FREE FILM SCREENING: HAWAII A VOICE FOR SOVEREIGNTY

Haunani-Kay Trask in Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty. Photo by Catherine Bauknight.

Paradise lost

By Ed Rampell

The 2011 Hawaii-set feature, The Descendants opens by asserting that it’s crazy to consider the Aloha State to be some sort of a paradise, where no major problems exist. Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty is a documentary about those troubles, or pilikia. However, whereasThe Descendants protagonist (George Clooney) plays a character who has a smidgen of indigenous blood and belongs to a privileged family with a multi-million dollar land trust, Catherine Bauknight’s powerful, multi-award winning doc focuses on the Disinherited: The Native Hawaiians, who have become a landless, disenfranchised, disempowered minority in their own ancestral homeland.

Say, just how did this Polynesian archipelago, about 2,000 miles from California, become part of the American empire anyway? Just how did the U.S. gain the Pearl Harbor Naval Base that Imperial Japan bombed on Dec. 7, 1941 anyway? History is usually written by the victors, just as Americans often trade in unexamined assumptions, but in Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty co-writer/director Bauknight dares to examine the assumed. Bauknight’s probing camera takes a peek behind the curtain of U.S. imperialism and presents a platform for the Islands’ aboriginal activists to present their side of the story.

Hawaii may be popularly portrayed and imagined as a visitors’ playground, but Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty exposes the social, political, cultural and environmental pilikia confronting the disinherited descendants of the Polynesian people Captain James Cook encountered when he made landfall there in the late 18^th century, thus putting Hawaii on the map for Westerners. Of course, the Hawaiians’ ancestors – masterful navigators -- discovered the Islands a millennium before Cook arrived. The culture clash that ensued after Cook made one voyage there too many was a harbinger of the societal convulsions that would engulf Hawaii and its indigenous inhabitants. These calamities include a swarm of “Christian” zealots and the armed invasion of the isles by the U.S. military -- acting in league with the original missionaries’ descendants -- and the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893. Auwe!

Far from the Waikiki high rises and mega-resorts Bauknight shows us Hawaiians who are not only landless, but homeless, too, living in encampments on the beach before the Occupy movement was cool. Best of all, Hawaiian activists, artists, fishermen, taro farmers, hula dancers, practitioners of the pre-contact religion, et al, explain their plight and cause in their own words, instead of having Bauknight, a “Haole” (Caucasian person) from da kine (mainland) impose her spin on indigenous viewpoints. The struggle against militarism (the Pentagon owns a higher percentage of Hawaii than it does any other state), mass packaged tourism run for the benefit of multi-national corporations, ecocide, the desecration of sacred sites, the theft of the aina (land) and the courageous resistance to all of these (and other) injustices under the battle cry of “Sovereignty” is compellingly depicted and commented on.

On a personal note, as a journalist who spent 23 years living in Tahiti, Samoa, Micronesia and half of this time in Hawaii, reporting on the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement and the Hawaiian Sovereignty cause, a highlight of watching Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty was seeing some of the leaders I used to cover as they now appear. They include: Dennis “Bumpy” Kanahele, a sort of Malcolm X-type of activist (the so-called Black Muslims even marched with Bumpy’s Nation of Hawaii group at the Iolani Palace in Downtown Honolulu during the 1990s). Kalani English of Hana, Maui, who became a state senator. Sarong-clad Professor Haunani-Kay Trask, an indefatigable academic and poet, whose courageous outspokenness is only outmatched by her brilliance -- and the fear her righteous rage raises amidst the staid status quo.

I got a special kick out of seeing one of Haunani’s former U.H. Department of Hawaiian Studies students, Kaleikoa Kaeo, who I used to cover at all of the Sovereignty demos when he was a bearded youth with longish hair. Today, he’s completely bolohead (bald), covered in traditional tattoos, and is himself now a professor, who expertly explains Hawaiian history in his thick Pidgin English accent. He’s a Hawaiian Howard Zinn, a true people’s historian!

Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty includes an interview with a legendary figure of the movement with a rascally reputation, whom I’d heard of but never met, and my hat is off to Bauknight for tracking the elusive Skippy Ioane down for at the Big Island. The film also includes organizers, rank and filers, etc., whom I was not aware – but am now, thanks to this wide ranging doc.

Like Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, this documentary has a great sonorous soundtrack of Hawaiian music by talents such as Cyril Pahinui. Some of the musicians, such as Henry Kapono and Willie K (who I remember when he started out, and has gray hair now, auwe!), are also interviewed onscreen. A Cd with the soundtrack has been released.

The documentary also includes sumptuous cinematography; Bauknight, a noted photojournalist, is also the film’s director of photography. There is also archival footage, news clips and soaring aerial shots, as well as lots of original footage shot specifically for this nonfiction film.

Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty has won seven awards since its premiere at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. and has had a special screening at the U.N. in Geneva. Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty won the awards for Best Environmental Film at The Red Nation Film Festival in Los Angeles and Best Environmental Film at the New York International Film Festival, as well as a prize at Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Wairoa Maori Film Festival.

And in the end, what is this thing called “Sovereignty”? Competing factions and trends of thoughts have different visions. When I covered the Hawaiian Revolution during the 1990s, Bumpy’s Nation of Hawaii advocated independence from the U.S. Ka La Hui Hawaii, the organization Haunani was linked to and which her activist attorney sister Mililani Trask led, endorsed a nation within a nation, government to government relationship with Washington, similar to the political status the so-called American Indians have, to exist on a land base somewhat similar to tribal reservations. Be that as it may, most Hawaiian activists share the belief that sovereignty is a form of self determination that guarantees indigenous empowerment. Perhaps above all else the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement means that the disinherited shall re-inherit the aina.

The digital launch of the documentary in North America will take place soon on iTunes, Netflix and Gaiam TV. But, before that, there will be a free screening of Hawaii A Voice For Sovereignty March 31, 11 a.m., at Laemmle’s Playhouse 7, 673 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101. After the screening there will be a panel discussion and/or a Q&A with director Catherine Bauknight, Hawaiian activist Leon Siu, veteran journalist Robert Scheer and myself.

Admission is free, so, as they say in Hawaii: "Try come!”


For more information: Hawaii A Voice for Sovereignty.

FILM REVIEW: FREE MEN

 Younes (Tahir Rahim) in Free Men.

Some might

By Ed Rampell

The 1942 classic Casablanca is set in North Africa. However, its World War II era protagonists are all Westerners. But what role did North Africans play during WWII? French cinema has been revisiting this with Rachid Bouchareb’s 2006 Oscar-nominated Days of Glory (Indigenes), and now with Free Men, another great movie by a director with North African roots, French-Moroccan co-writer-director Ismael Ferroukhi.

Free Men takes place entirely in France, where -- due to its colonial empire -- there was a substantial population of Arab ancestry during the Nazi occupation. For the most part, cinema has overlooked the role Arabs played during WWII; the Bush era propaganda mantra of the “Axis of Evil”, which included Iraq, even implied those Arabs were part of the Axis powers, which included Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Tojo’s Japan. But Free Men, which is inspired by real life events, tells a distinctly different story.

Tahar Rahim (who gave such a towering performance in 2009’s A Prophet) plays Younes, a black marketeer coerced by the Nazis to spy on Paris’ Mosque, a hotbed of anti-Nazi activity presided over by its rector Ben Ghabrit (Michael Lonsdale). Like the filmmaker Bouchareb, Younes is of Algerian ancestry, and like Malcolm X he rises from being a lumpenized criminal to attaining political consciousness, joining his cousin Ali (Farid Larbi) and love interest Leila (Lubna Azabal) in the Resistance. However, the North African comrades make a point of not only resisting fascism, but colonialism, too.

An excellent director, Ferroukhi’s action packed film is tautly, tensely paced and full of suspense and wartime heroics, as the Arabic partisans shoot it out with the Nazi occupiers. But what makes Free Men especially noteworthy is not only its depiction of noble Arabs resisting those ignoble Nazi savages, but the relationship between the Muslims and the Jews in occupied France. Guess who the rescuers of the persecuted Jews are in this eye opening picture? Wow! Who knew? To further enrich the film’s deep texture, there’s even a gay subplot as Younes befriends the famous North African singer Salim (Mahmoud Shalaby), who turns out to be not only Jewish, but also homosexual, to boot. 

It has often been remarked upon that when African-American WWII veterans returned home to America after helping to defeat fascism abroad, that they were unwilling to accept segregation at home. Blacks’ anti-fascist wartime service is widely credited with inspiring the ensuing Civil Rights and Black Power movements. In the same way, one imagines that Arab freedom fighters who felt their oats by resisting Nazism would likewise find postwar colonialism in countries like Algeria intolerable, thus inspiring struggles such as those immortalized in Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 masterpiece, The Battle of Algiers. And Free Men is a worthy successor to that revolutionary classic.

  

SXSW 2012: TCHOUPITOULAS

A scene from Tchoupitoulas.

We have a contender!

By Don Simpson

Bill and Turner Ross’ Tchoupitoulas does a tremendous job of defying classification. It functions as both a surreal documentary that borrows from narrative storytelling techniques and a narrative film that paints a realistic portrait of its protagonists by utilizing documentary devices. The narrative unfolds like an improvised jazz album with various tangents that flow seamlessly away from and towards the forward-moving primary thread. The tempo continuously alternates as well as the sublime, impressionistic cinematography alternates between running, walking and pausing. We are fully immersed into the surrounding environment from the perspective of three young brothers as they embark upon an adventure deep into the heart of New Orleans.

Tchoupitoulas feels like a fairy tale as the three boys enjoy absolute freedom without any parental supervision, experiencing firsthand the entrancing New Orleans nightlife — something that is typically limited to adults. Every sequence brings new emotions, ranging from ecstasy and joy to fear and sadness. When the new day rises, the magical cinematic sedation quickly wears off. We are awoken from the meditative dream-state and the story ends, yet the entire cinematic experience is left lingering in our subconscious like a fading childhood memory.

No one makes films like the Ross brothers -- at least not anymore -- and Tchoupitoulas is no exception. A cerebral experience like none other, Tchoupitoulas is certainly going to be one of my favorite films of 2012.

SXSW 2012: FRANCINE

Francine (Melissa Leo) in Francine.

Realism, I suppose she is acting

By Don Simpson

Sometimes a great film is the product of pure, dumb luck; and Francine is one of those films. We will never know what this film would have been without Melissa Leo in the titular lead, instead we will only know this film by the masterful performance that Leo contributes. The story goes that Leo was not pursued by the directors, she responded to a general casting call posted by the Hudson Valley Film Commission. With an Oscar under her belt, Leo could have taken countless other roles that would have paid much higher wages; but we can only assume that Francine struck Leo as a character she needed to fully immerse herself in.

Francine begins with Francine’s last day in prison. It seems she has been locked away for a long time, though the crime she committed is left unspoken. Francine moves into a small cottage near the water and finds a series of jobs — at a pet store, in the stables of a polo club, at a veterinarian’s office.

Yes, Francine loves animals. She begins to collect them, as if to create a close-knit family, one that only knows unbridled love and affection. Eventually, Francine’s home becomes one of those homes, one in which too many animals are given too much freedom in too confined of a space. (Thank goodness smell-o-vision was not used in the making of Francine!)

As Francine tepidly integrates herself back into society, she begins to develop friendships. This is the crux of Francine, a cinema verite portrayal of a woman struggling to become a member of the free world. As awesome as Leo’s performance is, co-directors/writers Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatsky's Francine‘s strength is in its uncanny sense of realism -- the real people, the real places, the real events. This is essentially a documentary from the perspective of a fictional character.

THEATER REVIEW: NEW JERUSALEM

Baruch Spinoza (Marco Naggar) and  Clara van den Enden (Kate Huffman) in New Jerusalem. Photo by Hope Burleigh.

A rationalist strategy

By Ed Rampell

The censorial impulse has always been with us, from the Spanish Inquisition to the Salem Witch Trials to Peter Zenger’s trial to the post-World War I Palmer Raids to the Scopes Monkey Trial to the Stalinist Moscow Show Trials to the House Un-American Activities/McCarthy Era purges, and so on. Throughout history the “heretic,” the “apostate,” the free thinker, the non-conformist, has often faced persecution by orthodox defenders of the established order who fear the status quo is being threatened by new, different ideas. David Ives’ New Jerusalem takes a searing look at an archetypal seer facing excommunication by no less than two powers that be.

Philosopher Baruch Spinoza (Marco Naggar) was born in 1632 in the Dutch Republic of Amsterdam, where his family had fled from Portugal, with its inquisition and forced conversions of Jews. What is now Holland has long enjoyed a reputation for the kind of tolerance which Spinoza preached, and Amsterdam, of course, is where Anne Frank’s family sought refuge from fascism’s gathering deluge 400 years later. While the Netherlands granted these Sephardic wandering Jews more liberty than the auto-de-fes of Portugal and Spain, Amsterdam’s Jewish population experienced what’s been called a sort of second class citizenship, not unlike what blacks encountered in the segregated South.

Spinoza sprang out of this social milieu, and by the time he was 23 evolved a “heretical” philosophy that challenged the precepts of the Old and New Testaments. In a nutshell, Spinoza argued in favor of logic and rational thought against superstition and was a major Enlightenment theorist. Not surprisingly, the dominant majority Christian culture seemed to feel jeopardized by Spinoza’s radical precepts. Spinoza posed a double-edged dilemma for Amsterdam’s Jewry (or at least its establishment) which felt not only ideologically endangered, but, as a minority, perceived its tenuous position in a foreign land was being imperiled by what the majority viewed as apostasy coming from the strangers in their midst. Dutch Jews, or at least their leaders, felt like they were between the proverbial rock and hard place.

This is the stuff that makes for heady drama: The clash of ideas plus a trial, which is inherently confrontational, generating the conflict tragedies thrive on. Some, however, may find the play to be talky, especially act one, with its exposition; act two moves at a brisker pace. Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s similarly themed 1955 play about a teacher of evolution being put on trial, Inherit the Wind, was filmed four times, most memorably in 1960 by Stanley Kramer. But alas, poor 23-year-old Spinoza had no Spencer Tracy/Clarence Darrow type character defending him.

Perceived as a sort of witch doctor, Spinoza needs a spin doctor to defend him as he debates Amsterdam’s chief rabbi, Saul Levi Mortera (Richard Fancy), and Gaspar Rodrigues Ben Israel (Shelly Kurtz), a parnas (president or trustee) of the congregation of Talmud Torah.  Spinoza’s expulsion hearing of took place there, in Amsterdam’s foremost synagogue, in July 1656. Amsterdam regent Abraham van Valkenburgh (Tony Pasqualini) observes -- if not presides over -- the proceedings to determine whether or not Spinoza should be forever banished by the Jews with a kherem (somewhat similar to an Islamic fatwa).

Unlike the Scopes Monkey Trial, which was actually broadcast on live radio during the 1920s, little remains of the record of the actual inquiry (although the chilling verdict remains). Having no trial transcripts, the playwright conjures up dialogue and the action of various characters, who spy on and testify against Spinoza, including his Dutch friend, the painter Simon de Vries (Todd Cattell), his half-sister, Rebekah (Brenda Davidson) and a female friend who Spinoza seems sweet on but can’t properly woo because she’s Christian. Conflicted Clara van den Enden (Kate Huffman) valiantly tries to defend the thinker.

The ensemble acting is adroitly, tautly directed by Elina de Santos. The sparring between the philosopher and his interrogators, especially the rabbi, is electric. Sparks fly as an anguished Mortera faces off against his former pupil, while Kurtz’s parnas likewise delivers a bravura performance. The rabbi’s philosophical conclusions in the face of his ex-student’s reasoning is surprising -- and quite troubling: Spinoza must be expelled not because he lies, and is wrong, but because he tells the truth and is right. So the victims of expulsion go on to practice expulsion themselves.

Naggar’s prophet outcast alternately comes across as priggish, smug, self-absorbed, self-righteous, brilliant and brashly hubristic in that youthful, exuberant way. Naggar hails from Geneva, the Swiss city with a long human rights history that’s currently celebrating the birth there of another of the Age of Reason’s top philosophes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As the Jewish leaders, a bearded Fancy and Kurtz (a Yeshiva University grad!) are also standouts, delivering Ives’ zingers with gusto and angst, as their characters whine on about Spinoza’s temerity in thinking for himself.

Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’s set is spot on, creating a sense of being in a Jewish temple with Sephardic roots, where most if not all of the action takes place. However, Schwartz’s modern dress costuming presented a conundrum for this reviewer. On the one hand, this breaks the illusion of the fourth wall. Theatre, film, TV, etc., can take spectators to another time and place, long ago and far away, but when Mr. Pasqualini’s Valkenburgh appears in a snazzy three piece suit and tie, the aud’s “willing suspension of disbelief” (as poet Samuel Coleridge put it) is shattered.

On the other hand, this contemporary aspect could be an attempt to create a Bertolt Brecht-like “alienation effect,” intended to snap viewers out of the reverie that they are seeing real life unfold before their eyes, when in fact, they are merely watching a staged rendition of reality. Therefore, spectators should assess the play as a work of art using their logic (a true Spinozan perspective!), instead of via emotions caused by empathizing with characters, the plot’s plight points, etc.

Having said that, I feel that the modern dress costuming is a blunder, and note that according to photos in a N.Y. Times review, the cast wore period costumes in a 2008 off-Broadway production of Ives’ drama. Furthermore, the current version’s own graphic likewise depicts a figure in 17^th century garb. As for authenticity, only a few experts and sticklers for absolute accuracy would demand costly costuming completely faithful to that era’s fashions. In fact, mere black robes would have served as appropriate garb for some characters.

But this is a mere quibble, and the West Coast Jewish Theatre’s production is a thought provoking evocation of the thought police -- then and now. Last year WCJT also presented the anti-Nazi plays The God of Isaac and Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass. In addition to being an ethicist, Spinoza was a lens grinder, a symbolic calling for a man who set out to make humanity see the truth, and for one finally ground down before his time. To find out why Albert Einstein said he “believe[d] in the god of Spinoza,” don’t miss New Jerusalem -- a shining city on a theatrical hill.


New Jerusalem runs through April 1 at the Pico Playhouse, 10508 W. Pico Blvd., L.A., CA 90064. For more information: Call 323/821-2449;http://www.wcjt.org/. 

THEATER REVIEW: A CELEBRATION OF HAROLD PINTER

Julian Sands and John Malkovich in A Celebration of Harold Pinter.

San(d)s the playwright

By Ed Rampell

At the March opening of this one man show director John Malkovich introduced the piece by calling it “a result of my 30-year-friendship with Julian and a fascination with Harold Pinter.” Although Malkovich is best known for acting, he noted, “I’ve directed [dozens] of his plays and acted in 10 of them… It’s delightful to hear Harold’s words again and to see Julian onstage” in this fundraiser to benefit L.A.’s Odyssey Theatre.

That Julian is Julian Sands, whose name may not be on the tips of the tongues of U.S. ticket buyers, but whose face and voice are instantaneously recognizable. Like Pinter, the Yorkshire-born Sands is a fellow Brit, who has appeared in countless plays and movies, including 2011’s American version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, 2007’s Ocean’s Thirteen and the TV series 24. Sands is no stranger to playing great writers, having previously portrayed British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in the 1986 film, Gothic. He and Malkovich originally presented the reading at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.

In A Celebration of Harold Pinter Sands occasionally gives raspy voice to that quick witted, temperamental English playwright, poet and actor, but does not depict him per se. Rather, this two-act production consists mostly of Sands appearing as himself while paying tribute to Pinter, with anecdotes of and about him (some drawn from the memoir of Pinter's widow, Antonia Fraser), Pinter’s comments about contemporaries such as playwright Samuel Beckett and on cricket (!), readings from some of the bard’s plays, which dominate the first act, and his poems, which form the bulk of act two.

According to press notes, what is now a homage to Pinter grew out of an invitation to Pinter to read his poems at a benefit for a women’s shelter at a London church. As the author was too ill to do so, he asked Sands to read on his behalf “on the condition of spending time together, rehearsing the works,” which was music to Sands’ ears. Pinter died of cancer in 2008 at the age of 78.

The result is a rare treat for theater and poetry aficionados. Sands has one of those mellifluous voices that, as the old cliché goes, could reduce listeners to tears with his recitation of the names on a phonebook’s pages. The handsome, blonde thespian brings Pinter’s prose, poems and drama alive and is a delight to hear and watch onstage, a rare in person treat. Sands alternates between reading aloud from a few dog-eared, bookmarked volumes (he’s been anointed to sign them on behalf of the Pinteresque powers that be, with proceeds benefiting the Odyssey) and spinning yarns.

Pinter did not suffer fools gladly (or quietly). He brandished his quill like a rapier, lashing out at privilege and the powerful with a literary savagery. Sands notes this was shaped, early on, by a “contentious anti-Semitism in the East End,” where Pinter grew up a Jew of humble, working class origins. In terms of cinema, Pinter is largely known for his collaborations with director Joseph Losey, such as 1963’s class conscious, The Servant and 1967’s Accident. Pinter’s collaboration with Losey speaks volumes about his own political sentiments, which were always stolidly in solidarity with the common folk he sprang from.

Sands does not dwell on Pinter’s progressive politics, nor does he shy away from them. He reads with relish from Pinter’s searing poems Democracy and The Special Relationship and a passage from Harold’s courageously biting 2005 Nobel Lecture, Art, Truth and Politics, wherein, among other things, he ferociously snapped at those hellish hounds of war, Mssrs. Bush, Blair and company, for invading an Iraq that had not attacked either America or the U.K., and which, as it turned out, failed to produce those confabulated WMDs which provided the pretense for a mass murder rather theatrically dubbed “shock and awe.” One would have thought that this laureate was winning the Nobel Prize for Peace, instead of for Literature.

Sands informs us that winning the Nobel Prize “was a great joy” to the dying writer, who was too sick to travel in person to Sweden, but managed to deliver his acceptance speech rejecting war and injustice via video. The actor also informs us during the second act that after World War II Pinter sought conscientious objector status when he was drafted by Britain’s imperial military.

After the play, as Sands signed Pinter books, I asked him what happened with Pinter's bold effort to avoid conscription. The thespian replied, “the judge saw that Harold was sincere in his beliefs, and could have sentenced him to a prison term.” I quipped, “Instead he received a life sentence in the theater,” and Sands, who has trod many a board himself, smiled.

This one-man show is tautly, adroitly directed by Malkovich, who is primarily known to auds as an actor in indies ranging from 1999’s Being John Malkovich to big budge blockbusters such as 1997’s Con Air, wherein he often ignites the screen as an incendiary loon. But Malkovich rose through the ranks as a stage actor, starting out with Chicago’s hallowed Steppenwolf Company, winning a 1983 Obie for Sam Shepard’s True West and co-starring with Dustin Hoffman in the 1984 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman; he’s also been an outstanding theatre director. As I took my seat in the Odyssey, I passed Malkovich and told him how, many moons ago, I’d enjoyed Lanford Wilson’s Balm in Gilead, which Malkovich had helmed and starred my boyhood best friend, Danton Stone. When I mentioned Stone's name Malkovich’s face lit up, perhaps with memories of the pure artistry that preceded the often commercial stardom that followed (although this is not to imply that Malkovich isn’t also a great screen actor, as he is, and his Lenny in the 1992 film version Of Mice and Men still makes me weepy). In any case, Malkovich, who was glammed down at this benefit for one of L.A.’s best theatres, with its trinity of stages, was very gracious.

I went to this Pinter tribute mainly to learn more about a seminal playwright who, I discovered, was also a poet capable of making the heavens rage. I also had a highly enjoyable evening at the theatre, but had one regret: Sands did not read from any of Pinter’s 25 screenplays. But this is a mere quibble. If poetry and/or theatre and/or great acting are your thing(s), I highly recommend this well-deserved and wonderfully presented celebration, which is being brought back for a second weekend by, as they say, popular demand.


A Celebration of Harold Pinter returns Friday, April 6 and Saturday, April 7 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, April 8 at 5 p.m. at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. For more info: 310/477-2055; www.odysseytheatre.com.

      

THEATER REVIEW: ALBERT HERRING

A scene from Albert Herring.

Sex sings

By Ed Rampell

Benjamin Britten’s comedy of manners, Albert Herring, premiered in 1947 at Glyndebourne, a grand country manor in the veddy British countryside near East Sussex. But this good fun opera about sexual repression unfortunately remains all-too-contemporary, what with Republican presidential candidates debating contraception and Rick Satan-orum running for witch-burner-in-chief and all.

When the prim and not so proper village of Loxford runs out of vestal virgins for its annual, traditional May Day Festival (no red flags, please -- this is Edwardian England, after all), they turn to the virginal and eponymous Albert Herring (tenor Alek Shrader). Like his nation’s future prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, Albert is the child of a green grocer (mezzo-soprano Jane Bunnell). Much as with today’s GOP buffoons, Loxford’s power players place a premium on chastity, as well as on greed.

The resident one percenter, Lady Billows (Scottish singer Janis Kelly alternates in the role with soprano Christine Brewer), is tended to by Florence Pike (mezzo-soprano Ronnita Nicole Miller), a domestic servant with airs, at her ladyship’s posh estate, beautifully evoked by scenic designer Kevin Knight. Lady Billows offers a handsome sum as reward for Albert’s virtue, while she presides over a retinue of comical sycophants. The festival committee includes those not so stellar pillars of the community: The Vicar Mr. Gedge (baritone Jonathan Michie); the Mayor Mr. Upfold (tenor Robert McPherson); the Superintendent of Police Budd (bass Richard Bernstein); and the teacher Miss Wordsworth, a sort of old maid, well-played by soprano Stacey Tappan.

Not all of the Loxforders pretend to be such goody two shoes. A trio of undomesticated youngsters add to levity. The drolly named Sid and Nancy may not be punk rockers like the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, but as the youthful lovers baritone Liam Bonner and mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack add a devil-may-care ingredient to the simmering stew of social propriety. Ultimately, boys will be boys, and predictably, as Albert is quite publicly lauded for his moral uprightness, with a little help from the mischievous Sid and Lady Billows’ bounty, all hell breaks loose. Much to the constable’s consternation amidst several, uh, red herrings, he is no longer a Prince Albert in a can. Although Albert’s coming of age is couched in hetero camouflage, Britten was reportedly gay, and his lampooning of sexual repression may have been his encoded ripostes to homophobia.

Mr. Knight’ sets, with rather large models of various homes in the background, aesthetically evoke the English countryside, while his period costumes conjure up a highly class stratified and rarefied era. Whereas Lady Billows’ home is suggestive of manorial splendor (not unlike, one suspects, Glyndebourne), the Herrings’ claustrophobic grocery shop is realistically rendered. The scenic transitions, enhanced by Rick Fisher’s lights, are gems as the Shanghaied cast, apparently impressed into service as stagehands, seamlessly, fluidly move from one time and place to another. But the fact that part of the background is simply bare and black -- at least viewed from my angle -- distracted me from Samuel Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief.

James Conlon’s baton reigns over a 13-piece orchestra with a sprightly score and much recitative singing, although there is no breakout aria or solo number per se that shakes the rafters. Paul Curran adeptly directs his ensemble cast with a flair for the bawdy and vaudevillean. Herring’s libretto, by Eric Crozier, is based on the French writer Guy de Maupassant’s short story Le Rosier de Madame Husson. Although sung in English supertitles are projected in English throughout the performance. Rule Britannia!

Innocence -- or rather innocence lost -- is a recurring theme in Britten’s work; his operatic take on Herman Melville’s angelic but doomed sailor Billy Budd (the mariner has the same last name as Herring’s policeman) premiered in 1951. Undercurrents of angsty sexuality roiled Britten’s version of Henry James’ symbolically titled The Turn of the Screw, which debuted in 1954 and was staged by L.A. Opera last season. (The centennial of Britten’s birth is next year.) While Britten put the sex into East Sussex, the hanky-panky in Albert Herring is largely played for laughs, although beneath the surface Britten’s opera jabs the tyrannical puritanical busybody brigades of then and now. One wonders what opéras bouffes the current Republican presidential race will someday inspire?  


Albert Herring runs through 17  at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.

  

THEATER REVIEW: SIMON BOCCANEGRA

Simon Boccanegra (Placido Domingo) in Simon Boccanegra. Photo by Robert Millard.

Dialectic of Enlightenment

By Ed Rampell

Widely perceived as a hoity-toity elite art form for the one percent, opera often gets a bum rap as a stuffed shirts’ sonic sphere, but Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra (based on a similarly named historical figure) gives the lie to this cliché. Marx and Engels wrote in 1848’s Communist Manifesto that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle,” and with its plebians versus patricians battle, this clash is clearly reflected in Simon Boccanegra, which premiered nine years later at Venice. Verdi’s opera opens in medieval Genoa (the Italian coastal city-state Christopher Columbus hailed from) as Simon Boccanegra (Placido Domingo) is voted Genoa’s first “Doge."

According to conductor James Conlon’s pre-opera lecture, in the 14^th century Venetian dialect Doge is the 20^th century Italian language equivalent of “Il Duce”-- Benito Mussolini’s title -- and means “duke” or “leader.” But Simon was no Blackshirted fascist. Indeed, he is a man of the people, a former pirate who represents the aspirations and interests of the masses against the patrician class -- the Middle Age’s aristocratic one percent. Originally, Genoa’s Doge was elected by popular suffrage, although his term of office was for life. If I understood Conlon correctly, this 1339 election marked Europe’s first democratically elected head of government.

Set against this background of power struggles, Verdi agilely interweaves a complex personal story full of mistaken identities, as the opera jump cuts to circa 1364. No simple Simon, Boccanegra still serves as Genoa’s Doge, as he tries to balance the plebian-patrician strife plus possible war with the competing city-state of Venice. Like a prototype of Flower Power leaders, Simon says “peace and love” and pursues policies to implement them. Harboring quarter century old grievances, the base bass Jacopo Fiesco (Vitalij Kowaljow) plots to topple the Doge and assumes the identity of Andrea Grimaldi. In the process, he unwittingly adopts a girl called Amelia Grimaldi (Ana Maria Martinez) who -- unbeknownst to all at this point -- is not only Fiesco/Andrea’s granddaughter, but Simon’s long lost love child.

Fiesco’s fiasco triggers a series of complicated events your spoiler adverse reviewer is loathe (and too lazy) to reveal. The golddigging Paolo Albiani (Paolo Gavanelli) and Gabriele Adorno (Stefano Secco) each woo Amelia. For some dubious reason the hotheaded Adorno is a hero of this opera, although he not only threatens to murder Simon -- whom he mistakenly believes to be likewise courting Amelia -- but his beloved, too, when Adorno suspects Amelia of being unfaithful to him. At one point, I wanted to shout out, “Hey Amelia! Why don’t you just tell Adorno that you found out Simon is actually your father, moron?” -- but I don’t think the crowd at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Verdi’s ghost would have appreciated it. (Ironically, just as Grimaldi is now the name of Monaco’s royalty, Theodor W. Adorno was a prominent 20^th century Marxist thinker of the so-called Frankfurt School, whose students included Angela Davis.)

Suffice it to say, this being a non-comedic opera, a melodramatic death with a requisite amount of staggering about onstage is required, and Verdi, but of course, delivers the goods, the bads and the uglies in this action packed precursor to those Spaghetti Westerns. (Take one wild guess who gets to chew the scenery during the big scene?) What Verdi doesn’t deliver, however, is a toe tapping aria fans leave the theatre humming. This, along with the overtly political nature of the subject matter, may have prevented Simon Boccanegra from scaling La Scala’s heights in the operatic pantheon, alongside of, say, Verdi’s La Traviata and Aida (which I still remember being staged at the Roman Forum with live camels and elephants when I was 12).

That’s not to say that the score isn’t sonorous, as well as wide ranging in its tonality. Harps and understated wind instruments convey a sense of serenity, while at other times brassy instrumentation and drumming conjure up the martial mood necessary for much of this class struggle text, with its libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and Arrigo Boito. Conlon’s supple baton nimbly presides over the orchestra and work which he clearly dearly loves.

Director Elijah Moshinsky’s mise-en-scene of this Les Miserable-type mass drama is masterfully staged, as what I imagine must be the entire L.A. Opera cast (and crew?), 50 or so performers by my count, bring alive the historical epic sweep of this saga inspired by actual events. Fight (club) director Charles Currier’s brio on the boards evokes the dueling and demos of a restive populace. Costume designer Peter Hall’s brilliantly colored medieval apparel captures the spirit of that bygone age, and helps to transport us back in time.

But kudos go to scenic designer Michael Yeargan’s colossal sets, once again bringing medieval Italy back to life, as they did last year with Yeargan’s scenery for L.A. Opera’s production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Yeargan’s Genoa imparts a sense of the sea worthy of the burg that produced Columbus, while his massive columns evoke an imperial sensibility. Act I’s Council Chamber scene is bravura, and the map room in the Doge’s palace during Act II isn’t too shabby, either. And I don’t know if Yeargan is responsible for the graffiti scrawled on the wall, proclaiming in Italian “Victory to the people!” and similar slogans during a scene of mass protest, but it’s a worthy addition, considering that the Occupy L.A. encampment was just a stone’s throw away at City Hall, which is visible from the Music Center.

Simon Boccanegra premiered in 1857 as Italy was on the verge of a unification the politically-minded Verdi agitated for, both on and offstage, as a deputy in unified Italy’s parliament. Similarly, L.A. Opera continues to present socially relevant works, and one likes to think that Placido Domingo’s Simon would have supported the Occupy Wall Street movement, just as Domingo’s Pablo Neruda in 2010’s Il Postino most assuredly would have. Despite the pricey seats, these are operas for the 99 percent that express the tenor of their times.

Simon Boccanegra runs through March 4 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.