New York - Part 1
I took a quick trip to New York last week. Late January / early February is a good time to go there, because hotel prices are fairly low. I was able to get a room in midtown for just over $100 a night. The primary purpose of the trip was seeing the Encores production of Once Upon a Mattress, but a little time browsing Time Out turned up three other shows I wanted to see, as well as a museum exhibit. And a quick look through the New York Adventure Club newsletter found a good way to fill in some of the rest of my time.
Anyway, I took the train up early on Tuesday morning. After dropping off my bag at my hotel, I headed down to the Lower East Side.
Judy Chicago Herstory: This exhibit, at The New Museum, was a must-see for me. Or course, I’ve been familiar with The Dinner Party for years, including seeing it both in book form and, in person, at The Brooklyn Museum. I also saw her exhibition Resolutions: A Stitch in Time at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles back in 2001.
I stopped quickly at Yonah Shimmel’s on the way there and had a disappointing kasha knish. They were never as good as my memories of Jerry’s on the boardwalk at Far Rockaway, a few blocks away from where Aunt Bernice and Uncle Ely lived, but they have definitely gotten worse the past couple of times I’ve been there and I think I may just have to give up on them. Oh, well.
Anyway, I was there for the Judy Chicago Herstory exhibit, which proved to be q fairly comprehensive retrospective. It made sense to follow it chronologically, so I started with her early work. The information placards were very informative, discussing how she took an auto body class to learn how to paint on pieces from cars. There were various video clips from her days doing performance art, the most amusing of which involved two performers dressed in body suits with large soft sculpture genitals attached arguing about roles in housework, e.g. “I have a cock. Therefore, I don’t wash the dishes. You have a cunt, so you have to wash the dishes.” But there was some less shocking artwork.
One of my favorite exhibits had to do with the Birth Project, which was an early 1980’s collaboration with over 150 needleworkers from around the U.S. Here’s an exquisite tapestry from it called The Creation and an enlarged photo of one part of it.
This is from Resolution: A Stitch in Time, which I’d mentioned having seen at the Skirball. In that project, each of the works offered a contemporary interpretation of a traditional adage or proverb.
If Women Ruled the World was another fascinating piece.
There was plenty of other stuff to see, including an exhibition of works by various women who influenced Judy Chicago. This was called The City of Ladies and the accompanying brochure had biographies of over 80 women, such as Hima af Klint, Simone de Beauvoir, Hildegard von Bingen, Suzanne Duchamp, Georgia O’Keefe, etc.
One of my other favorites was the International Honor Quilt, a series of several small triangular quilts representing women throughput the world who had been unjustly forgotten. There are apparently over 500 quilts in the total collection and the museum exhibited only a small number of them. Here’s an amusing example. Note the blue triangle in the top row, between Mother Teresa and Agatha Christie.
If anyone is going to be in New York, the exhibit runs through March 3rd and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in feminism and art.
Merrily We Roll Along: I took the subway back to Midtown and rested for a little while before getting a slice of $1 pizza before going to see Merrily We Roll Along. For anyone who doesn’t know, this was a 1981 Sondheim flop, based on a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It tells the story of three friends, whose youthful promise takes them in different directions. But it’s told in reverse chronology, so it starts in 1976 after they’ve had their falling out. The real focus is on Frank (Franklin Shepard, who has become a successful Hollywood producer, abandoning both his partner, Charley (with whom he collaborated on musicals) and their friend, Mary, whose career tanked after an early bestseller. As it works its way backwards, we see how Frank’s pursuit of monetary success led to his falling out with Charley, who embarrasses him in a television interview. And Mary’s unrequited interest in him leads her to decline into alcoholism.
The performances were impressive. A lot of people were there to see Daniel Radcliffe as Charley. His singing voice is okay, though not spectacular, but he does have a real gift for physical comedy. And he did very well with “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” which summarizes their separation.
Lindsey Mendez was an appropriately acerbic Mary. But the highlight of the cast was Jonathan Groff who made Frank less unlikeable than many other performers have. I also want to call out Katie Rose Clarke who nailed it as Beth (Frank’s first wife) who gets the best song of the show in “Not a Day Goes By” and Reg Rogers, whose comic timing as Joe was superb.
I have two serious problems with the show. For one thing, the backwards timeline makes it depressing. No matter how much early promise things show, we know that everything will go wrong. That also applies to the cabaret number, “Bobby and Jackie and Jack” about the Kennedy clan. It’s a very funny piece, but (again) we know how things go wrong for them.
My bigger issue is with the women in the show. Gussie (Frank’s second wife) displays every horrible stereotype about actresses. And Mary’s character is never fully developed. Sorry, but Frank just isn’t worth her throwing her life away for.
As a Sondheim completist, it’s worth seeing, especially for the excellent cast. But it will never be a show I love the way I love, say, “Company” or “Assassins” or “Pacific Overtures.” By the way, there is a running bit about songs not being hummable, which was, of course, a frequent criticism of Sondheim’s work. Anything you can sing you can hum, damn it. Just don’t go in expecting a Jerry Herman-esque ear worm.
This is getting long, so I’ll continue it in a separate post.
Anyway, I took the train up early on Tuesday morning. After dropping off my bag at my hotel, I headed down to the Lower East Side.
Judy Chicago Herstory: This exhibit, at The New Museum, was a must-see for me. Or course, I’ve been familiar with The Dinner Party for years, including seeing it both in book form and, in person, at The Brooklyn Museum. I also saw her exhibition Resolutions: A Stitch in Time at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles back in 2001.
I stopped quickly at Yonah Shimmel’s on the way there and had a disappointing kasha knish. They were never as good as my memories of Jerry’s on the boardwalk at Far Rockaway, a few blocks away from where Aunt Bernice and Uncle Ely lived, but they have definitely gotten worse the past couple of times I’ve been there and I think I may just have to give up on them. Oh, well.
Anyway, I was there for the Judy Chicago Herstory exhibit, which proved to be q fairly comprehensive retrospective. It made sense to follow it chronologically, so I started with her early work. The information placards were very informative, discussing how she took an auto body class to learn how to paint on pieces from cars. There were various video clips from her days doing performance art, the most amusing of which involved two performers dressed in body suits with large soft sculpture genitals attached arguing about roles in housework, e.g. “I have a cock. Therefore, I don’t wash the dishes. You have a cunt, so you have to wash the dishes.” But there was some less shocking artwork.
One of my favorite exhibits had to do with the Birth Project, which was an early 1980’s collaboration with over 150 needleworkers from around the U.S. Here’s an exquisite tapestry from it called The Creation and an enlarged photo of one part of it.
This is from Resolution: A Stitch in Time, which I’d mentioned having seen at the Skirball. In that project, each of the works offered a contemporary interpretation of a traditional adage or proverb.
If Women Ruled the World was another fascinating piece.
There was plenty of other stuff to see, including an exhibition of works by various women who influenced Judy Chicago. This was called The City of Ladies and the accompanying brochure had biographies of over 80 women, such as Hima af Klint, Simone de Beauvoir, Hildegard von Bingen, Suzanne Duchamp, Georgia O’Keefe, etc.
One of my other favorites was the International Honor Quilt, a series of several small triangular quilts representing women throughput the world who had been unjustly forgotten. There are apparently over 500 quilts in the total collection and the museum exhibited only a small number of them. Here’s an amusing example. Note the blue triangle in the top row, between Mother Teresa and Agatha Christie.
If anyone is going to be in New York, the exhibit runs through March 3rd and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in feminism and art.
Merrily We Roll Along: I took the subway back to Midtown and rested for a little while before getting a slice of $1 pizza before going to see Merrily We Roll Along. For anyone who doesn’t know, this was a 1981 Sondheim flop, based on a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It tells the story of three friends, whose youthful promise takes them in different directions. But it’s told in reverse chronology, so it starts in 1976 after they’ve had their falling out. The real focus is on Frank (Franklin Shepard, who has become a successful Hollywood producer, abandoning both his partner, Charley (with whom he collaborated on musicals) and their friend, Mary, whose career tanked after an early bestseller. As it works its way backwards, we see how Frank’s pursuit of monetary success led to his falling out with Charley, who embarrasses him in a television interview. And Mary’s unrequited interest in him leads her to decline into alcoholism.
The performances were impressive. A lot of people were there to see Daniel Radcliffe as Charley. His singing voice is okay, though not spectacular, but he does have a real gift for physical comedy. And he did very well with “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” which summarizes their separation.
Lindsey Mendez was an appropriately acerbic Mary. But the highlight of the cast was Jonathan Groff who made Frank less unlikeable than many other performers have. I also want to call out Katie Rose Clarke who nailed it as Beth (Frank’s first wife) who gets the best song of the show in “Not a Day Goes By” and Reg Rogers, whose comic timing as Joe was superb.
I have two serious problems with the show. For one thing, the backwards timeline makes it depressing. No matter how much early promise things show, we know that everything will go wrong. That also applies to the cabaret number, “Bobby and Jackie and Jack” about the Kennedy clan. It’s a very funny piece, but (again) we know how things go wrong for them.
My bigger issue is with the women in the show. Gussie (Frank’s second wife) displays every horrible stereotype about actresses. And Mary’s character is never fully developed. Sorry, but Frank just isn’t worth her throwing her life away for.
As a Sondheim completist, it’s worth seeing, especially for the excellent cast. But it will never be a show I love the way I love, say, “Company” or “Assassins” or “Pacific Overtures.” By the way, there is a running bit about songs not being hummable, which was, of course, a frequent criticism of Sondheim’s work. Anything you can sing you can hum, damn it. Just don’t go in expecting a Jerry Herman-esque ear worm.
This is getting long, so I’ll continue it in a separate post.