Play Nice, Dammit, Or Don't Play At All

The excuses are numerous: “I’m just tired of writing negative reviews”, “If I don’t have something good to say, better to say nothing at all”, “I don’t want to discourage anyone”, “my audience isn’t sophisticated enough to handle it”, “it doesn’t make any difference any way”; to all of these excuses by theater critics and reviewers here in Los Angeles – and anywhere for that matter – for not writing negative reviews I say to you, “Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” And even more than that I say, “Shame. Shame, shame, shame.”

Shame and bullshit.

You are not theater boosters, you are not theater cheerleaders, you are not theater publicists, you are theater critics. Act like one.

Bold words from Colin Mitchell, writing in the excellent Los Angeles theater blog Bitter Lemon. It is a well-worth-reading long rant against what one of his fellow writers, in an otherwise incoherent column, called "the sin of Nice Guyism." Though I applaud Mitchell's attitude, something about the complaint leaves me cold. It made me wonder—and I feel so wonderfully Carrie Bradshaw right now, ending my lede with a rhetorical question—is it ever nice...to be nice?

(An aside: there are so many wonderful pictures of Carrie looking thoughtful while asking inane rhetorical questions:

​My friends and I used to play a game called Carrieism, where we would try to think of the most perfectly thoughtful stupid puns. My all-time favorite, imagined for an episode about the pressures of planning an anniversary—"And so it made me wonder...at what point does a milestone...become a millstone?" Send $45 to this blog and I'll teach you how to play at home.)

Toxic reviews, are as irresistible as fried food, but Mitchell isn't calling for nastiness—just good, honest criticism. Theater criticism is not the same as writing about film, books or art. It's more like music writing—bigger and smaller at the same time—and there are a couple of reasons to argue against honesty. I'm not sure I entirely agree with them, but it seems worthwhile to raise, if only because I've got most of a cup of coffee left, and I can't enjoy coffee if I'm not typing half-witted nonsense at the same time.

The first is a question of column inches. Dozens of shows open every week, and even the Times—New York or L.A.—can cover only a handful. Savage reviews are delightful, but unless a show is a notable flop, the space can be better used. Why waste the paper's space and the reader's time on a show that's not worth the ink?

The slightly squishier argument is that, in some cases, it's better not to kick a production while it's down. At first glance, the thought of a critic refusing to speak out on behalf of the audience seems cowardly. In taking down an overblown Broadway show, the critic is, uh, whatshisname. That short guy that threw that rock at that big guy. But step down the ladder a few ranks, and suddenly Whoosewhatsit Shortguy looks pretty goddamned big. 

I'm not talking about amateur theater, although writing this did remind me of David Sedaris' vicious reviews of children's Christmas plays—"The story of the first Christmas is an overrated clunker of a holiday pageant." Small-scale theater in New York, and I say this as someone who writes for small-scale theaters, is mostly garbage. To indulge in a cliche, because I'm not getting paid to write better than this, when searching for diamonds in the rough, a critic shouldn't complain when he doesn't find a jewel. A salary, health insurance, and a full set of teeth make a professional critic a fat cat compared to most people who work off off Broadway. Tearing down their work would make him a bully.

Again, I'm not entirely sure I agree with the argument for kindness, unless it's my own work that's being reviewed. Even as I type this, I can think of one good reason to savage the smallest production: a lazy script. Last year I saw an acquaintance's play performed at a well-respected small downtown theater. The production was simple but gorgeous; the acting was mostly good; the seats were comfortable. But the script was repetitive, shrill and trite. That's not a crime—plenty of my best friends are repetitive, shrill and trite—but the playwright had spent over a year on this play, workshopping it several times and changing almost nothing at all. 

Present a play in good faith, and the critic owes you the benefit of the doubt. But if your playwright—or director, actor, designer—isn't capable of self-criticism, he is wasting the audience's time, and deserves a taste of the ax. 

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.

Quick Bright Things: At Classic Stage Company, Bebe and Christina Take on the Bard

So, one time I got to interview Bebe Neuwirth about Midsummer Night's Dream. The production was fantastic, and so was she. Big surprise, right?

Like an unimaginative lover on Valentine’s Day, theater companies like to throw around rose petals. It’s always the same: a single petal drifts from the ceiling, then a second, then a flurry. At the Classic Stage Company’s new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the petals start when Bebe Neuwirth’s Titania asks her fairies for a lullaby. What starts as a gentle shower turns into a deluge, as though the petals were being sprayed by a leafblower, and finishes with the fairies dumping grocery bags full of them onto their queen. The solemn cliché turns to satire, and the audience chortles as Ms. Neuwirth drifts off to sleep, to spend the next few scenes buried under a six-inch pile of petals.

“Last night I had a hot flash while I was under there,” the actress said during an interview with The Observer last week. “Fifty-three-year-old women readers will know that it’s no fun having a hot flash under a bushel of petals. I was laughing at myself, thinking, ‘Oh, wow. I hope none of these petals melt into my flesh.’”

Hot flashes aside, Ms. Neuwirth looks every inch the fairy goddess. As the production rockets from slapstick to sublime, she is its anchor—a woodland monarch who maintains dignity no matter how silly she gets. This strikingly funny take on one of the world’s most-produced plays, which opens April 29, is only the latest in a string of sharp productions by a company whose imagination, A-list casts and impossibly scarce tickets have, in the past few years, won it a place at the top of the Off-Broadway hierarchy. If CSC ever falls from grace, it won’t be Bebe’s fault.

The 20s For The 21st Century

In April, Matthew Broderick and Kelli O'Hara were in a pretty lousy show called Nice Work If You Can Get It. Before it opened, with none of knowing that the show wouldn't be great, I interviewed the two of them. They were supremely delightful.

Last week, in a rehearsal studio a few blocks from the Flatiron Building, the ensemble hoofed through “Fascinating Rhythm,” and Ms. O’Hara and Mr. Broderick told The Observer, in an interview, that it was the era that drew them to the show.

“Most people who do musicals like old musicals, whether they admit it or not,” said Mr. Broderick. “I like the flasks, the shoes. My costumes are so beautiful in this. It’s when there were real tailors. My god, how old do I sound?”

Besides looking like the ’20s, the show will sound like it. “There’s no American Idol here,” said Ms. O’Hara. The songs, most of which are well-known standards, “are going to be familiar in the same way that history is.”

“With a new twist!” said Mr. Broderick.

“A new twist,” she allowed. “The ’20s for the 21st century!”

Bialystock Rises Again

New York Magazine's Scott Brown ​has the final word on the Rebecca blow-up. He phrases it much more elegantly than I did. It's almost like the guy's a professional writer or something. Brown is thrilled about the play's highly dramatic implosion—not because it means good professionals will be out of work, but because it's a signal that, "the stereotype of the sharp-lapeled Broadway bullshit artist endures." He goes on:

Rebecca may prove that maybe the Max Bialystocks haven’t been priced out by a post-Producers, post-Disney Broadway after all. The theater biz, decades since Times Square was sterilized and laminated, remains uncorporatizable, immune to ruthless Romneyesque efficiences, financialization, and scientific management.

This has nothing to do with Brown's point, which I've already echoed plenty, but god do I love The Producers. The original movie is a strange case. It peters out terribly in the last thirty or so minutes, but the first scene of that movie is the tidiest introduction of characters, conflict​ and planning that you'll ever see. Whenever I start a play, at some point I end up going back to that movie—everything up to when Gene Wilder runs around the fountain—and I try to rip off Brooks' structure. I usually can't make it. You know why?

Because writing is hard.​

And that sucks.​

Actors As Dickensian Urchins

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​Actors!

Echoing yesterday's chatter about the unpaid American actor, The Stage's Mark Shenton—A British person!—complains that to not pay actors a living wage, even in Fringe productions, is terribly unfair. Setting aside the fact that there are many actors on this side of the Atlantic who would be happy to get any wage at all, no matter how deadly, there is something about his argument that seems too simple. Let's take a look, shall we?

But another actor friend has also suggested to me that, as long as there are theatres that don’t pay actors a living wage, she won’t be going to see shows at them. She’s going to withdraw her support as an audience member. And maybe that will force those theatres to examine their business models again.

They are sustained by actors who surrender their rights to be paid at the first audition, and audiences who subsidise the theatres by still buying tickets for them. It will only change if both the actors and the audiences behave differently.

Dust off your red flags! Stencil out a placard! Have your set designer draw up plans for a barricade! We're going on strike, dammit.​ Or, alternatively, we could gather up all of our magical American money, flit over to England, and take advantage of the British actor's apparent willingness to debase himself in exchange for a pat on the head and a bit of porridge. Want to cast Newsies or Oliver? Just hang out a sign advertising free red wine, and you'll have dozens of adorable little mongrel thespians at your door, dressed in super-classy English rags.

What Shenton doesn't point out is addressed beautifully in the comments, by a couple of fringe-level producers who chime in to remind him that, on productions where the actors are paid badly, the producer is usually paid worse.​ Says Free Will:

When you consider that the hire of a fringe theat can cost up to 500 a night (the unscrupulous venue I used actually charged us 400 just so we could get into the theatre to have a dress run 3 hours before we opened) the sad fact of the matter is that only a rare few shows that go onto the fringe will take enough money to cover production costs never mind raise enough to then pay everyone involved a good wage and leave the producers with enough to break even.

That's £500, or eleventy-million dollars. As much as I hate seeing actors let themselves be taken advantage of, I feel for the small producer. Everyone here is losing money and time—as long as they lose it in equal portions, it's hard to complain about unfairness. The real lesson here is that anyone who wants to make money off the stage should start by owning a theater. A more artistic ambition consigns one to life shoveling coal beneath the Barbican, or however it is British actors spend their time. (I could write a How-To Investment manual called Whatever You Do, Don't Be An Actor. It's going to be very short.) 

The last nifty bit comes from the second commentator. I didn't read any farther than that, because mine is a go-go lifestyle, and I have quite a bit of sitting about planned for the rest of the morning. "The alternative is the US model where Equity actors are forbidden from working in non-Equity shows on pain of expulsion from the union," says Robert Shaw. "The US Equity model is sterile and oppressive; to art, to innovation, to risk-taking and to its members. It's definitive proof that this is not the way to go.​"

English commentators are much more intelligent and articulate than the American variety. And, wait—Robert Shaw? That guy knows what's up.

Jaws Movie Clip - watch all clips http://j.mp/wtFgju click to subscribe http://j.mp/sNDUs5 Quint (Robert Shaw) reveals to Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and Brody (Roy Scheider) the chilling shark-infeseted nightmare of his past. TM & © Universal (2012) Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw Director: Steven Spielberg MOVIECLIPS YouTube Channel: http://j.mp/vqieFG Join our Facebook page: http://j.mp/tb8OMH Follow us on Twitter: http://j.mp/rZzGsm Buy Movie: http://amzn.to/u49ADp Producer: Richard D.

Mmm. Acting.​

Life In The Dramatic Coalmine

John, from the wonderfully named blog Tales of a Squishy Morph, just posted a manifesto for non-equity actors, imploring them not to work for free. ​His point:

In addition to my full-time job, you're asking me to spend 4-6 weeks in rehearsal and 2-4 weeks in performance. When I'm working on a show, I leave the house at 8:30 am and roll in after 11pm. This is time away from my friends, family and partner. My laundry and dishes pile up. My milk goes bad. I miss other people's shows. I miss family gatherings. I miss concerts, movies, museum exhibits, TV shows, and other cultural events. I spend money on gas, tolls, parking, bus fare, cab fare and subway fare to get to rehearsal.

It breaks my heart to see actors, especially those who are more than a few minutes out of college, working for free. Of course, they shouldn't, because it's humiliating. But of course, they have to, because otherwise they can't work.

It's unsolvable problems like this that make me happy not to be an actor. Playwrights get paid less than actors do, but the work is more forgiving to our schedules, and we get our names in lights. Or, more typically, written on a cheap 3x5 postcard.

I'm glad to see someone like John taking a stand on this, and I hope more can follow his example. Unless it means my play doesn't get produced, in which case, get back to work you damned layabouts!​

What You Got, October?

The newspaper tells me it is October. Though naturally skeptical of print media, I think this may be correct. If so, that means four weeks of Mets-free baseball playoffs, a bit of my girlfriend yelling at me for watching baseball, and the beginning of what could be called the meat of the fall theater season. (Such meat, I should add, makes a dismal hoagie.)

There are a few bits of high drama storming Broadway this month—your Glengarries​ and assorted Woolfensteins—but I have trouble getting excited about watching big name actors tear their way through classic dramas, no matter how strong the pedigree. I'm a confessed dramaphobe, and I have particular trouble dropping several hundred dollars to watch Important Thespians in Important Plays. So, what's piqued my lowbrow curiosity this month?

The Heiress​, at Walter Kerr. I decided to inaugurate my spiffy new blog with a late-night screed against Rebecca, saying that a Broadway musical based on a seven decades-old movie and book was a lousy idea. Since I'm jerk enough to kick the play while it's down, I probably deserve to be made a fool of. The Heiress, which is based on Henry James' surprisingly-funny Washington Square, premiered in 1947, and inspired the 1949 Montgomery Clift/Olivia de Haviland picture. It's an odd choice for a revival, and if it's a hit I will look dumb, which only seems fair. Previews start October 4th.

Modern Terrorism, or They Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them​, at Second Stage. I'll admit it now—I'm a sucker for verbose titles, especially those with a bit of violent flair. The first decent play I ever wrote was about harebrained bookselling terrorists who attempt to blow up the Union Square Barnes & Noble, and this story—about some harebrained terrorist terrorists who want to do the same to the Empire State Building—brings me back, nostalgia-style. Aside from his various theatrical achievements, playwright Jon Kern is a Simpsons staff writer. Although I'm sure I'll spend the whole play grousing about how I covered the subject better, I think Modern Terrorism could be worthwhile. Opens October 15th. 

​Theater! Daniel Pettrow in The Wooster Group's Hamlet. © Paula Court.

Hamlet, at The Performing Garage. Ooh. Ooh. Am I excited for this. I was in college when the Wooster Group premiered their wacky, high-minded Hamlet, and the thought of watching a bunch of actors screw around with the text alongside the film of Richard Burton doing the same in 1964—well, it appealed to the burgeoning deconstructionist in me. Since then, I have systematically choked the life out of my inner academic, but this play's conceit still appeals. This time they're filming the performance, adding another layer to an already overloaded concoction. Piling layer upon layer works for cake, and I have to think that anything that works for cake will work for Shakespeare too. Opens October 24th.

​Of course, I've missed all sorts of things. Let me know what they are. 

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. 

Crowd-Source the Dragon: Qui Nguyen and His Vampire Cowboys Are Back

I love Qui. You like Qui. Here's 1,200 words about the guy, which I wrote for the Observer back in spring.

The dragon is called the Tiamat, and in last fall’s production of Qui Nguyen’s She Kills Monsters, this firebreather closed the show. As the terrified heroine cowered in a spotlight, smoke filled the Flea Theater’s narrow stage. When the lights rose, there was the monster: a colossal five-headed puppet whose handlers were neatly concealed behind the fog. As a practical effect, the Tiamat was convincing enough to make one swear off CGI forever. As theatrical spectacle, it was a highlight of 2011.

Mr. Nguyen, whose name is pronounced “kwee gwen,” could have used any “random red dragon” in Monsters, but chose the Tiamat by polling his fans on Facebook. “I know what my audience likes,” he said last week over lunch at a Ninth Avenue diner. “And that’s part of how I work as an artist. I’m very crowd-sourcey.”

Knowing his fans, and giving them what they want, has secured a place in the Off-Broadway cosmos for Mr. Nguyen and his company, Vampire Cowboys. His plays are fast, funny, packed with combat, dance and genre play, and distinguished from other slick, tongue-in-cheek entertainment by their utter lack of irony. On Tuesday night his newest work, The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G, opened off Broadway in a coproduction with the Ma-Yi Theatre. Although it features all the Vampire Cowboy hallmarks—“ninjas, kung-fu, girl fights,” as Mr. Nguyen put it—it is the most personal work they have ever produced. Without forgoing the swordplay, the Vampire Cowboys are growing up.

There's more! Much more!