Florida Agenda

A film review by Warren Day

A positive stereotype that both heterosexuals and homosexuals hold about gays is that they’re more creative than most and without them theater would be half what it is.

If that’s true, then why is it so hard to come up with a substantial list of great gay plays – that is, plays of lasting value that focus on the lives of gay men and lesbians? Give it a try and see if you don’t have difficulty in listing five masterpieces, much less ten, and if you remove the ones that deal with AIDS, you might have trouble naming three. Where is our “Death of a Salesman” or “Long Day’s Journey into Night?”

Even the best playwrights who were homosexual (Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder, Edward Albee) produced no great work dealing openly with gays. In Tennessee Williams’ plays, the gay character is always dead before the curtain goes up  (i.e., Blanche’s husband in “Streetcar,” Brick’s football buddy Skipper in “Cat,” and Sebastian in “Suddenly Last Summer”.)

Some of the best known gay plays, the ones that originally broke the barriers, can seem quite dated today, such as “The Boys in the Band” and “Tea and Sympathy.” The exception to this is possibly “The Children’s Hour.”

And while Terrence McNally (“Love! Valour! Compassion!”) and Paul Rudnick (“Jeffrey”) may have given us some enjoyable and meaningful evenings in the theater, only a few would call their plays timeless classics.

So, almost by default, Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” obtains the distinction (and the burden) of being called “the greatest gay play ever written”.  In dramatizing the moral quandaries of the AIDS crisis in 1985, in both public and private lives, it has umpteen awards to support that claim, winning both the Pulitzer and the Tony and, as a mini-series on HBO, a slew of Emmys and Golden Globes. Harold Bloom, the go-to arbitrator of such questions, put it on his list of the greatest works of literature in the western world.  For now, at least, it’s the “Hamlet” of gay plays.

And the Andrews Living Arts Studio (ADL) in Fort Lauderdale is giving you a rare chance, until September 4, to see this gay masterwork, a play not seen in south Florida for over a decade.

Granted, it’s so highly-acclaimed and that gays hold so prominent a role behind and in front of the curtain in Florida theater, why hasn’t it been staged more often?

For one reason, it’s a difficult play for a community theater to do because it’s actually two plays running seven hours total (ADL is doing only an abridged version of “Part I: Millennium Approaches”); the script is multi-layered, epic in its themes, and consistently shifts between reality and fantasy. “Angels” requires a level of acting and directing that’s hard for any company to achieve.

ADL deserves big kudos for attempting such a play. However, I cannot review intentions or ambition, only the results, and on that score it’s a very disappointing production. Anyone seeing “Angels” for the first time here would have no idea why it’s considered a great play.

The acting ranges from adequate to embarrassing, with at least three of the actors noticeably older than the characters they’re playing. That last point is not minor, since questions and struggles that occupy people 27 to 32 begin to strain acceptance when played by someone who looks at least ten years older than that.

Part of Kushner’s genius is how he uses mundane language to communicate profound meanings and humor to explore some of life’s darker moments; but in this production, the mundane stifles the profound and much of the poetry and laughter is lost in delivery.
After being assured they would be using the Broadway script, I found at least an hour had been cut, with whole scenes and characters gone, and with them some of the needed coherence and substance. Joe Pitt’s mother is now in only one brief scene, and Ethel Rosenberg is reduced to some spooky music.

The director still has some of the 11 actors play multi-roles, but he changes the careful schematic Kushner intended.  There was a good reason to have the Mormon mother play the male Rabbi, the Angel to play the nurse, and the same actor who plays Lewis’ lover be his trick in the park. That’s all changed in this production, and it’s to the detriment of the evening.

As to the larger question of why there are so few great gay plays, if you keep in mind that dramas focusing openly on gay issues and characters have only happened in the last 43 years of the 2500 year history of theater in the western world, then maybe it’s more understandable that there isn’t yet a longer list of classics.  That same period has also been a lean time in producing masterpieces on the lives of straights (hence all the revivals).

Instead, think about what a future Tennessee Williams or Oscar Wilde might write, or what they and others could’ve written if their times had been different.  If you remember that William Shakespeare wrote his most ardent love poetry to a young man, then just try and imagine the gay play we might have today if he’d been allowed his “Romeo and Romeo.”

As the angel says at the end of “Millennium Approaches,” “…the great work has (just) begun.”

What Are Best Gay Plays?

Remember this isn’t a list of the most enjoyable or personally meaningful, but simply what might be considered the best written of the plays that have their main focus on gay issues or a gay or lesbian character. In alphabetical order, my personal list would include:

• Angels in America by Tony Kushner
• Bent by Martin Sherman
• Boston Marriage by David Mamet
• Breaking the Code (about Alan Turing)
by Hugh Whitemore
• The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
• The Dresser by Ronald Harwood
• Entertaining Mr. Sloane by Joe Orton
• Falsettos by William Finn
• Fifth of July by Langford Wilson
• Gross Indecency by Moises Kaufman
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch by John Cameron
Mitchell and Stephen Trask
• The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard
• The Killing of Sister George by Frank Marcus
• La Cage Aux Folles, the musical by Jerry
Herman and Harvey Fierstein, original play by
Jean Poiret
• The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman
• Loot by Joe Orton
• M Butterfly by David Henry Hwang
• The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer
• Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg
• Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein

Let us hear your reactions, opinions  and suggestions by emailing AgendaReviews@aol.com

Andrews Living Arts Studio is located at 25 NW 5th Street, Fort Lauderdale 33301. Performances Thurs thru Sun at 7:30 p.m. till Sept. 4. Buy tickets for $24.95 at www.andrewslivingarts.com, or 800-838-3006. At the door, $29.95.

By Warren Day

Compared to the frat boy romps and comic book heroes that have deluged us in 2011, “Crazy, Stupid Love” seems like a mature comedy, even though it’s basically a story of adults acting in very immature ways. Heterosexuals can do that, you know.

It certainly has one of the better casts of the year, with Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei, and Josh Groban (yes, the singer). Along with a seventeen year old baby sitter (played by Analeigh Tipton) and a very horny and heartsick thirteen year old (Jonah Bobo), these actors seem to hit every demographic a marketer could want. Yet the film is really a middle-age fairy tale, and I mean no criticism when I say that. All ages need to see their romantic fantasies acted out on the big screen, where we can do crazy and stupid things and still have a happy ending … unlike real life.

Even the young adult romance in this film seems more like a middle-age version of one. What sophisticated guy in his late twenties today would take his big romantic move on a girl from a chick movie almost as old as he is?

In the audience I saw it with, this middle-age slant did not keep those under 25 from laughing; maybe they were enjoying watching adults the age of their parents act like idiots. This movie could serve as a “go-to” manual for bad heterosexual behavior; so much so that I don’t think I want my children taught by them or even to allow them to marry.

To reverse the normal phrase, this comedy has a richness of embarrassments. In the first scene, one character asks another for a divorce, and his reaction is both funny and embarrassing.  And then, for two hours, you see the characters, all of them, get involved in one painfully embarrassing moment after the other. Is it funny? Very much so, but is it fun to watch? That’s a different question and, for me at least, it has a different answer.

Humor based on embarrassing situations is a low form of comedy, since it doesn’t require a lot of wit or imagination to get a laugh. Part of the reason we laugh is because these people are doing something worse than anything we’ve done, so when an entire two hours is based on almost nothing but watching people make fools of themselves, there creeps in a kind of smugness in our reaction. We wouldn’t be laughing if this was happening to us.

What is a revelation is to see several actors step outside their comfort zone, and to do so well. Steve Carell handles his dramatic scenes just as effectively as his comedic ones. Ryan Gosling can do light comedy. Marisa Tomei can do farce. Josh Groban can act.
What is both refreshing and rare is to see the concerns of middle-age people made the focus of a comedy. That alone will cause many, both gay and straight, to embrace “Crazy, Stupid Love” as one of 2011’s more enjoyable films.

And Restores Innocence to the Superhero Movie

A Film Review by WARREN DAY

If you were born past 1938, you’re a part of the comic book hero generation, for it was that year Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1, with Batman coming out in 1939.  And then, in 1941, Captain America.

So almost every American alive today can’t remember a time when there weren’t costume heroes who either possessed some unusual power or had access to some powerful gadgets and machines (and had to face villains with scary nicknames).

These heroes were also stalwart examples of the classic molds formed in mythology – their character true blue, their blood valiantly red, and their reputations lily white (as were their faces). Then, in 1962, it began to change with the appearance of Spider-Man, for Peter Parker was a tortured soul both before and after he was bitten by a radioactive spider. The superheroes emerging from the 1960s on were all top candidates for the psychiatrist coach (i.e., The Hulk, X-Men, Ironman, Blade, Hellboy, and so forth). Even solid citizen Batman was reconstituted as The Dark Knight.

What’s refreshing in “Captain America: The First Avenger” is that it not only takes place in the 1940’s, but it also returns to the steadfast values and clear-eyed stance of those times. In almost all the superhero movies of recent years – and there’s been a ton of them – they’re marked by cynicism, irony, angst, a smartass attitude and existential confusion, but you won’t find an ounce of those things in this film’s 121 minutes.

There’s something charming and disarming about its unabashed sincerity, idealism, and its conviction toward values that are often made fun of in other films. It’s a rip-snorting, crowd-pleasing, patriotic fourth-of-July action movie that’s rooted in a primal fantasy that’s at the heart of so many myths and comic books – namely how the 98 pound weakling becomes a brave and brawny champion.

When we first meet Steve Rogers, he’s in the process of failing his fourth army physical. He’s a scrawny, short and sickly kid (it’s a marvel of CGI how they put Chris Evans’ face on that body), but he’s picked for an experimental procedure that turns him into a super soldier with a body any Adonis would envy, and who’s more than the equal of any schoolyard bully or wannabe world conqueror.

The script, the director and, most of all, Chris Evans, makes both Steve and his alter-ego Captain America so likeable, admirable and yet still vulnerable, that you’re willing to excuse the implausibilities inherent in any superhero movie, something we weren’t willing to do with The Green Hornet, The Green Lantern or any other green hulky thing.

The cast contains a bevy of good actors who seem to be having so much fun that it’s contagious for the rest of us. Stanley Tucci plays a German-accented scientist who’s a good and wise Dr. Frankenstein. Hugo Weaving, who’s become the go-to actor for fantasy films (“Lord of the Rings,” “The Matrix,” “V for Vendetta,” “The Wolfman”) has a field day as the super Nazi (and super nasty) Red Skull (Weaving gives him a lisp that makes him sound like a hissing snake). And it’s great camp to see Toby Jones, the Truman Capote look alike, running around as the bad German-accented scientist.

While it was inevitable to have an American as Captain America, the recent trend has been to cast British subjects as our homegrown comic book heroes, like Christian Bale as Batman, Henry Cavill as Superman, James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart as Professor X. Sarah Palin will be claiming that Paul Revere made his midnight ride to warn us, “The British actors are coming!”
My concern about this throwback-to-another-era film is that it will undergird the simplistic and history-defying notion that military might always makes right, and that what we need to do in other countries is to go in and unilaterally kick some ass.

“Captain America” is a fun movie that should appeal to those in both blue and red states, but I just hope no one tries to turn it into a rallying cry for a bushwhacked foreign policy.

Chris Evans had played the conventional wise-cracking and sarcastic superhero in the Fantastic Four films, but here, he’s the exact opposite and delivers a sincere and nuanced performance as both the before and after Steve Rogers. As we’ve seen with other actors in other films, this isn’t an easy task, for Captain America is not cool or hip, but he is unusually smart, has a pure heart and is highly principled. It’s a welcome sight to see such an old-fashioned hero back in action on the silver screen. This movie proves there’s still a lot of mythological power left in stories about the undervalued runt who turns into the leader of the pack.

A Stage Review by WARREN DAY

There’s a long and cherished tradition in the American theater to base comedies around one or more eccentrics, going from “You Can’t Take It With You,” to “Auntie Mame,” to even big musicals like “Hello Dolly” and “The Producers,” to current productions like “The Addams Family.”

Yet, not every eccentric makes for a satisfying comedy, as is the case with the Caldwell Theatre’s world premiere production of “Stuff” by Michael McKeever.

Based on a true story, it concerns two brothers named Homer and Langley Collyer who lived, if you can call it that, from the Gilded Age of the late-19th century until the mid-20th.  In 1909, along with their doctor father and ex-opera singer mother, they moved into a large brownstone in what was then fashionable Harlem.

The father abandoned the family in 1916 and, over the next 28 years, the brothers descended from eccentricity into madness. They became the stuff of legend, living as hermits, filling the multi-rooms of their mansion with everything from the chassis of an old Model T to fourteen pianos (both grand and upright) and thousands of newspapers. Eventually, the living space in this four-story townhouse was reduced to a few square feet as they lived out their lives without electricity or heat, and with only narrow tunnels through the junk to get them from one packed room to another.

It’s a story that has fascinated many writers including, not surprisingly, Stephen King, as well as E.L. Doctorow, the prize-winning author of “Ragtime.”

In the two acts of “Stuff,” the playwright has picked but two nights out of their lives, one in 1929 when their mother was still alive, and then in 1947 when literally their lives, and their junk, were crashing around them. And that’s a central problem: There’s no gradation of development, because you go from when the hoarding was manageable to when it was chaotic insanity. The play starts at a sad place and jolts toward a much sadder one.

The playwright offers no penetrating insight into why the brothers were the way they were, instead pulling out the old chestnut of the domineering mother (the fallback cause in many a play and novel as to why someone was an unhappy homosexual).

For over two hours, the brothers bicker and sling insults at each other and, while the audience laughed a good deal, it’s hard
to make a consequential evening at the theater of two inconsequential people who did nothing consequential with their lives. You end up with the uncomfortable feeling of being asked to laugh at two people who were mentally ill.

The play itself may be lacking, but as usual for the wonderful and adventuresome Caldwell Theatre Company, the direction by Clive Cholerton is top notch, the set by Tim Bennett is outstanding, and the acting is at a highly professional level, with
the playwright Michel McKeever giving a fine  performance as Homer.

Running through July 31 at the Count de Hoernle Theatre, 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton, FL 33487.

A Film Review by Warren Day

Photo: Harry Potter fans, young and old, will all be sorry to see the series end.

By any standard, it’s one of the biggest phenomena in publishing and movie  history. Over 450 million books have been sold, with the last four consecutively setting records as the fastest-selling books in history. It’s also the most successful movie franchise ever (six of the 20 biggest grossing films), taking in more money for the first seven films than James Bond has earned in 22. And what other movie series has an entire theme park devoted to it?

Now, the eighth and last Harry Potter movie has come out (“Deathly Hallows Part II”), breaking national and world records and bringing the story to its final conclusion. But why should this be of any particular interest to the GLBT community? The truth is that Harry Potter has always held a major fascination for gays, so the better question might be, why?

In essence, many gays have seen a  correlation in what they had to face growing up and what Harry experienced. The family that’s raising him do not accept who he is, and pressure him  to act more like a “normal” boy. He has feelings and thoughts that make no
sense until he realizes that he was born that way. He’s drawn to and makes his closest friends with those who share his orientation. He has to be careful in letting others know about his true nature and often has to pretend he’s like the big majority of young people. Because his family rejects him, he’s had to build a family unit of his own with friends and mentors. I could keep going, but with that brief list maybe it’s no wonder gays have been drawn to Harry Potter.

And since gays are human beings, too (Yes, Michelle Bachmann’s husband, that is true!), we also identify with the usual growing pains – the anxiety in going to a new school, being bullied by kids with a cruel streak, forming a meaningful relationship with a teacher, the first awakenings of sexual attraction, et cetera, et cetera, until we reach what’s dubiously called ‘maturity’.

So gays have many reasons and many connection points to care about the Harry Potter saga, but does the last film live up to its hype? Is it not only worth watching, but also worth getting excited about?

The answer will depend greatly on how involved you’ve been with the story and characters, because to only see the last film would be like wandering into “Citizen Kane” for the final ten minutes and wondering, “What’s all this fuss about a sleigh?” On the other extreme, if you’ve been a 24/7 Potterhead, you may feel let down that the movie doesn’t live up to the one you’ve had in your head.
For those in-between, “Deathly Hallows Part II” will deliver a kind of catharsis, where you see seven-year
storylines reach a conclusion, and witness some surprising (and heart-rendering) developments with characters we’ve come to know so well, the kind of satisfaction you have at the end of a long novel or mini-series, but which you don’t get from a single film.

What’s truly unique about these eight movies is that we’ve seen these fictional characters (and real actors) grow up in actual time, going  from 11 to 21, and that adds a rare  resonance to our viewing. Daniel Radcliffe has developed into an excellent and versatile actor, something the producers had no guarantee of in 2000 when he was cast. Emma Watson has physically changed the most, growing into a beautiful and confident woman. Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley is the weak link in both his acting and in how he was scripted. He was better in the first two films than he’s been in the latter ones, where he often looked like someone who had no idea why he was there.

What’s truly enjoyable is to see a Who’s Who of British acting royalty in showy roles that were probably more amusing (and more lucrative) than their usual acting assignments. Some of them have been given rewarding moments for their last appearance at Hogwarts (i.e., Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Alan Rickman).

“Deathly Hallows Part II” has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, but I found it a little disappointing. Some of the scenes worked much better on the page than they did on the screen (Were they too faithful to the book?), others seem too rushed or condensed, and there are several that are downright confusing, even for those of us who’ve seen all the movies and read most of the books. It’s the one Harry Potter film that should’ve been longer.

What is certain is that it isn’t worth the extra money and inconvenience to see in 3D. The glasses make a dark film even darker, like you’re seeing it through a tinted car window.

So, after 19 hours and 58 minutes, after 11 years in the making, the Harry Potter films come to an end, and the fact that millions will genuinely care is proof that at least movie magic is real, and can cast a spell on people of all ages and orientations.

A Stage Review by WARREN DAY

Not all unique plays make for a good evening in the theater, and certainly most good evenings are with plays that aren’t all that unique. Yet a production company in South Florida, known as Infinite Abyss, obviously believes there’s no reason you can’t have both, as they are once again proving with their latest offering, the quite funny and very thought-provoking, “The Pillowman.”

For people who care about live theater and who crave to see it done well, “The Pillowman” at the intimate Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale is the kind of evening that will restore your faith in what a community theater group can achieve.

Written by the Irish playwright Martin McDonagh – who’s had four of his plays nominated for a Tony (including this one), who was also nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay of “In Bruges,” and who won an Oscar for Best Short Film in 2005 – he may bethe best playwright you’ve never heard of.

In “The Pillowman,” McDonagh concocts a Twilight Zone cocktail composed of equal parts Edgar Allen Poe and Roald Dahl, with a dash of Samuel Becket and a beer chaser of the Marx Brothers. When you see this play, you’ll realize that last sentence is not hyperbole, for McDonagh is brilliant at mixing far-out comedy and startling tragedy, and in creating the kind of moments that live theater does best.

The play takes place in a totalitarian state at an undetermined time; a writer of unpublished short stories has been brought in by the police for questioning, because some of his stories are too similar to several bizarre murders of children. Weaving throughout the play, we hear summaries of seven of those stories, which have the ring of allegorical parables.

This play doesn’t have a message, but it does have questions, and that’s a far more honest and hopeful undertaking than all the preaching in lesser dramas and all the platitudes in situation comedies.  Life is short and brutal, McDonagh seems to say, but stories can outlast fame and fortune, politics and relationships, and, for better or worse, give structure to the randomness of our lives. In every pun sense of the phrase, this play is deadly fun.

And it’s been given a superb production by the director Jeffrey D. Holmes, the producer Erynn Dalton and as fine an ensemble cast as you’ll see in Florida. Holmes has an uncanny ability to get outstanding performances from his actors, particularly his lead, as is the case here with the highly talented Scott Douglas Wilson as Katurian K.

Katurian.

Erynn and Jeffrey are not merely a producer and director, they are dramaturgical wizards and right now, along with their excellent cast, they are creating magic in a small theater in a big way.

Playing through July 30 at the Empire Stage Theatre, 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304, Performances are Thurs, Fri & Sat @ 8pm. Tickets: $25. Pay online at http://infinite-abyss.com or cash only at door.

A Film Review by WARREN DAY

Millions will find “Horrible Bosses” laugh-out-loud, grab-your-sides and slap-your-leg funny. That’s for sure, and for most
people, that’s all they require of a summer comedy and they’ll feel no need to look underneath the  carpet.

Certainly this movie is a far better successor to last summer’s “The Hangover” than “Hangover II”. I say successor because in structure and intent these three comedies have a lot in common. In fact, they follow the same formula that’s been dominant in recent years as movie makers (and more pointedly, movie financers) try to attract the all-important demographic of 18

to 30.

Young adults are marketplace attractive because they have more disposable income than those younger and older, and they also go out to movies a LOT more than their parents, grandparents and those with young children.

This film’s premise is a crowd pleasing one about three basically nice guys taking revenge on their ever-so-horrible bosses. Now that’s a thought, if not a deed, that many can identify with, for who among us has not felt under appreciated by a boss who deserved so little appreciation in return?

Jason Bateman has the Marquis de Sade as his boss (Kevin Spacey at his snarkiest), while Jason Sudeikis, of “Saturday Night Live,” has an out-of-control cokehead for his (Colin Farrell in a very funny performance), and Charlie Day, of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” has a ball-busting, no-holds-barred nymphomaniac (Jennifer Anniston in a mold-breaking role). Granted with the recession and 9.2% unemployment, changing jobs isn’t an option for these guys, so they turn to the least likely option of murdering those who stand in the way of their workplace happiness.

Maybe it’s a subliminal clue as to what bothers me about “Horrible Bosses” that I’ve used more hyphenated words in this review than I have in the last six, because the filmmakers do try to cobble together some comedic styles that don’t always mesh.

At the center, we have our three protagonists as “men behaving badly,” an ever-increasing cliché in comedies that seem dedicated to the permanent adolescentization of the American male (think of any half-dozen Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson or Vince Vaughn movies). The trouble is that in order for these three-stooges-type-characters to be likable, you have to give them some extreme opponents to justify their many failings. And in the case of this movie, even that’s not enough to make their incompetence and gross immaturity  palpable or playable.

The writers also unleash an avalanche of vulgarisms in the mistaken notion that it makes their character more hip and their jokes funnier, to which I say “no f**king way!”

What bothers me the most about these movies is that they seem to celebrate dumbness, and contribute to the anti-intelligence attitude that’s so prevalent in today’s pop culture and in today’s not-so-funny politics, perpetuating the falsehood that you can do one  stupid thing after another and  still come out on top. Sorry guys, but that has even less reality about
it than a Kardashian family reunion.

Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain star in “The Tree of Life” from Fox Searchlight Pictures

By Warren Day

All of us, critics and movie lovers alike (they aren’t always the same you know), usually end up judging a film by concluding it lacks something. But once in a while (a very rare while), along comes one that’s so challenging and so original that our opinion ends up being more a judgment of us than it is of the film itself. That’s the case with “The Tree of Life,” starring Brad Pitt, that’s just now opening in Florida.

The winner of the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, this movie isn’t concerned with what has occupied most films for the last 100 years, namely a sequential storyline with characters who are either a lot better or a lot worse than we are. This one wants to show you people and moments you’ve known up close and personal, and to show you how those are connected to all living things and the universe itself.

This isn’t a stodgy or apathetic movie, because if you’ll allow yourself to be open, it has the potential to fill you with more awe than maybe any movie ever has.

For most films, you can stay in the shallow end of the pool and still get all there is to be gotten, and that’s perfectly okay. Diversion and escape is one of the main reasons we all plop down our money for a ticket. Yet, a few times a year, there are films that ask you to dive into the deep end and swim with the adults. And, once every decade or so, there’s a film that beckons you to get out of the pool altogether and come ride the waves of an uncharted ocean, a movie that redefines what a movie experience can be. “Tree of Life” is that kind of film.

If you can leave the worn conventions of other movies at the door, I don’t think this meditative one has to be all that confusing. What the writer/director Terrence Malick is focused on is what has consumed any thinking person since recorded time: what is my place in the bigger scheme of things, and equally, how does the bigger scheme of things fit into my life?

He uses a very ordinary family in the 1950s to counterpunch and counterpoint those questions, for Malick understands that regular people wonder about such matters, and often when we’re twelve or thirteen we’re more willing to raise questions that are later drummed out of us by either closed minds or lazy thinking (they often go together).

At the beginning, we see Jack O’Brien, played by Sean Penn, as a successful architect, whose success has brought him neither fulfillment nor happiness. He reflects back on his life and what shaped him, and his memory goes in bits and pieces, forwards and backwards, to when he was twelve and how he was torn between his parents who were so different from each other.

His mother tells Jack that everyone must decide between nature and grace, with nature being our base animal instincts, our self-interest as the most important thing of all. Grace is what human beings can be when we reach out to something bigger than ourselves, when we’re capable of putting someone else’s interest before our own. His parents represent these two ways of life and Jack says his mother and father continue to wrestle within him, something many of us can identify with.

If you think of the whole movie as an inner monologue Jack is having with himself as he tries to makes sense of his past and present, then the structure is more understandable, for memory doesn’t stay put, but floats and darts, and can jump to something that seems unrelated, but which is very much a part of the struggle our minds are going through.

So, about 18 minutes into the film, after we’ve seen Jack as a delusional adult and seen his first memories of what he remembers as the confusing and wonderful time when he was twelve, his thoughts jump to how this fits into the bigger scheme of things. And there’s no bigger scheme of things than how the universe began, so you get this mind-bending and breathtaking account from the Big Bang that instigated the universe, to planets forming, to one cell amoebas, to a touching encounter between two dinosaurs on the banks of a primordial river.

The reason for his memory jumping to that becomes clear in the following scenes as we go from the awesome moments of cosmological wonder to his memories of the daily wonders of growing up. So, we see a montage of moments that many of us can relate to – a butterfly landing on your arm, running with your brothers through tall grass, the shadows on the ground as you swing from the shade into the sunlight, the washing of your feet over a lawn sprinkler. Malick is showing us (not telling us) that ordinary life has its share of wonders just as much as the universe does – that is, if we have the grace to see it.

This isn’t some nostalgia trip down memory lane, for Malick reveals the dark and destructive side of childhood, too – the fear on seeing the cruelty in your father, and the worst fear of seeing it in yourself; the feeling that we can never please our parents and yet we’ll never stop trying; the awkward awakening of puberty. Malick may show us kids joyfully chasing after a truck spraying for mosquitos, but he also shows us that DDT is written on its side.

“Tree of Life” is not for everyone (no movie is). It’s not for the cynical or materialistic, nor for those who think life and living is a simple matter and certainly not for those who want their movies to come predigested. You don’t have to like “The Tree of Life,” but you should at least admire it for how high it set its aim and how close it comes to achieving it.

Photos courtesy, “Tree of Life”, Fox Searchlight Pictures

They Just Do One Person Shows

By Warren Day

Whether it be the world premiere of a new comedy, as they will do in July with Stuf by Michael McKeever, or the regional premiere of a recent Tony-winning drama, as in God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza this past May, the professional Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton presents engrossing productions that usually can’t be found anywhere else in Florida.

Such was the case the first week in June, when they presented the legendary actor Ed Asner in FDR by Dore Schary.

Legendary is not too strong a word for this veteran actor of stage, screen and, especially, television, who has won seven Emmys and five Golden Globes, and was recently the lead voice actor in the Academy Award Best Animated Feature Up.

At the age of 81, most actors have retired by necessity, but Mr. Asner has been making appearances around the country playing our 32nd president of the United States in a demanding and grueling one-man show.

Over the last couple of decades, it’s been something of a phenomenon to have performers travel in one-person productions.

Sometimes these shows are an evening recap of their careers, as Lena Horne did for several years and which Elaine Stitch is still doing. Other times they are fictional works where the sole actor plays all the parts, as Lily Tomlin did in The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe.

Most often, these shows consist of a single actor playing a famous person, i.e., Henry Fonda as the lawyer Clarence Darrow, or Tovah Feldshuh as either Golda Mier or Talluhah Bankhead (now there’s a stretch for you).

These live performances can be great theater when the actor and the historical person seem a natural fit for each other, as with Hal Holbrook in Mark Twain Tonight. Other times, all the magical ingredients can seem to be there, as when Vincent Price played Oscar Wilde, but actually end up offering a rather bland and predictable evening, something the real Mr. Wilde never did.

As Roosevelt, Ed Asner falls somewhere between success and failure. He doesn’t fit FDR in age, looks, or accent; neither does he have that patrician air that was so much a part of this upperclass, but populist, president.

The fact that his performance works as well as it does is a tribute to his acting chops, as when he captures the joy in being able to stand for a few seconds without his canes (FDR had polio), or the believable and quick transition to anguish he makes at another point. Another plus is that Mr. Asner’s admiration for the President who led us through the depression and World War II shines through and is contagious. The audience obviously had great admiration for Ed Asner, and gave him a standing ovation at the end, but I think that was more for what Roosevelt had done in real life and for what Asner had done in other parts.

Photo: Award Winning actor, Ed Asner, will be appearing in FDR as President
Roosevelt at the Caldwell Theatre

By Warren Day

Some play titles are more like definitions than labels, such as Tony Kushner’s new one, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (wow, try getting that on the typical marquee), and that’s also true of another play being performed now at Rising Action Theatre in Fort Lauderdale.

Entitled Two Boys in Bed on a Cold Winter’s Night, you can’t say you don’t know the premise before “you pays your money.”
Written by James Edwin Parker, the play happens in real time, meaning there’re no jumps in the timeline and no intermission to break up the flow. It takes place early on a January morning in 1987 in a walk-up apartment in NYC’s Greenwich Village, for which Christopher Michaels has designed a very effective set.

Those two boys in the title (they’re 38, so they’re really not boys) meet for the first time the night before at The Ninth Circle gay bar and, by both their accounts, had some great sex; but now it’s the hour preceding dawn and one of them wants to talk and bare his soul. The other doesn’t. One confuses a great hook-up with a promissory note for the future, while the other just wants to have some more sex and be gone.

They went home together, but not with the same purpose.

The strength of that dramatic situation is also its weakness. It’s all so familiar, or as Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” That familiarity, the chance to see a portion of your life on the stage, will be enough for many people, but for others they may wish the playwright had delved deeper with some fresh and unexpected insights, or at least found more humor in such a fretful encounter. Like most one-night stands, it isn’t as satisfying afterwards as it may have appeared at the moment.

The director, Jerry Jensen, keeps the two actors moving and varies the composition within a small space and a tight timeframe, and both Angel Perez and Nigel Revenge seem to understand and fit their parts, although for 1987 the tattoos of one actor are probably more appropriate for the skin of the other character. The play does contain full frontal nudity.

What you have are two strangers – one who appears rather content with himself and is perpetually horny, while the other is filled with unrelenting loneliness and unfulfilled connections, the neediness of that character overwhelming the other. In the movie Broadcast News, Albert Brooks says, “wouldn’t this be a great world if desperation made us more attractive.”  But alas, it never does.

Performances at 8pm Fridays, 7:30 and 10pm Saturdays, and 7pm on Sundays until June 12. Rising Action Theatre at Sunshine Cathedral, 1480 SW 9th Ave, Ft. Lauderdale. Tickets are $35 and can be purchased at risingactiontheatre.com or call 800-595-4849 or 954-561-2225