But you don't really care for music, do you?
Last night carasol invited me to Joe's Pub for come concerts. The first was Capathia Jenkins and Louis Rosen- Louis has been writing song cycles for Capathia - they did selections from their previous cycle, which was poetry by Maya Angelou, then they moved on to some original work from their new album. Nice stuff. She's got an amazing voice.
She's currently appearing in Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, so much of the cast was there, including Martin Short and the composer Marc Shaiman. Mr. Shaiman was right in front of me in the lobby when I was getting my ticket, and I was very tempted to say "Hey Marc Shaiman / You're Quite a Guy / I'd say You Stand about / Oh, so high / You play piano / and that's really great / but the suit doesn't work and / dit dit dit dah dah dah, whatever the hell else you want to put in there".* I really should have, but I chickened out.
The second show was Mary Testa- a work in progress. We didn't know what to expect. The stage was just the piano and an easy chair. She came out in a gorgeous blue dressing gown and severe makeup and went through an amazing variety of songs- there was no pause between songs for applause (though often we did, anyway). We weren't quite sure what was supposed to be going on- there was a semi-book there, that she'd woken up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. She was enthralling anyway, she of course sang the shit out of everything. The arrangement of Aerosmith's "Pink" was gorgeous. I didn't know most of the music- I recognized 2½ ** out of the 23 songs she did (there were song lists available afterward (which identified the name of the piece as "Sleepless Variations")).
At the end she settled down into her chair and closed her eyes, and the crowd went wild- and apparently we missed the gag, which was that her alarm goes off just as she finally falls back asleep. We didn't hear it because we were clapping.
As she thanked everyone, I realized her pianist/arranger was Michael Starobin! Love him. When he came out to bow, we saw he was in pyjamas, too.
She did an encore of a Prince song I didn't know, and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". Beautiful.
carasol and I tried to get on the R train, but all of them were being diverted to the express track due to a sick passenger ("We're the MTA: Fuck you"), so after we'd waited about a half an hour (15 minutes without being told anything; just watching the trains go by), I went to catch the 6 up to the R, so I wouldn't miss the last R train back to Queens before Midnight.
* Which Martin Short improvised for him on "Women of the Night", an all-female comedy show on HBO back in the day (which featured Ellen Degeneres, Judy Tenuta, Rita Rudner, and Paula Poundstone,: Martin Short as host, with Marc Shaiman on piano).
** I recognized "High Flight" by Gillespie Magee (okay, from Bloom County), but had never heard it set to music before. There was also a medley of "If I Loved You" and "Unravel" by Bjork.
And, Scott Genn and Todd Durkin are in Mr. Marmalade down in Florida, and got a great review:
THEATER REVIEW | MR. MARMALADE
Disturbing, hilarious satire hits its mark
Entering an imaginative little girl's world, a young playwright takes a dark but decidedly funny look at the havoc wrought by adults.
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com
Out of the mouths of babes can come some very adult talk: musings about suicide, infidelity, sex, violence.
And that's how it goes topically when a beguiling little girl named Lucy speaks in Mr. Marmalade, the scathingly observant comedy by young playwright Noah Haidle.
Miami's Mad Cat Theatre Company has opened its season with an explosively funny, artistically fulfilling production of Haidle's play. While a key part of Mad Cat's mission is creating original work, its actors can shine in just about anything that's edgy and contemporary -- as Mr. Marmalade abundantly demonstrates.
The play's conceit is that 4-year-old Lucy (Ivonne Azurdia) fills her lonely hours as an only child anticipating the visits of her imaginary friend, Mr. Marmalade (Todd Allen Durkin). Mr. M is no little-boy playmate; rather, he's a stressed-out, driven businessman who's been away too long.
When he does show up, in addition to playing tea party with him, Lucy asks things like, ''Why don't you touch me anymore?,'' wondering if there's someone else.
If Lucy were a real little girl and Mr. Marmalade a real adult, that would be way creepy. But what Haidle is going for in Mr. Marmalade is a black comic look at everything from the way adult behavior inappropriately seeps down to kids in contemporary society to the disconnect between fairy-tale romance and the messiness of real relationships.
In other words, the play is deliberately absurdist, pointedly disturbing and very, very funny. And needless to say (but we will anyway), this is adults-only theater for people who dig satire.
Clad in footed pink Minnie Mouse pajamas, her dark hair pulled into two curly bunches, Azurdia hits all the right notes as Lucy, whether she's throwing a temper tantrum worthy of a 4-year-old, sweetly asking 5-year-old Larry (Eli Peck) to take off his clothes so they can play doctor or frantically trying to think of a way to keep the belching, beer-bellied Mr. Marmalade from leaving her and their squalling ``baby.''
Durkin, a manic powerhouse of an actor, finds the omnipresent menace beneath Mr. Marmalade's appeal, so that when Mr. M proves to be more Prince Charmless than Charming -- smoking, snorting cocaine, becoming abusive -- it's not terribly surprising. But he is, the way Durkin plays him, hilariously twisted.
Under Paul Tei's brisk, carefully detailed direction, the rest of the cast turns smaller roles into comic gems. Ceci Fernandez shines as both Lucy's mom, who thinks nothing of leaving her daughter home alone so she won't be late for a date, and Emily, the slutty teen baby-sitter. Scott Genn is unsettlingly funny as Emily's horny boyfriend and Mom's sleepover date. Erik Fabregat is a riot as Mr. M's much-abused ''personal assistant.'' Erica Boynton provides the crisp, knowing narration that links scenes together. And Peck -- his face a mask of worry, his head shaved bald -- is a visual hoot as Larry, Lucy's ''suicidal'' playmate.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.
She's currently appearing in Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, so much of the cast was there, including Martin Short and the composer Marc Shaiman. Mr. Shaiman was right in front of me in the lobby when I was getting my ticket, and I was very tempted to say "Hey Marc Shaiman / You're Quite a Guy / I'd say You Stand about / Oh, so high / You play piano / and that's really great / but the suit doesn't work and / dit dit dit dah dah dah, whatever the hell else you want to put in there".* I really should have, but I chickened out.
The second show was Mary Testa- a work in progress. We didn't know what to expect. The stage was just the piano and an easy chair. She came out in a gorgeous blue dressing gown and severe makeup and went through an amazing variety of songs- there was no pause between songs for applause (though often we did, anyway). We weren't quite sure what was supposed to be going on- there was a semi-book there, that she'd woken up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. She was enthralling anyway, she of course sang the shit out of everything. The arrangement of Aerosmith's "Pink" was gorgeous. I didn't know most of the music- I recognized 2½ ** out of the 23 songs she did (there were song lists available afterward (which identified the name of the piece as "Sleepless Variations")).
At the end she settled down into her chair and closed her eyes, and the crowd went wild- and apparently we missed the gag, which was that her alarm goes off just as she finally falls back asleep. We didn't hear it because we were clapping.
As she thanked everyone, I realized her pianist/arranger was Michael Starobin! Love him. When he came out to bow, we saw he was in pyjamas, too.
She did an encore of a Prince song I didn't know, and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". Beautiful.
carasol and I tried to get on the R train, but all of them were being diverted to the express track due to a sick passenger ("We're the MTA: Fuck you"), so after we'd waited about a half an hour (15 minutes without being told anything; just watching the trains go by), I went to catch the 6 up to the R, so I wouldn't miss the last R train back to Queens before Midnight.
* Which Martin Short improvised for him on "Women of the Night", an all-female comedy show on HBO back in the day (which featured Ellen Degeneres, Judy Tenuta, Rita Rudner, and Paula Poundstone,: Martin Short as host, with Marc Shaiman on piano).
** I recognized "High Flight" by Gillespie Magee (okay, from Bloom County), but had never heard it set to music before. There was also a medley of "If I Loved You" and "Unravel" by Bjork.
And, Scott Genn and Todd Durkin are in Mr. Marmalade down in Florida, and got a great review:
THEATER REVIEW | MR. MARMALADE
Disturbing, hilarious satire hits its mark
Entering an imaginative little girl's world, a young playwright takes a dark but decidedly funny look at the havoc wrought by adults.
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com
Out of the mouths of babes can come some very adult talk: musings about suicide, infidelity, sex, violence.
And that's how it goes topically when a beguiling little girl named Lucy speaks in Mr. Marmalade, the scathingly observant comedy by young playwright Noah Haidle.
Miami's Mad Cat Theatre Company has opened its season with an explosively funny, artistically fulfilling production of Haidle's play. While a key part of Mad Cat's mission is creating original work, its actors can shine in just about anything that's edgy and contemporary -- as Mr. Marmalade abundantly demonstrates.
The play's conceit is that 4-year-old Lucy (Ivonne Azurdia) fills her lonely hours as an only child anticipating the visits of her imaginary friend, Mr. Marmalade (Todd Allen Durkin). Mr. M is no little-boy playmate; rather, he's a stressed-out, driven businessman who's been away too long.
When he does show up, in addition to playing tea party with him, Lucy asks things like, ''Why don't you touch me anymore?,'' wondering if there's someone else.
If Lucy were a real little girl and Mr. Marmalade a real adult, that would be way creepy. But what Haidle is going for in Mr. Marmalade is a black comic look at everything from the way adult behavior inappropriately seeps down to kids in contemporary society to the disconnect between fairy-tale romance and the messiness of real relationships.
In other words, the play is deliberately absurdist, pointedly disturbing and very, very funny. And needless to say (but we will anyway), this is adults-only theater for people who dig satire.
Clad in footed pink Minnie Mouse pajamas, her dark hair pulled into two curly bunches, Azurdia hits all the right notes as Lucy, whether she's throwing a temper tantrum worthy of a 4-year-old, sweetly asking 5-year-old Larry (Eli Peck) to take off his clothes so they can play doctor or frantically trying to think of a way to keep the belching, beer-bellied Mr. Marmalade from leaving her and their squalling ``baby.''
Durkin, a manic powerhouse of an actor, finds the omnipresent menace beneath Mr. Marmalade's appeal, so that when Mr. M proves to be more Prince Charmless than Charming -- smoking, snorting cocaine, becoming abusive -- it's not terribly surprising. But he is, the way Durkin plays him, hilariously twisted.
Under Paul Tei's brisk, carefully detailed direction, the rest of the cast turns smaller roles into comic gems. Ceci Fernandez shines as both Lucy's mom, who thinks nothing of leaving her daughter home alone so she won't be late for a date, and Emily, the slutty teen baby-sitter. Scott Genn is unsettlingly funny as Emily's horny boyfriend and Mom's sleepover date. Erik Fabregat is a riot as Mr. M's much-abused ''personal assistant.'' Erica Boynton provides the crisp, knowing narration that links scenes together. And Peck -- his face a mask of worry, his head shaved bald -- is a visual hoot as Larry, Lucy's ''suicidal'' playmate.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.