January 31, 2009

 

          One of the things I’ve done is lead theatre tours to Ireland, including the west coast of Connemara and Galway City where the tiny Druid Theatre made world history when its artistic director, Gerry Hynes, uncovered a play by Martin McDonagh in her slush pile in the 1990s.  That play, “The Beauty Queen of Leenane”, went on to award-winning performances around the world, including Broadway.  It was the first in a trilogy. The second, “A Skull in Connemara”, opened at Theatre Tribe in North Hollywood last week.

          At its core, it’s a noisy irreverent deconstruction of death in this rural almost primitive wild west of Ireland in the 1970s.  Mick (Morlan Higgins) has the job of digging up cemetery residents who’ve been dead for seven years to make room for the newly deceased.  His neighbor, old Maryjohnny Rafferty (Jenny O’Hara) who drops by every night to cadge a drink,  comments on the insinuations made against Mick by her grandsons Mairtin (Jeff Kerr McGivney), a rebellious high school drop-out, and Thomas (John K. Linton), a police inspector, who desperately emulates such American TV detectives as “Starsky and Hutch” in his search for promotion.

          This year Mick must dig up the grave of his late wife Oona, who was killed in an auto crash while he was drunk-driving.  Although he was acquitted, there are still whispers that Oona was dead before Mick took the wheel.

          The play’s scurrilous plot twists are too deliciously bizarre to reveal but the image that lingers is the revengeful glee with which Mick and Martin hammer the skulls to bits.  Though more contrived than “Beauty Queen”, it has the black energy and vital vulgarity that mark this writer. In his early plays McDonagh laughs at death with the bravado of a very young playwright.

          Stuart Rogers has his finger on the leaping pulse of this piece of skullduggery and has assembled a first-rate cast.  Jenny O’Hara is a sly, determined Maryjohnny who has found a way to cheat at Bingo with the skill of a Bernie Madoc.  Linton projects the thankless role of a cop on the beat who wants to be, in the sneering words of young cousin Martin, “Macmillan and Wife”, an old American TV series. McGivney gives Martin a feckless animation.  The cast is headed by award-winning Morlan Higgins  whose beautiful voice is enhanced by the lilting Irish accent he uses and, though McDonagh hasn’t given him much information to work with, conveys the presence of a hulking man who lives with death.  Rogers stations him front center stage staring us in the eye at the beginning and end of the play, as if to say “I’m one of you”.

Jeff McLaughlin’s incredible set design is reversible, beginning with Mick’s wood-paneled house which, during a black-out, becomes the cemetery where the men dug up graves.  I don’t know how they did it but I’ve never seen anything like it.

At Theatre Tribe, 5267 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood, Reservations: (800) 838-3006.

Other plays reviewed this month on CurtainUp.com are “Mammals” at The Lost Studio, “Pope Joan” at the Stella Adler, “You, Nero” at South Coast Rep, “Taking Steps” at the Odyssey, “Pippin” at the Taper, “Stormy Weather” at Pasadena Playhouse.

 

January 28, 2009

 

          Last Saturday marked the 90^th birthday of my girlfriend, actress Frances Bay.  She’s played everything from the matriarch in John Guare’s “Bosoms and Neglect” at the Odyssey Theatre to Fonzie’s grandmother on “Happy Days.”  Today’s youth remember her best as Adam Sandler’s grandmother on “Happy Sandler”.

We met at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Playwrights Conference where she was an actress and I was a Critic Fellow.  That’s where I first met playwrights John Patrick Shanley and August Wilson and brought home friendships with Frances Bay and others that I cherish.

Although there’s a generational difference, I’ve always thought of Fran as a girlfriend.  Petite, unostentatiously youthful, she has the vivacity and curiosity of a child with the wisdom and emotional depth of a woman and the articulateness of a world-class actress.  “I need my Frances vitamins,” I tell her for the joy of hearing her laugh and enjoying her beautiful voice and sparkling eyes.  I went to Frances after the sudden death of my longtime companion, not only because the death of her own husband a few years ago was a parallel experience but because I needed the gentle understanding that offered no false panaceas.

          Frances’s large family and many friends turned out in force for one of the hospitable parties she still gives regularly.  Under the tent put up over the garden bar mingled producers, directors, artists, writers, actors and civilians of all ages and ethnicities.  Every other person was a cousin. 

          Days after the party I talked about it with Ron Sossi, at the premiere of his production of “Taking Steps” at his Odyssey Theatre.  Ron couldn’t make the party because of rehearsals but he’s still looking for a part for a dynamic 90-year-old actress in a wheelchair.

          Before the cake was cut, we were asked to contribute Franny anecdotes.  I have one I love.

          After lunch at Farmers Market a few years ago, we both reached for the check but she was faster than I was.  “I’m an old lady,” she said, flourishing it triumphantly, “and I get residuals!”

 

January 10, 2008  

 

          When I was invited to a séance with medium Hollister Rand, I accepted with alacrity.  This was something I’d always wanted to experience, open-minded that I am to the three possibilities:  it’s legit, it’s a fake or, as we were told when I worked for the Esalen Institute, it’s a form of ESP or mind-reading.

          The meeting of well over 100 people was held in the Bodhi Tree Bookstore Annex, a mellowly lit room on Melrose Avenue.  Rand, a jolly blonde woman, radiates positive energy.  She works in what she called the Love Vibration to maintain that energy and turned down a TV show that wanted her to enter the Justice Vibration and solve a crime.

          Rand told us there were many spirits in the room behind the people they knew in their earthbound existence.  “He’s tall, he keeps rising up and up,” she told one woman.  “Six foot three,” the woman said, tears running down her face.  Another woman heard from her mother, once very critical about her clothes, hair, etc. but more mellow in the next dimension.

          A writer got editing suggestions from his spirit guide and the spirit of a black lab running up and down the aisle was reunited with his former owner. 

          Rand says these spirits are always around us, which is reassuring if that’s a good thing, and prompts us to be aware of new energies or realizations in our environments after a séance.  My cinematographer neighbor once went to one mistaking it for a screening, as the France translation is closer to “viewing”.  

          I had a previous experience with rare energy.  At an Esalen workshop, a man said he would put us in touch with the Crystal People.  If we lay down on the floor in a circle and held hands, he would send a jolt of energy through the right hand and out the left hand.  And he did.  It was daylight, I was sober and I felt it.

          Later I queried my then boss, the President of Esalen, about this.  His take was that some people have rare energies and can’t define them, so they come up with explanations like the Crystal People or Spirit Guides.  

          Of the many paths, seen or unseen, that lie before us, that’s an alternative definition to what doubters call a bridge to nowhere.

 

January 6, 2008

 

A 12^th Night Party at the home of friends who live in a historic Hollywood house ripe with stories.  Built by the legendary theatre magnate Pantages whose eponymous theatre on Hollywood Boulevard has been restored with gilt and statuary, the 1920s-era house is built into a hill in Beachwood Canyon.  From the terrace Pantages could see his theatre winking below, framed by mountains and the glitter of Hollywood. 

          The house was used by Pantages’s showgirls and was, for a time, used by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. 

          Downstairs on the second floor, the master bedroom suite overlooks a fountain.  A spacious study and second bedroom are also each paired with a bath. Two lower floors are used for storage and office space.

          The living room contains both a piano and an organ on which the two musical hosts play duets for the sing-along which is a feature of their hospitable evenings. 

 

 January 1, 2009

 

Happy New Year, one and all!  I danced it in at Vladimir and Dimitry’s Millonga at the Santa Monica Women’s Club, which included a buffet dinner, a belly-dancing demonstration from Marina and a samba demonstration from Francine in a Vegas showgirl costume.  Although Marina invited people to dance with her, only the best and the bravest dared.  The rest would have preferred more dance time for themselves. 

 

The large floor, dim lights. sensuous music and compatible people dressed for a gala occasion made this a great place to dance in the New Year for tangueras and tangeros. 

 

Evesdropping on conversations that weren’t all levity:  A dashing Arab producer asked a blonde Jewish-American teacher:  “What do you think of the Gaza Strip?”

 

New Year’s Resolutions:  None, except the resolution not to make any.  I’m dumping this dated concept in favor of goals. 

 

1.  Top of the list is making this revised magazine the best it can be, covering not only the LA Beat but whatever I come across that’s astounding and worthwhile. 

 

2.     Travel more.  Sarasota, Florida, for The American Theatre Critics Convention, New Jersey and New York for a family reunion and a long-time dream, covering a visit to the Greek Isles.

 

3.     And I’m always up for what Dorothy Parker called “a whole new set of dearest friends.”

 

4.     With friends traveling in Galilee before the war broke out, that part of the world and its safety and peace are much on my mind.  The inauguration of a new president with a firm fierce mandate for change is the brightest star in our cloudy sky.

 

To all of you, make plans, set goals and break them down into one small step at a time.  If we don’t get there, we’ll get somewhere we could never have predicted.  Go for it!