I knew next to nothing about George Handel's opera Tamerlano prior to attending LA Opera's company premiere of the composer's 1724 work on November 21. While I have a mixed reaction to the production, the opera's themes — musical and political — are timely and perhaps more pertinent now than ever.
Inspired by the historical saga of Mongol warlord Timur the Lame (a.k.a., in Italian, Tamerlano) and his showdown with conquered Turkish sultan Bajazet, Handel reportedly wrote the score in only three weeks. The libretto, by Nicola Francesco Haym, is fairly minimal, allowing Handel's lovely melodies to carry the lengthy plot (at nearly four hours, including two intermissions).
The unprepared may be startled by this as well as the opera's small cast: there are six principals and no chorus. What's more, some who took in LA Opera's production on opening night were surprised by some of Handel's specifications and/or director Chas Rader-Shieber's choices in casting and staging.
Countertenor and former boy soprano Bejun Mehta assays the title role of the villainous Tamerlano, and does so fabulously. He is lithe of voice and body, and effectively conveys a despot's pride and power. However, Mehta's performance presents an immediate challenge to anyone who believes male roles in opera are limited to tenors, baritones and basses. Mehta addresses this in a fascinating podcast interview, in which he likens the struggle to embrace his unique singing voice to the coming out process for GLBT people.
Also, the role of Andronico, the young prince who has been carrying on a secret love affair with Bajazet's daughter, Asteria (a vocally-assured if somewhat bland Sarah Coburn), has been played by men in some previous stagings of Tamerlano but can also be cast as a "pants role" with a female in the part. Rader-Shieber and LA Opera go the latter route, with Patricia Bardon an excellent, convincing Andronico.
Having two females play the central love story, though, in an opera that is essentially about the subjugation of an exotic people by a militant force intent on stripping them of their rights makes a biting impression in post-Proposition 8 California. It is possible that only GLBT viewers will pick up on this, but I believe it reveals a particular sensitivity on the director's part.
Rader-Shieber reinforces this, intentionally or not, through his updating of the opera's 15th-century setting to the 20th century. Tamerlano, his security forces and Andronico wear more modern attire reminiscent of past fascist regimes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Bajazet and Asteria, on the other hand, wear more traditional, colorful garb inspired by their Byzantine source.
The great Placido Domingo plays Bajazet in this limited-run production, which closes December 1. He was in fine voice during the opening night performance, although he seemed to grow tired and jumped his musical cue at the opening of Act 3. Still, he splendidly portrayed the proud but defeated sultan trying to protect his daughter from a forced marriage to their captor.
Tamerlano's orchestra, under the assured, passionate direction of William Lacey, was superb on opening night. The musicians' mastery of the material permitted Handel's gorgeous music to shine through; at the performance's conclusion, the entire orchestra was rightfully invited on stage to take repeated bows along with the singers.
The opera's length and limited, oft-repeated lyrics can be daunting, especially to the uninitiated like myself. That being said, I encourage readers to sample Tamerlano, if not in LA then elsewhere or on CD or DVD where available. This unique, history-based tale can accurately be called timeless.
Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.
On November 22, I had the pleasure of joining the cast of Phoenix Rising Artists Collaborative as they presented their last night of Charles Busch's hilarious play, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. All proceeds went to the Desert Mountain States Chapter of the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society, which has been helping people fight the diseases since 1949.
As part of the fundraising effort, Charles Busch graciously agreed to personally sign a copy of his novel, Whores of Lost Atlantis, and send it to the person who made the highest bid. At the show, the highest bid offered was $100.00, but we at Movie Dearest are happy to open the bidding up to you, our readers, for the next two days.
If you would like to pledge a donation, please let me know at reelthoughts@aol.com by midnight Thanksgiving night. If your pledge is the highest, we will inform you how to make your donation, and will send your name and address to Mr. Busch, so that he can personally sign and send you your book.
Whores of Lost Atlantis is Busch's fictionalized story of how a wild group of actors came together to create a show not unlike Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, in a bar not unlike the East Village's notorious Limbo Lounge. Busch is as delightful a novelist as he is a playwright, so you'll love trying to discern what events in the book really happened.
By Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.
Tim Burton's latest flight of fancy Alice in Wonderland, starring his muse Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Alan Rickman as The Caterpillar ...
Mia Wasikowska as Alice, Michael Sheen as The White Rabbit ...
Anne Hathaway as The White Queen, Helena Bonham Carter as The Red Queen, Stephen Fry as The Cheshire Cat and Matt Lucas as both Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
The very important (opening) date for this 3-D Disney fantasia is March 5, 2010.
Arizona’s Joe Marshall is taking New York by snowstorm this Christmas. Marshall was a fixture on Valley stages, but now he’s finding success Off Broadway after moving to New York City earlier this year. In June, he staged his play Dirty Secrets, and now, he is opening his newest show, The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever! It’s a title Kathy Griffin loves, and recently, Margaret Cho stopped by to show her support.
The show concerns a strapped West Hollywood gay theater that is thrown into a tizzy when their eccentric playwright storms off before their big holiday show. Can the group of drama queens don their gay apparel fast enough to open on time? Does Liza wear false lashes?
A Tucson native, Marshall founded the Alternative Theatre Company in 1991 in Phoenix to fill the void for GLBT theater after the closing of the landmark Janus Theatre. He focused on producing modern gay plays by John Glines, such as Chicken Delight and Men of Manhattan, and later, Marshall’s own gay-themed plays. Dirty Secrets, about a twisted trio of gay men, and the gay Neil Simon-esque antics of A Night in Vegas were hits about a decade ago.
For a few seasons, the Alternative Theatre Company had a home in the gayest strip mall in Phoenix near the queer boutique Unique on Central, and Marshall grew a loyal fan base that he treasured. But disputes with the landlord shuttered the theater and the company went into hibernation. Marshall moved to Tucson in 2006.
NC: What has been happening since you left Arizona?
JM: Ohmigod! I left Arizona? Oh wait, it’s becoming clear to me now. I did leave Arizona. Well, needless to say, I moved to New York. Shortly after arriving, I approached Lawrence Page, the new owner of The Actors Playhouse, about producing my play The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever! We work shopped it last December in Tucson, resulting in a rewritten/reworked production. After holding a staged reading, with 37 actors, and a big enthusiastic audience, we got the green light to move forward.
The Actors Playhouse, steeped in gay history, was always secretly my first choice. Productions at the venue have included Howard Crabtree's Whoop-Dee-Doo, Harvey Fierstein’s Safe Sex and Torch Song Trilogy, Ten Percent Revue, An Evening with Quentin Crisp, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, Boy Meets Boy, Fortune and Men's Eyes, among many others.
The theater is located in New York's Greenwich Village. The typical 'black box' decor is no longer. The walls were stripped down to its original brick and imported tri-colored slate stone. New flooring was installed, the stage was reinforced and mahogany wood trimming was installed with a new landmark-approved marquee. Needless to say, this is the perfect location for a gay Christmas play, conveniently located right near Christopher Street and the original Stonewall Inn.
Similar to Phoenix, the talent pool here is amazing, but a thousand times larger. I no longer have to ask strangers walking down the street "Hey, want to be in a play?" We just listed our auditions and received over 300 submissions within a couple of days.
NC: I hear that Dirty Secrets had a well-received production Off Broadway. Tell me all about it?
JM: Yeah! Can you believe it? It was the first of my works to open Off Broadway. I remember opening in Phoenix to scathing reviews. At last I’m feeling justified. Dirty Secrets is always fun to revisit – hard to believe I wrote it over 10 years ago. Some rewrites, but all in all, the play is pretty solid. However, the ending changed again, and two weeks prior to opening, the actor playing Tom had to drop out due to family issues in LA. The producer told me I would have to step into the role. This time around, I found it emotionally draining to perform five times a week.
NC: Do you miss Arizona?
JM: In many ways, yes. I miss the guerrilla theater process we had in Phoenix, throwing a full-scale production up with little or no financial support. The loyal audiences who respectfully attended many of my productions, good, bad or indifferent. Friendships I’ve held for over 20 years. Phoenix will always be the city that allowed me to achieve many of my goals, something I’ll never forget.
NC: What kind of star encounters have you had since hitting the Big Apple?
JM: Good Lord, unlimited encounters; unlike California, actors actually use mass transit here. I’ve seen many a celebrity on the subway, walking down a busy street, eating in crowded restaurants. And the strange thing is, for the most part, they’re left alone.
I have to say the most impressive encounter was John Glines, who attended a performance of Dirty Secrets and after the performance sharing dinner with my partner, his partner and our director. Shortly after the show, my partner Adrian Maynard, and I were invited for cocktails at John’s home where he shared many stories about famous people he either worked with or had the opportunity to meet.
John Glines has always been a mentor for me. The Alternative Theatre was founded by actually producing a season of John’s plays. One claim to fame of his was winning a Tony for producing Torch Song Trilogy on Broadway. And you can’t overlook his groundbreaking acceptance speech, where he was the first person to ever thank their same-sex partner on national TV. I got to actually hold his Tony Award at the end of the evening. Of course, it took six cocktails for me to actually get the nerve to ask. “Hey, John, can I hold your Tony?”
NC: Other than your play and celebrities, any amazing things happen to you in New York?
JM: I live in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn with Adrian. Every Thursday we take a 20-minute subway to Coney Island for the free summer concert series. We’ve seen Frankie Valli, Connie Francis, Hall and Oates, Blondie, Pat Benatar and Donna Summer. Talk about amazing. Each week the crowd gets more and more gay. We’re expecting next week to just be a big gay disco party with 25,000 of our closest friends.
The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever! is now playing in previews and officially opens November 29 at The Actors’ Playhouse in New York. Performances continue through January 3. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit their official website.
Interview by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.
I love every film by director Werner Herzog I've seen, starting with 1982's Fitzcarraldo and culminating most recently in his wonderful if sad Grizzly Man. I like Nicolas Cage a lot, especially when the actor is at his most histrionic in such offbeat movies as Peggy Sue Got Married, Raising Arizona and Face/Off.
I do not like the new Herzog-Cage collaboration, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (which is actually titled THE Bad Lieutenant ... on screen). While it shares some of its moniker and basic plot elements with Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (1992), the remake/sequel/reboot opening today lacks most of what made its NYC-set forebear a very effective morality tale.
Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a New Orleans police officer suffering from debilitating back pain related to an injury he sustained while saving a man's life in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. When McDonagh's prescription medication becomes ineffective, he turns to illegal — and illegally-gained — drugs, sex with a beautiful prostitute (Eva Mendes, in an underwritten, thankless role), gambling and setting up criminals without authorization in a misguided effort to soothe his pain and find the culprits behind the massacre of an immigrant family.
Whereas Ferrara's film was an intelligent if graphic exploration of a wounded man's quest for redemption, BL: Port of Call New Orleans has a hard time settling on such simple things as characters' motivations, needs and accents (Cage's changes inexplicably midway through). Ferrara's version was steeped in Catholic imagery and symbolism. Here, the only sign of religion is a kinky excess of saintly statuary in sexy fellow cop Fairuza Balk's bedroom.
I lay most of the blame for this misfire at the feet of first-time screenwriter William Finkelstein and longtime producer Edward Pressman (who also produced the original), but Herzog can't be let completely off the hook. The director desperately tries to indulge his favorite theme — man vs. nature — here, but the most he can incorporate aside from the devastated post-Katrina environment are occasional shots of displaced alligators and drug-induced iguana hallucinations.
Some fine actors including Val Kilmer, Shawn Hatosy and GLBT fave Jennifer Coolidge are mostly wasted in supporting roles. However, the long-MIA Brad Dourif makes a great impression as McDonagh's impatient bookie.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is being touted as Oscar bait and is being warmly received by some critics. Don't believe the hype. Instead, go and see That Evening Sun, which is already playing in New York and opens today in LA. It is a far better exploration of the lengths to which some men will go to right perceived wrongs.
Winner of the Audience Choice award for best feature film and a Special Jury Award for best ensemble cast at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival, That Evening Sun stars old pro Hal Holbrook as Abner Meecham. A Tennessee farmer consigned by his son (Walton Goggins, who played the sexy gay drifter in Red Dirt a few years back) to a nursing home, Meecham makes a break from the facility one day and returns to the home he shared with his late wife (who is glimpsed in flashbacks and is played by Dixie Carter, Holbrook's real-life wife).
Meecham is startled to find a new family renting his property and living in his former home. The new head of the household is Lonzo Choat (Ray McKinnon, who also produced), an alcoholic prone to abusive rages. His wife (Movie Dearest fave Carrie Preston) and teenage daughter are the usual recipients of the unemployed Choat's anger, but Meecham becomes his new target when the elder man decides to take up residence in an adjoining cabin.
Hostilities mount between Choat and Meecham and culminate in mutual acts of destruction. Holbrook is great as usual, and could rack up some nominations and/or awards for his soulful performance. While grim at times, That Evening Sun (well-adapted from a William Gay short story by writer-director Scott Teems) ends on a hopeful note once Meecham and Choat have learned the hard way that violence is never a successful route to conflict resolution.
UPDATE: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is now available on DVD
Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.
Cast:
Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue, Cung Le
Director:
Christian Alvart
Release Date:
September 25th, 2009
Genre:
Horror | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Movie description:
When two men emerge from a deep sleep in the middle of space, they discover that they have no memories of who they are and where they're going. But their memory loss pales in comparison to the problem of the murderous warriors on board their ship who don't want to leave anyone alive.
Trailer for movie Pandorum (2009)
Cast:
Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Mark Rolston, Betsy Russell, Shawnee Smith and Peter Outerbridge
Director:
Kevin Greutert
Release Date:
23 October 2009
Genre:
Crime | Horror | Mystery | Thriller
Movie description:
Special Agent Strahm is dead, and Detective Hoffman has emerged as the unchallenged successor to Jigsaw's legacy. However, when the FBI draws closer to Hoffman, he is forced to set a game into motion, and Jigsaw's grand scheme is finally understood.
Trailer for movie Saw VI (2009)
