War Horse
Although there are many theaters in the New York, the most famous is not in the Broadway/45th street theater district, but further uptown—Lincoln Center, which is a complex of theaters and cultural spaces rivaled only by Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
Last night we had the immense pleasure of seeing War Horse at Lincoln Center, where the New York Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera were performing as well. The complex is stunning and it made me proud to be a citizen just to be there.
Kate, Gail and Brad in front of the Opera House at Lincoln Center
Getting to our seats was unusual–the ushers demanded to see each and every persons ticket before they would be permitted to sit down. This was after our tickets had been checked at the door. It’s like the TSA has taken over ushering duties.
War Horse is performed on a large bare stage. The only scenery is a swath of white hanging above the stage upon which is projected clouds and weather, dates, locations, battle scenes, etc. Everything else needed for a particular scene is brought on, or merely suggested by an impressionistic use of a few sticks, a door frame, a coil of wire, a long pole with a flapping bird on the end. If the arts are an extension of the imagination, then you are forced to become an artist within yourself to appreciate this masterful work.
The story is one of a boy and his horse. The boy raises the horse in Devon, England. World War I breaks out, and his father sells the horse to the Army, where he eventually captured by the Germans and put to work as a draft animal, for which he is manifestly unsuited.
The horse breaks free, gets caught in barbed wire, and then is saved by a joint action of British and German soldiers, and ends up back with the Brits after a battlefield coin toss.
Meanwhile, the boy, Billy, joins the Army to find the horse he loves, but is placed in the Infantry. After 3 long years, he is injured in a gas attack, and is recuperating in the same place where the horse shows up. The plot gets awfully corny here, with pistols misfiring at the critical second and plot devices that would embarrass Lassie and Timmy. But in the end all is well, boy finds horse and we fade to black.
The plot isn’t the most important thing here, though. The magic and mystery of this show lies in the astounding horses–puppets, operated by 3 men, which become so life like I frequently forgot that they weren’t real. “Puppet” may bring to mind a toy, but these are full size creations brought to life by the South African team of Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones. The horses move, they breathe, they twitch, just like real ones. The illusion is staggering; you emotionally relate to the these incredible creations.
Joey and Topthorn come to life onstage in War Horse
The acting is first rate, starting with Hunter Canning, as Billy. Billy’s father is played by Andy Murray, who I instantly recognized from his 10 years with Cal Shakes in Orinda. I’ve seen him in Marin and San Jose as well, and was thrilled to see him in the big time. It couldn’t happen to a more appealing actor.
War Horse is a phenomenal piece of theater. I’ll have to see the movie now, but I know it will be a totally different experience with the magic of the puppetry.
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We saw 4 plays in 3 days, each a different genre. The Exonerated was just 10 actors sitting on stools doing their lines without movement or props. Glengarry Glen Ross was realistic theater, as if you were watching it happen in real life. The Book of Mormon is a musical, moving the plot forward with large set pieces of song and dance. War Horse is a very impressionistic spectacle, where you imagination must fill in for the scenery and even the central characters, with the puppetwork substituting for reality.
Still, each piece was exhilarating and enthralling. Art is brought to life by the skill of the artist, not the methodology. Whether it was Al Pacino reaching rock bottom in a busted career or a puppet of a silly goose running across the stage, the genius was in the execution and we were honored and lucky to have seen so much in three short days.
The Book of Mormon
That’s not really the title I wanted to use, but couldn’t bring myself to title this “there are maggots in my scrotum”, one of the great lines from this afternoon’s play.
The Book of Mormon has been a smash hit for a couple of year now: it is coming to San Francisco and the entire run sold out in minutes. Even here in NYC, it remains sold out far in advance and the only way I got tickets was to buy them on StubHub at a significant premium.
If you are particular religious, or fastidious, or just plain prissy, don’t see this show. It is an equal opportunity offender, heretical in all directions. The bad guy is named General Butt Fucking Naked. Your great aunt Tilly might be a touch offended.
On the other hand, if you like this sort of thing you will never see it done any better. The cast is tremendous, specifically the female lead, Nikki James. She won a Tony for this role last year for good reason.
The writing is genius–from the twisted minds of Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the braintrust behind South Park, an animated comedy series now in its 16th season.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker at the Academy Awards
The Lion King brought us the phrase “hakuna matata”, no worries. The Book of Mormon brings us “Hasa diga eebowai”, fuck you God. The Lion King is nicer and sweeter and suitable for kids. The Book of Mormon is funnier and has some real meaning hidden within.
I guess I’m supposed to talk about the plot. Two Mormon kid set out on their mission, sent to Uganda for 2 years to proselytize. One is very straight and square, the other is a nerd who doesn’t fit in. The nerd succeeds, the straight one has a crisis of conscience, the natives are converted and there is a big finale. If I told you too much you would think you had seen it, and that would be wrong.
Hock your grandchildren, sell your wife’s jewelry, do what you have to in order to arrange tickets. This is not a musical to miss.
Glengarry Glen Ross
This may seem strange, but sometimes the bad things are easier to write about than the good ones.
Tuesday night we saw Elektra, hated it, and I had no problem coming up with a couple of hundred pithy words on why it sucked.
Tonight we saw Glengarry Glen Ross, loved every second, and I’m speechless.
Al Pacino is great, but you knew he would be. Bobby Cannavale, who carries as much of the play as Pacino, is also great, but that was no surprise either. I see Cannavale on Nurse Jackie and know what he can do with a role.
The play is fantastic,David Mamet got a Pulitzer prize for writing it, but that’s why they made a movie of it 30 years ago, when Pacino was young and handsome and played the role Cannavale plays now of Rick Roma, the hotshot, ruthless sales star of the office.
Okay, here’s something I would not have predicted–Pacino gives a wonderful performance without his usual bombast. His character, Shelley “the machine” Levene, is worn and tired, beaten down by life and grasping at straws. He starts with bragadocio and ends with pathos, but keeps the famous Pacino anger in check all the way.
The stage play is quite a bit different from the movie; much funnier in places. The office manager John Williamson, played here by David Harbour, is more wimpy and weasely here than in the film, where they built the role up for Alec Baldwin. My cousin James Foley (who is too good to speak to anyone in the family anymore) directed the movie–blame him.
The play flies by. The first act is three scenes and lasts 45 minutes. The second act is just over an hour, and you’re out the door by 10:10 or earlier. It seems sooner, as you get so enraptured with the performances and the writing and story you’re barely comfortable in your seat and the play is over–that only happens at the really great ones, and this qualifies.
The theater itself gets fewer nice words. The Gerald Schoenfeld Theater was built in 1917, and people were smaller then. They may have reupholstered the seats, but they aren’t any larger, and it’s an awfully close fit, both in legroom and shoulder room. There is less space here than on Southwest Air. The restrooms are downstairs and insufficient. As you enter the stairway, they separate the men on the left and the women on the right so the lines back up correctly.
Even with the tiny seats this was a fantastic night of theater, and in fact it is the specific reason we are in New York. Gail and I were planning a trip to Lake Louise when we noticed this play and its short 73 performance run, and Canada will have to wait.
Walking the High Line
Making lemonade from lemons, the city of New York has converted an unused elevated rail line into a wonderful linear park, the High Line. Stretching 20 or so blocks, from 12th to 32nd, the park is created almost literally out of thin air, bringing peace, tranquility and greenery to the hurlyburly of New York life.
We had to go see it, so we piled into a taxi and told the driver “the high line”. He didn’t know where that was, but he may not have been in New York as long as we have. Eventually another driver explained it to him and off we went.
He dropped us on a corner right beneath the park, then we had to find a way up. Nothing good is easy, mother said. We found a stairway, and started exploring.
This man was really wailing his clarinet.
The railway has been replaced with a walk way, lots of greenery and places to sit.
Even with snow still on the ground, the sun makes it warm and inviting
Three generations picnicking in the snow
The city streets from the High Line
A section of the old railroad tracks has been preserved
A high-rise condominium built over the old rail line. Can’t afford to waste space in the city.
Amazing how lush and green in November, after both a hurricane and a nor’easter.
A park needs art.
A park also needs lovers on a bench.
Little boys will always need to play in the snow.
Reaching the end of the line, we left the heavenly atmosphere of the park and descended to earth, looking for a place to eat. Fortunately, that isn’t hard in New York, and we decided on the Standard Grill, on Washington Street.
The Standard Grill is very much of what I think of as a New York restaurant–tons of warm wood and dark colors, well-uniformed staff, crowded and noisy with a sense of solid money and innate confidence. The food was pretty darned good, too.
Seared tuna salade niçoise
I had an excellent salad with seared tuna. The dressing had a rich, salty, umami flavor to it that is hard to define but I’d like to have again.
New York deli’s are famous for their over-stuffed sandwiches. Gail and Brad each had a club sandwich, but they should have just ordered one and split it:
Club sandwich with excellent fries.
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After lunch we headed for Chelsea to gallery hop, but the hurricane put paid to that idea–most of the galleries are closed for repairs still. We saw many huge dumpsters in the area, full of rotted drywall and the other effluvia of the storm and its aftermath. I think it’s going to take quite a while for Chelsea to recover, and many galleries won’t make it at all.
Then it was back to the hotel for blogging and napping, getting ready for the theater–tonight we see Glengarry Glen Ross. Stay tuned.
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The Exonerated
It ironic that Tuesday the citizens of California voted no to an end to the death penalty, and tonight Gail and I saw a play that would convince anyone to vote yes to its eradication.
There are almost 300 people who have been exonerated after being sentenced to death, and who knows how many more innocents are still sitting on death row.
Police need to close cases. Prosecutors need to keep their statistics up. The system is skewed in favor of the state and against the poor, the uneducated, the politically powerless. Innocent people get railroaded, and sometimes they get lucky enough to get freed, many years down the road.
The Exonerated is the true life stories of 6 of these people; their actual words brought to life onstage by a group of 10 talented actors simply sitting on stools. A couple of the parts are played by a rotating list of “name” actors: tonight we saw Carol Kane and Keir Dullea. There were only about 40 people in the audience, I doubt that there is much money in this for anyone. It is presented at the Culture Project, a very very off Broadway theater you can hardly find.
Gail picked this play from the pages of the New Yorker because she has always been so much more in favor of the death penalty than I am–and I’m really only opposed because of this specific issue. Conceptually, I have no issue with executing a murderer, but I’m not proud to be part of a society that executes the innocent. Life without parole works just fine as far as I’m concerned, there is time to rectify the errors of the police and the prosecution.
I think, after hearing the heartbreaking story of Sonny Jacobs, who spent 16 years on death row for a crime she didn’t commit, whose husband was executed for the crime he didn’t commit, that Gail may be coming around to my point of view.
The Exonerated is a tough play to watch. A confused young man is bullied and badgered into making a “vision statement” of what it would have been like if he had killed his parents, and then that statement is used as a confession. Of course, they didn’t give him a lawyer, they said he didn’t have the right for a defense.
One of the men, Delbert Tibbs [played by Joe Morton] says “If you’re charged with a sex crime, and you’re black, in the South, you better have done it ’cause they’re gonna hang your ass anyway”.
Sonny Jacobs says “Think of the period from 1976 to 1992. Now imagine that it is just gone. Never happened. That’s what happened to me”.
Too bad not everyone in California saw this play before last Tuesday. Even as I was writing this, I saw something on Facebook, another man finally freed, this time after close to 40 years in prison framed for a crime he did not commit.
A man who spent almost four decades in prison for killing two people in theArizona desert today pleaded no contest to two counts of second-degree murder and will go free.
Bill Macumber entered a plea in Maricopa County Superior Courtunder an agreement with prosecutors and received a sentence of time served. Although the victims’ family asked Judge Bruce Cohen to deny his request, prosecutors said they couldn’t pursue a third trial because key evidence had been destroyed or lost.
Notice that they made him plead guilty to something so the state can save face.
Remember that last May, while the Governor of Texas was futilely chasing the presidency, he had to look tough on crime. So tough that he executed an innocent man:
Carlos DeLuna maintained his innocence from the moment he was arrested in 1983 for the stabbing death of a young Texas woman right up until he was executed six years later. On Monday, a Columbia University professor and a group of law students offered what appears to be definitive proof that DeLuna’s mistaken-identity claims were the real deal and that an innocent man was put to death.
The Guardian explains how DeLuna, a 20-year-old eighth-grade dropout at the time of his arrest, told authorities that not only was he not Wanda Lopez’s killer, but that he knew the man who was: Carlos Hernandez, a notorious criminal who shared Deluna’s first name and looked so much like him that the two were frequently mistaken for twins. The prosecution, however, successfully argued that they searched for this elusive Hernandez without success, and that DeLuna had simply made him up.
This problem is real and ongoing. Politicians feel the need to appear “tough on crime”, even in the face of exculpatory evidence. Cops and prosecutors have their egos to maintain and their stats to keep up. Nobody gets a prize for not convicting an innocent man. Even the exonerated get little or no compensation. One of the subject of the play, Robert Hayes, was unable to get a license to train horses after he was released because he had been in prison.
The US executes more people than any other country except Iran and China. That isn’t a statistic to be proud of.
Clouds and silver linings
We’re in New York for a long weekend of theater. Got awfully lucky with the weather–the flight we took this morning was cancelled yesterday morning due to the storm. Today, all was well. We got off the ground right on time and landed 20 minutes early.
Flying over the outskirts of the city, we noticed large areas where there were no lights, even 8 days after Hurricane Sandy. Mike tell me that area where he grew up, Rockaway, is devastated.
It’s much easier to fly into JFK than it is to get out of it by car. The line for taxis is interminable, even though there seem to be an infinite number of cabs here. But it’s where I get to enjoy one of the great pleasures of life.
You can reserve a town car from a car service and ride into town in style for no more, and often less, than a taxi costs. And you don’t have to wait long, and you get to see this:
Only the most important big shots are known by one name.
I don’t get to travel by private jet, but sometimes I can still see my name in metaphoric lights.
The drive into town was the longest we’ve ever had–the mid-town tunnel is still closed due to the storm (scheduled to reopen at 6 tomorrow morning) and it took more than 90 minutes to make what is usually a 40 minute or less drive.
Here’s the silver linings, slender though it was. The tunnel has an $8 toll, the bridge we had to detour to was free. Okay, 8 bucks doesn’t mean much in New York, but every little bit helps. I like to feel like I beat the system, even if only by $8.
Priceline got us a room at the Crowne Plaza, right on Times Square. The room is great, it has a view of the square, we’re on the 36th floor, and they offer room service until midnight. What more could you want?
In fact, we went to a play (review coming soon), came back to the hotel and had room service for dinner. I had the linguine, Gail had the chicken pot pie.
We ordered 2 entrees, and they brought us silverware for 1. Somebody wasn’t thinking, but we survived. The food was decent +.
Elektra was not electric
Caroline Lagerfelt as Clytemnestra and René Augesen as Elektra in Sophocles’ Elektra. Photo by Kevin Berne.
To ACT this evening, to see Elektra, featuring Olympia Dukakis.
Or, at least, it features her on other nights. We got the understudy, Omozé Idehenre. We hated the play, but it wasn’t all her fault.
It’s pretty rare that you see a 90 minute, no-intermission play and think it’s too long, but we did tonight. The prevailing opinion seemed to be “get on with it already”, as Elektra whines and mopes about her dead father, over and over and over and over. She’s pretty ticked off at her mom, too, but that may be understandable because mom is the one who killed dad.
If only her brother, Orestes, would come back and save her! But alas, some men come and explain that Orestes is dead, killed in a chariot race. A race described in interminably excruciating detail. Oh Woe!
But then a man comes with the urn containing his ashes, and there is more woe. Except that he turns out to be Orestes himself, who his doting sister doesn’t recognize. This is a plot Shakespeare would have discarded as being too silly.
Mom gets killed. Dad gets killed The end. Thank God it’s over.
I usually like Carly Perloff as a director, but it seemed like everyone was just screaming their lines so we would know they were important. Sort of like acting, but takes less talent.
Ms. Dukakis was supposed to play the role of the Greek Chorus; perhaps she would have been able to sell the story better than Ms. Idenhenre. I’ll never know. Or care. This is a night of theater best forgotten.
I hope this isn’t a trend
French fries, cheese curds and gravy. The dish that made Canada great. Not my photo.
Fads come and go in restaurants, as they each chase the latest big thing to satisfy increasingly sophisticated and jaded customers.
A few years ago you couldn’t get a salad without warm goat cheese.
Then beets came, then beets went.
Figs were all the rage for a while. then brussels sprouts.
Sweetbreads are hot lately.
The newest thing I’ve seen, though, is terrifying.
Poutine is a bid deal in eastern Canada. Take a dish of french fries, cover it with cheese curds (clotted, unaged cheese. Kind of a tasteless cottage cheese without the liquid) and drown the whole mess in gravy. After eating, sit in a quiet room and listen to the fine crackling sound of your arteries hardening.
Last night at Revival Bar + Kitchen, there was poutine on the menu. All fancified and California-ed up, of course. Fries topped with lamb chili and feta cheese. It must be popular, we tried to order it but they were sold out.
Tonight, we went to Gail’s favorite, Va de Vi, sitting at our usual seats, K1 and K2, the first two seats at the chef’s counter in the back where we can watch the cooks work. Surprise, they had poutine on the menu as well, although their iteration was tater tots with house-pulled mozzarella and beef gravy.
I’ve never had this dish, so naturally we had to try it.
Let me save you the trouble—don’t. It’s ghastly. Not poorly prepared, not poor ingredients, the entire conception is an abomination to the idea of fine dining.
I told the waiter that the dish wasn’t up to the standards of Va de Vi, and he said it was his favorite thing on the menu. “A big greasy gut-bomb” is how he described it.
If I wanted a big greasy gut bomb, I’d be eating at Nations Giant Hamburgers, thankyewverymuch. I go to good restaurants to eat good food, not a heart attack on a plate with no texture or flavor.
One restaurant, maybe they were experimenting. Two hip restaurants in two days with the same bizarre dish? I pray to God this isn’t a trend, a move away from the light, crisp, fresh, healthy food Alice Waters pioneered 40 years ago towards heavy dishes of heart attack on a plate. I’ve already had my double bypass, I don’t want another.
The good guys win one
Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez walks the Tehran bazaar in Argo
We saw a great movie, and you should too.
Argo is the true story of how the CIA got 6 Americans out of Iran after the takeover of the American Embassy in 1978. They had escaped to the Canadian Ambassador’s residence (after being turned away by the British and the Kiwis). They couldn’t stay there forever, and they couldn’t leave legally. The CIA turned to an “exfiltration” specialist named Tony Mendez to get them out.
There followed a plan so audacious, so risky, that if it wasn’t true you wouldn’t believe it. The six were taken out of the country posing as a Canadian film crew making preparations for a non-existent film called Argo.
John Goodman and Alan Arkin have key roles as a Hollywood makeup artist and a producer respectively. They are broad, loud, brash and wonderful.
The attention to detail in this film is incredible. The actors playing the 6 escapees are dead ringers for their counterparts. The clothing, the scenery, the imagery all are spot-on.
You know how it is going to end, of course, and yet the final 20 minutes of the film will have you on the edge of your seat holding your breath. This is really very, very good film-making.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 95%. Go see it.
I really liked my goat
There’s a line you just don’t hear every day “I really liked my goat”. But it’s true, and it speaks volumes about last night’s dinner.
We went to Revival Bar and Kitchen, on the corner of Addison and Shattuck, instantly recognizing the building as a place where we had dinner before, in a previous incarnation. It is on the same block as the Aurora Theater and Berkeley Rep, so it would be perfect for a pre-theater dinner.
Revival is your modern, eco-conscious place. All their meat is local and butchered in house. Everything is local, organic, sustainable, just as green as Berkeley can be. Not only is this politically correct, it means the meat and produce you get is fresh, seasonal, the best you can find, healthy, tasty and good for you.
The layout of the menu is more than passing strange, with some salads listed under salads and others listed under sides. Small plates are common these days, but that doesn’t make them all appetizers. It took us a while to figure out what they had and what we wanted and how large was a large and what was a small, but eventually we put together a plan.
Dinner started out with a charcuterie plate, all house made:
Charcuterie plate
Duck liver mousse, duck/pork pate, pork rillete, smoked ham, mortadella. Accompanied by grape chutney, mustard and pickles. I like all of these things (except the pickles). I never understand why they put a plate of stale bread chips alongside to spread the goodies on–it’s like eating roofing shingles. Fortunately, there was fresh bread on the table so I just used that and wondered about the other.
Next up was the soup:
Butternut squash soup with crispy leeks
This sounds like a good idea, and it sure looks good on the plate, but the “crispy leeks” just turn into unchewable strings you have a problem dealing with. Maybe it’s a plan to combine eating and flossing, but it doesn’t work for me. The soup was great, the leeks were a definite loser.
Pork chop, grits cake and chard.
Gail and I virtually never order the same dish. We thing eating out is about trying different things, so we want to try as many dishes as we reasonably can. Jack and Carol, though, both ordered the pork chop. The good new is that Jack thought it was the finest pork chop he’d ever eaten; moist, succulent and, most importantly, not overcooked.
The grits cake was an interesting and different choice. Chard doesn’t move me–I think it’s poor man’s spinach, and I can afford the good stuff. This chard at least was cooked with house cured pork belly, which could make cardboard taste good. In fact, I’d rather have cardboard and pork belly than chard.
Pork sausage flatbread
“Flatbread” is just another way of saying “really skinny pizza, $15 please”. We own a pizza joint, why order it out? I don’t know, but that’s what Gail had. It was good enough that she brought the leftovers home for breakfast, and she’s generally opposed to that.
Now for the best part:
Goat mixed grill
Gail knew the minute she saw the goat on the menu what I would be ordering. Revival offers a mixed grill, with a goat steak, a rib chop, and another cut that escapes me, along with a warm salad of bitter greens and lamb bacon.
I think that we have come so far from the farms of our ancestors that we have developed an unreasonable prejudice against goat, thinking it is tough, gamey and stringy. None of which is true–this meat was just like more flavorful and slightly less tender lamb. If I told you it was lamb you would believe me, and think it was particularly good. I ate every bite and loved it.
Service was a trifle erratic, and I thought the 2 hours dinner took was 30 minutes excessive for the number of courses. We were in a back room, which I appreciated because it was quieter; perhaps that explains the lengthiness of the meal.
The dessert card looked interesting, but I was full of goat and not about to dump ice cream willy-nilly on top of it.
Prices are reasonable but not cheap. We had a good time, thoroughly enjoyed the food and intend to go back. Maybe I can get Gail to try the goat, too.
Totally Unauthorized 