Yearly Archives: 2012

HARRISON, TX: THREE PLAYS BY HORTON FOOTE

BLIND DATE is the first of three intimate short dramas by Horton Foote set in Harrison, Texas

Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St, between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 15, $30-$70
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org

Texas-born playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote, who died in 2009 at the age of ninety-two after a long, fruitful career, had an uncanny knack for capturing the inherent beauty and heartbreak of American life, putting realistic characters in believable situations, just going through their daily chores of merely existing. He is best known for such films as Tender Mercies and To Kill a Mockingbird (for which he won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay) and such plays as The Trip to Bountiful, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Young Man from Atlanta, and the three-part “Orphans’ Home Cycle.” His intoxicating slice-of-life Americana is currently on view in Harrison, TX, a compilation of three short works, ably directed by Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park), that have been brought together at Primary Stages. Blind Date is set in Harrison in 1928, on the cusp of the Great Depression, as pouty sourpuss Sarah Nancy (Andrea Lynn Green) has been sent to live with her aunt Dolores (Hallie Foote, one of Horton’s daughters) and uncle Robert (Devon Abner). Sarah Nancy is a mopey, bored young woman who’d rather hang out in her room than have to talk to anyone, especially young men, but Dolores is determined to get her a boyfriend and has thus set him up with Felix (Evan Jonigkeit), a local insurance salesman who is due to show up any minute. Dolores tries to coach Sarah Nancy on how to be a better conversationalist while also attempting to take care of her rather hapless husband, but when Felix arrives, things go a bit crazy.

Andrea Lynn Green and Jayne Houdyshell think of the good times in Horton Foote’s THE MIDNIGHT CALLER

In The One-Armed Man, also set in 1928, an angry former employee, McHenry (Alexander Cendese), is demanding to see his old boss, C. W. Rowe (Jeremy Bobb), so he can get back the arm he lost in an accident, but Rowe seems more intent on railing on about his personal success to his accountant, Pinkey (Abner). Rowe offers McHenry five dollars to go away, but it’s going to take a lot more than money to make things straight. The third play, The Midnight Caller, is set nearly a quarter-century later, but it feels like Harrison hasn’t changed a bit as a trio of gossipy women — judgmental chatterbox Alma Jean Jordan (Mary Bacon), “Cutie” Spencer (Green), and older teacher Miss Rowena Douglas (Jayne Houdyshell) — debate the upcoming arrival of Helen Crews (Jenny Dare Paulin), a woman with a reputation who is moving into their boarding house after being thrown out by her mother for her questionable activities. When a stranger, Ralph Johnston (Bobb), also shows up looking for a room, the situation gets a lot more complicated. Unfortunately, the eventual appearance of Helen’s former flame, Harvey Weems (Cendese), severely detracts from the play, which is otherwise sweet and engaging. In the first and third works, Foote’s snappy down-home dialogue is the centerpiece, adding beautiful, funny, poetic language to the relatively simple goings-on, with characters that are easy to warm to, especially Miss Rowena, who looks out the window, remembering what it was like as a child gazing out at the fireflies. The middle piece is far more abrupt and shocking, providing a strong counterpoint that would have felt significantly out of place had it started or finished the trio of plays. Taken together, the three pieces, running approximately one hundred minutes and performed without an intermission, offer a fascinating examination of an old-time America that might not be quite as far away as one might imagine. (Harrison, TX runs through September 15 and will be followed at Primary Stages by Him, a new play by another of Foote’s daughters, Daisy Foote.)

SEE IT BIG! THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Cybill Shepherd prepare for adulthood in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Sunday, September 9, free with museum admission, 7:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

The summer season of the Museum of the Moving Image “See It Big!” series concludes this weekend with two very different films, both shot by cinematographer Robert Surtees: William Wyler’s glorious Ben-Hur, for which he won his third Oscar, and Peter Bogdanovich’s much more subtle The Last Picture Show, a tender-hearted, poignant portrait of sexual awakening and coming-of-age in a sleepy Texas town. Adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel by the author and the director, the film is set in the early 1950s, focusing on Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms), a teenager who works at the local pool hall with Billy (Timothy’s brother Sam), a simple-minded boy who needs special caring. Sonny’s best friend, Duane Jackson (Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges), is dating the prettiest girl in school, Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd, in her film debut), who is getting ready to test out the sexual waters, sneaking away on a date with Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid), who takes her to a naked-swimming party in a wealthier suburb of Wichita Falls. Meanwhile, Sonny breaks up with his girlfriend, Charlene Druggs (Sharon Taggart), and becomes drawn to the sad, unhappy Ruth Popper (an Oscar-winning Cloris Leachman), the wife of his football coach (Bill Thurman). The outstanding all-star cast also features Oscar-nominated Ellen Burstyn as Lois, Jacy’s mother; Eileen Brennan as a waitress in the local diner who makes cheeseburgers for Sonny; Clu Gulager as a working man who has a thing for Lois; Frank Marshall, who went on to become a big-time producer, as high school student Tommy Logan; and Oscar winner Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion, the moral center of the town and owner of the pool hall, diner, and movie theater, which shows such films as Father of the Bride and Red River. Surtees shoots The Last Picture Show in a sentimental black-and-white that gives the film an old-fashioned feel, as if it’s a part of Americana that is fading away. Bogdanovich also chose to have no original score, instead populating the tale with country songs by Hank Williams, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Lefty Frizzell, Tony Bennett, and others singing tales of woe. In many ways the film is the flip side of George Lucas’s 1973 hit American Graffiti, which is set ten years later but looks like it’s from another century; it also has a lot in common with François Truffaut’s 1962 classic Jules and Jim.. Nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, The Last Picture Show is an unforgettable slice-of-life drama that will break your heart over and over again.

DAILY NEWS BLOCK PARTY

Ed Charles will be back at the Daily News Block Party to sign autographs and show off his championship ring on Sunday (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Third Avenue Street Fair takes place on Sunday from 12 noon to 5:00, between 66th & 86th Sts., but what makes this one a little different is that the Daily News hosts a block party from 76th to 77th Sts., featuring an all-star lineup of meet-and-greets, autograph signings, and live music and comedy. Among this year’s media participants are the News’s own Bill Madden and Denis Hamill, channel 4’s Pat Battle, Lauren Scala, and Raphael Miranda, NY1’s Cheryl Wills, FOX 5’s Greg Kelly and Dari Alexander, and MY9’s Brenda Blackmon. Among the current and former athletes on hand will be boxers Bryant Jennings, Riddick Bowe, Steve Cunningham, Danny Jacobs, Marcus Browne, and Mark Breland, Guyanese sprinter Aliann Pompey, and Mets champion third baseman Ed Charles, along with such pseudo-celebrities as JoJo Spatafora of Big Brother, Elizabeth Vashisht of VH1’s Tough Love, Raquel Castro of The Voice, Christina Salgado and Jenna Russo of Oxygen’s Bad Girls Club, and the Naked Cowboy and the Naked Cowgirl. Live performers include the C.A.S.Y.M. Orchestra, Gary Russo, Kool Mike Ski, the Edwin Vazquez Band, and Taina.

BAM FISHER NEXT WAVE: ECLIPSE

Jonah Bokaer and Anthony McCall present the first production in new BAM black-box space (photo by Stephanie Berger)

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
Through Sunday, September 9, $20
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

BAM has inaugurated its new black-box theater, the 250-seat Fishman Space in the Fisher Building, with the illuminating Eclipse. Part of BAM’s thirtieth Next Wave Festival, the seventy-minute piece is a collaboration between thirty-year-old Ithaca-born choreographer and Chez Bushwick founder Jonah Bokaer and sixty-six-year-old “solid-light” British installation artist Anthony McCall, commissioned by BAM specifically for the Fishman. Performed by Tal Adler-Arieli, Sara Procopio, CC Chang, and Julie Seitel, with Bokaer soloing at the beginning and the end, Eclipse takes place on a soft, dark floor, with the audience sitting two or three rows deep on all four sides, in addition to balcony seats. (All seating is general admission for this show.) Thirty-six lightbulbs hang from the ceiling in diagonal rows and at different heights, going on and off at timed intervals as the dancers move under and around them to the whirr of an old-fashioned movie projector, courtesy of sound designer David Grubbs. Wearing socks, button-down white shirts, and either white or gray cuffed pants — as well as, at times, a vest that is part school crossing guard, part airport ramp agent — the four main dancers walk to the four corners of the stage, stand face-to-face with the audience, and meet at the center, where they perform slow duets and trios. Shadows cast by the lightbulbs and spotlights cast geometric patterns on the floor, particularly triangles at the corners and a square at the center, where much of the more intricate, sculptural choreography occurs. The overall effect is supposed to evoke a live, three-dimensional, four-sided cinematic experience, with close-ups and long shots all in deep focus, but some of those aspects seem to get lost, at least for those audience members seated downstairs. Perhaps the people sitting in the balcony get a better angle of the pathways and changing geography created by the bulbs, supervised by lighting designer Aaron Copp. Still, Eclipse shines a fascinating light on BAM’s new venue, which will feature more experimental productions, with all tickets $20. Also playing the Fishman this month are Nora Chipaumire’s Miriam, Derrick Adams’s The Channel, and Ian and Chad’s Next Wave of Song.

BRUCE HIGH QUALITY FOUNDATION: ART HISTORY WITH LABOR / OPEN HOUSE

Bronze rat watches over Bruce High Quality Foundation installation in Lever House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Lever House
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through October 1
Admission: free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com

When we were photographing the latest display in the Lever House lobby a few days before the official opening, a young man in a suit, seemingly on his way to lunch, stopped us and asked, “What is this?” When we told him it was an art installation by the Bruce High Quality Foundation, he just looked blankly around and said, “Is it finished?” We said that we thought it was probably pretty close to completion, if not done yet, and he sneered. “What the hell! I gotta walk through this every day?” And he stormed off, shaking his head. An arts collaborative formed eight years ago and named for a fictional character, Bruce High Quality, who supposedly died in the September 11 terrorist attacks, BHQF creates multimedia installations and performances that comment on the state of art, politics, and the world. Indeed, “Art History with Labor” at first appears unfinished, with working materials all around the lobby, including a bucket with a mop, a wheelbarrow with a bag of soil, a floor polisher, a ladder, a trash can, and other elements that make it look like a construction site. Meanwhile, outside in the plaza, a giant rat faces the gallery, growling, but instead of his being another blow-up Scabby the Rat seen at so many city construction sites that employ nonunion workers, this twelve-foot-high bronze casting is called “The New Colossus,” directly evoking the 1883 Emma Lazarus poem that is on a plaque within the Statue of Liberty (“‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’”).

The Bruce High Quality Foundation reimagines Martin Luther’s 95 Theses for the modern age (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

But everything is part of the exhibition, along with a lone briefcase, an old watercooler, and a knocked-over filing cabinet spilling out printouts of “Art History with Labor: 95 Theses.” Free for the taking, the stapled-together four pages mimic Martin Luther’s 1517 document, a major force in the arrival of the Protestant Reformation, with quotes from Luther as well as Jean-Luc Godard, Roland Barthes, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Oscar Wilde, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jamie Dimon, Thomas Edison, and Sun Tzu in addition to facts about Ayn Rand, the Art Workers Guild, Auschwitz, Nikola Tesla, Paul Robeson, Iwo Jima, and the Lever Brothers, who built the company town Port Sunlight in 1888 for the men and women working in their soap factory. Each object in the lobby is equipped with a speaker pronouncing the theses, accompanied by a video, examining the nature of art and labor and how they have intertwined through the ages. The exhibit also includes “Double Iwo Jima,” a two-panel painting that raises questions about art, truth, propaganda, and labor by re-creating multiple images of Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. So, is the installation actually finished? One could argue that it’s only a start to further investigation on the part of the visitor. You can find out more about the Bruce High Quality Foundation and their unaccredited art university (a self-described “‘fuck you’ to the hegemony of critical solemnity and market-mediocre despair”) on Sunday, September 9, when they host an open house at their headquarters at 34 Ave. A, and there will be a closing reception for “Art History with Labor” at Lever House on October 1.

TICKET ALERT: FALL FOR DANCE FESTIVAL 2012

Shen Wei Dance Arts will perform RITE OF SPRING at Fall for Dance Festival at City Center (photo by Stephanie Berger)

City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tickets go on sale September 9 at 11:00 am
Festival runs September 27 – October 13, $15
212-581-1212
www.nycitycenter.org

On your mark, get set . . . Tickets for the ninth annual Fall for Dance Festival at City Center, which runs September 27 through October 13, go on sale September 9 at 11:00 am, but you better not delay if you want to go, because this hotly anticipated event sells out quickly. All seats are only fifteen dollars, with each program featuring multiple works in various disciplines from established and up-and-coming international companies. For example, the first two nights bring together Jared Grimes’s Dancing the Tap (choreographed by Grimes), Fang-Yi Sheu & Artists’ Five Movements, Three Repeats (Christopher Wheeldon), Nederlands Dans Theater’s Shutters Shut (Sol León and Paul Lightfoot), and BalletBoyz’ Void (Jack Cemerek), while September 29-30 consists of Juilliard Dance’s Fortune (Pam Tanowitz), American Ballet Theatre’s Sinatra Suite (Twyla Tharp), the Hong Kong Ballet’s Luminous (Peter Quanz), and Martha Graham Dance Company’s Chronicle (Graham). Among the other groups participating in the festival are the Moiseyev Dance Company, Shantala Shivalingappa, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Jodi Melnick, Shen Wei Dance Arts (Rite of Spring, which they performed last fall at the Park Avenue Armory), and Ballet West. Before and after each show, audience members can relax in Lounge FFD, where they can grab a drink and meet some of the dancers and choreographers. And there will be three special free DanceTalk panel discussions at the City Center Studios during the festival: “Dance and Live Music: How Do Choreographers Work with Composers?” on September 30 at 5:30 with Jodi Melnick, Steven Reker, Pam Tanowitz, and Charles Wuorinen, moderated by Maura Keefe; “For Public Consumption: Shaping Social and Cultural Dance for the Stage” on October 3 at 6:30 with Kumu Kaleo, Eri Mefri, Carlota Santana, and Elena Shcherbakova, moderated by Wendy Perron; and a lecture/demonstration on October 5 with Ka Leo O Laka I Ka Hikina O Ka La.

AMERICAN GAGSTERS — GREAT COMEDY TEAMS: WOODY ALLEN & DIANE KEATON

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton struggle with domestic bliss in ANNIE HALL

BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
September 8-9
Series runs through September 17
212-415-5500
www.bam.org

“We enjoy your films, particularly the early, funny ones,” an alien tells Sandy Bates in Woody Allen’s vastly underrated 1980 Fellini homage, Stardust Memories. Allen stars as Bates, a very serious director being honored at a film festival where everyone raves about his early stuff, much as fans and critics did after the Woodman shocked his public with the Bergmanesque Interiors in 1978. But what early stuff it was, with Allen and real-life partner Diane Keaton teaming up to become one of the greatest comedy duos of them all, right up there with Tracy and Hepburn, Powell and Loy, Martin and Lewis, and Cary Grant and any number of leading ladies. BAMcinématek is honoring Allen and Keaton (as well as all those others) as part of the fabulous series “American Gagsters: Great Comedy Teams,” screening four of their best films this weekend. In 1977’s Annie Hall (Saturday at 2:00 & 6:50), Allen plays Alvy Singer, a Jewish television writer who has fallen in love with the ultimate goy, Annie (a never-better Keaton, whose real name is Diane Hall). As their relationship ebbs and flows, they discuss major spiders, lobsters, sharks, and other creatures while driving through Plutonium and meeting Marshall McLuhan. (Alvy: “What’s the difference? It’s all mental masturbation.” Annie: “Oh, well, now we’re finally getting to a subject you know something about.” Alvy: “Hey, don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.”) In 1973’s Sleeper (Saturday at 4:30 & 9:15), Allen is Miles Monroe, a cryogenically preserved liberal who has woken up two hundred years later to find a very different world as poses as a robot butler for the snooty Luna Schlosser (Keaton), tests out an orgasmotron, and becomes a revolutionary. (Luna: “Oh, I see. You don’t believe in science, and you also don’t believe that political systems work, and you don’t believe in God, huh?” Miles: “Right.” Luna: “So then, what do you believe in?” Miles: “Sex and death — two things that come once in a lifetime . . . but at least after death, you’re not nauseous.”)

Diane Keaton and Woody Allen fight for Mother Russia in intellectual slapstick comedy

In 1979’s Manhattan (Sunday at 2:00 & 6:50), a celebration of Gershwin and New York City, Allen plays Isaac Davis, a forty-two-year-old television writer who starts dating seventeen-year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), much to the consternation of the snobby Mary Wilkie (Keaton), who is having an affair with Isaac’s best friend (Michael Murphy). (Mary: “What are you thinking?” Isaac: “I dunno, I was just thinking. There must be something wrong with me, because I’ve never had a relationship with a woman that’s lasted longer than the one between Hitler and Eva Braun.”) And in 1975’s absolutely riotous Love and Death (Sunday at 4:30 & 9:15), a hysterical parody of classic Russian literature, Allen takes on the role of the less-than-heroic Boris Grushenko, who finds himself dueling with a gentleman and going after Napoleon with Sonja (Keaton), the cousin he is madly in love with. (Sonja: “And I want three children.” Boris: “Yes. Yes. One of each.”) Allen went on to make some terrific films with his future partner, Mia Farrow, but it his work with Keaton that cemented his reputation and is likely to be best remembered now, in 2173, and beyond.