STAGE REVIEW: WE WILL ROCK YOU

Galileo Figaro (Brian Justin Crum) in We Will Rock You. Photo by Paul Kolnik.

A night at the musical

By Ed Rampell

This musical is a sheer delight for lovers of the British band Queen in particular and of classic rock in general. Like Mamma Mia!, which features Abba’s disco music, We Will Rock You creates a story to rather cleverly wrap around Queen’s songs. However, director Ben Elton’s book conjures and weaves a saga far more imaginative than Mamma Mia’s! rather trite one. We Will Rock You is imaginatively set in a dystopian future, where instead of book burning, “Globalsoft’s” totalitarian state led by Big Sister Killer Queen (the hilarious Jacqueline B. Arnold) has -- horror of horrors! -- banned rock ‘n’ roll music!

Somehow, although it’s never explained why or how, classic rock songs and lyrics filter through the mind of a teenager called Galileo Figaro (Brian Justin Crum), who teams up with another social misfit he dubs Saramouche (Ruby Lewis). They make common cause with keepers of the flame, the Bohemians -- aged outsiders who remember rock and the day the music died -- in their crusade and rebellion to revive, rehabilitate and resurrect rock ‘n’ roll. (The musical playfully panders to its audience, many of them hailing from the generation that came of age during Queen’s heyday and are roughly the same age as the Bohemians.)

No Brechtian agitprop play, We Will Rock You soft peddles its anti-censorship, antifascist pop politics, which are mostly played for laughs in this rather humorous show. There’s even a droll torture scene that makes witty use of Queen’s “Flash Gordon” number.

The two-acter has a multimedia vibe and two-level stylish set with an eight-piece orchestra sporting dual drum sets, belting out the live tunes from above. Architect Mark Fisher is the original production designer and video director, with Arlene Phillips’ frenetic choreography rousingly hoofed by a large cast accompanied by fab singing. At the Bohemians’ lair is what’s presumably a replica of the Freddie Mercury statue located near the Charlie Chaplin statue at Switzerland’s Lake Geneva. (Here’s the fun fact of the day: According to a plaque on that Swiss sculpture, four octave Freddie Mercury was actually born in Zanzibar.)

There’s just one flaw in this overwhelmingly enjoyable production: While the Globalsoft dictators suppress rock, they themselves perform rock ‘n’ roll numbers, which sort of undercuts their point. But this is a mere quibble: A splendid time was had by all as the musical transformed the Ahmanson into a joyous Radio Ga-Ga-palooza. To paraphrase that enlightened philosopher Jerry Lewis: “You’re only young once, but you can stay immature forever.”

Now, here are two hints from your humble reviewer to enhance your theatergoing experience to the fullest: See/hear this merry madcap melodious musical with a kindred spirit who enjoys Queen music and having a good time. And although this critic is loathe to disclose spoiler alerts, let’s just say that when you think the play is over, do not depart, Dear Reader. Stay put for a grand finale that’s, well, sure to rock you!

We Will Rock You runs through Aug. 24 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012. For more info: Queen (213)628-2772.

NEWPORT BEACH 2012: CAROL CHANNING

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Carol Channing in Carol Channing: Larger than Life.

Gentlemen prefer talent

By Ed Rampell

Watching Dori Berinstein’s delightful documentary Carol Channing: Larger Than Life is a sheer joy. The now 91-year-old performer who embodied Broadway with her original onstage incarnations of Lorelei Lee in Gentleman Prefer Blondes and the eponymous matchmaker in Hello Dolly! is a force of nature.

This nonfiction biopic traces Channing from her 1921 birth into a Christian Science family in Seattle and upbringing in San Francisco to her debut onstage, TV appearances from Steve Allen to Laugh In, and movie career. In addition to the ever hilarious Channing herself, the doc’s talking heads include Betty Garrett, Jerry Herman, Lily Tomlin, Bruce Vilanch, Tommy Tune, etc. Channing’s second husband, Harry Kullijian-- a childhood sweetheart who reappeared late in life -- co-stars. (However, the film sweeps under the carpet Channing’s disastrous long first marriage and how her career conflicted with motherhood.)

You don’t have to be a fan of Channing or of musical theater to be swept away by this feel good ode to the Great White Way’s eternal nightingale. Cinema wasn’t the medium that most favored the entertainer with those flying saucer eyes, lips as red as Dorothy’s ruby slippers and blonde tresses -- Marilyn Monroe and Barbra Streisand portrayed Lorelei and Dolly onscreen. But this doc finally makes Channing -- Oscar-nominated for 1967’s Thoroughly Modern Millie-- the movie star she deserves to be, too.      

  

TRUE/FALSE FILM FEST 2011: THE ARBOR

Andrea Dunbar (Monica Dolan) in The Arbor.

Real to reel

By Don Simpson

The eighth annual True/False Film Festival (March 3-6, 2011) transformed downtown Columbia, Missouri into a utopian haven of nonfiction cinema. Featuring an impressive selection of the best documentaries from major international film festivals (as well as five "top secret" screenings of films pending high profile official world premieres elsewhere), True/False purposefully programs nonfiction films that provoke dialogues about their subjects and bring into question the ethical responsibilities of the documentary form itself. 

Complimenting the films, the True/False Film Festival offers a seamless integration of live music into their four-day program as well as debates, game shows and parties, parties and more parties.

In what has come to be known as verbatim theatre, transcripts of interviews, hearings and/or trials are dramatised on stage by actors. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s film Howl is probably the best cinematic example of this novel storytelling technique, but director Clio Barnard really ups the ante by having her actors lipsync dialogue to audio-recorded interviews, further morphing the line between reality and fiction.


Barnard’s film is about Andrea Dunbar, the West Yorkshire author of three gritty social-realist plays who died in 1990 of a brain hemorrhage at the ripe young age of 29. Dunbar hailed from Bradford, England's rough and tumble Buttershaw Estate (dubbed "the Arbor"). The dialogue in The Arbor is taken directly from interviews conducted by Barnard of Dunbar's family, friends and children while passages from Dunbar's intensely autobiographical plays are re-created by actors amongst the (marginally improved) streets of modern day Buttershaw with a live audience of the estate’s residents. The Arbor also cleverly sprinkles some choice selections from A State Affair (Robin Soans’ biographical play about Dunbar) as well as archival television interview footage with the real Dunbar and her family.


The Arbor brings emotionally heavy subjects such as child and domestic violence as well as racism to the forefront of the narrative -- and let us just say that Dunbar’s penchant for alcoholism and poor life decisions does not bode well for her children, especially her half-Pakistani child, Lorraine (Manjinder Virk). Lorraine begins hiding from the reality of her own shitty existence at a very early age by immersing herself into a non-stop drug-induced haze; then she passes along her genetic history of neglect to her own children, increasing said neglect tenfold to morally troublesome limits.


Dunbar’s story is not all fire and brimstone. The one bright light within The Arbor is her success as a teenage playwright. Dunbar began her first play, The Arbor, in 1977, at the age of 15, for an English class. The completed play, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre in 1980. Dunbar’s writing debut won the Young Writers' Festival then traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to play in New York City. Dunbar was promptly commissioned to write a second play -- Rita, Sue and Bob Too -- which premiered in 1982. (Rita, Sue and Bob Too was adapted by Dunbar into a film directed by Alan Clarke.) Dunbar's third and final play is Shirley (1986). Despite her theatrical success, Dunbar never escaped the grim and downtrodden environs of Buttershaw and her downward spiral into alcoholism never stopped.


With a unique merging of fact and fiction, The Arbor is able to reconstruct the pain and struggle within Dunbar's work as well as reveal the dour consequences her life choices had on her family. Barnard’s stylistic choice of having her actors confide in the camera (therefore the audience) is a purposeful cinematic devise to add more hyper to the hyper-reality by bringing more self-consciousness into the mix.


Barnard is as sympathetic as possible towards Dunbar and her children, rightfully chalking up most of the atrocities recreated in this social realist documentary hybrid to poor economics and politics. In style and tone, The Arbor is truly an homage to Dunbar’s gritty working-class narrative style and aesthetic with clear allusions to the glory days of British kitchen sink cinema.