Cherry Jones and Colm Feore as the First Family on "24"???

[swoon]

IPHIGENIA 2.0

What can I say? Give me a show with dance numbers, acrobatics, plate smashing and a grand filicide and I'm happy.

And that's exactly what I got from IPHIGENIA 2.0 at the Signature. Nobody beats Chuck Mee for delivering to the modern stage the kind of blood, sweat and tears that would have been common fare in Greece 2500 years ago. Did it drag at places? Yes. Were the performances uneven? Yes. Was it a little too on the nose? Definitely. Did I leave the theatre feeling excited and stimulated? Most definitely.

The story of Iphigenia is a compact little gem, as can be said of most of the Greek tragedies. Agamemnon and the Greek troops are laid up in Aulis, waiting to start the Trojan War. In Mee's adaptation, Agamemnon (played by Tom Nelis with the earnestness and manipulative power of a seasoned politician) has received an ultimatum from his troops: before they will march on Troy, before some of them will undoubtedly die in battle, Agamemnon must show them that he understands sacrifice. They demand that he kill his daughter Iphigenia (Louisa Krause). And in the kind of moment of self-manipulation of which only seasoned politicians are capable, Agamemnon resolves to do so, for the greater good of Greece. Agamemnon summons Iphigenia under the pretense that she is to marry the soldier Achilles (the nebbish and charming Seth Numrich). Iphigenia arrives with a wedding train which includes her mother, Clytemnestra (Kate Mulgrew channels Kathleen Turner in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) who, on learning of Agamemnon's plan, threatens to kill her husband if he kills her daughter.

What can I say? Greeks!

The beauty of Mee's adaptation is the deftness with which he translates Euripides' legend to the modern day. Agamemnon is not an unerring patriot, but the kind of leader who is slightly out of touch with real life. In truth, he can ask his men to make the ultimate sacrifice, but cannot make it himself. His brother, the Greek general, Menelaus (Rocco Sisto), by contrast, understands the complexities of life and death and that difficult times call for difficult chocies to be made. In place of a chorus, Mee provides four nameless soldiers (J.D. Goldblatt, Will Fowler, Jimonn Cole and Jesse Hooker), four men who will eventually have to do the fighting and seem motivated mostly be a want to control some small part of their own honor and destiny. The myth is, of course, very timely with its war setting and its questions of the true honor of sacrificing oneself in battle and the danger of trusting the wrong leaders, but it's in the small overlaps, where Mee can slip the modern into the ancient, that make the interpretation so vital and interesting.

Not that it takes a whole lot to make Mee's work vital or interesting. One of the playwright's trademarks is his fearlessness in using theatricality to rocket his plays out of the realm of intellectualism into the open sky of pure emotion. To that end, IPHIGENIA 2.0 is full of celebratory dances, uninhibited bacchanals, syncronized movement, fighting, acrobatics, and lip syncing. These little theatrical treasures make the play almost unavoidably likable, appealing to something deeper than the critical mind, and creating a sense of revelry, like a carnival celebration. Unfortunately, it must be said that these moments do stop the action of the play, and contribute to some structural problems. On balance, though, its these purely emotional outpourings that make Mee's work so vivid and compelling and stimulating.

Blythe R.D. Quinlan's set is a masterpiece, a representational mish-mash simultaneously representing a Greek village, a battlefield, a barracks, a fox hole and a war room. The structure, which stands three stories tall and stretches from the deck to the top of the proscenium, is constructed of pipes, polls, ladders, steps and platforms, and the actors navigate the space like acrobats, sometimes rocketing from the floor to the top of the proscenium in seconds. Scott Zielinki's lights blast the set like the Middle Eastern sun one minute, and burn up red like fire another. Zielinki's light and Jill BC Duboff's sound design move in lock step, slamming, tearing and cutting through the play, wrenching the audience from scene to scene, moment to moment, emotion to emotion.

All of this under the watchful eye and hand of Tina Landau. I know a lot of people don't like her. This is the first thing of hers that I've seen, and I was bowled over by it. The staging was innovative and effective, and yet simple and refined. In a play which is made up of a thousand moving parts, never did two gears seem to gnash against each other. In the design of the machine and in teaching its operation, Tina Landau has excelled. The only criticism that I will lodge is that the actors performances were inarguably uneven. Kate Mulgrew emoting like a melodrama starlet from the 50s. Louisa Krause's unfocussed and sloppy presence on stage. A little more smoothing is arguably all that Tina Landau could have done to improve my experience.

Here's a newsflash: I'm extremely excited to be back in New York. So excited, in fact, that I think I may have gone just a splash overboard with this review. I'll try to pare it down later. But, for now, take it as evidence of how overjoyed I am to be out of the theatrical hinterlands of Austin, TX, and back into a place where things like this can happen.

I feel like Willy Loman...

...in that I have a job.

And that that job has some bearing on American theatre.

You know, after a year spent in Austin, delivering newspapers and generally feeling out of place, there simply are not words enough to describe how wonderfully strange it is to be back in a place where I'm not only expected to work hard, but where I actually want to work hard. My body wants to reject the hard work. I feel a little bit like a marathon runner coming back from a debilitating injury. I want to complete the run, but my body isn't sure it's capable. But, like the long distance runner in this decidedly long form metaphor, I will push myself until I am comfortable doing the hard work that is necessary.

I'm happy and tired and happy that I'm tired. And, for the first time in a long while, I'm excited to get up tomorrow and go to work. Beat that with a stick...

Troutman

...is the name of street on which I will be living come the first of September. Troutman Street. In lovely Bushwick or maybe Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I'm pretty happy with the place. The apartment is under construction, but should shape up nicely. All of the ingredients are there, if covered in sawdust and scrap wood. The building, however, looks a little bit like something out of Mogadishu in the mid-90s. I have high hopes (including a banister which you can use as a banister).

I'm pretty excited.

For now, my great thanks to Ross Michaels for letting me stay with him and even greater thanks to his roommates for moving out early and leaving an empty bed.

Now, to hit the hay, as I've got real actual work tomorrow. And then I have to come home and blog about it! Hurrah!

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was awesome and let me tell you why. In fact, let me make a ten point list as to why.


1) As a boy, he threatened to set his mother and stepfather's house on fire and burn them alive

2) He created calculus and then didn't tell anybody about it for 27 years.

3) As a student at Cambridge, he never once finished an assigned book.

4) He was an undercover detective.

5) While he was Warden of the Royal Mint, he conducted over 200 interrogations leading to 10 executions and then ordered that all records of the interrogations be destroyed.

6) He committed more time to the study of alchemy and theology than he ever did to science or math.

7) He did groundbreaking work on orbital mechanics and then lost the papers he had written it down on.

8) He once did an experiment where he stuck a thick sewing needle into his eye socket between the eyeball and the bone just to see what would happen.

9) He also one did an experiment where he stared at the sun for as long as could just to see what would happen.

10) He would often wake up, swing his feet out of bed and then sit for hours, overwhelmed by his own thoughts, unable to move.


Oh, there was also no apple. Gravitational mechanics just came to him.

Addendum

I got a haircut today at the mall. The woman asked me what I wanted and I said, "Just clean it up a little bit. Not too much shorter. I got it cut about a month ago, six weeks ago."

She said, "So, just like it is, but shorter."

"Sure," I said.

I should have known. "Just like it is, but shorter" was my instruction to anyone who cut my hair from when I was about 10 until I was 18. It is a command that one gives when one wants the same haircut that the stylist has given every boy -- regardless of age, appearance or style -- that he or she has ever seen. It's the hairstyle I had in middle school, it's the hairstyle I had in high school, and it's the hair style I have right now as I'm writing this.

Short on the back and sides.

Long on top.

Sideburns optional.

She even took the time after the haircut was over to get out some gel and try to get the front of my hair to stick up like Lance Bass' hair used to.

Congratulations, Howard County. You had made me feel 14, and now you've made me look 14. Perfect.

Okay, so there are worse things, but it just seems to perfectly... appropriate to the experience of the last three days.

After 48 Hours at Home

I don't think it matters how much you grow up. When you go home, you'll be 14 years old again.

Jiggety-jig

I don't think that a day can offer more of a Howard County experience than today did. An afternoon spent at the mall and a night at the county fair? I think I just described my own high school experience, relived within a day, my first as a Northeasterner in over a year. Welcome home, Alex.

On Leaving the Great American South

For dinner tonight, I had "Southern Fried Chicken and Spaghetti" at a place called Cafe Annie in Pass Christian, MS. Cafe Annie was once a chic bistro on the beach in Pass Christian, but since Hurricane Katrina, it has moved to a building that looks like a portable classroom of the type they park behind overcrowded schools. The interior design looks like a cross between a chic bistro, a Starbucks and a Cracker Barrel.

I guess, in my mind, I had pictured a pasta dish adorned with little fried chicken strips. I thought of the "chicken ranch salads" I used to buy for $4.99 at the HEB in Austin, which amounted to an entire head of iceberg lettuce with an entire fried chicken breast sliced and laid on top. I thought the "Southern Friend Chicken and Spaghetti" would be a fitting tribute to the low cost meals I used to buy in Austin, as well as an accurate representation of the a kind of posh soul food southern style of cooking. Instead, what I got was a KFC four piece value meal with spaghetti and bread as my two sides. It was a forlorn little dish, the fried chicken confused to find itself paired with spaghetti, the spaghetti buried and forgotten underneath the meat, a curious sprig of green languishing in the corner. Confused and disappointed (I don't much like fried chicken, actually) I ate as much as I could, wolfed down the spaghetti and politely asked the waitress for the desert menu (which she never did actually give me).

I mention all of this because that fried chicken meal is likely the last serious meal I'll have as a southerner. Tomorrow morning, my parents and sister and I will pack up our two cars and drive the 17 hours back to Maryland and I probably won't see this side of the Maryland-Virginia divide (the real division between North a South) for quite a while. I ordered that dish because I wanted something momentous, a symbolic dish to be the last of this chapter of my life. I wanted it to be memorable and important. I wanted a meal that said something.

And looking at the half eaten chicken and the greasy plate, I realized that that's exactly what I got:

1) It was something I thought I wanted, but turned out not to especially care for.
2) I consumed and enjoyed a part of it (maybe even a large part of it), but found some of it distasteful.
3) It was constituted of things I thought I liked but turned out not to like in combination.
4) It was unfulfilling.
5) I left it and asked for something I really wanted and got it.

So, that's the symbol I offer, for now, of time spent living in the south: "Southern Fried Chicken and Spaghetti" half eaten, at Cafe Annie in Pass Christian, Mississippi.

BlogSpot

I think that what happened was basically just that I really liked blogging but didn't feel that anyone was reading what I was writing. And when it gets to that point, then you just have to say to yourself, "Am I going to just keep this gold for myself, or am I going to make more of an effort to spread it around?" It was basically a decision between selfishness and selflessness, and, throwing Objectivism to the wind, I chose to be selfless.

So sue me.