Category Archives: City

“Scorched” lights a fire under SF

Posted on March 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

“Scorched” creeps up on you slowly, and before you know it, you find yourself simultaneously terrified, engrossed, impassioned and queasy. The play finds a jarring start in an elaborate set that doesn’t seem to belong in any particular place, where Simon (Babak Tafti) and Janine (Annie Purcell) make an uncomfortable visit to the notary Alphonse (David Strathairn, “Good Night and Good Luck”) to hear their mother’s will. The pair stands still for seemingly unending minutes while Alphonse, in an almost authentic Québécois accent, tries desperately to lighten the mood with desultory conversation and malapropisms. It’s disorienting, but this makes sense—losing a parent is just that—and it’s a subtle beginning to a complex build-up of stories.

The pair’s mother, Nawal, has stipulated in her will that her children must each perform Herculean tasks of delivering letters to unknown relatives in her home country. Simon must track down their father; Janine must track down their older brother. Once complete, they can engrave her name on her tombstone and receive an all-important last letter from her to them, perhaps with an explanation of why she didn’t speak a word in the five years leading up to her death.

Nawal was a Canadian immigrant from an unnamed Middle Eastern country, and her children have written her off as an anachronistic, out of touch, unloving and crazy. As we get glimpses of her past, we see how visceral and immediate their mother’s life was.

Her children are a stark contrast to her. Simon is a boxer, uninterested in family history or woes, concerned only about the advancement of his own career; Janine is a cold mathematician. The contrast is important: it’s the difference between the luxury of the West, the wars in the Middle East and the difference between the new and old generations. So we can forgive the playwright Wajdi Mouawad for the ridiculous mathematics talk, which reduces Janine to someone only capable of thinking in alienating mathematical metaphors—graph theory is haphazardly thrown in to little effect—and is insulting to any intellectual in the sciences with an aptitude for social interaction.

Their mission sends them off on a long trek trying to unravel the mystery of who and where their father and brother are. In the process, they uncover their mother’s history: her life in the war-torn Middle East, her ascent from poverty and despair, her revolutionary ideas and the horrors she faced because of them.

It’s a play about methodically retracing steps. We watch stories—all related to their mother’s—from years past unfold on stage alongside the current journey of our characters. Janine and Simon retread their mother’s path: visiting relevant places and retelling her story. We watch Simon and Janine retread the same ground physically, and in so doing, revise their own notion of history and of their own story. Director Carey Perloff’s blocking is deliberate, meticulous and so natural that you can easily miss all the meaning contained therein.

The set is beautifully designed by Scott Bradley to be an abstract piece: evoking all kinds of emotions and seamlessly doubling for contradictory places. It works just as well as a peaceful Canadian city, a quaint small Middle-Eastern town and the streets of a war-torn nation. As the play progresses, the audience is forced to revise their notion of what the set represents and what it means to be in different parts of the stage. There are obstacles across the set—rocks, trellises, etc.—to help create the illusion of trekking as the characters weave between them.

The journey takes on a mythic quality, like something out of Greek tragedy. The pair meets a wizened, wise old man (Apollo Dukakis) who talks about people with monikers like “The Woman Who Sings.” The same actor plays Nawal’s aged grandmother, whose invaluable love and advice set the course for her life’s journey. The children and their mother work towards achieving catharsis, every event taking on new meaning as the story unravels. And we have Alphonse, the fool and the Westerner prattling on at intervals to lighten the mood and provide comic relief, which also becomes increasingly meaningful.

“Scorched” is so rich in themes, characters and plot threads that you can imagine people dubbing the play as representative of “life” itself. It’s about the stories we tell and the ones we can’t; about family, connection and disconnection; about the futility of war and the impossibility of fighting it; about love; about finding your place within the world and between cultures that often times clash. Wajdi Mouawad’s play is ambitious but unassuming. It’s been translated from the French “Incendies” (which was also made into an Academy-Award-winning film), and no meaning was lost in the process. “Scorched” is the kind of play that will change on you with repeat viewings because there’s so much information you could keep unpacking—thanks to the script, the nuanced acting, the thoughtful blocking and the wonderful set design.

This review was originally published in the Stanford Daily here.

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Posted in City, Contemporary, San Francisco, Stanford Daily, Theatre, Top picks

Dave Holland Overtone Quartet jazzes up SF

Posted on March 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

It goes without saying that when a concert involves bassist Dave Holland and saxophonist Chris Potter—in collaboration—it’s going to be good. Holland’s rhapsodic syncopated bass lines and Potter’s counterpoint cerebral, dissonant, rich sax are at their best live and always sound amazing, no matter who the two are playing with.

They’ve both played with their fair share of masters: Holland with Miles Davis and Potter recently with Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner. These two are born performers, completely brilliant and enthralling on stage; despite owning all of their albums, I rarely listen to them at home but never miss their concerts. Yet what makes these two real performers is not just their inventiveness but also their knack for togetherness.

Holland and Potter have been playing together in the Dave Holland Quintet for years, and it shows; they are remarkably in sync. Holland knows how to lead a band to collaborate, to build off one another, to keep adding layers of rhythm and harmony step by step. I’ve seen Potter do the same when he leads his Underground band. While most jazz groups play next to one another—alternating turns in solos and melodies—Holland and Potter are all about playing together, with and against each other and other players.

In short, these two are masters. It’s because of these incredibly high standards that last Friday’s sold-out Dave Holland Overtone Quartet concert at the Palace of the Fine Arts was a disappointment. It was still a great night of jazz, but it was missing their trademark cohesiveness.

The group played all original pieces by each of the band members. They started out with Potter’s “The Outsiders,” which established the basic form and rules of the group. The modus operandi was for the two to build on one another by synchronizing completely in a melodic or rhythmic element, then diverging to eventually create four separate parts—interdependent melodically—but each moving and developing independently.

The result was four layers of sound. As the saxophonist, Potter’s layer had the greatest clarity; Holland’s was equally lucid when audible, but the poor acoustics of the hall tended to drown out much of his work. Though he is a talented pianist, Jason Moran’s playing sounded muddy in the quarter; he was best showcased in his own compositions, like “Gummy Moon,” which emphasizes what the piano can offer. Eric Harland, on drums, sidestepped the normal errors of the percussion section: he didn’t bang but worked meticulously to play with pitch, volume, silences and rhythm. Unfortunately, his commitment to complex rhythms more often than not resulted in chaotic rhythms.

Things picked up with opportunities to showcase Holland and Potter in extended solos in Holland’s “Walkin’ the Walk” and Eric Harland’s “Treachery.” Harland’s “Patterns” was an exercise in repetition: while Potter looped through the same few bars, each of the others slowly built up additional layers of sound with their own internal repetitive logic. It could have been stagnant but it was dynamic, with a real sense of forward motion.

Harland is no Nate Smith, the drummer in both the Dave Holland Quintet—another group of Holland’s—and Chris Potter’s Underground. Smith has proven himself to be the Jack DeJohnette of our generation: he builds harmonies and uses others’ rhythms to develop a scintillating base rhythm, which all other parts play off of and complement. His drumming has been the glue that holds these two groups together because it adds to advancements in rhythmic complexities and points us in the direction that the music is developing. Harland doesn’t take advantage of silences enough to do this, which means that while he can play off one or two of the parts successfully—and he did so beautifully in Holland’s “Veil of Tears”—his playing doesn’t tie everyone together in a singular, cohesive unit.

What we have, at best, are two players who completely integrate and mesh; we can even have two sets of two. But never did the four consistently develop each other’s work. Don’t get me wrong—this still leads to some great music. It just highlights the inherent dissonance in the kind of music they play, and it doesn’t showcase what these performers and bandleaders can galvanize on stage.

The two-hour, intermission-free concert of the Dave Holland Overtone Quartet was met with a warm and well-deserved standing ovation. These are still some of the best musicians in the world. But when you hold them to their own high standards, they could have done better. The space certainly didn’t help; dampened sound, an over-large stage and a very wide auditorium all created awkward distance between the audience and performers, which made it more difficult to engage. Nevertheless, the SF Jazz Festival Spring Season is starting off with a bang, and there’s much more great music to come, from the Brad Mehldau Trio to Gonzalo Rubalcalba.

This review was originally published in a revised form in the Stanford Daily here.

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Posted in City, Festival coverage, Jazz, Music, San Francisco, Stanford Daily, Top picks

Stanley Clarke Band delivers jazzy performance (Stanford Daily)

Posted on March 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

Stanley Clarke Band recently swung through San Francisco, playing a fantastic show with a familiar repertoire re-imagined. From the album “Return to Forever,” the song “No Mystery” was recreated for an acoustic ensemble, full of energy and spunk but with no signs of fusion, and with space made for the violin to play a key part in sharing the melody with the piano. The Band transforms pieces from Clarke’s relaxed, cool jazz trio album “Jazz in the Garden,” such as “Paradigm Shift,” “Sakura Sakura” and “Three Wrong Notes,” into something closer to bebop. They’ve got the energetic rock sensibilities, but thankfully and gratifyingly, they stuck to their jazz and fusion- free roots.

There is no other jazz bassist quite like Stanley Clarke. Though his mainstream fame comes from his rock-star fusion electric bass playing from “Return to Forever,” it’s his upright bass work where he’s a true visionary. He has the uncanny ability to play the bass like a cellist, equally comfortable leading the melody or backing it up with bass lines that do so much more than walk the chords. He can also transform his bass into a percussion instrument in what are always crowd-pleasing turns, slapping it up and down like a drum, making use of the differences in pitch depending on where he hits the neck and fingerboard.

Although missing frequent guest pianist Hiromi, the Stanley Clarke Band was in top form with its current lineup. Ruslan Sirota’s move from electric keyboards to a Steinway grand has led him to find a new lucidity, allowing for crisper, more articulated sounds, so neces-sary in allowing him to build com-plex parts in both hands and have them heard by the audience. Violinist Zach Brock has great chemistry with Clarke; the two are able to play off and accentuate each other’s work, making these two stringed instruments anything but stiff. Ronald Bruner, Jr. on drums is also a notch above your average drummer, taking the time to build rhythms in his solos, using the base rhythms of the piece and only sometimes resorting to haphazard loud banging, the usual pitfall of the drum solo. At times, Bruner’s solos turned into a marvelous rhythmic call-and-response with himself.

This was a concert without lows: It started off well and, by the end, reached even greater heights. Stanley Clarke Band can seamlessly piece together a melody on multiple instruments: one phrase on the piano, the next on violin and the next on bass, sometimes with a couple of instruments leading the melody in tandem. In the first piece, “No Mystery,” I was so satis-fied by the Stanley Clarke Band’s playing and their solos that by the time we hit Clarke’s solos, it was a shock that things were certain to get better. There’s an unmatched fullness of sound and complexity to Clarke’s playing, created by carefully chosen rhythms, punctuated with silence and rests which help create focal points and enhance the melodic riffs. In his “No Mystery” solo, Clarke explored the melody and found similarities to other pieces, quoting from funk to pop and ending with a few bars of “My Girl,” which Bruner even added to with a bit of vocals.

The Stanley Clarke Band is solid; Clarke’s solos never fail to be the zenith of any piece. But what makes the band great, more than just adequate backup for the great Clarke, is the way they play off each other. They improvise together, they collaborate on melodies and rhythms across instruments, they have synergistic energy and they do it all so smoothly that you might mistake the bass for drums or the violin for the upper register of the bass. They work hard to make the most of what each instrument has to offer to enhance a piece: it’s democratic and nothing short of awe-inspiring.

This article was originally published at the Stanford Daily and can be viewed here on page 7-8: 81171917-DAILY-02-10-12.

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Posted in City, Jazz, Music, San Francisco, Top picks

Review of “Higher” at ACT

Posted on March 2, 2012 | Leave a comment


Carey Perloff’s new play, “Higher”, is at its best when its leading lady, Elena Constantine (René Augesen) is the focus of attention. Elena is a successful architect dealing realistically with the vicissitudes of being a successful career woman. She is middle-aged, childless, unmarried and in a relationship with another successful but egotistical architect, Michael (Andrew Polk). This, of course, makes Elena insecure, constantly seeking his approval without being able to admit it. They find themselves in competition for the same job to build a memorial, unaware that they are each other’s opposition. It’s gender politics at its best, even though Michael is such a scumbag and thus a somewhat unfair example of a man.

Perloff has also crafted some great scenes, emotionally, between father and son Michael and Isaac (Ben Kahre). They have the kind of tension that can only be built up through a lifetime of disappointments, when Michael chose his work and his ego over his family and Isaac. Isaac isn’t meek or weak; he’s an independent, grown man. Kahre beautifully bares the scars that Isaac carries from this relationship, which tend to surface through sarcasm. When Isaac and Elena are together onstage, both having been hurt by the same man, their shared damage makes them dynamite together.

Read the rest at the Stanford Daily here.

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“Becky Shaw” lights up the SF Playhouse

Posted on February 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

Photo by Jessica Palopoli

The following article was originally published in the “Stanford Daily” here.
Gina Gionfriddo’s recent work displayed at the SF Playhouse, Pulitzer Prize finalist “Becky Shaw,” is the best piece of theatre in San Francisco at the moment, and indeed, in the last few months. Gionfriddo’s script is trenchant and clever, with enough laugh-out-loud epigrams to fill an Oscar Wilde play. But the play has more in common with early Woody Allen movies like “Annie Hall” that mix pathos with comedy than with “The Importance of Being Earnest.”

The death of Suzanna’s father has left the family penniless – not broke, but without savings. Her mother, Susan (Lorri Holt), who has multiple sclerosis, has taken a younger lover, her house painter, which disgusts Suzanna (Liz Sklar). Her cynical, adopted brother Max (Brian Robert Burns), on the other hand, sees this as a reasonable business deal; she simply can’t afford to hire help to deal with her illness. It has also left Suzanna severely depressed, unable to get off the couch and glued to trashy television stories about prostitutes. As Max puts it, “She has too much free time” to be depressed; Suzanna replies, “I’m a graduate student!”

Becky Shaw is the MacGuffin of the play, which is really a study of relationships and their forms – platonic, romantic and familial – that can sometimes bleed together. Becky (Lauren English), a temp at Andrew’s (Lee Dolson) office, is the seemingly unfortunate recipient of a blind date with Max, a cold-blooded New York finance guy. Max is judgmental, and when Becky shows up by taxi without a cell phone, he asks if she’s Amish or just one of those crazy environmental freaks. Unsurprisingly, their date goes badly: they get mugged, have bad sex and he kicks her out prematurely.

What transpires is the unraveling of every relationship in the play. Suzanna’s husband, Andrew, who saved her from depression after her father’s death, feels responsible for Becky’s post-date trauma and is drawn to nurse yet another sick puppy to health. Is he legitimately and harmlessly kind? Or is this kind of damage something he gets off on? As Max notes to Suzanna, Andrew married the last helpless woman he met. Meanwhile, Suzanna and Max’s semi-incestuous tryst and her dependency on him – which her mother claims he cultivated starting at a young age – start to interfere with her marriage. Do they have a relationship? Is it altogether okay that Susan uses her boyfriend with the understanding that he’s using her, too?

The play is rife with moral ambiguity and asks many questions without really passing judgment on any of its flawed, richly drawn characters. The SF Playhouse proves a wonderful space for this intimate family comedy of “middle-class manners,” as it has been called. Wherever you’re sitting, you get a clear view of all of the actors’ faces and movements. The stage is small, too, which adds a level of claustrophobia to their interactions: the discomfiture within the family is exacerbated by the lack of space to flee from one another. There is a lot of talent onstage: great comedic timing, motivated blocking with seamless movement on the stage and the ability of all the actors to play the gamut of emotions, from fear to joy to dismissive insecurity. But too often did the actors stumble over their lines, jumbling them up; the play needs to run for a couple more weeks to become fully polished. Soon, it will be not just a wonderful piece of theatre, but a masterful one.

Read the article here at the Stanford Daily, where it was originally published.

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Posted in City, Contemporary, San Francisco, Theatre, Top picks

‘Humor Abuse’ fails to deliver laughs

Posted on January 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

Photo by Chris Bennion

W. C. Fields once said, “Comedy is a serious business.” Perhaps that’s why comedies like “The Trip” or the play “Humor Abuse” have such dark underbellies despite the seemingly light subject matter. While “The Trip” was a film rife with laugh-out-loud impressions, it was also a meditation on loneliness and middle age. “Humor Abuse” is more about both the excitement and loneliness of having a clown for a father; it’s humorous but not all that funny.

“Humor Abuse” is a one-man show starring Lorenzo Pisoni as himself, a professional clown since the tender age of two. Lorenzo informs us that during childhood, he suffered from “humor abuse.” In his family, making people laugh was valued above all else, and Lorenzo suffered for these laughs. To get a second scoop of ice cream, he had to do a double take routine with his father. Also, Lorenzo learned to juggle fiberglass batons without lessons, and because his hands were too small to grip them, they’d often fall, break and cut up his hands. Years later, he discovered that kid-sized batons existed, but his parents never bothered to mention these to him.

By age five, Lorenzo had signed a contract to tour with the circus and was officially his father’s partner. At 12, he toured without his parents. In “Humor Abuse,” you really get the sense of just how much Lorenzo loved being in the circus. He loved that his father treated him as an equal because they were partners. He loved that he got to see his father in action at work, enjoying himself and being amazing. But it also meant he grew up fast; Lorenzo discovered his father wasn’t really infallible early on, a fact that was difficult to reconcile with his idolized image of his father. It was fun being in the circus, but it was hard work, too.

The production does a marvelous job of balancing the story, showing us the good and the bad in the circus life and why Lorenzo is so conflicted about being a clown. The result is a very honest and poignant story of the difficulties of grappling with childhood, made all the more exciting by the fact that Lorenzo’s experience involved professional clowning.

Director Erica Schmidt succeeds at keeping the action going in the play; it never feels like a series of static monologues. And we never tire of Lorenzo, despite the fact that he is the only person ever on stage. Lorenzo gives a nuanced performance not only as himself but also as his father, re-enacting scenes and routines from his childhood with clowning skill and genuine emotion. He may not be able to make us laugh much while he falls down the stairs, but he can fall down them expertly. His performance is enriched by period photographs of him and his father projected onto a red, circus-like curtain at the back of the stage. The set design and props evoke the circus perfectly, creating an inviting atmosphere that works both for circus re-enactments and as a story-telling environment.

The problem with “Humor Abuse” is that so much time in the play is dedicated to gags that just aren’t funny, although the rest of the audience was laughing heartily. Lorenzo always plays the straight man to his father’s clown, and as he warns us at the beginning, he really isn’t very funny. Whether he’s doing a routine of falling down stairs or failing to climb a ladder while wearing diving fins, it only made me smile and think, as his father would have commented, “That’s funny,” but no laughter would occur. It’s a story about comedy, but it isn’t comedy: it’s dark and rarely hilarious.

This story was originally published in the Stanford Daily here.

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Solid ‘Story’ in San Jose: Review of West Side Story

Posted on January 22, 2012 | 1 Comment

When “West Side Story” opens, we are introduced to two New York street gangs: the Sharks and the Jets. And they’re dancing with fisticuffs. It takes a few minutes to get used to the fact that the stage-fights will be dance-fights, but once you do, you know you’re in for a ride. The cast of this Broadway revival tour in San Jose can definitely dance. This is a show with a story told largely through song and dance; it’s physical and visceral and, for the most part, it’s done pretty darn well.

“West Side Story” is the epitome of what a good musical should be. It’s full of memorable songs, impressive dance numbers, and a poignant story to tie it all together. Leonard Bernstein composed the complex and enduring music with lyrics by Steven Sondheim, choreography reproduced from Jerome Robbins’s original work for the play and a story based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

It’s the Upper West Side in the 1950s, and our Romeo is Tony, an American and the former leader of the Jets. His Juliet is Maria, a Puerto Rican immigrant whose family belongs to the opposing street gang, the Sharks. The gangs hate each other based on principle and unshakeable racism. But when Tony (Ross Lekites) and Maria (Evy Ortiz) meet at the local dance, it’s inauspicious, colour-blind love at first sight.

The story is told largely through song and dance. Bernstein’s music is a great challenge to sing: it requires a huge vocal range and the ability to master difficult syncopated rhythms and melodies with challenging intervals. Ross Lekites, as Tony, owns his musical part. He has a powerhouse voice with large and beautiful range that never becomes operatic. Every note is clear, with perfect pitch, allowing the music to shine to its fullest. Ortiz’s voice is meeker, by comparison, but full enough to get the message across. The rest of the cast does a fine job tackling this complex but rewarding material. Unlike many modern musicals, you will leave “West Side Story” humming the songs.

This production is wonderfully choreographed and staged, making excellent use of space and of James Youmans’ wonderful set design, which places you right in the streets of New York. The love scenes between Tony and Maria always take place on an island set-piece–her balcony, her bed or an empty stage without a background–because, as they lament in the song “Somewhere,” their relationship doesn’t belong in the world they live in. When the Jets do the famous number “Cool” right before meeting with the Sharks for a rumble, they start off in Doc’s drug store. Then the store set-pieces disappear, allowing the Jets to take over the stage, which is now that piece of territory in the city that they are so intent on defending. We also witness this territory-marking through dance in “Dance at the Gym.”

The biggest flaw in the production is that it far too often stoops to gain the easy, low-comedy laugh. The result is that the action feels less weighty, the tragedy less serious–it leaves the audience not invested enough in the plight of the two lovers. When done right, “West Side Story” should have no trouble getting an audience to tear up. This is further aggravated by the clumsy scenes with dialogue that often feels awkward and inadequately rehearsed. These scenes disrupt the flow of the story. This alienates the audience from what is otherwise an emotionally involving journey. Thankfully the show always recovers its steam as soon as we hit the next dance number: the tempo, volume, and melody of the music work together to elicit a strong emotional response. It is by no means a perfect production, but what it does well makes up for its shortcomings.

A revised version of this article was published in the Stanford Daily here .

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Posted in Bay Area, City, Dance, Music, Musicals, Stanford Daily, Theatre, Top picks

The best is yet to come: 2012 in Jazz

Posted on January 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

Between Stanford Jazz, Yoshi’s Jazz Clubs in San Francisco and Oakland, Zellerbach Hall and the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the Bay Area is a great place for jazz enthusiasts, and there’s much to look forward to in 2012. It’s one of the reasons why we can attract so many world-class artists who simply love playing the Bay Area.

Start the year off in San Francisco in the Fillmore jazz district at Yoshi’s, where you can catch trumpeter Roy Hargrove’s Quintet (Jan. 12–15), vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson (Jan. 20–21) and the great bassist Stanley Clarke with his fusion band (Jan. 26–28). Keep your eyes peeled for more great concerts at Yoshi’s. Head to Berkeley on Jan. 29 to see the great young jazz pianist Alfredo Rodriguez do a solo concert in the Wheeler Auditorium.

Read the rest of this preview of Jazz in the Bay Area at the Stanford Daily.

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Posted in Bay Area, City, Jazz, Music, Stanford Daily, Top picks

‘Fela’ fails to delve deep

Posted on December 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

The new Broadway musical, “Fela!,” has some fun dance numbers but is largely a disastrous, disconnected and misogynistic production about the life of Nigerian Afrobeat superstar and political activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti. It takes place in the African Shrine, a nightclub in Nigeria where Fela (Sahr Ngaujah) is giving his final concert and telling his life story through the songs that he wrote.

“Fela!” delivers a glorious spectacle with impressive percussive afrobeats and delicious dancing, but the play is so desultory that if there is a message, it gets lost in the jumble. Without a coherent storyline, the production is disorienting. It doesn’t establish tone appropriately. The dance numbers are so vivacious, fun and sexual, that it’s unnerving when we hear excruciating details about how Fela’s wives were tortured in the second act: all signs in the first act pointed towards this being a generally light production.

Even when the production gets serious, it gets serious about characters who have never been developed and that we have never learned to care for: Fela’s wives are indistinguishable, scantily clad background dancers without personality, and his mother (Melanie Marshall) is treated as an idolized savior. While the atrocities committed against them are atrocious by any standards, the play lacks the poignancy that it could have had if any of them had been developed into more than clichés of the messianic mother and the whorish wives. The only character in the play with any development–and even that is shallow–is Fela, our obnoxious host.

“Fela!” is never fully able to create an emotional connection because the entirety of the story occurs in an isolated place–the African Shrine–and is guided by Fela, a largely isolated figure: we rarely see signs of the poor state of the world seeping into the Shrine. Most of the audience is not already well-versed in Nigerian history, making it difficult to guess at the important historical events that are occurring when the play is set. The play doesn’t even provide subtle hints of these. Without the outside world seeping into Fela’s world in the African Shrine, there is no context. And without context, it’s impossible to understand how the world is affecting Fela and how he is effecting change in it.

It’s not an impossible task to achieve this harmony between the story of Fela and his connection to that of Nigeria. Consider “Cabaret,” a play about people and politics, in many ways the predecessor to “Fela!”, where the emcee is our guide–here Fela is our emcee. In “Cabaret,” we get to know the characters well as three-dimensional, realistic people. The reason “Cabaret” is so heartbreaking and moving is that we get to see how the influence of the Nazis is slowly seeping into their world and impacting their lives: the merry singing and dancing is about active denial of the real world. In “Fela,” we can’t quite tell what the point of the singing and dancing is. Mostly, it comes off as shallow entertainment.

“Fela!” provides us with some jaw-dropping dance numbers, with impressively athletic vibrating and gyrating, set to some foot-tappingly good rhythms. But while it had the potential to deal with real issues, such as how and why Fela helped or tried to help his country, it settled instead for crowd-pleasing numbers that focus on sex and feces rather than on the problems Fela was famous for rebelling against.

Published in the Stanford Daily. Online version available here.

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Posted in City, Musicals, San Francisco, Stanford Daily, Theatre

Italian filmmakers shine in San Francisco – New Italian Cinema Festival

Posted on December 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

Last weekend, The San Francisco Film Society’s (SFFS) New Italian Cinema Festival at the Embarcadero Centre Theater in San Francisco closed the SFFS’s impressive annual Fall Season of mini-festivals. The Fall Season included a series of film festivals – Hong Kong Cinema, French Cinema Now, Taiwan Film Days, NY/SF International Children’s Film Festival, SF International Animation Festival – each lasting a few days and showcasing new films from around the world.

The New Italian Cinema festival focused on emerging filmmakers in Italy, many of whom were present to introduce their films and participate in a Q&A afterwards. The festival began with a retrospective of Daniele Luchetti’s films: Our Life, It’s Happening Tomorrow, and Ginger and Cinnamon. Most of the other directors were first time feature directors or relatively new directors: these aren’t just recent Italian films but films by new artists in Italian cinema.

Alessandro Aronodio’s first feature, One Life, Maybe Two, is a dark coming of age story about Matteo, a directionless young adult, who crashed into a parked police car when driving on a slippery road. Two stories play out simultaneously: one in which the crash happens and another in which he stops in time. In both realities, facets of Matteo are revealed, which are true of him in both realities: he’s lost, angry, and bored. The film often references Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, the story of another, younger, troubled youth who gets dealt an unfair set of cards.

Aronodio picks up on the running and water imagery from The 400 Blows, and uses them in his picture to show at once freedom and imprisonment. There is a beautiful ending in which Matteo meets himself at a protest – in one story he is a protester and in the other the riot police – which emphasizes how lost and fragmented Matteo is. These parallel stories so often feel like a weak plot device that we focus more on how the two stories play out differently than on the characters within them. Despite the two stories, Matteo remains largely a mystery: you often feel like you’re straining to find meaning where meaning doesn’t exist. Perhaps Aronodio should have consulted Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda, as well, for that is a film that tells two parallel stories – one comedy and one tragedy-  and finds unexpected meaning in both from a device that never seems like gimmick.

Francesco Falaschi’s This World is For You is, on the surface, a light-hearted comedy about yet another directionless youth, Teo, who yearns to be a writer but is sidetracked by family problems, including his father’s debilitating illness, which lead to unexpected responsibilities. Look a little closer and you’ll find a lot of precious insights. On one level, there’s a story of a father and son desperately trying to communicate in a culture where they have never been on level ground, hurting each other as they fail, but somehow finding a balance. On another level, it’s the story of dealing with the realities of first love, where the object of Teo’s desire, Chiara, is a strong, independent woman, whose research on wine will ultimately lead her out of the country and put an expiration date on their relationship. It’s also the story of how the scatterbrained, ambitious Teo, who can’t figure out how to write something honest, comes at it unexpectedly, and finds a way to meet family expectations as well as those he has for himself.

This World is For You is full of humour without undermining the serious themes it deals with. Consider the scene where Teo meets Chiara. He orders cheap white wine and tries to pass it off as champagne to impress her; he discovers, instead, that she’s a wine connoisseur, and that only ignites their attraction. There are also some delightful sceneswhere Teo is fighting with writer’s block, including trying to find the perfect start to his story, and ends up copying out Tolstoy’s famous opener, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The humour is always entertaining but it also serves to underline just how young and naive Teo is by letting us laugh, gently, at his foibles. It’s easy to dismiss The World is For You as a shallow film, but beneath the light humour, there are a multitude of clever observations about families and the painful transition into adulthood.

Habemus Papam, which has been making positive waves on the festival circuit at Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival, was the much-hyped closing night film, and the only film by a truly seasoned actor-director, Nanni Moretti. Moretti’s film is sure-footed and mature, a clever, hilarious, and surprisingly gentle satire about the choosing of a new pope. It will be getting a theatrical release in 2012.

When the new pope, Melville (Michel Piccoli), is chosen, he suffers from stage fright, starts to hyperventilate, and absolutely refuses to make his first public address and appearance. Hijinks ensue. They bring a non-religious psychoanalyst (Nanni Moretti) to talk him through it, but locate their sessions in public, with all the cardinals looking in, and forbid the psychoanalyst from asking him questions about sex, his parents, and his childhood. They hold the psychoanalyst in the Vatican until the unveiling of the new pope, and in his boredom, he starts up a volleyball tournament between the cardinals, and divides them by continent: Oceania only has three players and complains but he insists “if you’re good to your people, God will give you a bigger team next year”.

While many great laughs are to be had, the film works so well as satire because of the way it humanizes Melville and the other cardinals. We see the cardinals in their quarters, playing solitaire, putting together puzzles, and taking their medication. We see the cardinals as regular people with regular whims and cravings: they are anxious to leave the Vatican and explore Rome while they have a chance, to get delicious cappuccinos and doughnuts from the outside.

And most importantly, we see Melville, terrified about the task he is being asked to perform for the church. He runs away from the Vatican and begins walking and exploring the streets of Rome, contemplating his doubts and trying to understand his place in the world. He saw a second psychoanalyst who did not know he was the pope, and when asked his profession, Melville responded that he is an actor. We discover that his youthful ambition was to be a professional actor, but only his sister had talent, so despite his love for Chekov – we see him recite part of The Seagull with a troupe of actors – he went into the clergy.

In a suit, losing his breath after too much walking, Melville looks like just another elderly man, and that’s exactly how he feels, ill-equipped for the post of pope. Melville is so realistic, so human, that it becomes hard for us and for him to see himself as this divinely holy figure. All this discussion of acting is not in vain, for when he is finally forced to take up his post, we see him dressing in his papal costume, preparing for the biggest performance of his life. In a way, the film suggests, he has gone into the theatre after all.

The key festivals of the Fall Season may be over, but the SFFS is still screening independent and foreign film at headquarters, and gearing up for its winter programming and the annual San Francisco International Film Festival in the spring. The film scene is alive and well in San Francisco.

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Abridged version was published in the Stanford Daily here.

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