esrosedotblog

Most attempts to make a movie out of a stage play are failures.

By "opening it up", directors end up violating the intimacy and effect of sitting in an enclosed space with actors and an audience. What has worked, no longer does.

Today's film is an exception.

They took the play, put all the scenery on a larger stage set and then put the actors through their paces.

The camera roams the space with the actors but the feeling of the real theater, the breath, the spaces, the unreal reality, come through beautifully.

I suppose it has something to do with the material as well.

Just Say Love (2009)

Two men meet. One ostensibly straight one very gay. Nature takes its course.

The theatricality helps us hear the words. To get the nuance. Falling in love in these circumstances is a pretty complicated thing. And the film sails with the complications. There is a bit of a trick ending but by the time we get there, it does not seem that way. The full advantage of a theater over film. They have harnessed both here.

This is a great movie. Worth the time and trouble to listen. It has subtitles but I think that would ruin things.

Oh. It is based on Plato's Phaedrus. One of the guys is a bookworm and is holding the book in the opening scene. Not a spoiler. Just a tipoff. He even reads the section to the other msn. I missed the point myself. Plato. Not on my reading list.

A 5 out of Netflix5. I am glad it is in our library.

Labels: films, gay films, theater

I do not much miss our old life.

But when it comes to the theater, I sometimes grieve for a quick return and some Broadway and off Broadway visits.

I am astonished how much I mind missing this.

Why ‘Hamilton’ Has Heat

I would be in the front row.

I do not want to say that there is nothing out here to go to. But we have tried LA theater. Pale comparison. And the local theater which handles tours is a vast wasteland.

So.

Sometimes life in the desert is life in a desert.

Labels: broadway, theater

I have been reading Alison Bechdel's cartoon strip for a very long time.

Some of the strips have ended up in the blog.

Now, excitement. A Broadway show! That was an off Broadway show.

Alison seems to be enjoying herself. As she should.

‘Fun Home,’ the Musical, Takes Alison Bechdel’s Life to Broadway

It is all supposed to be pretty close to real life.

"Fun Home" is the name given to her Dad's funeral home where Bechdel grew up. Her dad was also a closeted gay man. You can see the complexities of such a family. Hide and seek 24/7.

The thing about this strip is that it is wise to many things. Gay life. Social hypocrisies. Lesbians. Not much known about that. At least not in your comic section.

I am glad to see she has made the big time. Very happy. Another rung on the gay/lesbian ladder to full social recognition.

Labels: gay books, gay life, theater

And look! He won a Tony last night.

Best actor in a musical for “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” which also won best musical revival.

I had a video of his speech but they took it away. Copyright infringements and stuff. CBS. Corporate hogs.

As it turns out, this is much much better.

Labels: theater

OBSESSION OF THE DAY

Boys from the broadway musical reprise their opening number in a van. I can't get enough of it.

Labels: fun. music, theater

CONNECTIONS

This is a bit of inside baseball but I just read the NYT review of

The Merchant of Venice

which just opened on Broadway with Al Pacino as Shylock and Lily Rabe as Portia.

It is, apparently a triumph for both in a very well directed play.

Lily Rabe is the daughter of the playwright David Rabe and the actress Jill Clayburgh who died, last week, at the young age of 66.

Pacino and Clayburgh were, for a season or two, in the repertory company of The Charles Playhouse in Boston and I had the pleasure of seeing them work together in a number of productions.

They were young and fresh and very exciting. The Charles put on great shows. They were often experimental theater or plays that were to the left of center. They always left me thinking and roiling after a performance. I can still remember a few scenes. Astounding.

This would be 1968-72. I looked it up here.

It isn't a big deal, but there cannot help but be a wonderful connection between the two actors over this.

That Al worked with the mom and now works with the daughter right after the mom's death and that they have a big hit in a very old play. Wow.

Labels: theater

ROTHKO

I would love to see this play.

In "Red" 2-Man Cast Shares Stage With a Vivid Character

Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne play Mark Rothko and his assistant.

They actually paint in the show. It says you can smell the paint when you come into the theater.

Rothko was a haunted man and committed suicide. He was trouble for patrons. He was commissioned to paint eight panels for an opening of a Four Season's Hotel and then withheld the work because he didn't like the hotel's clientele.

I never stayed in a Four Seasons for exactly that reason but we used to have dinner in their really nice bistro facing the Boston Common. I know. Very self referential but it is the truth.

Rothko's works are very moving. They are often shown in low light as prescribed by the artist.

We went to see The Rothko Chapel in Houston.

I can still see it in my mind's eye.

Rothko mostly painted stripes or columns in unusual shades that worked the eye and spirit. Hard. It all went right past the brain.

Labels: art, theater

OHHHH NOOOOO

They are going to fuck up one of my favorite musicals and probably the only musical movie that really made the transition well. It is a NYTimes Best 1176 Film.

Carrey And Gyllenhaal Tapped For Damn Yankees Movie

The film used most of the original cast and only Tab Hunter was thrown in for Hollywood value. He actually did a great job and his own singing. Stephen Douglas was the original Joe.

Ray Walston was the original and film devil. It is a Faust story set around baseball.

They don't mention the female lead, which is critical. The original Lola was Gwen Verdon.

George Abbot (who lived to be 104), one of the most talented Broadway directors ran the show.

You can get the DVD.

And the show is probably still playing somewhere in America tonight. It is still popular for local theater.

I know. I know. I should be used to this kind of ravaging of the classics.

I don't usually write about my musical mania because it has cooled and I do not have access any more. I used to see every Broadway bound show from 1954 until the time we left Boston.

Labels: best films, theater