THEATER

Laura Linney, Brian d'Arcy James and Eric Bogosian in “Time Stands Still.”
Photo: Joan Marcus. 

Time Stands Still
Manhattan Theater Club at the
Samuel J. Friedman Theater
261 W. 47th St.
212-239-6200
How original! A Broadway play that is not a pre-owned vehicle.  Or should I ask, Original? How? The answer would be because it was written by Donald Margulies, who gave us two theatrical gems in the past decade, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner with Friends and Sight Unseen with the glorious Laura Linney. The one show on which Margulies stubbed his toe, was Brooklyn Boy, a yawner, due to a laconic performance by Adam Arkin. Let us rejoice then for Time Stands Still, which should be a slam dunk for a Tony, not solely for a beautifully constructed script that is powerful, sensitive, biting, and comedic, nor an astonishing piece of staging which comes with the revered territory of Daniel Sullivan, but also for four perfectly synched players. No surprise here from the ultra-versatile Linney as Sarah, a photojournalist who was almost done in by a car bomb in Iraq or from her guilt-ridden partner Brian d'Arcy James  as James Dodd, himself  a sufferer of a breakdown who left Iraq before her accident, then brings her back from a hospital in Germany to their Williamsburg, Brooklyn flat . Linney and d'Arcy James have the chops to bring excitement to any theatrical enterprise.What knocked me for a loop was Eric Bogosian, the master monologist with the penchant for employing the f-word in the pluperfect subjunctive. As Richard Ehrlich, photo editor of a newsmagazine, Sarah’s mentor and one-time squeeze, he is warm, wry and cuddly as a teddy bear. Alicia Silverstone is Mandy, Ehrlich’s trophy girl friend who emerges from bimbo-ism to make perhaps the most salient point in the play. Does a recorder of a life-threatening event have an obligation to save a victim’s life rather than document it for his or her viewers?

 
Stephanie Umoh as Sarah and Quentin Earl Darring as Coalhouse Walker, Jr. sing the soaring duet from Ragtime, “On the Wheels of a Dream.”  Photo: Joan Marcus.  
 

Ragtime
Final Performance Jan. 10.
I was not a fan of the original big scale production of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s 1998 musical take on the famed E. D. Doctorow book, save for the performance of Brian Stokes-Mitchell as Coalhouse Walker, Jr. This revival had been toned down visually and aurally with constructive results; pity it didn’t catch on with the public. Perhaps it’s because it was revived too soon after the first version.

Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desirée. © Joan Marcus

A Little Night Music
Walter Kerr
219 W. 48th St.
212-239-6200
Still another revival of a classic musical, this one an ultra- minimalist mounting of Sondheim’s adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night. Whereas Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd and Company succeeded admirably by being scaled down, this production directed by Trevor Nunn is threadbare. The background of triangular panels is disconcertingly stark, vis-a-vis the pageantry manifest in the 1973 original with Len Cariou and Glynis Johns, and the 2003 City Opera version with Claire Bloom and Jeremy Irons. In the original, Glynis Johns as Desirée treated Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns as an elusively understated, speak-sing, as did Bloom in the City Opera version. Here, owing to its popularity (breathes there a cabaret artist who hasn’t included it in his or her repertoire) Send in the Clowns is reprised in the finale.  Catherine Zeta-Jones, does a serviceable job as Desirée, whereas Johns, though she could not sing a lick, enchanted the audience. Alexander Hanson is fine as Fredric in the role originally sung by Cariou.  Angela Lansbury, perhaps unwittingly, does a spot-on imitation of Hermione  Gingold as the grandmother.

Race
Ethel Barrymore
243 W. 47th St.
212-239-6200
Not one of Mamet’s best or better. The notion that two law partners, played by the reliable David Alan Grier and James Spader, could be compelled to defend a possible bigot Charles Strickland (Richard Thomas), because Susan, the firm’s African-American associate lawyer, claims he patronized her during preliminary examination, suspends belief.  The premise that Susan would connive to torpedo the case is beyond the pale. Returning to the stage after 30 years devoted to movies and TV,  Spader, in the performance we saw, could not ace the overlapping, legato-like Mametic cadence of a  William H. Macy in Oleanna,  a Raúl Esparza in Speed-the-Plow or a Liev Schreiber in Glengarry Glen Ross.  With each succeeding role Thomas scales his mounting virtuosity as a stage performer. Kerry Washington as Susan, was uncompelling in her Broadway debut.

Roundabout Theater Company’s
The Understudy
Final performance, Jan. 17.
Almost, but not quite as dreadful as The Toxic Avenger, this simpleton tale of a young man with designs to wrest away the leading man role in an off-off Broadway play, is strained and mean-spirited.

Primary Stages’
A Lifetime Burning
59E59 Theaters
Final performance, Sept. 15, 2009.
This is a play of contrivance and contrition that was only intermittently funny. Jennifer Westfeldt as Emma, authors a book that fabricates a  life story about her purported Incan and Cherokee heritage, neither of which strikes any kind of a chord with her sister, Tess (Christina Kirk).   

A British Subject
59E59 Theaters
Final Performance, Jan. 3.
As part of the Brits Off Broadway series at 59E59 Theaters, this true tale in semi-documentary form, tells of the campaign to free Mirza Tahir Hussain, who in 1988 at 18, traveled to Pakistan to visit family. Upon his arrival he is arrested for the murder of a taxi driver, a killing he contends was in self-defense. Hussain spent 18 years on death row, and as his execution date approached, he was visited by Don Mackay of London’s Daily Mirror.   Mackay’s reporting propelled a movement to free Hussain, a cause that was eventually taken up by Prince Charles. Mackay’s wife Nichola McAuliffe, not only authored A British Subject, she portrayed herself in the play. Three other cast members took on multiple parts on a mostly bare set.   

Nightingale
Final Performance Jan. 3.
Lynn Redgrave was tired, boring and unwinning in her fantasized depiction of her grandmother. This is not recollection nor hearsay  - it is quixotic  -  burdened by Redgrave’s need to read from the script she wrote, entirely from a seated position. Her previous one-woman show about her father Sir Michael Redgrave was by contrast, fascinating and inspirational.

Lisa Banes and Victor Garber in “Present Laughter.” Photo: Joan Marcus
 

Present Laughter
American Airlines Theater
A Roundabout Production
227 W. 42nd St.
212-719-1300
This is – count ‘em - the third revival I have seen of Noël  Coward’s lark of a play, modeled after Coward himself  as the dashingly egoistic matinee idol, Gary Essendine. No, I didn’t see Clifton Webb on Broadway in 1946, as Essendine, nor did I see Coward appear in a six-performance Broadway run in 1958 co-starring with -  would you believe?  - Eva Gabor.  The first revival I witnessed was the 1985 Circle in the Square production with George C. Scott as Essendine and such other worthies as Kate Burton, Christine Lahti, Dana Ivey, and the debut of Nathan Lane, and, more recently, the 1996 production starring Frank Langella and – Allison (C J on West Wing) Janney. Victor Garber, whom I have admired for years for his musical comedy prowess, is splendid and the height of urbanity as Essendine.  Also equal to the task are Lisa Banes as Gary’s insouciantly affectionate wife Liz and Harriet Harris  as Gary’s Girl Friday Monica who reminds me not a little of Eve Arden. The title comes from a song in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which urges ("present mirth hath present laughter"), and so the word present in the title should be pronounced as pre-zent’ , not  pre’-zent. Director Nicholas Martin keeps the traffic moving unimpededly in Alexander Dodge’s spectacular Art Deco London flat set.

Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber in Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge.” Photo: Joan Marcus

A View from the Bridge
In 1955 I saw two one-act plays of Arthur Miller directed by Martin Ritt. The shorter of the two,  A Memory of Two Mondays, featured Biff McGuire, the second, A View from the Bridge,  starred Van Heflin as Eddie Carbone, the longshoreman who had an obsessive predilection for his comely niece Catherine. I recall the stellar performances of Eileen Heckert as his wife Beatrice, and that of  J. Carrol Naish who could do more bona fide dialects than Sid Caesar, as the lawyer Alfieri. Naish also had a meaty role in “Two Mondays.” As I recall it, the dual one-actors received only a lukewarm reception from the NY critics. Perhaps that was the reason they separated the twins and extended the script of “View.” I never put A View from the Bridge in the same heady atmosphere of Miller’s Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, nor even The Price, until I saw the 1997 revival, in which Australia’s Anthony LaPaglia, who has since been a perennial on TV’s Without a Trace, gave a blazingly visceral portrayal of Eddie. Playing opposite him as Beatrice, was, drumroll …Allison Janney.  As for Liev Schreiber, he is indisputably among our finest young American actors, but in stark contrast to the volcanic LaPaglia, his is a more incipient passion which does not reach its nadir until late in the second act when Catherine defies him and determines to wed Rodolfo (Morgan Spector) an Italian illegal boarder, and kinsman of Beatrice, played by Morgan Spector. Michael Cristofer, who did an admirable comic/dramatic turn in  last season’s Primary Stages’ A Body of Water,  is outstanding as Alfieri.  Bouquets to Director Gregory Mosher and peonies to scenic designer John Lee Beatty. Yet, in this testosterone-laden play, two women stand out, Jessica Hecht as Beatrice, who was marvelous as the mother in the short-lived Brighton Beach Memoirs which opened this season, and surprise, surprise, a Hollywood star, Scarlett Johansson as Catherine, who makes the transition from screen to proscenium seamlessly in an extraordinary Broadway debut.

Love, Loss, and What I Wore
Westside Theater
407 W. 43rd St.
212-239-6200
Love, Loss and What I Wore, adapted by Nora and Delia Ephron is a charming “chick”show, filled with humor and sadness.  It examines women as they go through life, from training bras, to prom dresses, fitting rooms, high heels and disapproving mothers. Each tidy scene ,as seen through the eyes of the particular actress,  from a rotating cast comprised of such seasoned performers as Debra Monk, Katie Finnernan and Michelle Lee, also includes an article of clothing presented in a series of pictures on stage.  A great deal resonates with a woman, and there is much laughter tinged with sadness.  There were few men in the audience who though they may have enjoyed it, could not I’m sure, appreciate the goings-on with the acuity of the enthusiastic distaff attendees.
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Reviewed by Drama Desk colleague, Bob Feinberg (Fela! and Rock of Ages)

Fela!
Eugene O’Neill Theatre
230 West 49th Street
(212) 239-6200
The theater throbs to the Afrobeat music (a blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies) performed by a striking African man accompanied by a full band and an ensemble of some 30 dancers, some dressed in traditional, tribal costume, others in 1970s disco garb.  The man, a Nigerian born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, but known simple as “Fela,” studied music as a 20-something in London and formed his first band – the Koola Lobitos – there.  He returned to Nigeria in the early ‘60s, toured the world with his band, renamed “Afrika ’70,” and opened a nightclub called “The Shrine” in Lagos’ Empire Hotel. During the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, he married 27 women simultaneously – most of them, dancers and singers in his band – released 50 albums, performed at the Berlin Jass Festival and Giants Stadium, and contracted AIDS. More than a musician and performer, he pioneered Afrobeat.  He was also a human rights activist and political maverick whose music – indeed, whose life – challenged the militaristic dictatorships of Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s.  He criticized upper class Africans for turning their backs on traditional African culture and thwarted government censorship by buying ad space in Nigerian newspapers to run political attacks on the Nigerian government.  His music became more and more political, resulting in attacks by the army on his commune – named the Kalakuta Republic – which was burned to the ground in a 1,000 soldier raid in 1977.  Soldiers severely beat Fela and threw his elderly from a window, killing her.  In retaliation, Fela delivered her coffin to the army barracks in Lagos where the military leadership was housed. He formed his own political party – Movement of the People – and attempted to run for President, but was not allowed to put his candidacy forward. He died in 1997 and his funeral, held at the site of the burned ruins of The Shrine, attracted more than a million attendees. Fela’s story is true and Fela! is true-to-life.  Choreographed and directed by Bill T. Jones (2007 Tony winner for choreography in Spring Awakening)  - its producers are Jay-Z and Will & Jada Pinkett-Smith, who showcase Fela’s actual musical compositions, the show is a combination of dance performance, musical, political rally, and marathon for its star – Sahr Njaujah – who is onstage, dancing, singing, extemporizing, for almost the entire show. Fela! Is unlike anything this reviewer has seen on Broadway.  Go see it, but don’t expect to be humming show tunes as you leave the theater.  A raised fist is more likely.
 

Rock of Ages
Brooks Atkinson Theater
256 W. 47th St.
212-719-4099
When you’re driving (alone) and REO Speedwagon’s classic Keep on Lovin’ You comes on the radio, do you turn the volume up and sing along?  When you hear Starship’s We Built This City, do you publicly lament the demise of The Jefferson Airplane (but privately play “air drums” to the infectious beat)?  Did you recently enjoy the Sixties anthems from the revival of Hair; The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical but secretly long for the power chords of Journey’s Any Way You Want It?  THEN STOP FIGHTING YOUR ‘80s DEMONS AND GO SEE ROCK OF AGES!  It’s the story (book by Chris D’Arienzo) of Sherrie (Kerry Butler, fresh from her star turn in Xanadu), a small town girl hoping to make it as an actress in Hollywood, who meets Drew (Idol’s Constantine Maroulis) a lad from Michigan who sweeps the floors in a club on the Sunset Strip but longs to make rock and roll – only as Survivor, Asia and White Snake can.  Narrated by Mitchell Jarvis’s show-stealing Lonny, the zany right-hand man to club owner Dennis (Adam Dannheisser), the show lets the music drive the sweetly comic plot, to charming effect.  There’s  lots and lots of hair (hat’s off to hair/wig designer Tom Watson), acid washed denim, and  too-tight-tee shirts, jeans and jump suits. The music (supervised and arranged by Ethan Popp) is loud and infectious.  The cast and onstage band have a great time…as does the audience.  Finally, you can belt out Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel The Noize” at the top of your lungs – in public!
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MOVIES

The Book of Eli

By Zach Drucker, Contibuting Reviewer.
In a post-apocalyptic, dustbowl state, the earth is a frightening, desolate and dangerous place.  Eli (Denzel Washington) roams the roads in solitude, reading and re-reading a mysterious book while relying on his resourcefulness and unmatched combat skills to survive against drought, hunger and aggressive cannibals.  Yet, when he strolls into a dilapidated settlement run by a power-hungry and erudite gang leader, Carnegie (Gary Oldman), Eli must fight to protect his precious book from falling into the wrong hands as he tries to continue his treacherous peregrination to the West.  Washington shines as the title character, bringing an edge and attitude that he has not displayed since his Academy Award-winning portrayal of the corrupt detective, Alonzo Harris, in 2001’s  Training Day.  Anchored by graphic fight sequences  it comes off as another stereotypical action flick constructed  to satisfy the average male teenager’s thirst for combat. The ensemble cast also includes solid performances from the formidable Oldman, the rising beauty, Mila Kunis, as Solara, and singer-songwriter Tom Waits. mixes intense action with overarching religious themes.  Despite its talented cast, “The Book of Eli” targets a limited demographic and is inappropriate for young viewers.  Directed by the Hughes brothers, Allen and Albert, The Book of Eli , though  thought –provoking, with some intriguing twists and turns,  fails to define the origins of the war that led to the devastation of earth and most of its inhabitants.   

Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin canoodle in Nancy Meyer’s directorial plum. Universal Pictures.

It’s Complicated! 
I haven’t laughed so loud nor so often since writer/director Nancy Meyers’ Something’s Gotta Give which starred Jack Nicholson andDiane Keaton. This time the lead duo is Alex Baldwin as Jake and Meryl Streep as Jane (sexy at 60) and they are at the top of their game as former marrieds who bump into each other accidentally and react with youthful abandon. Speaking of which, Jake would clearly wish to abandon his trophy wife Agness  (Lake Bell) for a second chance with Jane , while Steve Martin as Adam in a complementary role adds sensitivity and intelligence as a prospective suitor to Jane. Funniest scene, Baldwin lying prone in all his corpulent nudity on Meryl’s bed, his private parts ostensibly shielded by a laptop on which he hunts and pecks. Unbeknown to him, he is being recorded for all to see via Skype.  Kudos to a breezily amusing John Krasinski as Streep’s future son-in-law. I understand he’s a regular on The Office.

The “ Me”  is Zac Efron. Orson is Christian McKay.

Me and Orson Welles
I grew up, as many of you did listening to the 19-year-old Orson Welles as The Shadow sponsored by Blue Coal and Welles’ Mercury Theater on the Air players who scared the hell out of America with War of the Worlds (October 30, 1938), and set it on its collective Rosebuds with moviedom’s Citizen Kane in 1941.  Brit actor Christian McKay, is 36 years old compared to Welles’ 23 at the time he was readying his modern-dress Julius Caesar in 1937with Mercury maven George Coulouris as Marc Anthony. This entertaining flick has many of the vintage-looking qualities of Tim Robbins’ 2000 film The Cradle Will Rock themed to the trials and tribulations of the labor-intensive, left-leaning Federal Theater. In looks, mien and voice, McKay has Welles down pat. Two others who strike a credible chord are Ben Chaplin as Coulouris and James Tupper as Joseph Cotton. Missing from this talented group for some reason are Mercury stalwarts Agnes Morehead, Ray Collins and especially Everett Sloane and Martin Gable, whose extraordinary radio voices belied their diminutive statures. 

Toni (Benno Fürmann), Andi (Florian Lukas) and Austrian competitor Edi (Georg Friedrich)

North Face
Once again young German film makers are evidencing their prowess as historical cinematic story tellers. We saw it with the recently released White Ribbon in the rural pastures of pre-WWI  Germany. North Face is a gripping adventure drama set in 1936, about the competition to climb the most dangerous rock face in the Swiss Alps,  the Eiger North Face – a 5,900-foot -high wall of stone and ice in the Berne Oberland, not far from the famed Jungfrau which Alice and I visited via steam locomotive a couple of years ago.  In 1936, in anticipation of the ultimately discredited Berlin Olympics, the Nazi propaganda machine urged German Alpinists to conquer the unclimbed north face of the Eiger. Two reluctant climbers, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas), are encouraged to quit the army in the name of the Fatherland,  to undertake a daring ascent and attempt to scale the infamous rock face, often called the Murder Wall. As they begin their ascent, they are inconveniently followed by two Austrians Willy Angerer (Simon Schwarz) and Edi Rainer (Georg Friedrich). All goes well at first as both rope teams unite and make good headway, but then the climbers lose their advantage over the elements. What gives this movie authenticity and gravitas is the fact that special effects and digitalized sequences are eschewed in favor of hand-held cameras, with the lead actors and the skilled alpinists who doubled for them braving  the elements and dangers of rockfalls, avalanches and sudden massive changes in weather. In German, with English titles.
 

The Messenger.
One of two movies that have a kinship to Hurt Locker and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  It addresses a subject that will not automatically trigger wide audience: the notification of six next of kin of their son or daughter, wife or her husband’s death. The notifiers are a hard-nosed captain, Tony Stone played impeccably by Woody Harrelson in his finest role and the sensitive Sgt. Will Montgomery played by a remarkable young actor, Ben Foster. They work as a team for the Army’s casualty notification service. All hail to the directorial debut of Oren Moverman, from a screenplay he wrote with Alessandro Camon.

Brothers
In another grief-ridden film, that might have been entitled Good Brother/Bad Brother. Sam (Tobey Maguire) is the good sibling who follows in the bootstraps of his cantankerous father (Sam Shepard)  and joins the Marines. He is married to Grace (Natalie Portman) and has two young daughters. Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the bad guy.  Just released from jail he is a rare-do-well who drinks more than he should. Captured by the Taliban, Sam is presumed dead, and in soap opera-style, Uncle Tommy sobers up, gains the affection of the daughters and most notably, sister-in-law  Grace until ….

  
Two beauties from different eras, Émilie Dequenne  and Catherine Deneuve, team up as daughter and mother in “The Girl on the Train.”

The Girl on the Train
Written and directed by André Téchiné  this crafty film is based on a 2004  incident in which  a 23-year-old woman falsely claimed she was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack by six men of African and North African origin on a commuter train outside Paris. She contended that they slashed her clothes and etched a swastika on her torso. What gave me, and I suspect most of the audience the clue that the authorities would catch on to her trickery was that the swastika was linearly upside down. The assault made headlines in Le Monde and the international press with president Jacques Chirac, urging French Jews to emigrate to Israel to escape the anti-Semitism.” Ultimately the woman who wasn’t Jewish, and obviously craving attention, admitted she had lied. In the movie, she is Jeanne,  a classic screen beauty and fine actress Émilie Dequenne, who devotes  her time to rollerblading, riding the train seeking work, while her mother Louise, played artfully by Catherine Deneuve, (who has slimmed down almost to her original beathtaking cinematic beauty)  minds children at her home to earn money. Intersecting to the core story is her fictionalized affair with a rough-hewn athlete, Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle and a sophisticated Jewish family the Bleisteins and a pending bar mitzvah. In French and Hebrew, with English subtitles.

The incomparable Jeff Bridges, shown with Maggie Gyllenhaal, is “Bad Blake” in this variation on the “Tender Mercies” theme.

Crazy Heart
Jeff Bridges, who wafts through every role as naturally as Huck Finn sunning himself on a raft, has never failed to impress as a movie actor. Though I’ve never been a fan of the Coen Brothers’ cult film The Big Lebowski, (1998) in which Bridges  played “The Dude” a slacker and avid bowler, I admired the hell out of him as a U. S. president in The Contender,(2000) with the great Joan Allen as the veep,  and with his brother Beau as The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) in which they were a small club lounge musicians who hire Michelle Pfeiffer as  a vocalist.  It’s perfectly logical why Robert Duvall is a producer of this movie, who reminds me in every way of Duvall as Mac Sledge in Horton Foote’s Tender Mercies, (1983) a recovering alcoholic country singer. Here Bridges is “Bad Blake” a near-washed-up guitar minstrel who is, yes, an incipient alcoholic, who befriends among others, Robert Duvall and a very young admirer played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Bridges’ Golden Globe Award gives him an inside track on an Oscar.
 

Precious
Without fanfare, and with no distributor, Push: Based On The Novel By Sapphire captured audience fanfare at the Sundance and Cannes film festivals.  Under its new title, the timeframe is Harlem, 1987, with the central character an obese, illiterate, black 16-year-old Claireece Jones  (Gabourey Sidibe) who is a virtual slave to her dysfunctional, unemployed mother. Twice impregnated by her father, her first child, known only as "Mongo" (short for "mongoloid"), has Down Syndrome and is cared for by Precious's grandmother. Against all odds Precious wills herself to obtain a semblance of an education and sanity. Two people in secondary roles, singer Mariah Carey as social worker Miss Weiss and Chyna Layne as Rhonda Johnson, a classmate of Precious in an alternative school, are surprisingly effective.  I have it on good authority that Ms. Johnson was a self-motivating, upbeat  Manhattan office employee whose passion for acting as a long-term goal was keenly supported by her management.  

A Serious Man
As John McInroe might ask, “Are You Serious.” And as  the Coen Brothers  might answer, “Who Knows?”  As I set up my DVD screener of the movie,  I suddenly see  a dramatization of a  folk tale about a tzadik aka rebbe (played by the 87 year-old-veteran of the Yiddush Theater, Fyvush Finkel) invited into the spare home of  a  devout husband. However,  the host’s  wife  believes she recognizes the visitor  as  a dead man  who is likely to be a dybbuk and summarily stabs him to death with a kitchen knife.  This action arouses more than a few metaphors about the movie to come. We now fast forward to 1967, a time when F-Troop ruled the airways. Maybe the Coens  we’re connecting the dots to F-Troop’s Larry Storch, whom I saw as  a stand-up comic in the Borscht Belt in the Jewish Mountains. I quickly disabused myself of that notion, when I was faced with the story of a nebbishe physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlberg ) at a quiet Midwestern university, who has just been informed by his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) that she is leaving him for a  patronizingly unctuous neighbor (Fred Melamed). To compound the situation, Larry awaits word of tenure at his university, while his idle brother Arthur (Richard Kind) beds down on his couch,  his son Danny (Aaron Wolff) a soon-to-be bar mitzvah straggles at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) filches money from his wallet  to save up for a nose job.  It seems to me I saw all of this (done much better) in Mordecai Richler’s Canadian film, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz some 35 years ago, with Richard Dreyfuss in the lead.

The Young Victoria
I was too young to have seen Laurence Housman's 1935 stage play Victoria Regina, which served as a showcase for Helen Hayes, but I do vividly remember seeing Dame Anna Neagle in the title role of the 1937 film, Victoria the Great, in which she played opposite Anton  Wolbrook of The Red Shoes fame as Albert.  That film’s episodic approach, traces Victoria from her 1837 coronation to her Jubilee celebration 60  years later. A  b/w film, the Jubilee finale was originally filmed in resplendent three-strip Technicolor and that is why it was so indelible to me.  In this diverting, but superficial movie, Victoria at 17 is played by Emily Blunt, who shone as Meryl Streep’s assistant in The Devil Wears Prada. She is the object of a royal power struggle. Her uncle, King William, pop-eyed and melodramatic , is played by the usually reliable Jim Broadbent who is dying and with Victoria in line for the throne, everyone is vying to win her favor. However Victoria is kept from the court by her overbearing mother, The Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson, who first came to prominence in The Crying Game in 1992).  The duchess takes the lead in inviting Victoria’s handsome cousin Albert (Rupert Friend) and the rest, as they say, is history. 
   

Inglorious Basterds
Until I saw Inglorious Basterds, I thought Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction was one of the worst films I ever saw. What we have here is the worst WWII movie ever made.  It makes Wake Island, Bataan and  To Hell and Back, monuments to movie-making. Tarantino has twisted the war into 2 ½ hours of stultifying drivel with a venom-spewing Fuhrer from the Charlie Chaplin vinegar factory. I admire Brad Pitt, for his versatility as an actor, but more so as a humanitarian, but as the leader of a unit of Jewish commandos, he effects a raspy, southern drawl and a stage-prop of a moustache that threatens to drop off. Under his misguidance, his Hebraic charges are inspired to crack Nazi heads with Louisville Sluggers and surgically remove their scalps. The only enlightened performance is that of Christopher Waltz as a chillingly unctuous, multilingual Wermacht officer, Colonel Hans Landa.    

A Single Man
This disquieting movie is based on the openly gay, British-born Christopher Isherwood’s novel of the same title. Famously, Isherwood wrote of Sally Bowles, later to become the play I Am a Camera, and ultimately, the musical Cabaret. The time is 1962, the height of the Cuban missile crisis, and it deals with George, a British college professor who teaches Huxley to bored students. As George, the versatile  Colin Firth struggles to find meaning to his life after the death of his long time partner Jim (Matthew Goode) seen in intermittent flashbacks.  I much preferred him as Darcy in TV’s Pride and Prejudice.  

Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer as The Tolstoys.

The Last Station
What an entertaining and curiously revealing little movie this is, given that the two leads are Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, as the white-bearded Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy and his joyous and volatile wife Sofya Tolstoy, I should not have been surprised, but I was. I anticipated that the two giants of stage and movie craft, would be swallowing the scenery like dollops of beluga caviar. And perhaps they do at times, when as for example they pull a Tevya and imitate barnyard chickens as evidence of their unconditional love for one another. Plummer, whom I had the privilege of interviewing a couple of years back, does nothing in this film to compromise his position  as our greatest North American actor. However, it is Mirren, precursor to such formidable performers as Streep and Linney, who purloins the picture, the way she did on TV, when we first viewed her as Detective Jane Tennison on Prime Suspect. Others who contribute mightily to the proceedings are Paul Giamatti as the  sycophant, Vladimir Chertkov,  who connives with his flunkies to manipulate Sofya out of Count Leo’s will; James McAvoy, the lookalike of Edward Norton,  as Valentin Bulgakov  a straight arrow secretary to the novelist, and Kerry Condon (Masha) who brings a rapacious titillation to the bed chambers of Bulkgakov. Mirren and Plummer were surprise nominees for Oscars.
 Click here: My Kind of New York - Top Nine* Movies of 2009

MUSEUMS

  
Velázquez, King Philip IV of Spain. 1644. Oil on canvas. The Frick Collection.

Velázquez Portrait of Philip IV
Returned to Past Glory  
At The Frick Collection.
One E. 70th St.
212-288-0700 
I came, I saw, I concurred: the Frick has done an astonishing job of cleaning and treating one of the most magnificent paintings in its vast collection, Velázquez's King Philip IV of Spain. Technical studies of the painting were done for the first time and involved microscopy, X-radiography, and infrared reflectography.  Experts have contended that the results of this treatment and examination are indeed a revelation.  Multiple layers of dull and discolored varnish have been removed, making clear for the first time in more than 60 years, the sureness of Velázquez's technique, and the subtlety and sensitivity of his composition.  The previous, rather flat appearance of the painted surface also made it impossible to fully appreciate the artist's peerless use of impasto brushwork. I encourage you to take a fresh look at this masterpiece on view in the Frick's Oval Room, hanging in the exact spot where viewers first encountered it in 1935, when the museum first opened to the public. This dazzling canvas purchased by Henry Clay Frick in 1910, is the last of Velázquez’ formal portraits of the king. A makeshift studio was hammered together by the royal carpenters adjacent to a battlefield and reputedly took the artist three days to finish the job.

The East Gallery of The Frick has been smartly refurbished. I like the fact that the dreary brown velvet wall covering has been placed with a soft coral textile that affords a rich backdrop for the works of art, as evidenced in this photo.

Threatening Sky, Bay of New York, Thomas Chambers (1808-1869).

Thomas Chambers
American Folk Art Museum
45 West 53rd Street
212 265 5933
Through March 7
Reviewed by Slice of New York Arts Critic Maury Leon.
Thomas Chambers has a well-deserved place in the Pantheon of American artists. The scope and intensity of Chambers’ work as shown here demonstrates that he is among American masters.
Thomas Chambers is best known for his paintings of ships, i.e., particularly, ‘The Constitution and The Guerriere’, one of the few paintings he signed.  Chambers was one of the mid-19th-century American painters, which included Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, Alfred Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer.  Most of Chambers’ works were done between 1832 and 1865.  His style and artistic sensibility appealed to the popular taste of that time and he had a large following.  After the Civil War, Chambers’ works were eclipsed by those of his contemporaries.  His paintings languished until the 1930s when he was rediscovered and his artistic resurrection began with a show in New York in 1942.  Chambers’ treatment of the ocean, the interaction of the wind and waves in a white-caped sea, is the signature image of his seascapes.  Vividly colored clouds appear in some of his seascapes, giving the viewer an eerie feeling.  River scenes, the bucolic landscape of early America also appear in his paintings, such as  Cold Spring on the Hudson  and nearby West Point . Some of these scenes are recognizable even today. Among his works are views of the Susquehanna River Valley and New York Harbor. This ‘must see’ exhibition of over 50 Chambers paintings also includes a few landscapes by other artists, including Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty and William Matthew Prior.

POP MUSIC

Lyrics and Lyricists:
Celebrating the Lyrics of Johnny Burke
92n St. Y
1395 Lexington Ave. @ 92nd St.
212-415-5500
Feb. 20, 8 p.m., Feb. 21, 3 p.m. & 8 p.m., Feb. 22, 2 p.m.
& 8 p.m.
Eric Comstock, piano & vocals
Barbara Fasano, vocals
Jeff Harnar, vocals
Terri White, vocals
Mary Burke, special guest
Warren Vaché, trumpet
Gene Bertoncini, guitar
Jay Leonhart, bass

Jazz singer/pianist Daryl Sherman offers an intimate, saloon-style tribute to Johnny Burke. The reigning lyricist of Paramount Pictures, his songs seduced singers from Crosby and Sinatra to Billie Holiday. Burke was the only major composer to spend his entire career with just one studio, Paramount.  Of the 41 films on which he worked, 25 starred Bing Crosby, most notably, Going My Way and Dixie.  Seventeen songs were substantial hits, including  I've Got a Pocketful of Dreams , Only Forever,  Moonlight Becomes You and Sunday, Monday and Always, (written with Burke’s frequent composer partner Jimmy Van Heusen)  and which I had the pleasure of singing at age 12 at P. S. 144 Queens with my friend Jack Connor.  

GARDENS

Thousands of brilliantly colored orchids are set among architectural vignettes from Havana and the surrounding countryside at the Victorian-style Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.

The 8th Annual Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower
Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
New York Botanical Garden
Bronx River P’kway (Exit 7W) & Fordham Rd. 
718-817-8700  www.nybg.org
Feb.  27 – April 11, 2010
This year’s always popular Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower elevates iconic sites of Old Havana and the Cuban countryside, re-imagined to evoke the history of the island while engulfing visitors in radiant bloom-age and providing a welcome one-day tropical retreat from this forgettable winter.  The 2010 theme and design, are the work of  Cuban-reared landscape architect Jorge Sánchez, of the Palm Beach firm Sánchez & Maddux.   Upon entering the Seasonal Exhibition Galleries where the show’s most concentrated displays of orchids are traditionally encountered, visitors will walk beneath overarching fronds of booted sabal palms planted in a tunnel alleé leading to a sugar mill ruin. Sugar mills processed cane sugar, an economic mainstay of 18th- through mid-20th-century Cuba.  

RESTAURANT

Doing a restaurant review is a departure from the norm for my fellow writers and me. However, this critique represents a keen opportunity for us to include the words of a friend who goes back to our days  at Syracuse, one of the finer writers and gourmands I know, Dr. Ralph Schlossman.

Food:
Service:   (willing, but a bit amateurish).
Décor:   (needs freshening up).

Wild Thyme
120 Noyac Rd. Southampton, LI 
 631-204-0007                
When Ruth and I began to spend our leisure time in the Hamptons some 30 years ago, one could count the really good restaurants on the fingers of one hand. Fortunately the scene has changed, and there are many good, and a few great, places to enjoy fine food. Thanksgiving weekend we enjoyed a wonderful meal at one of these. About three years ago, Delany and Miles Oser took over a venue formerly housing a Thai restaurant, and named it Wild Thyme. We have eaten there several times a year, often with friends, and have noted a continued and achieved effort to make the dining experience better and better. The innovative menus are never the same and based mostly on the best local ingredients available. Our recent meal began with a perfect (and generous) Hendricks gin martini for one. Ruth does not drink. Then there was a gift from the chef, a trio of mushroom and rabbit terrine, very different and very tasty. Ruth’s appetizer was a pear vinaigrette salad, while I had a gently braised piece of sow belly. We both love bay scallops, and when we saw on the menu  they were serving Peconic Bay scallops, there was no other possibility. The Peconics were almost wiped out several years ago by a brown tide and since then their harvesting is strictly limited, and they may be unavailable for years at a time. For those who have not had the opportunity, those from any other bay cannot compete with them for sweetness and flavor. These were lightly sautéed and served cassoulet-style over cannelini beans. Appetite satiated, I had the opportunity to chat with executive chef Alex Algieri. He was born on the East End to a family of subsistence farmers and hunters, an experience he uses to good effect when shopping for the restaurant’s ingredients. Although he had no formal culinary training, he obtained his On the Job Training working for some of the premier chefs of L.A., Las Vegas, and New York. In addition to  running the restaurant, Delany also has a successful catering business.   Prices are dear, but not unreasonable for the area.