the singing. The synth did triple duty and yes there was a pipe organ at St. Sulpice! Only one moment felt lacking—I missed the full strings at Manon’s last and finally successful iteration of N’est-ce plus ma main. This was also the one moment when singing and staging didn’t rise to the moment. Des Grieux capitulated too easily and Manon lacked a few rich notes in her lower middle voice to carry the weight of that phrase. Hardly a blip in an otherwise terrific presentation of an ageless sad story about young love and a dangerous world. A hard story to watch from the vantage point of age…..

A wonderful evening in the theater. I will gladly see anything this company offers—they obviously love and respect the material they adapt.

Nathan Bahny, of blessed memory

Dear Nate, what a privilege to have known you all these years!

I was honored to be asked by Liz to speak at the funeral. Liz pointed out that the various speakers were a Venn Diagram of the various facets of Nate’s life. There was opera. And the Fordham Library. Plus all his enthusiasms. And above all: Liz. The formal obituary below my speech will fill in some of the blanks.

_________

Guy Lombardo might not be the first thing that comes to mind when we’re all here for Nate Bahny. But there is a link! Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians owned New Year’s Eve for half a century. And he said that when he retired he was taking New Year’s Eve with him.

Nate was the Guy Lombardo of Jewish Choral Music! Big gigs were unthinkable without him. The Concord. Park East. 23 years of High Holy Days at Sutton Place. Shabbat Shira with Jackie and Mati every year. And so many one-off concerts. Which is why I called him that—because when he retired all the gigs would have to cease! As it happened Covid and budget cuts drained away that world ahead of Nate. We were dinosaurs and it was an intense bonding experience to sing together—and read those xeroxed copies of faded mimeographs from the ‘50s. We were snarky about the young whippersnappers who only read properly typeset music!

(with Fyvush!)

That voice. That musicianship. That institutional knowledge. And the humor! If Groucho told Dad jokes….

The best one, the most perfect Nate memory:

The scene. Park East. Men’s choir rehearsal in our chairs by the Bima. Seymour Silbermintz of truly blessed memory conducting in his inimitable style. Chicken scratch sheet music with no discernible word or vowel under a sustained chord.

Someone: do we sing oo or aw there?

Nate’s booming voice, instantly, no pause: We sing aw! Because it’s the days of AWE!

We groan.

His humor could have a sly edge occasionally. Once when we were doing a gig where the former Rabbi, known for his fierce style, had been succeeded by someone more…. Conciliatory…. We were at a restaurant and Nate didn’t order a drink. I said, Nate you usually get a mojito but you didn’t this time…. And he said, with this Rabbi I don’t need one!

But the voice and the musicianship, as grateful as many of us are for them, aren’t why we are here now. The humor IS part of why. But truly it is simply because he was the kindest sweetest man. Each of those gigs included social time: the Concord dining room, Neil’s Coffee Shop, Pescatore on Slichos, La Villetta, and that fabulous long gone Caribbean restaurant whose name I can’t remember, where Nate usually ordered mojitos.

He was so easy to be with. So easy to relax and be genuine with. That was his innate (SWIDT, and I know he’d have smiled at that!) quality, the thing that made Nate Nate. His blessing to all of us. For which we are here to bless him.

Thank you.

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/new-york-ny/nathan-bahny-12737736