Country, Musicals, Movement

When you watch The House's new All the Fame of Lofty Deeds – and you probably will – you might be struck by the surprising perfection of Country Music for Musical Theater. It is narrative, rangy, soulful, showy, familiar, easy to sing, and ripe for virtuosity. Moreover, it’s unburdened by rock music’s essence of rebellious posturing. Country is populist without needing to be new, and it’s strong and gutsy without rock’s pretense of counter culture.

The problem with the Rock Musical is that the idea—to incorporate contemporary music—is inspired and necessary, but the institution of this idea is necessarily lacking the very appeal of Rock Music. The Rock Musical has only ever the shadow of Rock, the reminder of Rock. The flaw germane to a High Fidelity musical as such—regardless of the production—is that Rob Gordon would hate it, that he couldn’t sing those songs. The secret lie of the Rock recording is that, by some accident, someone captured an amazing moment of bravado, performance, and expression, and then someone else sold it. The institution of the American Musical is too inescapably commercial for even this lie, ridiculous and remote, to ever exist.

The Rock Musical, then, must be a kind of meta-musical to be successful, either deliberately performative (Million Dollar Quartet) or aware of its artifice (Urinetown). The Pop Musical, on the other hand, is what musicals have always been. The genre of this music is unmarked, invisible, and ever-expanding, allowing for the characters, their voices and their words, to have full effect. Pajama Game or Rent, this is their promise.

Country, though, is an inspired choice. Its genre is still evident and so carries the weight of its every association, but it needn’t be necessarily a watered-down image of itself (like those asinine and frustratingly popular jazz covers of Radiohead). Also, and this I think is desperately important to The House, it can be actually hip. Hip in a way that Rock can’t be because it can’t ever quite be right and hip in a way that pop can’t be because it’s, well, pop.

And why make a musical at all? Famously, James Joyce refused a career in music despite his concert-worthy voice because he feared the non-intellectual, emotional, irrational power of music. Plato’s Republic is almost entirely without music except for patriotic and heroic historical songs. And the incomparable Greg Allen, in his rules for theater, suggests you use music whenever possible because it resonates so strongly with audiences. This year in Chicago, ATC, Northlight, and in fact The House are all producing seasons either entirely or almost entirely musical. The New Colony's First and Second Seasons will be 2/3 Musical each. Chicago is at this moment playing both morgue and maternity ward for nearly half a dozen Broadway Musicals.

Music has the power to move: a statement as obvious and untenable as tomorrow. My high school drama teacher insisted that the only worthy question at the end of a play is “Was I moved?” If this is indeed the only question, it’s certain that Musicals are a potent inroad to effective theater.

But, there are other ways to move people. A ridiculous example of this is in the new sitcom Community (watch until about 40 seconds in), or Eisentstein’s baby carriage. It would be very easy at any important moment in a play to drop a baby from the flyspace and have an actor catch him. Would this be a great play? Maybe the first time, but it’s difficult to imagine this spawning a whole genre of its own.

Is All The Fame of Lofty Deeds a great play? Not really. Though there are a few truly powerful moments (the end of Act One, for instance), but in general, not much happens, there’s a lot of arguing about the play’s own world, and the characters are remarkably two-dimensional (though the acting is not always), and there's a healthy ration of the stupid fad of "ironic" racism. It is compelling stylistically (the arrows are great, the headlights are miraculous, the dancing is lovely, the puppetry charming), the music is fantastic, and it looks and sounds expensive.

So, I suppose what I’m wondering is, what makes this show different from Mamma Mia or Jersey Boys or Legally Blonde: The Musical? What makes it non-profit? What makes it new? Is it Country Music? Because the most familiar criticism of musicals as a genre is that they affect us in a way that permits them to be silly, campy, or simple, and All The Fame of Lofty Deeds certainly takes advantage of the same strength and certainly suffers from the same weakness.

Literally then, what is the purpose of art? What is entertainment? This show will be a hit. A lot of cool people are going to like it a lot (I've never read a program with the word "cool" in it so many times, by the way) and they're not wrong. How can an honest person point at this show and say "bad" if he or she is moved by it? And how can an honest person point at this show and say "great" when it falls short? What are the lessons of this play? People die, corporate suits want money, cowboys talk like a sunset in a june-bug's eye and boy howdy that's a good Jack Daniels? Is the whole form - not just musical theater, but theater in general, art as a thing - a game of manipulation? What's the difference between manipulation and movement? In what way is Cordelia's death less manipulative than "It's Not Enough" in Lofty Deeds?

I don't know, exactly, and these are a lot of questions to ask of one show, but they seem desperately important to ask not just "in general" or to strive toward the good, or because it's good to ask, and not because this show wants us to ask, but because the American position toward contemporary art is deeply steeped in an anxiety about substance. Why don't people go to modern art museums? Why is the most common comment "I don't get it?" It's because the whole things smells to us like the emperor's new clothes. In a world of naturalism it's easy to evaluate who's good and who's bad, what's it a picture of, etc. In an abstracted era these rules are gone and two paths are left: I like it/don't like it, or this is 'important'/'unimportant' for blah blah blah reason.

But the theater is different because a lack of substance can still easily be overcome by a song, a good performance, a beautiful set, a million things. This is why there's no danger of the death of theater that everyone likes to whisper about. And there's no risk of an end to substantive theater either, because it's better and because someone will always reach higher than the rest, and because audiences are looking for excellence (if you don't believe that, quit now). More finally also, if there's no end to one, there's no end to the other. I don't, I guess, have the vocabulary to distinguish them, and I'm not sure it's be worthwhile.

And yet.

You're Welcome

The Equity Jeff nominations are up and I want you to know, loyal readers, that I called two of them way in advance.

Lance Baker is nominated for his work on Mauritius, which I drooled over here.

And Matthew Gawryk is nominated his lighting design of The Unseen, a small sliver of which I drooled over here.

Also, mad genius Steve Tolin got a nomination for the special effects on Lieutenant of Inishmore, was it because of the perfectly life-like cat puppetry? Well, who's to say...

But, really, congratulations to all the nominees.

Tech Weekend Over.

So armed with that testament of my burliness, I spent the weekend mopping up fake blood off of floors, walls, guns, and cats as part of my work on Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Northlight Theatre.  I've always found tech rehearsals really aggravating -  they're just so long, so dull, so precise, I'm instantly exhausted.  In Viewpoints, and really acting in general as I've received it, the ideal state is one of something like "active relaxation." Tech weekend for me is spent in a state of "passive anxiety."   A lot of the time I'm not doing anything, but I have to be ready to do almost anything. Anyway, the real trouble with spending two hours a day mopping up blood is you begin to wonder if its worth it. For this show, I actually think it is.  

Famously, McDonagh one had four shows being produced in London at the same time, it is said he's the only man besides Shakespeare for whom that is true.  McDonagh is not Shakespeare, but he is a remarkably interesting theatrical writer. Dominic Dromgoole, in the perfect, perfect, brilliant, perfect book The Full Room (read it!!) says this of McDonagh:

We are delirious at being suddenly allowed theatrical delights we have been denied access to for a long time. These plays are naughty, they’re wild, they’re elaborate and beautiful pranks. The sheer wicked bliss of having writing like this in the mainstream [theater] is so great, such a surprise, that people frantically try and ensure that it doesn’t go away. The ring-fence of art is drawn around it, and all is well.

Dromgoole holds this up as a kind of explanation for the profound interest in and excitement around McDonagh in the face of his perceived lack of substance.  This was written before McDonagh had written The Pillowman (and I think even Lieutenant) but, the point is profoundly valid.  The Fight Choreographer for this show Nick Sandys (who will also be directing a production of Macbeth I'll be a part of this summer at First Folio), pointed out on the first day of rehearsals how cinematically McDonagh writes.  Stunts like having two guns held up to a person's head and then being fired at point-blank range: there's no way to do this safely in the theater.  On one level you're tempted to think: "Well if you wanted to write a movie, why didn't you just write one?" But the interesting thing is Lieutenant would not work as a movie.  It would be completely unremarkable - the set is essentially static, the character types are utterly vaudevillian, the surprise and delight at violence would be absent entirely.  It is essentially theatrical.

What McDonagh has succeeding in creating in The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a well-made play with a cinematic imagination, the permission he gives himself in this creation is as much the spectacle as the blood cannons I mop up after. And for this testament of freedom, I think tech weekend is worthwhile.  

Making Space

Lance Baker is a really great actor, a company member of A Red Orchid, and in the cast of Mauritius at the Northlight right now (in which, for full disclosure, I'm an understudy and doing tech work).  He has probably the most fun role in the show; he plays a shady Mametian gangster type who for some reason really loves stamps.  Lance gives a dynamic and detailed performance which you really shouldn't miss, a lot of fun: a big role with room for nuance and Lance has, seemingly, a great time sharing this guy with the audience.

But, what I really want to talk about is this one little trick he uses that I think is amazing.  His character is in a stamp shop examining very carefully two incredibly rare stamps.  First he shines a special stamp lamp over them and looks through a magnifying glass.  Then he puts these away and looks at the stamps for a moment just under the regular light "in the store" (just stage lights, not practical lamps).  He looks at them like this for a moment, then he looks up at the "ceiling," finds exactly where the "light fixture' is shining, and moves the stamps slightly to be more directly in this light.

If we follow his eyes while he goes through this little bit we will trace the stage walls to where they end, then the fifteen feet or so of fly space until we get to the lighting grid cold and functional from which hang dozens of stage lights of all sizes and colors pointed meticulously at all parts of the stage.  But we know for Sterling (Lance's character), that there is simply a light fixture some four or five feet above his head.

In this bit Lance draws our attention to the patent theatricality of the moment while casually insisting that we are mistaken and that he is simply a stamp enthusiast in a dingy little shop trying to get the best view.  It is completely fantastic.

A Good Sign

At the previews of Mauritius last week: loud intermissions.  It's like the most beautiful music. Lights out, applause, lights up, explosion of chatter.  Exciting.

A Return to the Theater of My Mind

So I've been a bit busy at the Northlight Theatre where I am working on their current production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher. Here are some reviews: Sun-Times, Pioneer Local, and BroadwayWorld.com.  The reviews are sort of all over the place, which is interesting.  It took me so long to believe in aesthetic absolutism (which is obviously remarkably unpopular) it is surprising how quickly I'm reminded of the subjectivity of art's impression on individuals.  

By aesthetic absolutism what I guess I mean is the belief in an objective gauge of excellence in aesthetic matters.  I do truly believe that this exists.  I believe a person can say, unapologetically, that Life as a House is a bad movie.  Or that King Lear is a great play.  This matters.  

Often people ask in dressing rooms or on barstools what gives a critic the right to judge art.  The answer is simple, the critic has seen the show.  Everyone who sees the show is the critic and everyone has a right to an opinion.  But in the same way that a person's opinion on cats doesn't change whether or not cats exist, or one's opinion of a single cat doesn't change whether it is male or female, calico or black, one's opinion of a production will be influenced but not necessarily defined by the production's excellence.  Down Periscope is a film I enjoy, but it is not a great film.  The Homecoming is a good play, but I don't really care for it.  The ability to distinguish these makes a good critic, the harmony of them, perhaps, makes an excellent one.

At any rate, enjoy these reviews if you can.  I'll post more as they crop up.  Also here's a link to buy tickets to the show to see if these clowns are right.