'Anomalisa' and 'Hope Leaves the Theater' at UCLA
As the reviewer for the London show said it, this is difficult to describe the levels on levels of self-referential scene breaking character shifting Kaufmanesque theater that Hope Leaves the Theater, a “play within a play” is like.
However, lets start with my favorite of the two sound plays or radio style plays that were performed at UCLA's Royce Hall last night. Written by “Francis Fergoli” a pseudonym for a novelist who prefers to remain anonymous, Anomalisa examined the idea of the individual versus “them”, everyone else in the world.
The program notes for Anomalisa (you'll get the meaning in a bit) started with this poem:
I yearned for the kind of unseasoned telling found
In legends, fairy tales, a tone licked clean
Over the centuries by mild old tongues,
Grandam to cub, serene, anonymous.
- James Merrill, The Book of Ephraim
The band was set up around the stage, with the sound effects man, the Foley, center stage, the conductor stage left, and the three actors seated in chairs, the two men stage right and the woman stage left. Tom Noonan, dressed all in black, dangled his feet off the edge of the small riser, David Thewlis dressed in jeans and a (pleasing) lime green long shirt and those favorite brown shoes took a minute to get himself settled into his chair, his legs too long to sit with them in front of him, he sat, knees apart, his hands clasped for most of the evening in front of him. Hair and facial hair was much like the last few photos looked. (Our seats were row Y, not so bad in Royce Hall, but observed from a distance). Jennifer Jason Leigh dressed in the standard stage garb: white shirt with black sweater and jeans.
To illustrate the main idea in a radio style, Tom Noonan ( Last Action Hero, writer of the play and film, Wifey) played everyone in the play. Jennifer Jason Leigh (best known for Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle) played Lisa, the only woman who stood out as an individual to the protagonist, Michael Stone, played by David Thewlis.
The sound design and music seamlessly lulled the audience through the scenes. Starting with a series of scenes from a mundane airplane trip, from Michael Stone sitting next to an anxious person on his flight to Cincinnati to getting his luggage to a taxi ride with (a gruff Tom Noonan) as taxi driver describing the city's sites and chili on pasta, to checking into a fancy hotel (a crisp Tom Noonan as front desk agent- you get the idea).
The fun began when you got the whole sound effects leading you through the routine entering the room, opening the bathroom door and then the sound effects of a man peeing after a long plane ride, complete with the zipper, the toilet lid lifted and the interruption in stream of water towards the end, and the toilet flush. The audience burst into laughter at the familiarity of it, and the surprise of the whole inclusion in the play.
It was a treat to hear David Thewlis speak the whole time in his native accent, the yass, and nooh, and sort of rounded English accent. He's had to alter his speech so much for a lot of the movies he's done (e.g.: Irish for Divorcing Jack, and of course a more upper class polish for Prof. Remus Lupin). He has such an expressive voice that brings out the emotions of the character naturally, rather than by force of will.
Thus, we, the audience were all lulled along when Michael Stone proceeds to order room service and conduct a dutiful call to his wife and kid (a fussy sounding Tom Noonan as wife and kid, “Slugger”) which doesn't end in the routine “I love you”. He then returns to reading a letter from an old girlfriend (an angry Tom Noonan), and after trying in vain to concentrate on rehearsing his speech for the conference he's speaking at the next day, he calls up the old girlfriend and invite her to the hotel for a drink.
As we've all seen, Thewlis has an acuity for portraying the lonely drunk, the slightly slurred speech, the hopeful tilt to the ends of phrases. At this point in the play, Thewlis' character takes on the creepy drunk aspect, after a botched meeting with the old girlfriend at the hotel bar and a couple of “Belvedere martinis, straight up with a twist” the music takes a sinister nightmarish drunken turn as, walking down the hotel corridor to his room, he thinks he hears a couple of girls talking about him, and in a panic knocks on a series of doors (the occupants all voiced by Tom Noonan) until he finds the right room.
The one girl (voiced by a prissy Tom Noonan) and Jennifer Jason Leigh, as Lisa, a slightly silly Midwestern accented phone operator. Both girls are big fans of the customer service business book author, Michael Stone, and are at the hotel for the conference. The now skeezy Stone invites the girls down to the bar for a couple of drinksss, and a few apple mojitos (the audience groans and laughs) and Belvedere martinis later, Stone manages to invite Lisa to his room for a “night cap”.
The sound effects guy was truly amazing, with the ice, the uncorking, the rustle of sheets. Thewlis' character, Stone proceeds to persuade the one individually voiced Lisa to sleep with him, with a whole weird scene of drunken compliments of her beautiful voice, in which Lisa is persuaded to sing the title song from Titanic!! (Jennifer Jason Leigh has a hilarious breathy warbly soprano for that part) and later on, she does the Sarah Brightman version in Latin. This is when we find out the meaning of the title, she's an anomaly (the character has some mysterious thing wrong with her, and she likes the word anomaly), which Stone slurs into -Anomalisa-.
The funniest part in the play was the sex scene that followed the whole bumbling seduction, keeping in mind, it's a radio play so we the audience are watching Jennifer Jason Leigh on stage left speaking/moaning into the mike, while David Thewlis, stage right, seated on the far side of Tom Noonan proceeds to make kissing noises etc.. into the mike. It was immensely funny: the audience was titillated, giggling, and blushing madly all at the same time. They carried it through to the triumphant conclusion and the sound effects man had the thump back onto the bed perfectly, with the immediate fumble and flick of the cigarette lighter.
This is where the psychotic problems of Michael Stone's character becomes more clear-an odd nightmare (Tom Noonan's voice with lots of reverb) followed by paranoid comments during breakfast with Lisa the next morning (while he convinces her he loves her, she's the only one who makes him feel this way, everyone else is “them” at which point Jennifer Jason Leigh's voice is doubled by Tom Noonan's voice, and gradually Thewlis' character can only hear Noonan's. This is followed by a complete breakdown at during Stone's speech at the conference complete with rant about Intelligent Design!!
The last scene is Stone returning to his family (the fussy Noonan voice) and a surprise birthday party (various male and female voices by Noonan). There is a point made with an antique Japanese doll at this point that is too odd and complex to try to explain here. However, the play ends with Jennifer Jason Leigh singing in a little soprano voice a Japanese song that fades out as the music swells.
Is coming out on CD apparantly, and is much better described here .
One thing: Meryl Streep is AMAZING. She can do the southern drawl of black woman's voice like nobody's business. Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) has a huge stage presence and booming baritone voice. Hope Davis got to rip into Paul Giamatti as part of the script. Meryl Streep got to yell at the audience about cell phones and berate Hope Davis to her face. The play was bizarre, and fun and only something Kaufman could have the imagination to write out his issues so clearly, while making fun of himself and films he's done with all these actors.
ETA: also saw Eric Idle in the lobby-- he was dressed in a killer pin stripe suit, with black and silver running shoes/trainers! So classy, and man, he's so tall.
However, lets start with my favorite of the two sound plays or radio style plays that were performed at UCLA's Royce Hall last night. Written by “Francis Fergoli” a pseudonym for a novelist who prefers to remain anonymous, Anomalisa examined the idea of the individual versus “them”, everyone else in the world.
The program notes for Anomalisa (you'll get the meaning in a bit) started with this poem:
I yearned for the kind of unseasoned telling found
In legends, fairy tales, a tone licked clean
Over the centuries by mild old tongues,
Grandam to cub, serene, anonymous.
- James Merrill, The Book of Ephraim
The band was set up around the stage, with the sound effects man, the Foley, center stage, the conductor stage left, and the three actors seated in chairs, the two men stage right and the woman stage left. Tom Noonan, dressed all in black, dangled his feet off the edge of the small riser, David Thewlis dressed in jeans and a (pleasing) lime green long shirt and those favorite brown shoes took a minute to get himself settled into his chair, his legs too long to sit with them in front of him, he sat, knees apart, his hands clasped for most of the evening in front of him. Hair and facial hair was much like the last few photos looked. (Our seats were row Y, not so bad in Royce Hall, but observed from a distance). Jennifer Jason Leigh dressed in the standard stage garb: white shirt with black sweater and jeans.
To illustrate the main idea in a radio style, Tom Noonan ( Last Action Hero, writer of the play and film, Wifey) played everyone in the play. Jennifer Jason Leigh (best known for Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle) played Lisa, the only woman who stood out as an individual to the protagonist, Michael Stone, played by David Thewlis.
The sound design and music seamlessly lulled the audience through the scenes. Starting with a series of scenes from a mundane airplane trip, from Michael Stone sitting next to an anxious person on his flight to Cincinnati to getting his luggage to a taxi ride with (a gruff Tom Noonan) as taxi driver describing the city's sites and chili on pasta, to checking into a fancy hotel (a crisp Tom Noonan as front desk agent- you get the idea).
The fun began when you got the whole sound effects leading you through the routine entering the room, opening the bathroom door and then the sound effects of a man peeing after a long plane ride, complete with the zipper, the toilet lid lifted and the interruption in stream of water towards the end, and the toilet flush. The audience burst into laughter at the familiarity of it, and the surprise of the whole inclusion in the play.
It was a treat to hear David Thewlis speak the whole time in his native accent, the yass, and nooh, and sort of rounded English accent. He's had to alter his speech so much for a lot of the movies he's done (e.g.: Irish for Divorcing Jack, and of course a more upper class polish for Prof. Remus Lupin). He has such an expressive voice that brings out the emotions of the character naturally, rather than by force of will.
Thus, we, the audience were all lulled along when Michael Stone proceeds to order room service and conduct a dutiful call to his wife and kid (a fussy sounding Tom Noonan as wife and kid, “Slugger”) which doesn't end in the routine “I love you”. He then returns to reading a letter from an old girlfriend (an angry Tom Noonan), and after trying in vain to concentrate on rehearsing his speech for the conference he's speaking at the next day, he calls up the old girlfriend and invite her to the hotel for a drink.
As we've all seen, Thewlis has an acuity for portraying the lonely drunk, the slightly slurred speech, the hopeful tilt to the ends of phrases. At this point in the play, Thewlis' character takes on the creepy drunk aspect, after a botched meeting with the old girlfriend at the hotel bar and a couple of “Belvedere martinis, straight up with a twist” the music takes a sinister nightmarish drunken turn as, walking down the hotel corridor to his room, he thinks he hears a couple of girls talking about him, and in a panic knocks on a series of doors (the occupants all voiced by Tom Noonan) until he finds the right room.
The one girl (voiced by a prissy Tom Noonan) and Jennifer Jason Leigh, as Lisa, a slightly silly Midwestern accented phone operator. Both girls are big fans of the customer service business book author, Michael Stone, and are at the hotel for the conference. The now skeezy Stone invites the girls down to the bar for a couple of drinksss, and a few apple mojitos (the audience groans and laughs) and Belvedere martinis later, Stone manages to invite Lisa to his room for a “night cap”.
The sound effects guy was truly amazing, with the ice, the uncorking, the rustle of sheets. Thewlis' character, Stone proceeds to persuade the one individually voiced Lisa to sleep with him, with a whole weird scene of drunken compliments of her beautiful voice, in which Lisa is persuaded to sing the title song from Titanic!! (Jennifer Jason Leigh has a hilarious breathy warbly soprano for that part) and later on, she does the Sarah Brightman version in Latin. This is when we find out the meaning of the title, she's an anomaly (the character has some mysterious thing wrong with her, and she likes the word anomaly), which Stone slurs into -Anomalisa-.
The funniest part in the play was the sex scene that followed the whole bumbling seduction, keeping in mind, it's a radio play so we the audience are watching Jennifer Jason Leigh on stage left speaking/moaning into the mike, while David Thewlis, stage right, seated on the far side of Tom Noonan proceeds to make kissing noises etc.. into the mike. It was immensely funny: the audience was titillated, giggling, and blushing madly all at the same time. They carried it through to the triumphant conclusion and the sound effects man had the thump back onto the bed perfectly, with the immediate fumble and flick of the cigarette lighter.
This is where the psychotic problems of Michael Stone's character becomes more clear-an odd nightmare (Tom Noonan's voice with lots of reverb) followed by paranoid comments during breakfast with Lisa the next morning (while he convinces her he loves her, she's the only one who makes him feel this way, everyone else is “them” at which point Jennifer Jason Leigh's voice is doubled by Tom Noonan's voice, and gradually Thewlis' character can only hear Noonan's. This is followed by a complete breakdown at during Stone's speech at the conference complete with rant about Intelligent Design!!
The last scene is Stone returning to his family (the fussy Noonan voice) and a surprise birthday party (various male and female voices by Noonan). There is a point made with an antique Japanese doll at this point that is too odd and complex to try to explain here. However, the play ends with Jennifer Jason Leigh singing in a little soprano voice a Japanese song that fades out as the music swells.
Is coming out on CD apparantly, and is much better described here .
One thing: Meryl Streep is AMAZING. She can do the southern drawl of black woman's voice like nobody's business. Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) has a huge stage presence and booming baritone voice. Hope Davis got to rip into Paul Giamatti as part of the script. Meryl Streep got to yell at the audience about cell phones and berate Hope Davis to her face. The play was bizarre, and fun and only something Kaufman could have the imagination to write out his issues so clearly, while making fun of himself and films he's done with all these actors.
ETA: also saw Eric Idle in the lobby-- he was dressed in a killer pin stripe suit, with black and silver running shoes/trainers! So classy, and man, he's so tall.