Let it Flow: For Marlo-With Love

Just when I had pretty much accepted the fact that the fall season on Broadway was going to be a complete and utter disappointment, I saw something that lit a spark of optimism in my heart.

Last night, along with fellow graduates of Brown University, I was invited to a performance of the new emo/rock musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, followed by a talk with one of the show's producers, Oskar Eustis. Eustis, who looks a bit like Paul Bunyon with a beard and a mop of brown hair, is the artistic director of the Public Theater where the production of this show began its life. The genesis of the idea to put the life and political career of the 7th President of the United States to an emo/rock score apparently involved a playwright and a composer with completely different theatrical agendas: one was fascinated by a course in which he studied Andrew Jackson, and one just wanted to do something related to emo kids and their subculture. The result, as my friend pointed out, is a "reese's pieces" of a musical and it totally works.

Part of the reason it works is that it treats American politics of the 19th century with the same irreverence that South Park treats Oprah Winfrey and her private parts: nothing is sacred. Jackson, played superbly by the Julliard-trained young actor Benjamin Walker, is a gun-toting, tight jean and eye liner wearing loose canon, who throws chairs when he doesn't get what he wants and sings about how life "sucks" when his parents are killed by Indians. He also spills a lot of blood and not just when he conquers the Spaniards, the British and the Seminoles in Florida. He and his true love Rachel like to cut themselves when they are happily in love and also when they despair. The fact that the audience laughs and cringes at the same time pretty much sums up the overall tone of the show.

Walker, as Jackson, is such a commanding stage presence that he masters the appeal of America's first populist president, whose dubious claim to fame is how he solved the "Indian Problem" by forcing the Indians to keep moving further West until there was nowhere left to go (but onto reservations.) As serious as the issues are that Jackson faces when he finally becomes President in 1829 (after being robbed of the Presidency the first time around in a conspiracy of the Bush/Gore variety) the show continues to mine his political and personal relationships for their humor and resonance with contemporary political shenanigans. Jackson is the "people's president," but when he gets into office he finds that the populace doesn't know what the hell they want. And he sings "it's impossible to get anything done in Washington." That tune sounds so familiar.

It doesn't take long to get the feel for the bizarre juxtaposition of history and popular culture that is this superb production. The set designers have turned the entire Jacobs theater into a combination Victorian-Goth fun house, complete with blood red walls, a stuffed horse hanging upside down over the audience, numerous chandeliers, and at least two electric guitar players on stage at all times. The music and lyrics are loud, brash and a lot of fun. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson may just be the only bloody good thing in the fall theater season.

Correction: ZuckerBERG

Given that one cannot escape the name Mark Zuckerberg these days (it appeared in the conclusion of an article in The New York Times "Week in Review" section just yesterday, and in today's interview with actor Armie Hammer in nymetro), I felt it my duty to issue a correction: the "berg" in Zuckerberg is "erg" not "urg."

I spelled it wrong in my discussion of The Social Network in last night's post. Since the god of Facebook seems to see all and know all, I just wanted to make sure he didn't see my post and let it be known throughout the universe that I misspelled his name. I should be so lucky.

Looking for Mr. Wowbar

It turns out that my problem is not so much finding the time to see all of the shows and movies and art exhibits on my list for this fall, but finding the time to write about them. Although it doesn't show with my less than speedy reviews, I have made a real dent in my movie, theater and art exhibit list; although, for theater I have veered away from my original plan into smaller, more experimental plays, in part because someone else bought the tickets.

Part of my hesitance to write about what I have seen so far is that I'm still waiting to be wowed. I can't say that I've been thoroughly disappointed with the movies, just slightly underwhelmed. Woody Allen's latest, You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger, feels like a series of vignettes about the unhappy lives of young and old married couples, but never coalesces into a graceful whole. It's a shame the characters are so despicable, because the actors playing them are superb, particularly Gemma Jones as the jilted wife of Anthony Hopkins.

Of the two "techie" movies, Catfish and The Social Network, the latter is definitely more intriguing, no matter how much the former is billed as a "mystery." I can't say that Catfish is a worthless documentary, but its revelation that online relationships can be dangerous is only new if you have been living with the Amish for the past few years. The Social Network, on the other hand, portrays Mark Zuckerburg, the creator of Facebook, as such an arrogant, brilliant asshole that it's pure pleasure to see his friends and enemies go to battle with him in a major lawsuit. Like Facebook itself, the movie is the Mark Zuckerburg show, and seeing that show once is enough. You will not be clamoring for a sequel.

I will write about the plays as soon as I've actually seen one that is on my list. As for the art exhibits, "Abstract Expressionism in New York" at MoMa is so huge that I accidentally skipped two floors and still felt like I needed to go back to fully absorb the one floor that I did see.

Clearly, I'm not done yet. There is plenty left to see and plenty of time to be wowed before the first snowflake falls in New York.

School Daze

For those of us who have spent most of our lives in school, either as a student or teacher, every fall is a fresh start. The people in charge of the arts in New York also seem to be on the perpetual school calendar, because New York in the fall is a burst of cultural fresh air. The 85 degree weather is throwing me off a little, but there are so many new museum shows, new plays and new movies that I want to see, that not even wearing shorts and sandals at the end of September can dampen my enthusiasm.

Here is just a partial list of the things I plan on seeing (and reviewing) this fall: Abstract Expressionist New York, at MoMa (Oct.3-April 25), The Whitney's show Modern Life:Edward Hopper and His Time (Oct.28-April10); unlike in art, this fall the theater is all about the old masters: great plays by Shakespeare, Lillian Hellman, Noel Coward, George Bernard Shaw and even a play based on Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises are either already in theaters or opening in New York in the next month. The Hemingway play is the only one that, for now, is a short train ride away in Philadelphia.

My movie list is long, and it includes Woody Allen's You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, two movies about Facebook, Catfish and The Social Network, romantic comedies HeartBreaker with Vanessa Paradis (Johnny Depp's real-life paramour ) and Love and Other Drugs, a movie about viagra, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway.

I'm also going to have to see The King's Speech, with my favorite Brit, Colin Firth, who is due for an Oscar and according to film festival buzz might get one for his portrayal of a stuttering King George VI, the current Queen Elizabeth's father. Then, if I'm feeling really cynical, I might squeeze in I'm Still Here the faux documentary about Joaquin Phoenix, and Picture Me where super-skinny, super-rich models complain about how overworked and underfed they are.

How am I going to do all this in the next few months? That's a good question given that fall also means back to work for me. The papers have already started piling up. The students are already e-mailing for conferences. But it's fall and I can dream.

Will the real Slim Shady stand up?

I used to think that it was inevitable: as I got older I would become more conservative. It seems the opposite is happening. The longer I live the more I realize how my children have pushed me to become more open-minded. And I can't thank them enough.

When Eminem first became a household name my son was thirteen years old. I picked him up from camp one summer and he could recite all of the words to Eminem's "Without Me." I was appalled. Fast forward six years and I find myself defending Eminem's First Amendment rights in a Facebook discussion with a group of intelligent women who are all moms of young children. The women object to the the monster hit song " The Way You Lie."In it Eminem raps about an abusive relationship where the couple keep breaking up and getting back together. At one point the rapper threatens to tie his girlfriend to the bed and "set this house on fire" if she tries to leave again.

The chorus of "The Way You Lie" is sung by Rihanna, whose famous abuse at the hands of her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown makes her participation either very ironic or very stupid. I refuse to believe the latter. If anything, the fact that it incites controversy shows that the song may actually bring attention to the subject of abuse and afford an opportunity for parents to discuss it with their kids. Telling kids that the music is junk (or forbidden) and they shouldn't listen to it at all will send them straight to the Internet to download it. Anyway, isn't that what our parents told us about rock music in the 70's, including classics like Led Zeppelin and The Who?

If it's any consolation, my son the former Eminem fan, won't listen to Eminem anymore. "He's way too commercial now," he said recently. He will, however, listen to Beethoven and Led Zeppelin. They do grow up eventually, musically speaking, for the most part unscathed.

Holding Out for a Hero

There are very few women in popular culture these days that I would want my fifteen-year-old daughter to idolize. I know that Lady Gaga is making a statement about individuality, but does that always have to involve something see through that shows her breasts?

Fortunately, there are several young female characters running around in a book and a movie that I would call genuine role models, and perhaps even heroines. The first is a character named Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) in a film called Winter's Bone.

Visually, the movie is haunting, like a dark, rural painting where Andrew Wyeth meets Edward Hopper in the Ozarks. But more than the setting, the young girl at the center of the story is seventeen years old, responsible for her entire household, including two younger siblings and her mentally incapacitated mother, with absolutely no help from a missing, meth cooking father. Yet Ree is so determined and so capable that it's impossible for her to do anything but fight and survive. Any teenager who can teach her little brother to shoot a squirrel and cook it for supper has my vote for the MTV movie awards' "Bravest Film Chick" of the Year (new category).

The literary heroines that I want my daughter to idolize are the three women in the novel The Help, set in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi. One privileged young white woman and two black maids set out to write a book within a book describing what it is like to be "the help" in a white home in the pre-civil rights south. The three characters are very different, but all three risk everything they have for a cause they believe in. They have so much pride and determination and love of family and justice, that I would make this book a mandatory read in every tenth grade classroom across the country. And it's historical fiction so it goes down a lot smoother than a history text book.

Here's to role models for young women, real or imagined.

Send in the Clowns

I have always wondered how comedians manage to perform when they are sad. What if they are genuinely depressed and don't feel like being funny? This thought crossed my mind again last Wednesday night when I was at Comix comedy club on West 14th street listening to a lineup of stand up comedians who work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The man himself wasn't there, of course, but his executive producer and writer Rory Albanese was, as was one of his funniest correspondents, John Oliver.

Oliver, with his very proper-sounding British accent reminded the crowd that if this had been 250 years ago he would have been barking orders at us instead of jokes. He joked about the waning American empire, as evidenced by some of our most ridiculous TV game shows, and he had a rather long, imaginary conversation onstage with his father about deciding to tell a joke involving a certain part of his father's anatomy. There was a hint of sadness there, but only in his effort to exit the joke gracefully, which was impossible.

The surprise guest of the evening was comedian Jim Gaffigan, who has absolutely nothing to do with The Daily Show but is very, very funny. I happen to know this because my son is a big fan and has recited numerous Gaffigan jokes about food. This particular evening he went on about McDonald's and how much we love to hate the place. He pointed out that our expectations should be low when the mascot is a "pedophile clown from the 70's." If he was sad that evening it didn't show; it must help if you can make a crowd of people laugh.

I once asked author Michael Crichton if he ever wakes up and doesn't feel like writing. His response was "if I was an airline pilot, I couldn't just say I don't feel like flying today. " So I guess the best advice for comedians and writers alike is, "smile, though your heart is breaking." And go to a comedy club once in a while if you want to see how it's done.

A LIttle Night (and Day) Music

Last Thursday I stood in line at 10:00am along 59th street near Fifth Avenue with throngs of Sting fans. I have never been a huge Sting fan and only know him for the few Police songs that are burned into my brain from college frat parties. But a friend of mine from work is a fanatic, and she needed someone to share the experience of jumping up and down, screaming and clapping on cue for his free outdoor concert taped for the Early Show on CBS. I didn't watch the show the next day, but apparently I was on television for a tenth of a second if you watched with a high powered telescope.

Mary, my friend, said that I was the perfect person to bring to this event, which I wasn't sure to take as a compliment or an insult. My brief impressions of Sting , from a very close spot near the stage, were that he still has a good voice, that despite being 58 years old he makes everyone around him look totally uncool, and that his real fans are the ones that have been singing the words to 'Roxanne' since 1978. As far as musical revelations go, there were none, other than the fact that a good back up orchestra can make even a mediocre song sound like a symphony.

On that same evening, I went to Lincoln center to meet my mother, step-father, sister and niece for dinner and dancing at the Midsummer Night Swing outdoor dance festival. Midsummer Night Swing is a unique experience that can only be described as New York at its most ridiculous and joyful. Hundreds of people come out to Damrosch Park behind the New York State Theater to dance to live music of a different genre every night for three weeks.

The night we were there it was "Disco." Donna Summer and the Bee Gees were well represented, as were a full range of ages and dance abilities. One elderly gentleman in his 80s managed to swing more dance partners around the floor than other men half his age, and the girls he danced with couldn't stop smiling. Some of the couples clearly practiced before they came, but other people just grabbed whoever was willing and made up the moves as they went along. It's free if you remain outside the inner dance area, and $17 if you want to dance closer to the live music. Most people just dance wherever they are standing, with whomever they lay eyes on.

The only one who wasn't having a blast was my 20-year-old niece. She just couldn't get into the 70's music. She left to meet some friends at a bar. My sister and I paid our tributes to Donna Summer by dancing together to "I Will Survive," and then we made our way out past the crowds and the glittering fountain to find our own drinks and shared memories.

The Kids May Be All Right, But The Movie Isn't

Suzanne Tenner/Focus Features

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in “The Kids Are All Right.”

Lest anyone is under the false impression that I love every movie and every theater that I attend in New York City, I have to take a minute to write a short, negative review of "The Kids Are All Right."

The movie, which just opened on Friday to superlative reviews, has a stellar cast including Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and one of my favorite actors, Mark Ruffalo. But ironically, it is the "kids," played by Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson who really are the only thing that is right with this movie.

The story is about a lesbian couple with two teenage children, Joni age 18, and Laser, age 15. The boy --probably wishing that someone else had named him--wants to seek out the children's sperm-donor father. With the help of his sister, they find him and arrange to meet him.

The donor dad turns out to be an ultra-cool, motorcycle riding single dude named Paul, played by Ruffalo, who runs an organic restaurant and farm. For the daughter, it's love at first sight, although the son reserves judgment for a second visit. Ultimately Paul wins everyone over, including one of the moms, with his easy going charm and non-parental, laid back attitude. It makes sense that the kids want to spend more and more time with him, and he starts to become attached to them as well.

Once Paul is thrown into the mix of this nontraditional family, things gradually take a turn for the worse. The one mom, played by Annette Bening, dislikes him instantly, but she is so uptight and unpleasant it seems she dislikes everyone, including her wife, Jules. Jules played by Julianne Moore, has a very different reaction. She agrees to take on Paul's overgrown backyard as a start-up project for her new landscaping business, and is just as attracted to him as her kids are. They wind up in bed every time she comes over. It's all fun and no work for him, given that the kids are beautiful and smart and practically grown, and the affair with Jules, like everything else in his life, seems casual at first.

The movie is touted as dealing with a very cutting edge subject, gay marriage and parenthood, but the problem is that every relationship seems forced, except for the heterosexual affair. The two women don't have anything in common, and one wonders how they became a couple in the first place. The character of Paul, who is demonized in the end, is totally confused, as is the audience, as to Jules' passionate involvement with him and then subsequent rejection. Granted, he's kind of a smarmy asshole, but he doesn't deserve this.

As hard as writer/director Lisa Cholodenko tries to make this into a real family, the actresses are not able to pull off any genuine feeling between the two main characters. I really didn't care about their relationship in the end. The only thing that is pitch perfect is the behavior of the two teenagers. The fact that they reject their mothers and then their father, but need all of them desperately, is right on the money.

Al Wants a Pound of Flesh, And He Usually Gets It

JOAN MARCUS

Al Pacino (right) plays Shylock in this Central Park production of Shakespeare's controversial play. The cast also includes Lily Rabe (left) as Portia and Byron Jennings as Antonio.

Al Pacino is not the only reason to try and see the Shakespeare in the Park version of The Merchant of Venice. He's great, but so is the entire cast, half of whom I recognized from at least one television sitcom, including Jesse Tyler Ferguson from my current favorite Modern Family.

Part of the pleasure of this production is that the language and the plot are made so accessible by the actors. They all enunciate wildly. And the production itself, thankfully, does not try to change the setting to war torn Europe or Venice 2000, or some other unnecessarily futuristic landscape. Granted it's hard to listen to the tirades against "the Jew" (Shylock) by the Christians (the rest of the characters) with a politically correct, 21st century sensibility. That is why the play is so seldom performed, which is a shame, because while it may bring into focus the accepted anti-semitism of Shakespeare's time, my interpretation is that it doesn't condone it. Shylock is too complex a character for that.

Also, Portia is one of the smartest most fully developed female characters in any play I've ever seen outside of a Wendy Wasserstein play. And Lily Rabe who plays her is the best member of the cast by far; Al was good, but a couple of times when he starts to rant I couldn't help feeling like he was doing a Jewish version of the colonel in Scent of A Woman.

One piece of advice. Bring your own snacks and drinks because the line at the snack bar at intermission is so long that only the NYC marathon runners at the front got served before the Second Act.