Accent on Youth
As summer creeps to a close, I thank the stars for the Shins: look beneath the mind-bending time signatures of this pop group and you’ll find a neo-folk style that straddles eras as well as genres. Its easy evocation of coltish youth suits Trey McIntyre’s choreography for the Shins-titled Oh, Inverted World, part of the...
Why my heart doesn’t go dancing
Is April the kindest, or the cruelest month? The party line affirms the first: it’s the time of rebirth when saucer magnolias pop their tragic blooms, crocuses and tulips sprout, warm weather hints and Easter descends, toting tales of resurrection. I’m not feeling it, which makes me wonder if I ever have. Chocolate bunnies excepted,...
Firsts: Don Cornelius 1936-2012, Camilla Williams 1919-2012, Ben Gazzara 1930-2012
You turned on the TV on Saturday afternoon and there he was, the envy of every black boy on the block. It was his high style and aspirational exhortations that drew us each week, mirrored more youthfully by the Soul Train dancers, whose moves we copied for use on our own dance floors: street corners,...
James Farentino 1938-2012; Nicol Williamson 1936-2012; Eiko Ishioka 1938-2012
Farentino was lethal: a handsome actor whose performances ranged from Happy in Lee J. Cobb’s Death of a Salesman (later onstage as Biff to George C. Scott’s Willie) to Juan Peron in the Faye Dunaway telefilm “Evita Peron.” My favorite: his hotheaded lawyer in TV’s The Bold Ones. The Scotsman Williamson was a pretty decent...
Shortcuts: Coriolanus
Fiennes, with Vanessa Redgrave Was it accidental, or did Ralph Fiennes anticipate the cries of the rabble? At the beginning of Coriolanus, Fiennes’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s parabolic tale of a war hero who, prodded by minions and his politic/duty-bound matriarch (Vanessa Redgrave, better than ever, if that’s possible) loses the courage of his convictions...
Alan Sues, Comic Actor 1926-2011
There was Liberace, Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly and on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, Alan Sues. What a quartet of flamboyant personalities who blazed on prime time when I was coming of age. In the 70s their very names were punchlines, code for every euphemism of that other f-word even as the longhaired hippies and...
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Season’s Dreams
A reason for the seasons was what I got when, in grade school, I was taught the myth of Demeter and Persephone; the idea that a spell could be cast to wither grass and leaves made a stronger impression than the myth’s true focus: a mother’s longing for a daughter she could only see six...
Of Reliquaries and Retrospects
The mournful qualities of fall—all those dying leaves whose color mimics that of dried blood—complement the inaugural season at New York LiveArts, the still-young merger between Dance Theater Workshop and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Dance Company. With evergreen works by Jones and John Kelly being remounted, how intriguing that so far the theater unfolding in the...
Mourning Songs for a Theater, in a City Still Reeling
This week in Manhattan, Ground Zero isn’t the only repository of grief and longing. At the Marriott Marquis Theater in midtown, you’ll find a different kind of mourning going on. Before the curtain rises on the current revival of Follies, Stephen Sondheim’s 1971 elegiac musical, the audience is treated to a scene familiar to that...
Cliff Robertson 1923-2011
No, he wasn’t a big star. He was, however, a dependable leading man with a solid career in TV and films, nabbing an Oscar for his title portrayal in 1968′s Charly. The momentum from that win was hampered when he publicly took David Begelman to task, exposing the former head of MGM as an embezzler...
Jane White, Actress 1922-2011
“Who is that?” I recalled thinking as a child when I first saw Jane White in a television version of Once Upon a Mattress. As the imperious Queen Aggravain, her performance was a lesson in comedy and drop-dead stylishness; she was something special, and I looked forward to seeing her again. But sightings were rare—hers...
Betting on the Redhead
Something to Look Forward to Dept: Lucille Ball’s birthday is today; had she lived, that madcap comedienne would’ve been 100. But another redhead’s stealing her thunder this week. The season of Lauren Ambrose is upon us; I was elated to see she’s appearing as a rabid press agent on the new season of my favorite...
