Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

David Sefton
Photo: David Miezal 2008

I was saddened to hear the news today that David Sefton, the long time artistic director of UCLA Live, the university’s public performing arts series, has suddenly resigned. According to the Los Angeles Times, Sefton submitted his resignation to take effect immediately when he felt he could not abide a “restructuring” of the program dictated by the university and its own declining economic fortunes. Apparently the first change in the restructuring will be an end to the International Theater Festival Sefton championed since 2002 and which will not be a part of the upcoming season. It’s just tragic since the series has undoubtedly been the source of the most important programming UCLA Live has presented over the last decade. Sefton notes in the report that without this kind of programming, there is little interest for him in what the entire program has to offer in the future. I know how he feels. And without a replacement in the wings at a time of “restructuring”, it appears that the series risks entering a free fall in the not-to-distant future even though Sefton has reportedly finished booking the 2010-2011 season that is to be announced shortly. They might as well start booking that Steel Magnolias revival with Kathy Rigby as we speak. At least I’ll get to save some money by not renewing my subscription.

Meanwhile, people can’t stop writing about Gustavo Dudamel and his recently completed national tour with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. (So why should I?) Apparently feeling that Mark Swed’s damage control over the copious negative reviews of the recent tours was insufficient, the Los Angeles Times rolled out James Rainey (I know - who??) on the 26th to raise the inherent East Coast bias of those who dared to question the maestro's skills. His most shining moment in the piece, though, was his none-to-subtle implication that racism was a factor in these negative critiques as well. And who knows, maybe that garbage struck a nerve after all when you consider the further musings of Anne Midgette on the topic in today’s Washington Post. Midgette was one of the few critics who were enthusiastically supportive of Dudamel on the tour, but still she felt the need to write more in what is essentially a defense of her view in the follow-up. Yes, she admits, she still thought the concert in Washington was magnificent. But rest assured, she explains, she by no means thinks that Dudamel is the future of classical music. Though, on the other hand she is now certain he is not "falling into [the] trained-monkey syndrome.” Well there's some fair and balanced commentary for you if nothing else. Sometimes I worry that I’m not really qualified to write about the things I do on my blog. Then I read what passes for arts journalism and criticism in the legitimate press.

Labels: LA Philharmonic 09/10, UCLA Live 09/10

from Orbo Novo by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
Photo: Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet 2010

Art has always depended in large part on the largess of its wealthiest patrons. Although we in the U.S. would like to view this as a more democratic enterprise than it was say three centuries ago, the fact is little has changed. We’re used to seeing the names of a small band of big donors on concert hall doors and stages, but rarely do we appreciate how much of what actually gets done rests in the hands of so few funders in what are still perceived as civic or communal arts organizations. In some ways the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet is almost a throwback to an earlier era. Founded in 2003 by Wal-Mart heiress Nancy Laurie, the company has wanted for very little financially and has embarked on a decidedly brave course commissioning works from some of the most regarded young choreographers in the world for the troupe under its current artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer. Cedar Lake made headlines here in Los Angeles earlier this year when it was announced they were embarking on a periodic residency with UCLA Live!, the University’s public performing arts series, before the group had even opened its first performance this season at Royce Hall.

On Friday, the company finally made its local debut with a work they premiered in summer 2009 by Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui entitled Orbo Novo. Cherkaoui’s own troupe appeared at UCLA in 2008, so the syntax of the piece was not foreign to local audiences. And, while the piece has not been glowingly received in its appearances in New York and other venues, it seemed to be very exciting to the Royce Hall audience on Friday and would appear to bode well for the future of their relationship with UCLA. Orbo Novo is inspired by the writings of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor who authored a memoir of her own experience having and recovering from a stroke in My Stroke of Insight. Cherkaoui uses Taylor’s neurological-inspired musings on the duality of human nature and a call for the more emotional and less analytical approach to the world as a starting point. And I mean this in the most literal sense in that the piece begins with two of the dances reciting text from Taylor’s book in unison laying out a didactic framework for what’s to follow. It did seem like a lot of dead space right at the front of the 90 minute program, but, admittedly, had a buff hottie in a sailor outfit given my neuroscience lectures I might be working in a different field today.

From here the dancers engage in a variety of groups, solo, and duet segments most of which directly relate to duality and division, not unlike the two hemispheres of the brain. When dancers work together, they tend to be more fluid and “functional” in the undulating animalistic way that Cherkaoui’s choreography often takes. All of this takes place in an empty set divided by several tall panels of red metal lattice work that the dancers move to repeatedly form new spaces and enclosures. The walls are scaled, and dancers (amazingly) pass through the small openings in the lattice crossing the divide. Sometimes they are only partially successful, and are left hanging in midair as if falling in slow motion. The images are striking—especially when the male dancers all disrobe down to nothing but their briefs for the greater part of the middle section of the evening. Nevertheless, all of this seems a little too obvious and direct at times. A little subtlety can go along way, and Orbo Novo had it in too small a supply. The performance itself, though, was quite engaging and bodes well for future collaborations here at UCLA.

Labels: UCLA Live 09/10

Anne Sofie von Otter, Myung-Whun Chung, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Photo: mine 2010

This year’s UCLA Live performing arts series has been lighter than usual in the classical music department. In fact Wednesday’s appearance from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France is just about the only large ensemble appearing in this season’s offerings. But gratefully, it was a notable one. The orchestra appeared with music director Myung-Whun Chung who is no stranger to French ensembles or composers over the course of his career. So the decision to plan an all-Ravel program on this trip to LA certainly played to the performers’ strengths even if it was essentially a greatest hits evening - the complete Ma mere l’Oye, Daphnis et Chloé Suites 1 and 2, La Valse, and Schéhérazade with guest vocalist Anne Sofie von Otter.

But greatest hits are greatest hits for a reason, and the Philharmonique played with such lightness and polish they were hard to resist. The attacks were so controlled and subtle that at times the playing seemed like breathing. It was as natural and pure with a total lack of self-consciousness. There were still plenty of dynamics, but the shifts were seamless. As lovely and masterful as it was; though, there is a down side. Sometimes that much effervescence can lead to everything blowing away and disappearing into thin air. Chung’s guidance could also leave few clear edges to hold onto as well. But there was ample beauty. Von Otter was quite good throughout Schéhérazade. The last two times I’ve caught her live, she sang either Carmen or Brangäne, and the Ravel seemed a better fit for her. She sang with a rich tone and a vulnerability that grabbed the audience. It was certainly the highlight of the evening.

Labels: UCLA Live 09/10

Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester

There’s no irony quite like German irony. It’s that special blend that can bewilder Americans in particular over what appears to be a highly contrasting mix of admiration and a far more arch critique of the subject at hand. Take Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester who returned to Southern California this week including a performance at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Thursday. It was classic Raabe. The dapper and droll bandleader dressed in formal evening wear croons to popular songs of the 1920s and 30s with his similarly period orchestra. The songs couldn’t be more familiar including “Happy Days Are Here Again,” “Dream A Little Dream” and “Falling In Love Again.” They are performed in jazzed up arrangements that are still surprisingly unadorned and simple by contemporary standards. Raabe accompanies everything in a lithesome falsetto. In between numbers his stilted delivery of witty understatements acts as a bridge between songs from Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and even Kurt Weil. Many of the songs are performed in German emphasizing the cultural perspective of the ensemble. There are flashes of humor and even slapstick in the set which involves 12 other band members and it is all splendidly done.

But the point of it all remains tantalizingly elusive. Max Raabe, a character played by the groups leader, is clearly musical and highly educated about the musical period their songs come from. Yet at the same time, the detailed reproduction of costumes and physical gestures and mannerisms implies a larger project. There is more going on here than nostalgia. Yet at the same time, Raabe and his players never break the spell more than to give a glance that tells you there's something more. There is a subtle knowing wink in these songs of romantic love from a culture markedly different from the one we now know. Granted this is a feeling that audiences can decide to love or hate. But it is unquestionably unique and it might just be brilliant as well. I love Max Raabe and his orchestra precisely because there is something decidedly unwholesome about something that on the surface seems just the opposite. The show at UCLA, the third the band has done here, was a highlight of the UCLA performing arts season and it was sad to see it end.

Labels: UCLA Live 09/10

Ruth McCabe, Rosaleen Linehan, and Catherine Walsh
Photo: Tom Wilkinson/Druid Theater

The only regret I have about seeing Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom, which is on stage at the Freud Theater this weekend as part of the UCLA Live International Theater Festival, is that I couldn’t see it sooner. And I don’t just mean earlier in the run, but that it would have been even more fascinating just weeks ago running in repertory with Druid Theater Ireland’s other production for the Festival, Walsh’s The Walworth Farce. The two plays are mirror images of one another in almost every way. Both concern a trio of family members, in Ballroom's case three sisters, trapped in a small domestic scene where they re-enact family myths and dramas until a different gender outsider arrives upsetting the balance. The struggle then becomes how and if the family system will incorporate the intruder or allow him or her to become a catalyst for escape. Both plays are filled with dense and rapid dialog often packaged in extended storytelling monologues by turns hysterically funny and oddly disturbing. And like The Walworth Farce, The New Electric Ballroom is an excellent play, this production being one of the best things I've seen this year.

Where Ballroom ups the ante on its predecessor is in its compactness and subtlety. At just under an hour and a half, Walsh raises many of the same questions with a far less didactic tone. The ambiguities about the relationships between these three supremely enmeshed sisters, two who still harbor daily-revived memories of shared affections for the same young man many years ago, aren't as completely spelled out. When the outsider in The Walworth Farce arrives at the door, she clearly represents the real world the audience knows exists outside of the unfolding family drama. In Ballroom, the local fishmonger makes repeated visits with the tide, but it's quickly apparent that he is already sucked into the family's story with his own rapid fire tales of wit and anxiety long before he's brought into the house and efforts are made to assign him another role in the family drama. The fish monger, Patsy, is played with real excitement by Mikel Murfi, the same man who directed the earlier run of The Walworth Farce for Druid. He's great, but no more or less so than the three other actors, Rosaleen Linehan, Ruth McCabe, and Catherine Walsh who were fascinating to watch.

Ballroom is more directly about love and its power and failings in allowing people to work their way into and out of certain family dynamics. There's still a sense of nihilistic foreboding here, and while no one escapes through the promise of new love, there is decidedly more comfort portrayed in the daily routine that traps these three women together in their single room waiting for tea to go with their few dry biscuits and hot pink frosted sponge cake. Of course, depending how you look at it, this world may be even less pleasant than that of the men in Walworth. In The New Electric Ballroom the cuts will mame you; though, never providing the final mortal blow. Enda Walsh's play, and the Druid Theater's production, are first rate and must be seen. There are two more performances this weekend.

Labels: UCLA Live 09/10

Cast members from TR Warszawa
Photo: Stefan Okolowicz/UCLA Live 2009

With the ever tightening relationship between motion pictures and the stage, it’s becoming more and more realistic for fans of certain films to hope to see their favorites make it to the flesh and blood world of the theater. From any number of Disney musicals to the upcoming Spider-Man extravaganza, the possibilities may seem endless. But if your taste in film runs less toward The Little Mermaid and more toward Pier Paolo Pasolini, you might find the wait for Salo! 120 Days of Showtunes insurmountable. However, in Los Angeles this week, you’ll be thrilled to know that Polish theater collective TR Warszawa have brought their version of Pasolini’s 1968 film Teorema, now entitled T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T., to the Freud Playhouse as part of UCLA Live’s International Theater Festival.

The play is a largely faithful adaptation of the film. It concerns a bourgeois family that is disrupted, seduced, and abandoned by a handsome drifter. In the wake of the loss of his sexual charms, father, mother, son and daughter find their lives nearly destroyed with only the family maid rising above the loss to reach a state of near sainthood. All of this is book-ended by two fake press conferences with the father where planted audience members ask him questions about capitalism and morality in his role as manager of a local factory. It's psychoanalytic stuff and not completely free of the 1960s cultural trappings from which it springs. But it is often funny and still rather provoking after all this time. What's better, director Grzegorz Jarzyna and his design team have a remarkably strong and lyrical visual sense producing stage images that are in fact more cinematic than Pasolini's original. The narrow empty plywood set that acts as all of the rooms in the bourgeois family abode soaks up light and dark in a brilliant way.

There's little dialog throughout most of the show and the production relies heavily on a troupe of actors who are experts of the telling small gesture, but are brave enough to deal with nudity and any number of other challenges presented by Pasolini's text. Even with only two performances, T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. continues what is turning out to be one of UCLA Live's strongest Theater Festivals in a number of years. There are two more productions left including Enda Walsh's The New Electric Ballroom before things wrap-up in December.

Labels: UCLA Live 09/10

Tadhg Murphy and Raymond Scannell in The Walworth Farce
Photo: Druid Ireland 2009

I’m a firm believer that anytime you can sit in a play for 30 minutes totally caught up in what’s going on onstage and still think to yourself “What the hell is going on?” is time well spent. Such is the case with Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce which is currently in a run of five performances from the Druid Ireland company who are presenting it as part of this year’s UCLA International Theater Festival. It’s a superb play that has an awful lot going on that I don’t want to say too much about and spoil the fun.

Suffice it to say that it’s a family drama concerning a father and two sons set in a decrepit apartment that tweaks the play-within-a-play strategy to harrowing and humorous effect. The Walworth Farce is also perhaps the most psychoanalytic play I’ve seen written in the last twenty years. What’s more, Walsh is taking on much bigger targets than just the usual family secrets and destructive subjectivities. No, he’s even mining the dark psychological underpinnings of the Irish/British relationship as well, asking hard questions about the internalized self-hatred within a culture. It’s a play that owes as much to Pinter as James Joyce and Walsh repeatedly turns the stereotypical Irish love of storytelling on its head in a work that features more repeating, conflicting, and deconstructed stories than you may want to get through in one setting.

There are four actors involved here, including Michael Glenn Murphy, Tadhg Murphy, Raymond Scannell, and Mercy Ojelade all of whom are excellent with truckloads of dialog that doesn’t always flow logically from events onstage. Mike Murfi’s direction is both taut without being overly serious. And while the second act does run on just a tick longer than might be ideal, The Walworth Farce is consistently engaging and thoughtful. It has many humorous moments, but can also be chilling with little warning, calling for an approach that is loose enough to make these shifts believable. Despite its strangeness, it has an assurance and certainty that make the play familiar, although it is not. The show runs through Sunday and is highly recommended.

Labels: UCLA Live 09/10

from DV8 Physical Theater's To Be Straight With You
Photo: Tristram Kenton 2009

Lloyd Newson’s DV8 Physical Theater company appeared at UCLA’s Royce Hall over the weekend with a dance piece intended to push buttons. To Be Straight With You concerns the intersection between homosexuality, race, and ethnicity in a particularly British context. Growing out of Newson’s own brushes with homophobia, he set about constructing a dance work that he soon felt needed more narrative structure than he was accustomed to. In response, he conducted interviews and focus groups in numerous locales around the UK and collected several first-hand accounts from activists, bigots, those living their lives out and proud, and those living in secret and fear. The resulting monologues became the source for the copious amounts of spoken text in Straight With You, which does two things very well. It captures the real conflicts inherent in constructing a personal identity. First, it’s filled with stories of people living their lives half-submerged in fear and those who have sacrificed everything to be out in the open in a new world. The other major success of the piece for an American audience is to act as a reminder that while we in this country are caught up in a myopic debate about gay marriage, half of the world’s population resides in places where there continues to be penalties ranging from years in jail to death for any kind of homosexual activity. And, although the focus is undoubtedly on the UK, the question is just as relevant here. Are we really worrying about the right things when people elsewhere are dying for what we take for granted?

Not that Newson doesn’t get bogged down by the seemingly trivial at times. There’s a lengthy section regarding the hate lyrics popularized by many dance hall reggae performers that have enjoyed much greater attention abroad than in the U.S. However, the biggest shortcoming of the evening is that Straight With You gets sidelined by its own wordiness. The dancing, though remarkable at times, often seems like an afterthought. The work is divided into short segments usually performed by a single member of the 8-dancer troupe with occasional group numbers. The miked dancers speak quotations taken from the interviews while they perform, often behind a scrim in the midst of a nondescript three-walled office-like set. There is ample augmentation with interactive video and graphics to emphasize certain elements of the spoken text. For about the first 30 minutes or so, there’s so much AV going on that it almost appears that there’s no dance involved at all. Later more movement is incorporated into the action, but it often seems unrelated to the spoken text. In one scene a dancer recounts the tale of a young man leaving his home after being stabbed by his father in response to the disclosure of his homosexuality. All of this is done during intense and rapid rope jumping that is amazing to watch for its physical dexterity. What the physical action and the text have to do with each other, though, in this context is unclear.

Still, there are many physically interesting moments and well-taken points over the course of the lecture. And, even though some of the truths it speaks may not be shocking, To Be Straight With You sheds light on our sadly lacking global perspective just as we think we are somewhat ahead of the curve on social issues.

Labels: UCLA Live 09/10

The Kids Are All Right
Photo: Phile Deprez/Ontroerend Goed 2009

The thorniest thing about art that deals with the topic of adolescence is that it rarely does the thing it always purports it will do – present a daring, myth-busting insight into the real lives of teenagers. Instead, one usually gets more of the same - the struggle for individuation in the context of a stressful modern world. And, while the current performance in UCLA Live’s International Theater Festival does little to break that mold, it is nonetheless interesting to watch. The work is entitled Once and For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen and it is presented under the auspices of Ontroerend Goed, a Belgian Theater company whose name loosely translates as “Feel Estate”. The hour long piece is unique in that it is written and performed by a group of 13 teenagers who cavort, extol, and amuse their way through a physical and structurally adept performance. The topic is adolescence and like all good theater about the young, its main asset is its energy and exuberance.

The performance begins with a row of chairs and the performers, entering one at a time, taking their place. They begin to interact with one another, goofing off, arguing, and generally horsing around in various combinations for about 10 minutes or so as music plays in the background. There's a lot to see; though, none of it necessarily amounts to anything out of the ordinary. Just as you begin to think that this is all there is, an alarm sounds and the actors rearrange their chairs and clean up their mess. Then the cycle repeats itself. However, with each repetition some organizing principle of the production is changed as the actors wander through sobering ballet inspired versions, or comic histrionic versions, or simply a dancing frenzy version of the same actions. The scene is deconstructed and then put back together in various ways that make the pointless activities of the scene appear bigger and more meaningful. In the final sequence, the scene is reenacted with everyone carrying giant versions of their props on the stage and eventually concludes with an exuberant mosh pit of activity. It's funny and visually interesting throughout.

But it never really breaks out of the mold. The repetition appears to be intended to represent the western conceptualization of adolescence that all of these real teens find themselves trapped in. They rebel, as teens are so often purported to do, in an effort to create a new world separate from that of their parents. But this hardly seems daring. Adolescents have really only existed since the Victorian age when the bourgeoisie decided there was a need to reclassify a whole group of people who had previously been considered adults mostly for reasons of political economy. But the show basically gives you little more intellectually than you might get from watching The Breakfast Club on video. Despite it's protestations, Once and for All... is still mining the ore of the mythical rebellious teen at the expense of the everyday mundane and well-adjusted lives that most of them live. It does make attractive theater, though. The show runs through Saturday at the Freud Playhouse on the UCLA campus.

Labels: UCLA Live 09/10

A scene from Castellucci's Purgatorio

If you think you’ve seen it all on stage, you may want to catch the current offering from UCLA Live’s International Theater Festival, Purgatorio. The piece is from the mind of the Italian theater impresario Romeo Castellucci and his troupe, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. And while it is presented on its own here in Los Angeles, Purgatorio has two brethren, Paradiso and Inferno. While all three are inspired by Dante, there’s little about the single work on stage at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse that would tie it to that Italian masterpiece. It’s a complicated, highly psychoanalytic, and often visually gorgeous 100 minutes that may leave you feeling many ways, but certainly not bored in the end. Castellucci addresses themes of sin and redemption on a most primal level and that is bound not to be pretty.

I don't want to give too much away, but it should be noted that Purgatorio is not for children or the faint of heart. The show opens with a gauzy lit and highly-detailed domestic kitchen where a mother, known as “The First Star”, and son, “The Second Star”, go about typical redundant daily life. It’s pretty and so polished and reserved that the mise-en-scene just as easily suggests cinema as it does theater. Soon the father, “The Third Star”, arrives home and the banal expands with text projected on the scrim in front of the stage reinforcing the mundane non-events. And then things start to scream. In one of those David Lynch moments, things get dark really fast and you just know that some of the audience is going to walk out, which they do on cue. That’s not a judgment by the way, but for me it is one of those exciting things where people leave not because they’re bored, but more likely offended or upset. Which, all things considered, is pretty remarkable for a play to be so harrowing that people leave because a nerve has been touched.

And then gears shift again into a third act where the screaming stops and things really get loud. The final scenes go through the looking glass complete with floral video, an art installation, two new actors recast in roles from the first half, and loud industrial music. There’s a lot to look at and think about. Honestly, I’m not sure what it all means, but it has to be seen to be believed. In all fairness, there are some frankly manipulative bits to Purgatorio, but isn’t that what all theater is to begin with anyway? This is an evening with some bite to it, and it's worth your consideration on Friday or Saturday night in the last two performances at UCLA this weekend.

Labels: UCLA Live 09/10