Photo by Jessica Palopoli

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.

In “Coriolanus,” Fiennes skillfully transports the Shakespearean play into a convincing modern piece – all without changing the language. While Branagh’s Shakespearean adaptations favored long, ten-minute shots, allowing the scenes to play out as if on stage, Fiennes daringly transforms the play into the language of film and of the film genres that best suit the material. The scenes never last more than a few minutes, giving the film energy and momentum and making it feel like we are watching a war or revenge film, not a work of classical theatre.

Working with a significantly pared-down screenplay by John Logan, there is time to savor the important dialogue that does remain, and to let images and film conventions fill in the blanks. The television broadcast is used frequently and very effectively for exposition in the film: Coriolanus (played by Fiennes) is a powerful political figure, so we expect that this is how the masses would get their information about him. What better way to stage monologues criticizing his actions than on a television talk show, with the intonation of TV commentators? Coriolanus never soliloquizes, never connects personally with the audience, so all that matters in creating his character for us is his image as broadcast on television.

“Coriolanus” is a play about an angry man whose hubris trumps his political ambitions and whose rash temper causes him to team up with his enemy to wage war on his own country in defense of his pride. He responds viscerally to everything – he is, after all, a military man – and Fiennes situates the play within film genres where this makes sense. It’s a cross between a war film, a political thriller and a revenge picture, with enough physical brutality and honor not to be out of place in a Western. When Coriolanus is exiled, the first image of his departure is his large black boots pounding on the ground as he walks. We get many close-ups of Coriolanus’s scarred face and body, scars he refuses to put on spectacle for political gain, and of his mouth, spitting out words in a fury.

When we change locations, titles flash on the screen to tell us where we are, much like the globetrotting action flicks of today such as “The International” or “Haywire.” When Coriolanus campaigns for consul, he speaks to the commoners and shakes their hands in a montage that would feel just as at home in “Primary Colors” or “The Ides of March.” The political discussions are set in cold business offices, with Coriolanus’s opposition dressed in fancy suits, effortlessly emphasizing their mind-over-body mentality.

These cinematic feats would be worthless if Fiennes got the language wrong, but he and his cast nail it. Vanessa Redgrave as Volumnia, Brian Cox as Menenius, James Nesbitt as Sicinius and of course Ralph Fiennes himself, give incredibly lucid line readings, with tones that fits the modern setting. The words may be in iambic pentameter, but the quality of the acting brings them to life; it’s a faithful Shakespearean adaptation.

But this is Fiennes’s first feature as a director, and his inexperience shows. The film is shot almost entirely, and misguidedly, with a handheld camera, to give the work immediacy and disorient us. However, it mostly comes off as lazy directing: Fiennes is still uncertain where to put the camera, what to focus on, or for how long. “Coriolanus” is a thoughtful, though imperfect, rendering of an often-overlooked Shakespeare play, and it’s proof that Fiennes is going to be a force to reckon with not just in front of the camera, but also behind it.

This text is copied from the original article, published in the Stanford Daily here.

2) “Dan In Real Life”
In “Dan in Real Life”, Steve Carrel plays Dan, a widower and parent of three lovable daughters, who unwittingly finds love in a chance encounter with a beautiful and sophisticated woman in a bookstore, Marie (Juliette Binoche). Unfortunately, she’s his brother’s girlfriend. And they’re all on a weekend family retreat together. He handles the situation like a grown-up but of course over the weekend, they fall in love. His daughters are adorable: the eldest is a newly-licensed driver preparing to leave for college, the middle one has the knack for falling in love and tying cherry stems in a knot in her mouth, and the youngest is just about the sweetest kid you could hope for without being naive. Ultimately, it’s about family, and while a touching romance ensues, it’s not about proving he’s prince charming: he’s a single dad who loves his brother and his kids and that’s perfect enough for Marie.

3) “Friends with Benefits”
“Friends with Benefits” shares its premise with “No Strings Attached” – two friends decide to have emotion-less sex but ultimately fall in love in the process – but it’s smart, funny, and sweet. It’s about two clever, career-oriented people, so emotionally damaged by their families that they can’t handle the mess of a relationship. And it updates the rom-com fairytale: what these characters want is an equal, a best friend, a partner. It’s a film very conscious of its genre – there’s even a fake romantic comedy film within a film that the characters poke fun at – but it transcends and reinvents it. Yes, there are many frank though well-concealed sex scenes and the outcome is horribly predictable but it’s the cleverness and strength of the characters that makes this film everything a modern romantic comedy should be.

4) “Definitely, Maybe”
In “Definitely, Maybe”, recently divorced Will Haynes (Ryan Reynolds) decides to tell his incredibly cute daughter, Maya, (Abigail Bresnail) the story of how he met her mother, but he tells it as a mystery. He changes all the names and tells the story of the three most important women that graced his life and it’s up to her to decipher which one is her mother. The women are played by Isla Fischer, Elizabeth Banks, and Rachel Weisz, so you know they are going to be interesting. We get why they would have fallen for each other, even though the relationships all ultimately ended. There are some very funny moments, like when Will accidentally slips in a detail about having smoked in the ‘90s and his daughter is outraged and shocked. Or when Will shows up on Weisz’s doorstep, only to be greeted by a drunken Kevin Kline, who Will assumes is her father not her boyfriend, and who gives him lessons in what it means to be a real man: apparently it involves a lot of scotch. When Will finally does figure out who he should be with, when the many layers of all of the character’s have been peeled off and revealed, it’s a well-deserved corny but realistic happy ending.

5) “Easy A”
“Easy A” is a high school romantic comedy in the tradition of John Hughes films with the biting wit and religious satire of “Saved” and the quipping of “Juno”. It’s the film that launched Emma Stone into stardom, as Olive Penderghast, the sarcastic, wise-cracking, confident, loveable outsider who accidentally finds herself in the middle of a rumour that she slept with someone – who is, in fact, imaginary – on a first date. Since they are reading “The Scarlet Letter” in class, she decides to embroider an A on her own clothing in a bout of irony that’s lost on her classmates. The premise is dubious but the execution flawless. It’s ultimately about a strong, young woman, too smart for her classmates, and whose very likable parents (Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci) explain her completely.  It’s got many well-deserved laughs and a very sweet ending where she finds the boy that’s her match.

Pina Bausch was a German modern dance choreographer, famous for bringing elements of the real world onto her stage, incorporating water, dirt, rocks, city streets and cafés into her choreography. In “Pina 3D”, director Wim Wenders brings Bausch’s choreography seamlessly offstage into the real world–shooting parts of the dances on city streets, in the forest, on a tram, in an industrial park and on the beach–while still giving us glimpses of the performances on stage.

In “Pina,” Wenders works with Bausch’s dancers to bring segments of her “Café Muller,” “The Rite of Spring” and “Vollmond” vividly to the big screen. Cinematographer Hélène Louvart shoots effectively in 3D, which is all oriented behind the screen, creating the effect of watching dance occurring in a three-dimensional space. It’s as close to theatre or live dance as you can get on film. Here, you have the advantage of being able to get close to the dancers, to clearly see their facial expressions or the details of a particular move.

Wenders makes modern dance, which can easily be alienating until you get accustomed to it, accessible to the dance neophyte. Each of the three pieces are shown in relatively short segments, no more than 10 minutes each, and are interspersed both with one another and between the stage and the outside world. The advantage is that if a certain number doesn’t quite click for you, it is normally finished before you are too bored.

The disadvantage is that too often, the segments that you love are too short. For more seasoned dance appreciators, this can be frustrating throughout: Wenders may cut away from a particular angle or move of interest at an inopportune time, and you can’t see entire numbers in sequence. In a way, this is pop dance for the masses, in the same way that symphonies perform “pop” classical numbers where they play the month’s highlights instead of famous pieces in their entirety.

Nevertheless, “Pina” still brings a new dimension to the work of Pina Bausch by bringing it onto the streets and onto the beach. It gives the dance an added sense of urgency and spontaneity. It’s invigorating to see Pina Bausch’s choreography performed by the ocean, with the dancers kicking around in the water, and then to see how Bausch translated that setting and immediacy to the stage. It is equally exciting to see Bausch’s work re-imagined in the real settings that she re-created indoors.

One of the best dance numbers, which epitomizes how Bausch’s choreography is dance, theatre and life, all at once, comes from “Café Mueller.” The dance is set in a café; the stage is full of tables and chairs. A couple starts off in tableau, the woman resting her arms around her partner’s neck. A third person, a man, enters and moves the woman’s arms to rest on her partner’s waist, and lifts her up into her partner’s arms. Her partner immediately drops her, and she stands up, puts her arms around his neck and holds onto him for dear life. The third dancer comes back and the process repeats. Every time it repeats, it gets faster. The faster it gets, the more dramatic, the more urgent and the more charged it becomes. It is dance, but there is a story arc that makes it theatre and a familiarity that makes it a great reflection of life. And up close, with the camera right in the space with the actors, whether on stage or on location, it exists not as just a reflection of life but as life itself. Suddenly, Bausch’s mantra, “Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost,” makes perfect sense.

This review was originally published in The Stanford Daily here.

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.

In the present, where we first meet Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep in her Golden Globe-winning performance), she is mad and alone, hallucinating about her dead husband and nostalgic for her glory years as prime minister. Her extreme ambition in her political career led her to alienate everyone in her life, from her children that she never had time for to her colleagues whom she frequently berated without restraint. Of course, Streep nails her tics and affectations and gives us a glimpse at the three-dimensional character that the film dances around but never fully explores.

Read the rest at the Stanford Daily.

“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.

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.

“The Good Wife”–Alicia Florrick finally kicks her husband out

In the last two years, we’ve watched her wade through so much chaos caused by her adulterous, philandering husband as she secretly pines for Will Gardiner. How empowering for her to finally stop being “the good wife” and give his undeserving ass the boot.

..and Peter Florrick teams up with Cary to declare war on Alicia
 It’s proof positive that Peter can be such an awful sleaze-bag, but it was terribly exciting to anticipate just how bitter and scary he could be and how destructive he might be to Alicia. We hate him for it, but we kind of love the show for having him go there.

-AH

Read the full article here.

“Songs of Mirth and Melancholy”–Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo

Jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis and pianist Joey Calderazzo’s much-anticipated duo album of original music is absolutely marvelous, with a mix of foot-tapping numbers like “One Way” and beautiful ballads like “The Bard Lachrymose.” The result is a wonderful album that shows off what a jazz duo is meant to do.

 

“33”–Alex Pangman

Canadian songstress Alex Pangman transports us back to the 1930s with her new album, “33”, full of songs almost exclusively from 1933 in celebration of her 33rd birthday. Pangman updates these old songs for a modern audience while still maintaining an authentic sound that’s true to the era. The albums includes songs like  “Happy As The Day Is Long,” “Shine” and “I Found A New Baby” that are so upbeat they’re sure to wake you up, get you smiling and get you on the dance floor. There are also several ballads to pull on your heartstrings like Pangman’s composition “As Lovely Lovers Do,” which sounds like it could have been written in the 1930s and “I Surrender Dear.”