FILM NEWS: JACC ANNOUNCES PROGIE WINNERS

A scene from Even the Rain.

JACC jumps over what Oscar picks

By Ed Rampell and John Esther

After failing to make the final cut for this year's Academy Awards for Best Film in a Foreign Language (or any other category for that matter), Even the Rain, a smashing Spanish film about an uprising in Bolivia has swept the James Agee Cinema Circle’s fourth annual “Progie” Awards for Best Progressive Films and Filmmakers of 2010.

The James Agee Cinema Circle is an international, independent umbrella group of progressive film critics, reviewers, scholars and historians dedicated to raising public awareness about films dealing with political, social and cultural issues such as: Human rights, workers’ struggles, women’s rights, environmentalism, ethnic rights, free speech, gay rights, civil liberties, immigrant rights, people’s activism and peace.

The JACC annually presents The Progies to the year’s Best Progressive studio features, indies, documentaries and artists. The Progies are the “un-Oscar”, the “people’s alternative Academy Awards,” honoring movies and talents of conscience and consciousness whereas the Best Picture Oscar, for example, consistently goes to movies with centrist-right sensibilities (e.g. Ordinary People; Dances with Wolves; Shakespeare in Love; American Beauty; The Departed; The Hurt Locker) or even politically reactionary films (e.g. Forrest Gump; Driving Miss Daisy; Silence of the Lambs; A Beautiful Mind; Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; Crash; No Country for Old Men; Slumdog Millionaire) at the Annual Academy Award Ceremony. Of course, this year's Academy Award nominations are not significantly different.

Below is a complete list of all of the 2010 Progies winners, followed by the nominees in every category. (There is an initial nomination process with other films not mentioned below). Each Progie is awarded in a category named after a great cinema artist or film that made a contribution to movies that inspire, enlighten and entertain audiences.

The Trumbo: The Progie Award for Best Progessive Picture is named after Oscar-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a member of the Hollywood Ten, who was imprisoned for his beliefs and refusing to inform. Trumbo helped break the Blacklist when he received screen credit for Spartacus and Exodus in 1960.

Winner: Even The Rain

Other nominations: Social Network, Casino Jack, Made In Dagenham.

The Garfield: The Progie Award for Best Actor in a progressive picture is named after John Garfield, who rose from the proletarian theater to star in progressive pictures such as Gentleman's Agreement and Force of Evil, only to run afoul of the Hollywood Blacklist.

Co-Winners: Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter; Kevin Spacey, Casino Jack.

Other nominations: James Franco, Howl; Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech.

The Karen Morley Award: The Progie Award for Best Actress in a film portraying women in a progressive picture is named for Karen Morley, co-star of 1932’s Scarface and 1934’s Our Daily Bread. Morley was driven out of Hollywood in the 1930s for her leftist views, but maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for New York’s Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954.

Winner: Naomi Watts, Fair Game.

Other nomination: Sally Hawkins, Made In Dagenham.

The Renoir: The Progie Award for Best Anti-War Film is named after the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir, who directed the 1937 anti-militarism masterpiece, Grand Illusion.

Winner: The Green Zone.

Other nominations: Route Irish, Miral.

The Gillo: The Progie Award for Best Progressive Foreign Film is named after the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, who lensed the 1960s classics, The Battle of Algiers and Burn!

Winner: Even The Rain.

Other nomination: Tears Of Gaza.

The Dziga: The Progie Award for Best Progressive Documentary is named after the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, who directed 1920s nonfiction films such as the Kino Pravda (“Film Truth”) series and The Man With the Movie Camera.

Winner: Inside Job.

Other nominations: Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer; South Of The Border.

Our Daily Bread Award: The Progie Award for the Most Positive and Inspiring Working Class Screen Image is named after director King Vidor’s 1934 classic about an American collective farm, which starred Karen Morley and was produced by Charlie Chaplin.

Winner: Made In Dagenham.

Other nominations: Even The Rain; The Fighter, Fish Tank.

The Robeson: The Progie Award for the Best Portrayal of People of Color that shatters cinema stereotypes, in light of their historically demeaning depictions onscreen. It is named after courageous performing legend, Paul Robeson, who starred in 1936’s Song of Freedom and 1940’s The Proud Valley.

Winner: Even The Rain.

Other nominations: Night Catches Us; Miral; Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench; Frankie & Alice.

The Buñuel: The Progie Award for the Most Slyly Subversive Satirical Cinematic Film in terms of form, style and content is named after Luis Buñuel, the Spanish surrealist who directed 1967’s Belle de Jour and 1972’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Winner: The Social Network.

Other nominations: Enter the Void; Hitler in Hollywood. 

The Pasolini: The Progie Award for Best Pro-Gay Rights film is named after Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who directed 1964's The Gospel According to St. Matthew. 

Winner: The Kids Are All Right.

Other nominations: Howl; I Love You Philip Morris. 

The Lawson: The Progie Award for Best Anti-Fascist Film is named after John Howard Lawson, screenwriter of 1938’s anti-Franco film, Blockade, and the 1940s anti-nazi films, Four Sons, Action in the North Atlantic, Sahara and Counter-Attack. 

Winner: Even The Rain.

Other nominations: The King’s Speech, Casino Jack, The Last Circus. 

The Langlois: For Best Progressive Picture Deserving Theatrical Release in the US and distribution in other countries and platforms is named after film archivist Henri Langlois, co-founder of Paris’ Cinémathèque.

Winner: Film Socialisme.

Other nominations: Amigo, Vlast, Cleveland Versus Wall Street, Nostalgia For The Light.

 

The Sergei: The Progie Award for Lifetime Progressive Achievement On or Off Screen is named after Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet director of masterpieces such as Potemkin and 10 Days That Shook the World.

Winner: Jean-Luc Godard.
Other nominations: Sean Penn, Mike Leigh, Ed Asner.

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TOP TEN THEATER 2010: ED RAMPELL'S LC PICKS



A scene from Waiting for Lefty.

Live and kicking

By Ed Rampell

Expressing the zeitgeist of the times, 2010 saw an emerging trend of left-leaning plays and operas on the Left Coast.

Theatre West staged a powerful revival of Clifford Odets’ classic Depression era pro-strike proletarian drama Waiting For Lefty.

The second act of the new Charlie Chaplin bio-play called Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin at the La Jolla Playhouse near San Diego is primarily political, as the Little Tramp takes on Hitler in The Great Dictator and outspokenly advocates opening a second front during WWII in order to relieve the Soviets’ burden. The musical also vividly depicts the Redbaiting, surveilling and blacklisting of the sympathetically portrayed Chaplin, as well as a Communist rally with red flags.

As did Il Postino, the operatic adaptation of the 1990s Italian film about Chilean poet Pablo Neruda -- portrayed by the greatest living tenor, Placido Domingo -- and a simple mailman, whom the Marxist Neruda transforms into a writer and militant, who is eventually assassinated by reactionary police at a Communist demonstration full of red flags. In this L.A Opera production, instead of being portrayed as bogeymen, the Communist Neruda and mailman are the opera’s noble heroes.

The Latino Theater Company’s La Victima explored the vicissitudes of Chicano migrant laborers north of the border and depicts a United Farm Workers’ strike.

Carry It On! premiered at Topanga Canyon’s Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, co-founded by the blacklisted actor who co-starred in 1954’s classic, Salt of the Earth, and eventually played TV’s Grandpa Walton. A sort of people’s history of America told largely through protest songs, progressive whites are portrayed in Carry It On!, including Woody Guthrie, Mark Twain, Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Susan B. Anthony, Mother Jones, Lillian Hellman and Cindy Sheehan, as well as notable Blacks, like Harriett Tubman and Martin Luther King (vividly depicted by Gerald C. Rivers).

L.A. Opera’s glorious production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s immortal The Marriage of Figaro was deliriously uplifting and joyous, making one glad to be alive, if for no other reason than to see and hear shows like this.

Academy Award winner Tim Robbins’ Actors’ Gang play, Break the Whip, deconstructs the Jamestown colony with a story told from the point of view of slaves, indentured servants and American Indians.

The Sacred Fools Theater premiered Watson, The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes, a Sherlockian spoof told from Dr. Watson’s point of view, with much whimsy, drollery and French Stewart in a dual role –- as Dr. Sigmund Freud and Queen Victoria.

The Odyssey Theatre presented Tales From Hollywood by Christopher Hampton, a dramedy about European literary refugees fleeing Hitler and winding up in La-La-Land. The play’s lefty highlights include: Daniel Zacapa (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jean-Luc Godard) as playwright Bertolt Brecht, a Jewish-American female screenwriter who joins the Communist Party, a Soviet diplomat, the playing of the “Internationale,” etc.

My favorite 2010 play was, but of course, the one that I wrote: Still Standing, The Musical, a dramatization of the life and hard times of Kenyan rapper Gleam Joel, directed by Iona Morris, choreographed by Tor Campbell. Gleam wrote the lyrics for the songs composed by Sergio Fertitta in this hip-hop musical, wherein gangsta Gleam eventually turns his back on the thug life and finds spiritual salvation. We performed the play at Long Beach and flew the L.A. cast -- including Taylor McKinney, Eddie Wheeler, Vernetra Gavin, Constance Reese, Chris Allen, Brooke Bridges, Lloyd Collins and Harry Zinn -- to Switzerland, where Still Standing received standing ovations.

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FILM REVIEW: SANCTUM

A scene from Sanctum.

Si see sea C

By Ed Rampell

Almost a century ago motion picture pioneer D.W. Griffith, who helped create the cinematic art form, said, “The task I am trying to achieve is above all to make you see.” James Cameron, the auteur behind 2009’s epic Avatar, is continuing to do just that with Sanctum, the underwater cave diving extravaganza shot in mind blowingly glorious 3D and IMAX.

Set in Papua New Guinea Sanctum is the story of a hardy group of explorers who set out to discover the inner recesses of Esa’ala Cave, the planet’s least accessible cave system, which human eyes have never before beheld. Predictably, disaster strikes, and Sanctum becomes a saga about the struggle for survival, somewhat in the vein of 127 Hours crossed by the 1959 version of Journey to the Center of the Earth, based on Jules Verne’s immortal novel. Sanctum also features a father-son struggle of Ivan Turgenev proportions between the hardass lead explorer and master diver, Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh) and his teenage son, Josh (Rhys Wakefield). Throw into this volatile mix some damsels in distressm Victoria (Alice Parkinson) and Liz (Nicole Downes), a greedy capitalist (Ioan Gruffudd) who underwrites then undermines this mission impossible, shake, do not stir, and you have the explosive ingredients for a dramatic film. And considering Sanctum’s psychological familial dynamics, you don’t have to be a Sigmund Freud to figure out that the submerged caverns and tunnels symbolize the womb, birth channel, etc.

However, the film’s acting is mediocre (with the possible exception of Wakefield, who literally rises to the occasion), as is the so-so script by John Garvin and Andrew Wight (the latter is an actual spelunker -- Sanctum is loosely suggested by a 1988 cave expedition that went wrong). The vulgarities and brash behavior are meant to let audiences know what a group of bold souls these explorers be. Grufford’s clichéd capitalist is another one of Cameron’s greedy pigs in Titanic, Avatar, etc.

In Sanctum, once again, the indigenous people are reduced to being mere background in their own country, as the Black Papuans are mainly porters who serve the all-important whitey bwanas (it’s their story, after all), who are Australians and Americans.  The sole token Native cave diver, Luko (Cramer Cain), disappears off the screen pretty quickly, too. Those islanders are expendable in their own islands.

Director Alister Grierson’s only other feature, 2006’s Kokoda, was also set in what the production notes call “New Guinea.” However, Sanctum was actually shot on location at Australia and in a studio, not in Melanesia -- another trite trope of the South Seas Cinema film genre, that includes Pacific Island shot and/or set classics such as Mutiny on the Bounty and The Hurricane. I guess if you’ve seen one island, you’ve seen them all.

But never mind all this, which is run-of-the-movie-mill for special effects-driven films, where plot, characterization, dialogue, thespianism, etc., all take second place to the real raison d’etre and star of the big picture: the Cameron/Pace Fusion 3D Camera System. Sanctum’s story is merely an excuse for this revolutionary cinematic technique and format, and for using it in fascinating, stunning settings, both exterior and interior. You absolutely must see Sanctum in IMAX – some of the exquisite cinematography is absolutely startling and jaw dropping, from those lifelike underwater bubbles gurgling upwards – seemingly surrounding viewers – to those panoramic aerial shots that put audiences in the eye-popping choppers.

Some auds complained about technical problems when they viewed Avatar, but the Sanctum private screening I attended at an AMC Burbank on an IMAX screen was flawless and nothing short of visually spectacular. This is not the first time that South Seas Cinema has been shot in a new cinematic technique – William Castle’s 1954 Drums of Tahiti was shot in 3D, so there’s was lots of spears thrown right at the camera lenses in order to make ticket buyers duck for cover. And 1958’s South Seas Adventure there was a travelogue shot in the Cinerama widescreen process. But with Sanctum, the visionary Cameron and crew have made a major addition to the South Seas Cinema genre, and more importantly to film culture. In the best D.W. Griffith tradition, they are making audiences see in new ways.

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THEATER REVIEW: GREEDY

Want, want, want

By Ed Rampell

Greed is a powerful force that compels and propels human beings, and which has motivated capitalism, as well as some of our greatest artists to create over the years. Erich Von Stroheim directed a silent movie masterpiece with that title during the 1920s, while Oliver Stone’s “greed is good” mantra was recited by Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in another classic, 1987’s Wall Street, which Stone and Douglas revisited with last year’s sequel. Now playwright Karl Gajdusek (whose other plays include FUBAR) is adding to the greed canon with Greedy, a contemporary exploration of this attribute performed by an ensemble cast with some accomplished credits and ably directed by James Roday.

This Red Dog Squadron production is set against the ominous backdrop of a storm that recurs throughout the drama like rainy season at Pago Pago, as Greedy examines and exposes two different groups of characters whose lives become inexorably linked. Louis (Brad Raider) and Keira (Maggie Lawson) have a brother-sister relationship with incestuous undertones. She is a parasite who leeches off of her brother; Louis in turn relies on the money earned by his mannish lover, Janet (Amanda Detmer), who earns her daily bread as a security guard at a hospital.

Janet’s line of employment, as well as one of scam artist Keira’s schemes, links this trio to Tatiana (Ivana Milicevic) and Paul (on opening night Kurt Fuller played Paul). Here, Gajdusek’s drama takes an intriguing twist. Usually, we think of greed as being related to over-acquisitiveness and possessiveness of money and other means of wealth. However, Galdusek reveals, and rightly so, that humans can be overly zealous about acquiring other things. Paul, a defrocked doctor, has a desperate need to be wanted and loved for who he is. On the other hand, Paul’s considerably younger wife Tatiana, an Eastern European immigrant who seems like an on the make mail order bride, yearns to have a baby.

Their marriage reminds of Japanese comedian Tamayo Otsuki’s joke about the millionaire who asks his lover if she’d still love him if he lost everything. “I’d love you – and miss you very much,” is the funny response.

Much of this two-act's action is based on the intertwining of the different groups of characters, who are drawn together through various forms of greed, the play’s unifying principle. Indeed Greedy uses cinematic devices, such as video footage and more imaginatively, the theatrical version of a split screen. The book cluttered set by scenic designer Kurt Boetcher works well, too. The play also uses to good effect two spectral characters who are clad in raingear and roam the theatre before the proverbial curtain lifts, during intermission, etc. It’s a pretty creepy but evocative effect full of foreboding. 

Greedy is well acted with convincing, sometimes chilling performances. Fuller’s Paul, craving, crawling to be liked, is especially affecting, in this complex story with complicated characters that was previously presented in New York. (Note: Apparently, in some performances, Peter McKenzie, depicts Paul.) There are recurring references to Nazism, as well as to Marxism. Perhaps the latter, with its promise of “from each according to their ability, to each according to his needs,” is meant to represent a counterpoint to capitalism, with its dog eat dog, every man for himself, to each according to his greed credo.

By the way, a recurring leitmotif in the drama is the desire to run away and get away from it all at a tropical isle. Pricey Bora Bora is frequently cited, but as someone who has been there a number of times, FYI, although Bora Bora may be, as James Michener claimed, the most beautiful isle on earth, $100,000 is probably not nearly enough money in order to retire at this over-inflated island in French Polynesia, where immigration authorities would presumably refuse non-French citizens residency rights, anyway. So the dream is mere fantasy.

The small but enthusiastic audience clearly enjoyed the premiere. However, be forewarned: even though the El Centro is more diminutive than L.A.’s usual 99-seaters, do try to get a seat in or near the front row. Not only because the heads of other theatre-goers obstructed my fourth row view, but more importantly, for a few seconds at the end, something important is briefly glimpsed onstage (which, of course, your humble and most obedient plot spoiler-adverse critic won’t reveal here, Dear Reader) that is vital to Greedy’s denouement.   

(Greedy runs through Jan. 29 at the El Centro Theatre, 804 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood, CA 90038. For more info: http://www.lajollaplayhouse.org/)

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THEATER REVIEW: RIGOLETTO

Duke of Mantua (Gianluca Terranova) and Countess Ceprano (Valentina Fleer) in Rigoletto. Photo by Robert Millard.

The hunchback of Mantua’s dames and dukes 

By Ed Rampell

I had a hunch that L.A. Opera’s production of Rigoletto, the tale about the titular hunchbacked harlequin, would be hunky-dory. Indeed, composer Giuseppe Verdi called it “my best opera” and it is one of the most superb shows I’ve seen at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Verily, this vivid version of the 1851 classic about the comedian with a hump is a humdinger that will leave audiences humming Verdi’s virtuoso melodies.

Verdi’s sonorous score rendered under the commanding baton of James Conlon is, but of course, nothing short of superb. The colorful costumes designed by Constance Hoffman transport audiences back in time to 16^th century Italy. The sets of medieval Mantua wrought by skilled scenery designer Michael Yeargan on a slanted stage that enhances perspective bear a striking resemblance to the haunting paintings by Italian surrealist Giorgio De Chirico -- all that seems missing are the Greek-born painter’s trademark locomotives about to smash into brick walls. A canny choice: because if De Chirico’s canvases visualize frustration, Rigoletto is largely about thwarted love and lust.

Rigoletto was one of the social outcasts Verdi specialized in. Along with Porgy of the Gershwin Brothers’ Porgy and Bess, Rigoletto is one of opera-dom’s greatest physically deformed characters (although it should be duly noted that operas are full of mentally twisted dramatis personae). Baritone George Gagnidze of Georgia (Stalin’s, not Scarlett’s) brings down the opera house as the tortured court jester, those medieval stand-up comics whose comedy clubs were castles and palaces. The disabled comedian bridles at his lot in life, which is to amuse the Duke of Mantua (Italian tenor Gianluca Terranova depicts the raunchy royal) and his feckless, scheming, mean-spirited courtiers. Rigoletto is the archetypal clown laughing on the outside but crying on the inside.

However, the ribald Rigoletto is also a sultan of insults with a cutting Don Rickles rapier-like wit. He joins all the Duke’s men in belittling Count Ceprano (bass Matthew Anchel), who is cuckolded by the libertine (not so) nobleman, and Count Monterone (bass Daniel Sumegi), whose daughter is likewise seduced by the lady killer Duke. Incensed by Rigoletto’s barbs and mockery the count curses the jester.

The curse of Monterone apparently rewrites the Golden Rule, changing it to: “Do not do unto others what you don’t what others to do unto you.” Rigoletto learns this lesson the hard way, as the rapacious, deceptive Duke turns his sexual attentions towards Rigoletto’s own daughter, Gilda (soprano Sarah Coburn, who L.A. Opera aficionados may remember from 2009’s presentation of Giaochino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville). Stung once too often by Rigoletto’s jibes, the courtiers merrily and maliciously turn the tables on the humpbacked not-so funnyman.

Speaking of sopranos, Rigoletto solicits stiletto-wielding assassin Sparafucile (bassi profundi Andrea Silvestrelli) to do a hit on the fickle Duke, who plays with women’s emotions the way Niccolo Paganini played the violin. Sparafucile acts in league with his sister, the bawdy Maddalena (mezzo soprano Kendall Gladen, who previously appeared in L.A. Opera’s equally grand Carmen by Georges Bizet), to entrap and liquidate the randy Duke. But as male chauvinists have it, frailty, thy name is woman, and all hell breaks loose with one of opera’s most colossal disasters and backfires, as Rigoletto gets his “jest” desserts for ridiculing and humiliating so many for so long. The best laid plans of mice and men…

Back during the 1980s I saw a production of Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera, which rather strongly implied that the reason why the hunchback was so zealously overprotective of Gilda was that the deformed father had an incestuous desire to hump his daughter. But there’s none of that Oedipal-like theorizing in this production deftly directed by Mark Lamos. Although Verdi composed the music, the Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Le roi s’amuse by one of France’s greatest men of letters, none other than Victor Hugo –- who wrote that other masterpiece about a hunchback named Quasimodo.

This opera is a masterpiece and the poignant saga of the man with the hump will leave a lump in your throat.

Rigoletto runs through Dec. 18, L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown Los Angeles. For more information: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com

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THEATER REVIEW: LOHENGRIN



Telramund (James Johnson) and Ben Heppner (Lohengrin) in Lohengrin.

Wagner's woes

By Ed Rampell

L.A. Opera premiered Lohengrin on Nov. 20. No, this is not about Lindsay’s smirk in her mug shots. Rather, it’s another one of Richard Wagner’s works, only this time the opera is performed more conventionally, minus the avant-garde razzmatazz of Achim Freyer’s The Ring of the Nibelungen, which had some opera traditionalists’ panties in a bunch. Like The Ring Cycle Wagner explores a Germanic legend in Lohengrin, based on a medieval myth about a knight in shining armor (at least on one silver-clad leg). The original source saga could be roughly compared to the Sir Lancelot and Guinevere British tales of yore, although Lohengrin, of course, has an Aryan twist.

The production directed by Lydia Steier at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, however, has updated Lohengrin to take place during World War I (after Wagner’s death) in Saxony. In any case, like any good knight, Lohengrin (Canadian tenor Ben Heppner) comes to the rescue of a dazzling damsel in distress, the maidenly Elsa (Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski), who has been accused of a heinous crime. They vow to wed, but on one condition: Elsa must never ask Lohengrin about his family origins, or even his name.

But meet the mezzo -- Dolora Zajick as the scheming Ortrud -- who plays Iago to Elsa’s Othello, stirring the pot of suspicion in a classic case of projection. The U.S.-born mezzo-soprano’s character is married to Friedrich von Telramund (American bass-baritone James Johnson), who is a pretender to the title of “Protector of Brabant” and was originally supposed to marry Elsa, before she fell under a cloud of doubt. All hell breaks loose as Telramund alleges before King Heinrich (Icelandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson) that Elsa has committed a horrific act, and Lohengrin’s rather magical appearance pits the knight against Telramund.

Wagner’s opera comments on many dimensions, including on true love. One can clearly see that Wagner suffered from unhappy marriages, and Lohengrin’s wedding night scene may be the most epic depiction of coitus interruptus in the entire history of art. Talk about love’s labors lost! The story also explores whether lovers should reveal their true inner selves, who they really are, to their partners; as well as the folly of marrying someone you’ve just met, without getting to know their future spouse first. There may be such a thing as love at first sight, but most of these impulsive marital unions are doomed to failure, as Wagner knew.

Lohengrin also observes the issues of faith versus doubt, paganism versus Christianity, sorcery versus religion, conditional versus unconditional love and miracles. The opera ponders secret societies and utopias, too.

More presciently, Wagner also sheds light on the cult of personality and mob mentality, as well as militarism. At first, the German soldiers wear Pickelhaube helmets with spikes, but by the third act they appear to be wearing Wehrmacht-style headgear like those worn during the Third Reich. The Nazis rather infamously misappropriated Wagner and his music, although the maestro died six years before Adolph Hitler’s birth. Leni Riefenstahl’s 1934 agitprop movie Triumph of the Will, a pseudo-documentary directed by essentially a feature/fiction filmmaker, may consciously or unconsciously incorporate elements of Lohengrin. In addition to the whole hero worship aspect, Triumph of the Will opens with Hitler descending from the skies to the adoring masses below in the gothic town of Nuremburg, just as Lohengrin arrives via a black swan (which, in Triumph of the Will, is der Fuhrer’s airplane).

The L.A. Opera production designed by Dirk Hofacker has its share of special effects not unlike last weekend’s other wizardry work, the latest installment of the Harry Potter franchise. 3-D is much the film vogue nowadays, but by George, Hofacker’s set in this three-act show really is three-dimensional! Hofacker’s bombed out church -- most of the action takes place within or outside of it -- is one of the best sets I’ve ever seen grace the stage of the Dorothy Chandler. And not only is the set solid, but it actually moves, in real time. Take that, Avatar!

Without trying to be insulting, some of the oversized performers also give IMAX a run for its money. Unlike its younger sibling, the cinema, opera cares more about singing ability than it does about the looks of its stars, some of whom wouldn’t exactly be playing romantic leads on the silver screen -- if you catch my drift. The lighting by Mark McCullough, plus the changing skies, with clouds, stars, et al, are likewise glorious. It is not an overstatement to say that L.A. Opera’s sets can be true co-stars, like in Lohengrin.

James Conlon ably conducts the orchestra. Surprisingly, the best piece of music Wagner composed for Lohengrin is the sonorous, stirring, brassy Prelude to Act III, which, for my money rivals "The Ride of the Valkyries" and "Siegfried’s Funeral March" from Gotterdammerung (both in The Ring Cycle) as Wagner’s single greatest piece of music.

Nevertheless, there is enough to delight the eye and ear in Lohengrin to make even the troubled Lindsay Lohan grin.


Lohengrin runs through Dec. 12 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown Los Angeles. For more information: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com

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THEATER REVIEW: TALES FROM HOLLYWOOD

Bertolt Brecht (Daniel Zacapa) and Odon von Horvath (Gregory Gifford Giles) in Hooray for Hollywood.

Hooray for this side of Hollywood!

By Ed Rampell

Local theater’s leftward trend continues with the revival of Christopher Hampton’s 1980s play, Tales From Hollywood, which includes: A rendition of the revolutionary anthem "The Internationale"; Jewish-American screenwriter Helen Schwartz (Jennifer Sorenson) who joins the Communist Party USA; actor J.P. Sarro portraying an L.A.-based Soviet diplomat named Lomakhin in a minor part; and in a lead role, Daniel Zacapa as Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht. The latter is essential for Hollywood’s plot, which is about European – mostly German – artistic refugees from Hitler, who fled the fatherland and wound up in La-La-Land.

(By the way, if you want to catch a whiff of the militaristic mindset they were fleeing, see L.A. Opera’s production of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin, which is playing through Dec. 12.)

This comedy drama’s émigrés include a rather long-winded, pompous, if anti-fascist, Thomas Mann (Kent Minnault) whose novels include 1924’s The Magic Mountain; his more radical older brother Heinrich Mann (Walter Berry), who wrote the novel that Josef von Sternberg adapted for 1930’s The Blue Angel, which brought stardom to another anti-Nazi German artist, Marlene Dietrich; “Heine’s” wife Nelly Mann (Australian stage and screen actress Ursula Brooks); Salka Viertel (Elizabeth Southard), who was a screenwriter for that other European émigré, Greta Garbo, and hostess of soirees for the Continental exiles; etc.

All of the above dramatis personae were actual historical figures, with probably the exception of Schwartz, who is the girlfriend of the play’s main character, Odon von Horvath (Gregory Gifford Giles). Horvath was another real life personage, although Hampton takes great liberties with him -- dramatic license, and all that. In any case, as Hollywood’s narrator, Horvath plays a role somewhat similar to that of Joel Grey’s emcee in Cabaret, based on the stories by that other Christopher – Isherwood – that deal with related subject matter during at least part of the period Hampton’s play covers.

Hollywood actually goes beyond the 1930s to at least the 1950s, focusing on the interaction between exiled European members of the literati and the movie colony’s studio system. Towards the play’s end the refugees in “the land of the free” confront another form of totalitarianism: The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and McCarthyism, during the Hollywood Blacklist.

Much frustration and fun is derived from the clashes between these highly cultured men/women of letters and the vulgarians at the gates who ran the motion picture industry. In a dual role, Sarro also plays the aptly named producer-writer Charles Money, who is probably a composite character. As a studio cheat and chiseler, Sarro reminded me of the comical Wayne Knight, who played Jerry Seinfeld’s nemesis named Newman in that sitcom.

Zacapa steals the show as Brecht, portraying the cigar wielding German playwright with great comic panache as part Karl Marx, part Groucho Marx. The role as played and written is a droll send-up of Brecht and his Theatre of Alienation theatrical techniques. Not only does Brecht succeed in alienating practically everybody with his endless harangues and egotism, but his Brechtian methods provide much grist for the comic mill, as Zacapa appears in various scenes wielding signs stating what is happening onstage. I may be prejudiced because Brecht is my favorite 20th century playwright, but Zacapa’s performance was my favorite in the play. Viva Zacapa!

Brooks is another stand out as Heinrich’s long-suffering, far younger wife. A stranger in a strange land dislocated from her homeland, Nelly yearns for a younger man’s touch and for the Germany Hitler has stolen from her. Like Odon (whom she pursues), Nelly hides a terrible secret the comedy drama eventually reveals.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed Hampton’s highly literate, droll, insightful Hollywood script. However, I found the transition from comedy to drama to tragedy to sometimes be jumpy. Brecht’s wife, actress Helene Weigel (Niki Blumberg), says and does little, if anything other than appearing in the background. This is a pity because I would have enjoyed learning more about this woman who rocked the theater world as Mother Courage, etc., and she never comes alive onstage in Hollywood. The postwar L.A. production of Brecht’s Galileo starring Charles Laughton as the beleaguered astronomer forced to recant by the church, which was a thinly veiled attack on HUAC (and Stalinism) and quite a cause celebre at the time, is also neglected.

Hampton depicts Brecht’s appearance before HUAC in 1947 around the time the Hollywood Ten also testified. Brecht seemed so cooperative that the congressional committee actually commended him as an example that the Hollywood Ten should emulate. But Hampton does not develop that, nor that Brecht had the last laugh on the HUAC dictators: His “cooperative” testimony merely pulled the wool over their eyes, and immediately after he appeared before Congress, he fled America and wound up in the German Democratic Republic, where he established the famous Berliner Ensemble. (Hampton’s script merely indicates that Brecht returned to Europe – not that he crossed the so-called “iron curtain” into East Germany.)

Poor Brecht: He was one step ahead of Hitler’s invading armies in various European countries, was not especially welcome in the Stalinist Soviet Union during the Hitler-Stalin Pact, left Vladivostok on the last passenger ship out of the USSR before the Nazis invaded Russia, managed to make it to Hollywood, only to eventually have to pack up and flee again from “democratic” America. Good grief! It’s great that Hampton reminds us of these exiles in La-La-Land, and of course the ensemble cast, deftly directed by Michael Peretzian, covers much more than just Brecht and his trials and travails. This play is a lot more than just a bio-play about Brecht. It also has a gloriously sexy nude scene with a thespian wearing only a birthday suit that will make you want to sing "Happy Birthday." No phony blankets or sheets here to cover up the human body. Hampton is one of the few playwrights boldly using the freedom that artists have fought for over the years.

So over all, I sing “Hooray for Tales From Hollywood”!


Tales From Hollywood runs through Dec. 19 at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. For more info: 310/477-2055, ext. 2; www.odysseytheatre.com

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THEATER REVIEW: THE STORIES OF CESAR CHAVEZ

Fred Blanco in The Stories of Cesar Chavez.

Tossed Cesar salad

By Ed Rampell

Playwright-actor Fred Blanco’s The Stories of Cesar Chavez is part and parcel of an overlooked yet significant theatrical trend stretching coast to coast: Progressive plays about Communists, labor militants, unions, leftists, etc. As during the last Great Depression when “proletarian drama” swept the stage, socially aware theatre is making a comeback. Indeed, the most interesting thing for me about Blanco’s one man show is its depiction of Luis Valdez’s Teatro Campesino, a theater in the fields, the cultural arm of the United Farm Workers, the union Chavez co-founded with Dolores Huerta, et al. In a vivid scene within a scene, a grower is portrayed by Blanco in a pig’s mask, which is not only a reference to capitalists’ greed, but also suggests the forms Teatro Campesino takes, which includes Commedia dell’ Arte and ancient Aztec and Mayan rituals. Off the pig, indeed.

This is but one sequence and one character depicted onstage during Blanco’s complex one-man show. Other characters include a zoot suiter, a Chicana tortilla maker, a hired goon/strikebreaker and a Molotov cocktail wielding Latino militant, who advocates fighting fire with fire on the fields during the harsh class struggle. The characters mainly speak English, but there is some spoken Spanish; appropriately, the play deals with this still touchy language issue

Blanco portrays all of the roles with panache and authenticity, as he does Chavez himself, an hombre caught in-between right and left who tries to navigate his Gandhi-like nonviolent movement and philosophy between these two forces. Just as Martin Luther King (who Gerald C. Rivers likewise plans to depict in another progressive one-man show) contended with vicious Bull Conner-like racists on the one hand, and with Stokely “The Fire Next Time” Carmichael-like revolutionary nationalists on the other.

Blanco convincingly portrays the labor leader and gives us some insight into what made this civil rights icon tick. Who knew that Chavez wore zoot suits and defied Jim Crow laws right here in supposedly liberal California, back in the day? The play is mostly set during Cesar’s salad days in the lettuce and other agonizing agricultural fields in the 1960s. We experience his religious beliefs, the fasts and the times that tried this man’s soul. Those currently fighting in America for full human rights -- gays, undocumented aliens, exploited workers, gays, etc., -- can learn a lot about social struggles from this powerful, poignant play.

At one point during the drama a campesino displays a short hoe, which compelled the ag workers to bend over, causing them great suffering in the John Steinbeck-like fields. Watching this scene I remembered a story that the late great Bobby Lees, the blacklisted screenwriter of many Abbott and Costello movies, told me, about how during the 1940s the Communist Party raised money from La-La-Land lefties, bought full length hoes, and then drove up north to Salinas or wherever to give them out to the Latino and Filipino farm workers in order to spare them the pain of, literally, backbreaking stoop labor.

Out-of-work actors often “suffer” from that Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland syndrome where the solutions to all their problems is: “I know! Let’s put on a show!” So unemployed or under-used thespians write parts for themselves, and sometimes this takes the shape of one-man (or one-woman) shows showcasing their talents. I don’t know if this was the case with Blanco, who undeniably has talent as both a playwright and actor. In any case, one-person shows can take the form of the actor playing just the lead role, or many different parts, a la Anna Deavere Smith and her “documentary theatre,” most notably her 1994 L.A. riot piece, Twilight: Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way Blanco’s central character, Chavez, gets lost in The Stories of Cesar Chavez's shuffle. The labor leader seems to meander among Blanco’s other dramatis personae, and although this play is billed as being about Chavez, the UFW jefe is only depicted onstage about a third or so of the time.

Another problem with The Stories of Cesar Chavez is its low key ending. The play just seems to sort of peter out and run out of steam. This is a writing and structural issue, as there’s nothing wrong with Blanco’s acting, but rather with his uneven playwriting. Nevertheless, The Stories of Cesar Chavez  has much to commend it and is well worth seeing, especially by theater goers interested in dramatizations about socially conscious subjects, Latino themes, and those who just enjoy great acting. Although I never had the chance to see him in person, when he was depicting him onstage Blanco really brought Cesar Chavez alive for me.

I did, however, meet Cesar’s companera, Dolores Huerta, at a party after the private screening of a documentary produced by Rory Kennedy, the daughter of Bobby Kennedy. (Surprisingly, Cesar’s famous interactions with RFK are not depicted by Blanco, but I guess you can’t cover everything in a bio-play.) Huerta, who is an exceedingly attractive individual, had just returned from her trip to Venezuela with progressive celebrities such as Harry Belafonte, who were eyewitnesses to the 21st century socialism of that other Chavez: Hugo. (It was during this trip that Belafonte made international news by denouncing then-President Bush as “the greatest terrorist in the world.”) I asked Huerta what revolutionary Venezuela was like, and she looked at me and said: “Remember all those things we dreamed about and fought for during the ’60s? Well, they’re doing them now in Venezuela.”

If so, I think this would gladden the heart of the late, great Cesar Chavez, who lives again onstage in Fred Blanco’s moving one-man show – his very own version of Teatro Campesino.






The Stories of Cesar Chavez runs through Dec. 12 at the Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Dr., L.A., CA 90004. For more info: 310/281-8337; www.sacredfools.org




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THEATER REVIEW: MAESTRO, THE ART OF LEONARD BERNSTEIN

Hershey Felder in Maestro, The Art of Leonard Bernstein. 

West side his-story

By Ed Rampell

In Maestro, The Art of Leonard Bernstein actor-playwright-musician Hershey Felder is a one-man band in his fourth one-man show about a renowned composer that has played at the Geffen Playhouse. The other unusual suspects of Felder’s magnificent musical obsession have been George Gershwin, Frederic Chopin and Ludwig von Beethoven. Bernstein, who composed the music for West Side Story, Candide, Trouble in Tahiti, the Marlon Brando movie, On the Waterfront, etc., struggles to live up to his father’s demands proved to be a rhapsody that made Lenny blue (in more ways than one), as we’ll see.

Like Ed Asner’s FDR, recently produced at the Pasadena Playhouse, this 90-minute or so one-man show has no intermission. But unlike Asner’s New Dealer, Felder’s musician must tickle the ivories on a Steinway while he also acts and relates the life story of one of the 20th century’s most renowned conductors, composers, musical mentors and proselytizers. Hershey skillfully pulls off this delicate balancing act with aplomb, bringing Bernstein and his music back to vivid life. We follow Lenny from his troubled childhood to his schooling at Boston Latin and Harvard, his apprenticeships with several conductors, the accidental thrusting of young Bernstein into the limelight at Carnegie Hall, his TV appearances as a sort of musical dramaturge on the Omnibus and other programs, his forays at the Great White Way, Bernstein’s conducting of major orchestras and his angst-ridden journey to become a great American composer.

We also get glimpses into Bernstein’s tumultuous private life: Early intimations of homoeroticism, marriage, fatherhood, his coming out of the closet and abandoning of his beloved wife, Felicia, and the repercussions of his actions.


Bernstein lived to regret his betrayal, if you can call it that, of Felicia. But what haunts the conductor most is his self-perceived failure to live up to the expectations of himself and others that he would compose an immortal classical masterpiece. The tortured maestro flagellates himself over the gap he believes exists in his otherwise admirable, transcendent oeuvre.

To what should we ascribe this creative “omission”? Perhaps, like his literary contemporary, Truman Capote, Bernstein’s celebrity overshadowed his artistry. Why tackle the clacking keys of that typewriter or piano, grapple with your muse as you strive to create -- often a painful, nervewracking experience requiring the utmost concentration, shutting all else out -- when one is invited to hobnob with Jackie O. and exchange bons mots with the beautiful people at Elaine’s instead? Especially when one’s celebrity status also pays the rent, and there’s no pressing economic impetus to create.

I don’t know to what extent the Manhattan glitterati, Broadway success, Hollywood excess, and so on enticed and distracted Bernstein, as it did Capote (his childhood friend Harper Lee apparently learned this lesson well, and after To Kill a Mockingbird’s wild success, she shunned the limelight that consumed Truman). But I have a different interpretation as to why the composer of the play that revolutionized Broadway felt like an aesthetic flop. It really doesn’t matter if one co-creates (with choreographer Jerome Robbins and lyricist Stephen Sondheim) a West Side Story, or Candide, with its mellifluous music enlivening Voltaire’s enlightening tale or the sonorous score for On the Waterfront, and so on, and bring so much joy to millions of children (I still remember Lenny’s wonderful explication of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf) and adults. What matters is that if you have a parent who belittles you and tells you that you’ll never amount to anything, even if you illuminate the lights of the Great White Way, Tinseltown and the world with your artistry, you and your work will never be good enough, and never will be, you bad boy. There was a lot of trouble in Bernstein’s Tahiti. (I’m no Sigmund Freud, but perhaps this may also help to explain the apparently bi-sexual Bernstein’s psychosexual tension?)

These are insights I took away from Felder’s drama, along with what a huge role Judaism -- in particular that religion’s mystical side -- played in Bernstein’s life and on his music. This was quite a revelation. What’s missing in this bio-play is the rather well-known fundraiser Bernstein threw for the Black Panther Party at his posh Park Avenue penthouse pad, and which Tom Wolfe ridiculed in his 1970 book Radical Chic &a Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. For the Virginia born and raised Wolfe, whose father edited The Southern Planter journal, white guilt was the rationale for Bernstein’s Panther bash. But even if the soiree took place in a duplex I prefer to believe that the son of a Russian Jewish émigré might have had compassion for and solidarity with members of another oppressed minority. Who’da thunk it?

But you can’t include everything in a bio-play, even one as ably directed by Joel Zwick, who also helmed Felder’s preceding dramatic triptych of composers. Maestro does have great acting and stellar music, as well as imaginative projection design rendered by Andrew Wilder, as the play does include some archival footage of the conductor, plus other striking images. Randall Arney is Maestro, The Art of Leonard Bernstein's artistic director, while the estimable film/TV helmer Gilbert Cates, who has produced 14 Academy Awards ceremonies, is the Geffen’s producing director. For those interested in music, theatre, gay subjects, Judaism, obviously Bernstein himself, and virtuoso acting, don’t miss the latest installment of Hershey’s philharmonic factory. Bravissimo!


Maestro, The Art of Leonard Bernstein runs through Dec. 12, at 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village, CA 90024. For more information: 310/208-5454; for more info: www.GeffenPlayhouse.com

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FILM FEATURE: JOHN SAYLES AND AMIGO

John Sayles on the set of Amigo. Photo by Mary Cybulski.

Indie filmmaker rides again.

By Ed Rampell

Writer-director John Sayles went to Hollywood Saturday night, but that’s not to say the über-indie filmmaker -- creator of independent features such as Return of the Secaucus Seven, The Brother From Another Planet and Lone Star -- has “gone Hollywood.” Sayles held court at the historic Roosevelt Hotel then crossed the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame (where, not surprisingly, there’s no star for the maverick moviemaker) to present the U.S. premiere of his new film Amigo at what may be La-La-Land’s grandest movie palace, the ornate, capacious Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

A near epic entirely shot on location in the Philippines with a largely Filipino crew and a mixed cast of Filipino and American actors, Amigo tells the story of a village caught in the crossfire between Filipino nationalists and U.S. soldiers occupying those Western Pacific islands -- an outgrowth of 1898’s Spanish-American War. Instead of liberating the Philippines from colonialism, the latter day Yanqui conquistadors replaced Spain as the colonial ruler. Having already endured a third of a millennium of foreign occupation and rule, General Aguinaldo and his fellow revolutionaries did not take kindly to Washington’s meddling in their internal affairs, and Filipino guerrillas took up arms to resist the U.S. invaders.

The Philippine-American War was arguably the U.S. Empire’s longest war, lasting from 1899 all the way to 1913. (One could actually argue that although the Philippines attained formal independence in 1946, the U.S. occupation lasted until 1991, when the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. Pinatubo with post-Ferdinand Marcos nationalism combined to drive the Yanquis out of their Subic Bay Naval Station and Clark Air bases.) Leave it to the leftwing Sayles -- whose company is called Anarchists’ Convention Films -- to shine a light on this little known armed conflict -- something that the helmer says he loves to do. And by turning to this violent episode of the past, Sayles also scores some salient points about Washington’s two ongoing, seemingly endless occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, which threaten to replace the Philippine-American imperial imbroglio as the U.S.’s longest lasting wars.

As Chris Cooper’s hard-bitten colonel says, “There’s a lot of history you don’t know about.”

Cooper, a veteran Sayles-man, leads the American troupe as Col. Hardacre, a hard ass Civil War vet and officer in charge of the U.S. troops, who clashes with Garrett Dillahunt’s Lt. Compton, as he attempts to win the hearts and minds of the villagers he oversees. In an effort at what would be called “hamlet pacification” during another Yankee war of aggression, Vietnam , Compton introduces display democracy to the village he occupies. But when Hardacre returns there after a skirmish he water boards the hamlet’s re-elected headman, Rafael Dacanay (Joel Torre).

Rafael walks a taut tightrope as the village chief who must placate foreign invaders garrisoned in his village of Nipa huts and somehow co-exist with the guerrillas holed up in the jungle, and with whom he somewhat sympathizes. Rafael also contends with divided family loyalties. It’s a tough balancing act, as both the indigenous and the invading forces reportedly committed atrocities during the war.

Sayles often directs low key, laconically paced, character driven indies, such as the 1983 coming out drama Lianna, made long before porn’s Sappho chic trend or Ellen DeGeneres came out on her sitcom or MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow replaced Ellen as America’s favorite lesbian. Lone Star, which paired Cooper and Elizabeth Pena, is a racially charged murder mystery, but also a sensitive drama about brother-sister incest. Amigo, however, is most similar to Sayles’ action-packed Matewan, which was inspired by an actual episode of explosive class war pitting militant miners against owners and their henchmen. Amigo has the most gunplay and revolutionary politics of any Sayles film since Matewan, which also co-starred Cooper.

Sayles shot Amigo on location at Bohol, a scenic island located in the Visayas archipelago. During the Q&A after the Nov. 6 premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Sayles spoke highly of the Filipino film industry and of the Philippines as a location, which often doubles for Vietnam as in Hollywood director Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

Most of Amigo’s crewmembers were Filipinos, including its cinematographer, Lee Briones-Meily, and production designer Rodell Cruz. An exception were soundmen Sayles imported because, he said, “sync sound” and Dolby technology, are not widely used in the Philippines. Sayles added that while the Filipino crew was paid on par with or slightly more than what they’d get for working on a local production, they worked shorter, more regular hours on Amigo.

Sayles’ longtime producer Maggie Renzi told the audience that U.S. distributors should pick up Amigo because there are so many Filipinos in the U.S. About one fifth of all people of Asian ancestry in the U.S. are Filipino. This is probably due to the colonial history of the Philippines and U.S. After people of Chinese origin, Filipinos are the second biggest Asian-American groups.

Prior to the screening, at the Roosevelt Hotel’s lobby Sayles enthusiastically expounded upon Amigo’s use of RED digital cameras to two-time Academy Award winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who previously worked as Sayles’ director of photography on Silver City and Matewan and attended the Hollywood premiere of Amigo.

At the Roosevelt the tall, graying Sayles also discussed the vicissitudes of the economics of filmmaking and publishing, considering the latter to be in an even worse state than the former. Amigo grew out of Sayles’ soon-to-be-published sprawling novel called A Moment in the Sun about the era at the end of the 19th century, which marked a key turning point for the United States. Having utterly routed the Mexicans in the Southwest and the American Natives from coast to coast, Washington looked overseas to fulfill its “Manifest Destiny,” as Westward Expansion inevitably led to the Pacific. As the U.S. land grab grabbed Hawaii, Guam, Philippines and beyond, America arguably went from being a republic to becoming an empire.

Sayles, who is an accomplished author of fiction, as well as a screenwriter, lamented that he’d finally found a publisher for A Moment in the Sun, but was only being paid “a $3,000 advance. I spent more than $5,000 on research,” he laughed. Meanwhile, as of Nov. 6, Amigo has not picked up a distribution deal anywhere in the world, except for the Philippines.

At 59-years-old, Sayles may no longer be Hollywood’s enfant terrible, but he remains terribly committed to making independent minded, thought provoking films (and books) his way and on his terms, outside of the Hollywood studio system. To paraphrase the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, there’s no gray hair in this cineaste’s soul.

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THEATER REVIEW: WATSON, THE LAST GREAT TALE OF THE LEGENDARY SHERLOCK HOLMES

Watson (Scott Leggett) and Moriarty (Henry Dittman) in Watson, The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes.

Footsie play

By Ed Rampell

Who is the West’s most famous Afghan War veteran? Some may think it’s Pat Tillman, the late pro-footballer-turned-Army Ranger, subject of a recent documentary. But in my opinion, the answer is elementary, my dear reader: The best known Western veteran of the Afghanistan war, albeit back in the 19th century, is John Watson, the Brit better known as Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick, Dr. Watson.

He, rather than Arthur Conan Doyle’s scientific sleuth, is the lead character in the Sacred Fools' Watson, The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes, which is an extremely imaginative, clever spoof that had the audience howling with delight and applauding throughout the premiere of the almost two-and-a-half-hour production.

Since circa 1900 there have been more than 222 Holmes productions, and director-playwright Jaime Robledo robs numerous sources to create a send-up that is, in the end, his own unique work of art, as well as a humorous homage to literary icons. Robledo merrily loots Doyle (in particular his 1893 The Final Problem, which was intended to be Holmes’ last adventure, recounted by the faithful Watson), Nicholas Meyer’s superb The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and more.

In tone, Watson, The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes also comically cribs from the stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s, The 39 Steps, with its small cast frenetically and funnily playing multiple roles. In theme, Watson explores Sherlock’s sexuality (or lack there or, perhaps, his homoeroticism), and the cocaine use of a character primarily known for his logic, just as Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond did in the 1970 film, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Although Meyer, Wilder and Diamond made much of Holmes’ penchant for things going better with coke, it should be noted that 1939’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, the very first movie with Basil Rathbone as Holmes, ends with Sherlock exclaiming: “Oh, Watson - the needle!”

Robledo’s partners in crime include a Baker Street’s dozen or so of highly skilled thespians trodding the boards -- sometimes at breakneck speed. The cast is amiably led by Scott Leggett as a rather corpulent Dr. Watson. The slim Joe Fria, who has previously won an LA Weekly Best Comedic Performance award, portrays the consulting (or in this case, insulting) detective with great comic panache. Onstage, the two look more like Laurel and Hardy than Watson and Holmes, and they deserve to win more prizes for their waggish performances.

As should French Stewart (Third Rock From the Sun), who does a Peter Sellers-esque turn in a dual cross-dressing role, with his side-splitting, bawdy Queen Victoria worthy of Sellers’ droll depiction of the Duchess of Grand Fenwick in the classic 1959 satire, The Mouse That Roared. (BTW, the playwright errs here by having Queen Victoria referred to as “Her Highness” -- that is for mere princesses, while the correct appellation, “Her Majesty,” is reserved for monarchs. Veddy English and elementary, my dear Robledo!) Stewart’s uproarious Freud is decidedly less sympathetic than Arkin’s compassionate shrink in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.

If Vanessa Redgrave played Sherlock’s love interest in that film, the curvaceous Rebecca Larsen lustily portrays Irene Adler -- the only woman to have ever outwitted Holmes -- with sly wit in Watson. Henry Dittman is ditzy as a mustache twirling Professor Moriarty, the “Napoleon of Crime.” There are too many other members of this ensemble cast to single out, but Lisa Anne Nicolai typifies the thespians, as a background player moving about scenery and the like onstage, such as chests that are supposed to be the moving cars of a careening train in one death defying scene, or the white cliffs of Dover in another. As all hell breaks loose onstage, in that Buster Keaton “Great Stone Face” tradition, she somehow never manages to so much as crack a smile. In the face of such hilarity, even Stanislavski would be impressed by Nicolai’s stoic restraint.

Robledo deftly directs his madcap players, and is ably abetted by a creative collective: Scenic designer Erin Anne Brewster, scenic painter Nicole Agredano, costume designer Jessica Olson, lighting designer Matt Richter, composer Ryan Johnson (what would a Holesian saga be without violins?) and assistant director Monica Greene. Watson, The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmesis a virtuoso case study not in scarlet but in how small, low budget theater can, with imagination, innovation and verve creatively craft special effects to conjure up far-flung locales, sumptuous sets, and the like. Puppetry, shadows, curtains (effectively doubling as, of all things, fog) and more set the scenes. We travel from London to Constantinople (or is it Istanbul?) and beyond on a diminutive stage in a 66 or so seat theater. It’s obvious that these Fools have a Sacred esprit de corps. Bravo!

One of the big bugaboos of Holmesians is the portrayal and interpretation of Dr. Watson, whom many feel has been slighted onscreen as buffoonish and boorish, such as the often blundering Nigel Bruce opposite Rathbone in about 14 Universal films from 1939-1946. Strict keepers of the Sherlockiana flame may cry, “Is nothing sacred, fools?!” at the liberties Robledo and his acting accomplices take with Doyle’s characters, just as strict Freudians may resist his analysis of the founder of psychoanalysis. But I feel that Robledo’s robbery is more tribute than plagiarism, and true to Watson and Sherlock’s spirit, unlike Guy Ritchie’s 2009 rip-off of the brand Doyle artistically built up.

In addition, by upturning the usual emphasis on Holmes at Watson’s expense, and telling this tale from the good doctor’s viewpoint, Robledo sheds new light on the characters and stories. Along Watson’s way, we come to realize that it was the writer Watson, who chronicled Sherlock’s cases in Doyle’s adventures, who was really the great observer, not Holmes, with his much-vaunted deductive reasoning process.

After Doyle tried to kill his beloved literary creation at Reichenbachfall, Switzerland (not at Dover as in Watson, The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes!) in 1893’s The Final Problem outraged fans forced Doyle to bring his character back to life in 1903’s The Adventure of the Empty House. And here we are, 107 years after Professor Moriarty and Holmes’ tumble down that 393-foot Swiss waterfall, still enjoying new works based on Doyle’s immortal characters. (PBS is also airing a modern day, British-made version of the Holmes sagas.) What Robledo’s Watson, The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes proves is that the only thing that could kill Sherlock is dying from laughter. That is a risk theatergoers must happily take in order to enjoy this Baker Street irregular which I predict has a long life ahead of it beyond the Sacred Fools.

Watson, The Last Great Tale of the Legendary Sherlock Holmes runs through Dec. 11 at the Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Dr., L.A., CA 90004. For more info: 310/281-8337; www.sacredfools.org

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FILM REVIEW: FAIR GAME

Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) and Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) in Fair Game.

All the vice president’s henchmen

By Ed Rampell

Director-producer Doug Liman’s Fair Game is one of Hollywood’s best fact based political thrillers since 1976’s Robert Redford-produced All the President’s Men. This is an excellent dramatization of the high level leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s (Naomi Watts) identity to the press after her husband, ex-Ambassador Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), dared to publicly debunk His Royal Anus George W. Bush’s lies about Iraq’s purported nuclear weapons program in his 2003 State of the Union rant.

The feature uses news footage of actual historical personages and events interwoven with actors portraying newsmakers, including the heavies: David Andrews as Vice Pres. Dick Cheney’s henchman Scooter Libby and, in lesser roles (onscreen, if not off), Geoffrey Cantor as Bush Press Secretary Ari “Watch-what-you-say” Fleischer, Michael Goodwin as the Cheney legal counsel/chief of staff/torture aficionado David “Brain Addled” Addington and Adam LeFevre as Bush propagandist Karl “The Architect” Rove. The film’s title is taken from something Rove told MSNBC hardballer Chris Matthews: That Wilson’s wife is “fair game” to hunt.

Rove’s point, of course, was to silence dissenters, whistleblowers, etc., who opposed Bush’s bogus war on Iraq, one of the biggest blunders and war crimes in human history. Uber-war criminal Bush is making the rounds now trying to drum up sales for his memoir, claiming he was “sickened” by never finding the mythical WMDs that were used as the rationale for an illegal, immoral, extremely expensive war and waste of money and human lives. Bush may feel “sick,” but he’ll never feel as badly as those whose loved ones perished in this unnecessary war of aggression. Fair Game is based on two separate books by Plame and Wilson, and it could have been an instructional documentary or docudrama, if preachy and even, perhaps, dreary.

But it was one of the biggest cinematic strokes of inspiration in film history since the Nazis chose Leni Riefenstahl to lens Triumph of the Will to tap Liman to helm Fair Game. Riefenstahl was primarily known as an actress in German mountain climbing films and for directing 1932’s Alpine epic, The Blue Light, and not as a documentarian, when Adolph Hitler selected her to shoot the Nuremburg rallies. Der Fuhrer, of course, had pretensions to being an artist, and Riefenstahl brought her pictorial sensibility to bear on what could have been an unbearably boring agitprop film. Instead, with her striking visual sense and imagery, Riefenstahl rendered (from a graphic point of view) a bearably boring piece of propaganda. (Although I think Hitler’s reputation as an orator is vastly overrated: I didn’t understand a fucking word he said.)

This is not to compare Liman to Leni (Fleischer and Rove would be better comparisons, to both Riefenstahl and Minister of Propaganda Dr. Joseph Goebbels). However, picking the director of the action-packed The Bourne Identity and Mr. And Mrs. Smith to shoot what is, in essence, an espionage thriller was a great idea.

What is a smart idea that makes Fair Game a three-dimensional family drama about flesh and blood people rather than a mere history lesson is that the script by brothers John-Henry Butterworth and Jez Butterworth depicts the marital strains and tensions caused by the ordeal Plame and Wilson were subjected to, and how this affected their young children. (In addition to directing action flicks Liman also directed the 1996 character-driven indie, Swingers.) Plame, the CIA spy, is by nature secretive and behind the scenes. Wilson, the former ambassador, may not be very diplomatic but he astutely observes that only by coming out swinging publicly in the media could they hope to defend their honor and expose the Bush flacks who sullied their reputations. The differences in approach threatens to destroy what is, after all, a marriage.

For the record, I was one of the early journalists who wrote fairly about Wilson, whom I met, and Penn, as usual, does a bravura job in meticulously capturing his subject’s mannerisms, et al, and in getting under his skin. However, it is really Naomi Watts who lights up the screen in the lead role, and I predict an Oscar nom for this awesome Aussie actress who is also outstanding in the new Woody Allen film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

Film adaptations of books, be they novels or nonfiction, as well as of real life events, are necessarily exercises in selectivity. And so it is with Fair Game. In are Wilson’s colorful quote about “frog marching Karl Rove” and his efforts to be profiled with Plame in Vanity Fair; out are the actual Vanity Fair spread which caused a minor Beltway sensation, and the roles Rove and Bush may or may not have played in the scandal. Also left out: The whole execrable Judy Miller/N.Y. Times matter (which inspired Rod Lurie’s underrated 2008 Nothing But the Truth starring Kate Beckinsale) and Bush’s CIA Director George “Slam Dunk” Tenet, Plame’s boss. Also omitted is “hardboiled” prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who the bourgeois press sold to us as a virtual Elliot Ness, proved to be a total flop who never indicted Rove, Cheney, and the other war criminals involved in outing Plame in order to save their own necks, and he recently flopped again with the Rod Blagojevich case. Nevertheless, I realize you can’t include everything (that would be a mini-series!), and this is a compelling story about the attempts to punish truth tellers.

Although I want to point out that l’affaire Plame is curious in that what passes for the U.S. left lionized not only a U.S. ambassador, but a CIA agent, Valerie the Valkyrie, for speaking truth to power. In fact, while the Wilsons did indeed undeniably display fortitude and courage in the face of great adversity, the Left should put this scandal in its proper perspective, as a faction fight in the ruling circles of power. For both Plame and Wilson had been champions of the establishment though their government careers – albeit, as we saw, not humble obedient servants thereof.

The Plame scandal has been compared to France’s Dreyfus Affair, wherein a Jewish army captain was falsely accused of treason in the 1890s. Now, as I had told Joe Wilson, I’ll tell you something you probably never knew: The chief investigator in Dreyfus’ secret court martial was named Du Pati Du Plame. Wilson had told me Plame was a rare last name (although thanks to Scooter Libby, Rove, Richard Armitage, Watts, etc., now a quite famous one), so I find this to be a fantastic coincidence. Or fate.

Hunt down Fair Game at a theatre new you, and feel free to read my original L.A. CityBeat interview with Joe Wilson, published back in 2004.

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