Occam’s Razor

In Step with The Capitol Steps

There are a whole list of things that I as a Washingtonian should have done over the nearly thirty years I have lived here but have not done. Tourists often imagine Washingtonians as constantly down on the Mall or attending concerts at the Kennedy Center. The truth is few of us have that kind of money. In addition, most of us live far enough away from the center of the city where it is rarely worth either the cost or hassle to beat the traffic into the city, unless it is on the weekend. Moreover, since many of us work in the city during the week, the last thing we want to do on the weekend is drive back into it.

Therefore, I miss lots of fabulous Smithsonian exhibitions and concerts. By this time, I should have taken a White House tour. It remains on my list of nebulous things to do. I have been to the top of the Washington Monument twice, but only once as a Washingtonian. (The first visit was in 1967, when I visited as a boy scout.) Shear Madness has been playing forever in the Kennedy Center’s Theater Lab. I could never could be bothered. Mark Russell plays regularly at the Omni Shoreham on Calvert Street N.W. I have only seen him on Public TV during membership weeks. Ah, but The Capitol Steps; I can finally cross them off my list.

The Capitol Steps are loosely to Washington D.C. what The Rockettes are to New York City. In 1981, for Senator Charles Percy’s Christmas party three staffers decided to create parody songs and skits based on the topical political headlines of the day. They must have been good because they kept being asked to do other gigs. At some point, they gave up their day jobs and became part of the Washington kudzu. Now, twenty-seven years later it is hard to imagine a time when they were not around. Whereas there used to be just three founding members, now there are thirty of them. Whereas they used to do one gig at a time, now they travel in groups of five or six and do multiple gigs at the same time. They even travel the country trying to meet demand. Political singing and skits now provide them with a steady income. I bet they have 401-Ks and health insurance like the rest of us. Moreover, I would not be surprised if they belonged to a local actor’s union.

I am not sure how the performers who came out to Reston on Sunday night compared with the rest of the troupe. (If they are not being hosted locally, you can find them Friday and Saturday nights at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. That’s at the Federal Triangle metro station.) However, they come out to Reston, Virginia once a year for an annual benefit for Reston Interfaith. Since I give money to the charity, live three miles away and the Unitarian Universalist Church I attend has a member who makes getting tickets easy, I felt I had no more reason to procrastinate.

I probably would have enjoyed the show more if we had not been at a table in a far corner of the Hyatt Regency’s ballroom. Our tickets, $75 each, did not get us stellar seating. The premier tables, sponsored by local IT companies, got a much better view. Nevertheless, I did not feel too put out. My view was reasonably clear and the acoustics in the ballroom were okay. A fancy dessert and all the wine we could guzzle came with admission. Also present were a host of Fairfax County luminaries who hitherto I had rarely seen outside of newspaper photos, including two supervisors, our state senator and the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Gerry Connolly.

Even though attending a regular show of The Capitol Steps costs $35, I felt like we definitely got our money’s worth. The Capitol Steps of course exist to skewer politicians. Politicians were not only skewered, but also roasted over a rotisserie for long periods. The predictable results are many hilarious sketches and song parodies like this one, which skewers poor Senator Larry Craig and who by this time must be riddled with political buckshot.

Our particular show was fast paced. I do not know how long our show was compared to most of their shows. We got about ninety minutes of material, which was padded out to a bit more than two hours with an intermission and a benefit raffle. Virtually every presidential candidate was lampooned, often multiple times. A number of sketches would not work well outside the Beltway simply because the political figures (like Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) are not names that trip off the tongue of most Americans. Yet he was one of many foreign politicians also stepped on by The Capitol Steps.

The humor of course must be topical and lowbrow. Sometimes the tunes they choose to parody are a little obscure. (I doubt that many Americans are that familiar with Springtime for Hitler.) The Steps assume though that if you are going to fork over $35 to see them, you must be politically savvy. Consequently, while the Steps will probably never appear on Broadway, they earn their money. Their songs and skits must constantly be created and reworked to keep up with current events. One of their signatures is their “Lirty Dies” segment where they do a backwards talk. This gives them a convenient way to say things you generally cannot say in polite company. You may find as I did that sometimes you cannot translate their backwards talk fast enough to laugh along.

The Capitol Steps were good enough for me to want to see them again some year. Perhaps someday I can drag a politically savvy sibling or friend into D.C. to see one of their regular shows. While I have yet to see Shear Pleasure, our perennial local lowbrow comedy, I strongly suspect The Capitol Steps are equally as lowbrow, but funnier.

January 30th, 2008 at 08:58pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | no comments

Review: My Fair Lady

Going to see a revival of any Broadway musical is a gamble. A musical revival is a lot like a movie sequel. It rarely lives up to the original. I have seen Les Miserables three times over fifteen years and each tour was a step down from the last tour. Each incarnation becomes just a little more shopworn. Some musicals like Cats have been on so many tours that someone should shoot it to put it out of its misery.

It has been fifty years since My Fair Lady first appeared on Broadway. I was a baby in a bassinet when it first came out. My Fair Lady is one of these landmark musicals and excruciatingly hard to do right. For one thing, Rex Harrison epitomized the role of Professor Henry Higgins, both on stage and in the movie. In 1965, he won Best Actor for the role. The film itself also won Best Picture. Consequently, any revival of the musical must be treated with asbestos gloves. The chances are you are more likely to screw it up than satisfy.

Cameron Mackintosh though took the risk with this national tour. His risk was mitigated in part by getting many of the same cast that performed it so successfully on London’s West End back in 2001. My Fair Lady rolled into Washington, DC last month. My wife, daughter and I caught one of its last performances Saturday night before it moved on.

Good news to residents of Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Newark, Los Angeles, Toronto, Costa Mesa (California) and Tempe (Arizona). This tour of My Fair Lady feels as fresh as it was fifty years ago. While obviously I never saw it on Broadway, it fares nearly as well as the 1964 movie. Since it got a good review, I felt lucky to get tickets to it at all, and had to select from one of the later performances. Dig deep into your wallet and buy your tickets now. Any fan of musicals who has the opportunity to see this tour and misses it has only himself to blame. It may not role into Tempe, Arizona until June 17th, but if I lived out there I’d still try to get my tickets now.

Its success depends in part on faithfully sticking with well-known material. Christopher Cazenove, who plays Professor Henry Higgins, borrows more than a little from the late Rex Harrison’s portrayal. Considering what an odd and cantankerous professor Henry Higgins is, he would be hard to reinvent, and that he does not is perhaps just as well. Most of the characters studiously replicate the characters that preceded them in its original production. Walter Charles, as Colonel Hugh Pickering, looks like he could have been plucked from Wilfrid Hyde-White’s portrayal on the screen.

There are some exceptions. Unquestionably, the most fun part to play in the musical is the part of Eliza’s lowbrow alcoholic father, Alfred P. Doolittle, acted in this production by Tim Jerome. Jerome brings an enormous amount of energy to his supporting part and practically carries the whole cast off with him. This is one reason why it is so surprising that the rest of the production works so well. He could easily overshadow the rest of the actors and yet he does not. Lisa O’Hare delights as Eliza Doolittle, yet she gives her role a subtly different energy than Audrey Hepburn did in the movie. Except for being significantly wider in girth than Rex Harrison was, Cazenove slips into Higgins’ role with consummate familiarity.

As you might expect, complementing the ensemble is glorious dancing, magnificent staging and a wonderful energy from the cast. The only off-note of the evening was that the horns from the orchestra tended to make the higher registers from the performers hard to hear. That may have been due in part to the acoustics of the Kennedy Center Opera House or an overenthusiastic trumpeter. I was also somewhat annoyed by patrons arriving late, which made it hard to enjoy the first ten minutes of the show.

Thankfully, I can check My Fair Lady off the list of first class musicals that I have seen staged and thoroughly enjoyed. I realize that we were fortunate to get such a fine touring version. I must remember to keep my expectations more modest for the next musical that comes into town.

January 21st, 2008 at 11:05am Posted by Mark | The Arts | no comments

Reveling in the Winter Solstice

Somehow, I managed to live in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area for 29 years without learning of The Washington Revels. The Washington Revels is one of nine similar revels organizations across the United States. In some ways, these organizations resemble Renaissance Festivals. Both do their part to reunite us with our past. They help us reconnect with an increasingly distant time when we lived in smaller communities and felt deeply connected to the earth and each other through myth, ceremony, song and dance.

The Washington Revels main events are an annual series of holiday shows staged at Lisner Auditorium in Washington D.C. Each show is different from the previous year’s show but they all have a common theme: celebrating the holiday season and the solstice the way distant generations of ours celebrated it. Each show strives to be not so much theater as an embracing communal experience. The audience is not entirely a passive. You may find yourself dancing in the aisles with the group.

This year’s show was oriented around Elizabethan England. It was staged to take place in the town of Norwich. The town is a destination for Will Kemp, one of William Shakespeare’s comedic actors who as a stunt over nine days danced from London to Norwich. To celebrate his success, Queen Elizabeth deigns to pay the village a special visit. This show was loosely organized into two acts but was rife with song (over fifty were squeezed in) and dance. Each song and dance is authentic, and most are authentic to the Elizabethan period.

The town of Norwich was depicted as a very busy but very musical place where every townie is something of a character. The stage of Lisner Auditorium was literally overflowing with cast, some of whom were perched on the steps leading up to the stage. It is doubtful that there was a paid actor in the whole troupe. While the dancing of the children sometimes left a bit to be desired (they are children after all), all were overflowing with holiday merriment and utter sincerity. Even Scrooge would have had a hard time leaving a Washington Revel performance without a skip to his step.

The show at times felt inspired by Norman Rockwell. There were a few understated saucy musical numbers, but overall wholesomeness, good cheer and mild buffoonery were the order of the day. This is the way it must be. Revels organizations do not exist to entertain so much as they exist to wake us out of our cynical 21st century slumber. If you have a teenager whose idea of fun is playing Nintendo games, you need to haul them to a performance. Given the chance, our common humanity can be much more engaging and delightful than electronic games. Attending a Revels performance is a bit like those clapping and singing games you enjoyed with your elementary school classmates. If you remember the elemental fun you felt back then, you should feel the same way by the end of a Revels show.

In this show, as in all the Revels shows, audience participation is par for the course. Expect to sing along in a few traditional holiday carols. If you feel so moved dance in the aisles when the show moves off the stage. Also, expect to be entertained, delighted and charmed. Few such amateur groups come so close to having their performances feel so professional. The Revels may be working solely for good cheer, but their hearts and minds are fully engaged in spreading merriment. You should feel the contagion.

I imagine that Renaissance England was not quite the merry place depicted here. For one thing, they had the Spanish Armada to worry about. Of course, this solstice celebration is idealized. Likely life in Elizabethan England was a lot less fun: dirtier, smellier, harsher, sicker and bawdier. Perhaps they made up for their chancier lives with more careless revelry and festive celebrations tied along seasonal events.

I am grateful to the Revels for pulling me out of my own holiday stupor. Before the program, I was making lists in my head of Christmas presents I needed to buy. By the end of the show, I felt a little like Charlie Brown discovering the true meaning of Christmas. I knew all along what the seasons was supposed to be. Thanks to the Revels, I felt it this year. So if you do not feel any holiday spirit this year, or even if you do, reserve your tickets now for one of next year’s performances. The Washington Revels are the perfect antidote to the bizarre Madison Avenue concoction we now call the Holiday Season. I just wish I had had a cup of eggnog to lift at the end of the show.

December 19th, 2007 at 07:34am Posted by Mark | Sociology, The Arts | 3 comments

Review: Spamalot

This is a hard review to write for a Monty Python fan. We saw here in Las Vegas Sunday night Spamalot, the musical sort of wrapped around Monty Python’s phenomenally successful 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Yet I was underwhelmed.

Here is the problem with Spamalot: you have seen most of it before. Moreover, what you have not seen is not always that humorous. Rather than feel like a Monty Python production, it feels like an Eric Idle production, which it is. Now there is nothing wrong with Eric Idle’s sense of humor, it is just that his humor is just one of the spectrums that made the Monty Python shows and movies funny. Lacking the other creative voices, Spamalot feels very strained.

If you enjoyed the movie, and who among us has not, you will probably enjoy the reenactments of many of the classic scenes from the movie. On the other hand, if you have seen the movie repeatedly, and can recite every line in the Knights Who Say Ne sketch by heart then seeing it on stage feels very anticlimactic. Except for the voice of God played by John Cleese, there is not a single member of Monty Python in the entire production. So what you get are comedic actors trying to act like the comedy troupe. They often come close. But just as Californian sparkling wine is not quite French champagne, while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it is still imitation, and it tends to fall somewhat flat.

In some ways, what is new in the show is faithful to Monty Python. The plot is pretty incoherent and rambling. Some of the new songs are cute including “The Song That Goes Like This” and “The Diva’s Lament”. There are a few surprises that should not be, including Sir Lancelot who is exposed as a gay queen. There are a few modest improvements. “He’s Not Dead Yet” number adds new life and humor to the bring out your dead scene.

Still, something about this experience felt fundamentally false. It was close imitation Monty Python, but not Monty Python itself. It just made me wistful for the real thing. Its short running length (just over ninety minutes, with no intermission) made it feel needlessly hurried.

Mel Brooks took his 1968 movie The Producers and turned it into a phenomenally successful musical that just recently closed on Broadway. Ironically, the musical of The Producers is also playing in Las Vegas. Having seen the musical version of The Producers, both on stage and the subsequent movie, I can say that Mel made an even better product than the original source material. That is not the case here. This production does not come even close to being as funny or inventive as its source material. Rather than adding value to the original package, it unfortunately subtracts value.

My assessment is that unless you are only a part time Monty Python fan or want to see famous scenes from the movie reenacted, just stay away. This musical will doubtless keep the remaining members of the Monty Python troupe from spending their last days impoverished. If you are feeling nostalgic, it might leave you with a pleasant buzz. I suspect it will leave you feeling more let down than entertained.

The comic energy that was Monty Python has long gone. It is best to accept it and move on. Enjoy the movies and classic shows on DVD. They were authentic. Spamalot feels like a dressed up imitation of the real thing. If in Vegas and you have a choice between Spamalot and The Producers, see The Producers instead. Even if it is only 70% as good as it was on Broadway, it would still be far fresher and more entertaining than Spamalot.

July 16th, 2007 at 12:58pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | no comments

Review: Oliver!

It has been at least twenty years since my wife and I made the journey into outer suburban Maryland to the Olney Theater. Now I remember why. If you live in Northern Virginia, even during non rush hours it is a pain to get to Olney, Maryland. Olney, which still has the feel of a distant suburb, sits a dozen or so miles north of Silver Spring. It is accessible only by roads chock full of traffic lights. It struck me as an odd place for a professional theater. The Olney Theater though has a storied history. It has been entertaining Marylanders since 1938. My father, a Washington native (who attended the show with us) remembers the theater when he was a boy. It hosts numerous plays and musicals every year, many of them top notch productions. Their latest is their family production of the 1968 Broadway hit musical Oliver! Charles Dickens of course wrote the original book Oliver Twist on which the musical is based. We caught the Sunday matinee.

Our family enjoys a good musical. We especially enjoy a decent production where we do not have to pay an arm and a leg for tickets. The Olney Theater straddles the middle ground between polished theaters like Washington’s National Theatre which often brings touring versions of Broadway shows and community theaters. With adult ticket prices for Oliver between $29 and $39, and with kids under 18 half price (plus a modest discount for senior citizens), going to see Oliver is easier on your wallet than going to see some of the other high-class theater in the area.

At the Olney Theater, all the adults are all professional actors. However, Oliver is also a production full of children. Could this ensemble put together a good performance? The answer is mixed. The boys rotate between performances. Fortunately, the boy I saw who played the central part of Oliver was quite good. He could not have been more than ten years old yet he had a surprising amount of stage presence and even a good singing voice. The principle roles are cast solidly. Oliver completely fails without someone excellent in the role of Fagan. Andrew Long does not disappoint as Fagan. Brian Sgambati is also appropriately threatening as Bill Sikes. Fortunately he is not so threatening as to have the younger children in the audience (and there were plenty) heading for the exit. I also really enjoyed Stephen Carter-Hicks as Mr. Bumble (and a number of other parts) and Peggy Yates in the role of Nancy.

The whole production is staged on one set, which while it offers an efficient use of space, fails to convey a sense of place during the many scene changes. The lighting was often rather dim. The theater had a smoky look to it, making it hard to suspend disbelief during “outdoor” scenes. Having never seen Oliver before, the production seemed like it must have been trimmed. Subtracting intermissions, it was less than two hours long. Perhaps this is a good strategy since children are not known for being able to sit for long periods unless they are attached to a Game Cube. The plot moved briskly, leaving little time for character development.

For a children’s musical, it still works. It conveys many adult themes about the way children used to be treated (and still are in some places of the world). Children are likely to find it both educational and amusing. However, discerning theatergoers like my family will probably not feel like they got a bargain from this production. Nevertheless, they should feel they got what they paid for: a solid but not overly memorable performance with some dated but still catchy tunes. You will probably find it a pleasant way to keep your children and yourself entertained for a few hours. However, you probably will not be recommending that your friends see it too.

December 2nd, 2005 at 08:24pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | no comments

Review: Othello

We should probably become season subscribers of the Washington Shakespeare Theater. I am starting to lose count of the number of Shakespearean plays we have seen in its theater on 7th Street NW in Washington, D.C. (A new theater is under construction nearby.) Their theatrical productions easily outclasses those at the nearby Folger Shakespeare Theater, D.C.’s other Shakespearean theater. By many accounts, The Washington Shakespeare Theater is best Shakespearean theater in the United States.

While most of their shows, if they have not been excellent, have at least been uniformly very good, there have been some less than stellar performances. I was quite disenchanted with the last performance we saw there, The Tempest. In fact, I was so disenchanted that I was a bit leery to return to the theater any time soon.

Happily, the current production of Othello is the best of their productions that I have seen. If you live in the area and can snag a ticket before the show closes on October 30th, buy it and worry about how to pay for it later. This production should not be missed.

However, it does not plow much new ground for Avery Brooks, who plays Othello, a Moor general sent to fight the Turks on Cyprus. For those of you who do not inhabit the Star Trek universe, Brooks is probably best know as Commander (and later Captain) Benjamin Sisko of the space station Deep Space Nine. That series ended in 1999 after a six-year run, but Brooks’s performances of Othello date back to at least 1990. Speaking of Star Trek captains, Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean Luc Picard) also played Othello at the Shakespeare Theater in 1997-1998. (What is that? Stewart didn’t have the right skin tone? Not a problem, he was cast with an otherwise all African American cast. Let us hope though that William Shatner is never asked to perform the role.)

There is no question that Brooks plays a stellar Othello. He is clearly comfortable in the complex and demanding role. Othello though is not the primary character in this play. As those who have read or seen the play performed know, Iago gets most of the stage time. The evil and nefarious Iago sets into motion a complex plot where he plays the weaknesses and desires of the characters against each other, culminating in a plot to have Othello believe that his new wife Desdemona (Colleen Delany) is being unfaithful to him. As is true of most of Shakespeare’s tragedies, you can expect many dead people by the end of the performance. Iago is clearly one of Shakespeare’s most loathsome, yet fascinating characters. In this production, Patrick Page plays Othello. We frequent Shakespeare Theater attendees have seen him before, most recently in the title role of Macbeth. While he was good in that role, he reaches an acting zenith performing the role of Iago. Page seems to have a gift for playing complex and evil characters. While I am sure he has a long and successful career ahead of him, it is hard to imagine that he will be able to top his performance in this production.

In fact, there is not a fault in the entire casting. Brooks and Page play off each other perfectly, and Brooks’s performance is riveting. Nevertheless, make no mistake: it is Page who is center stage throughout most of the play. He brings an oozy creepiness to the role of Iago that I found spellbinding. Yet I was equally fascinated by the performance of some of the minor characters: Emilia (Lise Bruneau) as Iago’s suffering wife, and Bianca (Andrea Cirie) as the smoldering but suffering courtesan who falls in love with Cassio, Othello’s lieutenant.

Listening to the Old English in any of Shakespeare’s plays can be challenging to our modern ears. It is easy to miss important plot points. This is one reason why it is so critical that the actors in Shakespearean productions be excellent. The emotions and tone of voice that the actors convey must make up for the odd choices of words yet communicate the same meaning. I often feel like I miss 5-10% of any Shakespeare production because of language translation difficulties. However, I missed nothing in this production.

In fact, I sat enrapt throughout the entire performance. I felt mesmerized through much of it. A cell phone went off during the first half of the performance that annoyed me. Apparently, cell phones went off twice during the second half. I did not hear them at all. Indeed, there were times during the performance that I breathed in sharply. This was not from fright but simply because I was so drawn into the story that I was not getting sufficient oxygen!

The director Michael Kahn’s intimacy with the play over so many years is probably why this production works so well. It may be more convenient to watch thrillers at your local cinemaplex. Nevertheless, if you live in the Washington area, you will find this Shakespeare classic far better than any thriller you will find in at the cinema. When I think of all the Shakespearean plays that I have seen in my 48 years, this is the best production of them all.

October 22nd, 2005 at 08:40pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | no comments

Review: The Tempest

The Shakespeare Theater in Washington DC is renown for its productions. Arguably it is this country’s most renowned Shakespeare theater. My family and I have seen a number of their productions including Macbeth, Hamlet, Richard III and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They had all been home runs. So I had decent expectations that we’d also get a good show when we went to see their latest production, The Tempest.

Alas the show, which closed on Sunday, was a disappointment. My wife counts the Tempest as her favorite of the Shakespearean plays. I have to disagree with her. I considered it one of his lesser plays. I confess the cast in this production gave me ample reason not to change my mind. To begin with all the characters in the play are one-dimensional. It is hard to develop any empathy when all the characters are made out of cardboard. With a few exceptions they were all annoying.

Start with Prospero, the usurped Duke of Milan. He spends most of his time doting over his very hot daughter Miranda, but only in a fatherly way of course. Played by Philip Goodwin he gets to be either doting, pretend to dislike Ferdinand (the son of Alonso, the King of Naples) or snivel at his ugly slave Caliban. Miranda (played by Samantha Soule) falls in love with Ferdinand (Duane Boutte) on first sight. This is not too surprising since she has never seen a man before other than her father and Caliban. But even so it would be hard to find a bigger airhead that Miranda. Samantha Soule though does a pretty convincing job of playing an airhead. Ferdinand may be the first guy her age she has ever seen but she is so in love with him you want to shake her by the shoulders and slap her across the face. It would be wholly sickening if she didn’t portray her love with such utterly sincerely.

The rest of the cast of characters were largely eminently forgettable. Of course all the people Prospero has issues with shipwrecked on his island by design. But don’t worry, nothing bad happens. Prospero has Ariel, a spirit, who causes his tempest but makes sure no one drowns, nothing actually is destroyed and everyone stays confused. In this staging Ariel (Daniel Breaker) gets to have the most fun, constantly suspended from piano wire and dancing over the stage, often hanging upside down. He also gets to sing a lot.

As usual you have to depend on comic relief to liven up the performance. Happily there was some excellent comic relief from Trinculo (Hugh Nees) and Stephano (Floyd King) as the bumbling, often inebriated sailors from the shipwreck. They give some modest life to what was otherwise a dreary performance.

Admittedly this particular play would be a challenge to even the most talented actors. It is hard to get people interested in cartoon characters. The staging was well done and dazzling at times. Yet it made little difference in a play where so many characters were miscast. Overall the play felt lifeless and uninspired. I was glad it turned out to be one of Shakespeare’s shorter plays so we could hustle on home when the curtain fell.

May 24th, 2005 at 09:04pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | no comments

Review: M. Butterfly

Once or twice a year I go see a show or a movie that I carry it home with me. It has the power to keep me awake at night or sometimes to infect my dreams. Yesterday my family and I (along with my brother Tom and his girlfriend Rebecca) went to Arena Stage in Southwest D.C. to see their production of M. Butterfly. And I found that all night long I was living the M. Butterfly universe in my brain. As much as I wanted to turn it off I couldn’t. I’m still processing it. I likely will continue to process it for sometime.

No we did not go to see Giacomo Puccini’s famous opera Madama Butterfly, although I definitely want to see that performed some day. Instead we went to see M. Butterfly, a play written in the late 1980s by David Henry Hwang and actually first staged back then at Arena Stage. The plot of M. Butterfly borrows a lot from Madama Butterfly but twists and perverts it in different directions. Instead of Japan in the early 20th century we are in China in the 1950s and 1960s. Instead of an American sailor named Pinkerton we have a French diplomat stationed in Beijing named Rene Gallimard. Rene, a guy of course, gets involved with a Chinese opera singer. He seems to have no clue that in Chinese operas at the time men performed the roles of women. He ends up falling in love with this “woman” and over the course of a 20-year affair manages to remain wholly clueless that his illicit lover is actually a guy.

The plot has lots of diplomatic intrigue but concentrates on two areas. First it explores the male psyche and the proposition that is the natural need by men to completely dominate and own a wholly submissive woman. The second area it explores in the difference in Eastern and Western philosophies. It suggests that Westerners are by their nature dominant types and Orientals are submissive types. It examines the proposition that with a sufficient show of dominance by the West, the East will submit and all will be well. The play posits this philosophy but constantly challenges it with incidents, both on and off stage. The dynamics between Rene and his “mistress” Song Liling result in a constant tug of war between two personalities and two prisms of viewing the world. Rene projects into his mistress those ideal virtues of subservience that he expects in the model Oriental woman. Song at once seems to tacitly agree by playing the role of the submissive while outwardly rebelling.

Yes, it’s a confusing and complex plot. It was made more confusing to me because I don’t buy into these premises. I confess I find Oriental women in general very attractive. But I have never once thought of Orientals as inherently submissive, and I have never looked upon women as objects for my own selfish pleasure to be used and consumed like tissues. I acknowledge that many men may have this mindset but it is a perspective I just can’t grok.

Nonetheless the performance was wonderful. It is being performed on the Fichlander Stage, which is a theater in the round at Arena Stage. The acting is solid but newcomer J. Hiroyuki Liao delivers a completely stunning performance as the Chinese opera singer Song Liling. The incendiary material practically burns up the stage. And to call the show “adult” does not quite do it justice. This is a play that intrudes into your personal space, grabs you by the shoulders, shakes you violently to and fro, slaps you in the face a number of times and forces you to rethink your orientation, even if just for a little while. It requires you to ponder the stereotypes of sex and gender. It tries to make you reconsider your notions of love.

If this weren’t enough for your money you get one naked man scene. Near the very end of the play Song finally disrobes to prove to Rene that the “she” is actually a “he”. Had I known this in advance I might not have had my 15-year-old daughter attend, but she seemed to handle it without any particular trauma. In fact both she and my wife were crying at the end of it. At the intermission I wasn’t sure what to make of the play. It seemed too weird and I just wasn’t getting it. But by the end I was stunned. I liked it but it was hard to say why I liked it because it also really upset me.

There is not much to criticize about the performance. My brother Tom did not particularly like Stephen Bogardus as Rene. He thought he should have been played a bit plainer than he was. J. Hiroyuki Liao is absolutely mesmerizing as Song. While you are aware that there is a guy under all that makeup it is hard to believe, and he has down so well the little Chinese feminine ways of doing things. He comes across as wholly believable in what has to be one of the oddest roles in all of theater history.

I kept thinking how difficult it must be to act in this play. The actors must be totally drained at the end of each show, and to project the complex forms of affections required must be incredibly difficult.

Staging? There was no staging as it was a theater in the round, but there was excellent lighting work with patterns of lights on the stage floor representing rooms. At key moments the lighting and effects like flower petals floating from the ceiling, along with excerpts from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on the sound system added a surreal edge to the production. The play is full of surprises and keeps you at the edge of your seat right until the final seconds. I am sure most of the patrons were like me and left the theater more than a little stunned by what they witnessed.

There are some subjects that we so deeply repress that we have no desire to go there. This play opens boxes within boxes within our psyche. It is unnerving and should make you feel uncomfortable. But why go to the theater at all we are not forced to see the world through a different set of lenses now and then? This play will do this and much more. And if you are like me its aftershocks will linger for days, weeks or perhaps even longer.

Catch it if you can or if you dare. The production closes October 17th.

October 10th, 2004 at 11:50am Posted by Mark | The Arts | one comment