pt at large

"Ripcord": A Zany Un-PC Comedy with Heart

"Ripcord"

Written by David Lindsay-Abaire

Directed by Jessica Stone

Scenic design: Tobin Ost; Costume design, Gabriel Barry; Lighting design, David Weiner; Sound design and original music, Mark Bennett; Projection design, Lucy Mackinnon; Casting, Alaine Alldaffer; Production stage manager, Emily F. Mc Mullen; Stage manager, Kevin Schlagle; Scenic design, Tobin Ost; Costume design, Gabriel Barry; Lighting design, David Weiner; Sound design and original music, Mark Bennett; Projection design, Lucy Mackinnon; Casting, Alaine Alldaffer; Production stage manager, Emily F. Mc Mullen; Stage manager, Kevin Schlagle

At Calderwood Pavilion, Viginia Wimberly Theater, Boston Center for the Arts, May 26-July 2, 2017 Tickets start at $25, 617-266-0800; www.huntingtontheatre.org

 

Most people don’t need to be thrown out of an airplane to get the message to wake up and smell the roses. That’s one of the messages of the aptly named play called “Ripcord” playing at the Calderwood Pavilion.

It’s a froth of a play, an insanely comic piece occasionally leavened with a tug at the heart, and is a superb tonic for escaping the lousy news that abounds these days. 

In 90 minutes, the president might have tweeted, the Russians may have intruded, and someone in public office might have done something inexcusably stupid.

Watching Nancy E. Carroll as cranky Abby and Annie Golden as ditzy Marilyn take galomping chomps out of their roles as water and oil roommates in an assisted living facility will have rendered those things null and void while you’re totally engrossed with the antics of those two and the supporting roles of the cast.

Delivering dark humor, sarcastic, even abrasive humor and having it come off as laugh-out-loud funny is not easy. For this, Nancy E. Carroll is the queen of local actors. 

Carroll plays the role up to the hilt in her dealings with her roommate Marilyn, another damaged soul, whose armor is a bulletproof sense of goofy sunshine, oodles of thoughtfulness, and kindness as deep as the Grand Canyon. 

The whole play revolves around a bet, cleverly devised by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, to determine who gets the bed by the window that has a view of the outside world and sunshine, both of which are devoid in their lives. 

The subplots are fabulously abetted by the performances of a supporting cast who earn their stripes by holding their own with the two heavyweights. Ugo Chukwu as the room attendant, Scotty, is a standout.

The scenes showing the ploys each woman thinks up to win the bet are outlandishly creative. Director Jessica Stone, along with the scenic, costume, lighting, sound, and music design directors, must have had a field day fleshing out schemes in which the imaginative Marilyn tries to win the bet.

Not wanting to spoil the fun, I will only say that this is where the ripcord comes in. One brief moment of pathos in another vignette is a key to the final scenes. 

You know there has to be a back-story that led these two women to become the characters they are and end up in an assisted living facility. David Lindsay-Abaire’s strategy of unpacking their stories ever so slowly is ever so satisfying.

Oh, one last thing. The devices that director Stone uses to segue from one scene to the next in this two-act play are the most surprising and hilarious I’ve ever seen. There’s choreography and music involved and is so good that I don’t want to spoil it for you.

"Ripcord" is a satisfying night at the theater. I guarantee you’ll have a soft and safe landing.

Photo courtesy of Huntington Theater

"Arrabal" - Argentine History, Tango Style

“Arrabal”
Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge,MA
through June 18, 2017
Tickets: $25-$85, 617-547-8300
www.americanrepertorytheater.org

“Arrabal” is a theatrical Rubik’s cube in which music, movement, emotion, and story line are inseparably connected in order to portray a horrible stretch of Argentine history. If you like ballet, modern dance, and Cirque de Soleil, chances are you’ll love "Arrabal". Each form tells a story, more or less linear, that we kinda/sorta figure out. We’re ok filling in the blanks. When the language is Tango, the most dramatic dance form on the planet, who cares about the blanks. 

In 1976, Argentina became paralyzed by fear and governed with brutality after the violent overthrow of President Isabel Peron by a right-wing junta in 1976.  More than 30,000 objectors to the coup - activists, students, workers, teachers, amongst others - were seized, some with reason, others on whims known only to the police who carried out the dictator’s authoritarian policies. Many were tortured. Most were never seen again. They became known as the Desaparecidos, the Disappeared. An infant at the time, Arrabal never knew that her father became one of them.

The first act, “1976”, depicts Arrabal’s father’s transition from playful to active resistance. A popular member of a tango club in Buenos Aires, Rodolpho, the father Arrabal never knew, joins the resistance in the streets, much to the anguish of his mother, who knows in her heart that he is doomed. From scenes of ardent, tormented tango in several sequences, we see him brazenly wearing his opposition T-shirt, then arrested, beaten, and eventually killed. 

The second act, “18 Years Later”, is the saga of the tango club owner who summons Arrabal, the naïf from the outskirts of Buenos Aires who has been raised by Rodolpho’s mother, to the club so he can tell her how and why her father died. The scenes in which women congregate with black and white images of their loved ones hanging around their necks are haunting, the eyes of the mother’s beseeching us… “Have you seen him?” “Have you seen her?”

Dramas before and after Shakespeare use a comic character to give us a chance to laugh to relieve tension. Mario Rizzo as El Duende, the messenger who connects Arrabal with the owner of the tango club, does a seriously quirky version of street dancing and tango that got generous applause every time he entered. Julio Zurita, spectacularly emotive as Rodolpho, choreographed the show brilliantly. Soledad Buss in the role of Nicole, jilted lover of the man who becomes Arrabal’s protector, is fire and ice to Arrabal’s ingénue innocence as she encounters urban tango culture.

Tango is a dance of maximums and minimums. Dominant, often acrobatic displays of breath-taking fluid sensuality one moment, then the arch of an eyebrow, the nearly imperceptible shift of a shoulder the next.  Every solo, pairing, or ensemble routine, whether or not it fills in the blanks of the sometimes elusive story line clearly, was met with cheers from the audience.

Sub plots abound - between flirtatious couples, men competing to seduce Arrabal, the man who protects her, and women competing for the attention of their men (and vice versa). All present a chance to stage a heady fusion of tango, ballet, modern dance, and earthy street dance that set the play squarely in Buenos Aires and light it on fire with the same Argentine passion that fueled the insurrection. 

This is the kinetic version of the bleak period in Argentine history that director Sergio Trujillo wanted to make as an homage to the resilience of his countrymen and women during the repressive regime. For the trio of Trujillo, composer Gustavo Santaolalla, and writer John Weidman, tango became the language of revolution. 

The A.R.T. is a world-class theater.  Like a chameleon, it changes size and configuration to suit each play it presents. For this production, you can choose to sit in one of the two dozen round top cocktail tables in what is called ‘The Sunken Cabaret Tables” section just below the footlights or in the regular orchestra seats.

The American Repertory Theater has it all going on. The sound system has the power of cannon fire. The five piece band Orquesta Bajofonderos acts as a muse, predicting or underscoring the drama unfolding on stage. Cleverly situated on an upper level on the left side of the stage it pounds out the most robust and searing rock infused tango music you’ll ever hear. The backlit set suggests the working class barrios of Buenos Aires. 

The stage is big enough to hold spectacular scenes of ensemble dancing that left me in awe of the athletic strength of the men and the silky grace of the women. Tall, short, thin, muscular, a bit zaftig, with a range of faces you’d see on a bus in Buenos Aires, they are perfectly cast to represent the people who rose up after 1976.

The cast of dancers and musicians is from Argentina. Many of them appear to be too young to have experienced the repression first hand but all of them must know someone whose family or friends were affected. The intensity with which they dance is a visceral expression to purge the pain of history and an exhilarating statement to declare “Mo Mas...Never again.” 

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Addendum: This link helped me understand the play even better - the musicians explaining the cultural stew that created tango and what they call ‘milonga’, a vibrant music/dance environment still evolving today. Give it a read before you go~
https://americanrepertorytheater.org/inside/blog/%5Btitle-raw%5D/25524

Photos courtesy of http://americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/arrabal

Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

New Orleans: Lee Circle Without General Robert E. Lee - Mayor Landrieu’s Stand

New Orleans: Lee Circle Without General Robert E. Lee - Mayor Landrieu’s Stand

May 24, 2017

I had heard rumblings about symbols of the Confederacy that remain in plain sight in New Orleans. The tipping point, fueled by unease after high profile police killings of black men across the country and Dylann Roof's murdering of nine black men and women in a Charleston church, raised the ante to make changes.

To me, a frequent visitor, the statue of General Robert E. Lee, was a sort of civic wallpaper, a vague reminder of southern history and as recognizable a site of New Orleans geography as Bourbon Street. To African-Americans and a growing number of white citizens, it was an offensive symbol of the Civil War's racial overtones.

Right thing to do or not, I never thought anyone would have the gumption to remove General Lee from Lee Circle.

On May 19, 2017, Mayor Mitch Landrieu did just that. The words he uttered to describe his decision were more powerful than the cranes that lifted the statue. 

Landrieu's mix of facts, aspiration, history, and personal anecdotes quoting conversations with some of the city's best known African Americans, was broad and inclusive, at times reaching lyrical and poetic heights. It should be required reading for every civic leader and every high school student in the land. It was not a calculated sound byte to be easily digested.

It was the kind of speech you wish politicians and leaders of every stripe would have the nerve to make. My guess is that, like me, you'll read it more than once because it is refreshingly American in the best sense of the term.

History drapes around New Orleans like the Spanish Moss hanging from its live oak trees. It's impossible to disentangle the moss from the trees. But words that Mayor Landrieu used in his declaration to the city that elected him go a long way to disentangle antebellum attitudes from modern day realities. Disappearing Robert E. Lee isn't going to disappear racial attitudes overnight but it's a powerful start.

New Orleans is not your typical southern city. There's nothing remotely typical about New Orleans. From its gumbo history of being owned by France then Spain then France again before being bought in the Louisiana Purchase, and the loads of Italian, Irish, German, and Haitian immigrants that co-existed with descendants of Spanish, French,  and Creole (free people of color) culture in the early 1900s, New Orleans was hard to categorize. It still is.

Shock waves created by Mayor Landrieu's act of civic courage have reached my home town of Boston. Ty Burr, a Boston Globe columnist and film critic, asks, "Are Boston's statues honoring all the right men?" 

Henry Cabot Lodge, Samuel Eliot Morison, and Christopher Columbus have prominent statues in their honor. Burr's profiles about the men's intolerance and views were embarrassing eye-openers. And are timely conversation starters. Should the statues remain? Should they be removed? Should their plaques be rewritten?

The fact that they were deemed worthy of a statue in the past speaks volumes about what the attitudes of the general public were at the time. How we manage their presence today represents who we are now.

What happened in New Orleans is likely to create a domino effect. Our assumptions about our local histories and heroes are about to be questioned. The answers, as in the case of Boston, are going to be hard to reconcile.

The biggest question: will the answers bring us closer together.

Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

The Mount Auburn Cemetery: A Bouquet of Factoids

After chatting about the "Monuments of Mount Auburn Cemetery" post with Meg Winslow, she offered this trove of information. Meg is the Curator of Historical Collections, Mount Auburn Cemetery, 580 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge MA 02138-5517. She also informed me that The Mount Auburn Cemetery is currently the number one tourist destination in Cambridge on Trip Advisor.

The Nation’s First Rural Cemetery

• A National Historic Landmark founded in 1831.
• Designed by Henry A.S. Dearborn, Jacob Bigelow, & members of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.
• The first designed landscape open to the public in North America.
• The model for the America’s rural cemetery movement, public parks, and suburbs.
• Open to all. Non-denominational and non-sectarian.

A Cultural Landscape

• Open 365 days of the year, free of charge.
• #1-ranked tourist destination in Cambridge on TripAdvisor.
• More than 200,000 visitors annually from around the world.
• A Visitors Center in Story Chapel is staffed by docents and offers maps and a wide array of interpretive materials.
• Over 75 unique programs annually including walking tours, talks, and special events; 150 annual group tours ranging from elementary to graduate students, garden clubs to community and historical associations.
• New free Mobile App for mobile phones provides interpretive and GPS directions to any lot location within the Cemetery.

Accredited Arboretum and Internationally-Renowned Botanical Garden

• First Cemetery in America to be accredited an arboretum
• 175 acres of landscaped hills and dells, 3 ponds, and 1 vernal pool.
• Nationally significant collection of woody and herbaceous plants. 5,000 trees (640 different species and cultivars), 13,000 shrubs and groundcovers (1362 taxa).
• Ecologically sustainable practices, the introduction of new plantings for the improvement of wildlife habitat, and the creation of garden spaces associated with the development of new burial space.

An Urban Wildlife Refuge

• Massachusetts Audubon Important Bird Area.
• One of the premier birding destinations in Massachusetts.
• Home to rare spotted salamander, amphibian reintroductions, apiary, and pollinator habitats.

Mount Auburn’s Historical Collections were researched by David Russo over a three year period

• The first of its kind in the nation, open by appointment.
• More than 3,000 linear feet of institutional records that chronicle the Cemetery from its founding to the present. Holdings include Archives, Library, Photographs, and Fine and Decorative Art. The collection actively grows through gifts and acquisitions.
• Researchers include historians, biographers, landscape designers, architects, filmmakers, and individuals with family buried at the Cemetery.
• Staff and volunteers respond to more than 150 genealogical requests per year.

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As you see, David Russo's presentation about the Monuments of Mount Auburn Cemetery is an entry point to a parcel of Americana that's been going strong for 186 years.

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