pt at large

Memorial Day, May 28, 2007, Westport, Massachusetts

Nothing in the worid like a parade in small town America. For a precious hour or two, citizens leave the headlines at home and bring a folding chair to the side of the road on Main Street, USA, to honor the people - war veterans, national guard, firemen, police, - who enforce the rule of law and protect us from natural and man made disasters.

The men in the uniforms might be our fathers, uncles, brothers, or neighbors. They served in WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, and the Gulf Wars. They may be losing the battle to fit into their old uniforms but they’ve won our respect by fighting for us. No matter where you stand on the political divide, it brings a lump to your throat every time a color guard passes and bystanders quietly doff their hats, salute, or place right hands over their hearts.

And when there’s a snappy marching band playing  “Stars and Stripes Forever” and other John Philips Souza tunes, we shed, for a few precious moments, the labels of Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Conservative, and simply embrace being American.

In the half mile from the Town Hall to Beech Grove Cemetery and then back, a small town like Westport, Massachusetts, takes a giant time out as some sort of benign patriotic fairy dust settles over the parade route. Bystanders appreciatively applaud the small knots of police, fire, war vets- even politicians - who pass along in loose formation.

Everyone perks up when the band launches into a jubilant brass, drums and cymbals marching tune. “That music stiffened up our old backs, “ said a grateful Korean War vet.

The folding chair brigades, some of whom have sat in the same spot for generations, holler in delighted recognition when they see their young, in the uniforms of cub and boy scouts, brownie and girl scouts, who are the caboose of this parade,

Smiling into the crowd when they hear family calling their names, kids bob and weave along, kept in some semblance of order by patient and bemused Scout Masters and Mothers. In a generation or two, the veterans in the forefront will have made their last march into the cemetery. The chatty little kids taking up the rear today will be up in front wearing the uniforms of their elders.

One hopes that the campaigns that they will have waged involved filling sandbags for hurricane abatement rather than trying to avoid IEDs in some country half a world away.

Boston Design Center

While roaming through the halls of the Boston Design Center I felt as if I'd mistakenly wandered into Donald Trump’s living room and might be politely but firmly be asked to leave. Every showroom and window display oozes luxury. It’s a parallel universe of home décor.

The hard wiring of any poor soul with pedestrian taste or finite financial means begins to melt in the face of such opulence. Comparisons can be odious. I speculate how I will feel when I return to my modest abode and survey the décor, which, until this moment in time, I complacently thought was a light year from the Salvation Army furniture in my graduate school days and represented the achievement of a man with a relatively refined sense of taste.

Not.

Unique shapes and sizes of lamps, lampshades, and light fixtures sprout everywhere. Bureaus, sculptures, coffee tables, mirrors, objets d’art, etegiers, fabric, and rugs are exquisitely arranged and haughtily priced.

I spot the price tag on the comfy armchair I’ve slumped into to absorb the Louis XIV-ness of the showroom. The “Hydrangea cream armchair with chateau finish” is priced at $2438. That surpasses the cost of every stick of furniture in my living room. The total retail cost of all the items in the spacious Grand Rapids Furniture Company must rival the national debt of certain small countries.

How do people afford this stuff? I leave the second floor in a mild state of sticker shock.

More of same on the 3rd level plus a good helping of antiques. And several bathroom showcases like the one named “Urban Archaeology” that elevate lavatory experiences to a level a sybarite swoons over. Slabs of marble, granite, glass, tile, and stainless steel utterly seduce the senses. I can see myself living languorously in the loo for about a week. Friends and food just a cell call away.

By the time I’ve surveyed the 4th and 5th floors I’m exhausted. And spent tens of thousands of dollars in my head on bamboo flooring, marble and stainless bathrooms, elegant sconces and table lamps, plush Persian rugs, walnut and mahogany tables, and accessories I never knew I needed.

What makes a house a home?  How about the sun streaming in the windows and a collection of furnishings that feels as comfortable as an old flannel shirt. That’s what I’ll find when I turn the key into the old homestead later this afternoon. And be grateful for its whisper, “You’re home…”

Photos:
http://www.bostondesign.com/

Chita Rivera: A Dancer's Life

Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life
Written by Terrence McNally, with original songs by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty
The Colonial Theater, Boston, MA
May 1 - May 6, 2007

She’s 74 years old, for god’s sake. Seventy-four. And when her name is Chita Rivera, she can fill up a theater on the recognition of her name alone. Standing at five feet four inches on great gams, she’s one of the rare legends who knows how to trade on her fame without losing her dignity. Her feet don’t move like Latin lightning any more but she has stage presence, enormous poise, a surprisingly rich alto singing voice, and a terrific storyteller’s sense of timing.

Photo: http://www.thedancerslife.com/downloads.php#

 All of which she puts together in this national tour show, “Chita Rivera: the Dancer’s Life” - the story of her life, a history that practically defines musical theater in the last half of the twentieth century. She’s had her feet bandaged by George Balanchine, been taught to sing by Leonard Bernstein, and danced with the most influential choreographers of the twentieth century - Jack Cole, Jerome Robbins, and Bob Fosse. You don’t have to be a dance junkie to have heard of musicals like West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman. Rivera starred in twenty-five musicals in over fifty years.

The 2002 “Kennedy Honors” award to Rivera is the springboard writer Terence McNally used to propel the show and allow Rivera to look back on her career. Her stage arc may be in eclipse but her spark, well, that’s another matter. Sitting on a chair stage center, Rivera opens the show reminiscing about being raised in Washington, D.C. as a first generation Puerto Rican American. It’s not long before she’s dancing on a table on the set behind her (her mother sent Rivera to ballet school not long after she broke the family table while dancing on it).

Rivera and her company of eight top tier dancers stunningly executed two dozen song and dance routines that reprised her roles on Broadway. Rivera has lived musical theater from the TV Ed Sullivan Show to the post AIDS world.

Photo from http://www.chitarivera.com/productions/dancerslife.htm

The secret is that Chita has learned to do more with less. A sideways glance, a lowering of the voice, a well timed swivel of the hips, an sporadic burst of fancy footwork, and an occasional high kick to the rafters, remind us she’s still on fire. What keeps the show balanced is Rivera’s willingness to complement, not compete with, the extraordinary dancers in her troupe. They clearly adore her.

“Looking back doesn’t have to be painful,” she says at the top of the show. Rivera certainly had her share of pain - shattered leg in an auto accident, denied movie roles for dance roles she created on Broadway - but she always soldiered on in a Darwinian environment in which talent, luck, and grit were her constant dance partners. 

Here, she’s content to remind us of her greatness not to prove it. She never forgot the advice given to her by her first dance instructor before her first big audition, “Conchita, stay in your lane,” dance language for ‘Don’t worry about the dancers around you, just be who you are.’ Rivera is still stoked with stamina, talent, and attitude but, simply put, she hasn’t forgotten that she’s seventy-four.

Great singers and dancers like Rivera instinctively embrace their audience. One isn’t surprised to hear her say softly near the end of her show, ”When you drag yourself to the theater on a rainy afternoon and the matinée is less than half full, you are there for that one person whose life might be changed by what you do.” When she looked into the audience, I felt she was looking right at me and I’ll bet someone thirty rows away felt the same thing.

“Passing The Torch”, the last section on the program, features Rivera and her dancers in an exuberant, full throttle rendition of “All That Jazz” (Chicago). Under the combustion, one feels Father Time tapping his feet to the music, a poignant reminder that all shows, Rivera’s and ours, have a finale.

Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero knows what she’s got left in the tank and drives accordingly. What an instructive lesson to those of us not too far behind her in the parade.

Mike Daisey's "Monopoly..." at the American Repertory Theater:Zero Arrow Theater

“Monopoly! - Tesla, Edison, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and the War for Tomorrow.”
Created and performed by Mike Daisey
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory
May 1-May 5, 2007
Zero Arrow Theater, Cambridge, MA
617-547-8300
www.amrep.org

Two minutes into portly Mike Daisey’s monologue and he’s got it all going on. His pudgy round face is a theater all by itself. Eyebrows rise, fall, twitch. Eyes squint, roll, stare. Mouth and lips contort to give charge to the words coming from them. Voice thunders, wheedles, quietly slows to gently massage each syllable.                                                                                     Photo from amrep web site

Occasionally all of that plus whatever else of him is visible from behind the table he’s sitting at, his only prop other than a glass of water he seldom sips from, go into herky -jerky or balletic pantomime to buttress the words of the story. He’s a one-man band of a storyteller.

Tonight’s roller coaster is “Monopoly! Tesla, Edison, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and the War for Tomorrow.”   Whatever happens tonight may be different from yesterday’s or tomorrow’s monologue. Daisey has no fixed script. He glances at a one-page outline of each of the dozen or so vignettes in his show, takes a deep breath, and re-imagines the story.

And, if we believe Daisey’s intent in the second of three monologues presented by the American Repertory Theater, we in the audience bear some of the responsibility for how it turns out. Daisey’s Director’s Notes, printed prominently in the theater foyer, proclaim he “tells the tale fresh for each and every audience using whatever energy you bring with you to make new discoveries along the way.”

Ahhh, the audience as enablers. Right away I’m hoping that the other 149 people who’ve purchased tickets have read this and are prepared to lean into their oars for his ninety-minute monologue.

Thirty minutes into the show and I’m wondering what I would have to smoke to connect these stories in such brilliant ways. He’s made a quilt of stranger than fiction accounts of the Edison-Tesla AC/DC electricity saga; the history of Parker Brother’s most famous board game - Monopoly; growing up in rural Maine; experiences when he fled to Seattle (including being cast in an industrial video with Bill Gates and Daisey’s gonzo attempt to use a lightning bolt spewing Tesla Coil in a theater monologue); and the impact of Wal-Mart on small town America,

Using stories about his small town sister or big time inventors Edison and Tesla, Daisey gives us fascinating microcosmic lessons about history, economics, and capitalism on a very human scale.

Occasionally, Daisey gets mired too deeply in his self-admitted obsessions with capitalism or history and that’s where we can't help him out. If he senses the audience’s eyes glazing over from too much information, he pulls the pin on a hand grenade of humor, outrage, or mimicry to remind us we’re in a theater. If he doesn’t feel us fading (as in last Thursday’s performance for a couple of stretches), we feel like we’re in a lecture hall at Harvard.

With beautiful timing, Daisey creates hauntingly silent pauses in which you feel the audience holding its collective breath. What makes this a theater experience instead of an alpha male storyteller dominating a living room or bar room is Daisey’s notion that it’s not all about him exclusively. “We’re navigating the space together,” he said at a recent “Talk back” session with an audience.

Extending the metaphors he’s created with Edison and Tesla, Daisey ends his show saying, “Tonight you are charged and you will not dissipate.” And it dawns on us that if we could think as globally and non-linearly about our own lives, obsessions, and preoccupations as Daisey, we might generate enough electrons to illuminate our kitchens for an hour or so.

By then, the final statement in Daisey’s Director’s Note, “The alchemy of live performance makes our hearts larger, and our imaginations brighter than any of us can achieve alone” rings true.

Tickets still available
TONGUES WILL WAG – a special workshop performance of Mike Daisey's newest monologue!
One performance only! Tuesday, May 8 at 7:30 pm at Zero Arrow Theatre. Tickets: $20 - buy online or call 617.547.8300