Awaiting the Bird

Image by Ray Caspio...

....who, by the way, "doesn't just PLAY the Eagle; he IS the Eagle. Too bad he hasn't an Equity card, so that we could REALLY respect his work." - Wry Smirko, author of I Know Something You Don't Know, The View from Grandpa's Seat, and "I Before E": a Proofreader's Handbook

Cleveland Public Theatre presents Big Box 2014, including The Importance of Waiting for the Eagle, by Robert Hawkes. Feb. 20th, 21st, & 22nd, 7 p.m. in the James Levin Theatre.

 A Failure to Distinguish

If you advertise your film as having won X number of Academy Awards, I may be attracted to the spectacle, and when I see the film at my local cinema, I will see ALL of the work that won the awards - acting, direction. cinematography, script, etc.

If you advertise your non-New-York production of a play as having won or been nominated for X number of Tony Awards, I may be similarly attracted to the spectacle by the whiff of celebrity in the air, if such is my appetite. But when I see your local production of the play, I will see NONE of the work that earned the recognition, except in the case of a nomination or award for Best Play, i.e. for the script itself. The rest of the work - acting, direction, design - will be different. It will be possibly as good as, or even better than, the work in New York, but it will not be the same work. So where's the logic in selling the play to me as though it were an immutable package like a film?

We celebrate the difference between the theatre and the cinema: I can do things in each of them which I cannot accomplish in the other. Two wonderful arts with quite different strengths. Maybe we ought to honor that distinction on the marketing front.

Sight & Sound 2011 Top 10

Having viewed The Turin Horse this evening, I have now seen all the films on the Sight & Sound Top 10 of 2011 list except for This Is Not a Film, of which I have missed or not heard of a local showing, and which is not yet released on home video.

We could divide up the list thus:

EXPECTATIONS DISAPPOINTED:


We Need to Talk About Kevin
A Separation


EXPECTATIONS SOMEWHAT DISAPPOINTED:


The Kid With a Bike
The Artist


EXPECTATIONS SATISFIED:


Melancholia


EXPECTATIONS MET AND EXCEEDED:


The Tree of Life
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The Turin Horse


IN A CLASS OF ITS OWN:


Le Quattro Volte


I'm open to discuss any of these, any time.

The Favorites List

The Favorites List, which I will limit to ten members, is not a "Ten Greatest" list. It's a list of films which I have difficulty imagining I would not be in the mood to see, at almost any time, if you said "Let's watch X". Some of them might well pop up on a Ten Greatest list as well, but that's not the point here.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hamer, 1949)
M. Hulot's Holiday (Tati, 1953)
Topkapi (Dassin, 1964)
The Kid (Chaplin, 1921)
Tremors (Underwood, 1990)
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
Fargo (Coen Bros, 1996)

Cat People (Tourneur, 1942)

As with my 10 Best list, it could change if you asked me again, although Kind Hearts and Coronets has a permanent seat in first place.

A List

With the every-ten-years Sight and Sound 10 Best Films Poll coming up soon, I thought I might offer my own "10 Best", just for shits and giggles.

First of all, in order to make some room on the list, I'm going to award emeritus status to Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941), The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939), and Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953), and just put them on an honorary shelf to the side.

The rest of the list - for today at least - would look like this:

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)
Persona (Bergman, 1966)
Gates of Heaven (Morris, 1978)
Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1978)
Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961)
A Serious Man (Coen Bros, 2009)
Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
Blow-up (Antonioni, 1966)
Drifting Clouds (Kaurismäki, 1996)

I could come up with another list tomorrow - well, in a few months - which might include some different names. And then there's my "10 Favorites" list, which is different from my "10 Best". Another day.

A graceful production at convergence-continuum

I had folk knocking at my door the other day asking if I ever asked myself why God allowed suffering. “Aha,” I said to myself, “these guys are wondering about the undeserved punishing of the innocent - the flip side of Grace.” Scenting dogma on the breeze, I declined to engage in this conversation underneath my lintel.

Craig Wright’s play Grace, which opened on June 29th at convergence-continuum, extends us an invitation to a less dogmatic consideration of the question of God’s favor - or lack of it. The play jumps into the pool of ideas about faith, grace, and the Wheel of Fortune and has a good old splash around. convergence-continuum’s production, simply and snappily directed by Geoff Hoffman, allows the humor, pathos, and philosophical inquiry of the play to emerge to glorious effect.

Like Alan Ayckbourn’s How the Other Half Loves, Grace takes place in two apartments represented simultaneously on the stage - with some of the same comic results. One apartment houses Steve and Sara (Doug Kusak and Laurel Hoffman), a young Christian couple newly arrived in Florida from Minnesota. Full of spotlessly cheerful faith, they believe themselves highly favored, and seem to have proof: they have just received, from a Swiss investor, money enough not only to buy the hotel they want but to start a “Gospel hotel chain”.

Next door, in an identical apartment, lives NASA programmer Sam (John Busser), whose view of the universe is not only rather more scientifically skeptical, but informed by recent unmerited misfortune: an accident in which his fiancée has died and he himself has suffered disfiguring injury. Moreover, his computer and digital camera seem to be conspiring to erase what concrete record he has of a happy time before the disaster. He’s a suffering Job, if a doubting one.

Karl the Exterminator (Clyde Simon) visits both apartments to spray for “the little guys”, bringing with him not only his pesticide, but a frankly atheistic point of view, to complete the spectrum. The wartime horrors he witnessed as a youngster have left him firmly persuaded that no divinity exists.


But it's not all as simple as that, because time passes, things happen, and people undergo change - or offer resistance which in itself is also change. Sam is not the only Job on the ash heap (Steve develops a nasty rash), nor the only doubter, and sometimes even the faithful receive a sharp reminder of the adage "If you want to give God a good laugh, make a plan." Wright concocts a plot in which all these elements collide in delicious ambiguity - often hilariously, sometimes painfully, always interestingly.


The convergence-continuum actors weave their way through the confusion with skill and daring. Kusak's evangelistic energy - whether for God or for real estate, both of which represent "the substance of things not seen" - is contagious, as is his wretched itching. Laurel Hoffman manages to invest a possibly wimpy Sara with a core of compassion that has actual power. The simplicity of John Busser's approach to his character's suffering and anger creates an effect both touching and funny. convergence-continuum Artistic Director Clyde Simon, in the supporting role of Karl, scores something of a triumph of both comic and pathetic detail. His monologue about the wartime horrors chills to the marrow.


In con-con's flexible space, set designers Hoffman and Simon have placed the apartments between halves of the audience; lights by Cory Molner and sound by Clyde Simon support the text and action with nicely restrained effect.


Grace is the third play in con-con's mini-series "Cosmic Conundrums Curiously Considered". It asks some big questions, and does not insult us with easy answers. In fact, it pokes some fairly pointed fun at the easy-answer merchants. It is theatre that challenges and delights. It deserves our support. The play runs Th/Fr/Sa through July 21st.


box office: 216-687-0074
convergence-continuum.org
tickets $15 ($12 seniors, $10 students) - seating is limited