Lynn Ruth Miller

Why Write?

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:05:00 +0000

WHY WRITE?

Some people play with footballs and hockey sticks. Others play with recipes or computers. There are some who only play with each other. I have no interest in those kinds of games. I play with words.
I am a word-a-holic. I write sentences, notes and observations on paper, on a computer and in my head 24 hours a day. I do it when I walk my dogs, when I sit at my desk and when I dream….especially when I dream. Sometimes, the words I write are published but more often they are not. Occasionally, I get paid, but I never can remember the amount I receive because my real compensation is what my words have created. My sister telephoned me many years ago and asked,” What are you doing?”
I said, “Writing stories no one reads.”
She was amazed. Why would I work so hard on such a thankless task? She didn’t realize that I figure out life by putting it on paper. That is how I understand the meaningless, hurtful things that I cannot control and the marvelous gifts that fall in my lap. Someone asked me “Why do you write?” and I answered, “Why do you breathe?”
The first time my mother read me a story, I composed another for her, one so real it made me laugh and cry a lot harder than I ever laughed when she taught me how to bounce a ball or cried when she forced me to finish my milk. I live in my imagination because that is where I feel at home. The real world with traffic jams and angry policeman, frustrated projects and nine-to-five jobs cannot touch me there.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that I could ramble on forever, but if my words didn’t SAY something to someone else, they only nourished me. Anyone who is a real writer knows that is the stuff of journals, reminders on the fridge and verbal meanderings, but it is not communication. I want… No… I need every sentence I write to be a bridge into someone else’s mind. That kind of composition takes work…a lot of revising, a lot of deep thinking, and a lot of painful cutting. My first poem was published when I was ten years old. It was about a lamp post. But it told my readers a lot more than that. It told them we shared a human need to cast a light on where we are in our world. That is why it was put into a book.
As the years went on (and there have been over seventy-five of them) I wrote for anyone who would read my thoughts and understand what they meant. I sent out millions of messages to the world in the form of features, reviews, letters, columns, entertainments, greeting cards, short stories and finally novels. I have written eleven of those. I sent one of them to every publisher in this country three times under three different titles and not one company bothered to send me anything more than an impersonal rejection slip. When I finally published it myself and called it STARVING HEARTS, I thought it was a waste of time and money. To my surprise, it has sold over 6,000 copies and still sells today.
These days, I still write in all those forms and I have added comedy routines and song parodies to the mix. People call me a performer now, but I am no such thing. I am a writer. That is who I will always be.
This is what I have learned from all these years of putting words together, all the millions of rejection slips and the tears they bring, the joys of that one acceptance that spurred me on: You can be paid a million dollars for words that came from your head instead of your heart and that money is dross. But when you are walking on the beach and someone takes your hand and says “I read your book and it was me,” you have succeeded.
When someone says, “Your words gave me the courage to live MY dream.”
That is when you have discovered heaven.

The Elixir of Love

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:11:00 +0000

The San Francisco Opera presents
THE ELIXIR OF LOVE
By
Gaetano Donizetti

If you have any delusions that opera is inaccessible and elite, you must treat yourself to this production of THE ELIXIR OF LOVE. Donizetti composed his delightful confection in a little more than two weeks and there isn’t a moment in the two and a half hour production that isn’t captivating and adorable. The opera is filled with the kind of rich, memorable tunes usually enjoyed on the musical comedy stage. The setting for this particular production has been moved from a small village in Italy to a town in the Napa Valley on the eve of World War I. Director James Robinson added the charm of a turn-of-the century Italian settlement in the wine country to the mix of superb melodies and an opera buffa plot that would tickle anyone’s fancy. Tenor Ramon Vargas has a superb voice and plays the shy, love-struck Nemorino to the hilt. In this updated version, he is a bashful Italian immigrant who sells ice cream from the back of his Model T truck. He is madly in love with the lovely and flighty Adina (Inva Mula) and in a desperate attempt to win her admiration and affect, he buys a love potion from the quack doctor Dulcamara (Alessandro Corbelli) who arrives in town on a flashy motorcycle with a stock of cheap wine he touts as a powerful love potion. Nemorino’s competition is the flashy Sergeant Belcore (Giorgio Caoduro), just about as macho and arrogant as any army officer can be.
Nemorino believes that the “love potion” he has purchased with all the money he has will make him irresistible to all women. To his amazement, he does indeed become the object of all their affections when the ladies in town discover that he has come into a huge inheritance. Adina begins to be interested in him as well when she realizes that she has competition. Add to all these complications, her determination to show Nemorino he cannot control her by deciding to marry Belcore and then trying to get out of the commitment to no avail.
Sound ridiculous? Well of course it is. But it doesn’t feel that way when you are sitting in the magnificent War Memorial Opera House listening to some of the most lilting, heartwarming music ever composed while watching burlesque comic antics so droll that you are laughing too hard to concentrate on the unbelievable beauty of the voices you hear on stage.
We are supposed to cry when Nemorino sings his gorgeous tenor aria “Una furtive lagrima” and laugh when Dr. Dulcamara tells us the wonderful and amazing cures his tonic can produce, but instead we are so charmed by this production, all anyone can do is smile and tap their feet to melodies so lovely you wish they would never end.
Elixir was first presented May 12, 1832 in Milan and was an immediate hit. Said one critic, “to lavish greater praise on the Maestro would be unfair to the opera; his work does not need exaggerated compliments.” Yet for me, it is very hard not be effusive about this delightful opera buffa that proves beyond a doubt that in vino is indeed veritas.
Treat yourself to a wonderful evening of music and laughter. If you don’t want to tackle the full production sung in Italian, you can take your children to the English version for two Saturday performances at 12:30 pm November 2 and 8, also at the War Memorial Opera House.
IF YOU GO:
THE ELIXIR OF LOVE continues through November 26
The War Memorial Opera House
301 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco
TICKETS: www.sfopera.com
415 864 3330
OPERA TALKS: 55 minutes before each performance in the orchestra section
Free of charge.

Boris Godunov

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:22:00 +0000

San Francisco Opera presents
BORIS GODUNOV
By
Modest Mussorgsky

I love Samuel Ramey. The first time I saw him he as Attila the Hun, he swept me off my feet. This season he is Boris Godunov and he is as thrilling to hear and see today as he was when I first saw him. “I have been singing for as long as I can remember,” he says. “But I was self conscious about it because in music class my voice was the only one that had a vibrato. I tried to stifle it and was afraid that they would make fun of me.”
He should not have worried. He has a magic about him that captivates every opera –goer lucky enough to hear him. Ramey has been singing with the San Francisco Opera for thirty years and has been performing for over forty years. “I am still going as strong as I can at my age,” he says. “Things get harder as you get older. Physically but also vocally; my voice is not what it was twenty years ago, or even ten years ago. With age, any voice will start to show a certain degree of wear and tear.”
Perhaps. But to me, his voice was as thrilling as ever in this current production of Boris Godunov, far more captivating than the production itself. The first act of his opera was very long and the sequence of events confusing to me. This San Francisco Opera production is the 1869 version of the opera, with much of the wonderful sweeping melodies cut away and was selected because it is the one Ramey preferred. “I always preferred the original one, simply because the focus is on Boris, himself,” Ramey says. “It was initially rejected for performance because it didn’t have a female lead or a love story, so Mussorgsky rewrote the opera, adding a love interest and a big scene set in Poland, but it has very little to do with the historic figure of Boris Godunov.”
For me, the problem with this production was not the absence of a female lead, but the convoluted sequence of events. I was not clear on what actually happened to Dimitri and why Boris was ridden with guilt. I managed to figure it all out however in the second act. There are beautiful moments throughout this production and I, for one was taken by Andrew Bidlack’s performance as The Simpleton. I thought his voice was sweet and clear and his character touched me to the core. When he clung to his spire and raised his head in prayer, he brought tears to my eyes. The chorus and the orchestra starred in this opera for me and the Coronation scene was magnificent. Indeed, all the voices were gorgeous. “The overall quality of the singing is so high that the production remains compelling,” observes Jason Victor Serinus in his review of the opera for the Bay Area Reporter. He goes on to say, “Chalk up the Innkeeper as another character-role triumph for mezzo Catherine Cook. If ever a singer knew how to delight with a treasure chest of voice and gesture, it is this former Adler Fellow.”
For me, the thrill of seeing Samuel Ramey on stage was paramount. He is one of the true greats in the annals of opera and unforgettable even at 66 when most singers‘ careers begin to decline. If you go to this opera for no other reason than to hear this great voice once more, it will be an evening very well spent. Mussorgsky’s music is always thrilling and when you have Ramey’s voice and music as lush as that in Boris Godunov, who cares about plot?
In 2003 Ramey received the San Francisco Opera Medal, the company’s highest honor to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of his debut. “San Francisco has always been one of my favorite places to work and certainly one of my favorite cities to visit,” he said. “I think it is the most beautiful city in America and the opera company is a wonderful place to be. It is always a pleasure working here.”
And it is a privilege for opera-goers to experience Samuel Ramey once more on the San Francisco Opera stage. Don’t miss him. He is stellar.

IF YOU GO:
Boris Godunov continues through November 15
War Memorial Opera House
301 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco 94102

Tickets: www.sfopera.com
or 415 864 3330

THE QUALITY OF LIFE

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:19:00 +0000

The American Conservatory Theatre presents……
THE QUALITY OF LIFE
By
Jane Anderson
This is a play about grief and how helpless we feel when we are facing loss. Obviously, it is a topic we all need to address so we can understand the bell curve our emotions take when someone we love passes away. That is why THE QUALITY OF LIFE had the potential to be a blockbuster if the author had only delved more deeply into the characters she was creating instead of concentrating on the problems they faced. She says, “There is a Buddhist belief that suffering is just a fact of life, and it is your job to take whatever grief or pain that life hands you and find a way to move through it.” And she goes on to ask, “Are we obliged to keep living if the quality of our lives is so absolutely awful?”
THE QUALITY OF LIFE explores these questions and attempts to illustrate what that Buddhist belief really means in human terms when people face intolerable grief. Are we strong enough to bear up under our tragedies and get on with our lives? Do we have the right to say, “I don’t want to face what my life is going to be from now on”? AND if one decides life has no more value, is it a sign of weakness or strength to end it? How great is the cost of cruel and senseless suffering to the survival of our existing relationships and what scars inevitably remain?
These are all valid philosophical questions well worth deep, penetrating discussion. However, when one writes a theater piece, we need to understand the characters on stage and see them as real people, not generalized stereotypes. The actors must be so vulnerable that we believe their anguish and cry with them. They must be so human we cannot predict their reactions because real human beings have so many contradicting motivations. The dialogue should stimulate each viewer to ponder the value of his own life and how he relates to those he loves. Sadly, except for a few isolated instances, the plot line was one that has been done so many times that it held no surprises for the audience, no revelations or new insights into truth.
The cast in this production was excellent. Each actor managed to make these four cardboard personas as moving and sympathetic as they could and I applaud all four of them. It isn’t easy to deliver lines so predictable that this reviewer at least anticipated the response to every remark they made. We have the stupid, but positive, pretty little Midwestern girl (Dinah played by JoBeth Williams) who loves canning, gardening and all wholesome pleasures and trusts in Jesus with all her heart. We have her born again Christian fundamentalist husband (Bill played by Steven Culp) who is rigid, opinionated and bonded to the word of the Bible as if it were his Siamese twin. Their counterparts are Neil, (Dennis Boutsikaris) an anthropology professor dying of terminal cancer and his Bohemian, free spirited wife, Jeannette (Laurie Metcalf) both of whom meditate, conform to non-conformity, are one with nature and intellectual atheists to the core. Put these four soap opera figures on a stage together and you know the quips that are coming, the inevitable vegetarian concoctions of sprouts and roots that offend the Midwestern conception of food and the laughs we liberal sophisticated people are going to enjoy at the expense of the Ohio hicks and the contrast between two sharply opposed belief systems. We approve of Neil smoking medical Marijuana and laugh at Bill’s huffy (and very middle class) exit to his truck to listen to the game. We understand why Jeanette wants to join her husband in death and we scoff at the narrow conservative, religious dogma the two Midwesterners use to justify their horror at the “sin” of a healthy human being considering suicide. Watching the antics on stage made me feel like I had just tuned in to a reality show on television where every emotion was exaggerated by characters sketched in but not fleshed out.
The plot contrasts Bill and Dinah who are grieving over the senseless murder of their daughter with Jeannette and Neil happily housed in a yurt after their home was destroyed in a devastating fire. Neil and Jeanette are dealing with Neil’s certain death by planning a painless exit from life preceded by a carefully worded farewell letter and a huge, happy party. Jeannette has decided to join her husband in death because life without him is unthinkable to her. That is a lot of tragedy to deal with in two hours and if you are going to care whether any of them live or die, you need to understand them as complete human beings whose very being is worth preserving. When Desdemona finally dies, I am torn apart because I have lived through her descent from Othello‘s grace and seen her disillusionment develop as she recognizes who her husband really is and how his doubt and insecurities destroy them both. However, in this work, I am very sorry Neil is so sick but his loss is not a tragedy to me. Jeannette is a funny hippie who is out in left field and I am not sympathetic to her because I don’t know what she really feels. I only hear her smart remarks and brittle repartee. The one I related to most closely was Dinah because at least her emotions were recognizable and I saw how they had developed.
There are wonderful moments in this play and I suspect as the run continues, the actors will find ways to be more convincing in their roles. Bill becomes vulnerable and real when describes why he fell in love with Dinah; Neill descends from his intellectual pinnacle when realizes that Janette must continue to pursue the dreams the two of them began. But these are only moments and are not sustained throughout the play. As I left, one member of the audience remarked, ”What was all the fuss about? When someone dies, you don’t have a choice. You go on with your life.”
Exactly. This is a work that should be seen for its philosophical content and one that has more meaning in what it makes us think about after the final curtain. The author wanted to explore our ability to transform and grow through personal tragedy and indeed the play raises many questions, but doesn’t answer much at all.
IF YOU GO:
THE QUALITY OF LIFE continues until November 23.
Tuesdays-Saturdays @ 8pm
Matinees: Wednesdays, Saturdays & Sundays @ 2pm
WHERE: The American Conservatory Theater
415 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA
TICKETS: 415 749 2228
www.act-sf.org

COMEDY AT THE EDINBURGH FRINGE

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:43:00 +0000

At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe….
COMEDY IS KING

Each year that I perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the comedy shows increase both in number and in quality. This year 32% of all the 1,088 shows offered were comedy performances, most of them one or two person shows and late night showcases where solo performers could promote their work. Comedy is such a huge attraction to audiences at the Fringe, that four major venues: The Assembly, The Pleasance, The Underbelly and the Gilded Balloon put on their own Edinburgh Comedy Festival charging as much as 25 pounds for an afternoon show featuring high profile comedians like Joan Rivers, Bill Bailey and Paul Merton. To me, this defeats the purpose of a fringe festival performance. The reason aspiring showmen spend the money and devote the immense effort it involves to put up a show at a Fringe Festival rather than booking a show at London’s West End or New York’s Broadway is to get press coverage and evaluate audience reaction to shows that have not yet been recognized by national press. But when these four high profile venues announced their prestigious and very expensive program studded with established, well known personalities, the public shut their pocketbooks and turned instead to free venues for their comedy.
To their delight, they got far more than their money’s worth of entertainment and it was they who decided what to give the performers when the collection bin was put out at the finish of the show. The free fringe offerings were certainly as funny as the more expensive fare and you didn’t have to skimp on rent or dinner to see them. When you have paid the equivalent of $50 to see a show, you feel entitled to a top-notch production and you are very upset if it falls short. If you are dissatisfied with a free show, all you have to do is leave.
My favorite long time performer for the free fringe is Brian Damage who has a regular free afternoon event: Pear Shaped with the PBH Free Fringe. Damage plays the guitar, sings whacky songs alone and with his dead panned partner Krysstal as part of an open mike show at the White Horse Tavern on the High Street. He gives every comedian who drops into the show five minutes to tell jokes because as he says, “Anyone can stand anything for five minutes.” You can see more of his antics at www.briandamage.net. He runs shows in London as well that sell out every performance.
Krysstal, whose real name is Vicky De Lacey also runs her own venue, Holyrood Too @ Faith that features exactly the kind of shows audiences want to see at a Fringe Festival. She selects people she believes have the potential to become successful headliners in the international entertainment field and some of the favorites from this year were SATURDAY BOY, a dark and new comedy from the RuthEBlue Theatre Company, and PAUL FOOT performing improvised musings and anecdotes. De Lacey’s website is www.rarebirdsproduction.com
The two met in 2000 and are an integral part of the London Comedy Scene. They have produced two CD’s that are available on their website: SILLY SONGS and SPUDCASTS. The latter has a country western tune titled “Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae“ that is irresistible in this time of dissolving mortgages, falling home prices and frightened bankers. In fact, every priceless remark these two comic geniuses give their audiences is memorable and the music is toe-tapping good. You can hear the first selection with videos that give you a hint of how clever these two performers are at http://www.truveo.com/Freddie-Mac-Fannie-Mae-The-Musical/id/4224768133 There are 14 other choice selections on this CD each one funnier than the next.
In addition to his own shows and helping De Lacey run a dream venue where the performers are treated with respect and the audience like kings, Brian Damage appeared at many of the showcase comedy venues where all of us who have shows do thumbnail performances to entice audiences to choose to see our show out of the 2,088 on the program.
Another professional comedian that delighted anyone lucky enough to discover her is the Cockney bag lady, HELEN HEELS, (whose real name is Caroline Mabey) with her outrageous improvisations that bait her audience interspersed with a well-crafted stand up routine. She has bizarre solutions to every personal problem. She determined to give up smoking and released the resultant malaise and suppressed aggression by hitting a child. Not a bad idea even if you continue smoking. Mabey appeared at Fred Anderson’s 7 p.m. show ALL STAR MAGIC AND COMEDY and hostessed several shows for PBH’s Free Fringe 2008. “Bloody brilliant, simple, perfectly timed and refreshing,” said the Three Weeks reviewer and gave this talented lady a well-deserved four star review.
Fred Anderson has been bringing shows to the Edinburgh Fringe from San Francisco for over 4 years and always attracts crowds with his promise of a special blend of California comedy and magic. This year he was at the Zoo Venue on Nicholson Street with Kitten on the Keys, a chanteuse with an edge, RJ Owen who is as funny as he is deft with magic that defies reason, Big Al Catraz another San Francisco treasure and Jay Alexander, an internationally famous magician and mind reader (!). People in the Bay Area can get a taste of what they missed by staying home last August if they go to the 7:00pm or 8:30 pm shows Anderson produces all year round at 533 Sutter in Union Square. (www.comedyonthe square.com)
I told stories and did some jokes at Anderson’s shows and I performed two of my solo shows for Alex Petty’s Laughing Horse Free Festival. (www.laughinghorsefringe.co.uk). My afternoon show was a continuation of my storytelling series, ANOTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR : “this is a beautiful and inspiring show – a master class not only in storytelling, but in how to live and look at your life,” said Rob Jones from Three Weeks; “…a life affirming experience,” adds The List. My evening show is one Bay Area audiences have seen at The Octavia Lounge and as part of Seniors on the Move this fall, AGING IS AMAZING, a mock cabaret about growing old. “With the modesty of youth gone, she (me!) grapples life’s dilemmas head on, and with a song.” said the reviewer from Musical Theatre Matters and Hannah Atkinson from Three Weeks observes, “A one-woman musical is a daunting prospect at the best of times, but when the woman in question is only a few years off a Zimmer frame it becomes positively terrifying.”
For me, both shows were exhilarating. The positive audience response energized me to do several open mikes Petty offers for his performers to advertise their shows. I made a variety of guest appearances and had the opportunity of hearing a bevy of outstanding comedic artists who were also doing free shows at this eclectic festival of the arts. One favorite was Nick Coppin’s SHAGGERS at the Meadows Bar. I met some of the finest comedians and most delightful people at that show like Hazel O’Keefe who runs her own comedy show in Manchester and Margo Carr who has an ongoing show in Dublin. My favorite was Shelley Cooper whose show REALITY CHEQUE got resoundingly positive reviews: “…she’s more hard hitting and spiteful than ever about the pretence and ridiculous, otherwise known as life.
I did several shows for Will Pickvance and Findlay Hetherington at their delightful local café and had one memorable appearance at The Gilded Balloon late night show, Carnival des Phenomones hosted by the very capable and versatile Rob Broderick. Broderick performed his own one man show, ABANDO MAN: A HIP HOP COMEDY to sell-out crowds at the Argyle Bar, that Edinburgh landmark managed with a loving hand by David O‘Neill.
Rick Molland hosted both THE PICK OF THE FRINGE at the Espionage and a marvelously funny show HERESY at Jekyll & Hyde on Hanover Street. I was able to do a few wild variations of my strip tease at that one and in an effort to beat me at my own game, comic Phil Buckley took off his trousers. Evidently seeing a septuagenarian dancing in her skivvies inspired him to show off his muscular gams and I must admit his were certainly shapelier than mine. Molland is a top comedian in his own right and has mastered the very difficult art of conversational comedy. He is a treat both on and off the mike. He hosts HERESY year round at the same venue and it is indeed an Edinburgh treasure.
Donald Mack had his own show, THE ADVENTURES OF AN ORGASM DONOR at The Espionage and his comedy is a delightful montage of edgy and sweet. He talks about his life as a single dad and you cannot help but love him. “Some of the best jokes I’ve heard at the Festival,” said Three Weeks and I have to agree.
One show I missed was a highlight of the entire festival: Andy White’s I THINK THEREFORE I JOKE which is a biographical and intellectual journey that makes you ponder even as you smile at this young man’s depth and wry turn of phrase. White’s is an intelligent introspective mind and his observations are moving and very real
The one show I did manage to see was performed by one of my all-time favorite comedians, Ivor Dembina. I heard his comedy in the basement of Lindsay’s in 2007 and I vowed that no matter how busy I was, I wouldn’t miss this talented comedic artist in 2008 His show this year was called THIS IS NOT A SUBJECT FOR COMEDY, and indeed it was not. It was a beautiful and wise exposition on what it meant to Dembina to be Jewish. He charted his ties to Judaism and the philosophical basis of the religion he was taught. He showed how he formed values that are diametrically opposed to killing and uprooting human beings from the homes they have built and guided his audience through his own intellectual and moral development peppered with wry comments that may make you smile but always, move you to have compassion for those you have been told to hate. Listening to Ivor Dembina, I was struck with how fair his observations were in his discussion of Israel, Palestine and the Jews. His conclusions are mine because the Judaism he learned is the one I was taught as well: to love, to forgive, to share whatever you have with those less fortunate. Indeed, I was moved to tears as I listened to what was supposed to be a comedy presentation. Dembina’s point is that no country, no government, no human being has the right to roust someone from the place they have built and call home. Said Kate Copstick in Three Weeks, “This is political comedy taken to a place I’m not sure it’s been before, but I’m glad it got there.”
I would agree and I can only hope Dembina keeps performing this touchingly funny, very human show so everyone knows what Judaism can stand for in this angry tumultuous world we live in today.
The average audience at a Fringe show is about 55 people and their attention spans are short. Most productions are about 50 minutes long and it was interesting to me that the quality of the free fringe offerings often exceeded their more expensive counterparts. This the most interesting year of the four I have experienced. When I recall the shows I saw and the people I met this past August, I think of people working together to make every show a fantastic experience for their viewers. It was a rainy, cold and wet August for Edinburgh, but somehow we all sloshed through it and when the final day arrived, I for one was very sad to say goodbye and return to the foggy reality of the San Francisco Bay.

RADIO GOLF

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:44:00 +0000

Theatreworks presents….
RADIO GOLF by August Wilson
I loved the acting in this play. I felt as if I were watching world famous stars on the Mountain View Performing Arts stage creating a world with the power of their immense talent, using August Wilson’s words to paint a stirring, upsetting and poignant philosophy. I was not, however, as fond of the play itself. I usually love August Wilson because he shows the importance of our cultural heritage and the vitality it gives to our present lives. He shows us how minorities protect themselves with their own prejudices and we see discrimination on both sides of the coin. If you have been left out of the mainstream, you never forget it, no matter how much better the majority tells you it has become. “That was yesterday. Today’s today. Tomorrow’s been following me for a long time. Everywhere I go it follows me. It ain’t caught me yet. “
You don’t find dialogue that grabs you like that very often and in an August Wilson play, it happens over and over again. Another example: “Some people say you got to tear it down to fix it. Some people say you got to build it up to fix it. Some people say they don’t know how to fix it….You mix them all in a pot and stir it up and you got America.”
The central issue in Radio Golf is whether we have the right to tear down a man’s home to rebuild a decaying neighborhood. If that home represents his history, and he wants to hold on to it, does a city or a state or even a country have the power to erase it? This is a many-faceted problem facing society today and it cannot be debated often enough. However, in this play, Wilson does more telling than showing and the actors had a difficult time bringing their characters to life. They struggled in the first act, but by the second act, they had the audience spellbound. “Wilson’s work captures the individual truths of a vast neighborhood of intriguing characters, as well as the shared, underlying truths of the African American experience throughout the 20th century,” says Robert Kelley, Artistic Director of this wonderful and innovative regional theater company. “At the same time, his works reach beyond specific individuals and their specific moment in time to deal with the fundamental truths of all people and all time.”
The play is set in the hill district of Pittsburgh, where most of Wilson’s plays happen. The neighborhood is a slum: run down and disintegrating, a blight to see and to live in. To this day, it does not have a grocery store and most of its residents live in public housing. “This play asks….how can we truly be free?” says director Harry J. Elam, Jr. “What are the political consequences of our individual acts?“
Harmond Wilks (Aldo Billingslea) wants to be the first black mayor of Pittsburgh and old Joe (L. Peter Callender) doesn’t think he has a chance. He says, “Is you really running for mayor? They ain’t gonna let you be mayor.” And Wilks replies, “This is 1997. Things have changed. This is America. This is the land of opportunity. I can be mayor. I can be anything I want.”
But he doesn’t realize the cost. He doesn’t realize how many principles he will have to compromise to get the office and in the end he is not willing to forsake his own heritage and his respect for all that has happened to his people and himself before this moment in time. His wife (C. Kelly Wright) and his best friend (Anthony Haney) disagree. To them it is better to sacrifice principle if you can get position and wealth. But how can you forget the roots that make you what you are? How can you ignore the beauty of your heritage just because it has no social currency? It still is all you have. “Wilson’s Radio Golf asks that (politicians) do not lose sight of history, that they address the specific needs of the urban masses without excuse but with moral obligation,” says Elam, Jr. “That they understand how serving this constituency is not partisan politics, but speaks to the greater good.”
That is a lot to think about and at the end of the play, Wilks gives one of the most moving speeches I have heard in a very long time on just what integration thinks it has accomplished and how very far it has yet to go. We cannot legislate people’s opinions; we can only create laws we hope will limit cruelty and hatred. Sadder still, we cannot erase the inferiority minorities feel when they are up against a powerful, opinionated majority that doesn’t even see them.
As I watched this play, I was struck but how much further we need to go before this world can become color blind and realize that our differences feed us and encourage us to grow. How long will it be before we really know that all of us, every color, every ethnic strain of humanity only want one thing: to live a decent life, and have the right to follow their dreams.
IF YOU GO:
Radio Golf continues until November 7
The Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts
500 Castro Street
Mountain View
Tickets:
www.theatreworks.org
(650) 903 6000

SPLITTIING INFINITY

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:42:00 +0000

San Jose Rep presents……
SPLITTING INFINITY
This play is called ”a provocative exploration of faith, love and science” and it was certainly very provocative. Still, I found the maxims the characters spouted to one another both confusing and too generalized to have real meaning for me. “Several years ago, a noted physicist published a book purporting to prove the existence of God through physics,” said playwright, Jaime Pachino. “The writer in me could only wonder: What provoked this act? What was the reaction of his colleagues?....These questions coupled with the wrestling I had been doing on my own over religion’s place in my world and in my own life…led me to the fertile ground that would become Splitting Infinity. “
MY question is: What does it matter? Debating God’s existence is like discussing how many angels can dance on the point of a pin. As Forrest Church says, “God is not God's name; God is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. “
In other words, God is the label we give to things we cannot understand. No one can prove his existence. You either feel it or you don’t. I am one of those who don’t and as I listened to these tortured characters trying to force faith to explain the mess they made of their lives, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why all the hullabaloo?”
My friend, Dan Edwards saw the play, and his confusion was even more pronounced than mine. He said, “Jaime Pachino’s, Splitting Infinity, was a mad rush through the minds of four characters hopelessly lost in their own thoughts. What at first seemed to be a philosophical discussion on the existence of God quickly turned into a study of the unfulfilled lives of the people tossed together like greens in a salad. Leigh Sangold (Amy Resnick) is the center of the conflict, having forsaken everything including her childhood love, in the pursuit of absolute truth. Saul Lieberman (could you come up with a more Jewish name), [played by Robert Yacko] is the one she let get a way, but apparently not too far. They have been meeting every Thursday since he became a Rabbi but not to do what Sal really wants; just to do what he is trained to do, listen and be miserable. Pachino jumps back and forth in time doling out the background details a spoonful at a time like chicken soup for a cold.
“ I did say four characters and the other two show up at the end of the first act. First a young student (Chad Deverman) possibly more brilliant and more deeply disturbed than his mentor Leigh and the student’s mother (Cindy Goldfield) a devout Christian Scientist that really doesn’t do much for the Protestants in the audience. The title of the play is eventually explained through telling half of an old joke about the difference between a Mathematician and an Engineer. The hypothetical problem of walking half way to a girl (wall) is proposed to illustrate that that no matter how many times you cut infinity in half the remainder is still infinite. The mathematician’s position would be that you would never get there so you could never kiss her. The Engineer would say but soon you would get close enough to make your move. And that seemed to be the underlying issue in this play. Every time one of them felt like they were close enough to make their move, life jumped and pushed them away. The play ends with the death of the young student, because his mother placed his fate into the hands of God. The Rabbi placed himself in the hands of the wife he left and Leigh ends up lost in the middle with nothing, neither faith nor science. So the title was appropriate. Splitting Infinity is a play without and end. No matter how you slice it each piece looks a lot like the last.”
I couldn’t say it better. I loved the dialogue because it made me question philosophical problems that can never be resolved. The setting was a little disturbing with flashbacks happening on a platform above the stage and Leigh’s office suddenly becoming a living room, a bedroom and then extended into a hospital room. I felt Amy Resnick was not really into her part in this play and everyone was acting instead of being. Saul says, “It’s the people that make the world, not ideas,” and goes on to tell Leigh, ”Everything we need (in this world) is already here.”
Leigh responds, “If all we want is to know, why are we prevented from just that?
I agree with that one, but I think that if you are going to ponder the imponderable that’s exactly what you’ll get: a blank wall. I can still remember one of my students calling me on the telephone in tears and she asked, “When will I find the answer?”
“To what?” I asked
“To life,” she said.
And I said, “You will find it out when you die.”
I didn’t think this production answered eternal questions that we all have asked ourselves at one time or another in our lives. It did tell me that no matter what you believe and how you pursue those beliefs you are going to end up with nothing. And I guess that is Splitting Infinity.

IF YOU GO:
SPLITTING INFINITY continues until November 9, 2008
San Jose Repertory Theatre
101 Paseo de San Antonio
San Jose, CA 95113

Tickets: www.SJRep.com
or (408) 367 7266

Idomeneo at the SF Opera House

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:54:00 +0000

San Francisco Opera Presents:
Mozart’s IDOMENEO
Starring Kurt Streit and Alice Coote
October 15-31

If you like Mozart (and I do) you are going to love IDOMENEO. If you care about pace and plot, this one isn’t for you. Mozart composed the opera when he was 24 years old and despite the illogical book, the music is more than enough to testify to his genius. It is a lyrical masterpiece (that never seems to end.) The opera is three and half hours long and it takes a hearty constitution indeed to remain awake during the whole thing. Indeed, this production is an example of how of getting too much of a good thing can sour a masterpiece.
Still, the singing is lovely and Donald Runnicles does a masterful job of keeping the music light without upstaging the singers. The biggest problem is believability. The plot is idiotic and there isn’t much movement on the stage. The characters have such long arias that for the most part they just stand there and sing words so repetitious that Christopher Bergen didn’t even bother to put up supertitles. He’d already translated the same phrase a dozen times before. The opera is set in Crete after the Trojan War and the sets didn’t seem to match the time frame. The production was designed by John Copley who wanted to convey the austerity and gravity of the piece with an 18-century flavor. The result was that everyone was singing about Troy in the 11th century BC, yet they looked like they were standing in Mozart’s drawing room. There were often inexplicable props and moving platforms with strange things hanging from the rafters and walls opening and closing to give us views of the sea, usually in some kind of turmoil. The costuming was a bit inconsistent as well, with the chorus looking Greek and the stars dressed in variations of 18th century elegance. The Trojan Princess, Ilia (Genia Kuhmeier) appears as if dressed for a ball with her hands in chains singing about how she loves the guy who captured her. As it turns out the “guy” is Idamante, a pants role sung by Alice Coote who doesn’t manage to look very masculine despite a few attempts to swagger while singing extremely difficult arias that demanded so much of her voice that I doubt she had the energy to worry about her demeanor. In fact, I felt as if I was watching a testimonial intended to convince me that I should vote against proposition 8 and give this besieged couple a chance to make a life together.
A highlight of the performance is the quartet in the third act where the four principal characters sing (in perfect harmony and counter melody of course) about their frustration with the predicament they are in. It seems that Idomeneo (Kurt Streit) has promised Neptune that if he is saved from a death-dealing storm, he will show his gratitude by killing the first person he sees when he arrives home. To his dismay, that first person is his son Idamante. To make matters worse, Idamante and Ilia are in love and Idomeneo is devoted to them both. There is much lamenting (sung with immense skill to gorgeous melodies) and Idomeneo attempts to put off the inevitable. Neptune becomes impatient and whips up a terrible storm with a treacherous monster to devour everyone on the island. The resulting bloodshed and terror makes emotional wrecks of everyone on the stage. Just to make events more diabolical, Electra (sung by Iano Tamar with so much harshness that she herself becomes hateful) has designs on poor Idamante and everyone is in despair because it looks like no one in the whole island is going to live at all ,much less happily ever after. However, just as Idamante decides to stop the slaughter Neptune’s monster is wreaking on everyone, there is an oracular pronouncement (!): Idomeneo is to renounce the throne; Idamante is to be king and Ilia his queen. This turn of events infuriates Electra who had other plans for Idamante. She goes off in a vocal huff, but no one cares and everyone else sings with joy because good has conquered evil just the way it is supposed to do.
Now don’t get me wrong. If you shut your eyes, you will hear three and a half hours of sublime music composed by a genius when he was 24 years old. The voices are all first class and manage to plow through intricate, difficult passages while attempting to be characters no one in their right mind can believe in. As I said when I began this discourse: If you like Mozart (and I do) you are going to love IDOMENEO. Your choice.
IF YOU GO:
IDOMENEO runs through October 31 at the War Memorial Opera House
Tickets online at www.sfopera.com
By phone: 415 864 3330

ASHLAND 2008 AND BEYOND

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 23:55:00 +0000

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2008
A LOOK BACK AND A GLIMPSE AHEAD
This is Bill Rauch’s first season as the artistic director of The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon and he shares my view of the importance of good theater, widely disseminated. “The older I get, the more convinced I am that if more of us could sit in the dark and imagine together on a more regular basis, we would make the world a more peaceful place,” he says.
I agree and I would add that as the director of one of the finest regional theater companies in the country, he has a special responsibility to select productions that not only reflect the world we live in but also force us to re-think our own priorities. Rauch goes on to say that OSF’s mission is to reflect ”… our collective humanity through passionately interpreted classic and contemporary plays….” In his overview of the 2008 season, he says that the productions he picked “…explore the essence of our common humanity: the struggle to know one’s self and to understand ourselves as part of an ever-changing canvas of history, politics and peoples.”
In some plays, he succeeded to touch the very core of what makes us human. Other productions were too superficial and cautious to say anything positive. I have already discussed the misplaced panache and inadequate scripting of The Clay Cart. It said nothing much in an extravagantly produced over-played, empty scenario and sadly, colorful as it was, I found it painful to watch such superior company actors stoop to become foolish, clichéd characters. The best of them were doomed to failure.
In contrast, Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, dated though it was, spoke to us all. Libby Appel directed this magnificent piece of theater, written in 1955, and as wrenching today as it was when it was first presented. Arthur Miller’s villains are always victims of their own humanity. His characters are tormented beings so like us all, with conflicts between what we need and what we want, what we are and what we long to become. Armando Duran is a consummate actor and I have never seen him less than brilliant in any role he takes. In this production as Eddie Carbone, he is stellar; so heartbreakingly real that you feel his anguish and, like Mr. Alfieri (Tony DeBruno), dread his inevitable destruction. I suspect that younger viewers had some problems understanding just what Eddie was trying to protect his niece Catherine (Stephanie Beatriz) FROM. I was a senior at the University of Michigan in 1955, a time when the most important thing any woman had was her purity. Eddie knows what temptation can do to resolve and he is determined to keep Catherine’s virginity intact so she will enjoy the kind of future he, as an immigrant to a strange land, could not. Once her innocence was gone, her hope for a decent life (defined as marriage, children and a husband to support her) vanished.
Men at that time controlled their women. Eddie tells his wife Bea (Vilma Silva) that if she goes to Catherine’s wedding, she cannot return to his home and she obeys! Today, if a man dared to threaten his wife that way, she would out of there and he would be lucky if all he suffered was a black eye. However, in 1955, when women could only get low paying jobs as servants to men either in the office, school or home, and being single meant you would be penniless, living on the streets or free loading from relatives who didn’t want or need you in their lives. Marriage involved specific responsibilities and love was the least important factor. When one partner didn’t fulfill his part of the bargain, (s)he was out. Bea was aware of her promised obligation to Eddie and she respected it.
The direction and the acting in this production made the audience feel part of the tragedy unfolding before them, passé though it seemed. “Miller’s plays have always combined his strong social and political consciousness with his powerful tales of family life in America,” said Appel and she continues…”Miller was also attracted to the personal struggle within every human being to make sense of his life and his relationships.”
Tony DeBruno is a superb actor and as the narrator, (Mr. Alfieri), he defines this struggle and illuminates the circumstances that lead to Eddie’s downfall. The power of his observations and the compassion that rings in his every word, sweeps us into an era that few remember and even less understand. The result is a magnificent, timeless piece of theater.
I could not wait to see Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner because I do not believe there have been enough plays about the role food plays in our lives. However, this production, much like the vapid wishy-washy statements of Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter, did not say anything strong enough to have any real meaning. The direction did nothing to enhance an inadequate script, riddled with clichés we’ve heard and never really believed that there is a thin person inside every fatso. We KNOW that we need more than food to nourish us and this work doesn’t show us that need in a new or compelling way. The acting was far below the quality I have come to expect in any OSF production. I would suspect that was because there was nothing real about any of these characters. “The play calculates the heaviness of emotional baggage and (it) questions whether sacrifice for others and fulfillment of oneself can harmoniously coexist,” says director Tracy Young.
Well maybe that is what the playwright, Luis Alfaro intended, but what we actually see on stage are four shallow characters that are very difficult to care about because their concerns are only verbalized; they are never seen nor felt.
Who can possibly not adore Othello? I do not want to confess how many times I have seen this misguided, jealous man (Peter Macon) do poor Desdemona (Sarah Rutan) in, and every single time I pray that this time, this time, she will get up from that bed, kick him you know where and run off with Emilia (Vilma Silva) to a paradise where she is appreciated. It never happens of course but the fact that we hope it will is evidence of William Shakespeare’s genius. “Isn’t it wild how contemporary Othello still is, how terrifying it is, as chilling as the latest thriller?” asks director Lisa Peterson and she goes on to say “…the thing that makes Othello so very modern –and so frightening- is the way it takes us on a journey into madness.”
And madness in human beings has not changed very much despite the addition of countless drugs to ease our pain. In this production, Othello was a bit over the top, too intense, too histrionic to believe, and when he confesses he loved not wisely but too well, I personally did not shen my tears for him. It was Desdemona (Sarah Rutan) who stole the show for me. She was a feisty, delightful romantic who believed in love and its power to conquer evil. If you have half a heart you need to believe in her goodness to soften devils like Iago (Dan Donohue) that do not have a shred of human decency in them. How Emilia (whom we all adore) can love such a jerk is beyond us, but after all, in those days, if you defied your husband, you were history. I do not believe I have ever wept as copiously as I did when Emilia asks Desdemona who did this to her and the dying woman’s love is so strong that even in her last breath, she protects her beloved by saying she did it herself. I wonder if those younger than I in the audience, thought her a fool? I, for one, did not. For even today with our jaded views of romance, I cannot believe that we must lose faith in the ultimate power of love. That power wasn’t strong enough for Desdemona in Shakespeare’s day and perhaps it wouldn’t have helped her even now, if she was up against a psychopath like Iago. I would hope that women in 2008 are smart enough to spot the nasties before they get a toe-hold on their lives and have the strength to force love to win their game. And yet… and yet…..
I watched this tragedy, eyes brimming with tears, teeth clenched in anger in the Elizabethan Theater, the rain dripping on my head, my hands tucked into my sleeves for warmth. It wasn’t until the three-and-a-quarter hour production drew to its close that I realized I was soaked to the skin. THAT is how compelling this production was and I can only hope that if you didn’t see it already, you jump into your automobile, drive 6 hours up Route 5 and take it in before it is over.
IF I had to pick a favorite in this year’s season, it would have to be Our Town. This Thornton Wilder play is so outdated that every young person I spoke to about it told me they fell asleep trying to watch it. That saddened me far more than if they had actively disliked the production because this story has so much to say to them if they would only listen. The beauty of Our Town is its simplicity. This is a play about what life IS, be it in Grover’s Corners at the turn of the last century or in Northern California on the brink of an election that will catapult us into a new era. When Wilder described his masterpiece (for masterpiece it is) he said, “It is an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events of our daily life.” And he observes that in theater “…you never teach anyone anything; you merely recall things to them that lay sleeping just below the level of consciousness…That is what theater’s for. That’s what the theater is.”
Mahira Kakkar was Emily, the daughter of the town’s newspaper editor Charles Webb (Richard Howard) and although every actor outdid himself in this gorgeous production, it was these two that stole my heart. I still weep when I think of what they said on stage not just to each other but to us as human beings trying to live the best life we can. There were many gorgeous moments in this quiet, caring production but one that tore me to shreds what when Dr. Gibbs (Hassan El-Amin) has one of “those talks“ with his young son George (Todd Bjurstrom) shaming him into doing his chores. George hangs his head, his father hands him a handkerchief and it was I who wept. What has happened to the days when a father could make his son cry because he neglected his responsibilities?
When I see talent like that on stage bringing this Wilder classic to life, heightened by direction so imaginative that it made the world created on an outdoor arena seem like our own living room, I am amazed that somewhere, somehow, someone doesn’t make this particular production as mandatory to attend as school for every American, every person exploring his own humanity.
I do not like people to mess around with Shakespeare. His plays have been around a long time and do very well exactly as they are written. However, sometimes, a director gets an idea so far out of the box that he transforms the Bard’s work into something delightfully new and as irresistible as a new presentation of a chocolate cookie. Penny Metropulos did just that with The Comedy of Errors presented in the Elizabethan Theater, this year. She crafted it into a musical with a toe-tapping score by Sterling Tinsley and remodeled the play into a Western. “The writings and photos from that era give us a glimpse of the independent women and men, from vastly different backgrounds, who inhabited the West,” she said “They were unconventional and courageous people, searching for something that was missing in their lives.”
I cannot think of better adjectives to describe the resulting OSF production than unconventional and courageous. The madcap farce we saw on stage was spellbinding and the acting right on the mark. Every character was bigger than life and funnier than even Shakespeare could imagine. Everyone in this wild romp was in sync with one another, but I must comment on Todd Bjurstrom who played Nell the cook. His character would have been memorable in any setting, but he brought her to life as only a towering six-footer dressed in drag can do. His performance was a farcical masterpiece and I give him many bouquets for actually touching my heart even as he made me laugh. This is not to say that the rest of the cast was not worthy of immense praise. The entire production was a unique masterpiece and I feel certain had Shakespeare seen it, he would have loved it as much if not more than his original scenario. I saw this confection while sitting in the rain and was so captivated I never noticed my dripping hair and soggy shirt, charmed as I was by the fabulous and zany interpretation of confused identities and blasted pre-conceptions.
If you missed this season, do not despair. The new 2009 roster promises to be even more provocative and hopefully the quality will be more consistent now that the Rauch, as the Artistic Director feels more comfortable in his new shoes. “I love this paradox about theatre,” he says. “We lie in order to reveal truth. Theatre is an illusion, a fictitious world for audiences to enter to get deeper into the truth of humanity.”
His second season is intended to juxtapose truth and lies in a wide variety times and places. There will be three Shakespeare plays: Macbeth, in the Bowmer Theater, Henry VII and Much Ado About Nothing on the Elizabethan Stage and one about Shakespeare: Equivocation, a world premiere of Bill Cain’s political thriller that examines how the bard is thrust into a quandary because of decisions made by King Henry 75 years earlier. Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka, a work that moves from an outdoor market in Nigeria to the world of the British colonialists and set in 1940’s West Africa will be presented in the Bowmer, along with The Music Man and Clifford Odets’ Paradise Lost.
The New Theater always has exciting avant-garde offerings and 2009 is no exception. Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl, is a dark comedy, a delicate and deliberate interplay between the mundane and absurd, the ludicrous and the dead. “Her comedic structure …is likened to Edward Albee’s, but her wry poetic style is her own,” says Eddie Wallace in his analysis of the work. He continues, “The genius of it lies in her ability to lightly deal with issues that might normally fill us with dread.”
Two more productions, The Servant of Two Masters, a world premier adaptation of the Carlo Goldoni classic and All’s Well That Ends Well another Shakespeare adaptation promise new interpretations of old ideas that will surprise us are also scheduled in the New Theater in 2009.
“The plays of 2009 are filled with women helping each other find love – or mourning each other’s plight,” says Lezlie Cross in her discussion of the feminine bonds dramatized in the selections and she continues, “All of these women of the 2009 season are set apart from their male counterparts by their ability to see into the lives of their fellow women, and to feel deeply for their losses and their triumphs.”
I have never regretted the drive up Route 5 to see the plays this exciting company offers and as Bill Rauch says “In times like these, we all need the precious truth that is theatre.”
How right he is.
MORE INFORMATION:
www.osfashland.org
PO Box 158, Ashland OR 97520
800 219 8161

Die Tote Stadt

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:24:00 +0000

San Francisco Opera presents:
DIE TOTE STADT
By
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
September 23-October 12

I have been attending every opera I can afford and many I cannot for well over 50 years and usually I can say that I have pretty much seen it all at least once before. However, the current production of Die Tote Stadt is very definitely a unique experience. The overture, and indeed the entire score, is lush movie music, brassy and loud, with surging chords and stirring arpeggios but no identifiable melody. Donald Runnicles conducts this opera and he once told me how every difficult it is to adjust the timbre of the orchestra to the volume and pace of the voices in any kind of choral work. In this production, he had a difficult challenge and although I am sure he did better than most, the singers were forced to belt out very intricate vocal passages with much vigor for the audience to hear them. This is all well and good with a rousing chorus, but most of the singing in this work is solo work and many of the arias are meant to be very plaintive. That isn’t an easy mood to convey when you have a full orchestra blaring fortissimo in the pit.
There is no doubt that the orchestra (the largest Korngold ever used) had the leading role on the opera stage for Die Tote Stadt, but to my mind, it was a shameless scene stealer as well. The plot of this opera is not just surreal. It is positively eerie and that kind of weird fusion of reality and fantasy is not best portrayed with flagrant, sweeping sound competing with the performers on stage. I thought the singers did a creditable job and each one had brief moments of true loveliness…but only moments. The curtain opens on a stark and empty stage with one disconsolate man, Paul (Torsten Kerl) sitting in a chair staring at a portrait of his dead wife, Maria. His friend Frank (Lucas Willie Decker) enters (singing of course) and the music bellows, the voices shout above it and macabre plot begins to unfold. It seems that Paul has seen a woman who is the spitting image of his former wife, Marie. (Marietta, sung by Emily Magee) and has invited her to visit him so that he can get a closer look at this astonishing resemblance. It doesn’t take long for the audience to realize that poor Paul is not playing with a full deck and we watch as he devours Marietta with his eyes and tries to talk her into staying with him so he can relive his lost past. She refuses and explains she must leave for a dance rehearsal. After she departs (singing) Paul descends into the fantasy we see on stage. He cannot seem to separate Maria (the dead wife) from Marietta (the very alive dancer) and the audience is having a tough time as well.
Many operas have one unforgettable aria that we hum as we leave the theatre and long to hear over and over again. Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi is one example and his La Rondine, another. Die Tote Stadt has its melodic blockbuster as well,” Marietta’s Song, sung in the first act and then reprised when Paul sings it at the end of the opera. It is so lovely, lyrical and real that you wish it would never end…but end it does and we are once more forced to try to figure out who is alive, who is dead and who is a figment of whose imagination.
After all, one aria does not an opera make, and the overall effect of this highly touted work is so strange and fabricated that it doesn’t hold together for me. In the second act, Paul really goes off his rocker and the audience cannot tell where he is, what happened to his sane buddy Frank and if Marietta is really interacting with the guy on stage (who now appears to be in two places at once) or if we are watching Paul’s dream. The curtain descends, the music is still roaring but no one is certain that they saw a passionate love scene, a mirage or just a nightmare gone bad.
We are now ready for the third act when Marietta confronts Marie’s portrait on stage and after much screaming over the strident sounds of an unleashed orchestra in full volume, we see Paul strangling Marietta. However, we realize that all this is a fantasy and Paul did not really murder anyone. In fact, all of the love scenes were a delusion…which sometimes happens in real life, but more often in the insane asylum.
The real Marietta now appears to collect her forgotten umbrella and flowers but Paul is too exhausted from the emotional roller coaster he, the orchestra and the audience have been enduring for the past three hours. It is then that he recaps the lovely “Marietta’s Song”, the curtain closes and we applaud the brave singers who managed to make themselves heard and wonder what in Gods name we actually saw.

IF YOU GO:
DIE TOTE STADT through October 12
War Memorial Opera House
301 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco
www.sfopera.com
415 864 3330

Frankie and Johnny in the Clare de Lune

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 01:47:00 +0000

Marin Theater Company presents:
FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLARE DE LUNE
By
Terrence McNally

The first time I saw this play was in New York in the late eighties. I walked into a darkened theater. The curtain opened and I heard the grunts, groans and scuffling of a couple obviously having sex on the stage. The lights went up; a fat, middle-aged woman tumbled from a sofa-bed onto the floor and I was swept up in a plot so endearing that I didn’t notice the nudity, the obvious lack of character motivation or the crude remarks. It was far too sweet a story.
The woman who landed on the floor was Frankie (a waitress) and the man she was tangling with was an equally unappetizing specimen of humanity, Johnny (a short- order cook). The plot revolves around these two misfits, both of whom needed several years at the gym if they weren’t going to risk total collapse from high cholesterol and numbed arteries. These two losers, out of sync with reality and their roles in it, worked together at a fast food diner. They go out on a date to the movies and one unexpected encounter leads to another totally surprising event and the next thing they know they are back in her apartment making wildly satisfying love to each other. Johnny knows a good thing when he is on top of it and is determined to make this chance encounter a permanent liaison. “I have what it takes to give you all you want,” he tells Frankie, but she is still gasping with surprise, not to mention the gymnastics she had just experienced with this comparative stranger, and she is certainly not ready to give away her future on the strength of one good orgasm.
The action takes place over one romantic moonlit night when we as an audience get to know two complex and damaged human beings so like ourselves that we are on the verge of tears even as we laugh as the preposterousness of these plain, unromantic characters vying back and forth over what it takes to keep that flame they just lit alive. ”We have the chance to make everything turn out all right again,” Johnny says. “But only if we begin.”
I was fifty-three when I saw this play and I loved it. It fed on my own need for a commitment I never had and my own insecurities about locking myself into yet another relationship that suddenly sprouted the teeth and chains that would maul and destroy at least ten years of my life again. The two characters on stage reinforced my belief that you can look like a slob and still be beautiful to someone who sees into your heart. I believed in the fragmented, ridiculous, barely plausible romance happening on that stage. …and I wept with joy when they made it permanent to the poignant strains of Debussy’s Clare de Lune.
I was innocent enough at the time to think that true love really could conquer all and that everyone needed a lover to make themselves complete. AND I was stupid enough to think that a toss in the hay sealed the bargain.
The production I saw at The Boyer Theatre produced by The Marin Theatre Company was a very different piece of cake from that one I ate up on Broadway, and I was a much more sophisticated eater. I firmly believe Terrence McNally, who has written some of my favorite plays like RAGTIME, LIPS TOGETHER; TEETH APART and THE LISBON TRAVIATA, wanted Frankie and Johnny to be at the bottom of the sex-appeal spectrum, but instead, Director Jasson Minadakis opted to have two very hot numbers tossing each other about on his stage. Terri McMahon was Frankie and I assure you there isn’t anyone with an ounce of testosterone in his body who wouldn’t kill to get her in the sack. Rod Gnapp is no hunk, but he is adorable, charming and looked pretty desirable to me, no flopping gut and plenty of attitude.
And because they were so gorgeous and exciting, no one in the audience questioned their attraction to each other. Obviously, these two could turn on a lot more than a lamp. The poignancy of this plot is that two people you wouldn’t look at twice suddenly became Romeo and Juliet to each other. If the guy looks like a fellow with a beer belly who eats too many French fried potatoes and the girl looks like she needs to padlock the fridge, their fear that this is too good to be real tears at our heartstrings. That is why it was twice as difficult for McMahon and Gnapp, two superb actors, to make us believe in them. No one in that audience would have turned down a chance to make a pass at either of them.
And then let us discuss the philosophy behind the play. When you are looking at two gorgeous specimens who obviously kept up their commitment at the fitness center, you notice that Frankie is being railroaded into sex by a fast talking, shallow male animal who mistakes genital stimulation for romantic love. She asks him to leave her apartment…in fact, she begs him to get out… and he won’t budge. He is there and he is going to have her, the hell with N.O.W. and Betty Friedan. AND SHE SUCCUMBS…just like any idiotic fifties-type woman. She doesn’t pick up the phone and call 911. She doesn’t even raise the windows and yell,”I am being molested!” because the smooth-talker who just laid her has convinced her that he IS the romantic hero she has dreamed about. The amazing thing is that not one person in the audience asks, “Why is she STILL locked into a knight-on-a-white-horse complex? Aren’t we beyond that in the twenty-first century?” until they get in their cars to drive home and ponder what they have seen happen on stage.
And that is because the acting in this production is nothing short of amazing. I have seen Terri McMahon on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival stage for more years than she would want me to tell you about and I have never seen her do a less than superb job of characterization. Another actor who was once with that company, Remi Sandri, told me “If you know how to act, you can be ANYBODY.”
Terri Mc Mahon has proven that to me each time I am privileged to see her on stage. In this particular production, she outdid herself. Her every gesture, every movement, every word made us forget that she was so gorgeously adorable men would kill for her. Instead, we bought into her character’s fear of commitment, her insecurities, her past failures and her desperate need to believe this con-artist who insisted he was the Galahad she had been waiting for all her 41 years. Johnny tells her, “All I have ever wanted is right here in this room,” and McMahon makes everyone in that audience actually feel how badly Frankie wants it to the stuff of her dreams as well.
Still McMahon couldn’t have carried the action off alone and in this play she has just the right guy opposite her. Rod Gnapp is the perfect counterpoint to her uncertainty, her need to believe the unbelievable. He is a con artist, the door-to-door salesman who could sell his mother her own false teeth. He is the stereotypical male chauvinist who convinces not just the girl on stage but an audience who should know better that nirvana is created only with his male package and if Frankie turns her back on this chance, she can never have that kind of bliss ever again. A lesser artist on that stage would have made us laugh and walk out of the theater. Gnapp has all of us, including Frankie, mesmerized.
The success of this production lies in the talent of the couple on stage and director Jasson Minadakis capitalizes on their superb abilities with his spare and studied direction. No step is wasted, no action superfluous. The play moves from the bed to the kitchen to the window to the bed in a perfect circle with no time for the audience to reflect on the out-dated values they are believing.
But ARE they outdated? Don’t we all dream of someone to love, to rely on and to soothe us when we are afraid, even as we comfort them? Is it so awful to want to be protected and to want to feel that maybe you do need help to survive this complicated thing called life. Maybe a toss in the hay isn’t the complete answer, but, what the hell, it’s a start. And maybe the chemistry these two feel won’t last forever, but so what? They are giving it their best shot… and they are taking chance on one another. Maybe Johnny IS a chauvinist who only thinks of his own satisfaction; maybe Frankie IS a weak wimp who is afraid to assert herself. Maybe the old-fashioned rose-colored glasses I still wear are hopelessly out of date. I’m one of those hopeless romantics who like to believe there is a Frankie and a Johnny in each of us… and it is an iron heart indeed who wouldn’t risk everything they have been too afraid to try to make love to the strains of Clare de Lune.

IF YOU GO
Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune continues through October 5. Evening performances Tuesday through Sunday & matinees some Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Tickets 415 388 5208 or www.marintheatre.org
The Marin Theare is located at 397 Miller Avenue in Mill Valley

THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:46:00 +0000

A San Francisco Opera world premier:
THE BONESETTER’S DAUGHTER

I do not like modern opera. I am also not a fan of spooky mother/daughter guilt trips. I lived one for too many years. So it was that I was expecting to detest THE BONESETTER’S DAUGHTER when I went to the Saturday matinee last week.
Instead, I was fascinated by the theatricality of the production. It is a beautiful piece based on Amy Tan’s 2001 bestselling novel with music by Stewart Wallace, who also wrote the score for the 1995 opera, HARVEY MILK. Taken separately, I was not impressed by the music which had a sameness about it that modern music often has and the libretto which was a clichéd composite of mother/daughter guilt, heartless men abandoning their families to immigrate to America and the miscommunication between races that causes so many emotional tragedies for immigrants in a new country. The minute the curtain rose, I knew what was coming and I knew how much uncomfortable truth there was in the behavior I saw. I saw no reason to sing about it.
However, when you take the opera as a whole, its beauty and its sweep is mesmerizing and the ghost of LuLing’s mother is the perfect touch to this over-stated, melodramatic soap opera about a mother trying her best to bridge cultures and bring up her child to become a strong courageous human being, using horrendous threats as her weapon. “My mother gave me these horrible warnings,” Amy Tan said, speaking of her own childhood. “’Be wary. Fear is your best friend.’”
The story is of three generations of Chinese women searching for homeostasis in a hostile world they do not really understand. The main character is Ruth Young Kamen (Zheng Cao) who lives in San Francisco, married to a Jewish man who had two daughters from a previous marriage. Her mother is LuLing (Ning Liang) and Precious Auntie is sung by Qian Yi. Amy Tan wrote the libretto and sadly, who is doing what and why becomes very confusing if you didn’t read the book, (and I didn’t). “I kept saying, ‘I don’t know how to do this,’” said Tan. “I had no idea how opera was made. I was as mystified by the process as anybody else.”
And so she did what all innovative artists do: She created lyrics and a story line to tell her tale musically in her own unique style. As we watch one scene melt into the other, we are captivated by the mysticism of mothers becoming daughters and daughters becoming ghosts. We cannot figure out what the Jewish people are doing in that first act and why the woman we thought lived in San Francisco is in China writing letters for abandoned wives to husbands across the sea. What on earth happened to the mink coat that made it turn pink? Is it a symbol of LuLing’s becoming American? Is it representative of the futility of acquiring material goods? Who knows?
And more important, who cares? This opera is an exquisite piece of theater, where the melodies (if you can call them that) blend in with a surrealistic plot (and that too is questionable) that only makes sense while you are immersed in it on stage. As soon as the curtain descends you think, “What was THAT all about?”
Anthony Tommasini says in his review in The New York Times (September15, 2008) “Still, here is an ambitious and culturally sensitive new American opera about three strong, complex women who painfully learn a timely lesson: that our identity is embedded in our very bones.”
I agree. As an opera, it could have been more musical; as a story, it could have been woven together more carefully; as a production, the total effect was magnificent. The costumes were lovely, the video projections stunning and nothing I have seen on the opera stage can beat seeing Precious Auntie in all her finery flying above the others singing her heart out.
I cannot tell you if this is a quality piece or just cheap illusion. I do not know if it is good opera or fine writing; you will have to see and hear the opera yourself to make that judgment. What I can promise is an evening of theater at its best.

IF YOU GO:
THE BONESETTER’S DAUGHTER runs through Oct 3 at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco
Tickets: 415 864 3330

Simon Boccanegra at The San Francisco Opera House

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 01:20:00 +0000

SIMON BOCCANEGRA:
AT THE SF OPERA HOUSE UNTIL SEPTEMBER 27

I have always adored Grand Opera because it is so over-the-top. I love the lavish sets, the soap opera stories, extravagant costumes and excessive histrionics. The San Francisco Opera’s current offering, Verdi’s SIMON BOCCANEGRA fills the bill for me. The story is a real gut-wrencher, (as well it should be if you are going to have all those big name singers going on about it for three hours). The prologue sets the tone: Paolo, the villain of the piece, convinces Simon Boccanegra to become Doge of Genoa, right at the very moment he discovers that his true love Maria, daughter of his enemy Fiesco has dropped dead in her tiny cell upstairs in her daddy’s castle. Maria and Simon were a bit careless when they made love and the result was a baby girl, also Maria, secreted away to a seashore villa. A horrid fate (or could it have been a severe chill?) wipes out baby Maria’s nurse and poor, distraught Simon has no idea what happened to his daughter.
We are now ready for the first act which takes place twenty five years later when we meet Amelia who is really little Maria all grown up and ready for romance (so that’s what happened to the poor little thing). She is safe, sound and adopted by the Grimaldi family, arch enemies of Boccanegra who are also sheltering Maria (now Amelia)’s Grandpa, Fiesco. Just to complicate an already messy situation, Amelia is desperately in love with Adorno who hates Boccanegra and is determined to kill him. From this scenario, all the tragedy, bloodshed, senseless slaughter, inadvertent poisonings, misunderstandings, lousy communications, unjustified anger, and a variety of deaths, the opera develops, laced together with thrilling arias sung by voices to die for.
Donald Runnicles conducts this exciting production and no one makes Verdi soar like he does. He once told me that it is very difficult to find exactly the right volume and pace for the orchestra that does not obliterate the sound of the singers’ voices and finding that exact tone is his art. The voices soared to the top balcony and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra was right there supporting them, with Donald Runnicles at the helm.
Dimitri Hvorostogvsky is Boccanegra and his voice is an amazing instrument. He captures the audience from the moment he appears on stage with acting as eloquent as his singing. Amelia is sung by Barbara Frittoli and for me, she played the role of loving daughter, adoring sweetheart and peace-maker beautifully. I loved her voice and although it might have lacked power, its lyricism made up for any lack of force. I enjoyed Ukrainian bass Bitalij Kowaljow who was Grandpa Fiesco, as well. I thought Amelia’s sweetie, Marcus Haddock was not just believable but noble, brave and one helluva singer. As always, when the chorus and the cast were on stage together, the effect was mesmerizing: grand opera at its best.
I am neither a vocal critic nor an opera expert and I cannot comment on the musicality of each voice in this opera, but I am a fervent fan of the medium and I can tell you as a very long time opera-goer, this production was all I could ever want.
The pace was slow at first, but it had to be to absorb all the ins and outs of the complicated plot and get straight in your mind whom to hate, whom to love and when to cheer. Once all that was established, things moved as quickly as opera can when every horrifying disaster must hold its pose so everyone can sing about it.
If you are willing to suspend your belief in how life really unfolds, and buy into all the good guys dropping dead, the villain finally crucified and the lovers wandering off into the sunset, this is the production for you. I ate it up, every lavish, overstated, beautifully sung moment of it.

IF YOU GO:
Simon Boccanegra plays in repertory until September 27
WHERE: San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, Van Ness & Grove
TICKETS: www.sfopera,com or 415 864 3330

PUMP BOYS & DINETTES

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 18:35:00 +0000

PUMP BOYS & DINETTES
Willows Cabaret in Martinez

It is always a pleasure to attend a show that is as much fun as the current Country-Western musical at the Willows cabaret, Pump Boys & Dinettes. This is a bon-bon of a show that relies on clichés and farce to tickle your funny bone and touch your heart. It has no message to it other than what fun it is to laugh at a bunch of rednecks who are uncomfortably similar to ourselves. The show calls itself a ”Filling Station Musical” that celebrates life down south in Frog Level, North Carolina.
It was written as a team effort by its first performers, with music and lyrics by Jim Wann. The current production is directed by Chris Blisset, who also plays Jackson on stage. It is presented in cabaret style in a charming, intimate space, with drinks and snacks available to an audience seated at small tables instead of traditional rows of seats. The set is a delightful pastiche of memorabilia from the era when filling stations did everything but vacuum your carpet, peppered with relics of cars from the fifties and all the paraphernalia of an old fashioned do-it-all gas station. We meet six unforgettable hillbillies who love drink, song and relaxation (as opposed to real work) at The Route 57 Gas Station across from the Double Cupp Diner,(second cup is free) run by Prudie (Amanda Ryan Page) and Rhetta Cupp(Amy Washburn). Every character in this pastiche of music, and southern values is so real you cannot believe they aren’t baking pies or drinking beer after the show is over. The narrator and guy-in-charge is Jim (Larry Tobias) portrayed with just the right touch of devil-may-care irresponsibility. The pace is perfect and the laughs never-ending.
Each actor carries his own weight in this show but for me Amy Washburn’s Rhetta was nothing less than brilliant. She is a comic, over-drawn yet very real feminist firecracker when she tells Jim “Be Good Or Be Gone” , the prototype of the tough and feisty Southern Belle with hide like leather and a heart of gold.
“This show has been especially rewarding for me to work on because of the creative team brought in to work with and be in the cast,” she said.
It is obvious these six people love working together. They never upstage one another and work as a team from the opening number to the finale. The musical versatility of the group is wonderful to see and hear as they play banjos, guitars, harmonicas, pots, pans and washtubs, dancing, posing and milking each number to the hilt. “Red (Chris Blisset) and Larry (Tobias) have both done Pump Boys a number of times around the country,” said Washburn. “I am still impressed with the joy and creativity they bring to their roles. It's like a country party every night. As our director, Chris focused on creating a musically strong show, which is why I think it is such a joy to perform. The characters may be stereotypes, but we were encouraged to keep them grounded and real. I think it’s this take on the roles that helps the audience engage with us, and keeps the stage interactions fresh. Every night I've found a new moment to enjoy with my cast-mates.”
There is not a second of this show that you won’t be smiling and tapping your feet to the beat of such songs as “Farmer Tan” and “Pump Boys”. If you want some fun that doesn’t tax your brain but gives double the smiles for the price of the ticket, don’t miss this charming confection now playing in Martinez at the Willows Cabaret.

IF YOU GO:
Pump Boys & Dinettes continues until September 28
Wednesday & Thursday @7:30 pm; Friday & Saturday @ 8:00 pm
Matinees: Wednesday,3:30 pm, Saturday 2:00 pm & Sunday 3:00 pm
The Campbell Theater
636 Ward Street in Martinez
Box Office 925 798 1300
www.willowstheatre.org

The Foreigner at San Jose Rep

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:14:00 +0000

SAN JOSE REP LAUNCHES ITS 2008 SEASON WITH A BELLY LAUGH:
THE FOREIGNER BY LARRY SHUE

This is a show about pre-conceived notions that we have about ourselves and others. It is also a production that will make you laugh out loud. It was written by Larry Shue and had a record-breaking run at New York’s Astor Place Theatre where Shue played Charlie Baker, who dubs himself “the world’s dullest man. ”THE FOREIGNER is a comedy with a heart as big as all of Georgia,” says director Andrew Barnicle. “It is a sweet, funny, scary play about people’s need to fit in and their ability under extreme circumstances to create family from the likes of perfect strangers.”
This production shines because of the combination of Shue’s touch for sharp, comedic repartee and an ensemble cast that respond to one another like clockwork. The direction, the acting and the meshing of all the elements of good drama work so well that they elevate the story into something greater and more touching than a superficial farce. Charlie Baker is played by Louis Lotorto and for me he steals the show. His character is a man who has been defeated by life and is so sure that life has made the correct judgment about his inadequacies, that he adopts a lifestyle that expects rejection. He sees himself as a nothing and wants to wallow in his inadequacies. It takes a master actor to play this kind of role and allow his character to develop confidence and substance as the plot unfolds. Lotorto is up to the challenge. His is a sympathetic, brave, adorable and confused man. When we meet him he has no respect for himself and when we leave him he is a powerful human being who understands that he can do whatever he believes in, if he will but try.
Charlie Baker is introduced to Betty Meeks, (Phoebe Elinor Moyer) owner of a failing, remote fishing lodge in Georgia as someone who cannot understand a word of English because he wants to be left totally alone. From there, the comedy takes off with predictable ploys like Meeks shouting at Baker to make him understand her to the stupid brother Ellard (Aaron Wilton) blossoming as he teaches Baker English.
Despite a devious plot that involves prejudice, the KKK and a preacher gone bad, and a series of predictable twists and turns that only farce can make palatable, this is a story of how we humans nourish each other and the magic that can happen to us all when we treat one another with love and respect.
The production is fast paced and that pace keeps us from noticing the believability of some of the characters as they gallop through the machinations of uncovering the bad guys and saving the good. No matter. The puns are perfect, the laughter makes up for it all and Lotorto, Moyer and Craig Marker (Rev. David Lee) carry us all to the rollicking conclusion.
When the final curtain falls no one really cares if the people on stage were real or if the plot makes sense. Every member of that audience had way too good a time to nit pick veracity, depth or message. This is a play that is fun in every sense of the word and the only sad note is that its playwright was killed in a plane crash in 1985 and can give us no more of his marvelous comedic creations.

If you go:
Dates: August 30-September 28, 2008
Price range $15-$59

Where: San Jose Repertory Theatre
101 Paseo de San Antonio (betw 2nd & 3rd)
San Jose, CA

Box Office: 408 367 7246
www.sjrep.com

Down There

noreply@blogger.com (Lynn Ruth Miller) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:11:00 +0000

DOWN THERE
Unto the pure, all things are pure.
Titus 1:15
A friend of mine asked me what my mother said about “down there,” and I said, “Nothing.”
Indeed, when someone spoke of “down there” to me I thought they were talking about Australia. If I had a date who wanted to go there, I sent him to a travel agent. I didn’t know I had anything of importance between my shoulders and my hips, unless it leaked….which it did all too often…. And it still does, but in a different way, thank goodness.
Women in the forties did not discuss their body parts by name even among themselves. I studied biology in high school and college, and understood the entire theory of reproduction, but I didn’t believe a single word of it. I was absolutely certain that babies emerged from the belly button. That was obviously the only logical exit. It was impossible for me to believe that God would put a reproductive facility in a plumbing area. It didn’t make sense and God ALWAYS made sense. Didn’t he?
I knew what a breast was of course. It was the best part of the turkey, but a vagina was a word I could not fathom. I thought it might be a twisted blood vein of some kind and I was pretty sure it wasn’t a good thing to have. My instincts told me that if I had vagina problems I would get into a great deal of trouble. I had no idea what a penis was but I assumed it was a kind of flag pole or railway cautionary signal. I realized my mistake when I married and received one in a very unexpected place.
We never called our body functions by their clinical names either. We referred to our products of elimination by numbers. Relieving ourselves was such a private act that my mother assigned different numbers for us so no one would know what we were talking about. Instead of 1 and 2, we did 4 and 76. This caused much embarrassment at school when I needed to leave the room. When I told my fourth grade teacher I had to do 76, she was delighted. “That’s the spirit, Lynn Ruth!” she said.
She handed me a flag and insisted we all sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in honor of the brave Minutemen who gave their lives for our country.
The performance was stirring and the entire class joined in with loyal and true countrymen that they were. The delay created a good deal of unexpected laundry for my mother when I finally got home, too late to perform the deed in the accepted manner.
Nice Jewish girls who obeyed their mothers (and I was one) would not have dreamed of disrobing in front of anyone including their girl friends and certainly not a man. When we experimented with romance, we did a great deal of groping and it was always in the dark. I had absolutely no idea what a naked man looked like but I knew pretty well what happened to his crotch when we were exploring one another in the back seat of a car. The first time I actually saw a naked man was on that outdated, provincial, no longer relevant evening: my wedding night. My husband came out of the bathroom and I said, “What do you do with that thing? Pole vault?”
He didn’t think I was funny.
Women these days have no problem discussing their body parts and cosmetically improve them at every opportunity. A friend of mine from Minnesota did an entire monologue on the danger of pole dancing in the winter in her home town. When I was her age, I had no idea what pole dancing was and when I heard her not more than one month ago, I thought she was talking about a ritual dance they did in Warsaw. My crotch was not a topic of conversation ever…not when I could have used it for a variety or recreational pursuits or now when it doesn’t always obey me as it should.
This same feminine orator treated us to a long, painful monologue on her coochie and I thought she was discussing insect infestation in her furniture. Why on earth didn’t she just spray the thing with RAID? Or call an exterminator. He would know the right procedure to eradicate her vermin, wouldn’t he?
I consider myself a liberal, free thinking woman and I have no problem being open and honest about any topic. I always enjoy a passionate discussion about something stimulating, but I do not consider my clitoris a very hot topic. I prefer an intelligent debate on my right to get paid the same wage men receive for a job I know I do better or how to find a shoe that doesn’t hurt five minutes after you walk in it. I have never really hungered for a discussion on how to give myself an orgasm, which is probably a great loss. I live well below the poverty line and cannot afford to go to the movies. An orgasm might have been a nice cheap entertainment substitute but to my mind it could not possibly measure up to the cinema unless I could sustain it for an hour and a half with a few colorful previews to launch the event.
I was discussing eternal youth during a theater intermission with a group of people sitting near me not too long ago when a gentleman well into his eighties said, “I run.”
“You what?” I said.
“I run and I can keep up an erection for twenty minutes…no problem.”
Had he regressed into his childhood and taken up hobby engineering? I knew little boys loved fiddling with nuts, bolts and electric motors but I assumed they outgrew that kind of thing once they had a bank account. “How lovely for you!” I exclaimed. “And what are you building? A moving robot? A ferris wheel?”
He muttered something but I couldn’t make sense of his words because I had never heard them before. I caught something about tumescence and I smiled and said, ”I love sweet potatoes, too!”
I went into the lobby to get a coffee and when I repeated the strange terms the little guy had used, the woman behind the counter said, “He was talking about his sexual prowess. Men that age usually can’t perform properly, but my guy is great. I had to get a special cream so I would be ready for him.”
“Ready for him for what?” I asked. “Does he run too?
She blushed. “No. To keep moist,” she said.
I patted her hand. ”I use Nivea,” I said. “It worked for my mother and it works for me.”
She paused for a moment and then she said, ”You better finish your coffee,. You can’t take liquid into the theater.”
I gulped down the steaming liquid and then I smiled. “You know I never would have guessed that guy was an actor. I wonder where he performs.”

There is no sin except stupidity.
Oscar Wilde