Completely Unnecessary

I swore at my mother yesterday.

We went to see House’s great new production of The Nutcracker. As young Clara peeked her head around the corner, I was so surprised that I turned to my mother and said, “That’s fucking Laura Gray!”

And indeed it was. Laura and I grew up together and I’m ever so happy to see her make good (though she’s been doing successful work with her comedy group Triplette as well) at my favorite Chicago theatre.

The show was completely re-envisioned as is House’s wont (and strength). It’s the same team that did The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz, and they delivered again with similarly creative and imaginative touches. (I am staring to think, however, that Jake Minton is a tad obsessed with snapping the necks of his characters).

The show is great and really good fun (might be a bit scary for any super little kids). Heaps of imaginative characters (especially the lithe and limber Monkey) make the show seem far too short.

House is running the show at Steppenwolf Upstairs. I’m pretty bummed that House seems to have left Viaduct for good. I’ve always really liked the huge rambling space and their ability to completely alter it for each new show. That being said, they do good things with the proscenium at Steppenwolf, too.

Tickets are a bit pricer as well ($29, $20 for students and industry) in the new space, but they’re available at HotTix, too. They’ve opened another block of tickets for the week after Christmas- which means the cast is going to be doing, I think, nine shows the final week.

If you need family-bondy Christmas ideas, I highly recommend it.

Tickets at Steppenwolf or 312.335.1650, or at Hot Tix.

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• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)

I’m not supposed to double post from my the Melbourne Metblog, but I’m too excited - loosely-based internet rules be damned!

John Cage is one of my favorite 20th century composers. His most famous piece is ‘4:33′, in which no actual notes are played. That’s interesting and all, but I’m in love with his prepared piano stuff. His technique included shoving (very carefully) a bunch of stuff (frequently everyday, junk objects) into pianos and composing around that. Some of it’s really amazing.

Well, I’ve just spent 15 minutes failing to make the audio player work, so that’s thrilling. I’m sure I’ll think about this time when I’m whining over my 12,000 words due in about three weeks. Here’s a youtube clip instead (there’s a bunch of lead up, so I’d start watching from 5:00, the piece starts just before 6:00):

Here’s another. This is actually from the Prepared Piano set I wanted to play, though not the one I wanted. It’s pretty neat:

Anyway, this Friday the Melbourne Arts Festival is running John Cage’s Musicircus. It goes from dusk (5:48pm) to dawn the next morning. There’s all sorts of music, art, dance, theatre, etc. The lineup looks amazing, though there are literally so many acts I didn’t even get to look at them all properly.

So excited for this. It’s going to be 25 degrees as well, but, being Melbourne, the low is going to be 9. Sigh.

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I got free tickets, so I went to see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical tonight.

Now, I’m a bit of a hag, so I’ve seen me some gay, but, without equivocation, I can say that was the gayest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life. They could have brought Cher up on that stage and made her perform Scissor Sisters songs while wearing Judy Garland as a hat, and it still would not have made the show one ounce more homosexual.

The final number was also a bizarre display of Australiana, with the entire cast dressed as bottlebrushes (a native flower), emus, koalas, Bob and Benji as kangaroos, cockatoos, Jesus lizards and the Sydney Opera House. This is a callback to the original film, but still, I felt really bad for the three women in the furry koala suits; they did not bring the sexy, despite their skimpy bustiers.

I can only imagine the American equivalent, which would have had far more eagles and flags… and possibly a Kodiak bear costume.

The show was fun, but I’m getting a little sick of musicals that just rehash dated pop songs. I technically haven’t seen any others, but this one was enough. I will say that a seven year old boy singing I Will Survive is pretty cute. Also, Guy Pearce is still a better drag queen than many drag queens.

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Adapting a musical out of a book and completely changing it. [Brief disclaimer – I’ve not actually seen the full piece, but I’ve recently acquired the soundtrack – my father just turned up with a burned copy, which he got… where? BUT! The exposition in the songs is enough to ensure me that] Serious craptacular stuff has been done to the narrative. Apparently Elphie is hated because she’s ugly, not because she’s a freedom fighter against the wizard. Turtle Moon, the Quadling, isn’t the cool glassblower from the book, he’s a sleezo singing a campy, minstrely song encouraging Elphie’s mom to drink a green [surprised?] potion before they fuck. It appears that Glinda marries Fieryo (not so sure about that, but she marries someone that loves Elphie instead). It’s all very poorly conceived. And finally Elphie decides that she’ll never do a good thing again because Fieryo died.

And then there’s the music. Someone was once talking to me about this play and how they thought it was crap because it reminded them of RENT. One’s opinion of RENT aside, these plays have nothing in common – except Idina Menzel, whom every musical should be blessed with. RENT broke form and didn’t have a traditional overture, gave their chorus interesting things to do instead of the big group sing, and broke down the musical sound that had been a staple of Broadway for ages. Wicked? It totally follows form and spends most of its time sounding like something the 70s shat out [At one point, it switched to the early 90s, so I kind of thought they were trying to show that Elphie had grown up, like Earth music-time had gone by, but then right back]. In his defense, many of the harmonies are interesting, and he gives Idina and Kristen some fun things to do that showcases their voices well. I’m not quite sure how they fit all that lung inside Kristen Chenoweth.

I shouldn’t really be getting mad about this, but way to take a subtle, nuanced book and splatter its brains all over the wall and then get the biggest brush possible to paint a picture of it. [I know that’s a mixed and rather disgusting metaphor – what I was going for was that it lacked both the intelligence and definition of the novel.] I’m sure Geoffrey Macquire is scowling all the way to the bank. [I also know I’ve bitched about this before, but it’s annoying. And now I have more ammo.

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Oh lord Jesus in Heaven, deliver us from atrocious scene partners.

My current affliction, man there’s just no nice way to say it, is stupid as shit. In the scene we’re doing from “Waiting for Godot,” they want to hang themselves, but they don’t have a rope. Gogo says, “What about my belt?” and then they test the strength of [something] to see if it will hold them. Miss Scenepartner says, “Okay, so we’re going to need a rope and a belt.” I stare at her for a moment, hoping that she’s putting me on, and as she stares blankly back, I realize that she doesn’t understand that they’re planning on using Gogo’s belt in place of a rope for the hanging. After I explain this, she still keeps acting like the belt isn’t on her person – indicating its presence somewhere a few feet from her every time she talks about it. My mother said, “Well maybe she’s just never read the play before; it can be difficult.” True, though I don’t think this particular moment is much of a intellectual leap, BUT Miss Scenepartner has actually done this scene before! She’s taking Adv. Scene Study for a second time!!! She also kept trying to bring chairs on stage, though the script clearly says there is only a tree and a mound. She’s also telling me how she hunched when she played Didi, my character – I think the implication was that I should hunch in a similar fashion (may I also mention that the actual statement was, “But I didn’t feel comfortable really hunching, so I just lowered my head.”) And doing things like coming up directly behind me to talk to me, meaning that I either have to completely turn my back on the audience to converse or I have to scamper away to deliver my lines; I chose the latter.

Holy Christ. How is she in this class? Not to mention, and it’s about to get even uglier, I totally saw this one coming. She is a total gamer, similar to those that populated my college, but viciously unwashed, unlike Mac gamers that looked as if they’d had a shower at least recently. I realize that it’s totally wrong to look at someone and make snap judgments, but everything about her appearance said, “I am really weird and have poor social skills.” She lived up to both statements just magnificently today. I was reminded quite forcefully of a moment in a Shakespeare class from college – Some people know the moment of which I speak. Sadly, my roommate does not remember Emily, and thus my recreation of, “And maybe it’s all stormy and Lady Macbeth is like a vampire, like a bat hovering at his window saying, “Let me in! Let me in!” and he doesn’t want to, but he has to because she’s his wife,” was lost on him.

I’m really hoping John dumped Miss Scenepartner on me now so that I won’t have to do a longer scene with her later. I really can’t hack it. I’m not amazing, not expecting an Academy Award in my lifetime, but some people just need to be told that spending $300 on an acting class is just not a good use of their hard-earned money. Anyone judging me right now: I know we’re all supposed to be nice, but in real life you wouldn’t want her either.

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I went to this acting workshop thing (which turned out to be more like a lecture thing, but no matter) and now I’m all excited about acting again. This, in turn, makes me think about going away this summer, but I reckon I should still go because the Audition Studio has been there for twenty-odd years, it’ll probably be there when I get back, whereas the greek olympics will only be there once (at least as far as I’m concerned; if I live another 2,000 years then there will be plenty of time for acting classes).

On my way home on the El platform there was a man in an Army uniform. I don’t know what his story was because I was only alerted to his presence when he began violently kicking one of the metal thingies on the platform and swearing. Being Chicagoans, we all gawked briefly and then treated him as if he didn’t exist and none of this had ever happened. All I could think was, “Right. Let’s give him a gun, then, and send him off to another country. Fine idea.” I said as much to the woman standing near me. She remarked that her brother was in the Navy, and they got in big trouble if they were late. This in no way changed my opinion about the gun thing.

I’m trying, in vain, once again to learn to love ‘The Three EPs’ by the Beta Band. Nope, sorry guys just hate it. I’ve decided that, with exceptions, I really dislike ambient, meandery popular music. Just give me a song with a couple verses, couple choruses, with bonus points for witty or insightful lyrics and complex harmonies. Oh, I also am generally against California punk after 1997. Fuck I have to turn this shit off.

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I went and saw Too Much Light last night. Highlights included a girl saying to another audience member “You jackass, this tastes like cat litter,” whilst trying to eat a bowl of “Disney’s Princess” cereal. The best play, however, was “Star Crossed Sweepers,” wherein two of those new little robot vacuums tried to find each other across a crowded stage. I nearly hyperventilated.

I bought a two track cd of the musical “Wicked.” I’ve learned from this disc that buying the entire thing would have been a giant mistake. Yet, I’ve also become strangely obsessed with one of the tracks. I kind of have to fast forward thru part of the track because it makes me want to put my fist through the stereo, but Idina Menzel’s voice just keeps drawing me in. The notes this woman can belt are in the upper ranges of my falsetto. And every single tone is a bell - it’s just stunning. The rest of the bits though sound like some early 90s horrible light rock crapola. Turns out, it’s by the same guy that wrote Pocahontas. Aside from the positive choice of casting Idina instead of Vanessa Williams, not much has changed or improved.

I’m currently slogging thru this Bill Bryson book about the history of the English language in America. It’s funny and has really interesting little factoids, but I think this is seriously the longest I’ve ever spent on a book in my life. I’ve had to renew it from the library twice. But I’m bloody well determined now. Also about 100 pages of the book randomly fell out of it one day. Hope that’s not a sign.

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