Sam Shepard's Kicking a Dead Horse and Why You Should Sit in the Back of the House at a Preview

Once upon a time in the West, an icon of the American stage (pictured here with Patti Smith) wrote a play for an icon of the Irish stage,
and a dead horse was kicked. Repeatedly.

Sam Shepard's Kicking a Dead Horse will open at the Public
Theatre on July 15. This first Shepard play in four years is a co-production with the Abbey Theatre.

I attended Sunday's preview and having seen the luminous and non-botoxed Judith Light, looking very east village, in the box office line before me, I spent the rest of the evening wondering just who is the boss? Is it Pulitzer prize winning Shepard? Is it
Oscar nominated Stephen Rea? In Rea's character, Hobart Struther, the wealthy art dealer now stranded in the desert, who was the boss in his dueling personalities: the romantic or the cynic?



The boss turns out to be Samuel Beckett whose presence looms large over this play. So large in fact that no amount of cowboy motif or metaphor can distract from the idea that Hobart is Hamm and Clov rolled up into one. Shepard's play is a homage to Rea's work with Beckett in Endgame, that ubiquitous play which might just turn out to be the play of 2008.

That night I sat in the back of the theatre and declined to move when those around me were escorted toward the front to fill empty subscriber seats. I declined and was greatly rewarded. At curtain call, I looked behind me in my usual nosiness. The director and author of the evening was seated right behind me.
At St. Dymphna's for a post-show Guinness, could that have been Leo Fitzpatrick of my favorite TV show of all time? The best show of all time? The Wire? The sighting made a great evening even better.

The Onion Game

It is always a good sign for a comedy when the actors crack up during a reading. And as visiting playwright Bryan Delaney noted after Monday's The Onion Game: "the audience loves it when the actors laugh." Well, the audience loved the crackups as well as the whole of the play. Delaney is in New York for the summer and will be returning to his position at the Abbey Theatre in the fall. The reading was at the Vineyard Theatre and featured the lovely Geraldine Hughes of the latest Rocky movie. Fabulous but perhaps we should also note her turn in Friel's successful Translations on Broadway last year.

The equally lovely Peter Scanavino, from Conor McPherson's The Shining City, played Geraldine's son - Ogie. See? O.G. The Onion Game. Little surprises around every corner but nothing dangerous. Or are they? Delaney's play radiated through layers of black humor that would have made Tolstoyevksy jealous.

Photos by Ben Strothmann at the Translations opening 2007

The cast of the Fall of the House of Onion was headed by the Onion King himself (Christopher Evan Welch), daughter Milly (Zoe Kazan), Jacques the farmhand with D.H. Lawrence literary tendencies (David Cale) and Connor Barrett. Will Frears directed the reading. All in all, a "stunning achievement" as the Onion King's publisher would crow.

Pimm's Lemonade, Port Authority and the Fishamble

Yes, I had two Pimm's Lemonades at the Half-King before Thursday's sold-out show, but I know I sat through Port Authority with tears in my eyes with no help from the alcohol. I was simply overcome by the pure empathy this playwright has for his characters. This was the best Conor McPherson play I have seen. This is not the McPherson of The Weir, The Good Thief, or Shining City. As good as those plays are, they are violent tragedies. Port Authority is the quiet tragedy of everyday life, and it is that much more effective for it.

There are no gimmicks here. No supernatural twists found in his other plays. Satan never once appears. The success of the play lies in what McPherson does not do. McPherson does not sit in judgment on his characters. He allows them to tell us their stories, dares us to judge and we cannot. We can't even muster much sympathy for these characters because their stories are too familiar. The stories are our own: the confusion of youth, the failures of middle age and the 'not quite but something close to' regrets and resignations at the end of life. The stories are of beer parties, humiliations at work, and suppressed devotion told within the framework of a trio of alternating monologues, a technique that McPherson used in his This Lime Tree Bower and Brian Friel used in his Faith Healer and Molly Sweeney.

The lovely shoulders of the three men's offstage and unattainable women make Port Authority a modern day aisling poem. Clare, Mrs. O'Hagan's wife, and Marion all are reminiscent of the subjects of Ireland's 18th century bardic poetry. The fact that the shoulders are tan - a fairly recent ideal of beauty - brings the women up to the present. The women are visions of an Ireland not so defined by its politics but by what Sean O Tuama calls "the smaller material of daily human consequences." Port Authority which unfortunately closed last night, featured the brilliant performances of John Gallagher, Jr., Jim Norton, fresh from his Tony, and Brian D'Arcy James on his way to Shrek.


Good news for the the Fishamble Theatre from Dublin and bad news for those of us who procrastinated on getting tickets for Sebastian Barry's The Pride of Parnell Street at the Long Wharf Theatre. The play is part of New Haven's International Festival of Arts and Ideas. Well, I'm off to a mediocre John Updike novel, I mean, a neighborhood bbq here in the suburbs.

The Pride of Parnell Street: Mary Murray, Karl Shiels

University Place and even more Shaw

Attending Tuesday's NYU rehearsal for the summer drama project - a double bill of Synge's Riders to the Sea and Beckett's Endgame - I was reminded once again that intimate Beckett is the best Beckett. As glorious as the BAM Endgame was, Beckett is so much more intense and accessible when the audience feels to be inside the skull that encloses Clov, Hamm, Nagg and Nell.

HAMM: Why do you stay with me?

CLOV: Why do you keep me?

HAMM: There's no one else.

CLOV: There's nowhere else.

Nowhere else but the small rehearsal space at 19 University Place. Perfect!


To be filed under: "What more can we want than that?" Playwright and novelist Joe Pintauro was part of the post-performance discussion. Turns out his play Men's Lives was a good deal influenced by Synge's play. The connection from the Aran Islands to "old" Montauk now seems a natural one! Why didn't I see that before? Thanks for the invitation to the readings and the post-performance discussions, Akiva Daube! The contrast in acting styles between the two productions was fascinating, and I look forward to seeing what comes of the plays as they move through production.

Project Shaw

Under the direction of David Staller, Project Shaw is in the 3rd of its four year duration. Staller conceived of a Shaw marathon - the reading of each of the prolific and long-lived playwright's plays. It has been a great success with such stage presences as Michael Cerveris, Brian Murray, Michael Musto, Tyne Daly, Kate Mulgrew and Blair Brown (who will always be Molly Dodd to me). This month's Great Catherine w/ Annajanska, The Wild Grand Duchess is sold out, but after the first of the month, tickets can be had for Major Barbara in July. My personal fav. of Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra will be read in September. Ah, Caesar! Shaw's true hero. If only current politicians could and would read a little Shaw....

Joycean Hangovers and Shavian Operas

Above: Ciaran O'Reilly and Charlotte Moore from the Irish Repertory Theatre
reading the "Bloom Invites Stephen to
Spend the Night" segment @ Bloomsday.

Bloomsday

Last night was my first Bloomsday at Symphony Space. I approached it unenthusiastically, as something that "would be good for me" like ab crunches or memory puzzles. I am too lazy a reader to appreciate Joyce. He deserves a better audience than I. You could spend a lifetime on a sentence let alone a novel. No wonder there is a whole cottage industry of academics built upon the man and his book. Me, I enjoy the short stories. Better yet, I enjoy movies based upon the short stories preferably starring Angelica Huston.

But I am glad I went last night. If only to have Fritz Weaver growl and tell us to "shut up" when we complimented us on his reading. I think he was joking. I think. It was his 28th Bloomsday.

I also enjoyed the Guinness. Before, during, and after. Every girl needs a little black drink.

G. B. Shaw, commenting on Ulysses, called it a "revolting record of a disgusting phase of civilisation; but it is a truthful one." Some of Shaw's truths, including who actually wrote Shakespeare's plays, are arriving in operatic form.

Also at Symphony Space, the Encompass New Opera Theatre is presenting two one-acts operas by Philip Hagemann based upon G. B. Shaw's The Dark Lady of the Sonnets and Passion, Poison and Petrification, June 19-22.

Jim Joyce and Jim Norton on Broadway

"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: Introibo ad altare Dei."

Happy Bloomsday! Those of you who would like their hallucinations complete with profanity, tune into the Symphony Space webstreaming of their Bloomsday on Broadway. Readers include Stephen Colbert, the ubiquitous McCourt brothers, and Fionnula Flanagan. The FCC approved Ulysses is on WBAI beginning at 7 p.m. Readers include Alec Baldwin and Anne Meara.

The Tonys

Congratulations to Jim Norton for his win at Radio City last night for best featured performance in a play. The win came at the expense of his castmate in The Seafarer Conleth Hill. Could there not have been co-winners just this time?


Here is this morning's RTE interview with Seafarer playwright Conor McPherson discussing the 70-year-old Norton's accomplishment and the diaspora of Irish theatre to the U.S.

Will I go to McPherson's Port Authority on Thursday and see Mr. Norton's post-Tony glow? Yes I said yes I will Yes.

Gala II: Hirschfeld and Astroland

The Brooklyn lightning show @ last night's McCarren Pool concert brought to mind all the new possibilities for the name Death Cab for Cutie, but I return as promised to the topic of the Gala.

Actually, let's talk about last year's Gala silent auction. I won something that made my material girl heart flutter - an Abe Hirschfeld.




The print is from Martin Scorsese's The Gangs of New York. The caricature fantastic. The film not so. That's Liam Neeson hovering in saintly fashion over the rest. To the right is Daniel Day Lewis sans milkshake. He was born in London, don't you know, but assumed Irish citizenship in 1993. You think that citizenship would have been an automatic with In the Name of the Father, My Left Foot, and The Boxer. Besides Neeson and Lewis and others, there are four Ninas.

This year, no Hirschfeld to my disappointment. But there was an Astroland. And that was almost as good. We brought home a lovely print of Coney Island's on-notice amusement park. Year by year, the Gala is slowly furnishing my abode.

Irish Rep. Gala

Last night the Irish Rep. Theatre celebrated its 20th anniversary at a glamorous evening at the Pierre. Highlights of the entertainment were John Cullum (who will always be Holling to me), Melissa Errico, and Gabriel Byrne doing a party piece. Fantabulous time.

Blogger and daughter. Note how well she learned those childhood lessons on keeping color out of the wardrobe.
Daughter and the lovely Sarah having a grand time. More later. Time for another nap.

Meanwhile, with the Tonys on Sunday, here is an interview with Jim Norton and David Morse (who will always be Dr. Jack Morrison to me) on the Lennie Lopate show WNYC - FM. Remember, it's Brian before and Lennie later.

Yeats in the Bowery

Yeats condemns the gentrification of the Bowery!

Not really, but he did once proclaim that he wanted all his "poetry to be spoken on a stage or sung." It wasn't enough to have his poems static on the page. Yeats' ambition for his poetry shines through his plays as well. His plays are poetic and his poetry are full of dramatic tensions and images. There is an unusually thin line of demarcation between his verse and his drama. It's like having a play at a poetry club.

This past Saturday, the Handcart Ensemble had a very successful one-off production of Yeats' Purgatory to a full house at the Bowery Poetry Club. The one-act was a powerful combination of mythology, Irish history and Japanese Noh drama. The play featured Sam McCready (Old Man), Jane Pejtersen (figure of Mother) Kyle Riley (Young Man), and Britt Pixton (Psaltery/Singer). Direction was by Joan McCready. The McCreadys are founding members of the Lyric Players Theatre in Belfast. It was a great pleasure to have them in town!

Handcart Artistic Director J. Scott Reynolds, ctr. with Sam and Joan McCready

Incidentally, although this is well-documented by people other than Yeats, I have to say it again - the Bowery is not what it was. John Varvatos is in CBGB's and a sparkly new Chase is on the corner as it is everywhere.

"The most exciting new imports of the Off Broadway season were by Irish writers..."

So says Jason Zinoman in Sunday's NY Times . He was referring to recent plays by Enda Walsh (The Walworth Farce) and Mark O'Rowe (Terminus). Here director Mikel Murfi talks about directing the divine Farce and what makes it inherently Irish.