Silverlake Blvd.

Spamalot @ Ahmanson

Neither of us knew what to expect. It was hilarious, of course. It was also ingeniously presented.

 

Most impressive was how some scenes from the movie that are seared into the consciousness of my generation—the Black Knight at the bridge, the Killer Rabbit—which would seem unstageable, were realized on stage with wit and art.

 

Most of the new material, including the high point: “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway” (“There's a very small percentile, / Who enjoys a dancing gentile.”) were parodies of Broadway musical conventions. The embodiment of all this, The Lady of the Lady, was a pip. Her “Song that goes like this” and “The Diva’s lament” simultaneously conveyed sentiment while mocking it. Her whole part takes place inside scare quotes, and Merle Dandridge tread the tricky path with style.

 

Matthew Greer was the evening’s overachieving clown, playing not only Lancelot but the Knight of Ni, Tim the Enchanter but and, best of all, The French Taunter.

Reel Thing XXII @ Linwood Dunn Theater

Still digesting the conference last week. Exhausting & exhilarating. The dramas, the detective work, the craft:

How naturally he catches the moment between noticing and not noticing. This, one says, is where his art lies; not simply in seeing, but in the waywardness and the timelessness of seeing. Seeing is like light and shadow, playing over what is seen. Things seen are exact yet they flow away or are retrieved: the past and the present mingle in a clear stream.

--V.S. Pritchett on Turgenev

The Battle of Agincourt @ Barnsdall Park

Last night the ISC, as usual, made the most of the comic parts of Henry V, and even making the merely strange elements, like the Chorus, and the stately humbug of the aristocrats into comedy. All to the good. 

What a play! It seems to be an empty-headed exercise in jingoism and then comes the scene where Harry in disguise talks with some soldiers, and tries to inspire them: “Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honorable.” To which the grunts reply “That’s more than we know.”

 

The company had particular fun with the Welsh, Irish and French accents. And, since Shakespeare wrote parts for 100s of characters, all the actors except Harry played 3 or 4 or more different parts. A possible source of confusion that, with clever direction and simple costume changes, became an additional source of fun.

Escape @ the Bowl

 

Thursday night at the Bowl the wind felt like a hairdryer rather than a cooling breeze. The program was Northern European Romanticism, and a welcome relief from the heat and smoke. M. Thibaudet, in the same patchwork suit he wore earlier this year, had a ball with Lizst’s second piano concerto. And the Phil jumped headfirst into Richard Strauss, ending with a presentation of the Rosenkavlier Suite that was rowdy, intense, mercurial and a bit hysterical, i.e. perfect.

Pompeii @ LACMA

Even though LACMA just did a big exhibit of treasures from the Naples Museo Archeologico last millennium (“Pompeii: life in a Roman town,” October 1999-January 2000) how can you not love the garden scene fresco? or the bronze boar with each tuft of hair lovingly detailed? or the two little frescos of prettily arcaded villas? or the three graces? or my pal the naughty Silenus fountain that the Getty copied?

 

There were novelties this time: a painting of a woman sitting in front of an easel painting (a 1^st century Berthe Morisot scene), a strange statue of a satyr tussling with a hermaphrodite.

 

And, best of all, three painted walls from the Moregine dining room. Despite the muses striking poses and garlands hanging from rafters, the effect is somber. It was like walking into a Barnett Newman painting.

 

Also haunting was a painting on white marble, of a man trying to extract a lady from a centaur. which, through age or design, appeared as a red chalk drawing on the sparkly flecked surface. It looked like Pisanello had drawn it yesterday. Retouched?

 

A nice surprise was all the works borrowed from other museums. There was a black basalt head of Livia that could be the illustration to what Robert Graves wrote about her.

 

It was beautifully installed, looked great. It ended with a brilliant room of Pompeii-inspired art from the 18^th and 19^th centuries—a warning against sentimentalizing but also a major guilty pleasure.

A nice Saturday evening in enemy territory

I’m no friend of LACMA since they announced the cancellation of their film program, but I admit I enjoyed wandering around the Ahmanson building yesterday.

 

The Lazarof gifts from last December made stunning displays: tabletop abstract sculptures by Arp, Hepworth, Laurens, Miro & Moore. Two slightly different Brancusi birds to provide a lesson in refinement. A suite of Picasso portraits ranging in mood from charming to horrifying. And a whole roomful of Giacomettis. Also a sculpture of a solder that’s the nicest Archipenko I’ve ever seen. A bunch of Klees and Kandinskys and other nice things.

 

The show of contemporary Korean art had a video installation by Kimsooja, "As a needle woman," in which we see six images of her seen from the back, stading still in a busy pedestrian area of different cities in Chad, Israel, Nepal, Brazil and two other countries. It was fascinating to watch the faces and clothes of the passers-by, their responses to her. The contrast of her stillness and the bustle around her. It was like watching water flow down six different streams in six different landscapes.

The little exhibit “Animal Destinies” collected prints, sculptures, drawings and books from their expressionist holdings that featured animals—symbolic, satirical, mystical, and even animals in contemporary German advertisements. I’m still reeling from the George Grosz “Murder” print: so ferociously bitter that it made me laugh out loud.

 

The evening’s big event was a screening of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Léon Morin, Priest, from 1961, about which I don’t know what to think. It seems to be two different films occupying the same screen.

 

Film A is a sharp, subtly-textured depiction of the internal effects of the Occupation on Barny (Emmanuelle Riva)—her office flirtation with another woman, her roommates, the oppressive nearness of violence, her friendship with an intelligent, earnest young priest (Jean-Paul Belmondo--!!!) who wakes her up.

 

Film B, a trashy melodrama on the theme “I Loved a Priest,” had the air of an improvisation, with lots of loose ends (What ever happened to Barny’s son?) and meandered tediously at the end. 

The other Melville movies I've seen are so suave and polished. What happened here? Apparently the original cut was 3 hours long! So is what we saw a mutilated fragment of Film C?

A few 'zines retrospective @ Woodbury Hollywood Exhibitions

It was too great to re-connect with everybody at the opening. 

The installation was brilliant. 

I'm OK with commemorating ephemera--the more ephemeral the better.

I.e. my 1993 Spring Fever issue of Judy!:

And ... it's not a 'zine, but I have it in the same pile:

Lucia @ Our Lady

 

Rachel & Gary invited me to their daughter's baptism on Sunday. I was expecting the sacrament, but not the interactive theater piece, plus photo-op, sermon, water slide, and multi-cultural baby parade, ... and everything else that was going on around the font. Through it all, Father Kevin gave a lesson in unflustered stage management. Congrats to everyone. A festive and moving afternoon.

The Tempest @ Barnsdall Park

Another terrific production by the ISC last night. While they may not have the resources for grandeur, they more than make up for it with liveliness and wit. Every entrance and exit was a significant surprise. 

As always, the music and musical jokes were especially good. There was a punk rendition of “Full fathom five” by the Siouxsie-eyed Ariel, and a disturbing version of “Roll Out the Barrel,” with a tuba-tooting Trinculo.

You never know how Little Sid is going to respond to things. I assumed he would spend the evening trying to get into everybody’s picnic goodies. On the contrary, he was riveted by the antics on stage. The shipwreck at the beginning particularly upset him. And Ariel and the other spirits prompted low growls. He was so agitated he had to go home at the intermission. It was that good.

Larry Johnson @ the Hammer Museum

Was it chance or a deliberate and carefully executed evil conspiracy that limited all my encounters with Larry Johnson's work over the last 25 years to the wrong things? 

Until I got dragged to the retrospective at the Hammer I had no idea how funny and beautiful and sharp his work was. 

This print is untitled, but subtitled "Achievement, SW Corner, Glendale & Silver Lake Blvds." They're for sale in the gift shop to benefit the museum, if anyone cares to lend me $3500.