Fragments of Oscar Wilde

Spoilers Ahoy!

This week marks something of a marathon--four plays to review within five days. Not that I complain! But it ends up putting me in a contemplative, some might say pretentiously pedantic mood.

So be it!

Fragments of Oscar Wilde comes across as a very personal and rather experimental idea by writer/director Vanessa Cate. Something about Oscar Wilde does seem to stir something like that from authors. Years ago I saw a play about his life, in which his imprisonment for sodomy was intercut with scenes from both The Importance of Being Earnest (with the warden as Lady Bracknell) and the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta Patience (which made fun of him), other prisoners doing the chorus. Twas fun!

Photo: Vanessa Cate

In this case, Ms. Cate combined scenes from several Wilde works to create a theatrical montage of scenes along a theme--the relationship between love and art and life. She took several opening scenes from the novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray, a bit of La Sainte Courtisane, another bit from Salome, The Nightingale and the Rose, and the uncompleted play A Florentine Tragedy.

Honestly the flow between the different sections of the piece sometimes seem a little ragged, but the writing itself unites the different elements. Just to keep us on our toes, she also finds ways to surprise us. The very first scene shows La Courtisane (Anastasia Charalambous) reading about a character from Portrait, Lord Henry--who instead of a jaded older gentleman (I've seen John Guilgud and Colin Firth play him) turns out to be an attractive young woman! More, one who looks rather like a cherub or maybe Nancy Drew--if either one had somehow acquired an extremely jaded palate towards life (Taylor Solomon).

Photo: Vanessa Cate

Likewise the speech of Salome towards the dead John the Baptist's mouth ends up delivered by three women towards the audience, dancing together and sharing a long red cape (Natalie Hyde, Stephanie Giles, Rebecca Watson). About two years ago I reviewed a production of this specific play and it frankly was better done in this instance.

Now I'm going to get pretentious and pedantic. You have been warned!

The whole show has a few problems--the single biggest one is the lack of vocal training by the cast. Honestly, this remains a pervasive complaint I have with nearly all theatre I go and see. But it really stands out when the language doesn't even pretend at any naturalism. Wilde's speech is and remains arch, witty and sophisticated. We Americans rarely learn how to do that. In this show the quality of vocal performance varies quite a bit. A few actors fall into the trap of (evidently) thinking speed and volume equals passion. No. Worse, a couple have trouble with parts of speech (rule of thumb--anyone who places the stress on pronouns over and over and over again has not mastered the art of speaking). A few show weak consonants, which is actually very easy to overcome by practice. Really--do some tongue twisters a few times a day for three weeks and the results will astonish!

Photo: Vanessa Cate

But these problems--which remain very common--get some nice compensation in the actual production. For one thing, the leads do quite well. Secondly, Zombie Joe's is a "black box" theatre so we can easily hear actors. As the great director Peter Brooks once noted, the quieter a character speaks the easier it is for them to find the emotional truth.

Also the director did something very clever in casting. The cast as a whole all demonstrated genuine stage presence. Each took command of the stage simply by entering, standing, walking or exiting. No small feat. All in some really fundamental way radiated their character, even looking at things and listening in ways their characters would. Again--NO SMALL THING.

Finally the movements conveyed a great deal. I happen to know that a few members of the cast (I've seen them in other things) are dancers or at least studied dance. So too the Director, and the various movements throughout conveyed a great deal. No fidgeting, no remaining rigidly still, no uncontrolled awkward business. Bravo! For example, an actress at the very beginning has a lovely piece of material wrapped around her. While exiting, she simply lets it drop, revealing a brief flash of nudity. Very simple and elegant. Likewise a sword fight almost looked real (they had foils and moved as if they were sabres--but how many folks would ever know that?) and certainly looked NOT AT ALL AWKWARD. Most sword fights on stage look wrong, Very wrong. One at San Francisco's ACT was actually embarrassing!

Photo: Vanessa Cate

So in the end I find myself very glad to have attended, genuinely moved by what I saw, and left pondering the dramatic sonnet Ms. Cate created for us. Wilde was never an author to tell you what to think--one reason Victorian society (and our own) found him so daunting. He drew connections, showed consequences, did not stint on the details the story naturally presented. Fragments of Oscar Wilde and the cast that present it do a find job of capturing all that bittersweet irony, the melancholy beauties, the musings by an artist upon art (and not necessarily to be taken entirely seriously).

Fragments of Oscar Wilde plays Saturday Nights at 8:30 March 23 thru May 18 (no show April 6) at Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre Group 4850 Lankershim Blvd. North Hollywood, CA Call 818-202-4120 for reservations.

Salome in NoHo (Review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Vampires and Oscar Wilde seem like they should go together when you think on it.  Not something I really had thought about very much.  True, Wilde woo'd in his youth the icily beautiful young woman who eventually married Bram Stoker.  One cannot also but think Wilde and Lestat might have gotten along fabulously.  If vampires are vaguely decadent sophisticates, then the author of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" would seem to a spirit sibling at least.  More, he knew--only too well--what it was like to have to hide one's desires in plain sight.

But when I saw the premiere of Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre's production of Wilde's much-banned play "Salome" the real association between this writer and that genre became much clearer.  Contrary to popular image, Wilde had a finely honed moral sense.  He saw only too clearly the contradictions of man's highest hopes, how they entwine with our basest desires.  He talk of decadence, of aesthetics and those witty barbs coupled with outlandish behavior made him the Lady Gaga of his day.  More, he expressed in this play more than any other how life can be empty enough to drive a person mad.

Remember how in Anne Rice's novels and in Lindqvist's "Let The Right One In" so many vampires eventually commit suicide?  Wilde would have understood.  Oh, yes.

This particular production has its strengths and weaknesses.  Forgive the rant, but its faults are almost entirely those of technique.  Too often actors and directors in the US simply never get trained about how to approach verse plays (such as "Salome") and fall into a series of traps.  Hardly a one such trap remained up-sprung here.  Monologues of heightened language gushed forth, powered by one emotion.  Stage business too often replaced genuine action between characters.  Jokanaan (i.e. John the Baptist) looked great, but when he preached he clearly had no idea to whom he was speaking or what he expected to get from his words (with one marvelous exception--when he urged the title character to save her soul, that was REAL).  Many times the background players did things with the air of a sitcom, or maybe a hint of vaudeville (which might have worked if taken much, much, much further--to the point of grotesquerie).

Mind you, "Salome" is very nearly a three-person play.  It hinges on what happens between King Herod, his wife Herodias, and her daughter (his stepdaughter) the princess Salome.  Tim Ottman gave the best performance in the show.  His slightly gaunt features in whiteface captured a good look for the King.  More importantly, his voice helped that face bring his character to life--and that character is a vampire, albeit not in the supernatural sense.  Herod is a man who's tired of life--having seen and done and tasted and tried everything he can think of, and in abundance.  Now he reigns out of habit.  His royal edicts are born out of whim and terror.  Tired of life, yes--but horrified at the thought of death.  Superstitious without being able (or willing) to treat spirituality or faith seriously.  So he locks up a prophet who speaks out against him, yet refuses to kill the man, no matter how much his queen nags him to do so.  The temptation with King Herod is to make him just an obnoxious bore.  But Ottman played the pathos of the man.  Like an ancient liche who clings to life, his Herod clings to his emptiness yet will recklessly seek to fill it.

In a way he's a mirror of the title character--save that at least Herod has lived.  Salome--she has all his ennui but nothing of his wisdom.  Having grown up in a decadent court as the King's only child (albeit by marriage), Salome plays the simple social games skillfully but automatically.  Her problem?  She doesn't really want anything.  Not very much anyway.  A life without meaning is a life without hope, without any real desire.  So when she sees a genuine prophet, someone totally different and (most importantly) brimming with genuine passion, what is her natural reaction?  She wants it.  Longs for it.  Hungers for it.

Hungers for him.

Lita Penaherrera makes for a lovely princess, and has a natural charm about her.  There's something nicely catlike about her manner and looks.  Banter between her and Herod reminded me weirdly enough of scenes between vampires and their sires in films like "Interview" and "Vampire Journals" and even "Near Dark."  A stretch?  Not really.  What she and Herod have in common is a deep, abiding thirst for life--one that each will go to extremes to slake.  How vampiric.  And yes, how undead.  Not alive, not really, but still moving about making a fuss.  Dangerous.  Boundless appetite coupled with extraordinary power.

Penaherrera made an unfortunate choice with her Salome--to portray her as a spoiled brat.  Demanding her way she did not so much cajole or manipulate or even play as pout and have a temper tantrum.  She reminded me of Veruca Salt, a little bit.  Instead of a teenager with the world-weariness of an ancient, what we got was a deranged child.  She longs for John the Baptist, to touch him, to feel him, to kiss him.  When he refuses, she's left unsatisfied enough a terrible idea comes forth.  Her stepfather--clearly savoring an incestuous lust that quickens his aging flesh--forever asks her to sit by him, share some fruit with him, drink from the same glass of wine as himself.  Dance for him.  He finally offers anything she desires up to half of his kingdom if she will but dance for him.

Anything?  Anything at all?  Yes, he vows.  They are both empty and seek to fill themselves even a little.

So she dances.  Let it be said this dance was very scenic in many ways.  More modern than middle eastern, but then the play was set in a modern era (or some version of one) so no complaints there.  Panaherrera is indeed a lovely young lady, and she can indeed dance (having worked with plenty of actors who cannot I realize this is no small thing).  One can fully understand Herod's desires.  The audience applauded for her dance, quite rightfully so.

Next, she springs the trap.  Her price?  The head of John the Baptist on a silver platter.  Herod, horrified at the thought of either breaking his word or slaying a prophet (the man is intensely superstitious remember), begs and cajoles and tries to negotiate his way out of it.  She remains implacable.  Her mother (the third major player--quite competently performed by Sasha Ilford--this is a compliment since many actors rarely rise to the level of competence) crows with triumph and pride, under the mistaken impression this is a gift to her from Salome.  Ah, no.  It is an attempt to feed, to quench an undying thirst for love, for life, for meaning.  Salome no less than Herod is a vampire of sorts.  Is it any wonder her love story ends with the death of her beloved?  That the end of the play is a soliloquy to a severed head--a living dead girl exulting that she may finally kiss Jokanaan's beautiful mouth, then realizing the man she loved is now destroyed.  What good his mouth for kissing without a tongue that speaks and kisses back?  How can any face remain lovely to behold when the eyes are empty, dull, nothing but flesh with no fire within them.  He cannot see her.  And Salome...weeps.

Who does not see in her a vampire?  Someone neither dead nor alive, eternally hungry and forever unsatisfied, a temptress who kills the man she loves then kisses his bloody dead lips?  This production has its faults and honestly, they are many, but the core was there.  Appropriately, the co-producers of this show is the Fabulous Monsters Performance Group.  If anyone is interested, you can learn more about the show at zombiejoes.com or urbandeath.com.

Note:  After finally getting over a severe cold and performing in this year's Cairo Caravan, I will be writing my reviews of the final three episodes this season of Game of Thrones next.  I promise!

Dorian Gray (2009)

Spoilers ahoy!

(Note: This film has not yet been released in the USA)

Even if you haven't read the original book, or seen any of the film versions, odds are the name conjures the story. Dorian Gray, the beautiful young man whose portrait ages instead of him. As time goes by, the portrait shows not only age but also moral decay and disease, the ravages not only of time but of a sinful life.

Curiously, when published the short novel by Oscar Wilde was seen as immoral. Myopia in the extreme. Like all too many works that portray sin, past and present, it stood condemned even while clearly teaching a moral lesson. But moral critics often focus on minutia. Wilde was extravagantly, deliberately decadent and he wrote a novel about sin. Prudes condemned it and could not see the work for what it was. Much as some fundamentalists cannot get past the trapping of magic in Harry Potter to even notice the profoundly Christian values embodies in the series.

But all that is background...

The latest motion picture of Dorian Gray stars Ben Barnes, and he is one of the two weakest elements in this entertaining-but-hardly-deep adaptation. Each scene that Barnes plays is well enough in and of itself, but doesn't seem to have a through-line. They don't feel connected somehow. Previously best known as the title character in Prince Caspian, Barnes does however capture some of the dichotomy of Gray (possibly the most aptly named character in English literature). In this version, he is a boy pretending to be a man, and one who sadly never really grows up. He longs to be moral and successful, popular and beloved, welcomed and satiated. In a word, he is hungry. Or so the script would have you believe. Barnes does a workmanlike performance (I've seen plenty of professional actors who'd've done not as good a job) but we never feel the inner fire of this (eternally) young man.

Alas this is made a bit worse by the script. Not a bad adaptation, to be sure, but one that falls into some fairly obvious traps. The most obvious is to show Dorian's excesses, because these days you can get away with it. In practice, this means sex and drugs. And in the end, isn't that fairly blase? Much more troubling (as in other versions) is his treatment of other human beings as props. Is not blackmail a far worse act than visiting a brothel? Really? Just as cruelty makes a more vivid impression than drunkenness or promiscuity. But instead of cruelty, what we see is a kind of callousness. Murder, yes, but more in a fit of emotion than a coldly calculated action just to feel what it would be like.

Barnes' Dorian is neither wicked enough, nor repentant enough to make the story work. And much of that fault lies in the script.

On the other hand, the script also manages to be fun. There's an amusing thrill to see Dorian seduce his way through a circle of polite society ladies (and in one very amusing instance, daughter as well as mother). Colin Firth does his usual magnificent job as a deliberately decadent nobleman, Lord Wotton, one who says much but does very little and is hoist on his petard upon finding an acolyte who takes his ideas seriously. Most particularly this shows up in a new character, Emily--a daughter played by Rebecca Hall who (to Lord Wotton's horror) falls for Dorian as he does for her. One cannot help but think this is something of a cheat. In the original story, Dorian feels increasing despair as he realizes his own inability to love, to feel anything save boredom and nagging guilt. If in offering a way out, the author felt an extra element of tragedy added to the tale, I can only say the idea failed. Poignancy was substituted for power. Hall did as fine a job as one could ask for in the role, but the plot got in the way (Hall is an excellent actress and I highly recommend seeing her in The Prestige as well as Wide Sargasso Sea).

Likewise the lovely Rachel Hurd Wood does a fine job of playing Sybil Vane, Dorian's sweet and doomed first love. Again, though, the script gets in the way. Unlike any other version of this tale, I just did not understand her suicide. We simply don't get to know her well enough, and what we do see is a frankly a strong, brave young woman. The implication was that she felt her life to be ruined because she surrendered her virginity to Dorian. But that didn't ring "true." Again, returning to the original, she needs to have a much more vast emotional investment in Dorian than the one we see on film (and it frankly feels like a cheat that she drowned herself instead of swallowing lye).

The climax, with Hall's character included, is as special-effects-laden as one would expect in this kind of tale, albeit without a huge amount of point. Do we really gain anything by watching Dorian age and the painting youthen? At the same time, much of what it attempts to do works well enough--we are left with an idea of a genuine love destroyed by circumstance. Likewise the story of Lord Wotton himself is left in an interesting place, paradoxically more ethical yet ruthless.

Yet it doesn't really work as a version of Oscar Wilde's story, the one that has survived the test of time.