Emery Battis R.I.P.

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Christopher Arnott

Emery Battis (left) with Milo O'Shea in Blitzstein's Daarlin' Juno at Long Wharf in 1976. Photo courtesy of the Long Wharf Theatre.

Regional theater actor extraordinaire Emery Battis died this week in Massachusetts at the age of 96. He’d already been performing for over 30 years when the regional theater movement took hold in the late 1960s. Then he really got busy. New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre kept him active for over a decade, often in in large ensemble pieces such as David Rudkin’s Afore Night Come (a violent and controversial rural drama which had its U.S. premiere in New Haven in 1972), David Storey’s Changing Room (which had a 22-person all-male cast), the Chekhov anthology Troika, and Kaufman & Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You.

Battis was Carl Bolton, the builder given to “spells” in Paul Osborn’s Morning’s at Seven. He was Boxer Daly in the Long Wharf’s regional revival of the musical Daarlin’ Juno, Marc Blitzstein’s adaptation of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock.
Oh, and like a zillion other things. Seriously, a zillion.

He appeared in Long Wharf’s 1974 production of Peter Nichols’ The National Health which transferred to New York’s Circle in the Square theater, directed by Arvin Brown and also featuring such Long Wharf regulars as Joyce Ebert and William Swetland. (That dozens-strong cast also included a young Tazewell Thompson, who 30 years later would be the artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse for a time.)

Battis was also in rep companies at Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater and Baltimore’s CenterStage. His best-known association was with the Shakespeare Theatre in D.C. The Shakespeare Theatre’s artistic director, Michael Kahn cites a Battis improv in a Long Wharf show as the inspiration to lure the actor to Washington in the mid-1980s.

In honor of Emery Battis’ tireless service to the American theater, I am hereby reprinting a recipe he contributed to Long Wharf Theatre Cooks, a fundraising project published in 1976.

Lime Jello Supreme—Emery Battis

1 pkg. lime Jello
2 3 oz. pkgs. cream cheese
1 can crushed pineapple
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
½ cup chopped celery
½ pt. heavy or medium cream

Emery Battis was clearly a colorful, nutty guy. When you eat lime Jello with nuts in it, think of him.

Emery Battis as Martin Vanderfhoff in You Can't Take It With You at the Long Wharf. The production opened the 1971-72 season after having already traveled to Scotland as part of the Edinburgh Festival. Photo courtesy of Long Wharf Theatre.

Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Feste, Do Your Stuff!

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Christopher Arnott

Imagine this tableau with the guy on the right in a wheelchair. David Adkins, Nakeisha Daniel, Susan Kelechi Watson and Darius de Haas in Mark Lamos' production of Twelfth Night, through Nov. 5 at Westport Country Playhouse. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

So how’d that eleventh-hour crisis at Twelfth Night turn out? Darius De Haas, who’d been parading about the stage, and apparently into the audience as well, during the preview performances as Feste, injured his Achilles tendon Thursday night. (Yo, wrong Shakespeare play! Achilles is in Troilus and Cressida!)

De Haas was able to remain with the show, in which he also sings up a storm, but is now confined to a wheelchair. Director Mark Lamos and the cast spent all Friday reblocking the show around Feste’s sedentariness. Around 3:30 p.m., they realized they wouldn’t be ready in time for that night’s performance, so the 8 p.m. Friday show was cancelled. Saturday’s press night went on as scheduled, however. I saw the show Sunday afternoon and it was pretty, uh, surefooted. They’d even found De Haas a wheelchair to match the vaguely 1920s design style of Andrew Boyce’s set and Tilly Grimes’ costumes.

WCP’s Associate Artistic Director David Kennedy gave this pre-show announcement at the Sunday matinee: “Mr. De Haas asks that, on his first entrance, you take a good long look at his wheelchair… then forget about it.”

For many of his scenes, De Haas is pushed about the stage by this production’s Fabian, a character who doesn’t usually make an entrance until Act 1, Scene 5 and thus has nothing to say for his first few appearances here. That’s really the only clue that this was a hasty restaging.

There’ve been several fine Twelfth Nights on Connecticut stages in the past few decades. Mark Rucker’s Yale Rep one in 1995, (with then-students Tom McCarthy, Sanaa Lathan, Stephen DeRosa, Mercedes Herrero and Suzanne Cryer) and David Warren’s 2002 Long Wharf rendition (with David Garrison as Malvolio and Tom Beckett as Feste) both used 1960s Italian film imagery to infuse the play’s delirious Illyrian locale. Lamos opts for a jazz-age feel, as he did for his 1985 production of the play at Hartford Stage but less explicitly; at Hartford, there were obvious musical references to Cole Porter and Gershwin and more of a Prohibition-era party atmosphere. (Lamos’ Hartford cast included Jerome Kilty as Toby Belch and Mary Layne as Viola.) This one, which benefits from a multi-cultural cast, is bluesier, with a wild vamp to the line “Hold thy peace, you knave knight” ending in a suggestive pun.

I’m reviewing Twelfth Night for the Fairfield County Weekly. I’ll provide a link when that article’s published on Wednesday.

Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Rey Planta Review

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Christopher Arnott



Rey Planta
By Manuela Infante. Produced by Alexandra Ripp, who also translated the script. Directed by Michael Place. Script and translation consultants: Jose Rodriguz, Anne Seiwerath. St: Daniel Alderman and Olivia Higdon. Stage Manager: Alyssa K. Howard. Sound: Keri Klick. Associate Sound: Palmer. Costumes: Erika Taney. Performed by Robert Grant (The King), Monique Bernadette (The King’s Thoughs), Winston Duke (Security Guard) and Carmen Zilles (Sylvia).

Just a decade ago in Nepal, a crown prince (presumably miffed at his mother’ s opinion of his fiancee) slew both his parents and most of the rest of the royal family, then finished the job by shooting himself. The suicide was handled more sloppily than the murders, placing the terrorist prince in a three-day coma before he died—during which time he was duly sworn in as king of Nepal.
This incredible real- life tragedy, and its attendant unbelievable example of how far a country will go to uphold a monarchy, seems organic grist for a frenzied political theater piece along the lines of Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Yet Rey Planta is more like one of the measured, text-driven monologues of Fo’s wife Franca Rame.
Manuela Infante’s perversely reserved, calmy provocative play is receiving an overdue US premiere at the Yale Cabaret in a brand new translation by Yale school of Drama dramaturgy student Alexandra Ripp. The staging by Michael Place is so decidedly anti-sensational that it risks being static and sterile. The glory of the translation, direction, performances and design are that they keep your eyes attracted to a show where the leading performer seldom does more than quiver.

The piece is played out as if the King-in-a-coma was on exhibition in an art gallery. A security guard sits in a corner reading the newspaper and occasionally wanders through the gallery, and a cleaning woman also makes an appearance, but that’s the entirety of the action. — is front and center onstage, but he doesn’t go out of body and start animatedly narrating the circumstances of his demise, or flashing back to livelier times, la Sunset Boulevard. He doesn’t talk. He stares deadly ahead, sometimes pitches forward, drools a little. As carefully modulated by Robert Grant, none of this coma composure is overdone or in poor taste; it fits the calm and elegant art gallery backdrop.
While his body rests, the King’s mind is active, alert and extremely loquacious. His articulate, philosophical, uncommonly self-reflective and contemplative expressions are voiced through an offstage microphone by the unseen Monique Bernadatte. Last week, Bernadette was the largely mute yet physically vital presence in Alexandru Mihail’s Cabaret adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. She’s really got this voice/body disconnect thing down. Her interpretation of “The King’s Thought” is smooth, even-tempered, unflappable yet still passionate and resonant and rhythmic and musical, like something out of a Robert Ashley opera.

Manuela Infante is skillful at articulating the social changes of Nepal and the personal turmoil of its out-of-touch rulers. The real-life story of the country had a happy aftermath—the machinations of the man who eventually took power (the uncle of the young coma-king portrayed in Rey Planta) led to a people’s uprising which dethroned the monarch and gave way to a new democratic system of government. This play, first presented in 2006, doesn’t go there. It’s more of a reflection on how bad things had become. The fact that they’re better now seems inevitable.

While you know where the playwright’s sympathies lie, this is not a polemic. It’s a portrait of a vulnerable human whose family oversaw a vulnerable country.
Yet while keeping the tone reserved and formal, Rey Planta is nonetheless able to make royalty seem ridiculous. The Cabaret production captures all the subtleties of Infante’s carefully wrought monologue. Robert Grant looks both laughable and pitiable in his tall red scraggly crown. He is a portrait out of place with the others on the wall, yet his is by far the most fascinating.

I’m really sorry that the Yale Cabaret didn’t have photos of this immaculate, beautifully composed production that I could share with you. Given the tight, shallow confines of the stage (necessary to validate the art-gallery conceit), the clarity of Glenn Isaacs projection design and the (uncredited) lighting design adds depth, light, grandeur and layers of additional meaning to this spare, single-voiced script. The show can be slowgoing to be sure, but they couldn’t have dressed this up any finer if they were doing it in a Nepalese castle. The challenges of this unusually structured and visualized piece are clear, and just as clearly the Cabaret is up to that challenge.
In this week of international protests and open questioning of ruling capitalist powers, Rey Planta shows us that there’s more to revolution than shooting and shouting.

Categories: Connecticut Theaters, European Theater, Politics, Reviews of Shows, Uncategorized, Yale Cabaret | 11 Comments

Lenny Bruce’s Rock Song Legacy

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Christopher Arnott

On Oct. 13, had he lived, Lenny Bruce would have turned 86 years old. You could joke about the very idea of him ever living that long, but the fact remains that there was nothing at all funny about him dying at age 40 in 1966.

Lenny Bruce’s preferred music was jazz, though in the last days of his life he apparently played recordings of Sousa marches at top volume on his home stereo while poring over the minutiae of court briefs related to his various arrests for obscenity.
Here’s a list of songs of more recent vintage which revere or otherwise reference Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce had a number of pop star friends, most prominently Phil Spector, who lent the impoverished comic money, produced two of his albums and paid for his funeral.
A good number of the songs listed here can be found in the admirably exhaustive “pop culture” section in the Lenny Bruce entry on Wikipedia. Wikipedia has snuffed such ephemeral sections out of its database, but the list has lived on at sites which steal info wholesale from Wikipedia.
I was able to find a bunch of items not on that list. I also sorted and cleaned the whole lot up, so it’s clearer which songs are full-scale tributes, which get by on casual mentions, and which Lenny Bruce tributes are actually covers of other people’s Lenny Bruce tributes.

Happy 86, Lenny Bruce.

Songs About Lenny Bruce
1. Grace Slick & the Great Society, “Father Bruce”: “Oh, oh, Lenny, we’re so glad you’re getting well, well, well Fuck!”
2. Tim Hardin, “Lenny’s Tune”: “I’ve lost a friend and I don’t know why.” Hardin wrote it, but the song was originally released by Nico, under the title “Eulogy to Lenny Bruce.” The Nico version (and title) was later covered by Damon & Naomi.
3. Bob Dylan, “Lenny Bruce”: This is the first Lenny Bruce song that springs to a lot of minds, but it’s not very good. Some critics have even conjectured that it’s not about Lenny Bruce at all. Stan Ridgway’s cover version at least gives it some bite.
4. Nuclear Valdez, “Unsung Hero (Song for Lenny Bruce)”: Also mentions Lenny’s ex-wife Honey.
5. Chumbawumba, Big Mouth Strikes Again.”: Revisits Bruce’s “To Come” routine, and references “Christ, judges, Lone Ranger … padres, pastors, popes, priests … critics, comics, you me…”

Songs Vaguely About Lenny Bruce

1. Balloon Squad, “Still Mad at That Lenny Bruce”: Plaintive pop tune off the band’s May Pangs and June Forays EP from 1994. Doesn’t directly mention Bruce; it’s about a guy whose girl’s gotten too hip and left him.
2. The Boo Radleys, “Rodney King (Song For Lenny Bruce)”: Just two lines of lyrics in the whole thing: “Do you know my name before you tear me apart? Do you care who I am?”
3. Elastic Purejoy, “If Samuel Beckett Had Met Lenny Bruce”: Speculative meeting of great modern thinkers. “A needle in the can killed the laughter.”
4. Juice Leskinen, “Lenny Bruce”: From the Finnish singer’s Grand Slam album, and all in Finnish.
5. John Mayall, “The Laws Must Change”: Lenny Bruce was trying to tell you many things before he died.”
6. Starpilot, “Lenny Bruce the Martyr”: Starpilot is a composer of electronic “chiptunes” with undecipherable lyrics which he performs live before a changing screen of projections.
7. The Heartsleeves, “Son of Lenny Bruce”: From the Peripheral People album, played in a blues/klezmer style: “I’m the tattooed Jew! I’m the son of Lenny Bruce!/Albert Einstein is my muse! Frida Kahlo cuts me loose!”

Songs Which Borrow Lenny Bruce Routines
1. Julian Cope, “Soldier Blue”: Samples routines from Lenny Bruce’s The Berkeley Concert album. The track was later remixed, with an added rap, by Michael Franti of Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.
2. Frank Zappa. The Mothers of Invention opened for Lenny Bruce at the Fillmore West, listed him as an influence on the cover of the Freak Out! Album and referenced some of his routines in live shows.
3. Tom Russell, “Harry Partch, Jack Kerouac, Lenny Bruce”: A track from Tom Russell’s Hotwalker album, a conceptual sound collage utilizing words and sounds from a number of ‘60s beat and counterculture icons.

Songs Which Mention Lenny Bruce
1. REM, “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”: One of the best enunciated lyrics in a muddy list: “Lenny Bruce is not afraid.” Covered by Great Big Sea.
2. John Lennon & Yoko Ono, “We’re All Water”: “There may not be much difference/Between Marilyn Monroe and Lenny Bruce/If we check their coffins.”
3. Rent (the Broadway musical), “La Vie Boheme”: “Ginsberg, Dylan, Cunningham and Cage, Lenny Bruce, Langston Hughes, to the stage.”
4. Simon & Garfunkel, Seven O’Clock News/Silent Night. Lenny Bruce’s death is one of the items in the horrific newscast which serves as a counterpart to S&G’s rendition of the carol.
5. Simon & Garfunkel, “A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert MacNamaraed Into Submission).” “Well, I paid all the dues I want to pay/And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce.”
6. The Stanglers, No More Heroes. “Whatever happened to dear old Lenny?” It’s presumed that this means Lenny Bruce, but I guess The Stranglers could be missing Leonard Bernstein.
7. Steve Earle, “F the CC”: “Dirty Lenny died so we could all be free.”
8. Metric, “On the Sly”: “For Halloween I want to be Lenny Bruce.”
9. Nada Surf, “Imaginary Friends.”:“Lenny Bruce’s bug eyes stare from an LP.”
10. Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “All Things Considered”: Tale of a street person who claims to have palled around with the biggest names of the 1960s, including “his closest friend, the one and only Lenny Bruce.”
11. The Auteurs, “Junk Shop Clothes”: “Lenny Bruce never walked in a dead man’s shoes even for one night. Junk shop shoes will get you nowhere.”
12. Kid Rock, “EMSP”: My name is Tino, you know, baby, let’s get funky/I’m like Lenny Bruce but I ain’t no goddamn junkie.” Bonus points for also mentioning George Raft.
13. Widespread Panic, “Tickle the Truth”: “Lenny Bruce was a prophet in the 1960s/Two shows at tonight’s inquisition.”
14. Genesis, “Broadway Melody of 1974”: “Lenny Bruce declares a truce and plays his other hand/ Marshall McLuhan, casual viewing, head buried in the sand.”
15. The Bicycle Thief, “Cereal Song”: “Being cool and looking good/Keith Richards and Lenny Bruce and all of them/Well, I give up.”
16. Nils Lofgren, “Mr. Hardcore”: “Thinks Lenny Bruce looked like Walt Disney.”

An Original Song Performed by Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce, “All Alone”: A stand-up routine about getting over a romantic break-up, wrapped in a lovely song about loneliness. Famously performed on The Steve Allen Show.

A Song Parodied by Lenny Bruce.
In an earlier post, I ran an excerpt from Kaye Ballard about how Lenny Bruce created a parody of “Autumn Leaves” at her request, which she recorded on her Boo-Hoo/Ha-Ha album. It’s right there in Ballard’s autobiography, but now I wonder if she got the album mixed up. I don’t own either record, but from what I’ve found online there’s no listing for “Autumn Leaves” or anything like it on Boo-Hoo/Ha-Ha, while “Autumn Leaves” is indeed listed as the lead track on the 1959 album Kaye Ballard Swings. Anybody record collectors out there able to clear this up?

Categories: Rock Theater, Stand-Up Comedy, Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Sir, no; his indignation derives itself out of a very competent injury

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Christopher Arnott

Ouch!? Darius DeHaas in Twelfth Night at Westport Country Playhouse. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

All I know is what they said in a press release issued late this afternoon:
Due to a serious injury to an actor, Westport Country Playhouse has canceled tonight’s performance (Friday, October 14th) of Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Patrons holding tickets are asked to please contact the Playhouse Box Office at 203-227-4177 to exchange tickets into another Twelfth Night performance, running through November 5. The Playhouse apologizes for any inconvenience and appreciates its audience’s continued support.

But Playbill.com suspects the injured party is Darius De Haas, who plays Feste in the Mark Lamos-directed production. Feste’s a wandering fool, ripe for potential injuries.
I’m seeing the show Sunday afternoon, to review it for the Fairfield County Weekly, so I’ll apprise you of any cast changes then.

Here’s the previously announced cast list:
MALVOLIO – David Adkins
SIR ANDREW AGUCHEEK – Jordan Coughtry
OLIVIA ATTENDANT – Nakeisha Daniel
FESTE – Darius de Haas
CAPTAIN/PRIEST – Rick Ford
MARIA – Donnetta Lavinia Grays
ORSINO – Lucas Hall
VIOLA – Mahira Kakkar
FABIAN/VALENTINE – Justin Kruger
ORSINO ATTENDANT/SAILOR – Myron Lee
OLIVIA ATTENDANT – Kimberly Maresca
ORSINO ATTENDANT/SAILOR – Chris Ryan
SEBASTIAN – Rachid Sabitri
SIR TOBY BELCH – David Schramm
ANTONIO – Paul Anthony Stewart
OLIVIA – Susan Kelechi Watson

Categories: Previews, Uncategorized, Westport Country Playhouse | Leave a comment

Krappy Seats

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Christopher Arnott

Brian Dennehy as Krapp, as he appeared the last time he played Krapp's Last Tape, at the Goodman Theater in Chicago three years ago. Photo by Richard Hein.


Tickets go on on sale tomorrow, Oct. 15, for the Long Wharf presentation of Jennifer Tarver’s production of Brian Dennehy’s rendition of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. (Forgive me; I wanted to see how many apostrophes I could squeeze in there.)

Long Wharf subscribers, don’t get complacent. Krapp’s Last Tape isn’t part of the regular subscription season. Subscribers do get special offers and discounts, but don’t just expect the tix to turn up in the mail. For the general public, all seats for this multimedia minimalist classic are 70 bucks.

Categories: Connecticut Theaters, Long Wharf Theatre, Previews, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Birds of a Feather

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Christopher Arnott


The Yale Rep season-opening production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters closed last weekend, but the chilly autumnal feel of its poster design persists downtown. I took these photos of the window display at the English Building Market, the antiques and architecture enterprise at 839 Chapel St., just a few blocks from the Rep.

The shared red-and-black avian aesthetic is uncanny, no?

Categories: Connecticut Theaters, Museums, Uncategorized, Yale Repertory Theatre | Leave a comment

Tempest in a Three-Book

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Christopher Arnott


Prospero Regained—The Stunning Conclusion of Prospero’s Daughter
By L. Jagi Lamplighter

The third 500-page volume in a trilogy which takes the characters in Shakespeare’s The Tempest a lot more seriously than Shakespeare ever did. Lamplighter has grown a whole mythology around Miranda and her siblings. Siblings? Yes, Prospero’s been busy—or just bored since he’s apparently immortal. Several of his offspring, however, have been swept away by Hellwinds. The family business, Prospero Inc., has problems you can’t itemize on any spreadsheet.

I find books such as this, which turn allegories and metaphors into role-playing game manuals, a tough slog, even when I care about the characters. My own philosophy of life doesn’t allow for so many absolute rules of existence. Some of the principles in this Prospero series can’t set a foot wrong without literally raising the devil.

“Is there really a connection between our little Eridanus and the Milky Way?”
“According to the Laws of Sympathy and Contagion, the similarity of the name would be enough to make a connection for a spirit being.”

First, as someone once said, let’s kill all the lawyers.

Each son or daughter of Prospero a special staff, each with its own special power: Winds, Summoning, Devastation, Decay, Persuasion…

Caliban’s on hand for a few chapters of this sprawling saga, but isn’t particularly funny, more of a tragic pawn. That’s a directorial choice, of course. The humor comes from sibling rivalry, from ancient spiritual cultures clashing with contemporary corporate civilizations and the endless banter among the enchanted.

Prospero Regained is fanciful and full-bodied, but too finicky for my taste. Shakespeare had the right idea in confining his magical goings-on to one small island.

Categories: Books & Magazines, Shakespeare, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Edelstein, Idolized: Last Monday’s Celebration of Gordon Edelstein’s First Decade as Artistic Director of Long Wharf Theatre

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Christopher Arnott

Donald Margulies (standing, left) toasts Gordon Edelstein (seated, right, in black jacket) at a tribute to the Long Wharf artistic director, held on the theater mainstage Oct. 3. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Long Wharf celebrated the glorious middle last Monday night. Tricks in My Pocket … Things Up My Sleeve was a catered feast in honor of Gordon Edelstein’s first decade as the theater’s artistic director. This wasn’t a climax, some “farewell” or “new beginnings” affair. Honored speaker after honored speaker wished Edelstein many more years in his current position. He himself acted as if he had no desire to leave Long Wharf for at least another decade, if not a century. Paula Vogel was the first to say it, and the sentiment was echoed many times during the night: “Here’s to the next ten years.”
This wasn’t an anticlimax, or the cliffhanger ending of a second act. It comes at a peak time in Edelstein’s directing career, with his acclaimed production of Glass Menagerie last year and his continued championing of new works by both established writers (Athol Fugard) and up and comers (the new musical February House this season).Playwright Donald Margulies, whose Shipwrecked and Two Days have been staged at Long Wharf during Edelstein’s reign, gave a toast, suggesting that the director “reached a pinnacle with Glass Menagerie,” that it represented “everything you’ve practiced and preached all these years.”
Nor was it a prologue–Edelstein was Associate Artistic Director under the Long Wharf’ s longest serving artistic director, Arvin Brown, for several years in the 1980s and early ’90s. Brown sent a video greeting for Monday’s party, in which he spoke of his pleasure at seeing Edelstein’s recent production of The Glass Menagerie at L.A’s Mark Taper Forum.
The cast of Glass Menagerie–the Long Wharf cast of Judith Ivey, Keira Keeley and Patch Darragh replete with the Gentleman Caller who couldn’t make the New York transfer with them, Josh Charles (the SportsNight star is now back on TV in The Good Wife)–did a fourfold impersonation of Edelstein laughing, eating and directing.
Film clips from those who couldn’t attend in person included some other impressionists, notably Dael Orlandersmith.
Others were packing anecdotes. Will Ginsberg, president of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, revealed he’s known Edelstein since they were teenagers, working as counselors at the same summer camp in 1972; he recalled eating spaghetti with salad dressing in the Edelstein kitchen, and recalled a frantic road trip they took together while leaving out juicy details. “Gordon was hip before being hip was hip,” Ginsberg said, then added “Gordon is fundamentally, unalterably theatrical.”
Paula Vogel had both a recent and a vintage tale to tell–how Edelstein sent her a dirty martini in the bar at the study hotel just the other night, yelling the bartender “maybe I’ll get lucky”; and how, when they were both starving artists in new York city, Vogel and her then girlfriend designated Edelstein “am honorary lesbian” so that he might be granted a sleeping spot on the small bed in their apartment after they’d been up all night talking.
Omar Metwally, who co-starred in the Long Wharf premiere of Sixteeen Wounded, Eliam Kraiem’s bakeshop drama of Israeli/Palestinean relations, recalled how protective he felt of his character, to the point where he went to complain to Edelstein about how a promotional mailing misrepresented the play. Edelstein agreed, and scrapped the mailing, even though thousands of the cards had already been printed. At the same time, Metwally’s even-handed tribute had this punchline, a quote from Edelstein: “Omar—I love you. But I’m not putting Chomsky in the lobby.”
Oskar Eustis, now of course the artistic director of the Public Theater in New York, but who has known Edelstein for decades and was doing co-productions with him when Eustis was running Trinity Rep in Providence, declared that “Gordon’s an amazing artistic director.” More than that, Eustis recalled a trip to Alaska with Edelstein, when neither men were running theaters and had jointly taken a short-term teaching gig in Juneau. The experience, Eustis said, took place during a time of indecision and depression for him. He credited Edelstein’s positive frame of mind as being “not just career-restorative but life-restorative.”

The Public Theater's Oskar Eustis with Obie-winning actress Karen Kandel at the Edelstein tribute. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.


Other encomia came from actress Karen Kandel, playwright Julia Cho (whose BFE and Durango both debuted at Long Wharf) Todd Haimes of the Roundabout Theatre (where Edelstein will be directing Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca in December) and Todd London of New Dramatists, a classmate of Edelstein’s at Grinell College in Iowa who vividly remembered a student production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which London was Lysander and Edelstein played Francis Flute, the bellows-mender who is pushed into playing the damsel-in-distress Thisbe in a community theater travesty.

Keira Keeley (who played Laura in the Glass Menagerie at Long Wharf) attempting the role of Amanda while the production's actual Amanda, Judith Ivey, plays Tom. The erstwhile Tom, Patch Darragh, looks on, being Laura. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.


The guest speakers did more than speak: Besides impersonating Edelstein, the Glass Menagerie players honored his eye for casting by demonstrating what it would be like if they’d played each other’s roles, doing a couple of different rounds of the exercise. When Josh Charles joined them onstage, he noted that he’d gotten his Equity Card due to Edelstein casting him in the Stage II production of David Wiltse’s A Dance Lesson in 1989.

Josh Charles and the cast of Glass Menagerie get serious for a moment. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.


David Shire, composer of Baby and the stage musical of Big premiered “Restaurant Around the Corner,” a song from Table, a work in progress which the Long Wharf longs to stage in a future season. Shire said he and his Table collaborator, New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik were “thrilled beyond belief to have out show directed by you in this wonderful theater.” (If Edelstein does direct Table, it will be the first musical he has directed at Long Wharf since the world premiere of Joe Keenan and Brad Ross’ The Times in 1993.) New Haven-based cabaret singer Anne Tofflemire (accompanied by Yale student pianist Daniel Schlossberg) applied the Sondheim song “Putting It Together” (from Sunday in the Park With George) to Edelstein’s work at Long Wharf.
Actor John Procaccino was a fitting master of ceremonies, since he’s as effusive and fun-loving as the guest of honor, and his acting evinces the same passions and varieties as does Edelstein’s directing. Procaccino was directed by Edelstein in the O’Neill tragedy Moon for the Misbegotten and the Dario Fo political farce We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay, and more recently appeared at Long Wharf shows in Sylvia and Italian-American Reconciliation (both directed by Eric Ting) and Craig Lucas’ Prayer for My Enemy (directed by Bart Sher). He behaved like his Italian American character, spinning yawned and keeping the mood upbeat, but he had plenty of help from Edelstein’s friends and colleagues. “Gordon creates a loving environment of acceptance,” Procaccino suggested, and the rest of the evening proved the thesis.
The evening was divided into acts. The program book looked like a script. There was no doubt who the hero of the piece was—even when Edelstein’s own children took their turn in the proceedings to toast not Dad but his hard-working Executve Assistant Todd Yocher.
The evening was capped by a touching tribute from the Long Wharf’s Associate Artistic Director Eric Ting, who called Edelstein “one of the bravest men I know,” a leader able to command “an unmatched level of loyalty.” The current chair of the Long Wharf Board of Trustees, alongside three former holders of that post, presented Edelstein with a photo portrait of himself.
Then Edelstein was finally called to the podium. He likened the evening to “Tom Sawyer spying on his own funeral.” He thanked his parents, his brother, his wife of 25 years Joan,  and his children. To his many old friends in the room, he challenged “What say we keep going until we get really old and really fat?” Which was the perfect perspective. This was about momentum, enthusiasm and stability, not about laurels and past glories. Holding the tribute at the very beginning of another strong Long Wharf season showed that. Tricks? Things up his sleeve? No sleight of hand or illusions at all, actually. This is the Gordon Edelstein we’d all come to know, and love.

Gordon Edelstein, flanked by James Bundy, dean of the Yale School of Drama, and Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Categories: Connecticut Theaters, Long Wharf Theatre, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The Persona Review

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Christopher Arnott

Laura Gragtmans (the nurse) and Monique Bernadette (the actress) in the Yale Cabaret's stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's Persona. Photo by Yi Zhao.

 

Persona

Through Oct. 8 at the Yale Cabaret. Based on the film by Ingmar Bergman. Director: Alexandru Mihail. Dramaturg: Emily Reilly. Set: Kristen Robinson. Projections: Paul Lieber. Assistant ProjectionsL: Connor Lynch. Lights: Masha Tsimring. Sound: Solomon Weisbard. Sound Design Advisor: Ken Goodwin. Costumes: Seth Bodie. Stage Manager: Sonja Thorson. Technical Director: Jackie Young. Producer: Michael Bateman. Cast: Monique Bernadette (Elizabeth Vogler), Laura Gragtmans (Sister Alma), Emily Reilly (The Doctor), Lucas Dixon (Mr. Vogler), Carmen Zilles, (Radio Actress), Xander Martin (The Child).

The Yale Repertory Theatre did a new stage version of Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata last spring, directed by Robert Woodruff. Now the Yale Cabaret’s adapted Bergman’s Persona. There is no purpose in comparing these two shows, except to scream this loudly from the fjords: MORE PEOPLE SHOULD BE ADAPTING INGMAR BERGMAN’S FILMS AS PLAYS! These are sturdy, well-structured scripts which invite fresh interpretations. Woody Allen should stop trying to rewrite Bergman and just revive his scripts. There should be Bergman Theater Festivals and competing Bergman translations and Bergman scene studies. The writer/director’s brilliance as a filmmaker, especially with works such as the exquisitely edited and close-upped Persona, can distract you from the basic glories of his dialogue and plotting.

Alexandru Mihail, who laid an insane table for Chekhov’s The Wedding Reception at the Cabaret last year, goes still and immaculate for this gently told yet not at all tender tale of female bonding, one-sided confession and stressed solipsism. As Monique, an actress who’s had a sort of breakdown that renders her silent, a watcher instead the watched, Monique Bernadette is tended by Alma (Laura Gragtmans), who doesn’t realize she’s being drawn in to a drama

The effect of Bergman’s words, on a wide open stage that spans the length of the Cabaret space, played by humans who touch and spit at each other without distancing camera angles, is mesmerizing, lulling, transfixing. The concept of remoteness is handled with translucent curtains and, well, projection screens, but in a subtle manner that suits a mood also imbued by ’60s pop music, home movies and sensitive lighting. Supporting characters have weight and reality. Lines are cleanly spoken. Every nuance of Monique’s silence is profound. No supertitles.

Bergman being Bergman, wherever he lies.

Categories: Connecticut Theaters, European Theater, Uncategorized, Yale Cabaret | 8 Comments