More Tidbits

* I was just told by a ticket buyer that I have an "honest face". I'm not quite sure what that means. It sounds like a euphemism for something.

* I finally finished Marathon Man the other night. It meant to watch it weeks ago, since there is a reference to the film in the show I was working on. I started it about two weeks ago, and had to turn it off when we reached the "Is it safe?" sequence.

I've had three root canals (for an explanation of that you can venture back to one of my very first entries about my 'soft teeth'). Anyone who has had three root canals should be warned about the content of Marathon Man before watching it.

Seriously, the idea of dental work without novocain makes me want to curl up into a ball and sob. Just the idea. Awful. Do scientologists get their dental work done without novocain? I should look that up.

Anyhow, I started it up again, and am glad I finally got through it. I actually enjoy movies from that era - sort of gritty, set in New York, way-pre-Guilliani, preferably starring Dustin Hoffman or Jodie Foster movies. They depict a New York that I never knew. Don't get me wrong. Marathon Man is no Midnight Cowboy or Taxi Driver, but it has a similar feel nonetheless.

There is a heightened sense of theatricality in these movies as well - not quite melodrama, but everything is just, well - moodier - I guess, than we get away with on film these days.

For example, the scene where the Laurence Olivier character (Zell?) is walking through the jewelry district of New York, trying to get the diamonds he smuggled out of Nazi Germany appraised. The sequence is all shadowy and dark and of course the neighborhood is filled with Hassids and other Jews, who one by one start recognizing him. One old woman and one pale, lank man (who doesn't appear to have gained much weight since the camps) start following him, and it descends into this surreal, spooky progression, which on the one hand is totally unbelievable (are they actually recognizing him from seeing him at the camps some thirty-five years before? Or from pictures they have seen of him since?).

It almost descends to camp.

Interesting though, thinking about Nazi war criminals in light of the start of the Hussein trial. What would Hitler have been like in court? One can only wonder.

* Saw this production of The Chairs on Monday night. It is an extremely physical staging of the play, and interesting to watch because of that, but Peter Mark's review is pretty spot on when it comes to their attention to the meaning behind the text. This isn't the actors' fault. I don't know if, as a result of language issues, the director was unable to investigate what was actually-actually going on in the play (he's French) or if that was just his choice. I'd be curious to see the production he staged at Avignon.

I do applaud the actors for holding up their end of this deal, and especially Mr. Kyd for achieving some truly touching moments in spite of, rather than as a reult of (I suspect), the direction.

It makes me wonder why we have so much trouble creating "physical theater" that attends to the text in this city. Arena Stage's production of Intimations for a Saxophone, staged by Anne Bogart, is the closest I have seen any company come to a successful melding of the two.

I do not, however, think that the two things ("physical theater" and "attention to text") must be mutually exclusive.

The decision to use young actors when the play states that the couple is an old man and woman is also an interesting idea, but doesn't really pay off. If they were young people with "old souls", it may have been interesting (to see young people with old souls who look like this couple - watch the documentary Children Underground) and even would have worked with the design (they were dressed like urban street punks). I may have bought it. But with this, it all stayed in the idea place.

* There are lines into the street at all of the places that sell lottery tickets on Pennsylvania Avenue. I assume it's because of this.

* I started watching season four of Curb Your Enthusiasm last night. Larry and Cheryl are horrible audience members. They talked through an entire number in the Producers, and then Larry fell asleep at the show. As a theater patron, you can't get much worse than that.

* Blech.

* Good thing the United States has so improved the lives of Iraqi civilians.