FIZZY, FLEET and FUNNY

You couldn't present a play like Private Lives today. Noel Coward's fizzy comedy of bad manners and wayward passions embraces themes that are always current — sexuality, morality, and gender roles. But attitudes toward these themes have shifted dramatically in the almost-century since the play was first produced in 1930. Things that seemed scandalous then barely raise an eyebrow today, while comedy bits once played for laughs trigger alarms in modern audiences.

 

For this reason, smart productions keep the action firmly rooted in its original era. And the Santa Cruz Shakespeare adaptation of Private Lives, that premiered Saturday night, is a very smart production. From the gorgeous Art Deco interiors of Thomas Bigley's scenic design to the super luxe gowns, dinner jackets, pajamas, and traveling outfits of costume designer Austin Blake Conlee, to the vintage music curated by sound designer Luke Shepherd, this delectable bon-bon of a production is shaped by canny director Laura Gordon as a tribute to its original era. But she never loses sight of how some of the more complex issues raised might land on modern sensibilities.

 

Beautifully acted by a cast of SCS stalwarts, the play adheres to Coward's signature style of ferociously witty and elegant people lobbing acerbic bon mots at each other over cocktails and cigarettes. (Continuous smoking might be one of those things that distance a modern audience, as much of the action hinges on the lighting, sharing, snuffing out, and general handling of cigarettes.)

 

Dewy young newlywed, Sybil (Charlotte Boyce Munson), is on the first night of her honeymoon with dashing, wisecracking Elyot (Charles Pasternak) at a French seaside resort. Sybil keeps trying to prompt the more experienced Elyot to assure her how much of an improvement she is over his first wife, Amanda, a volatile union that ended in divorce. He promises her that all he wants now is "love without drama."

 

Too bad for him, the honeymooning couple in the suite next door turn out to be Amanda (Paige Lindsey White) and her new husband, Victor (Chris Cherin). He's a stuffy, upstanding sort who like to believe he's rescued Amanda from her misspent past. Amanda admits her heart was "jagged with sophistication" during her time with Elyot, and yet, there seem to be depths and complexities to her character that Victor does not yet fathom.

 

The two suites share a balcony, and as soon as Elyot and Amanda clamp eyes on each other, the best-laid plans of both couples, er, go up in smoke. As Elyot and Amanda both try, and fail, to spirit their new spouses away before calamity strikes, old wounds are clawed open, and old rages rekindled — along with old passions. Victor sees a side of Amanda that makes him "afraid," while Amanda and Elyot declare "To Hell with love!" on the brink of reconnecting.

 

White's quicksilver Amanda is the heart of the production, sexy, savvy, and sensitive to the moment, but unwilling to compromise who she is for the comfort of others. (The lower registers of White's voice are especially sly and provocative.) Pasternak's Elyot is bursting with severe wit, sorely tried patience, and expansive bonhomie. His defense of his "flippancy" as opposed to Victor's "bluster," is priceless. Munson's affronted innocence as Sybil, and Cherin's Victor, clinging to his stoic decency ("I'm glad I'm normal!" he exclaims desperately, as madness bubbles up all around him), round out the cast, along with Izzy Pedego, very funny as a deadpan French maid bustling in and out of the action.

 

The show was considered quite racy in its day for depicting a couple "living in sin," and cheerfully discussing sex and sexuality (although supposedly tempered by the fact that, as previous spouses, they'd already known each other, carnally speaking). There's nothing remotely shocking about it, by today's standards. But when Elyot and Amanda's banter turns waspish, when their petty disagreements and bickering escalate into slugfests, we're a little taken aback. It's only a few resounding slaps, a record broken over a head, and some tussling on the floor. Clearly, it was intended as comedy back in the day, even a kind of foreplay between well-matched opponents, who don't actually want to cause physical harm. But these days, with physical contact (especially between the sexes) such a prickly, hot-button issue, the surprised gasps from the audience suggest how the cultural climate has shifted.

 

Nevertheless, Private Lives remains buoyantly true to its era, while offering up plenty of timeless insights into love and romance in a fleet and funny production.

 

 

The Santa Cruz Shakespeare production of Private Lives plays at the Audrey Stanley Grove at DeLaveaga Park through October 4 

 

TICKET TO RIDE

 

It was (ulp) 60 years ago today, that I went to my very first rock 'n' roll concert — The Beatles, at Dodger Stadium, in LA. August 28, 1966. Two days after my 14th birthday, I piled into a car with my girlfriends, Jeannine and Nora, driven by one of our stalwart moms, and hit the freeway from Hermosa Beach. I wore a rib-knit sleeveless turtleneck and corduroy skirt in beige, the color Paul wore in the Salisbury Plain scene in Help. 

I also carried the Paul doll I'd made out of muslin and wire (his face so lovingly drawn with felt tip pens), which I waved in the window, to the delight of every other carload of babbling teenage girls we passed on the way.

 

The stage, such as it was, was set up on the pitcher's mound. (No Jumbotron, no light show, with speakers about the size of the ones on my portable stereo.) Our seats were behind home plate — about eighteen stories up, in the nosebleed section. I believe our tickets cost $6 each. As for merch, all we got was this Beatles (USA) Ltd tour program, which I suppose might be a valuable collectible now, if I hadn't cut out every wallet-sized picture of Paul to carry around in my purse.

 

When the Beatles came bounding onstage, they looked like ants. They might as well have been ants, for all we could tell at that distance, or hear, for the non-stop barrage of screaming. But we recognized their trademark moves, and even though their primitive equipment didn't allow them to play anything much more complicated than "Ticket To Ride," it didn't matter. We were in the same place, breathing the same air, as the actual Beatles. 

 

As singular an event as it was in my own life (i.e.: Best. Day. Ever.), it was almost as momentous for the Beatles. The next night, they ended their tour at Candlestick Park in San Francisco — which would be the last live concert they ever performed together. (Except for the rooftop event at the Apple Corps headquarters in London, at the end of the Let It Be shoot, in 1969.)

 

You can now (of course) find amateur footage of the Dodger Stadium show on You Tube, which I find interesting, in an archaeological sense. But nothing compares to the rapture of memory.

 

Best six bucks I ever spent!

 

 

 

Above: 14-year-old me trying to torture my curly hair into straight bangs, like the Beatles' girlfriends! 

 

 

WICKED

Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s dynamic Macbeth chills and thrills 

There could be no more ideal setting for Macbeth than outdoors, on a dark and chilly night, under a stand of towering trees. The very trees rustle with menace in the Audrey Stanley Grove for Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s dynamic production of Shakespeare’s blood-soaked tragedy of hubris, ambition, and murder, witchy prophesies, and ghostly revenge. 

Paul Mullins directs with forceful intent, on a nearly bare stage devoid of any distraction. An upper deck, two staircases, and four long tables comprise Michael Schweikardt's scenic design. Three giant white-draped panels behind the stage provide the only backdrop, illuminated in Marcella Barbeau's clever lighting design to stand in for drafty stone castle walls, a green forest, or a crime scene bathed in blood red. Rodolfo Ortega's sound design of whistling wind and ominous rumbling before, during, and after the show, amps up the sense of unease. 

Dan Donohoe's performance as Macbeth is naturalistic and immediate. He doesn't declaim lines; ideas, fears, schemes, and sudden reversals of priorities burst out of him as fast and recklessly as he seems to be finding the words to express them. Occasionally, along the way, his eccentric cadence threatens to become a little sing-songy, but overall, he is the volatile spark that ignites this production. 

The ever-remarkable Paige Lindsey White partners him beautifully as Lady Macbeth, chief instigator of all his darker impulses. It's clear in this production that she does not inspire in her husband any treasonous plots that were not already lurking in his subconscious, but the ferocious clarity of her purpose, before, during, and after the evil deed, is utterly chilling. Her red gown and black jumper, devised by costumer designer extraordinaire, B. Modern, decks her out like a black widow spider. 

Festival favorite ML Roberts is impressive as soldier-statesman Macduff, a bastion of conscience and morality, in opposition to Macbeth. His grief is stark and electrifying when he learns his family has been murdered. Mike Ryan lends solid support as Macbeth's friend and lieutenant, Banquo, who learns that friendship is no defense against homicidal ambition. Allie Pratt departs from her more usual ingenue roles to play a spirited young Malcolm agitating for revenge after the murder of his father, the king. 

Banquo's ghost taunts Macbeth

Of course, for many of us, Macbeth, it's all about the witches, the "weird sisters" whose cryptic prophecy launches Macbeth on his murderous path to the throne. Here, they could have used a bit more lurid pizazz, in contrast to the stark, grey, minimalist production design, but this concept of them as elemental earth spirits, dabbling in human drama from the remote indifference of the natural world, is effective, in context. Carolyn Ratteray, Renee Torchiro MacDonald, and the inimitable Patty Gallagher speak all their incantations with resonant precision, and their cauldron scene is a showstopper, created by the four tables arranged with a hole in the center, a trapdoor, and Barbeau's splendid lighting effects. 

Derrick Lee Weeden makes a majestic King Duncan. But his murder is partly visible, behind a lattice upstage, so it’s confusing when Weeden rises up at the end of the scene, and comes out, still in Duncan’s bloody shirt, to play the part of the irascible porter opening the gate (although a great showcase for Weeden's versatility). However, the same trick works wonderfully later, when Banquo’s freshly killed body is abandoned on a platform stage right. When the action shifts to center stage for the banquet scene, it makes perfect sense for Banquo to rise up and stalk across the festivities, a vengeful ghost born of Macbeth’s guilt. 

Having thrilled us with the hurly-burly of this particular production, director Mullins leaves us with a coda of his own design — the return of the witches, to repeat the play's opening line, "Sisters, when will we three meet again?" Who will be next on the road to perdition?

(LOST) BOYS N the 'HOOD

40 years ago, Hollywood came to Santa Cruz

Forty years ago, this month, when Hollywood came to town to shoot a teenage vampire movie, nobody had any idea that The Lost Boys would become a cult phenomenon.

 

Sure, we locals loved it. The production crew was here for a couple of weeks, pouring Hollywood revenue into our hotels and restaurants, and employing hundreds of locals as extras. We loved seeing landmarks like Pogonip, the Boardwalk, and the train trestle over the river mouth up on the big screen.

 

What nobody could have predicted, was (fittingly enough, for a vampire movie) the extensive afterlife the movie would have beyond its original theatrical release — from midnight shows, revivals, and the advent of streaming, with its 24/7 access, all the way to Broadway, where an original stage musical adaptation just won four Tony Awards.

 

Little did we know, back in June 1986, when the movie was shot, what a cultural touchpoint it would become, not only in the annals of both vampire and teen angst movie genres, but as a snapshot of a very particular sort of hip 80s vibe. In which respect, director Joel Schumacher, cinematographer Michael Chapman, and production designer Bo Welch discovered that Santa Cruz was so ready for her close-up.

 

In the story, a recently divorced mom and her two teenage sons move from urban Phoenix to a sleepy California beach town to start a new life. Restless, 17-year-old Michael falls for a girl who runs with a seductive, yet sinister crowd of (literally) drop-dead cool kids who haunt the beachfront Boardwalk at night — and who turn out to be vampires. 14-year-old Sam starts hanging out at the local comic book store, where the owners' two tween sons try to convince him that vampires are running amok in the town, and enlist his aid in stamping out the bloodsucking menace.

 

Although the town is called Santa Carla in the movie, it taps into our early-'70s reputation as the "Murder Capital of the World," and the program of plastering the faces of missing children on milk cartons, to create a sense of real danger beneath the movie's teen comedy overtones. The plot turns on the scheming of glamorous alpha vampire, David, to induct Michael into their biker gang. The tagline — "Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire." — references Peter Pan, from which the movie gets its title. 

 

And if David is the Peter Pan figure in the movie, Santa Cruz is the Neverland.

 

From the first montage of Mom and the boys driving into town, with "People Are Strange," on the soundtrack, the fabled weirdness of our little burgh is on full display — drummers, dancers, street musicians, at least one snake-handler, surfers, punks, Goths, spikey Mohawks, and a panorama of jeans, leather, wetsuits, granny dresses, combat boots, and other items of trashy gypsy hipster chic. For a pivotal scene during a nighttime rock concert at the bandstand on the beach, the hundreds of locals hired as extras didn't even have to go through wardrobe and makeup — they already looked perfect!

 

Night scenes on the Boardwalk are shot around rippling tongues of flame, as if  bonfires were lit just out of camera range. Life in Santa Carla is one long, non-stop party, framed in torchlight and neon, and powered by jangly calliope music and scorching rock 'n' roll.

 

One particular thing the filmmakers loved about shooting in Santa Cruz was they didn't have to build a comic bookshop from scratch. Enter Atlantis Fantasyworld, operated by co-owners Joe Ferrara and my Art Boy, James Aschbacher. Their original, pre-quake building on Lower Pacific was cavernous; it had been a grocery store in the 1920s, with solid wood plank floors and a two-story high ceiling. When the crew folded back the giant accordion doors out front, they could roll the klieg lights right inside. The huge, freestanding shelving units in the middle of the room could be rolled aside to accommodate the lights, camera, and action of dozens of crew members loitering around the periphery on any given shot. 

 

The only problem was that Atlantis was not actually located on the Boardwalk, as the store in the movie is supposed to be. The solution was to build a replica section of the Boardwalk on the sidewalk in front of Atlantis, a plywood tunnel painted faded Boardwalk yellow, and complete with green benches, and the uber-eerie Laughing Sal automaton chortling right outside the door. When Schumacher decided there should be some graffiti on the wall outside the shop, he wielded the spray can himself. On the first day of shooting in the shop, production designer Welch marveled, "This is a monumental set to put up. You wouldn't even do this in TV!"

For three consecutive weekends, the faux Boardwalk facade was erected out on the sidewalk while the crew shot interiors inside the store. James and Joe auditioned to play the shop proprietors, but they didn't get the parts; Schumacher wanted a burnt-out hippie couple who slumped in front of the TV all day, instead of, you know, actually running the shop. But the two of them do appear in the movie for about six seconds, playing pinball in the background as Sam walks into the store. And the three of us got to hang out on set all three weekends, to discourage people from standing or walking on, or rolling equipment over the merchandise — and also ring up sales to crew members, who spend most of their time on movie sets waiting around to set up the next shot.

 

Forty years on, watching the movie again, I was surprised at  how short it is (89 minutes), how remarkably uncomplicated by any multiple plot threads, and what a conventional horror-movie finale it has — especially if you buy into the subtext of youth yearning to make community with their found tribe. Still, it captures as  evocative moment when Santa Cruz was (or was pereceived as) a fun and funky little beach town Neverland, with no delusions of metropolitan glamour. Those were the days, all right.

 

 

 

Above, upper right: Lost Boys call sheet

 

Above, left: Joe and James in Atlantis, with faux Boardwalk set visible outside the front door

 

Above: James and Joe at work, you know, running the shop, between takes 

 Right: 2 random onlookers fooling around on the set

PIRATES & PENANCE

 

Malinin and Sandokan: Profiles in Courage

 

What do triple toe-loops on the ice and pirates in tropical Southeast Asia have in common? Well, not much, except they were both at the top of my TV watchlist during last week's frigid winter storms.

 

After a long day at the keyboard, I like to chill in front of the tube at night, with a purring cat and a glass of wine, and having opted out of the news cycle to preserve what's left of my mental health, I found myself drawn into the figure skating competition at the Winter Olympics. At the same time, I happened upon Sandokan: The Pirate Prince, an 8-episode, Italian swashbuckler now streaming on Netflix.

 

For a week, I was madly channel-hopping between the two (although there are a thousand ways you can catch up with any Olympic events you might have missed), so that the two programs became almost inextricably linked in my brain. Both offer equal opportunities to cheer triumphs, commiserate with losses, cheer on underdogs, and explore complicated personalities. And both came loaded with plenty of drama.

 

Sandokan caught my eye, because, you know, pirates, even though I'd never heard of anybody in the cast, or the source material it's based on, a series of Victorian-era adventure novels by Emilio Salgari about a Malaysian pirate battling the English during the Age of Empire. And after a fairly ripping first episode, it almost lost me as it threatened to devolve into typical romantic fodder about a hunky pirate captain and his hostage, a snippy, entitled young beauty flinging insults and vitriol about to maintain her moral superiority — in short, all the tropes I wanted to subvert when I wrote my pirate novel, The Witch From the Sea, about a woman who becomes a working member of a pirate crew for the freedom of the open seas.

 

But the heroine, Marianne, soon drops her attitude, and gets drawn into the larger story of colonialism, attempted genocide, rebellion, and liberation. (Indeed, while there's a decent amount of shipboard action, these pirates are less interested in plunder than in battling English invaders who would steal their resources and enslave their people.) There's also the evolving mystery of pirate Sandokan's true origin, and heroic destiny. Along the way, we meet salty pirates, exotic natives, spirited women, and a plethora of sinister antagonists, including the corrupt English consul (Marianne's father), and an opium-smoking British naval captain out to hunt pirates, and the ruthless, sybaritic local sultan, with a taste for torture, both of whom have designs on Marianne.

 

Sexy Sandokan is played by Turkish-Albanian actor Can (pronounced "Gian") Yaman, a formidable presence with a searing gaze, who can twirl a scimitar like a cheerleader's baton. It took a while to warm up to Alanah Bloor as heroine Marianne, but she becomes more interesting as the story gains traction. I especially liked the dance-as-foreplay motif in which their romance evolves over a couple of elaborate set pieces, a formal ball at the consulate, and later, a Lunar New Year celebration in Singapore.

 

Meanwhile, over at the Olympics, most of the drama for Team USA centered on skaters who didn't quite live up to expectations. Champion ice dancing pair Madison Chock and Evan Bates "only" won silver, and there was some whining about a French judge whose scores might have elevated French pair Laurence Fournier and Guillaume Cizeron to the top spot. Yes, the Americans skated beautifully, but so did the French; I loved the precision of their Rhythmic category performance to Madonna's "Vogue."

 

But the story of the event — possibly of this entire Olympics — was 21-year-old figure skater Ilia Malinin, from Fairfax, Virginia. The son of two Russian figure skaters, Malinin, nicknamed the Quad God, is a star on the tournament circuit; he's like the Simone Biles of figure skating, doing amazing things on ice never before attempted, let alone achieved, by any other human, like the insanely difficult quadruple axel, and back flips. 

 

He and his Team USA cohorts had already won gold as a team. But, heavily favored to take gold in the individual event, he stunned the world with a poor performance, falling down twice in his final routine. The crowd cheered him on, anyway, but as he came off the ice, completely out of medal competition, and composed, but obviously disheartened, his father and coach exchanged a few words with him, but did not hug him. There wasn't a person in America, probably the world, that didn't want to give that kid a hug right that minute, except his dad. Fortunately, his other trainer stepped up and enveloped him in a massive embrace. A few minutes later, when the expected second-place winner, Mikhail Shaidorov,  from Kazakhstan, realized he'd been elevated to gold, Malinin trotted over to give him a congratulatory hug. Shaidorov was overwhelmed, and they held on to each other for a few minutes, the only two people in the entire arena who understood what the other was going through.

 

But having lost the gold in penance, Malinin found redemption. The hottest ticket at the Winter Olympics is always the Exhibition Gala on the last night, where skaters present routines out of competition, with no mandatory elements, and do whatever they want. Malinin skated to the song, "Fear," by a rapper called NF; dressed in jeans and a dark gray hoodie, he confronted darkness, disillusion, and crippling self-doubt, landed every masterful jump and flip (on a single blade, fer cryin' out loud), and emerged triumphant.

 

 

And here's the thing: no one will ever remember the disappointing free skate that landed him in 8th place instead of on the podium in the men’s individual competition. But no one will ever forget his exhibition program — it may become the defining image of this year’s games.

WILL POWER

Life initiates Art in graceful, passionate Shakespearean rhapsody, Hamnet

 

The words of William Shakespeare speak so directly to the heart, and to one's lived experience, that no context is needed. You don't require supplemental notes or background material to get swept up in the reckless joy of young love in Romeo and Juliet, the naked ambition of Macbeth, or the fatal hubris of King Lear.

 

So, the idea of creating a semi-fictional backstory on the events of Shakespeare's life leading up to and including the writing of his masterpiece, Hamlet, may seem superfluous, at the very least, if not downright foolhardy. Nonetheless, such was the conceit of Maggie O'Farrell's recent bestselling novel, Hamnet, now brought to the screen with extraordinary passion, delicacy, and restraint by filmmaker Chloe Zhao.

 

The story begins with the meeting of Will (Paul Mescal), educated son of a country glovemaker, hired to tutor a neighbor's sons in Latin, and Agnes (pronounced An-yis) (Jessie Buckley), from another country family nearby, who is rumored to be the daughter of a forest witch. Will is driven to write from the vastness of his soaring imagination. Agnes is a child of nature, an expert at herbal lore and remedies, who keeps a pet hawk. Their handfast marriage produces three children, and evolves to accommodate Will's frequent trips away to London, where his playwriting leads him.  

 

Their only son, Hamnet (an impish and tender Jacobi Jupe), is known to have died unexpectedly at age 11, the seminal incident through which Zhao and O'Farrell (who adapted the screenplay together) imagine the psychological forces that fueled the writing of the play. Most of us don't need any more reasons to admire Shakespeare's words, but the snippets from Hamlet that waft through the film, in rehearsals, or, ultimately, onstage at the Globe, filtered through the lens of the playwright's overwhelming grief and guilt at not being there during the crisis, are delivered with such heartbreaking fervor and immediacy, and feel so starkly expressive, it's like hearing them for the first time.

 

Mescal is particularly effective as Will directs the actor playing the part of Hamlet onstage, or takes the part of the ghost of Hamlet's father himself, bidding his son his final, heartfelt adieus. Also pretty great is Noah Jupe, as the young actor playing Hamlet onstage. Especially in the play (and the film)'s transcendent final moments, when Agnes is there to share in the redemptive power of what Will has created. (For an extra layer of resonance, Noah and Jacobi Jupe are brothers in real life.)

 

(The only scene that doesn't quite work in this regard is when Will, at a moment of profound despair, peers over the edge of a dock above the Thames and murmurs the first few lines of "To be or not to be . . . "  Is he just reciting these lines from the play because it's just such an atmospheric setting? Or is he supposed to be making up this brilliant speech on the spot, intact, without a single misplaced word?)

 

Will is the one with the gift for verbalizing his feelings, at least on paper, and onstage. But it's Agnes whose visceral experience of the story's deep emotions carries the movie, and Buckley's performance is absolutely fearless. The childbirth scenes are harrowing and compelling, the first when she goes alone into the forest to give birth within the giant, gnarled roots of an ancient tree, and the second, in a room with a midwife and a stool, when she delivers infant Hamnet and his stillborn twin, Judith, whom Agnes coaxes and bullies back to life through sheer force of will. Soft-spoken, a little saucy, and uncompromising, she is the movie's beating heart.

 

 

Zhao, also listed as co-producer and co-editor, must get most of the credit for the movie's look, tone, and sensibility. Some twilit interiors are so dim, you can barely see what's going on, as are exteriors in dank, perpetually hazy London. (Don't try watching this on a home screen, kids, it needs space!) But the scenes in Agnes' beloved forest are always vibrant and alive.

 

In particular, that gigantic tree on which Zhao's camera so lovingly feasts in the movie's opening moments, comes to represent the entirety of nature in all its scarred and towering nobility.