Loud And Proud And Also Loud: Julius Caesar In Dumbo

A few weeks ago, I took in a bit of Shakespeare near the Brooklyn waterfront, screwing my bladder to the sticking place along the way.  My review of the Donmar Warehouse's production of Julius Caesar is up today at Howlround, and you can read it if you like.

In the teeming yard of an English prison, a convict named Brutus tries to get the attention of a gang of joggers. He speaks of love and honor and fairness, finally winning their approval with a simple question: "Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves," he asks them, "than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men?" From the vantage of the prison yard, a single death is a small price for freedom. But as Brutus and his throng soon learn, the transaction is not so simple.

The Donmar Warehouse's Julius Caesar premiered in London last December, and has been imported to Brooklyn to play in a warehouse of our own: St. Ann's, a half a block from the East River in Dumbo. This all female production, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is set in a women's prison, and uses that harsh setting to remake itself into a meditation on the nature of freedom. Compelling but flawed, it is a fine example of the benefits and drawbacks that come with using Shakespeare to make a point about something larger than the play itself.

I walked away from that production feeling very good about it, and wrote the review in that mood. But this was not a love that lasted. The more I thought about the production's noisy tricks, the less I was impressed. Most of the acting was superb, and the first half of the play—when the production's premise was still unclear—was discomfiting in an interesting way. But what's stuck with me over the last couple of weeks is the noisiness of the production, and the shallow flashiness that seemed design to deafen the audience and drown out the text.

I had complex feelings about this production, and wanted that to come through in the review, but reading over my words, I worry that they sound a little too sunny. There are very good things in this Julius Caesar, but they come in spite of the production itself. Even so, I'm glad I saw it, and I'm glad I spent the last two weeks wrestling with the way I felt about it. A perfect production (if there were such a thing) could never make you think the way an ambitious, badly flawed one can.

Questions of Comfort, At The Theater & In The Loo

The performance begins at 7:00 PM and runs 2 hours and 15 minutes without an intermission. . . . We strongly recommend that you use the restrooms at Brooklyn Roasting Company. The St. Ann’s Warehouse restrooms will only be available immediately prior to the start of the performance. For the safety of our audiences and actors, there will be no re-entry to the theater if you have to leave your seat during the performance. There will be no intermission. 

So I was informed this week by an email confirmation of a ticket to the Donmar's Julius Caesar, at St. Ann's Warehouse, which is playing this month just a half block for the East River. This is not a review of the performance—that will come on Howlround, I think, sometime this month—but rather of the particular bit of anxiety engendered by that email. 

 "Two hours fifteen?" it made me think. "No bathroom? Jeez."

(Be here warned that this post acknowledges certain facts of human biology—namely that sometimes men and women have to go to the bathroom.) 

I've been wary of theatrical bathroom problems since February, when I made the mistake of having a couple of beers before Good Person of Szechwan at La Mama. The beers ran right through me, as beers have a way of doing, and I spent the first act of that lovely show in squirming agony, like a five year-old on a road trip with Mitt "No Bathroom Breaks" Romney. Thankfully, that show had an intermission, and I was able to enjoy the second half in comfort. Julius Caesar would offer no such escape hatch. 

We are grown ups, of course, and can control our bladders, but that doesn't mean it's very much fun to do so. Coffee, tea, beer and cigarettes are all wonderful things to have before a play, and all are diuretics. Being told that you have to hold it for two hours plus, I think, is a mental diuretic as well. 

A few hours before curtain on Saturday, I set aside my tea, and looked away from any offers of beer. Water, I sipped sparingly. A trip to the theater had turned into the night before surgery. This proved moot, however, when I reached the theater, and found out that all of my nervous skittering had overlooked an important fact: my ticket was for Sunday, not Saturday. This was a particularly boneheaded mistake, as you could see if you looked at my datebook, which contained exactly one item for the entire week of Nov. 30 to Oct. 6: "Julius Caesar," it said, on Sunday. But who bothers looking at their datebook?

The front of house staff was gracious, and offered to seat me that night for the performance beginning an hour later than I had thought, but I decided I'd rather have my Saturday to myself, and went home. I repeated my procedure Sunday, scorning anything that might later cause a tickle in my bladder, and by the time I arrived at the gloomy Brooklyn waterfront, mouth and bladder were both stone dry. St. Ann's had set up a makeshift lobby inside the adjacent Brooklyn Roasting Company—a cruel gag for those who were about to have their restroom rights stricken—and the winding line for the bathrooms had the nervous buzz of the crowd waiting for the last helicopter out of Saigon. 

I waited by the river—where some civic art-minded goon had thoughtfully woven plastic strips through a chain link fence, obscuring the view of the skyline and Manhattan Bridge—and listened as the Pirates took a 3-2 lead over the Cardinals, on vital sacrifice fly. They were still leading when the Donmar company, dressed as prison wardens, herded us into the space. "There are toilet facilities on the left," they told us, "and we suggest you use them now." Truly, theatergoing is a romantic pursuit.  Behind me, a grizzled Englishman announced, "It's a fucking prison, shut the fuck up. I don't want to live the experience, I just want to watch it."

The auditorium had been given a jailhouse makeover. The seats were plastic, armless and hard, and the only air conditioning was a few ceiling fans which seemed to have no more than ceremonial value. I'm not usually one to whine about a theater, but the seats, heat and explicit prohibition of bathroomery perplexed me. Where is the line between pampering your audience and abusing them? How long can a play get before the value gained by not having an intermission is outweighed by the distracting effects of stiff backs, jittery legs, and overfull bladders? (90 minutes, as far as I'm concerned.)

The Donmar's Julius Caesar moves quickly, and 2:15—or actually 2:00 flat, since that :15 was built in to allow the crowd time to get settled—is wonderfully short Shakespeare. But in a play that breaks so easily into halves—"Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war" is as good an act-out as any in the canon—it seems silly to risk losing your plastic chair-tortured audience by refusing them a chance to stand and stretch their legs. The honorable deaths of Cassius and Brutus, it seems to me, will not make much of an impression on an audience member whose ass is numb.

It could be that I'm making something out of nothing. Last night's crowd survived intact, save for one man who was overcome just before Caesar's assassination, and scurried out towards the bathroom, never to return. When the lights went up at the end of the performance, the grizzled Englishman leapt to his feet, and let out a war whoop of approval. A good play can make you forget discomfort, and this Julius Caesar largely manages. It's a compelling production, but a fiendishly uncomfortable one. Leave your sweater at home, skip the coffee, and bring a bottle of water—to sip on, and never gulp.

'Szechwan's' Bandleader, On Keeping Brecht Lively

This month's hot ticket has been on Fourth Street, where Taylor Mac is bringing Brecht back to life in the critically lauded Good Person of Szechwan. Rollicking, zany and heartfelt, it is everything we've been told Brecht isn't supposed to be—and it is absolutely marvelous. Although the show is built upon Mac's typically white-hot all-singing, all-dancing performance, Good Person is bolstered by its house band: The Lisps.

A Brooklyn-based band whose instruments include a suitcase full of bells and a built-in washboard, their look is whimsical but their sound has meat. In 2012, they premiered Futurity, a musical of their own. Astor Place Riot spoke this morning with bandleader César Alvarez, about doing musicals yourself, and how to keep Brecht from boring. Good Person of Szechwan runs through February 26th. I suggest bludgeoning whomever you have to in order to secure a ticket.

How did you get attached to this project?

Basically, Taylor Mac is an acquaintance and sort of a hero of mine. They were trying to nail down what they were doing musically with the piece, and Taylor said, "What about César Alvarez, and that band The Lisps?" They were looking for somebody whose musical approach would help them tell the story, but would also be fun and wacky and not quite on the nose. If you read what Brecht said about music in his plays, it's that the music should be its own, standalone thing. 

What's great about having a band doing the music is that we're an autonomous creative unit. We have our own style and approach and performative language, and we bring that to the piece. We're not a pit band—hired guns who show up to play the score—but a creative group that's there alongside, commenting on the story, critiquing it, and enriching it. What's fun about the production is that it's totally wacky and fun and ridiculous, but it's also very Brechtian without being academic.

What do you mean by that?

Brecht is an incredible lion of dramatic writing, and he came up with an entire philosophy of what theater should do. In the translation and canonization of that brilliant idea—of theater as a way to raise the consciousness of humanity—it's become academicized. The usual translation of Brecht's German word—which I'm never gonna say right—is "the alienation effect." [Director] Lear [deBessonet] translates it differently. She translates it as "making strange."

Translating it as "alienation effect" has led people to think that Brecht wants you to alienate your audience. But Brecht was a populist, a fan of vaudeville and silent film and jazz. He wasn't interested in alienating his audience—he just didn't want to hypnotize them. This is Lear's genius—she's figured out a way to take this incredibly dense work, and make it both poignant and relevant, but also really fun to watch.

Between this and your 2012 musical Futurity, The Lisps have gotten very theatrical. How come?

A band can be very insular. We love each other to death, but after seven years, you get sick of working with the same people. When we wrote a musical, we suddenly had twelve new band members!

Now we're a band that's gotten really good at stepping out of our comfort zone. As the MP3 generation takes shape, what you start seeing is bands redesigning themselves for a more collaborative and networked world. As analog as our band is, what we're doing theatrically has everything to do with the fact that it's not enough to just make albums any more. People are searching so desperately for performance, real life experience and three dimensional entertainment, that a lot of bands are starting to reach outside the typical touring and recording format.

It's the best thing we've ever done as a band.

I'm working on a musical right now with a friend of mine who's a musician and a composer. He's never written a musical before—what would you tell him?

My advice is, do everything the opposite of how you think you should. We didn't have any idea how to put on a musical, but we just put it up. Everyone who actually does musicals would say, "Don't do that!"

We just played our musical for our friends, giving us the chance to workshop it in this incredible way. We never played our musical with just a piano, we always had the full band there. That's what helped us get it produced, that we just did it ourselves. 

I'm dying to see a DIY musical culture. When bands and composers and electronic musicians start pulling their music out of the forty minute set in the bar, and start telling a story. How cool would it be if there were an indie musical culture in New York?

The word "musical" carries a lot of baggage. But in the end, it's a deeply American form that's influenced everyone in some way. Everyone's seen musicals. Everyone's seen The Lion King. Everyone was in their high school musical. Even the most disaffected indie kid was in Grease or Hair. The form is much more open than Broadway might have led you to believe.

Are you planning on more musicals?

Right now I'm working on a space musical, which merges the experience of a musical with that of a video game. I'm interested in thinking about how changing technology is going to alter the way we experience musical theater. And we're continuing to work on Futurity, looking towards its New York premiere, which will be imminent.

I Figured Out The Best Thing About Busby Berkeley

42nd Street was on TV this morning, and I watched it while I worked. I'm familiar with Busby Berkeley movies through random clips, which I sometimes put on just to marvel at the madness and the beauty of old Broadway choreography. But I realized, as 42nd Street tapped on, that I'd never seen one of his pictures straight through. It was a hell of a lot better than I'd expected. 

For one thing, it was funny—sexy and crude in the way that only pre-Code movies can be. The endless scenes of hoofers hoofing outdid All That Jazz. The party sequences made me want a highball, which is all you can ask of a roomful of fictional drunks. And the dance numbers shone, in context, much better than they do in the sad little prison of a YouTube window. Berkeley is famous for his hallucinogenic dance sequences, but I'd never considered how liberating they could be after an hour and fifteen minutes of semi-realistic Broadway toil. 

Escena final de 42nd Street de Lloyd Bacon

What I'd never noticed about the title dance sequence before is how gradually it moves past what is actually possible on a Broadway stage. Rather than leaping straight into fantasyland—the way that SIngin' in the Rain and An American In Paris do, say—it happens gradually. We start with a woman in front of a curtain, and then pull out to reveal a couple dozen dancers. From there, the scope gets bigger and bigger, until it becomes clear the reality of the film has broken down. Along the way, your brain argues with itself, trying to rationalize the increasingly impossible space. By the time the woman jumps out the window, chased by her homicidal husband, your brain simply gives up and explodes.

Busby Berkeley—the original psychedelic.

The Musical That Won't Die Continues Not To Die

Have you had a nasty taste in your mouth all day? Keep spitting, and it sticks around? Brush your teeth, rinse with Listerine, chug some whiskey—and it's still there? That's because Bono and the Edge are writing new songs for Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. And something tells me that Broadway's dumbest musical isn't about to get any smarter.

This could be the worst non-Romney-related idea of 2012. Having already paid out well over $100 to see the show, I can’t imagine anyone coming back for the sake of one or two new songs. That Spider-Man congealed into anything remotely watchable is something of a miracle, and tinkering with it could undermine the fragile foundation that supports this utterly nonsensical play. If Bono and the Edge break the play, it could be bye-bye Spidey, hello Kong. (I really want to see that Australian King Kong.)

So, just how bad could this be? Here are some ideas for Bono and the Edge as they sharpen their pencils and get down to making theater magic. Note: if any of these appear in the show, I look forward to the protracted, life-shattering legal battle that will ensue. It’ll make me Broadway famous!

What are the new spidey-songs going to sound like? Well you'll just have to click and find out.

Good Monkey!

I woke up at 2:30 AM, unable to sleep and assuming the trouble was the six gallon cocktail of coffee and hot tea that I must drink each day to keep my playwright's engine functioning. But could it be that I was awoken by something more primal? Something, perhaps, like the far-away awakening of a great, rumbling beast? You know—like a big monkey?

At 10 PM last night, the producers of the new Australian musical King Kong—yes, that Kong—rolled out their creative team in what the press release called "an unprecedented . . . one-time only event presentation." Why the American press push for a show that opens a year from now in Melbourne? I can only take it to mean that the people at Global Creatures are as serious as their ridiculous website suggests. Playbill has a summary of the press release—salient details below.

I'm intrigued, primarily, by the Australian-ness of the whole project. The composer is Marius de Vries, of Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge fame. The production company, aside from being responsible for the seemingly quite impressive How To Train Your Dragon, are also working on a stage adaptation of Luhrman's Strictly Ballroom—a personal favorite of mine. And the score will feature "new and existing" songs from Sarah McLachlan, Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja, Justice and The Avalanches. Remember The Avalanches? An Australian band, had an odd hit in 2000 with Frontier Psychiatrist? Man, I thought that song was so cool when I was a kid—and darn if the video doesn't have some flair. Switch the curtain at the beginning to red instead of gold and that could be a Baz Luhrman musical right there.

(Waitaminute—Marius de Vries? Sounds an awful lot like Roger de Bris, whose dress, of course, made him look like the Chrysler Building—just the sort of building King Kong liked to climb on! See? It all comes back to The Producers!)

As nifty as all that is, the press release sold me as soon as I heard the words, "the most technologically advanced puppet in the world—a one-tonne, six-metre giant silverback." I woke up the boys in the Metric Conversion Lab to calculate that six "metres" is, "oh, we don't know. Around eighteen feet or whatever." That's only half as big as the ape was really supposed to be, but hey, pretty damned tall. 

Not impressed? Because I'm over five feet tall and have an allergy to the Izod Center, I wasn't allowed to see How to Train Your Dragon. But have you seen clips?

A glimpse of the show opening in Melbourne next March. RAW. See more at tennews.com.au

​That shit is awesome. It's either the late night, the lack of sleep, or my natural ten year-oldness, but I'm calling it now—King Kong will be too. 

In more immediate news,The Front is on TCM. I'm gonna go see how Woody stacks up next to the great ape.

Goodbye to Manderley

​The Rebecca musical has died again, for good this time. The increasingly bizarre story of malaria, poisoned pen letters and all-around bad business is being better reported elsewhere, and is proving to be the juiciest bit of Broadway gossip since Julie Taymor's $70 million attempt to kill every actor in New York City. Just an hour ago, the Times reported that the mysterious malarial investor was linked to a Long Island Ponzi-schemer, which has had the effect of bringing the whole scandal back down from the realm of theatrical fantasy to the sordid metropolitan area that we inhabit. But in their giddy reporting of each baffling development, the Times has failed to point out something crucial:

​Why on earth did anyone ever think they could make a musical out of Rebecca?

I've been wondering this since the production first faltered back in spring. Du Maurier's novel is a longtime favorite of every woman in my father's family, and they talked me into reading it during a tedious trip to Long Island in the summer before sixth grade. ​The book is southern Gothic on the Riviera, like Fitzgerald swapping spit with Faulkner, an image which I already regret creating. From that crackerjack first sentence—"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again"—I was hooked, and I've always held a soft spot for the novel, without ever rereading it. Perhaps now is the time.

​The movie never charmed me. The Hays Code forced Hitchcock to change the crucial murder from a justifiable homicide to a clumsy boating accident, and I was never able to see the fun in that. The Academy disagreed with me, and the movie remains a classic. This is, perhaps, why Austrian producers were able to drum the story into a successful musical in 2006, and why the current beleaguered band thought it would be a good idea to translate the show and bring it west.

​A seventy year-old Best Picture winner does not occupy the kind of mental real estate needed for a Broadway hit, and the atmosphere of overblown European Gothic stinks of the West End in the 80s. What is lush and charming in the book would have been bloated and dismal on-stage. Don't believe me?

​It's not Lotte Lenya. 

It's unfair, of course, to judge a musical we haven't seen performed in a musical we don't understand. The people behind Rebecca put in good work, and it's possible the show would have been tasteful, the script elegant, and the score inspiring. But it's struck me as a bad idea since spring, and for once my gut—taking a break from its endless demands for cheeseburgers—seems to have been proven right.