Bakersfield Mist at the New Rep

An authentic Jackson Pollock, Lavender Mist

Bakersfield Mist, the new play by Stephen Sachs, currently in a "rolling" national premiere at the New Rep, is a long meditation on a single painting - a canvas which is possibly a newfound Jackson Pollock, or possibly just a piece of junk from a tag sale. Sachs has based his script on a the strange-but-true story of one Teri Horton (here "Maude Gutman"), a former long-haul truck driver who "bought the ugliest painting she could find" at a tag sale, only to discover a mysterious fingerprint on it that matched those of, yes, you-know-who.  The painting's general look and size likewise made the Pollock connection at least a possibility, and  Teri's long quest to have her artwork authenticated (and so instantly become worth tens of millions of dollars) is detailed in the amusing movie "Who the Fuck is Jackson Pollock?" (reportedly Teri's first response to hearing of her purchase's possible provenance).

Now, I don't know whether Ms. Horton (at left, with her painting) has "the real thing" or not - although from a cursory glance, her painting looks a good deal more convincing than the obviously phony "Matter Pollocks," which actually had a showing at Boston College a few years back, and fooled several local critics (at the Arts Fuse and elsewhere) before being debunked by paint analysis.

I was vociferous in my opposition to the Matter Pollocks, of course, but I think I'll hang back on the authenticity of Teri's acquisition, even if I have my doubts; the painting's no worse than a few Pollocks (indeed, some feel it's suspiciously similar to one in particular, No. 5, 1948, although a different painting, Lavender Mist, is referenced in the play's title).  And if Horton does become a zillionaire, she has probably earned it, one way or another.  Still, Ms. Horton - I think it's worth noting - has had some association with a well-known art forger (an issue which this play succinctly deletes), and those supposed fingerprints on her painting have come under skeptical scrutiny; I'd say the question of her acquisition's authenticity is at best still an open one.

The issue that occupies me as a drama critic, however, does parallel the play's theme; in brief -

Is Bakersfield Mist a "real" play?

And I'm afraid the answer to that question is rather obviously "no" - it's not nearly a real play - even though I'd rank it fairly high in the new genre of simulated plays that clutter our stages thanks to the "development" community.  We must have new playwrights, you know, to justify the developers' existence, and hence half the theatrical season is essentially devoted to their product rather than art.  And there are so many stakeholders in that community now!  So many artistic directors and heads of drama departments and playwriting coaches - all patiently waiting for their turn at bat!  Thus our seasons of "new voices" have essentially devolved into the sound of a cottage industry talking to itself - it's a miracle we ever hear from a playwright who hasn't bought into the scene via tuition, or tenure, or connections.

Needless to say, Sachs is deep in the development community himself - he's one of the artistic directors of L.A.'s Fountain Theatre - and so he knows his way around this kind of thing, and how to make something like Bakersfield Mist happen.  Not that he has no skill; he's certainly a deft weaver of exposition, I'll grant him that, and has worked up a heady metaphoric meringue around his central theme of authenticity. Sachs has also done his art-scene homework, even if he has piled just about every recent trend or scandal at the Met or Getty into the biography of his fictional "Lionel Percy," the art expert who arrives at Maude Gutman's trailer to assess her find.

Still, what's wrong with Bakersfield Mist is so obvious - and moreover so easily fixed - that it kind of makes you throw up your hands at the whole development gang; if they can't get this right, then they really are of no use whatsoever.  In short, Sachs gives us a diverting tour of various arty controversies, and he even diagrams a conflict for his leads - Maude wants her painting authenticated (even if she herself prefers sad clowns to Pollock, as below), but Percy's "gut" tells him her find's a fake.  The problem is that establishing a conflict is just square one in the dramaturgical game; you have to then hit on an action by which the conflict can be developed.

Paula Langton and Ken Cheeseman ponder the meaning of art.

And here Bakersfield Mist stumbles and flails, even though there's an obvious mode of dramatic action to hand - Maude's potential seduction of Lionel.  What's strange is that Sachs actually loads his characters up with just the right metaphoric baggage to make this seduction his seeming point - but then he never gets around to it.  For Maude's scrambled biography makes her a kind of Jackson Pollock in human form; her life has been a jumble of misdirected, self-destructive energy.  Her trailer reflects that - it's an explosion of American kitsch.  Her son even died in a car crash much like the one that took Pollock's own life.  In short, she's the real thing, whether or not her Pollock is.

The audience can't help but perceive this - Sachs underlines it for us like a diligent student teacher - but for some reason, Lionel remains in the dark.  And if only he began to fall under Maude's sway (and I don't mean just her sexual sway) how brightly the exposition of Bakersfield Mist might suddenly burn, and how the play might suddenly swing from patronizing comedy to cutting-edge satire!  For what is Lionel's "gut" but a subconsciously class-driven mindset?  And if his inherent patronization of Maude were chipped away - if he began to perceive that she actually personified the artistic content he has devoted his professional life to  - who knows where the character might find himself wandering, or where the play might suddenly rocket?

But alas, no such luck.  As with the similarly pedagogical Red, Bakersfield Mist is little more than a potted art-history lesson for college-educated people who aren't, actually, educated (i.e., probably the vast majority of college-educated people).  Although for the record, I think the New Rep does an okay job by it (if only because I'm not sure what more you could do with it).  Local theatre stalwarts Paula Langton and Ken Cheeseman are both amusing, but they sometimes look a bit awkward in their blocking, and only Langton gets beneath the skin of her character.  Cheeseman does have one comic aria which he nails physically - but nevertheless, his "Lionel Percy" never emerges from beneath the weight of Sachs' pre-fabricated psychological cliches.  And even Langton makes some rather obvious acting gaffes; a supposed alcoholic, her Maude nevertheless gasps in shock whenever she knocks back a shot of Jack (??), and she generally handles her million-dollar prize as if it were, indeed, only tag-sale booty.  And I'm afraid in his first local outing, director Jeff Zinn only makes a perfunctory impression - this show makes you wonder what all the fuss over his Cape Cod theatre has been about.

Oh, well!  Like Red, Bakersfield Mist will satisfy a lot of people; after all, it has been designed to do that.  I think my irritation with it stems in part from the fact that Teri Horton, whether or not she's a grifter, is obviously a great American character, and she deserves far more than development fodder like this.  What's most telling about the play is that in the end Sachs seems to have no idea why Maude won't abandon her quixotic quest, even when (like, I believe, the real Teri Horton) she is plied by offers in the low millions - a fraction of what the painting could eventually be worth, true, but still a vast fortune to her.  Clearly Maude wants to be vindicated - she wants to be seen as authentic (a deeply romantic impulse in the present day).  Too bad Bakersfield Mist, and Stephen Sachs, seem unable to honor her with an authentic play.

Choreographic All-American

Dancers Travis Walker, Ashley Werhun, and John Michael Schert.

Trey McIntyre has found - or rather created - an intriguing choreographic niche.  Working with his eponymous Trey McIntyre Project, a small, dedicated, highly skilled group of dancers out in Boise, Idaho (of all places!) he has built a national following for a vision that may be sourced in classical technique, but plays out as a variant of smart, twenty-something chic - with, amusingly enough, a sturdy, all-American edge.  Even though there's a distinctly homo-erotic, Calvin-Klein-esque undertow to much of his imagery (above).  That's right: homo-erotic, all-American dance.  I know.  The funny thing is - it works.

Or at least it works when McIntyre keeps close to his classical roots, and his indisputable talent for quicksilver steps creates a dazzlingly gymnastic hybrid of ballet and pop.  Oddly, though, when he tries to follow Paul Taylor into jazzier, funkier idioms, his invention flags a bit, and his symbolism gets a bit pretentious and obscure.  Even in these pieces, though, you can always just look at the boys.  Not that the girls aren't lovely.  They are!  But those boys.  Whew.

Alas, the gay content only explicitly surfaced once last night at the ICA, where McIntyre is enjoying a return engagement after his debut last year with World Music/Crash Arts, in the opening (and best) of the evening's dances, Blue until June.  But I think it may count as the first time on a major Boston stage we've seen an openly romantic pas de deux for two men (John Michael Schert and Travis Walker), even if this one definitely had the vibe of "We're just experimenting!" (and even if an irate girlfriend shut everything down at the end).  Oh well.  At least it's a start.  And the World Music audience seemed okay with it - even though this crowd feels a bit dated in its progressive politics (several people stared openly at me and my partner during intermission, with that "Whoa, are they gay?" look we all remember so well from the 80's).

Elsewhere, just btw, Blue until June was transporting; a true McIntyre classic (it was, it's worth noting, the oldest dance on the program).  Set to a series of Etta James standards, I suppose it didn't offer any deep new insights into, you know, the blues, and heartache and such, but are there any new insights into such things?  The dance began with one of the Big Symbols McIntyre seems to favor; the dancers crawled out from beneath a dark tarp, somewhat like sleepers roused from dreams.  But what we got after that wasn't so much a sense of emotional epiphany as sheer choreographic brilliance; McIntyre is certainly at the very high end of pop choreographers; he doesn't "enact" the lyrics of the songs he chooses; instead, his graceful duets seem to stream along in complicated counterpoint to their (fairly simple) musical accompaniment.  Indeed, McIntyre carries us along with such inventive confidence that we stop thinking that nothing's really building and instead just drink the dances in (and get drunk on them).  The big problem with pop choreography is almost always that the music isn't complex enough to sustain any real choreographic (and hence, intellectual) development.  I wouldn't say that McIntyre actually solved that problem here, but for long stretches he transcended it.  And the dancers were riveting, with particularly virtuosic turns from Lauren Edson, Benjamin Behrends, and Annali Rose.

Alas, McIntyre wasn't quite so successful in Bad Winter, or The Sweeter End.  The adorable Chanel DaSilva worked hard to sell the first half of Bad Winter (set to the standard "Pennies from Heaven") but just couldn't make much headway; the steps are too ironically superficial.  There was more depth to the second half of the piece (set to pop tunes from the Cinematic Orchestra), which Travis Walker and Lauren Edson performed with admirable intensity; but we were left wondering exactly how the two parts were meant to connect.

The Sweeter End was likewise thin, but more fun - it was basically a long vamp to the darker, devil-may-care, nihilistic side of jazz.  It began with another slightly-puzzling grand gesture (Chanel DaSilva spray-painting an "X" across the backsides of the other dancers) - to which the only possible response was, "Ok, I kind of get that," but what followed slowly devolved into a kind of big party for the end of the world, with everybody just doing their best choreographic tricks. Here once again Lauren Edson, Ben Behrends, and Annali Rose stood out, but Brett Perry and Ashley Werhun had their moments in the spotlight, too.  And the crowd left happy, if slightly puzzled; but one thing was certain: we were no longer blue.

Uh, just before Ira Glass throws Mike Daisey under the bus - please note that Mike Daisey "lied" about things that are true

I'd like to point out this note from Rob Schmitz, one of Daisey's interrogators:

What makes this [This American Life's actions] a little complicated is that the things Daisey lied about seeing are things that have actually happened in China: Workers making Apple products have been poisoned by Hexane. Apple’s own audits show (PDF) the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers. These things are rare, but together, they form an easy-to-understand narrative about Apple.

Hmmmm. So Daisey "lied" about things that are actually true.  I wouldn't say it's time to buy your next iPhone yet.

Developing: This American Life backs away from Mike Daisey, says he "lied" about visits to Apple/Foxconn factories; Daisey admits to "fabricating characters," but stands by his work

This American Life has suddenly announced that it is withdrawing its piece on Mike Daisey's The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, and will "devote its entire program this weekend to detailing the errors" in their previous story.  Full press release below:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / FRIDAY MARCH 16

This American Life Retracts Story
Says It Can’t Vouch for the Truth of Mike Daisey’s Monologue about Apple in China

This American Life and American Public Media’s Marketplace will reveal that a story first broadcast in January on This American Life contained numerous fabrications.

This American Life will devote its entire program this weekend to detailing the errors in the story, which was an excerpt of Mike Daisey’s critically acclaimed one-man show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” In it, Daisey tells how he visited a factory owned by Foxconn that manufactures iPhones and iPads in Shenzhen China. He has performed the monologue in theaters around the country; it’s currently at the Public Theater in New York. Tonight’s This American Life program will include a segment from Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz, and interviews with Daisey himself. Marketplace will feature a shorter version of Schmitz’s report earlier in the evening.

When the original 39-minute excerpt was broadcast on This American Life on January 6, 2012, Marketplace China Correspondent Rob Schmitz wondered about its truth. Marketplace had done a lot of reporting on Foxconn and Apple’s supply chain in China in the past, and Schmitz had first-hand knowledge of the issues. He located and interviewed Daisey’s Chinese interpreter Li Guifen (who goes by the name Cathy Lee professionally with westerners). She disputed much of what Daisey has been telling theater audiences since 2010 and much of what he said on the radio.

During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey’s story, This American Life staffers asked Daisey for this interpreter’s contact information. Daisey told them her real name was Anna, not Cathy as he says in his monologue, and he said that the cell phone number he had for her didn’t work any more. He said he had no way to reach her.

“At that point, we should’ve killed the story,” says Ira Glass, Executive Producer and Host of This American Life. “But other things Daisey told us about Apple’s operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn’t think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake.”

The response to the original episode, “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” was significant. It quickly became the single most popular podcast in This American Life’s history, with 888,000 downloads (typically the number is 750,000) and 206,000 streams to date. After hearing the broadcast, listener Mark Shields started a petition calling for better working conditions for Apple’s Chinese workers, and soon delivered almost a quarter-million signatures to Apple.

The same month the episode aired, The New York Times ran a front-page investigative series about Apple’s overseas manufacturing, and there were news reports about Foxconn workers threatening group suicide in a protest over their treatment.

Faced with all this scrutiny of its manufacturing practices, Apple announced that for the first time it will allow an outside third party to audit working conditions at those factories and – for the first time ever – it released a list of its suppliers.

Mike Daisey, meanwhile, became one of the company's most visible and outspoken critics, appearing on television and giving dozens of interviews about Apple.

Some of the falsehoods found in Daisey's monologue are small ones: the number of factories Daisey visited in China, for instance, and the number of workers he spoke with. Others are large. In his monologue he claims to have met a group of workers who were poisoned on an iPhone assembly line by a chemical called n-hexane. Apple's audits of its suppliers show that an incident like this occurred in a factory in China, but the factory wasn’t located in Shenzhen, where Daisey visited.

"It happened nearly a thousand miles away, in a city called Suzhou," Marketplace’s Schmitz says in his report. "I’ve interviewed these workers, so I knew the story. And when I heard Daisey’s monologue on the radio, I wondered: How’d they get all the way down to Shenzhen? It seemed crazy, that somehow Daisey could’ve met a few of them during his trip."

In Schmitz's report, he confronts Daisey and Daisey admits to fabricating these characters.
"I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard," Daisey tells Schmitz and Glass. "My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not journalism. It's theater."

Daisey's interpreter Cathy also disputes two of the most dramatic moments in Daisey's story: that he met underage workers at Foxconn, and that a man with a mangled hand was injured at Foxconn making iPads (and that Daisey's iPad was the first one he ever saw in operation). Daisey says in his monologue:

He's never actually seen one on, this thing that took his hand. I turn it on, unlock the screen, and pass it to him. He takes it. The icons flare into view, and he strokes the screen with his ruined hand, and the icons slide back and forth. And he says something to Cathy, and Cathy says, "he says it's a kind of magic."

Cathy Lee tells Schmitz that nothing of the sort occurred.

"In our original broadcast, we fact checked all the things that Daisey said about Apple's operations in China," says Glass, "and those parts of his story were true, except for the underage workers, who are rare. We reported that discrepancy in the original show. But with this week’s broadcast, we're letting the audience know that too many of the details about the people he says he met are in dispute for us to stand by the story. I suspect that many things that Mike Daisey claims to have experienced personally did not actually happen, but listeners can judge for themselves."

"It was completely wrong for me to have it on your show," Daisey tells Glass on the program, "and that's something I deeply regret." He also expressed his regret to "the people who are listening, the audience of This American Life, who know that it is a journalism enterprise, if they feel betrayed."

Daisey, who is currently performing the piece in New York, has countered with a short statement on his blog:

I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. Certainly, the comprehensive investigations undertaken by The New York Times and a number of labor rights groups to document conditions in electronics manufacturing would seem to bear this out.

What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic ­- not a theatrical ­- enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations. But this is my only regret. I am proud that my work seems to have sparked a growing storm of attention and concern over the often appalling conditions under which many of the high-tech products we love so much are assembled in China.

What can I say but "Stay tuned!"?

What's up this weekend

Even though I haven't quite caught up with my reviewing, the forced cultural march continues this weekend. I hope to finally pen an assessment of Bakersfield Mist on Saturday, and my considerations of Recent Tragic Events and Next to Normal should be forthcoming after that. At the same time, however, I will be checking out the Trey McIntyre Project (taking off, above) at the ICA tonight, followed by Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, one of August Wilson's best, at the Huntington on Saturday (if the power's on).  I will also be hearing a re-discovery, Camilla de Rossi's The Prodigal Son, by La Donna Musicale, and may be able to squeeze in one extra fringe show as well.

Looking for Ameriville

"The Universes" perform Ameriville.

Ameriville, by the Universes (Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, Gamal A. Chasten, and William Ruiz A.K.A. "Ninja," above) at ArtsEmerson through this weekend, is the kind of show you want to like - partly, I admit, because you feel you should like it.  As directed and developed by Chay Yew (of Chicago's Victory Gardens), Ameriville returns to the scene of a recent political crime - the shrugging off of the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina - and attempts to conjure from that shameful failure a vision of an America that might actually be able to hang together in a crisis, even when it's people of color who are being victimized.  Yeah, imagine that - a nation that truly worked like a village, i.e., like "Ameriville."

And the resulting mix of rap, hip hop, gospel, rock and the spoken word is often rousing, and occasionally affecting; but while you can't fault its message, Ameriville only intermittently connects with the audience.  The performers aren't the problem - all are powerhouses (although the stand-out is probably Ms. Ruiz-Sapp - whose wails waft to the rafters with an edge of genuine pain, even when she's beaming with an incandescent smile).  No, it's really the material itself which still needs refinement and focus; Yew's text floats between poignant and satiric vignettes at will, and they tend sometimes to blend together; and to be honest, occasionally the performers' diction gets blurry, and we're no longer sure where we "are" in the show.

And then there's the simple fact that a real response to the problem of re-building New Orleans probably requires more dramatic structure, more literal dialogue; an impressionistic musical palette simply can't tell the whole story, even if it's delivered with a stomp.  History, politics, and by now deeply-engrained economic structures are all in play here.  Indeed, New Orleans probably stands as a literal symbol for the politics of the American underclass: one of the few true "melting pots" in the country, it's mostly built below sea level (a neat metaphor right there), and so despite being a font of American music, drama, and culture, it's perennially in harm's way, a Southern belle whose existence absolutely depends on the kindness of strangers (not to mention the elements).

And I think it's worth noting that the exodus from the city before the flood only exacerbated its problems - but Ameriville doesn't have much to say about that (and tellingly, we notice that nobody ever talks about getting organized after the disaster); nor does Yew spend much time dramatically connecting the aftermath of the deluge to the various larger political claims he wants to make (even though I agree with those claims, they'd be all the more powerful for not being so obviously assumed).

Still, in the show's specific, personal vignettes, the performers land their punches with a wallop; it's then that the levees of outrage break, and a flood of tears seems to pour forth before us.  It's hard not to wince, for instance, when a dazed resident asks anyone who will listen whether or not they've seen his mama;  more powerful still is the moment when a servicewoman returns to find her home has been destroyed, and that the nation she has pledged to defend with her life doesn't really give a damn.  It's at such clinch moments, when America's indifference to its victims crashes into its habitual exploitation of them, that Ameriville suddenly sings.

The Hub Review tries its hand at honest food blogging!

It was only a matter of time, I suppose.  In case you've missed it, the familiar ethical issues surrounding blogging have just raised their collectively ugly head again - only this time around food blogging. The Globe recently called foul on a group that calls itself "The Boston Brunchers," a crowd of seemingly perpetually-squealing "foodies" who organize free lunches for themselves at local restaurants and caterers, and then tweet and blog about how great everything tasted.

Needless to say, the Brunchers have been shocked, shocked to discover that people might view their cozy little arrangement a bit skeptically.  One blogger, "The Passionate Foodie" even outed the Globe's writer as having shared an ethically-suspect wine junket with him - and kudos to "Passionate," btw, for  the following harumph: "I am deeply offended that anyone would think I would compromise my integrity for such a meager amount [of money]." I really like that - I suppose higher-pay-outs would be another story?

To be fair, the Brunchies occasionally do post a negative post or tweet - but my brief survey of their output revealed their assessments of these free brunch bits yielded overwhelmingly positive brunch bytes.  Yeah, this is a pretty classic case of what used to be called "logrolling."  And the best part of it is, the dishonesty is so democratic!  Half these brunchers have no credentials as critics, or even writers - they're just self-described "foodies" who show up for the event.  Still, is anyone being fooled?  Everyone knows the "reviews" you read on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere are bullshit (and the pans are as suspect as the raves, frankly), so where's the harm?

Parallels with theatre blogging inevitably come to mind, of course - although just as many differences between these respective scenes occur to me as well.  I've often been struck, frankly, by the fact that arts blogging is so unpopular.  Only a handful of Bostonians have stuck with it, and most of those do make a long-term commitment to the form have written for print publication in the past.  The idea of 150 people (the full roster of "Boston Brunchers") signing up for free tickets in exchange for the slog of actually writing a review seems pretty remote at this point.  (And you can nab a free ticket to most opening nights just by joining Stage Source, anyhow.)

Not that the critical scene is some gleaming paragon of moral rectitude.  I wish I could say that Boston critics constituted a city on a hill, but that's obviously not the case!   Indeed, I've heard all the perky, obviously-phony self-defenses of the Boston Brunchers from half the theatre reviewers in town already.  A good number of them - even the most established and successful - seem to approach PR people on their knees, and negative criticism is almost inevitably soft-pedalled.  Except at the Hub Review, of course.  Which is part of what makes me so shocking!  Actually, even I soft-pedal pans for the defenseless - I'm not about to roast somebody performing in their friend's show in a basement, please! Yet oddly, this seems to shock people most of all.  Yes, I ridicule the big players, the ones with the money and power - so call me crazy!  They only put up with it because my blog has the largest audience, and because, let's face it, people only read writers like Don Aucoin and Ed Siegel because they're the face of the Globe or Phoenix; if they hung out a shingle by themselves on the Web, nobody would pay any attention, just as nobody cares what sweet old Joyce Kulhawik says on her blog.  If people want actual criticism, genuine argument, they know they have to come here.

So you know, I'm wondering if I could parlay by moral self-regard into . . . food blogging!!  Are the foodies ready for a blog like The Hub Review?  Hah!  Probably not.  But just as a kind of opening salvo, I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts on the restaurant scene flourishing around various theatres in the South End.

Okay, so you have tickets for a play at the BCA.  Where should you eat?  The first place to check - and this is no secret - is Picco, at the corner of Tremont and Berkeley, which is one of the best restaurant values in the city.  The pizza is good, but the pasta is the secret here - I'm not kidding, it's superb.  A good list of reasonably priced wines (try the reds), some great beers (try the Yeti stout), and a tasty sampler of ice cream round out the menu.  What's the downside?  All the obnoxious brats trucked by in the yuppies who live upstairs.  Seriously, the place is like a daycare center at 6 pm.  If only the owner would open a second, adults-only location!  Venture capitalists, this is your chance!

What do you do, then, if Picco is overrun by screaming, entitled Isabellas and Noahs?  Well, there are other options - and I'll run through them, I think, on a value basis.  I usually try Metropolis, a little down Tremont, if Picco is jammed - not cheap, but reasonable, and there's a rough equivalence between price and value here.  (Don't bother with the risottos, though, and the wine list is good but not great.)  If that's also booked, I might brace myself for Hammersley's or Sibling Rivalry (note, though, that I'm edging here toward substantially higher price points).  Hammersley's is the more reliable - it is worth the money - but it's not very imaginative; meanwhile Sibling Rivalry has been getting better of late, and the drinks are arguably more fun (and the bar in back is swankly groovy).  If it's summertime and you can eat on the patio, though, I'd go with Hammersley's.

What else is there.  Forget Stephanie's - ugh. Aquitaine?  Only if you're a drinker (the wine list is the best in the area, though, and the waiters actually know something about it).  The Beehive - uh, maybe if you're twenty years younger than I am, and don't mind waiting in line, then having to scream to the other members of your party to be heard.  Other than that it's awesome, dude!  Of course if you're looking to get laid and you're under thirty, this is your best shot - so the Beehive: horny, yes, hungry, no.  That oyster place and that "butcher shop"?  Too much "player" attitude; and as a general rule, I avoid Barbara What's-her-face's pretentious eateries.  (I'm here to eat, not to be seen eating.) Coppa down on Shawmut is not bad, though (not cheap either, but again, probably worth it). The Indian and Thai places - only as a last resort.  I've never been to the Ethiopian place.  And when all else fails, I guess there's always Francesca's.  Or the sub shop!

So there you go - honest food blogging!  (I paid for every bite I ate.)   Bon appétit!

Boston Lyric Opera's The Barber of Seville

Jonathan Beyer and Steven Condy in The Barber of Seville.  Photos: Eric Antoniou

People are always asking me, "What should I see right now?" And I'm always happy to answer: what you should see right now is The Barber of Seville at Boston Lyric Opera - a big, blooming bel canto extravaganza that you can only catch through Sunday.  This is Rossini as it was meant to be heard and seen - with ripe voices, bold colors, a high musical finish, and a frisky sense of fun.  Premiering just weeks after the brooding chamber opera The Lighthouse (itself a triumph in its own way), Barber offers proof positive that BLO, always Boston's leading opera company, is now ready to step up to the plate as its only opera company, with an artistic reach that convincingly stretches from the esoteric to the populist and back.  Although all that aside, this Barber is just a great night out - and trust me, we won't hear bel canto like this, with voices like these, for some time to come (or at least not until BLO returns to the genre).

If this sound like I'm purring, well I am - this is the kind of production you can sink into confidently; it's a big plush easy chair of memorable melody (you already know the whole overture, in fact) and rollicking comedy.  I suppose you could sniff at the fact that this is a "traditional" rendering, and nobody involved is trying to subvert Rossini's sturdy commedia structure with some intellectual agenda or other, to prove they went to Columbia or Harvard.  But what can I say?  If that's the way you think, well, you know where you can go (and it ain't Columbia or Harvard, much less the opera house!).  I know, I know, people want to drag into Barber something of the complexities of The Marriage of Figaro, the second play in the Beaumarchais trilogy which, of course, inspired Mozart's revolutionary opera of the same name.  But I'm afraid that wider intellectual dimension isn't really to be found in Rossini's source - and me, I'll take this composer straight, with his sunny melodies, lusty sense of romance, and yes, weakness for slapstick, any day.

The slapstick's about to start!  Pass it on!

From the start, frankly, I knew this production was in clover; even as the pleasingly rambunctious stage business began, conductor David Angus was drawing a rich, elegant sound from the pit.  Likewise the drops and costumes, by Allen Moyer and James Scott respectively, appropriately evolved from a warm romantic realism to a sense of heightened satiric sketch (as the pratfalls piled up around the characters), and stage director Doug Varone proved he knew just how to shift that balance, too - even if his inventiveness flagged slightly before the final act was over, we didn't really mind by then.

And the voices!  As was the case with Agrippina last spring (another big, bold comedy - BLO has a feel for this kind thing), the world-class warbling just keeps coming in The Barber of Seville.  As the eponymous hairdresser himself,  Jonathan Beyer deployed a rich, resonant baritone that seemed warmed from below with sun, and he beamed with just the right mix of lustiness and fey wit, too.  Believe it or not, however, he may have been slightly out-classed by Sarah Coburn's Rosina, and Steven Condy's Dr. Bartolo.  Coburn's flexible mezzo (as is often done, the role was transposed up slightly from its original range) is dazzlingly pure, and she has startling reserves of power; plus she, too, is no comic slouch.  The comedy laurels, however, have to go to Condy, who as Rosina's would-be suitor/captor expertly teased both our ridicule and sympathy in about equal measure; and as an added bonus, his deep baritone is tinted with an intriguingly dark, individual color.  Indeed, the only (slight) vocal gap among the leads lay in tenor John Tessier's turn as Count Almaviva.  Tessier has a flexible lyric tenor, with a radiant bloom in the middle of its range; but it's perhaps slightly too light for what it has to accomplish here, and Tessier was showing signs of strain by the finale; which is too bad, because he looks just right, and has a sweet way with romantic comedy to boot.

But then he had stiff competition from what amounted to a talented squad of hammy farceurs, including the memorable Judith Christin, whose bug-eyed servant drew laughs every time she entered.  Alas, local bass David Cushing (with Christin, above) eschewed his big aria as Basilio, the music master, as he was suffering from a head cold on opening night (just like, ironically enough, his character supposedly is) - although honestly, he managed pretty well in his ensembles.  The chorus, which we only heard from occasionally, was likewise in strong form - there was a palpable sense from everyone onstage, in fact, that this was a production to be proud of; somehow they all knew they were giving The Barber of Seville a classic cut.

John Tessier and Sarah Coburn are finally wed, with a little help from the infantry.

Boston Baroque doubles up on Mozart

The boy genius twice over.

My earlier post about the amusing contretemps I witnessed at last weekend's Boston Baroque concert has been getting a lot of play on sites like Universal Hub, but it would really be too bad if that concert was only remembered for that particular incident, because honestly, it featured one of the most astounding keyboard performances I've ever had the pleasure to hear in my life (and I've heard just about everybody, going all the way back to Rubinstein).

Actually, to be specific - it featured the most transporting double performance on fortepiano I've ever heard in my life.  The players were Robert Levin and his wife, Ya-Fei Chuang; the piece was Mozart's Concerto in E Flat Major for two pianos and orchestra (K. 365).  Both Levin and Chuang are local mainstays, of course (he's a professor at Harvard, she's at NEC), but we hear from Levin more often than Chuang, it seems.  Here, however, Chuang took the lead -  and to my mind she got the better fortepiano, too (plus the better gown - a sparkling number in pale periwinkle that looked absolutely stunning).

I wasn't that familiar with this particular concerto, so for me the whole thing was a ravishment - it's one long swoon of rippling, silvery delight, boasting a haunting andante at its core (in which joy and melancholy seem to keep each other at bay in an almost heart-breaking way) that is simply to die for.  And Levin and Chuang weren't just virtuosic individually - as the piece progressed they seemed to be merging into a single musical mind; again, I've never experienced a sense of musical ensemble as pure as this one (and I may never again).  People actually began giggling in happiness at certain phrases, they were so elegant they almost tickled you; this was like listening to Ariel's music on Prospero's island; the performance was absolutely perfect.

Oh, yeah, the orchestra; they were good too (!).  Sorry, I don't mean to sound flip; though inevitably slightly overshadowed by the pianists, the strings and the woodwinds were in particularly fine form, and Pearlman shaped the playing so that it always operated as an exquisite response to the fortepiano line(s).  The conductor likewise made a subtle statement out of the opening Symphony No. 29 (K. 201), the last of Mozart's "early" symphones - indeed, I thought Pearlman made a better case for No. 29 than he managed with the later "Linz" Symphony (No. 36, K. 425), which I always find round and maturely rousing, but not much more.  (Perhaps tellingly, Mozart wrote and copied out the parts in less than six days, when his hosts at Linz begged him for a new symphony.)  The program was filled out by three of Mozart's arrangements of fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, which, though of some interest, didn't really have the heft or depth of true concert music (Pearlman all but admitted as much in his comments from the stage).  Still, after the Levins, I think everyone felt we'd already experienced more than a concert's worth of great music; Pearlman could have followed up with Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and I wouldn't have minded.

Boston Conservatory goes The Full Monty

The guys get ready to "Let it Go."

I admit, I felt like a dirty old man going in.  A college production of The Full Monty?  I can blame it on the partner unit, of course (it was his idea!), but seriously . . . he didn't have to nudge me all that hard, I confess.

And now, what's worse, I have to let everybody know I was there, because . . . well, because it was just about the best large-ensemble musical I've seen in these parts since Candide (which we only speak of now in hushed, hallowed tones).  I'm not kidding.  The Boston Conservatory kids definitely went the full monty with The Full Monty.  Yeah, the notorious split-second of actual nudity was there (in a blast of backlight!), but that's not really what I'm talking about.  What I'm talking about is a crackling, top-notch production by a crowd of young talents (male and female) that bested the professional versions I've seen of this show.  Yeah.  That's what I'm talkin' about.

Director Laura Marie Duncan (Boston Conservatory '94) was actually in the original Broadway cast, and while her production never felt like slavish imitation, it was also clear that her experience had given her the edge of knowing the show inside and out; there was a level of attention to detail here that's rare in Boston direction - Duncan found moments, in fact, that I hadn't imagined you could find in this material.

But then I admit I'm not that big a fan of The Full Monty anyway (although after sitting through Next to Normal, I admit it's looking better and better in retrospect).  Its chief flaw, which it shares with so many other new and newish musicals, is a so-so score - and then there's the fact that its plot slowly abandons the gritty edge of its supposed premise (the collapsing economic and social status of men) and begins to grind against the limits of its soft-core marketing tease. Will they take it all off?  Will they take it all off?  There are only so many way you can ask that question, and The Full Monty basically works them all; and would we smile so broadly at a musical that giggled about women being forced to become strippers?  Somehow I don't think so.

But if Terrence McNally's book in the end only does lip service to the social and sexual issues it pretends to raise - well, McNally is nevertheless an old gay Broadway pro, and has, as they say, a talent to amuse; so Monty, studded as it is with jokes and asides and show-bizzy gambits, does mostly amuse; indeed, I think through its patina of raunch you can still perceive, if you squint a little, the tatty razzle-dazzle of the likes of Hello, Dolly!

I suppose all that was neither here nor there to the kids of Boston Conservatory, however; they just wanted to put on a good show - and they did (and then some). Led by the dynamic Keith White as ringleader Jerry, the central sextet of regular Buffalo guys who don, then doff, thongs for the first time - Stephen Markarian, Daniel Plimpton, Trevor Hannigan, Shayne Kennon and Avery Smith - were all solid gold, and they were backed by compelling turns from Meryn Beckett, Niki Sawyer, and Margaret Lamb as the women in (and half out of) their lives. Meanwhile Corey Mosello was hotness incarnate as the stripper whose act first gives the boys their bright idea, and sixth grader Andrew Horowitz was poised and affecting as Jerry's mortified son Nathan. But the show was probably stolen by Hayley Lovgren's hilarious portrayal of the grizzled rehearsal pianist Jeanette; somehow this college student channeled perfectly the gonzo, possibly bonkers optimism of every showbiz survivor everywhere.

Meanwhile down in the pit, the band was tight, as everything - set, costumes, choreography - clicked nicely onstage. Indeed, the only thing not to like about this Full Monty is that, well, it's over; Boston Conservatory productions generally only run a weekend. Which I'm sure leaves quite a few of our local theater companies sleeping a little easier at night.

About a boy

Ian Shain and Felix Teich finally make it to the prom. Photos: Saglio Photography.

I got to Boston Children Theater's Reflections of a Rock Lobster a little late - and the run was short (this afternoon is the last performance), so for most readers, this will be a post-mortem.  Which doesn't really matter; the production got tons of positive press, and to be honest, it's the kind of politically-driven production I often take issue with.

That kind of position is complicated for me this time around, however, because this piece is open, self-declared agitprop, and of a particularly benign variety - it takes on prejudice against gays in general, and the bullying of gay kids in particular.  Perhaps I'm being a bit hypocritical in my affection for it, of course, because I'm gay - and Rock Lobster, the true story of Rhode Island teen Aaron Fricke's legal fight to take his boyfriend to the prom, takes place in 1980, right around the time of my own coming out (although I wasn't as brave as Aaron - I waited till college).  So the period detail here - from the midnight pilgrimages to The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the Jordan Marsh shopping bags - was particularly resonant for me, and Boston Children's Theatre has taken the time (and spent the money!) to get everything from the post-70's tuxes to the pre-80's hair just about exactly right.

To be honest, however, author Burgess Clark, who developed the script from Fricke's memoir, does occasionally play too heavy a political hand for my taste.  Indeed, at a talkback following the performance I saw, Mr. Fricke himself (who was in attendance) had to field a pointed question or two from teachers at his high school at the time, who challenged a few of the script's broader strokes.  In Reflections of a Rock Lobster, handsome boyfriends are always articulately brave, while conservative principals are obviously vile; this makes for good theatre, of course - but if only life itself fell into such appealing, clean categories!  Oh, well. Fricke likewise had to admit that his relationship with his parents wasn't quite as the playwright portrayed it; things were inevitably more complicated at home, and "artistic license was taken," he confessed.

Yep, been there, done that: Ian Shain endures a rite of gay passage in Reflections of a Rock Lobster.

Still, Fricke's brave story is a compelling one, and Clark cleaves to its general outline; and to the playwright's credit, he does know how his way around a melodrama.  Clark may never pull his punches, but still, he can land a (far-) left hook, and in a story like this one, you appreciate that.   Plus he's brave enough to deal directly with topics like the furtive sexual fumblings of teen-aged boys, as well as hate speech like "faggot" and "cock sucker."  (Rock Lobster may not be appropriate for kids in middle school or younger - although actually, kids at that age know all these words, and more.)

The playwright also directed, and he has been lucky in his cast, from whom he has generally drawn strong performances: teen-agers Ian Shain and Felix Teich were both utterly believable (and utterly un-self-conscious) in the lead roles of Aaron and his boyfriend Paul, and were backed up by subtle work from local theatre stalwarts Paula Plum and Richard Snee as Aaron's clueless parents ("You have such a strange sense of humor for a boy!" they tell him).  There was more nice supporting work from Sophia Pekowsky as Aaron's accident-prone best friend,  Allan Mayo as a flamingly old-fashioned gay activist, and Doug Bowen-Flynn, who tried to work as much subtlety as he could into the evil-principal role.

There was also the sense throughout the performance that broad as it sometimes may have been, this was still agitprop on the front lines.  Indeed, perhaps because of the very visibility of gay people (and even gay teens), bullying only seems to be getting worse these days. Projections on the set detailed a list of those who have died because of gay-bashing in recent years, and in the middle of the talkback the crowd was momentarily stilled by a quiet question from the balcony:

"Aaron- how did you endure all that bullying?" a young girl wanted to know.  "Because, you know, I'm like trying to deal with - well - I mean, could you just tell me how you got through it?  Please?"

You could hear everyone in the theatre take a big gulp (luckily there were folks from PFLAG on hand to offer support and guidance).  And I remembered that for some kids, shows like Reflections of a Rock Lobster are nothing less than a lifeline.

Fold along with MIT (and Mozart)

Betcha didn't know that MIT, my alma mater, is a hotbed of origami innovation. Well it is! And you can savor some of the best pieces to come out of the Institute in recent years right now at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, where "Mens et Manus" (that's Latin for "mind and hand," btw, MIT's motto) runs through April 29.  In the above video, a truly mind-boggling piece of origami is undertaken - a folded version of the MIT seal (it's on display in the show).  If you've got ten hours free, maybe you can try it yourself.