Category Archives: The Morgue

Henry VIII

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Henry VIII, English king

(photo: wikimedia.org)

Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, a wildly popular play up until the 1800’s, is rarely performed today. Surely not because we like our history delivered with somewhat more accuracy, and surely not because producers are unable to cut its approximately six-hour running time down to a more manageable two-and-a-quarter, as the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey has done in its current, excellent production. The prologue includes a bit of optimistic false advertising in that regard:

Those that come to see
Only a show or two, and so agree
The play may pass, if they be still and willing,
I’ll undertake may see away their shilling
Richly in two short hours.

Today, the play is probably best known for a mishap during a 1613 performance, in which the play’s cannonfire set afire the thatched roof of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, which burned to the ground.

Twenty-four pivotal years are condensed in the play’s action, which covers the early days of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon up to and including his infatuation and marriage with Anne Bullen (Boleyn) and birth of their daughter, Elizabeth. The end of the play is a long forward-looking tribute to the future of baby Elizabeth, anticipating a glorious era, her father’s legacy.

Although most modern dramatizations of Henry’s life linger on the problem of the six wives, the period of the play is much more interesting for the conflicts between Henry and the Pope and his agent in England, Cardinal Wolsey (subject of Hilary Mantel’s award winning Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies). Although the conflict came to a head over Henry’s wish for annulment of his marriage to Catherine that would free him to marry Anne, it was fed by Henry’s desire to acquire the massive wealth and property owned by the country’s hundreds of churches, monasteries, church schools, priories, convents, and other religious entities. His break with Rome led, of course, to formation of the Church of England with him at its head and turned that country from a Catholic to a Protestant one—a course his daughter Elizabeth vigorously pursued in her long reign.

The STNJ production is brilliantly acted, with special praise going to Philip Goodwin, who inhabits the role of Cardinal Wolsey like a second skin, David Foubert’s King Henry, and Jessica Wortham’s Queen Catherine. The “just enough” set design offers plenty of flexibility and space for the action, allowing large groups of the cast of 15 to be comfortably on stage at once, including for some period dance scenes (Henry was a fair composer). The costume design is spectacular.

I wondered at the drawing on the cover of the playbill of the baby wearing Henry’s locket only to realize that in this play, the baby is much the point.

Halloween Reads

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pumpkin, Halloween

(photo: pixabay)

Book lovers have been compiling their favorite scary reads for this season, and here are 10 culled from Book Riot and various other sources:

  • Snowblind by Christopher Golden – phone calls from dead people, missing children
  • The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon (this one was on some other lists, too) – poor housing choice
  • The Woman in Black by Susan Hill – (film starred Daniel Radcliffe) stay away from Eel Marsh House
  • The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero– from gothic to “wickedly twisted treasure hunt”
  • Booster & Reeves: The Night of the Revenants by Troy Blackford – both terrifying and laugh-out-loud funny
  • We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory – a support group of survivors of stuff “too crazy to be true”
  • The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers – classic inspiration for much that has come after, including last spring’s tv series True Detective
  • Song of Kali by Dan Simmons – on several lists, takes place in the dark (in every sense) setting of Calcutta
  • The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue – art not only imitates but becomes life
  • Pet Sematary by Stephen King – a horror classic; even King thought it “too scary”
  • And here’s a bonus link to Neil Gaiman talking about the value of scary stories

The links are to Amazon.com for convenience, but, as always, I encourage you to do business with your local independent bookstore!

11-1-14 A Mysterious Conversation

Russian Ark (2002)

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Russian Ark, Alexander SokurovA combination of incredibly poor planning and the exigencies of our Netflix list in one week produced two arty but, let’s face it, slow-moving movies set in museums [Museum Hours reviewed 10-22]. Russian Ark (trailer), too, had rave reviews from critics and is perhaps best known for the incredible way it was shot. The whole thing—all 96 minutes of it—is one unbroken take. Really. Filming in The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the royal-palace-cum-art-treasurehouse, director Alexander Sokurov and his cinematographer Tillman Buttner had use of this incomparable setting for a single day. You can say this for them, they made the most of it.

The film follows a mysterious and unnamed museum visitor, purportedly the Marquis de Custine, who wanders its hallways, back passages, and famous galleries, encountering notable Russians from the past—Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, the Romanovs (that’s the Romanov daughters, destined to be gunned down in the Communist Revolution in the picture). For the most part he is unseen, or at least ignored, as he turns and talks to the camera (you).

There’s no plot, just this drifting, mostly through the 19th century. But it’s an incredible tour and a costume-lover’s dream. At one point the Marquis heads into a ballroom where an orchestra plays for hundreds of dancers and onlookers. After this spectacular ball, the camera watches the guests leave, ultimately moves ahead of the crowd, and exits the museum. Fini. How I interpret all this is that the people in the scenes, like Noah’s giraffes and sheep and bluejays, may have led separate, unconnected lives (in this case, over time), but they are all inevitably connected in the arc [!] of Russian history.

Some reviewers asked whether the film would have received such a positive critical response if it had been made in the usual way, with cuts and edits, since images and scenes accumulate, disconnectedly, without any discernible central point. Roger Ebert’s response was “ʻRussian Ark,’ as it stands, is enough. . . . If cinema is sometimes dreamlike, then every edit is an awakening. ʻRussian Ark’ spins a daydream made of centuries.” (Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 89%; audience score: 81%).

Writing Tips from The Count

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Dracula's castle, Romania

Castle where Vlad the Impaler (“Count Dracula”) was imprisoned (photo: the author)

Inspired by Halloween’s rapid approach, the editors at Writers Digest have used the opening of Bram Stoker’s Dracula as a way to demonstrate 10 key writing techniques, as revealed in the book’s annotated version, with annotations by American horror author Mort Castle.

Among Castle’s observations are how tiny clues provide insight into the character of the book’s narrator, Jonathan Harker, including his domesticated notes to himself about getting recipes for his fiancee back in Victorian England. He praises how masterfully Stoker moves Harker through time and space to get the story moving, rather than lingering on blow-by-blow details of his journey to Hungary and on to Transylvania: “The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.” Leaving the familiar, in other words, and crossing into the realms of the barely known.

A little further on, Stoker describes the people of the Transylvania region, “I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool.” Again, as Castle notes, he is setting the reader up for happenings that are beyond everyday knowledge. This must have been quite thrilling for people living in 1897 London.

There was a real Dracula, of course, a 15th c. leader of Wallachia, south of Transylvania. Here’s a well-regarded history of his cruel and violent rule—fighting those Turks, as well as his rivals—written by two Boston College history professors. Don’t read it unless you have a strong stomach. I couldn’t finish it. If Londoners nearly 120 years ago knew even dimly of this real prince, their bones were shivering from the start of Stoker’s tale!

A Dining Room with a (What a!) View

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restaurant, Puglia, Italy, Grotta Palazzese

Ristorante Grotta Palazzese in Puglia, Italy (photo: hereandthere.eu)

At the end of a long week, I’m ready for nothing more challenging than some pretty pictures. And here’s a collection of photos of 35 restaurants with truly spectacular views! I thought some of the dining room vistas in the recent movie The Trip to Italy were beautiful, and here are more, culled from around the world. My favorites: #4 and #33. (The photo above is also from #4, Ristorante Grotta Palazzese in Puglia, Italy).

I hope the diners who patronize #23 never see the restaurant from the angle at which the photo was taken. Looks way too precarious in an earthquake-prone country! That would seriously interfere with my digestion.

#5, is pretty spectacular, too. Pictured below, it’s Ithaa Undersea Restaurant in Rangali Island, Maldives. “I’ll have the steak, please.” And the ladies’ room is NOT out back.

restaurant, fish, Maldives, Ithaa Undersea Restaurant

Ithaa Undersea Restaurant, Rangali Island, Maldives (photo: conradhotels3.hilton.com)

 

Little Rock: An American Play

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Little_Rock_Desegregation

(photo: en.wikipedia)

Passage Theatre Company’s current production—Little Rock: An American Play (video)—presents a compelling dramatization of how nine black students integrated Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus allowed an angry, jeering mob of more than a thousand white protestors to intimidate the students, who, not unreasonably, feared for their lives. School desegregation was the law of the land, however, since the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, and President Eisenhower sent in troops and federalized the Arkansas National Guard to protect the students. A Civil Rights landmark, this episode was the first major test of the strength of federal support for desegregation.

This production uses nine cast members—six black and three white—to portray dozens of roles: the nine students, their parents, teachers, other students, the protesters, local and national political leaders, and young television reporter Mike Wallace. Comments of a number of people external to the events—including Louis Armstrong, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Lena Horne, Rosa Parks—are presented in vignette.

The show begins with a song, as the cast marches in, and music varies the already lively pace throughout. The single set, classroom desks facing the audience, gives the cast members a place to be while waiting their scenes in the spotlight at the front of the stage. More important, it is a constant reminder that all this turmoil was about only one thing: kids wanting an education—a good education. (That this dream still inspires and is not yet fully realized is evident not only throughout the United States, but in the 2014 award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai.)

The multi-talented cast brings playwright Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj’s conception to life. Little Rock is a reminder of what Passage Theater’s artistic director June Ballinger calls a “shameful time in American history” and of the healing that remains to done. Held over at Trenton’s Mill Hill Playhouse until November 2.

Museum Hours

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Pieter Bruegel, Museum Hours, Jem Cohen

“The Peasant Wedding” by Pieter Bruegel (photo: wikimedia.com)

Quick Netflix queue check: Is Museum Hours on your list? (trailer) If you put it there because you’re looking for an alternative to the deafening noise and frantic pace of action movies, you have succeeded. This 2012 drama was directed by Jem Cohen, the award-winning creator of numerous films about punk rock musicians, including Patti Smith. I haven’t seen those documentaries, but I’m guessing the quiet and snail’s pace of Museum Hours is a significant departure that takes the meaning of “art house film” literally.

Not overloaded with plot, the film includes lots of footage of paintings and sculpture and people looking at paintings and sculpture, a 15?-minute art appreciation monologue on the work of Pieter Bruegel, the point of which was that, in the panoply of people he scatters across his canvases, he doesn’t direct the eye to any single place. You can pick your own center. Each person portrayed is potentially equally important, regardless of the putative “subject” of the work.

That seems to be the Cohen’s point, too. That the two characters—a woman visiting Vienna to attend her comatose cousin—and a museum guard she meets by happenstance, are two random people and subjects as worthy of exploration as anyone else. That’s my guess, anyway.

Only three real speaking parts, all performed superbly: the guard, the out-of-towner, the museum lecturer. Not the comatose cousin. Much of the movie was filmed in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott gave it 5 stars and called it “quietly amazing, sneakily sublime.” Rotten Tomatoes called it “a mesmerizing tale.” Mesmerized, I fell asleep (briefly). Critics rating 94% — Audience: 59%. Like visiting an art museum without leaving home.

With Age Comes Apparel

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Advanced Style

The Stars of “Advanced Style”

Take New York Times street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, add some Joan Rivers, Oprah, and Dr. Oz, and you’ve got the formula for the documentary Advanced Style (trailer here).

Photographer Ari Seth Cohen profiles seven fashionable ladies “of a certain age” (60s through 90s) whose sense of color, textures, and bold accessories (clunky cuff bracelets, enormous earrings, and oversize rings and eyewear) he discovered on the streets of Manhattan. Amazing photos of one of them—Tziporah Salamon—are included in this 40+ Style interview.

The women all have a back story, and not everything in their lives is ideal, but they are at ease with who they are. As one woman remarks, “I do a portrait with clothing. I build; I construct.”

Through Cohen’s blog and book, also titled Advanced Style, the women have been noticed by the advertising world in campaigns for Lanvin, and, oddly enough, KMart.

While engaging and entertaining, the documentary devolves into one-line tropes about aging, such as, “Everything I have two of, one hurts.” But overall, it’s worth trying on.

Guest Blogger Jodi Goalstone writes the highly entertaining blog: Going Yard, Offbeat Baseball Musings, currently showcasing the great writing coming out of the unexpected victories by Kansas City and San Francisco.

All the News That Fits We Print

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journalism, Times, New Jersey

(photo: the author)

This photo shows better than words the sorry state of journalism in the capital city of the great state of New Jersey. Would you guess from this that our Governor is a potential presidential nominee? Maybe so, considering he’s a person of weight.

Global warming, Syria and Iraq, the economy, Ebola hysteria—much important stuff is happening in the world and in the nation and even in New Jersey. It’s a major chemical-producing state, headquarters for many pharmaceutical firms, yet still a major farming state (blueberries, cranberries, peaches), important Revolutionary war, American Indian, and industrial history site, host of the nation’s largest seaport, major educational and scientific resources, and a commuter haven. All these industries and activities are vital to the region, with more than 100 million Americans—almost a third of the U.S. population—no more than an overnight drive away. New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the nation, sends 15 people to Congress, and has all the challenges and richness that an economically, culturally, and otherwise diverse population brings to the table.

Trenton itself deserves ongoing, close journalistic scrutiny. It’s just beginning the recovery from a corrupt mayoralty and complicit city council and someone needs to hold its leaders’ feet to the fire, and who’s to do that? Network news stations? The state has none, pinched as it is between New York and Philadelphia. Public media? Governor Christie sold off our public radio and tv resources to powerhouse WHYY in Philadelphia and WNET in New York. They vowed to cover the state thoroughly, of course, and . . .

The recent “local” Princeton story about NBC physician-reporter Nancy Snyderman violating her Ebola quarantine was broken not by the Times, WHYY, or WNET, but by hyperlocal news website, Planet Princeton, run by my friend, Krystal Knapp. When these other entities got around to covering the story, they neglected to give Krystal credit. Not so CNN’s “Reliable Sources” (link to come, once it’s posted) and this Washington Post blog.

I’m afraid the newspaper front page says it all.

The Understudy

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JD Taylor, Adam Green, The Understudy, Theresa Rebeck, Adam Immerwahr, McCarter Theatre

JD Taylor & Adam Green in The Understudy (photo: McCarter Theatre)

An exciting opening night at McCarter Theatre on Friday, with the audience anticipating Theresa Rebeck’s knowing backstage comedy, The Understudy, and area fans awaiting the directorial debut of up-and-coming Adam Immerwahr, McCarter’s Associate Artistic Director. Adam’s fine work has been on stage at Trenton’s Passage Theatre, but this was the Big Time, on the big McCarter main stage. He pulled it off beautifully, in a production whose complexity, pre-show gossip said, required three tech rehearsals.

The conceit of the play is that a new Franz Kafka play has been discovered and is being produced on Broadway with two Hollywood action stars in lead roles (shades of the first season of Slings and Arrows, the hilarious Canadian series). The play opens with a literal bang, when unemployed but high-minded actor Harry (Adam Green) rushes on stage for a rehearsal, as he’s been cast as the understudy to the lesser of the Hollywood lights. Harry’s opening monologue—interspersed with bits from the Kafka play—shows all his disdain (“OK, I’m bitter”) for the star, his acting ability, and the film vehicle he just appeared in, for which he was paid more than $2 million. Harry fixates on this impossibly large sum with a shimmering mix of envy and pop-culture loathing.

The stage manager Roxanne (Danielle Skraastad) is a woman Harry was once engaged to but ran out on two weeks before the wedding—the wedding dress “still hangs in my closet. Like a wound.” The third character, the pretty-boy and somewhat dim star, Jake (JD Taylor), valiantly tries to explain Kafka and the deep significance of this new play. The cast is strong, with Green (who played Figaro last year) having a genius comic touch. The humor in Skraastad’s lines is limited to sarcasm, which she wields expertly. Taylor, too, plays his deceptively complex role so that the audience goes from laughing at his selfies and sense of entitlement to appreciating his vulnerabilities. We never see the stoner manning the light, sound, and set cues, who gets every one of them wrong, creating constant onstage turmoil (and requiring those three rehearsals).

The name of the fake Kafka is “The Man Who Disappeared.” It applies to both of the male characters, and is the one fact about Harry that is never out of Roxanne’s main line of sight. Harry describes a casting call experience where an assistant tells him, “No one will see you, you don’t exist.” Very Kafka, and very apt for all of them at one point or another. What the play shows is how they can exist for each other, at least for a few moments. Rebeck’s intimate knowledge of the theatre and its dilemmas is absolutely convincing, but the problem of “being seen” and heard applies to creative artists in general, to people in general, to all of us who’ve had the dream of going to an important meeting and . . . you . . . just . . . can’t . . . get . . . there.