Silverlake Blvd.

Vegas

 

 

I don’t understand the Strip at all. I assume nothing is permitted to exist in Las Vegas that doesn’t reliably make money—especially things that at first glance seem absurd, inconvenient or wrong. But I don’t get the economics that underlie it, or the marketing strategies that define it, or the aesthetics of the casinos, or their appeal. I don’t understand why it exists, or why it takes the form it does.

 

For example: are the luxury shops actual money-making stores or are they just advertisements for their brands? Every casino has a shopping mall, and while there is some variation in the stores, there is also a lot of duplication. Hence here are eight Gucci shops on the Strip, one every 1000 feet. The same number of Versaces, and probably more Tiffanys.

 

 

 

Moreover, there is also Crystals at CityCenter, a shopping mall in the middle of the Strip featuring nothing but luxury stores. The shops are lovely, but who are they for? Do these retailers assume Mister Typical Man-on-the-Strip alternates his BEER/FUCK/YEAH t-shirt with a Paul Smith floral print dress shirt? It might be true—what do I know?

 

 

Or are there sufficient numbers of non-BEER/FUCK/YEAH Vegas regulars to make the shops commercially viable? But how many Japanese, Middle Eastern, and Russian tourists are required? Or are the luxury shops actually making money selling their own equivalents of BEER/FUCK/YEAH t-shirts rather than their luxe items?

 

I’m afraid the Strip is not a place of refinement. The entrepreneurs promote gluttony, and dissipation. One of the billboards for NYNY suggested, “Enjoy a slice. Or eight.” It’s stupid, but it’s no surprise. The relentless and absurd super-Victorian sanctimoniousness of public discourse would drive people mad if they couldn’t escape it periodically. The sermons emitted by high-minded conservatives and high-minded liberals have succeeded in making excess more attractive than moderation. “Just Say No!” and "Tread lightly!" inevitably prompt “Give It Here!” 

 

Still, I'm happy to report that the old sign at the Flamingo still glows like an urban-scale Dan Flavin installation. And--best of all--Caesar's Palace is still appealing. It's different--bigger, ampler--but still doesn't take itself too seriously. They have multi-story fasces going up the side of the towers! A classical margarita hut in the courtyard!

 

The Venetian also seems to be able to maintain a tongue in its cheek. We had a good Mexican meal on the patio as gondoliers warbled through the Grand Canal threading through the shopping mall.

 

Counting down 10 Buildings that Changed America on PBS

When I first heard about this I thought, “About time!” It's been twenty-seven years since Robert Stern’s Pride of Place--which, admittedly, was not an encouraging precedent. But I was optimistic: I even liked the idea of focusing on ten specific buildings, even though it’s gimmicky, and they wouldn't be the ten buildings I would choose.

 

And the idea of an hour devoted to a single building, with lots of clever camera work to convey something of what it feels like, supplemented with lots of lively argument about what it is and what it means: how could it go wrong?

 

Well, by being a single show, rather than a series. Instead of an hour, each of the lucky buildings got about 4 minutes. Just enough time for Geoffrey Baer to spew a couple of Dan Protess’s inane Power Point bullet points over an incoherent jumble of images. Pride of Place at least had the intelligence to budget eight hour-long episodes to cover the same time span.

 

Intercut in this rubbish were talking heads contributing sometimes apt and intelligent remarks (When’s the last time you saw Denise Scott Brown on TV?), but their quaint scrupulousness was lost as the tour group crammed in way too many masterpieces.

 

Indeed instead of conveying any experience, Protess & Baer fell back on the hack tour-guide’s gimmicks of (1) irrelevant personal gossip (Wright ran off to Europe with his mistress! Henry Ford was an anti-Semite!) and (2) historical assertions that would be interesting if examined and carefully parsed (Thomas Jefferson made neoclassicism the official style of the early USA)—which of course there was no time to do.

 

Chris Hawthorne’s inexcusable thumbs-up L.A. Times review betrayed an appalling de haut en bas “It’s good enough for them” attitude. But it’s not good enough. The tour-guide approach undermines the whole idea of aesthetic value, reducing art to a pretext for personal gossip or pedantic tittle-tattle. I hope nobody else watched it.

 

Giulio Cesare Live in HD

 

 

Giulio Cesare was quite a feast: I wish I had been up to it. I started nodding off after a few hours. But even so, I was intermittently alive to its amazingness.

 

The work comes from a theatrical tradition that is Baroque at its Baroquest: it is colorful, it is overwhelming, it is completely mad. The action unfolds in exclamations of lust, anger, despair, and triumph presented one at a time. Almost every genre is mixed in—tragedy, historical drama, farce, musical comedy—there’s even a violin concerto. The music is a parade of hits, as Handel tosses one magnificent number after another. The plaintive arias are especially shattering.

 

There was nothing wrong with updating the setting to a vaguely-Passage to India 1920s, and letting loose some Bollywood dance numbers, but the real heroes of this production were set designer Robert Jones and costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel, who provided a visual style that unified the action. And the retro stylized stageyness provided wit without subverting the drama.

 

As often happens, after it was over it seemed that everybody except the title character had had multiple show-stopping moments. Natalie Dessay definitively proved that Cleopatra must have been a flapper. Patrica Bardon and Alice Coote, as the grieving mother and son were tremendous (“Son nata a lagrimar”). Christophe Dumaux camped like mad as Tolomeo while racing through his impossible arias.

 

Speaking of camp, the supers and dancers added a distinctly gay cast to the evening, e.g. Justin Flores & Kei Tsuruharatani acting up with Rachid Ben Abdeslam during Nireno’s hilarious big moment, and gymnast-hunk Matthew Cusick, famously fired by Cirque du Soleil for being HIV+, striking statuesque poses.

 

Musica Angelica @ the Austrian Consul General's house

 

The Generalkonsulin wasn’t there—she had to attend some other event—but she let Musica Angelica perform in her yard.

 

It was a treat to be liberated from boxes and listen in the open air. It was a nice, clear, cool night in Brentwood. A bird chirped along with Bernarda Bobro, and the little ensemble. Very focused but informal.

 

I admit I was disappointed Musica Angelica postponed their production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea until next year. But it was possible to make do with arias by Vivaldi, Telemann and Handel, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

 

Authentic practice baroque music will never catch on with lowriders: the antique instruments don’t have any bass.

 

And instead of the modern violin’s piercing, clarity, the old versions produce a sound that’s soft and mild. The whole evening was an education in listening to music without the support of lively acoustics, without amplification, without the aggressive volume of modern instruments.

 

Plus there’s a wobbliness to the tuning that sounds sometimes like a beginners class. But they were far from beginners. Instead of blasting away like a simpleminded Popular Classic, The Four Seasons twanged like an intricate and rowdy squaredance.

 

[Image: Male & female Yellow-fronted Canary (aka Serin de Mozambique), from Buffon’s Histoire naturelle des oiseaux, 1771-86]

Bette, Babs & Beyond @ the Cavern Club Theater

 

 

I had a really good I’m So Completely Out-Of-It experience at last night’s benefit to support Brad Grifith’s AIDS Lifecycle ride. Performers kept prefacing their numbers with remarks like, “This is my favorite song, from the album that has meant the most to me since I was nine …,” and then launched into ballads I had never heard before. I needed a program with extensive footnotes. I only retain my Gay License because of irrelevant technicalities. That being said, I didn’t have any trouble appreciating the strange and witty Connie Kim. 

Jephtha @ Disney Hall

 

The Handel and Haydn Society (Beautiful name! Sign me up!) presented Handel’s last original composition last Tuesday. 1751: the same year as Hogarth’s Gin Lane, and the first volume of Diderot’s Encyclopedia, among other diverse events.

 

It’s instructive how a period of presumable orthodoxy and conformity permitted Sacred History to be revised to provide a happy ending. Why Jephtha? What’s the point? Is it a demonstration of admirable piety, or damnable paganism? The theological and ethical questions are downplayed in favor of the drama.

 

“Drama” in the sense of a very stylized, non-naturalistic dramaturgy. It’s a succession of soliloquies in contrasting moods. It is formal, stately and grand. It doesn’t grimace or strain. It is a dramatic situation atomized and distilled into distinct parts, each of which is examined carefully, one at a time. H&H made every nuance crystal-clear. There is no bustle, no hurry. It’s animated, but without action. There is no mugging or hair-pulling. Instead we get the pathos of contrast: Iphis sings a thrilling song of jubilation, which is matched, later, by a shattering lament. Joélle Harvey had the intricate vocal acrobatics entirely under control, and concentrated on producing ravishing drama.

 

The Chorus of Israelites was glorious.

 

A long, intricate, but carefully-plotted feast.

Alan Bennett’s People, via National Theatre live

 

 

Bennett raises questions that are provocative and important: What do National Trust houses mean? What does preservation of a house mean? Doesn’t it inevitably involve transformation of the thing allegedly preserved into something completely different? And, frankly, what is behind this urge to preserve? It seems to involve dubious notions of “England” and “heritage” and “history”.

 

Heady stuff. Certainly material for a good comedy. It can even be seen as a continuation of Bennett’s The History Boys, where the past is a pretext and raw material for present-day class and sexual conflicts. However, where History Boys extracted full dramatic value from these issues in all their personal and political richness, People merely indicates them verbally. The action is novelty-free and void of drama.

 

Of course Bennett provides some brilliant lines. The most thrilling moment occurred when Francis de la Tour as Lady Stacpoole, turned to the representative of the National Trust--dithering on about how her house represents England--and declared,

 

I would be deceiving you, Mr Lumsden, if I said I had not heard such twaddle before. I particularly abhor metaphor. Metaphor is fraud. England with all its faults. A country house with all its shortcomings. The one is not the other, however much the Trust would like us to think so. I will not collaborate in your conceit of country. It is a pretend England. … England is not my problem. This is not Allegory House. England not. History not. Bring it on.