A Tribute to Lucas Klein

Lucas Klein

Here’s a video that my niece Sarah helped put together:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElU6ASQQ9JM

My dog Lucas came to me from the Bide-a-Wee shelter in the spring of 1999. He was just a four-month-old puppy, but from the moment I met him, I fell in love. He seemed to know that we belonged together and over the years that bond was never broken.

As Lucas grew, he developed the traits that made him such a special dog. He was always very affectionate and even-tempered. Watching him play with other dogs, he seemed to have a real sense of fairness and decency. While Lucas liked playing with other dogs, he loved people even more. Walking down the street, if someone wanted to say hello, he would just stop and wait for them to come up and pet him. (This might have something to do with thinking they had a treat, but if they didn’t that was all right.) Lucas, usually listened to me, but he could get distracted. When we were in the dog- run and I needed to leave, all I had to do was yell ‘Lucas say goodbye, we have to go’ and only then would he would come bounding over as if to say to the other dogs ‘gotta go’.

Lucas loved water and he loved diving into our pond upstate and swimming around, chasing the stones I would throw near him. Afterward he would come out wet, tired but very happy. He also loved snow, especially when I would shovel our deck and throw the snow in his face as he jumped up to catch it.

Even though Lucas had arthritis from the age of three, he was always up for long walks whether it was the Appalachian Trail or Fire Island beaches, careful to make sure I was in sight before jumping into the Atlantic ocean or running into the woods. There was something about the joy he took in exploring that always brought a smile to my face

When in July 2004, I inherited Sam Krueger, Lucas took the little guy in his stride and I became a two dog household. They complimented each other, especially in their coloring and temperament. Whenever Sam would bark at a larger dog, Lucas would jump up and let him know it was not polite. Sam rarely got the message, but Lucas was very patient and loving with him.

In early fall 2008; Lucas developed a cancerous tumor on his foot, which made it increasingly difficult for him to move. So on January 30, 2009, at a hospital in upstate New York, Lucas passed away. He will be missed by a lot of people, but especially by his ‘brother’ Sam and I.

Again go to YouTube and enjoy some of my memories of Lucas

Love

Richard and Sam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElU6ASQQ9JM

“Billy Elliot”: Broadway’s return to the classic musical

Well the first thing you should know about “Billy Elliot” is that it’s more of a play that has integrated songs and dance to make a spectacular whole theater piece. All the elements of a musical are there, but each seems to not only complement, but also enhance and expand on the other. In scope “Billy Elliot is very much like Fellini’s “Amarcord” or Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander” where a whole youthful world is remembered and embroidered on by great artists. That is same way “Billy Elliot” is to me. It also weaves a myriad of themes so perfectly, that as a play I had to reach back to “Angles in America” to find anything as comparable. As for musical theater, I can only think of the great “Carousel” where music and dance are as well entwined.

The next thing to know is that “Billy Elliot” is a very adult play. What I mean by that is, despite having a young Billy at the center, there is lack of romanticizing or softening of his world. All the adults and children are presented as real human beings with the virtues and faults we all possess. It’s more “Great Expectations’ than “David Copperfield”. There is a clear-eyed lack of judgmental quality that permeates throughout. This also means that the language is rough-hewn, coarse and common, but true to the actual location and circumstances of the mining community in northern England.

It is also clear from the get-go that the creators of “Billy Elliot” not only know the background and lives of these people, but also this is their own story or some variation thereof, that is being told. So much of the attitudes, feelings and emotions of these characters just sound real. By the end of the play, even the minor characters seem to have a life and story that was included.

Based on the 1995 film, “Billy Elliot” tells the story of a motherless boy, growing up in the harsh world of a fading mining town, who almost accidentally discovers not only an aptitude for, but a love of ballet. (Or ‘ballie’ as they pronounce it) Of course this goes against the standard norms that are prevalent all over the western world. Billy should be practicing boxing or some other manly sport. Dancing is for girls or ‘poofs’! Importantly, Billy is never presented as lonely or an outcast, but just a kid looking to find something that actually interests him which, much to his own surprise, is ballet. All this is presented against the turbulent background of Thatcherite England where a miner’s strike has been going on for a year due to the ‘Iron Lady’ trying to break the powerful labor unions in an effort to privatize industry. (To really understand the reasons for the depth of anger and fury this action caused, just read A.J. Cronin’s “The Citadel” or Richard Llewellyn’s “How Green Was My Valley”, or at least the movie versions, to learn how exploited the people and the land were by private companies.)

Once Billy has embraced his passion for dance, with a great assist from his fey best friend Michael, his struggle then becomes between not just his own world, but with a more universal one, that of fathers and sons. In fact, I think that the other major story in “Billy Elliot” is of his father’s acceptance of his son’s aspiration to dance and the sacrifices that entails. Not only must Frank Elliot find the money to send Billy to London for an audition at the Royal Ballet School, but also he has to go against the community and fellow strikers that he lives with. To its great credit, the play gives Frank the time to express the turmoil and toll his decisions take.

“Billy Elliot” is so much about people who look to their past for the sense of who they are, but are also willing to acknowledge that change is coming. Two major dance pieces illuminate this theme; in the first act, Billy explodes with frustration at the forces that he sees as trapping him in a life that he no longer wants. No words can express his pent up emotions and desires so he does the only thing he can do, which is dance. It’s an angry and wild ride filled with steps that he can only improvise since his dance vocabulary is so limited and his inner turmoil so great.

In the second act, Billy sees his own future as a dancer and the steps are classical and glorious. Set to Peter Tchaikovsky’s most romantic music, Billy, youth and adult, do a pas de deux that is so visually stunning and moving that it literally takes ones breath away. Ending on a note of defiance, Billy crosses over from boy to young manhood and dares his own father to stop him from growing up. This is quite the coup de theatre!

Finally in the climatic dance “Electricity”, Billy realizes and admits what he is capable of doing and he is able to leave the only world he knows behind. His mother is dead and his town and its way of life are dying. But they will not be forgotten. Billy Elliot has great hope for the future and so do we.

MY Liza Minneli Problem

A couple of weeks ago my friend Christine asked if I wanted to join her and a co-worker in seeing “Liza’s at the Palace”. I had been a fan of Liza’s from way back when, seeing her when she toured the Midwest and then on Broadway in almost all her shows including “Chicago”, “The Act” and “The Rink” (No, I was too young for “Flora, the Red Menace”) even collecting her LPs and watching every broadcast of “Liza with a Z!” each time it was on. Well I am a gayboy who grew up in the 1970’s! I was a big fan, maybe not as big as some, but still a fan.

But then sometime in the early 90’s I began to lose interest probably due to the times and my changing tastes. I was also tired of all the tabloid gossip regarding her reckless lifestyle and lack of professionalism. (The stories coming out about her behavior while in “Victor/Victoria” were ‘not kind’!) Friends of mine, who know her, said she was a perfectly sweet woman and very nice. No doubt this is true, but seeing her on TV looking haggard and sounding shrill was awfully painful. Even on “Arrested Development” the camera seemed to trying to cut away so as not to embarrass her.

With all this in the back of my mind, the three of went last Friday night a week ago. We sat in the first row of the mezzanine and the house was packed. I would say that the majority were gay men (of all ages), but certainly also lots of straight people. As the houselights went down (on time) and the orchestra started up, the intensity and excitement were reaching a fever pitch and then Liza appeared and all pandemonium broke out, the audience was screaming and jumping to its collative feet and yelling “We Love You, Liza!!!!!” I will say she looked far better then she has in years and certainly commanded that stage.

Unfortunately for me (and as it turned out Christine) the show then went off a cliff. After all her surgeries (vocal cords, hips, brain and god knows what else) Liza Minnelli can hardly walk, talk or dance. I was looking at a faded facsimile of the entertainer she once was. Firstly, I was really bothered by her diction and that sibilance that was so pronounced. I knew the lyrics to all her songs and I still couldn’t understand a word. (Why she even attempted the tongue twisting “If You Hadn’t, But You Did” is beyond logic.) Next I was put off by her heavy, rapid breathing even during her songs, but most pronounced while she talked or just waited to catch her breath, which took longer and longer as the evening wore on. She even had to sit down while she sang “Maybe This Time” which I felt undercut the whole meaning of the song!

Given all her physical limitations, it became apparent that she was still trying to be the young Liza of “Cabaret” and “The Act” when she was at her peak. (And really quite beautiful.) Her act hasn’t grown or even changed, so there was no sense of time and maturity deepening and coloring her style. Liza was trying to be that young girl excited about playing dress-up and singing for an audience even if she didn’t relate to the songs themselves. In the most ghoulish way, I was reminded of Bette Davis as ‘Baby Jane’.

But the most dispiriting part was that Liza was determined to show that she was back! An entertaining force of nature! Liza Minnelli Superstar! And to this end the audience gave her everything she craved and needed. They stood after every song and they cheered and screamed and yelled and laughed and applauded and applauded and applauded! Her need for everyone to LOVE her was palatable. For me though, it was draining. I felt that if I personally didn’t LOVE her as much as she needed me too, it was back to pills & liquor and it would have been MY fault. I guess this neediness is why “Liza’s at the Palace” came across to me as an almost melancholy act and not much of a show. All I could think during it was “What about my needs Liza? Pay attention to ME.”

Afterwards, we three left with big grins plastered to our faces, but mine was mostly so Christine wouldn’t see me as disappointed or her friend wouldn’t think I was a snob. He was so excited that he talked about going again and again and I just nodded. Saying goodbye, Christine and I went to the train together and that’s when I learned how confused she was. “What was the big deal and why all the screaming? I mean I couldn’t even understand what she was singing about.” I replied, “Well said Christine, well said.”

All the shows that I have seen lately with capsule reviews

It's been a while since I have put my reviews here and I've been seeing a bunch of shows so I thought I would just put them all together in one large post starting with the oldest first so here goes;

I first saw  "Forbidden Broadway" way back in 1982 at the then Paulson's Supper Club on 72nd and Broadway. It had me in stitches then.  Each number was as fresh as a new bright morning. WE (everyone) had never experienced such a mean, nasty, gossipy show that expressed our love/hate of the theater. With it's over the top (maybe!) takes on theater legends like Ethel Merman and Patti LuPone and even Stephen Sondheim, this was THE insider's guide to New York Musical Theater and everyone came (including Merman, LuPone and Sondheim) to laugh.

Over the years material ripe for satire became awfully thin and an occasional visit was all that was needed.  Some skits continues to work (I still laughed at their take on "Les Miz"), but others fell flat.  There was just not enough humor to mine. In the past few years, the Broadway musical theater became a parody of itself. Perhaps the nadir was the show "Spamalot" which seemed to be emulating "Forbidden Broadway" itself, so much so that several recent editions used a song from that show 'whole'. "FB's" was no longer comic fringe, but mainstream.  Crappy shows like "The Producers" and "Young Frankenstein" and even good shows like "Hairspray" were just extensions of the knowing, winking camp eye.  Their were no outsiders, laughing at the pretension of those inside.  

Now "Forbidden Broadway Goes to Rehab"  is to be the last (at least for a while) and it's easy to see why.  While I Loved, Loved Loved this edition, I also realized that was only funny to a dwindling group of people.  In order for the satire to work most of the audience really has to not just get it, but has to care about the subjects being satirized, and that's just not the case anymore.  I (we) know that Patti LuPone (again after all these years!) is a way over-the-top personality with perhaps a monstrous ego, and that's what I (we) love and adore about her, but frankly the tourists who now make up 75% of the audience have no idea nor do they care.

With very few exceptions ("Spring Awakenings" wonderfully inventive staging is perfect for parody),  making fun of theater has become a harder and harder task. Now when the Broadway theater faces it's most depressing period (In Jan. 09 6-8 shows are closing and very few are coming in), maybe a long stint in rehab might just work.

NYMT's "Play It Cool"; At Long Last Love

I just wanted to give a shout out to “NYMF’s “Play it Cool” which I saw yesterday (Sunday Oct.5). Since this recent theater season began with the lame [title of show] and through the awful “13”, I began to despair for a decent new musical. (This includes some of the crap I saw at ‘Fringe’ this year.) Then some friends talked me into seeing “Play it Cool” and I am so glad they did! With no set to speak of and simple costumes, this show relied on a superb cast and a terrific period jazz score to tell it’s slight story about the effects of homophobia on a small group of Hollywood types in the early 1950’s. Best was Sally Mayes as the lesbian owner of a small jazz club living in fear of being closed down by the police. This Broadway musical veteran was a real vocal standout. Her bluesy voice shook the tiny TBG Theater on 37th street. Also excellent was Josh Strickland as the young gay man not willing to play the Hollywood ‘straight’ game. The other three cast members were equally good.

What made “Play it Cool” so enjoyable, was that here is a small, but extremely smart show with a clear point of view and a very cohesive jazz score by Phillip Swann and Mark Winkler, well sung. Book wise, there were some problems that could use a little tightening up, but that’s a minor quibble. In contrast to the junk I’ve been seeing lately (with the exception of “Fela!”), this show gave me real satisfaction and pleasure as well as hope. I’m only sorry that yesterday was its last performance (as well as the end of this year’s NYMF) so I could have let other friends know about it. Oh well, that’s the nature of festivals.

One last thought about “Play it Cool”, is that while not as ‘full bodied’ a show, it was thematically similar and as professionally done, as “Yank”. If that gives you any idea of how good it was.

“13”; My “A Clockwork Orange” moment.

 A few years ago I would be watching TV and idly changing channels when I would hit on “Saved By the Bell” a ‘80’s artifact that starred the pre-super buff Mario Lopez and a pre-slutty Elizabeth Berkley. It was an inane comedy that took place in the kind of high school only bad TV could invent. After a few minutes of idiotic chatter, I’d change the channel. The ‘90’s brought “Beverly Hills 90210” which substituted juvenile humor with puerile melodrama among a shallow group of high schoolers. Now we seem to have a show called “Gossip Girl” about the same high schoolers only much richer and far more tech savvy. Being much older, none of these shows, or their various knockoffs, interest me in the least, with the exception of “Everwood”.

As I sat watching the new musical “13” by Jason Robert Brown, I felt like I was Alex Delarge, the Malcolm McDowell character in “A Clockwork Orange”, as he was being given criminal aversion therapy by having his eyes tapped open and forced to watch the worst atrocities known to man. In my case it was watching this display that was basically a 90-minute ‘musical’ version of those aforementioned shows. In Alex’s case, he ends up trying to commit suicide only to find himself in a full-body cast and paralyzed for the rest of his life. Me, I lucked out when after 4 hours (or 90+ minutes in real time), I was able to race out of the Jacobs Theater (really the Royale) and onto 45th street where I was able to regain my equilibrium. The #104 bus uptown never seemed like such a sanctuary!

The plot, such that it is, revolves around Evan, living on Manhattan’s upper west side, (literally three blocks from where I live) who is about to have his Bar Mitzvah. The only thing on his and the minds of his friends though is who is going to have the best party. (To be absolutely honest, this did ring true, especially since I remember my Bar Mitzvah and I invited Howie Burnett, whom I didn’t like, just so I could go to his party. BTW, mine was a swim party at the local JCC and a major success, but I digress) Quicker than you can bring Dorothy back to Kansas, Evan is whisked to a very gray Indiana, (don’t ask!) and he has to befriend a new group of cool kids or risk having a crappy Bar Mitzvah party. Very, very, very standard complications ensure, but in the end Evan learns a valuable life lesson. (Sorry for the spoiler.)

Also embedded in the plot is a real stench of Anti-Semitism, which stems from the idea that all Jewish kids think about is the cool, expensive parties they can have, devoid of any religious content. As I can attest to, there is a lot more to a Bar Mitzvah than just a party. It is a lot work and study. The party is fun, but the achievement of being part in long tradition in ones heritage is the best reward. In “13” it’s all party.

The young cast is talented but exceptionally unexceptional. They all seem to have spent WAY too many summers at ‘Camp Musical Theater’ or whatever it’s called. As performers they are so generic that according to their bio’s, almost all of them are understudies for each other. In the lead, Graham Phillips as Evan was charming and at least looked Jewish, but as the jock, Eric M. Nelsen couldn’t shine the shoes of the great Chris Pratt as jock extraordinaire, Bright Abbott on the far superior show about teenage angst, “Everwood”.

If this show becomes a hit perhaps next we will see “15”, where in Los Angeles, 14 year old Marisol is eagerly waiting for her Quinceañera, when suddenly she is whisked to Vermont….

"Equus"; Peter Shaffer's hot box of crazies!

I originally saw “Equus” on Broadway in the spring of 1975 when I had just moved to New York City. The same week I also went downtown to the Public Theater to see for the first of my 14 times, “A Chorus Line”. For a young man from a small town in southern Illinois(Carbondale), these shows were the avatar of theater. How could it get any better?

What I remember most about “Equus” was not only its seemingly simplistic staging and stylized horses but also the grand acting of such theater stalwarts as Frances Sternhagen and Marian Seldes. I also developed a crush on the actor playing Alan Strang, Peter Firth. (He must have been a lot older than I thought, because watching him now on BBC-America’s “MI5”, he looks older than Anthony Hopkins, his Dr. Dysart, does today.) At the time I found both “A Chorus Line” and “Equus” to be absolutely thrilling theater, but what I didn’t grasp at the time was how similar thematically they were. Both plays are rooted in the mid 70’s ethos of societal group norms versus freedom for the individual.

Regarding “Equus", I knew it was a crazy psycho-sexual drama, but I didn’t realize the extant that it was a homo-psycho-sexual play bordering on homophobia. (Maybe not even bordering, but deep in the terrain of queer self-loathing.) I’m sure everyone who saw it could never forget Alan symbolically masturbating on his favorite horse Nugget, played by the beautifully equine Everett McGill. “Equus”, the play, had some weird sexual attitudes, but John Dexter’s direction was breathtaking.

After a year or so, the play ran its course and would have closed if the producers had not put in Anthony Perkins as the lead. (Opposite another crush of mine, Keith McDermott.) Talk about your ‘hot box of crazy’! I mean, here was a man who was so fucked up sexually, that he made Montgomery Clift look positively ordinary. Too old to play Alan Strang, Perkins played the self-doubting shrink Martin Dysart! No wonder the critics went wild with this peculiar role reversal. The show lasted another two years, even moving from the Plymouth to the now demolished original Helen Hayes Theater.

I saw the show again there from a stage seat, but it was with Richard Burton, and I don’t remember much other than being enthralled watching the ‘great man himself’ up close. Since that time, “Equus” seemed to have faded into the maw of theatrical history with only a great logo “to remind me of my first heady theater experiences. (Well that and the recent revival of “A Chorus Line”.)

This of course brings me to the new revival of “Equus” which I saw in London last year. At that time I was a little nervous about seeing it again, since I had heard that the play itself was being viewed as a ‘period piece’ and starring Daniel Radcliffe, who had never acted on stage before in a very complex part. (Shades of Julia Roberts!) I mean his bio says that he did a walk-on in “Stones in my Pocket” but as himself! Also the thought of watching a 17-year-old walking around ‘nakid’ made me feel just a little pervy.

Well all that trepidation was allayed when both Radcliffe as Alan Strang and Richard Griffiths as Dr. Martin Dysart walked on stage (in a new set design by the man who did the original, John Napier), and I realized they were both in complete control of the play.

”Equus” is of course the story of a young man, who after tending horses at a local stable, goes bonkers one night and blinds them with a spike. This includes his favorite horse, Nugget. The reasons, the aftermath and the effect of this heinous crime form the basis of the play, not just the way they impact the young man and his family, but also the psychiatrist who is assigned to ‘help’ him.

As a consequence of Radcliffe’s youth and intensity, the play shifts its focus, and Dysart becomes almost secondary. Radcliffe's Alan is angry, despairing, shamed and deeply guilt-ridden. I really wondered how this boy could survive if he faces the unspeakable horrors of his crime. What’s really infuriating about Dysart is that he speaks a lot of psychobabble mumbo jumbo about conformity verses intense passions without ever realizing the deep-seated root of Alan’s despair. Not once does Dysart consider the homosexual panic of a young man raised in a repressive religious environment.

To their credit, both the director Thea Sharrock and Radcliffe do emphasize the effect homophobia has on a young psyche almost in spite of Shaffer’s text. Alan’s masturbatory ride with Nugget is so homoerotic that I almost had to turn away. This is also where Radcliffe, being only seventeen when I saw him, really scores big time. He was still just a post-pubescent young man, completely unaware of his body and the hormones racing through it. A good deal of the time he’s either in a state on undress or completely nude. It seemed to me that neither Strang nor Radcliffe are even conscience of their own inherent sexuality. This is why the melding of character and actor is so powerful.

What Radcliffe does know is that Alan is very, very attracted to the masculine and strong figure of the horses. In London, the virile dancer Will Kemp played Nugget, and the other five horses were almost as Adonic. Rather than the melodramatic meeting of Alan and his father at a porno theater that the plot suggests is part of his breakdown, Sharrock implies the perceived lack of maleness of his father is what provokes his outrage. This then invokes strong homosexual feelings in him, combined with his lust for the picture of Jesus originally over his bed, that it has to be destroyed. Thus the beautiful horses are blinded so they don’t see his unnatural love.

This contemporary rendition of “Equus” is what makes Alan Strang the central character rather than Martin Dysart. I thought that Daniel Radcliffe was amazing for someone so young who had never been on stage before. But even more surprising was that Peter Shaffer’s play after 35 years had such resonance and the power to provoke such strong emotions. Though written for a different era and with a lot of out-dated psychiatric notions, the play still works on so many other levels. That’s the sign of a true classic.