A & E

To Doubt Is Human

(Editor's note: The following commentary comes courtesy of CityBeat contributing writer Tom McElfresh, who reviews a pair of theatrical productions recently staged in Indianapolis.)

There’s a curious consonance between two plays heating up Indy stages these cold winter nights. As unlike as figs and flatirons in their theatrical style, Doubt and End Days are alike in the topic that playwrights John Patrick Shanley and Deborah Zoe Laufer investigate and the conclusion that each reaches — elliptically in his case, more directly in hers.

They aver this: To doubt is to be wise, humane and, ultimately, to find inner strength while clinging blindly to some absolutist certainty is ultimately destructive, no matter how comforting such a certainty might seem.

In the process each playwright levels significant charges at religions that permit, even promote, obsession — be it within the rigid structure of a Catholic school, parish and diocese or in the individual practice of their beliefs by convinced Evangelicals. Let me be clear here: Shanley and Laufer criticize self-serving, personal fervor, not Christianity per se — though Laufer, at least, seems doubtful of its efficacy.

In 2003 Shanley won both a Tony and a Pulitzer for Doubt and richly deserved both honors. Now, Indiana Repertory Theatre (IRT) is presenting it in a virtually flawless main-stage production — directed with clarified simplicity by playwright-in-residence James Still, lit with chilly edges by Lap Chi Chu and set and dressed by Ann Sheffield in a sort of haunted autumn with bare trees, strewn leaves, massive arches and a huge looming window.

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

If Jerry Springer can make it onstage at Carnegie Hall, can anyone argue that an opera about him doesn’t belong in Cincinnati? That becomes a meaningful question with yesterday and today’s staging of Jerry Springer: The Opera in New York City (Jan. 29-30), featuring veteran stage and Oscar-nominated actor Harvey Keitel as our one-time mayor and TV anchor. Cincinnati’s New Stage Collective plans a production of the work this summer, opening June 26 and running until early August.

Producers of the Carnegie Hall event — Jason Moore, who directed Avenue Q, and Wicked’s music director Stephen Oremus — claim that a successful New York response could lead to the work landing on Broadway. Jerry Springer, inspired by the talk-show career of on one of Cincinnati’s favorite sons, got a lot of people’s attention during the 2002 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was picked up for a production at the National’s Lyttleton Theatre, where it was extended twice before moving to London’s West End, where it won the 2004 Olivier Award for best musical.

When a recording of the show was aired on the BBC, it generated enough complaints that some broadcasting executives requested police protection. The Carnegie Hall production has drawn the fire of numerous conservative Christian groups who object not only to the frequent use of obscenities but also to numerous religious references that are found offensive. How it’s received could have repercussions for NSC’s local production, I imagine, although the theater group’s artistic director, Alan Patrick Kenny, is not one to shy away from controversy. His local premiere of Edward Albee’s The Goat last spring proved how fearless he can be with material that other theaters have avoided.

It was interesting to read in Saturday’s New York Times a remark that “the theatrical Mr. Springer has a philosophical streak seldom evidenced on the actual show,” but most of us who remember Jerry’s WLWT commentaries certainly recall that they were nothing if not philosophical. So maybe we’re better able to enjoy this production than we’ve imagined. Time will tell.

— Rick Pender

Playwrights are Speakers, Too

Over the next month the Mercantile Library (414 Walnut St., Downtown) is hosting evenings with three contemporary playwrights. It’s an unusual opportunity for theater lovers to get some face-to-face exposure to people who are creating some of today’s best new plays. This week on Wednesday at 7 p.m., it’s Heather Raffo, an Iraqi-American writer and performance artist. Her script, 9 Parts of Desire, was an Off-Broadway hit in 2004 (winning the 2005 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Special Commendation and a Lucille Lortel award for best solo show). Raffo will talk about her play, offering insights into the psyches of women in Iraq, especially relative to the current war.

Subsequent evenings will offer an appearances by Marilyn Campbell (Feb. 11) and Steven Dietz (Feb. 28). Campbell adapted Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment into a script that will be presented by three actors at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park’s Shelterhouse Theatre (Feb. 2-March 2). Her remarks will focus on the topic of adapting literary works for the stage.

Dietz’s careeer has included adaptations as well as original scripts. His interpretation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective, Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, was a Cincinnati Playhouse production last spring. His original script, More Fun than Bowling, was the second play presented during Ensemble Theatre’s 2007-2008 season. He will speak about his career as a writer and director.

Admission to each lecture is $10. (The entire series can be attended for a $25 fee.) Reservations: 513-621-0717. Additional information: www.mercantilelibrary.com.

– Rick Pender

Sundance 2008: The Aftermath

Just got back in town following a whirlwind week at Sundance that was riddled with computer issues and long lines and ended with a 10-hour odyssey at the Salt Lake City airport. More on that later. Until then, here's my coverage of the first weekend of the festival. Look for more on the latter half of my stay tomorrow.

Perusing other coverage — including Manohla Dargis' wrap in the NYTimes and Wesley Morris' blog for The Boston Globe — it looks like I missed quite a bit of the good stuff, which is inevitable when you take in but 10 percent of the more than 200 films that screened at Sundance.

— Jason Gargano

Stage Door 1/25

On a bitterly cold weekend, a trip to hell might sound like a good choice. If that's the case, Cincinnati Shakesepare Company has the show for you: Jean-Paul Sartre's existential classic No Exit, which is set in a place where none of us really want to end up — and where the real torture is the folks we're trapped there with. (According to Sartre, "Hell is other people.")

I'm not certain that the other half of CSC's double-bill will warm you up any more, but Samuel Beckett's Endgame might make you laugh, because it's laced with the Irish absurdist playwright's wicked, nonsensical humor.

What's making these two one-acts attractive is the acting, featuring Corinne Mohlenhoff, Hayley Clark, Jeremy Dubin and Giles Davies (the women are pictured above). Each of them have earned multiple nominations in the Cincinnati Entertainment Awards, and Dubin and Davies had a memorable turn in Beckett's Waiting for Godot several years ago.

Performances begin tonight and continue through Feb. 10. Get ticket and performance info here.

— Rick Pender

Rent: Past Due?

It's the end of an era: The long-running Broadway musical Rent will close on June 1 after 12 years. It will be the seventh longest-running show in Broadway history, just shy of 5,000 performances.

In case you didn't know it, Jonathan Larson's musical is a contemporary retelling of Puccini's opera La Bohème set in New York City's East Village. When the show opened in February 1996, it was an instant hit and converted its performers — Taye Diggs, Idina Menzel, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Jesse L. Martin, Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp — from struggling Broadway actors to well-known theater personalities.

Rent moved to the Nederlander Theatre in April 1996 (from the New York Theatre Workshop, where it originated in the East Village). It was there that the practice of offering $20 day-of-show tickets began, and young fans of the show still line up daily on 41st Street. The practice has been applied to touring productions, too, and the show has many fans here in Cincinnati, where it has been presented several times at the Aronoff Center.

— Rick Pender

Sundance 2008: Batman Does Directing

Not to be whiny, but blogging at Sundance is a bitch. The place is a logistical nightmare: It’s nearly impossible to update daily in any meaningful way. Unlike Toronto, you can’t just break out your laptop during down time at a Starbucks and post a few thoughts about the movie you’ve just seen — there is no down time here.

A typical Sundance day begins with coffee and a complimentary New York Times (they’re a sponsor) in the press room, followed by screening followed by bus ride followed by screening followed by bus ride followed by mediocre lunch on the fly followed by bus ride followed by screening — all fueled with enough coffee to kill a buffalo.

Even when you’re able to carve out some time, the hot spots here are few and far between. And the one time I did find both time and hot spot, I had only 10 minutes of power left on my MacBook. (Electrical outlets are as precious as tickets to the largely vacuous, celeb-spotting after-parties.)

Speaking of power, the battery meter on my laptop is down to 20 percent, thus I better jettison this excuse-laden preamble and a get on with a bit about Michael Keaton’s directorial debut.

The Merry Gentleman finds the veteran actor playing a tight-lipped, suicidal hitman who begins an unlikely friendship with an abused woman (Kelly MacDonald) trying to start a new life in Chicago. Ron Lazzeretti’s script is an odd beast in terms of tone, mixing brief bursts of violence with an unrelenting sense of melancholy. The inert narrative fails to generate much interest, which is a problem for a film that is content to luxuriate in its central duo’s unearned emotional desolation. I'm all for ambiguity, but there's not enough of their characters' back-story to make us care about their ceaseless self-loathing.

The Merry Gentleman is an odd choice for Keaton’s directorial debut — a low-key, admirably obtuse affair that contains Keaton’s most restrained performance to date. And, despite his high-profile presence, it’s also a movie that’s likely to have a hard time finding a distributor.

The actor/director was on hand for a post-screening Q&A. Clearly nervous, Keaton said he was happy that the sold-out Eccles Theater audience seemed to stay with the story despite its laconic pacing. He also said that, based on the crowd’s reaction, he was going to make “a few cuts here and there.”

Uh, no disrespect, Mike, but it’s going to take more than a few snips to make The Merry Gentleman palatable to anyone besides gawkers of your rapidly receding career.

— Jason Gargano

Sundance 2008: Let It Snow

Thought I'd post a few images while I actually have wireless Internet access, which has been fleeting — even when in the supposedly hot-wired press area — to the point of deep annoyance.

Nothing special, just a few random shots I took today in between interviews (the best of which was with George Romero) and screenings (the most intriguing of which was a doc called Secrecy). Sorry, kids, much to the chagrin of CityBeat's art director, my paparazzo skills are pretty weak. Besides, I think Paris Hilton picked up her swag yesterday, which no doubt means she's already back in L.A., Fred Segal beauty products in hand.

Speaking of walking disasters, today I read a quote attributed Britney Spears' 2003 visit to the festival: "Sundance is weird. The movies are weird — you actually have to think about them when you watch them."

OK, back to reality: Look for a more detailed post tomorrow about some of the films I been able to catch to this point. That is if the Internet gods allow it.

Stage Door 1/18

If you want to see what acting is all about, I urge you to head to the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park this weekend (or sometime before Feb. 15) to see The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead (my review is posted here). Annalee Jeffries (pictured) plays seven different characters, and she's quite remarkable. If you didn't know in advance that one actor handles the entire show, you'd imagine you were seeing seven different — and excellent —performers. So it's especially amazing that one performer pulls this off.

I had a great conversation recently with Australian playwright Robert Hewett about his script, which he created for "an actress friend over 50, when jobs tend to dry up." It's a shame she never got to perform it, he says, mostly because of funding problems, but it took on a life of its own with several successful productions in Australia in 2004 and 2005.

Hewett had a big break in 2006 when an actress proposed it to the Stratford Festival in Ontario. It had a brief run at the end of the 2006 season, then came back as a popular choice for 2007. Several Cincinnati theater fans saw it there, and they urged the Playhouse's Ed Stern to consider it — leading to the current production, the U.S. premiere.

Sundance 2008: The Mayhem Begins

It’s cold. Really cold. As in my feet felt like blocks of ice within 15 minutes after touching the snow-laden terrain of Park City, Utah. So begins my latest excursion to the Sundance Film Festival.

The 24th edition of the fest kicked off yesterday as thousands of film freaks of every stripe — from distributors and filmmakers to journalists and publicists to actors and hangers-on — descended on this small ski resort town for what has become the largest festival of its kind in the U.S. In fact, given the ongoing writer’s strike, 2008 might prove to be its most important year to date. Studios, concerned that the strike will cut into their future release slates (that’s a good thing, right?), are likely to snap up anything remotely worthwhile, which means the frenzied, late-night negotiating between distributors and filmmakers is likely to rise to even more ludicrous levels.

Business mayhem aside, Sundance 2008’s lineup looks better than usual — though, admittedly, that’s based on nothing more a cursory glance at the list of more than 200 films (from more than 3,600 submissions). The usual batch of American independent dramatic and documentary features are still Sundance’s bread and butter, but it’s the festival’s rapidly improving slate of foreign films that has many intrigued. (Incidentally, I took a shuttle from the Salt Lake City airport to Park City with Japanese filmmaker Naoko Ogigami, whose Megane is in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. Exhausted after a 17-hour trip from Japan, Ogigami, after several pregnant pauses, sheepishly described her film like this: “Hmm, uh, yes, uh, it’s a comedy.”)

Word is that more than 50,000 people will attend Sundance this year, which means another mammoth bounty for the makeshift concession stands at each screening venue. I paid $2.50 for a mediocre 12-ounce coffee last night, only 4 ounces of which actually made it into my mouth: I forgot that coffee isn’t allowed inside The Eccles — a crime against a fest-goer’s humanity if there ever was one.