Judah Ben-Hur

I just watched the promotional DVD of this new musical by Ellen and David M. Sanborn and am impressed. Their goal is to bring the show to Broadway. They seem to have a worthy product -- and they’ve definitely been paving the way.

An international cast and crew presented the world premiere in Singapore from 2001 to 2002 where one reviewer had this to say: “The musical weaves the thematic threads of Lew Wallace’s novel, Ben-Hur, refreshingly (with) more humor and a lot less angst. Every element is scrupulously conceived and put together . . (with) many beautifully wrought songs . . . Ingeniously designed.”

The track record for this story is strong. The classic novel beat out popular contemporaries such as Les Miserable to become the No. 1 best-selling novel of the 19th century. In 1899, a stage version of Ben-Hur opened on Broadway and toured the country for more than 20 years, becoming the most successful theatrical production in U.S. history. In 1959 the film, starring Charleton Heston, broke box office records and garnered an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards, a record still unsurpassed.

Now the story has been dusted off, made funnier and faster, and turned into a musical comedy. Enhanced by 21st century technology, Judah Ben-Hur delivers timeless romance, the legendary chariot race and a battle between revenge and redemption. Epic stuff -- it should find a place on Broadway.

For more information, visit www.JudahBenHur.com.

My Ship: The U.S.S Intrepid

Raymond Stone just sent me a copy of this memoir. I won’t get the chance to read and review it before Father’s Day, but I want to mention it now because it should make a great present. I met Ray last month at the National Arts Club during our final Dutch Treat Club luncheon of the season. I thought his book sounded fascinating, so he kindly sent me a copy.

“Stoney” was a 18-year-old “hung-over ‘Boot’” who developed into a “battle-tested 20-year-old ‘Old Salt.’’ The book chronicles his life aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid, the Navy’s most frequently hit carrier, from 1943 to 1945. Drawn from his World War II diary, the account captures the drama of history as seen by one who lived it.

One of the Intrepid’s 3,000-man original crew, Stone served as a radar man in the ship’s brain center, the Combat Information Center, where the main responsibility was to detect enemy planes with radar and direct fighter pilots to intercept and shoot them down.

Stone was lucky; he survived without even a scratch from first a torpedo, and then the five kamikaze hits on his ship. Twenty-six of his fellow radar men were among the 69 men killed on the day two kamikazes crashed into the Intrepid while it was supporting the invasion of the Philippines.

A percentage of the profits will be donated by the author to The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and The Intrepid Association of Former Crew members.

Interview with composer and playwright Phil Hall

I wrote this feature for the March 16, 2007 issue of National Catholic Reporter

In the anxiety and excitement of getting a play up and running, the last thing most playwrights want to think about is its closing. Phil Hall is an exception. He had the ending day clearly in mind from the start and then went about finding a theatre that could accommodate. For a play about resurrections, it could close at no other time than Easter.

“It was imperative to have the most dramatic impact,” says Mr. Hall about scheduling Matthew Passion, a new play with music that will be performed off-Broadway at the American Theatre of Actors’ Chernuchin Theatre from March 29 through April 8, 2007.

Advertising itself as a play about “a man who chose to die; a man who should be dead and a boy who never saw it coming,” Matthew Passion parallels three stories thousands of years apart. The central plot surrounds Jim Keenan, a middle-aged actor who was diagnosed five years earlier as being HIV positive. Assuming he was going to die, he allowed his career to fizzle out but now realizes he has to embrace life.

“I made my peace with dying,” he tells his roommate. “Only, the end never came. And now I have to find a way to reinvent myself -- to find meaning in a future I didn’t expect to have.”

The other two stores, that of the passion, crucifixion and death of Jesus and the murder of Matthew Shepard, the young gay man who was beaten, tied to a fence and left to die in Laramie, Wyoming, are portrayed through the play-within-a-play technique as a director casts plays telling their stories. All find their resurrection in the end.

“The grace of these people and the human spirit is that we can go on and heal from these tragic acts, and by not forgetting can impact the world,” said Mr. Hall, 54, during a telephone interview from his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “The message is be all you can be and be comfortable with who you are. There’s no place we go where God’s not there too.”

The inspiration for “Matthew Passion” came from a college-aged woman Mr. Hall saw interviewed on television about Mr. Shepard’s murder. She said people should no longer be beaten up for who they are.

“I was 50 and I thought, ‘she’s the next generation and she gets it,’” Mr. Hall said. “I sensed some sort of cosmic gear shift. It was noteworthy and stuck in my mind’s eye for a long time after. Matthew Shepard was beaten and tied to a fence and that so closely paralleled the crucifixion of Christ. I don’t deify Matthew Shepard, but I do feel both were crucified for who they were on some level.”

He added the third story because he had a friend who was HIV positive and had been expected to die, but instead found himself still living and struggling with understanding why he was infected and how he was to live his life.

The play had a reading two years ago at Marble Collegiate Church, of which Mr. Hall is a member. The performances at Chernuchin Theatre will be the first full production. Although Mr. Hall has extensive experience as a conductor and musical director, having worked in noted venues including Broadway, Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center and written the lyrics to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” this is the first show for which he has written the book as well as the music.

Mr. Hall can foresee criticism from conservative Christians over a scene in which Jesus visits a gay bar and Jim, not realizing he is talking to the real Jesus, tries to pick him up.

“I don’t think that will go down too well,” he said. “It’s preposterous in some sense, but it’s also funny. Jesus is literally and figuratively the straight man.”

Mr. Hall was raised Southern Baptist in Durham, NC, and felt he always had to hide the fact that he was gay.

“The hardest thing is the lack of integration,” he says. “You can’t sit down and talk about having a crush on so and so with your family and friends so you have to split off.” The result, he said, is having part of one’s life with family and straight friends and part with groups made up of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

“We don’t get to include all of who we are, and we have to be all of who we are if we are to be psychologically healthy.”

Mr. Hall remembers asking his therapist years ago what he should do in a world that wasn’t big enough to include him as he is. The therapist gave him advice he has taken to heart.

“He said, ‘create a world that’s big enough for all of you.’ Writing this play was my coming out spiritually. The last step to integration is coming out spiritually and being comfortable in our own skin.”

Related web sites
www.matthewpassion.com

I will be made well

The gospel reading for Sunday is Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.

When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up.

Meet George Orwell

I did just that, on Saturday night in the parish hall at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. Actor Dudley Stone brought the writer to life in this engaging play by Mark Weston.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me first say Dudley is a friend, but that is not why I’m praising his performance. If I hadn’t felt it was first rate I just wouldn’t be writing anything.

Luckily I can celebrate his portrayal of George Orwell, presented as a staged reading to raise money for Holy Trinity’s soup kitchen renovation. I soon lost awareness of the script Dudley referred to because I was so caught up in the life story he was sharing.

He was blessed with good material to work with in Weston’s play, which has Orwell reflecting on his life from his childhood as a scholarship student shunned in English boarding schools, through the development of his writing career, with touching accounts of his personal life. The setting is a cottage on an island off the west coast of Scotland in 1948, a year and a half before Orwell’s death, at 47, of a neglected lung ailment.

Dudley had us in stitches as he had Orwell recounting his experience as a waiter in Paris, and we were moved by the telling of his wife’s death; several people in the audience gasped at the sadness and unexpectedness of that unfolding. Orwell’s account of visiting a mine in northern England and seeing the deplorable working conditions, the seeds for his socialist philosophy, was vividly recalled. As a writer, I also loved hearing Orwell talk about the inspiration for his works -- Animal Farm and 1984 the most memorable -- and his struggles to get published.

The evening raised more than $1,000 for Holy Trinity’s soup kitchen. The event was produced by Triangle Theatre Company, the parish’s resident company of which Dudley is founder and artistic director.

This 75-minute play, directed Saturday by Lorree True, has been performed to acclaim at the National Arts Club and The English Speaking Union in New York, as well as other locations, including Eton College (Orwell’s school), Trinity College, Oxford and the John Kennedy Memorial Library Theatre in Boston. It’s the first play about the celebrated English novelist and essayist famed for his lucid prose style and, for the most part, is in the writer’s own words. Besides his boarding school days, he reviews his life as an officer in the Royal Imperial Police in Burma, “down and out” days in London and Paris, and his experiences in the Spanish Civil War.

    Meet George Orwell will be performed again on Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the Mid-Manhattan Library on Fifth Avenue at 40th Street, across from the New York Public Library. A question and answer period will follow.