Fool's Gold Coast

Halloweenie

I didn't put together a Halloween costume this year. Do I regret this decision? Slightly. Will I miss picking glitter out of every bodily nook and cranny for the next two months? I will not. (Does this not happen to you when you dress up for Halloween? Then I pity you.)

You'll be happy to know that my lameness did not infect Kito, who hastily slapped together a vampire costume for hitting the town on Saturday. He wore all black, face powder, and a velvet cape. He looked pretty good, despite my initial worries that people would think he was supposed to be Stevie Nicks.

Anyway, happy Halloween!

Shows Worth Seeing 3

East of Berlin and The Russian Play (Signal Ensemble Theatre). The grisly 20th century claims two more lives in a pair of riveting one-acts by Hannah Moscovitch. Morally complex, emotionally harrowing. Through November 13.

The Argument (Interrobang Theatre Project). A young woman wants her twin sister to have a full life, even though she died in a natural disaster (details, details). Director Jeffry Stanton nimbly balances the grotesque and the sweet. Through November 6.

Speaking in Tongues: The Chronicles of Babel (MPAACT). Residents of a torn-down Chicago housing project describe living there in the '60s and '70s. Taken from interviews, Shepsu Aakhu's script is angry without getting bitter, and nostalgic without whitewashing the past. Through October 30.

Moby-Dick (The Building Stage). Six Ishmaels recount the Pequod's long, strange hunt for Captain Ahab's blubbery nemesis. Using discursive narration and an arsenal of low-tech effects, director Blake Montgomery manages to adapt the unadaptable. Through November 4.

The Gold Mine 134: October 29, 1994

Stuff I've dug up.

Here's an excerpt from a diary entry I wrote on today's date 17 years ago. I was 15.

October 29, 1994
Today we took my grandma to my family's cabin in Eureka Springs. She's 74 but still extremely lively. She talked about her recent garage sale. Apparently people weren't just snatching up her merchandise (including a car radio that didn't even work). She had opinions about everything from immigration to lesbians, and she felt the need to express them at the top of her voice in crowded restaurants. She also filled us in on all the latest family gossip and made a joke about a sign that read "Dam Site." Her farewell statement: "Bye-bye, hon. I love you so much. Be good."

She died in 2006.

ELSEWHERE:
My review of The Gift Theatre Company's Cloud 9 is in this week's Chicago Reader.

I Fall in Love Too Easily

Something you should probably know if you're a man who has had a conversation with me lasting longer than seven minutes: there's a strong chance that I have an enormous crush on you.

"But wait!" you say. "You can't possibly mean me! Our conversation was dull, my personality is unpleasant, and I'm not what you'd call 'conventionally attractive' on account of this unsightly deformity of mine!"

You are wrong. No one is safe.

Tree Stumped

Sometimes I think that my dog, Lucy, is a few dalmatians short of a full 101, if you know what I mean. And if you don't know what I mean, who could blame you? I'm saying she might be stupid.

The way she chases squirrels, for instance. If, during the chase, a squirrel darts up a tree, Lucy frantically searches the ground surrounding its roots and the path she's just come from, but it never seems to occur to her to look up. Clearly baffled by the sudden disappearance, she seems at a loss about what to do next, and, in sum, appears altogether flummoxed. She must think of squirrels as these magical creatures--like something out of a fairy tale or an ancient myth--who have the power to make themselves invisible at will, and if only she could unlock the mystery, she would understand something profound and essential about the universe.

I worry about what this says about her intelligence.

The Body Beautiful

I'll tell you what I admire about dancers: it's the way they realize the body's potential. I mean, apart from a few genetic differences, we all come into the world with the same parts--arms, legs, necks, wangs, and so on. But some people--dancers, dick piercers, vajazzlers--take these things and turn their bodies into works of art. What have I ever turned my body into, besides a processing plant for Oreo McFlurries?

ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of Urban Theater Company's The Beauty of the Father and Signal Ensemble Theatre's East of Berlin and The Russian Play are in this week's Chicago Reader.

Shows Worth Seeing 2

East of Berlin and The Russian Play (Signal Ensemble Theatre). The lives of a German expat and a Russian shop girl are indirectly yet irrevocably altered by Nazism and Stalinism, respectively. Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch proves adept at both psychological drama and satiric folklore. Through November 13.

The Argument (Interrobang Theatre Project). In the wake of a Hurricane Katrina-like disaster, a woman tries to give her drowned twin sister the life she missed out on. Surprising moments of tenderness amid a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland. Through November 6.

Burying Miss America (New Leaf Theatre). A prodigal son returns home for his mother's funeral and has it out with his sister, who never left. Not a moment feels false in Jessica Hutchinson's staging. Through October 29.

Speaking in Tongues: The Chronicles of Babel (MPAACT). Life in a now-demolished Chicago housing project, as revealed in interviews with some people who lived there. A vivid portrait of a failed social experiment from the inside. Through October 30.

ELSEWHERE:
My review of Steep Theatre's Under the Blue Sky is in this week's Time Out Chicago.

The Gold Mine 133: The Critics

Stuff I've dug up.

[Stanley] Kauffmann divined in Bullitt not only its "phoniness" but a "possible propagandistic motive": "to show (particularly to the young) that law and order are not necessarily Dullsville." The "motive" in Bullitt was to show that several million people would pay three dollars apiece to watch Steve McQueen drive fast, but Kauffmann seems to prefer his version. "People in the East pretend to be interested in how pictures are made," Scott Fitzgerald observed in his notes on Hollywood. "But if you actually tell them anything, you find . . . they never see the ventriloquist for the doll. Even the intellectuals, who ought to know better, like to hear about the pretensions, extravagances and vulgarities--tell them pictures have a private grammar, like politics or automobile production or society, and watch the blank look come into their faces."
--Joan Didion, The White Album

Let me tell you why I hate critics. Not for the normal reasons: that they're failed creators (they usually aren't; they may be failed critics, but that's another matter); or that they're by nature carping, jealous and vain (they usually aren't; if anything, they might better be accused of over-generosity, of upgrading the second-rate so that their own fine discriminations thereby appear the rarer). No, the reason I hate critics--well, some of the time--is that they write sentences like this:

Flaubert does not build up his characters, as did Balzac, by objective, external description; in fact, so careless is he of their outward appearance that on one occasion he gives Emma brown eyes (14); on another deep black eyes (15); and on another blue eyes (16).

This precise and disheartening indictment was drawn up by the late Dr Enid Starkie, Reader Emeritus in French Literature at the University of Oxford, and Flaubert's most exhaustive British biographer. The numbers in her text refer to footnotes in which she spears the novelist with chapter and verse.
. . .
And the moral of it all, I suppose is: Never take fright at a footnote. Here are the six references Flaubert makes to Emma Bovary's eyes in the course of the book. It is clearly a subject of some importance to the novelist:

1 (Emma's first appearance) 'In so far as she was beautiful, this beauty lay in her eyes: although they were brown, they would appear black because of her lashes . . .'
2 (Described by her adoring husband early in their marriage) 'Her eyes seemed bigger to him, especially when she was just waking up and fluttered her lids several times in succession; they were black when she was in shadow and dark blue in full daylight; and they seemed to contain layer upon layer of colours, which were thicker in hue deep down, and became lighter towards the enamel-like surface.'
3 (At a candlelit ball) 'Her black eyes appeared even blacker.'
4 (On first meeting Leon) 'Fixing him with her large, wide-open black eyes'.
5 (Indoors, as she appears to Rodolphe when he first examines her) 'Her black eyes'.
6 (Emma looking in a mirror, indoors, in the evening; she has just been seduced by Rodolphe) 'Her eyes had never been so large, so black, nor contained such depth.'

How did the critic put it? 'Flaubert does not build up characters, as did Balzac, by objective, external description; in fact, so careless is he of their outward appearance that . . .' It would be interesting to compare the time spent by Flaubert making sure that his heroine had the rare and difficult eyes of a tragic adulteress with the time spent by Dr Starkie in carelessly selling him short.

And one final thing, just to make absolutely sure. Our earliest substantial source of knowledge about Flaubert is Maxime du Camp's Souvenirs litteraires. . . . On page 306 of the first volume Du Camp describes in great detail the woman on whom Emma Bovary was based. . . .:

. . . her eyes, of uncertain colour, green, grey, or blue, according to the light, had a pleading expression, which never left them.

Dr Starkie appears to have been serenely unaware of this enlightening passage. All in all, it seems a magisterial negligence towards a writer who must, one way and another, have paid a lot of her gas bills. Quite simply, it makes me furious. Now do you understand why I hate critics? I could try and describe to you the expression in my eyes at this moment; but they are far too discoloured with rage.
--Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

I rarely read critics anymore, except for those in The New York Times, who directly affect the box office (and not all that much). When I look back at the ones I've encountered over the years, however, I have the dismaying thought that if, as the saying goes, a man is best measured by the size of his enemies, I'm in a lot of trouble.
--Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat

Against Burritos

The main problem with burritos is that they're impossible to eat. This is mostly a result of their ginormousness. No human mouth is large enough to take a bite that encompasses all of the ingredients at once, so you have to eat each ingredient separately, which inevitably leads to at least one bite that's all sour cream. Some try to solve the problem by opening one end of the burrito and eating the insides with a fork, but this method is unwieldy and leaves you, at the end, with a soppy, useless tortilla.

You'd think that a complete lack of eatability would be considered a drawback in a foodstuff, yet to my bafflement burritos somehow remain highly popular. I do not get it.

ELSEWHERE:
My short review of The Plagiarists' Caesura: A Butchery is in this week's Chicago Reader.
And my dialogue with Time Out Chicago dance critic Zachary Whittenburg (I figure that between us we add up to one Hedy Weiss) on Dancing Henry Five is at TOC's Unscripted blog.

Lifetime Achievement

Looks like someone's got herself a reason to shop for a Power Edwardian evening gown. The Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee--that bastion of the middlebrow--announced today that Fool's Gold Coast mascot Hedy Weiss will receive a special Jeff Award in recognition of her 73 years of service as theater and dance critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Chris Jones mentioned the news in the Trib, calling Weiss "indefatigable" and revealing her true age--thus solving yet another mystery that has kept me up at night.

The annual Jeffs ceremony will take place on November 7. I assume I'll be presenting Hedy's award because I can't imagine anyone else doing it justice.

ELSEWHERE:
My review of Interrobang Theatre Project's The Argument is in this week's Time Out Chicago.