Larry Stark's open letter to the A.R.T.

I was surprised to receive an e-mail yesterday from Larry Stark, longtime Boston critic (and IRNE member), as well as editor of the website The Theater Mirror. His note included a link to a post that he said I "might want to glance at." Well, I took a glance - and found the post quite heart-warming. So the first thing I want to do is thank Larry for his support. The second thing I want to do is share his post with you.  It's an open letter to the A.R.T. - the kind of thing they're getting a lot of these days - regarding the recent brouhaha regarding yours truly.  The letter kind of speaks for itself, so I'll just let it do that - but again, thanks, Larry. [The IRNEs ceremony is tonight, btw. Things could get interesting.]

Regrettably, until further notice, I shall not be attending any productions by the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.). Let me explain:

I have frequently been critical of other critics. In some cases, this has been my "internal editor" quibbling about style; at other times, it has been an attempt to let critics feel the personal pain that damaging criticism can cause in people who must get up before another audience knowing that critics' comments have shaped what at least some in that audience might thus believe.

But, even admitting these opinions, I believe even the harshest of critics, deep down, really love theater --- that creators and critics are really "on the same side". Sometimes it may look as though a critic Loves Theater To Death; still, in an austere era many of my colleagues are continuing to write critiques without being paid to do so, their love is that strong. And they try to apply their personal standards in as impartial a manner as possible, though it may not always look that way from outside. That, I think, is the critic's job.

The job of a Public Relations Coordinator for any particular theater company, though, is necessarily biased. The goal there is to get that same potential audience to view the company's shows in the best possible light, to see and appreciate what is there, and to come back again and again for more. And it may seem that P/R people and critics are at war --- especially when they disagree, with one seeing only negatives while the other must accentuate the positive.

But those on both sides operate in what is called "The Free Marketplace of Ideas" --- and audience-members may decide for themselves which one is right. This, at least, is how I assume the game should be played.

Lately, I have heard rumors that a vicious "kill the messenger" attitude threatens this entire structure. I have often voiced my opinions privately or written them publically, but deliberate attempts to disgrace or disbar or silence someone's free voice I cannot tolerate nor condone. I therefore sent the following letter to the producer at the American Repertory Theatre protesting what I see as disgraceful behavior, stretching back over many years, that has no place in that "Marketplace of Ideas" which I fervently hope will remain Free.


To: Diane Borger, Producer, AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATRE

Dear Ms. Borger:

Of late I have heard astonishing stories and rumors of the antics of a person in your employ referred to as "Catty" by those who have had contact with her. I undertstand that Public Relations work necessarily involves some sorts of manipulation; however, if even half of what I've been told
is true, this person has no ethical standards whatever. I am astonished that you continue to employ anyone who so totally misunderstands her profession, and mine.

You must realize that in the climate created by her actions, any positive reviews of your company's work can be construed as written out of fear of this woman's power to ruin the reputation of anyone voicing opposite opinions.

I cannot believe you are ignorant of this situation, but you must be aware that continuing to employ her in such a sensitive position can only be construed as approval of such behavior by the American Repertory Theatre, which I fervently hope cannot be the case.

But if you condone such actions, I cannot.

I cannot in good conscience continue to work with anyone who behaves with such vindictive misunderstanding of her job, and mine. To do so would suggest that I myself condone such behavior, which is decidedly Not the case.

Should there be a change in personnel in future, I would appreciate your notifying me.

Sincerely,

===Larry Stark

of Theater Mirror

I finally caught The Blue Flower at the A.R.T. just before it closed, and I was very much struck by one thing about it:

It was clearly a labor of love.

You don't always feel this at the theatre, believe me - and you almost never feel it at the A.R.T. But it was obvious that this weirdly melancholic "musical" (it's really a song cycle with a video, but never mind) had all but been doted on by its creators, Jim and Ruth Bauer (of Beverly, Mass!).

Now I'm never one to snicker at real feeling. But this time I had to at least allow myself a small, sad smile. For while it's obvious the Bauers are deeply in love with their putative subject - the "degenerate" German art of the first half of the century - at the same time it's utterly clear they don't understand that art in the least. They're clueless as to the object of their worship; they're like characters out of one of those books by Oliver Sacks - you know, the men who mistake their wives for hats, or the people who lead full, emotional lives despite deep perceptual deficits.

This gives The Blue Flower more poignance than anything in its supposed "book" (even though said book covers two world wars and the rise of Hitler!). Composer Bauer is certainly not a lyricist, and really not that much of a melodist either; but he conjures sweetly mournful pop textures through a gentle blend of cabaret and country instrumentation. And visual artist Ruth has dreamt up plenty of striking imagery to play out on the movie screen she has placed center stage.  Director Will Pomerantz hasn't gotten all that far with the "theatrical" side of the production, however - it often looks, in fact, like a bunch of people wandering around at the movies.  And while the cast proved capable and appealing, they couldn't really make much headway against the schematic design of both the staging and the book.

Moreover,  I have to say that in intellectual terms, The Blue Flower is appalling - nearly as appalling as The Donkey Show, in fact. It's hopelessly dishonest and deeply silly; it's just not offensive because the Bauers themselves seem so sweet.

You've probably heard the musical revolves around characters 'inspired' by Max Beckmann, Franz Marc, Hannah Höch, Marie Curie. These cultural body-doubles engage in a decades-long ménage à trois (or quatre) that is torn apart, Doctor-Zhivago style, by war, then fascism, and then more war. To borrow another movie metaphor, like Jules and Jim and Catherine, these four all love each other so much, and they make so much great art (or science!) as they fight the madness that surrounds them.

Needless to say, though, Their Love Is Not to Be. Suicide, the Nazis, and finally a heart attack, pick them off, one by one. A tragedy, no? Yes, of course - and also pretty much total bull.

I know, I know, every play or musical from biographical material fudges its facts; and the Bauers admit their doomed quartet were only "inspired" by Beckmann, Marc, Curie and Höch.  Still, how far can "inspiration" be made to stretch?  Marie Curie never met Beckmann, Marc, or Höch - and actually, I'm not sure Beckmann and Höch ever met Marc, either, before his premature death (which was not a suicide, btw, as posited here).  As for the two characters who actually did meet in real life - Beckmann and Höch -  they hardly fell in love; in fact, they dissed each other (and Beckmann didn't think much of Marc and his fellow Expressionists, either).  And need I add that Höch did not resist the Nazis, as claimed here (instead she laid low, and thus survived)?  Or that Marie Curie did not die in a concentration camp?  (She passed away - in France - just before the Nazis came to power.)  Indeed, even the art in question is misrepresented (it was Höch, not Beckmann, for instance, who worked in collage).

Of course all these inaccuracies are uninteresting in and of themselves - they're only interesting insofar as they reveal a pattern, a pattern of relentlessly saccharine commercialization. Which renders the art that's supposedly at the center of the whole enterprise (at left) flat and uninteresting - we never sense the overwhelming disgust that powered Beckmann, or the passionate lyricism that burned within Marc, or even the alienated, quirky weirdness that animated Höch.  And of course the internecine battles between their various scenes - as well as within them (Höch could never make headway with the Dadaists because of their sexism, for instance) -  are all but ignored.

So we're left with some pretty musical textures, and yet another example of Diane Paulus's strange determination to fuck the A.R.T.'s founding concept up the ass.  I admit I find the whole spectacle disturbing, yet fascinating - I can't turn away, in fact.  What's almost admirable about Ms. P., in a scary way, is that what she has done has been entirely an inside job.  (But then I suppose it had to be.)  In much the same way that Mikhail Gorbachev spent decades droning on in party congresses about praxis and the proletariat before bringing down the Berlin Wall, so Ms. Paulus spent years imitating her mentors' delusions (her early productions are indistinguishable from the standard boho/Soho template), only to turn their whole raison d'être inside out once she had the chance.  The A.R.T.'s founder, Bob Brustein, was bent on confronting the bourgeoisie - and his heir, with perverse logic, has turned this very idea into a form of bourgeois entertainment!

I suppose that irony is as nothing to the new political alignment at Harvard.  But isn't the disinformation peddled by The Blue Flower kind of problematic for an institution with the motto of "Truth"?  Because I'm afraid there's very little of that - either artistically, historically, or intellectually - in The Blue Flower.

Brustein in winter

Hub Review readers know I'm not a fan of Robert Brustein (above, in a wintry pastiche), and his tenure at the American Repertory Theatre (which he founded) I regard as a pretty profound failure - a long experiment which year after year, season after dismal season, disproved its own thesis.  For decades, in fact, Brustein wasted literally millions in public and private funds in a quixotic quest to "revolutionize" theatre in something like the way the wannabe communards of Columbia University (where he got his Ph.D.) thought they could transform politics in 1968.

Obviously, the A.R.T. managed no such feat.  Indeed, Brustein's idea that his critical eye could re-invigorate the entire American theatre (note the pretentious moniker he chose for his company) proved egocentrically overblown; America moved on without him, or his fellow travelers in Manhattan and the university circuit. After a strong start (with productions like The King Stag and Six Characters in Search of an Author, both of which were revived for years), the company soon found itself treading water, while clinging to a dated vision of the "cutting edge." It had the (very) occasional hit (like Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror), but subscribers still missed most everything that mattered in the theatre over the past generation; they never heard from Tony Kushner, or August Wilson, or Caryl Churchill, David Hare, Sarah Kane, or Tracy Letts (and they saw several musicals, but none by Stephen Sondheim). Tellingly, when a living writer of real stature (Dario Fo, Sam Shepard) graced the theatre's stages, it was almost always with work done in the 60's or 70's; because while the A.R.T.'s internal culture was militantly avant-garde, it was obviously nostalgic in what it thought of as avant.

Part of the problem was that Brustein's theories leaned heavily on directorial intervention, and thus turned his theatre into a formalist hothouse hostile to writers engaging with the actual culture. Inevitably, this theory (like all theories) forced the A.R.T. to retreat into an academic and political bubble. But of course Brustein was operating inside an academic and political bubble, at Harvard. And Harvard's king around here, of course - and if the king wants to stage an ersatz revolution every season, the peasants inevitably show up.  Meanwhile Brustein's career had made him superbly connected within the academic establishment, while his position as one of the country's last nationally-published drama critics made most reviewers loathe to cross him. So there was no way to stop him; his reign of error ground on until 2001.

When he finally left, there was a leap of interest in his successor, Robert Woodruff, and judging from figures recently published by the Boston Globe, moribund attendance at the A.R.T. suddenly jumped. But something went down between Woodruff and the university administration - and he was soon pushed from his post (why this occurred remains a source of rumor and debate). After a search that lasted over two years - and three seasons of further decline - Diane Paulus was installed as Woodruff's replacement.

But the soap opera only continued. Paulus quickly alienated - then eviscerated - her staff, and pretty much dis-assembled what was left of the acting company. She installed her husband, a burlesque impresario, as manager of A.R.T.'s second space, and opened their private moneymaker, The Donkey Show, which I think is still running there along with other New Age strip acts, including web diva Amanda Palmer, who's starring in a sold-out version of Cabaret directed by her high school drama teacher (which is resonant in just so many ways).

A backlash began to form, of course, but Paulus hired other business associates to bolster her power, and many local writers, who are essentially rock fans rather than theatre fans, responded to her embrace of the club scene. Plus Paulus had a trump card in her gender; dim "progressives" (with images of the fatuous Larry Summers still fresh in their memories) were sure to howl if she were to be fired - even though it was widely known that she was almost never at her theatre, but was instead attending to her New York career (as her buddy at the Huntington, Peter DuBois, is also prone to do).

But wait, the world's still turning for the young and the restless. As the actors dumped by the A.R.T. began to be seen more around town (by audiences too smart to waste their time at the Loeb), they began to be viewed as local heroes. One, Will Lebow, even wrote an open letter to Harvard expertly skewering Paulus's bad faith. Even more damagingly, Rob Orchard, a former member of the A.R.T. staff, began to gear up at Emerson College what you could think of as a kind of academic "third way" - a theatrical season of genuine intellectual challenge that was also emotionally satisfying, and thus commercially viable. (Last month it began with a BAM, if you will, with two hits, Fraulein Maria and the Laramie Residency.) Finally, word came out that Robert Brustein himself, in a gesture of profound dismay, had resigned from the A.R.T. board.

Not that that matters, really. But it's touching somehow; the dream is once again over, and once again we'll have to carry on. Brustein has had to abandon his brain-child, and I'm sure that hurt (as has its eventual artistic fate). In a recent exchange with former Globe critic Ed Siegel, Brustein even sounded a little defensive when Siegel hinted at what the rest of the city is saying out loud - that Orchard's ArtsEmerson has taken over the high-end cultural space Paulus's ART has evacuated. Which led Brustein to describe many ART productions as "light-hearted," a statement which I think made many readers' jaws drop. The ART was never light-hearted - not ever; it didn't know how to be; it just didn't have that generosity of spirit. That was part of why so many people hated it. In his comment, Brustein lists a series of shows (most of which I saw) which, it's true, were all intended as comedies, but generally relied on the crassest kind of humor to put over that idea; watching them was like watching Robespierre or Lenin do stand-up. And they were all so cold - "comedy" at the ART was seen as the formal flip-side of the theatre's usual chilly, rarefied post-surrealism. You could argue that at their best, the brutal shenanigans had a point - but then again, perhaps they were just playing to the cruelty of the Harvard home crowd (not for nothing did Harvard birth the legendarily nasty National Lampoon).

And at any rate, I wonder if Diane Paulus is really so far from Brustein's true legacy - that is the legacy of the "revolutionary" sixties filtered through Soho in the seventies. Amusingly, when Paulus does attempt a "straight" ART-style show, like Paradise Lost, she comes up with something remarkably like what Brustein used to produce on a regular basis (indeed, something like what she actually used to see when she was a student at Harvard!). Clearly, Paulus thinks these two modes are compatible - and I have a hunch she's right; or rather that all she has really done is commercialize the dream of orgiastic freedom that floated beneath the supposed rigor of so many ART productions. The few times I interacted with Brustein (he didn't know who I was at the time), he struck me as an avuncular, but inveterate, snob - and that snobbery certainly reverberated throughout his theatre. And it's that snobbery which gave Paulus her opening; all she has really done is down-market Brustein's vision to the bourgeoisie he despised. So sadly enough, the lion in winter set his own trap.

What's actually interesting about Paulus, in fact, is not her hand-me-down aesthetics, but the way in which in her commercial ambitions she's a kind of an avatar of the university system in general, which for the last generation has been talking about how important it was to "leave the ivory tower behind." Well, now they've left it, and taken up residence at the disco and the mall. And Brustein has seen his faux revolution put in the front window, with a price tag on it. The funny thing is - it was crass then. And it's crass now. Plus ça change, as they say in Au Bon Pain.

Will LeBow has his say

To all those who have been writing in - Will LeBow's open letter on the A.R.T. can be found here, at "www.LeBowTheatreEssay.blogspot.com." In other developments, LeBow lays into Globe reporter Geoff Edgers here, for distorting his message as "the stodgy old guard resisting the new exciting innovative regime." LeBow's quite right about the Edgers article - it does distort his letter - although frankly, that distortion merely reflects the attitude that suffuses the Globe in general, doesn't it.

Money quotes from LeBow's letter:



"Shakespeare serves the The Donkey Show as an effective marketing tool, but the process is not adaptation. It is not reinvention. It is, simply and precisely, exploitation. The resulting shows were popular, fun, and in one case visually stunning, but they contained none of the power, intellect, and beauty of Shakespeare. They didn’t need to. That’s not how they seek to impact the audience.

How did academia respond? Well, in a related panel discussion, a leading Harvard Shakespearean scholar, Marjorie Garber, apparently didn’t miss the text at all. Happily confessing that she “shook her booty at The Donkey Show”," she affirmed that "It's still Shakespeare," and “it will cause people to pick up and read Midsummer Night’s Dream.” To that last quote I say, “Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.” (That’s Shakespeare for “ain’t gonna happen, IMO”) . . .

What’s happening at a.r.t. is not “expanding the limits of theater.” It is diminishing it into a populist form. These shows seek to impact the audience the way a drug like cocaine does. By introducing elements of sex, drugs, booze, hot dynamic music, and the power rush of the crowd, and also by blurring the line between performer and audience, you can create an anodyne state in the theatre - pain-controlled, and intellectually narcotized, with, ideally, a euphoric rush or two or three. And it’s an environment where people will be more inclined to spend at the bar.

What has also happened simultaneously at a.r.t. is an almost complete replacement of the artistic and production staff and acting company. So, references to “a new direction for the company” or “how the ART thinks or feels about an issue”, are meaningless. That company no longer exists. That company WAS its people, giving heart and soul to Robert Brustein’s vision. That company has been replaced with a corporate model, complete with the power centric CEO (the Artistic Director being so officially named). The company’s new Financial Officer was formerly at Clear Channel, two words that send a chill up the spine of Equity Actors everywhere . .

What’s at stake right now is the direction of theatre in America, the function of the actor in the theatre, and the model of the regional theatre company moving forward. In my mind the stakes have never been higher. I believe we need to focus on and prioritize the reasons for doing theatre in the non-profit venue. My hope is for money and power to lose the top spot on the list, to a theatre of ideas, insight, and great heart."

I couldn't have said it better myself. I mean doesn't LeBow just nail it, from Marjorie Garber's booty to Clear Channel? But as for Harvard flushing Paulus and returning to some level of intellectual integrity - don't count on it as long as the money is rolling in. I still think our only hope may be to find a way to go after the nonprofit status of the A.R.T. legally, but that's probably just a pipe dream!

Racism strikes out; or, whitewashing the Red Sox at the A.R.T.

Huck and Jim watch The Curse play out from their time-raft in Johnny Baseball.

I swore to myself I wouldn't write about Johnny Baseball. But I suppose I have to, because so little of any value has been said about it. The Globe's Louise Kennedy was lukewarm to the show, but her general response was completely forgotten once she threw one of her out-of-political-left-field screwballs at the production, claiming it relied on "cheaply homophobic" jokes. I prefer expensively homophobic jokes, myself - but this was one of Louise's keepers, I must admit, if only because this time literally no one - and I mean no one - could tell what the hell she was talking about. Good old Louise - for synthetic controversy, you can't beat her.

Meanwhile in the Herald, Jenna Scherer's lede was kind of a head-scratcher in another way ("It isn't obnoxious," she enthused). Then Bill Marx wrote one of his "this little entertainment was energetic, but really beneath my critical authority as Grand Poobah" reviews. The Times's Ben Brantley wittily picked the show apart (largely because it is, indeed, kind of a ripoff of Memphis), and Variety seemed to love it before a killer close - something about it someday "being ready for the big leagues." That had to hurt.

Of course at the same time that the critics were hemming and hawing, Red Sox Nation did embrace the show (which was extended). And why not - it did two things, after all: it treated the trivia around which these sad people have built their lives with utter seriousness, and even more importantly, it absolved them of the charge of racism.

Not that Red Sox Nation was ever, ever racist. Of course not. The Yawkeys were racist; the management was racist. Oh, and of course Boston was long organized (and to some extent still is) in a form of geographic apartheid. The integration of the public schools - which hit at the center of the Sox audience - led to riots, in fact, in the 70's.

But the Red Sox fans themselves were not racist. Or sure, maybe they once were. Maybe some of them were, once.

But not now.

Or at least that's what Johnny Baseball would like you to believe. And "believing" is big in this musical. The bedraggled fans in the bleachers in the storied play-off game in 2004 that frames the musical all "believe" in the Sox. And they are just a crustily lovable bunch of white trash kooks, believe you me! So lovable! Which makes you want to "believe" right along with them. Until you suddenly think - what are we all "believing" in, exactly? I mean didn't the fans in 1919 and 1948 "believe" just as much as the ones in 2004? Hmm. So what's different? Well, the musical explains over the course of two hours, then the Red Sox were racist. And now they're not.

You see the problem, even if director Diane Paulus and her creative team keep a studiously blind eye aimed in its direction. What changed about the Red Sox and its audience? And how and when did it change? That's the question at the bottom of their putative theme. Certainly there's room for a popular musical about racism and the Sox - but to be of any value, it would have to address those questions.

But Paulus & Co. literally offer us no clue. And their "bleacher creatures" seem even more in the dark, as it were. Every amusing flaw and quirk about them is exposed - their drinking, their gambling, their petty crimes, even their masturbation habits. And in the persons of the ART's crack comic cast, their litany of Charlestown/Southie (but not, of course, Wellesley/Weston) foibles is, indeed, pretty funny. The only thing we don't hear about them, come to think of it, is their current feelings on race. Even though they're all white (as were 100% of the adults in the audience the night I saw the show). Because, of course, to broach that subject would suddenly open up genuinely raw feelings, and real questions of guilt and social justice.

And the box office of Johnny Baseball would tank. And all that really great "populism" would go to waste!

So we're stuck in some sort of daydream-timewarp of a show that we get the impression is supposed to operate as a kind of musical confessional - if Boston will only just admit that in the 40's it was racist - or actually just that Tom Yawkey and Joe Cronin were racist - then all will be forgiven. By Diane Paulus. Or maybe Harvard.

Okay, whatever. All I have to say is that as a money machine, this show may prove golden (in Boston, at least); but as "populist art with integrity," it's transparent b.s.; it just doesn't grapple with its own ideas. Indeed, it completely whitewashes (sorry) its central figure, the mythical "Johnny O'Brien" a.k.a. "Johnny Baseball" (Colin Donnell). Now let's see: Johnny's a white Irishman in the early years of the last century - and yet he has no racial baggage at all. He's ready to vote for Obama back in 1918, in fact - and falls head over heels for African-American chanteuse Daisy (Stephanie Umoh) in a heartbeat, even though she entertains in a bordello. What a nice open-minded boy! He's so - how to say this - so . . . so fucking unbelievable.

Now if Johnny Baseball had shown the eponymous Johnny struggling with his own received attitudes when faced with love, it might have had some real dramatic power. But the decision to eschew this topic turns both Johnny and Daisy into sweet, pretty blanks, and entirely cripples Richard Dresser's book. And as a result there's just no real conflict for anybody to play in the show; there are evil racists afoot, of course, until near the end, when suddenly there aren't anymore. We don't even really understand why, precisely, the Curse is lifted when it is. But who the hell cares? The Sox win the pennant! The end.

Still, the show has one secret weapon: its lyrics. Rarely has a musical depended on its lyricist (Willie Reale) as heavily as Johnny Baseball does; indeed, his lyrics aren't just the best thing about the show; they actually drive the production. Reale's knowledge of the Sox milieu - coupled with a wit that's light, but ruthless - results in songs that on paper are the best I've heard in years. One number - "Brotherhood of Bastards," that includes the immortal line "I wanna sleep with a girl/just like the one that slept with dear old Dad!" - may alone be worth the price of admission, and there's more deadly-accurate hilarity to be found in "One More Run," "Mr. Yawkey Has a Vision," and several more. Alas, the music (by Reale's brother, Robert Reale) isn't in quite the same class, although it's okay - it's yet another "jukebox"-style musical, with facile numbers from various periods and styles that somehow all sound alike. Still, Daisy gets one genuinely touching tune ("Do I Know You?"), and there's a kicky number for Willie Mays and (the again imaginary) Tim Wyatt in Act II. In an age in which Wicked counts as a high achievement, the score holds its own.

But again alas, Diane Paulus hardly lights a fire under the material. She manages the traffic smoothly and smartly, and has one powerful visual idea near the end of the show; and she gets off a lot of funny gags about skank, because you know, skank's her core brand. She doesn't let any real dancing in the show, which is a real deficit, but I guess dancing would just be too gay for Red Sox fans. Still, that gap contributes to the growing sense - since you could describe much of the production as "workmanlike" - that she's hardly in the major musical-theatre leagues inhabited by the likes of, say, Nicky Martin, or Michael Lichtefeld (whose brilliant work we sometimes saw at the North Shore Music Theatre).

On the plus side, however, the cast is indeed a good one - certainly the best large ensemble I've ever seen at the A.R.T., probably because everyone has honed their chops in national tours or on Broadway. There's really not a weak link in the cast, but special shout-outs should go to Burke Moses, for his ebulliently obnoxious Babe Ruth (he even nails the Babe's famously queeny trot around the diamond) and Charl Brown's quietly intense Tim Wyatt. And to be honest, leads Colin Donnell and Stephanie Umoh can both sing and act beautifully - and are just beautiful to look at, too.

These performances should be enough to put the show over - the trouble is, there's no real show to put over. Not yet. So we might lose all those great lyrics! And I don't want that to happen - so, even though I feel I'm giving aid and succor to the enemy, I'll play Elliot Norton for a minute for the A.R.T. and explain how to fix what's wrong with Johnny Baseball.

The show obviously needs to be about its hero - and that will require revamping the bland first act. Johnny has to have an inner conflict over Daisy; we have to see him develop from playing one of Babe Ruth's crude cronies to becoming his own man, and lose his racist baggage in the process - only of course this happens too late, and he loses Daisy, too. Therefore the second act, when he encounters his own son in the minors (sorry - was that a spoiler? Really?) becomes a theatre of his own (and his city's) redemption - which is frustrated once again. I hope the writers can fill in the final scenes themselves (although to be fair, Johnny Baseball's clumsy book doesn't feel like writer Richard Dresser's other work - my gut is the show owes its current form to pressure from other sources). An arc like this would provide the musical with both a dramatic engine (which it currently lacks) and some real resonance as social comment. And both are needed, I think, if the show's going to play in New York.

And of course it shouldn't bother Sox fans, either - as they're no longer racist, you know.

Say it ain't so, Joe: Dan Shaughnessy and dramatic license

Now I'm no fan of Johnny Baseball, but I couldn't help but feel a little twinge of sympathy for it when I read the complaints from Dan Shaughnessy (at left) about it in the Boston Globe.

Shaughnessy is a long-time sportswriter at the daily, and thus a long-time observer of the Red Sox, and so I was interested in his perspective on the musical (which posits that racism, not Babe Ruth, was at the root of the team's long inability to win the World Series). For the record, Shaughnessy also has his own theory about the same period, and even his own book - The Curse of the Bambino, which some construe Johnny Baseball as debunking. Still, Shaughnessy's response to the show as entertainment was positive - although he also wrote:

". . . I walked out of the theater bothered by the unnecessary blending of fact and fiction. I fear that most of the ART patrons now believe that Mays tried out for the Red Sox at Fenway in 1948 and was sent packing by a racist general manager named Joe Cronin.

It never happened. Robinson and two other black players did try out at Fenway in 1945. It was a sham. That episode is mentioned in “Johnny Baseball,’’ but the scene we see has Mays at Fenway in 1948, and a posse of Yawkey’s drunken “baseball men’’ turning him away."

Shaughnessy seems to feel this is a smear on Cronin (who was a player for, and then a manager of, the Sox). He sighs that "Cronin passed away in 1984 and can’t defend himself, and family members who still live in New England are saddled with this unflattering portrait."

But does Shaughnessy have a valid point, or is he merely quibbling? It's true that Mays never tried out at Fenway - he was, instead, passed over by Red Sox scouts; but the A.R.T. says so in a program note, which reads: “Willie Mays did not try out at Fenway Park in 1948 or ever. . . . For dramatic purposes we have Willie Mays trying out at Fenway Park in 1948.’’ Shaughnessy cites book writer Richard Dresser as admitting: "“We knew it was one of the liberties one takes to make things clear in a dramatic story . . . We felt that the truth of the situation was that the Red Sox passed on Willie Mays. That was the larger point we wanted to make. We compressed those things in the service of telling the story.’’

Shaughnessy's response? "Sorry. That's not ok."

Dresser's excuse, I admit, is a little weaselly. On the other hand, Shaughnessy's point would be much stronger if he could say that if Cronin had indeed been at that fictional Mays tryout, he would have signed him - or at least fought Tom Yawkey's bigotry and tried to sign him.

But that also seems unlikely. In fact, in his article Shaughnessy plays a little narrative sleight-of-hand of his own. For Joe Cronin was manager of the Sox during that notorious "sham" tryout of Jackie Robinson in 1945 - a scene in which another Globe writer (Clif Keane) later claimed there were shouts of "Get those niggers off the field!" There's also the unflattering fact that as long as Cronin remained manager, the Sox remained white as the driven snow; in fact, it was just months after he retired that the Sox hired their first black player (they were the last major league team to do so). Coincidence?

I don't know. But why doesn't Shaughnessy make those points clear? I'm likewise not sure. He's on firmer ground, though, when he notes that the Sox were still only a few years behind the times - the first major league team integrated in 1947, the Sox, in 1959. That still leaves about 74 years of "the Curse" unaccounted for.

Which leads me to a longer, deeper critique of the silly Johnny Baseball than I really want to write - but it looks like I'm going to have to. Right now I'll simply say - since when was racism wrong because it prevented you from winning the World Series? Are those really the values of Red Sox Nation?

Actually, don't answer that. I don't want to know.

Pimping the Professor, Part II

I always knew there was something fishy about Diane Paulus.

I just never thought the facts would smell this fishy.

Suspicious types like me sensed from the get-go that there was something a little too neat about the importation of The Donkey Show, created by Paulus and her husband, Randy Weiner , into ART's Zero Arrow space last fall. The piece had been initially developed for night clubs (in New York and elsewhere) where it had run profitably for years. It was obviously a piece of commercial theatre (that paid undisclosed royalties to Diane and her hubby) sliding into what was widely understood to be a non-profit piece of cultural real estate. Unsurprisingly, due to its nearly-bare boobs and disco tunes, The Donkey Show was a hit - but people like me began to wonder, as it was extended over and over again, whether we'd ever see "real" theatre, or any performance risky enough to turn off the bachelorettes, at Zero Arrow Street again. After all, in its original locales, The Donkey Show had run for years.

(Note: we moved the NSFW graphic to after the jump.)



Will Harvard wake up to the ethics of Diane Paulus and her husband?

Meanwhile, of course, the press blithely applauded this obvious land-grab. As in the equally-dismaying case of Shepard Fairey at the ICA, the smarter print critics pretty much sat on their hands as the professors went pop (one local scribe whispered to me that Paulus was "middlebrow" - duh - but was too cowardly to say that on the record), while the dimmer bulbs did cartwheels; at last, high art had been obliterated (again)!!! And what do you mean, this all might be unethical? Diane Paulus is a woman, and she voted for Obama! She's one of us!!!!

Right. Or maybe she's a fembot with her eyes on the prize, as it were (which is how she comes off in interviews). At any rate, as in the case of Fairey, the Diane Paulus mystique may be about to look a little tarnished. Because now, in a Globe piece by Geoff Edgers, the picture over at Zero Arrow gets a good deal less murky, and a good deal less savory. It turns out that Paulus' husband has, indeed, been taking home a tidy royalty on The Donkey Show - a royalty which seems to include part of the bar tab. He even owns the "Club Oberon" trademark. To Edgers, this is "an unorthodox relationship [between a promoter and Harvard]." Others might use harsher words, particular when they read Weiner's babble about "What a show is, it's a promotion, like a wet T-shirt contest, it's karaoke, it's girls get in free. The genius of doing a show is that people will actually pay for that promotion. I'm winning on the promotion and I'm winning on the drink."

No, I didn't make that up - Weiner actually said that on the record. What's funny is the way Edgers buries this and other details in what could pass for a puff piece (is Edgers as clueless as he has often seemed, or is he clueless like a fox this time around? You decide!). To Edgers, there's really no issue in having a non-profit theatre space at our leading university host "a quiz show, a burlesque, and a conjoined-twin singer-songwriter duo," presented by (who else?) Amanda Palmer. But even he can perceive that the A.R.T. seems to be sliding toward Mafia-restaurant territory, where the husband of the artistic director is hawking drinks and pocketing the change, and the theatre's new producer, Diane Borger, has a son-in-law who in a very strange coincidence is one of said hubby's partners in his latest New York venture, "Caligula Maximus." Again, I'm not making this up - could the whole mess look more corrupt and money-driven if it tried? No surprise, then, that almost no one at the A.R.T. wants to comment on the situation.

Okay, I admit I'm laughing right now, and I'm wondering just when, exactly, Harvard will make its move to remove this big-ass omelette from its face. Of course Harvard hardly has an ethical reputation to rival Mother Theresa's; still, the situation at the A.R.T. pushes the limits of the plausible deniability that is the university's norm. The claim that The Donkey Show is, in effect, funding "riskier" work at the A.R.T., as A Chorus Line once did for Joe Papp, is debatable, I'd say - but if Harvard wants to go that route, it still pretty much has to move the dancing girls to a commercial venue (as Papp did with his hits) to make the argument hold water. If The Donkey Show were playing on Lansdowne Street (where it belongs), and held its own in the commercial sector, there'd be few arguments against it, even if Weiner and Paulus were throwing a few bucks Harvard's way. Of course it may well prove unfeasible to run Paulus and Weiner out of town on a rail (which, frankly, is what should happen), but Harvard owes it to its own reputation to at least move The Donkey Show downtown, and bring theatre back to Zero Arrow.

Methought I heard Bonnie Tyler cry, "Sleep No More!"

Why pay to see No-Doze when it's all on Youtube for free?

OMG, I finally like saw Sleep No More, which is like totally the hottest ticket in Boston? And OMG, it was way stupider than I ever thought it would be! I was sure the concept and all would be cool and millennial but OMG it was like I was stuck in a music video from 1985. And I was like oh no NOT more bad modern dance in the thrift shop! But YESSSS it was bad modern dance in the thrift shop 24/7! And WHAT was Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca doing in Macbeth anyway? OMG, it was like MacBecca! And WHY was the Second Mrs. DeWinter married to the old king, you know what's his name, the one who goes "This castle hath a pleasant - ACCCKK!!" I mean what was UP with that?

Ok, whatever. Somebody told me it was a lot better if you didn't know anything about the play or the movie and that's probably true. It's always better with the A.R.T. if you don't know anything going in. It would have been wicked cool, though, if like Mrs. Danvers had totally gone down on Lady M. but that was ONE opportunity they for some reason sadly missed. It WAS freaky sometimes when you'd be like watching some actress who you weren't quite sure who she was but anyway she'd be all intense and then you'd hear this SCREAM from another classroom, and you'd be like, whoa, I bet they just found that dead body I saw a minute ago! Awesome! And I did like the eel in the bathtub, that was kind of cool, but when I tried to catch it and leave it in somebody's locker this guy in a black mask stopped me and told me I'd be like ejected if I tried anything like that again. Bastard. LIGHTEN UP, okay? I guess there were some good parts where the guys took off their clothes but that was like the ONLY reason I was glad I saw this show and even that only happened twice unless I missed something. I mean half the time I'm like "Sleep No More"?? I'm nodding off already!!! But then BOOM the sound system kicks in and some asshole actor like SLAMS into you and all these jerks in their little white masks are chasing after him to get their 25 bucks' worth and you're like "Shit, wait for me! I'm tired of staring at all these antiques!!!" It would also probably be a whole lot better if it came with a card like from a scavenger hunt with things on it to check off, like "YES! I totally tagged the bloody baby!!" Anyway that would be my constructive criticism.