All My Sons

British director Simon McBurney has staged an intriguing, if at times uneven, revival of All My Sons, Arthur Miller's first successful play, one which features what would become two of his enduring themes -- the effects of capitalism on a person’s soul and the responsibility we have for one another.

Tony Award winner John Lithgow is fabulous as Joe Keller, a business man who survived the scandal that sent his partner to jail, and Patrick Wilson is equally strong as his son, Chris. The show opened last night at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.

I was less taken by the performance of Dianne Wiest, an actress I generally regard highly for her work on stage and screen. (She won Oscars for two Woody Allen films, “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Bullets Over Broadway.”) While Lithgow and Wilson give powerful, naturalistic performances, hers as Kate, wife of Joe and mother of Chris, is more flat, as if she is portraying a type. Her interpretation of Kate fit in with the expressionistic mood of the production.

This dichotomy is what gives the show an uneven feeling. Tom Pye’s stark set, which consists of little more that a screen door, points toward expressionism and away from the traditional staging of a Miller play. From the beginning when the cast walks on stage with no fanfare and Lithgow announces the name of the play and asks people to turn off their cells, to the final scene when all of the minor characters, who have been sitting passively in the wings watching, come on stage and stand silently on either side, I thought of Our Town; this ending made me think of the cemetery scene in Wilder’s classic. But then there is the recorded chorus singing ominously between the second and third acts that is pure Greek tragedy. In a way it seems as if Lithgow and Wilson had just wandered from a naturalistic play onto the set of one that is experimental -- two characters in search of a play.

But it is also, thank heavens, very much Miller, a playwright I have always loved. Ever the moralist, Miller found his inspiration for this 1947 play from a true story of a successful businessman who knowingly sold the government defective airline parts during World War II, resulting in tragic consequences. The truth comes out in the play as his son prepares to marry his partner’s daughter.

Oh, yes, and about that daughter. Katie Holmes (the third Mrs. Tom Cruise) is not just making her Broadway debut in the role of Ann Deever, she is making her debut on any stage and it shows. She’s far better than Julia Roberts when she made the same leap. In fact she’s fine in the first act when her character is more the sunny girl next door. She seems so at home on stage I would never have suspected it was her first time -- a far cry from Roberts who shook and cowered. It was in the second and third acts when she had to portray raw emotion -- hurt and anger and to break down in tears -- that her inexperience showed.

The original production of All My Sons won the Tony Award for best play and best director (Elia Kazan) and starred Ed Begley and Karl Malden. It was adapted for the screen in 1948 featuring Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster.

In addition to the theatre giants Lithgow and Wiest, this production includes Becky Ann Baker (Sue Bayliss), Christian Camargo (George Deever), Jordan Gelber (Frank Lubey), Danielle Ferland (Lydia Lubey), Damian Young (Dr. Jim Bayliss) and Michael D'Addario (Bert) with Sherman Howard, Clark Jackson, Lizbeth MacKay, Christopher Grey Misa and Danielle Skraastad as the Neighbors. It is scheduled to play a limited engagement through Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009.

Show times are Tuesdays at 7 p.m., Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., with matinees Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. The Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre is located at 236 W. 45th St.. Tickets, priced $61.50-$116.50, are available through www.telecharge.com or by calling Telecharge at (212) 239-6200.

'Liberation' is weak to one who lived it

 

A 30-something woman travels back in time to 1970 to get to know her mother better in the world premiere of Bess Wohl’s uneven new play, Liberation, which opened last night at the Laura Pels Theatre.  The exploration, under the direction of Whitney White, lacks the charm and fun of a similar, accidental, journey in the movie “Back to the Future.”  And there’s no cool DeLorean.

 I was in high school and college in the 1970s and my development was deeply affected by the women’s movement.  It still informs my life as I approach 70 next month.  Wolf wasn’t born until 1975, which is why I didn’t feel the spirit of that time.  She hadn’t lived the energy and optimism that was so exciting.

 The five women Lizzie (Susannah Flood, left in photo) attracts to her CR group (consciousness raising) seem to have little commitment to any ideology but they do talk — a lot.  The two hours and 30 minutes running time should be cut considerably.  Wohl seems to be going for humor but I didn’t find their comments funny, just boring.

 Part of the problem could be David Zinn’s set, a basketball court in a subterranean gym in Ohio.  With banners proclaiming the victories of boys’ sports teams plastered on the back wall, the testosterone vibe overwhelms the women, at least in the first act.

 Act Two opens three years later and was the only time I felt the women had the potential to be engaged in the Movement.  Buck naked under Cha See’s softened lighting and following a trend they’ve heard other groups are doing, they reveal themselves while sitting on metal folding chairs and walking around the stage.  Out of respect for the actors our phones were locked in Yondr pouches, which we took to our seats.

One by one the women share one thing they hate and one they love about their bodies. Being liberated from their clothes (costumes by Queen Jean), they liberate their spirits for the first time.

Margie (Betsy Aidem, second from right), my favorite character because she seems the most real, begins.  A traditional wife and mother in her late 50s or early 60s, she skips over what she loves and gets right to what she hates, her scar from the C-sections she had for her two sons.

“I know it shouldn’t bother me but it’s ugly.  It just is.  And I hate it the way my, my skin sort of pooches out over it and then makes this kind of disgusting fat shelf.  I hate it so much and it’s bumpy and long and I hate that, that it feels unfair somehow?  Like, my children, my sons, they got life and my husband got the family he wanted and I ended up this husk with this hideous scar.  I mean I love my sons, don’t get me wrong.  It’s a worth it, blah, blah, blah, but you know.”

She tries to pass on saying what she loves but Dora (Audrey Corsa, far right), in her mid-20s, won’t take no for an answer.

“It’s part of the work, self-love.  It’s, it’s an act of liberation.”

Saying she doesn’t feel liberated and that the others are too young to understand, Margie gives her thoughtful answer.

“I like that my body still works.  I like that my knees bend.  I like that my heart beats.”  She pauses to put her hand over her heart.  “Yeah, it’s still going.  When you get older, if you love long enough, you start to watch as your body slowly descends.  No, really.  It’s like, it’s like watching something on the shore slowly get pulled out to sea.  And I like, I love that I’m not lost in the ocean.  Well, not yet anyway.  That’s it.”

Isidora (Irene Sofia Lucio, second from left), in her early 40s, jumps in readily to say she loves her “tits,” in a tank top or sexy blouse, “and you know you can get anything you want.” 

An obnoxious talker, she was my least favorite.

“Okay, so yeah, fuck off.  I’m a radical, sure, but this tits thing, it works.”

What she hates is her crooked toe, a result of her father stomping on it – intentionally -- when she was a child.

Next up is Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd), the lone Black woman in the group, in her late 30s, who says they shouldn’t be focusing on appearances at all.

“I think this is the exact trap they want us in, objectifying ourselves, talking about our bodies when we should be having a more, a more elevated, intellectual kind of discourse.”

Having made her point, she readily acknowledges that her entire body “is something the world has been at war with for a very long time.  I can’t really isolate out one body part more than another.  It’s the fact of being in a body that is often unwelcome.”

What she loves is her brain. “And you can tell me that doesn’t count, but I’m counting it because it’s a body part.  I do love my brain.”

Susan (Adina Version, third from left), in her early 20s, is brief.  “Ass good, tits feh,” and she declines to elaborate.

Lizzie likes her eyes and hates lots of her body parts but none as much as her nostrils, which her first boyfriend in high school told her were flared and made her look like an angry horse.  Even since when she’s met someone new she’s looked down so they won’t see her big nostrils.

Dora is astonished.

“So you’ve spent you whole life with your head bowed because of something some little prick said about your nostrils?”

But when it’s her turn, Dora confesses that being pretty means she’s treated like a doll and she thinks that’s why she’s never had an orgasm “because I can’t actually feel anything.”

This was the CR session the women were most engaged with each other and with themselves and when I became most interested in them. Liberation takes time.  In real life and in plays.

Produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, Liberation plays through March 30. 

I Contemplated Suicide Again - This Time by Inhaling During a PowerPoint Presentation

By Kenny Moore

I recently gave a business talk at a swanky New York City hotel and got robbed by one of the attendees. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised: it was a gathering of entrepreneurs.

There’s a price to be paid for going public

I was there to talk about a book that I co-authored: The CEO and the Monk: One Company’s Journey to Profit and Purpose. I’m the “monk” side of the story, having spent 15 years in a monastic community as a Catholic priest before venturing into the world of business. Actually, the work’s proven to be quite similar, except the pay’s now a lot better.

My presentation format is somewhat non-traditional. Unlike Jack Welch, I don’t purport to have clearly articulated solutions to solve today’s pressing business problems. I likewise eschew PowerPoint presentations, guided by the belief that folks are tired of them and prefer hearing a few good stories instead. I think Jesus followed a similar format in his short-lived business career. And even though it didn’t generate positive cash flow, his design was well received by the masses.

Perhaps what most distinguishes me from Mr. Welch is that he’s rich and I’m not. And as we all know from studying business best practices, if you’re rich - you must be right. Consequently, lacking copious cash and a neat package of simple handouts for business success, I use a presentation style that tends to skirt the mainstream, and wobbles along the margins of today’s cookie-cutter conference programs.

I’ve even given up deciding which business stories to tell, since it’s never really clear to me in advance what the attendees need to hear. I merely display several pictures on the stage and invite participants to choose one which captures their fancy – then I tell that particular story. This design is based on the business principle that people support what they help create. It also connects to my personal conviction that the group’s active contribution to the program generates buy-in and commitment. Besides, it safeguards my frail ego: if the presentation bombs, at least I have somebody else to blame. I’ve gleaned this final bit of wisdom by assiduously observing executive behavior both within and outside the monastery for well over 30 years.

During my talk, I also like to have the attendees take part in a group activity. Most of the time I’m able to resist the monastic temptation to have them join hands and sing “Kumbaya” and wind up engaging them in a business exercise pitched largely to their professional learning and personal enjoyment. When the activity’s over, I ask them to share their reflections with the full audience. I’ve found that if I can actually keep my mouth shut, most of the participants have pearls of wisdom to offer their peers. Anyone who’s brave enough to publicly speak his mind also gets a gift from the front table: a signed photo card from a well-known photographer - me. Like Ansel Adams, I counsel the recipients to hold onto it, for once I die it will only grow in value. This is, unfortunately, the downside of being an artist: you don’t get recognition until after you’re dead.

Miscreants in the marketplace

It was in just such a program that I got ripped off by a New York entrepreneur. After my talk, large numbers of the audience came up to shake my hand, offer congratulations and seek my professional counsel. This represented a total crowd of three. While I was momentarily distracted by the glow of world acclaim, someone snuck over to the front table where I had placed my photo cards and stole the display copy of my book. I didn’t notice the purloined item until the room emptied and I collected my personal belongings to journey home.

Drawing from my many years of monastic serenity, I remember softly muttering to no one in particular: “O my God! Some bastard stole my book.”

Like Holden Caulfield, I too couldn’t quite stomach all New York had to offer and found myself expressing similar expletives of disbelief. My teen-age son often reminds me that not everyone views the world as I do. But what the heck’s going on here? Isn’t there anyone left who knows something about Divine Retribution?

From the way I looked at it, stealing from some ordinary guy on the street is one thing; but ripping off a former man of the cloth is quite another. You can’t steal from monks, even defrocked ones, without expecting some dire consequences to ensue. However, I took some consolation in recalling the opening act from the Broadway hit Les Miserables, where Jean Valjean is caught robbing from the church and is forgiven by the cleric - a compassionate deed that became a turning point in his life. I eventually offered absolution, in absentia, to the thief and likened my recent experience as similar. I headed home that evening humming the soundtrack from the musical.

But then a month later, it happened again. This time in New Jersey! And as we now can statistically substantiate, there ain’t no bad people living in any suburb of New Jersey.

Similar to the New York experience, at the end of my presentation I was surrounded by a screaming crowd of inspired business professionals. While deeply engrossed with the five people before me (actually, a few were there seeking directions to the Garden State Parkway) once again my book was mysteriously absconded away with.

The crowd eventually dwindled and a lone gentleman remained behind. “I loved your talk,” he said, “and I wanted to have something to remember you by.” With an air of nonchalance, he continued: “Since you didn’t have any more photo cards left, I decided to take the display copy of your book.”

There, boldly visible in his attaché, was the evidence of his misdeed. Adding insult to injury, he took it out for me to autograph.

With the same moral indignation that Officer Javert held toward the thief Valjean, I chided him for his dastardly offense. But he was both unmoved and unrepentant. “I didn’t want to leave here tonight,” he calmly continued, “without taking along a small reminder of the event.” What did he think he was doing - harvesting relics for some future ecclesiastical yard sale?

While folks may have stolen personal effects from Mother Teresa at the end of her career, she certainly didn’t get her start that way. And neither did Jack Welch.

I worried how this might all eventually play out: today they take my book; tomorrow, my femur. Was the New York entrepreneur a harbinger of something deeper?

I’m nobody. Who are you?

A final quality that differentiates me from Mr. Welch is that I’m not famous. This means that when I come into town to speak, most people don’t take notice. And when my presentation is over, I don’t have a frenetic speaking schedule that whisks me off to the next mega-conference in Vegas. I get to sit tight and hang around for awhile. It’s not uncommon that my speaking schedule is so paltry that after shaking a few hands, I merely loiter in the lobby waiting for the cocktail hour to start. I regularly even have time to attend the conference dinner. But I’m not important enough to sit at the head table; I usually dine with the ordinary folks at the convention.

I kind of enjoy that, for I get to meet interesting and wholesome people in the process. Like the woman who shared with me her personal journey with breast cancer. Being a cancer survivor myself, I felt heartened listening to her story. Or another executive whose uncle was a Catholic priest. As a young girl, she grew up having a vast horde of them continually showing up for dinner, often unannounced. The woman also had some of the best clergy jokes I’ve ever heard: “Why do people sit in the back of the church? Because there are no chairs in the parking lot.”

Oddly enough, there’s even a chance to perform some goodly deeds when you’re not that important. While I was wasting time before dinner, one young accountant in his twenties approached me with some small talk and then suddenly blurted out: “A friend of mine recently died and I haven’t been able to stop crying. My roommate feels there’s something wrong here. What do you think?”

We wound up talking for well over an hour.

It seems ministry is no longer relegated to the confines of a church. Most sacred moments happen in the marketplace, not the monastery. And occasionally even at a business conference. As we’ve known all along, the opportunities to offer support and provide friendly counsel continue to remain infinite and surprisingly varied.

Remembrance of things past

Upon reflection, I think the reason my book gets swiped at conferences is that people want a tangible reminder - a relic - of the experience. While difficult for my ego to accept, it’s not about me; it’s about the event. We come together at business gatherings seeking a sense of community. Our desire is not so much to hear from big-name speakers or to walk away with another set of handouts. We’re looking to connect with other kindred souls, ordinary folks struggling with the same issues we are.

Our unstated goal for attending these events is the overarching desire to feel that we’re not alone. That in living out our business vocation, we are making a difference. It’s the innate longing to believe that we’re using our God-given talents for something beyond financial remuneration. At some level, we understand that the author Neale Walsh was right: “When you lose sight of each other as sacred souls on a sacred journey, then you cannot see the purpose, the reason, behind all relationships.”

In our thirst for learning, we want to be active participants and have a playful hand in creating our own business reality. What we’re seeking is an experience of being alive. And we come alive through stories and personal interaction. Something PowerPoint presentations just can’t accomplish.

We’re also reminded that the sacredness of life is often shrouded in the trappings of the ordinary. The Divine is manifest in the mundane, not the spectacular.

It seems that throughout history whenever sacred events happened, most of us missed the encounter. We were looking for something dynamic and more attractive. Possibly a charismatic leader cloaked in the trappings of a business superstar. But the prophets always reside in the audience and never on center stage. Alas, the Divine is deceptive.

It’s no surprise then, that when we attend workshops we seek to retain something as a reminder. Rather than wanting to steal books, we really desire to recall that remembrances reside not in things but in us. Upon returning to work, we find that it’s who we are and not what we know that will ultimately transform our corporate homes.

Like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz this is something we’ve known all along, but somehow failed to remember. She had Glinda, the Good Witch, to remind her. But who will help us?

Perhaps that’s the responsibility we have to one another: to be heralds for this more sacred business reality. Conferences confer the invitation for us to be the living reminders of this deeper responsibility, this more compelling journey.

Unfortunately, if we fail to recall it on our own, we’re sure to be subjected to further PowerPoint presentations.

And I’m not sure I can handle yet another set of handouts.

P.S. If you’re thinking about writing me, give in to the temptation. I love getting mail ... and being influenced by what you have to say. Please e-mail me at kennythemonk@yahoo.com.


Kenny Moore is co-author of The CEO and the Monk: One Company's Journey to Profit and Purpose (John Wiley and Sons), rated as one of the top ten best selling business books on Amazon.com.

Prior to coming to corporate life, Moore spent 15 years in a monastic community as a Catholic priest. Oddly enough, both jobs have proven to be quite similar - except the Incentive Plans vary greatly. Kenny left the monastery because he wanted to get married. Now that he’s married and has two teenagers, he would like to go back.

The media once asked Pope John XXIII how many people worked at the Vatican. “About half of them…” he said. Moore has discovered that there are common operating principles in effect whenever you’re dealing with large hierarchical institutions, sacred or secular.

Several years ago, Moore had the good fortune of being diagnosed with “incurable” cancer, at its most advanced stages. He underwent a year of experimental treatment at theNational Cancer Institute and survived. He recently had a heart attack and was invited to be sawed in half and given a quadruple bypass: a subtle reminded that his time is running short.

Kenny came away from both experiences recalling the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside us.” Moore’s lifetime goal is to spend more of his time playing his music.

Having dealt with both God and death, he now finds himself eminently qualified to work with senior management on corporate change efforts.

Kenny is a watercolor artist, poet and photographer. He is Founding Director of Art for the Anawim, a not-for-profit charity which works with the art community in supporting the needs of terminally ill children and the inner city poor. His poems have been published in several anthologies; one was selected as a semi-finalist in the North American Open Poetry Contest. Kenny lives in Northern New Jersey and is married to the “fair and beautiful” Cynthia. Together, they are fighting a losing battle of maintaining their mental stability while raising 2 teenage boys.

Kenny has recently expanded his work to include Stand-up Comedy. This is driven largely by the sneaking suspicion that when the Divine returns, She will find a more receptive audience in bars and comedy clubs than in our Houses of Worship.

Moore is President of Kenny Moore Consulting, LLC. He’s a well-regarded Keynote speaker, executive coach and business consultant for Leadership Development, Change Management and Employee Engagement. He can be reached at kennythemonk@yahoo.com or (973) 956-8210.

Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli headline 'An Enemy of the People' revival

 

Playwright Amy Herzog has once again taken a beloved Henrik Ibsen classic and made it more accessible — and shorter — without cheapening its worth.  This time it’s An Enemy of the People at Circle in the Square, tautly directed by Sam Gold and wonderfully acted by Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli.

I had high expectations having enjoyed Herzog’s adaptation of A Doll’s House last year and I was not disappointed.  I’ve liked both plays since I first read them in college.  Ibsen was a revolutionary.  Many people were outraged to see a wife and mother leave her family in A Doll’s House.  I understood Nora’s need for independence and loved that a man from that time had created her.   But Ibsen was writing for long 19th century Norwegian nights.  Enemy, especially, can drag at times and come off as didactic.  Herzog and Gold’s production is well paced throughout, reducing the five act play to two hours with no intermission.  They are wife and husband collaborating on their first stage production together. 

It’s a story of greed and political self-interest that, unfortunately, is as timely as 2020.  Dr. Thomas Stockmann (Strong) is a small town doctor who discovers that the town’s water is toxic and warns of a pandemic if the situation isn’t addressed.  He could be a fictional Dr. Anthony Fauci.  All we have to do is think back four years to the fierce divide between red states and blue over COVID restrictions and we can understand Stockmann’s plight.  Fortunately Fauci wasn’t stoned as Stockmann is but had he been in a small southern town he could have faced a violent attack. 

When the play opens Stockmann has returned to his hometown on the coast with his grown daughter, Petra (Victoria Pedretti), after living in a remote region until his wife died.  This is one of Herzog’s changes, cutting out the character of the wife who in the original play is a shrill opponent of her husband’s principled stand.  I didn’t miss her.

The town had always attracted, on a small scale, people suffering from various ailments because of the healing power of its hot springs.  In Stockmann’s absence, under the direction of his brother, Peter, who is mayor (Imperioli), big plans to turn the town into a major resort and spa are well under way, creating an abundance of jobs and the promise of wealth to all who invest.

At first the doctor is esteemed for discovering the contamination.  But when he calls for all plans for the resort to be stopped while an expensive, years long rebuilding of the water system is undertaken, the townsfolk turn on him swiftly.

Ibsen, considered the father of modern drama, was a moralist. Arthur Miller said he was greatly influenced by Ibsen’s plays.  Herzog has said the same.  In Miller’s case this is most obvious in his 1948 drama All My Sons in which Joe Keller, a self-made industrialist in World War II, discovers that a plane part at his manufacturing plant is defective but allows production to continue rather than face a costly work stoppage.  When a plane crashes and kills all onboard Keller frames his business partner.  Like Ibsen, Miller knew that when taking the moral road has a high price tag many people will leave their morals on the roadside and keep going. 

The action in Enemy is well served by the scenic design  company dots, as well as the theatre itself, which is in-the-round.  In the first act simple furnishings, in keeping with Norwegian sensibilities, create a dining room, living room and newspaper office.  I was thrown at first by what turned out to be the most unusual set change I’ve seen in a long time.  Before I realized what was happening the furnished rooms gave way to a pub and the audience was invited onstage for a drink in what we were told would be a five minute break.  It turned out to be more like 20 minutes to serve the lines of people waiting.  Some audience members had been asked to take seats onstage to represent the people at what becomes a town meeting.  I didn’t see how that contributed to the scene.  They were incongruous in their sneakers and casual clothes against David Zinn’s evocative period costumes.

But the set allows Stockmann to climb onto the bar to try in vain to make his case.  It highlights him as the solitary crusader he has become, who has now been deemed an enemy of the people.  Luckily he survives their stoning and tells Petra they will go to America where things like that don’t happen.  This draws laugher and applause.  He’s probably right about not being stoned.  We used bullets now instead.

This was the most satisfying production of An Enemy of the People I’ve ever experienced.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Herzog has in store for us next.  Hedda Gabler, please. 

All-Black cast energizes 'Death of a Salesman'

 

     I was unprepared for the emotional impact director Miranda Cromwell’s revival of Death of a Salesman would have on me.  I haven't felt so moved since the first time I saw this Arthur Miller classic when I was 17 and went into it cold.

     Willy's death shook me deeply then and it did again yesterday thanks to Wendell Pierce’s powerful, fully human performance.  But I grieved for another character as well this time, Linda, Willy's devoted wife.  As portrayed by Sharon D. Clarke this Linda is a woman of our time, a feminist Linda who isn’t diminished by Willy's temper and insults.  

     Linda has always come off to me as a servile, 1950s TV wife with a “Yes, dear” attitude who cowered under Willy's verbal abuse.  When Willy yells at Clarke’s Linda to be quiet she stops talking but her gestures and expressions say plenty.  She’s no doormat.  She’s Willy’s equal and when she tells her sons she loves him I had no doubt.  In the past I’ve thought she was just kidding herself.

     This revival, at the Hudson Theatre, is the first time the 1949 play has been done on Broadway with an all-Black cast.  Broadway lags way behind Baltimore’s Center Stage in that regard.  The 1972 production I saw was the first time Salesman had been done by an all-Black professional cast in this country.  Miller came to the opening.  In a program note he wrote: “I have felt for many years that particularly with this play, which has been so well received in so many countries and cultures, that the black actor would have an opportunity, if that is needed anymore, to demonstrate all his common humanity and his talent.”  Obviously it was still needed because it took 50 years for it to happen on Broadway. 

     I’ve seen the play at least three other times — in 1983 at Syracuse Stage and the Broadway revivals in 1999 and 2012, with all white casts, of course, and I’ve read it I don’t know how many times through my three degrees in English.  Because of that I was reluctant to see it again.  I thought its power to move me was long gone and I went only as a dutiful Drama Desk voter.  I’m glad I did.  By the end, the graveside scene was so painful I was in tears.  Linda said she couldn’t cry but couldn’t not.  

     Adding to the emotion of the scene was a gospel recording that began to play quietly and was picked up by Linda singing “When We Meet Again When the Trumpets Sound.”  What a gut punch.  

     This gave a familiar classic a new take.  Clarke’s performance and Cromwell’s direction made the play a story of a husband and wife, a marriage, instead of the father/son story I had always been left with.

     Which leads me to the sons, Biff (Khris Davis) and Happy (McKinley Belcher III).  I’ve never had much sympathy for either of them except when I saw Kevin Anderson’s portrayal in the 1999 Broadway revival.  I did care about his Biff.  With these two I wanted to bash their heads together. 

     Andre De Shields portrays Ben, Willy’s older brother, who proudly tells Willy,  “William, when I walked into the jungle, I was 17.  When I walked out I was 21.  And, by God, I was rich!”  He is authoritative, almost kingly, pumped up with his own self-importance, making it easy to understand how he makes Willy feel he can’t measure up.  He’s also a bit scary when he’s the ghost of himself who plays out in Willy’s troubled mind.

     Scenic designer Anna Fleischle leaves the stage largely bare, which is effective in focusing on the drama of the play.  Furniture and window frames that are suspended from the ceiling go up and down as needed. Jen Schriever’s lighting design is dark and shadowy, in keeping with the mood.  

     This production was originally directed by Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell at the Young Vic Theatre in London, and subsequently at the Piccadilly Theatre in London in 2019.    This Broadway production proves that attention must still be paid to Willy Loman and Miller’s enduring play. 

Love and Death

     The Rev. Stephen Chinlund had an agenda in mind as he headed to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for the diocesan convention about a decade ago, and it had nothing to do with church governance.  He was there to court a partner.

    And he found him, luring him across Amsterdam Avenue to the Hungarian Pastry Shop where the two men bonded over coffee and decided to cast their futures together.  The consummation of that union is about to be born.

     In a city where the unusual borders on normal, Brush Strokes may be the only musical conceived at a church convention.  Its birth will take place this month in that mecca to which so many in the performing arts aspire — New York’s theatre district. 

     The other proud parent of this collaboration is the composer Bert Draesel, known in church circles as the Rev. Herbert G. Draesel Jr., whom Chinlund, the show’s book writer, sought out because of his extensive experience as a composer of musical theatre. A third parent, Jim Semmelman, a long-time television stage manager of “The View” and “Today,” wrote the lyrics to Draesel’s songs.   

     Chinlund and Draesel, both now retired from full-time church ministry, discussed their musical, which will be produced Off, Off-Broadway by the Thespis Theater Festival at the Hudson Guild Theater, at Chinlund’s Garment District studio. Chinlund not only writes in this crowded space behind a canary yellow door on a floor filled with artists’ studios festooned with a rainbow of colorful doors, but he paints here as well.  His paintings adorn the wall, and shelves are crowded with books and photographs of his family — wife of 50 years, Caroline, two sons, a daughter and grandchildren.  It is a familiar setting in New York’s creative world, but it was actually the priesthood that brought Chinlund here.

     While rector at Trinity Church in Southport, CT, in the mid-1980s Chinlund counseled many older parishioners who felt that with their children raised and their careers behind them “nothing moved them.”

     “I thought, ‘Maybe if I wrote a play and they could see themselves onstage, they could think, ‘Maybe I could be like him or like her.’”

     Although he had only written one play, which was never produced, Chinlund gave it a go, creating a story of an older man and woman who meet at an art class, fall in love and marry.  When he showed it to friends, they were underwhelmed.

     “They said, ‘A play is about drama, and drama is about conflict.  You don’t have any.’”

     So he decided to introduce a topic dear to him — assisted suicided —something he champions heartily and which has put him at odds with his 54-year-old daughter, Sarah, now a Roman Catholic, who opposes it.  Chinlund’s position was shaped by his parents, founding members of Death With Dignity and strong believers in the right to determine one’s ending.  

     “They were terrified of being hooked up to tubes,” he said.

     Draesel said it was this element that drew him to the project.

     “It was something both of us wanted to say, and to say it as a musical would say something that mattered rather than doing Annie Get Your Gun one more time,” he said. “This is something the church should be discussing and grappling with.  What better way than as a show?”

     Chinlund hopes churches will produce the musical as a way to discuss end of life issues, but also to highlight positive aspects of aging, something he had been championing for years in his Happy Surprises in Later Life discussion groups.

     “It was the same idea as the play, that old age is not just a time to be denied or lamented, but could be the best time of life. That’s really counterculture.” 

     So is talking about death as a church topic.

     “It’s taboo,” Chinlund says.  “We don’t use the D word freely.  We’ve still got a long way to go.”

     Both men emphasize, though, that death is not the end of the love that was central to a relationship. The inspiration behind the joyful final song, “Always Together,” came from Chinlund’s sister who continued talking to her husband after he had died, making her feel he was still with her.  “Everyone in my bereavement group is doing he same thing,” she told her brother.  That line is now in the play.

     “That’s just how my sister felt about her sort of ongoing marriage,” Chinlund said. 

     “That’s not morbid,” Draesel said.  “It’s just natural.”

     While the September performances will be the first full production, the musical has been tested in public readings.

     “We got a lot of encouragement from audiences,” Draesel said.  “People were walking out crying, happy crying, and hugging each other.  But we were preaching to the choir.  I’d like to get beyond that and create study guides to be given out as they leave for people to think about these things.”

     Both men are hoping that the September production, which is being videotaped, will land them a producer who can take the show to an Off-Broadway run.  Draesel envisions a rotating cast of A-list perfumers, citing two he would love to entice — Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones.

     “I pray,” he said.

     This foray into the performing arts is new to Chinlund who spent nearly five decades of his priestly years working in prison ministry, becoming the chairman of the New York State Commission of Correction. Draesel, whose time was spent in parish ministry especially in urban areas, can trace his artistic involvement to when he was 5 1/2 and listened to his sister practicing her piano lessons, which she hated.  When she was finished, he took to the piano bench and played her pieces by ear.  He wrote his first song at 7.

     “Faith and the arts have been a very happy coupling all my life,” he says. “Most of the things I’ve written have been labors of love and explorations of faith.”

     He cites his musical Walden, about the abolition movement and the underground railroad.

     “Those are issues dear to my heart from my years in urban ministry,” he says.  “The church is not always terribly responsive. It says it’s interested in the arts but there’s not a lot of expression.

     “When people think about religion they think about fundamentalists and people finding Jesus.  That’s not what I do.  What I’m trying to do is be a little more subtle.  We have to find God in the ordinariness of life and we have to celebrate at every possible moment.”

     Chinlund agreed.

     “I hope people will find in the play reasons to feel fulfilled in life that have nothing to do with a checked-off list.  I think we could do more in the church to encourage people.” 

Image: Joy Franz and Chuck Muckle are the lead actors in Brush Strokes.

Ever wonder why it rains cats and dogs?

In The 1500's

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s, sent to me by my neighbor Lydia Colon.

These are interesting...

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water.

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath.. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying It's raining cats and dogs.

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house.. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, Dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance way. Hence the saying a thresh hold.

(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat..

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous..

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days.. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.

And that's the truth...Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !

Educate someone. Share these facts with a friend.

'Church and State' play aims to stir up conversation about guns

     The U.S. Senator from North Carolina is an unquestioning supporter of all things red, especially in relationship to God and guns.  His convictions are challenged, though, after a shooting at his sons’ elementary school leaves 29 dead. Following the funeral for one of the victims, he admits in response to a blogger’s question that the killings are enough to make him doubt God’s existence.

     He is running for a third term and his comments go viral.  Three days before the election.  

   Jason Odell Williams, 42, was inspired to write his latest play, Church and State, after the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, but he had been thinking about gun violence since at least 2007 with the mass killings at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, a football rival of his alma mater, the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

   “I watched the news and saw a candlelight vigil in Charlottesville and it struck a cord with me,” he said during a telephone interview from his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  “I had been a student there not that long before.  It really shook me.”

  That incident had been followed by the shooting outside a Tucson supermarket in which Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 16 others were shot, six of them fatally.  

     “I thought, ‘What if it had been a man and he had been a Republican,” Williams said. “That’s a really dark and twisted thought, but when tragedy strikes, our thoughts become dark and twisted.”

     Sandy Hook’s tragedy prompted him to put his thoughts on paper. His first draft of Church and State was “like a well-written Facebook rant with a very one-sided liberal New Yorker view.”

    He sent it to Ralph Meranto, artistic director of JCC CenterStage in Rochester, NY, who had produced his first play, Handle With Care.  Meranto “asked smart questions” and offered suggestions to make the characters — the Senator; his wife, a conservative Christian; and his campaign manager, a liberal Jew from New York — more three dimensional and to present the issue of gun control more even-handedly.  He also thought it would be fun to have the Senator’s remarks be tweeted to spread quicker.  Meranto didn’t know his 2014 suggestion would be so timely in 2017 with the election of America’s Tweeter in Chief.

     The show had a successful run in Rochester before moving to Los Angeles where the Huffington Post called it “powerful, humorous and highly contemporary,” naming it one of the Top Ten L.A. Theatre Productions of 2016. It is now at Off-Broadway’s New World Stages, with tickets on sale through Sept. 3.

     Talkbacks have been a part of Church and State’s runs.  In New York they were held after three performances in April featuring representatives from Virginia Tech Victims Family Outreach Fund; Everytown For Gun Safety, with an appearance by actress Julianne Moore; and New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. During the Virginia Tech event, a woman identifying herself as a Donald Trump voter said she thought the play had done a good job of presenting both sides and later told Williams in the lobby that she hopes the play will be presented in red states.  That would be fine with him.

     “My goal was to get it to New York and then across the country.  I’d love to see it in all the purple states.  That’s my ultimate goal.”

     He is in talks with theatre producers in North Carolina, rural Virginia, Florida, Washington, D.C. and Alaska about possible productions there.

     “I want to stir up some controversy and start conversations.”

  He sees areas for compromises, such as universal background checks. He created an open-ended finish to allow audiences to draw their own conclusions.

     “We’re so divided now.  Maybe the rubber band will break and we’ll all come back to the middle.”

   Williams is adamant that he does not want his play to be thought of as disrespectful to people of faith or Southerners, and makes it clear he doesn't see conservative Christians as the enemy in gun control talks.  He saves his wrath for one target alone.

     “To me it’s the NRA.  They’re only thinking about profit.  Nothing about their agenda is reasonable.  Living without fear is more important than somebody’s gun collection.”

     Although he has had no personal experience with the issue, he thinks “we’re all less than six degrees of separation now from gun violence.”

     “There’s stuff in the newspapers everyday,” he said.

  Just then, Williams, in almost unbelievable timing, was interrupted by a text from Rob Nagle, the actor playing the Senator. The text informed him about a shooting at a San Bernardino elementary school that had just left two adults and one child dead, with another child injured. 

     “It’s crazy.  It just keeps happening.  People are afraid to go to the mall, the movies, church, places that are supposed to be safe.” 

     Williams, who was nominated for an Emmy Award as a writer for National Geographic Channel’s TV series “Brain Games,” has never worked in politics and says the only thing that could lure him into it is that in the unlikely event Nagle would run for office, Williams would like to be his speechwriter. 

     He also is not a person of faith although his mother is Catholic and father Protestant and he was baptized but not confirmed.  And his first two Off-Broadway plays centered around God and faith.

     “I don’t know where I stand, which is why I keep writing about it,” he said, adding that his wife grew up Orthodox Jewish in Israel and turned from her religion when she moved to America.  After the birth of their daughter, Imogen, now 11, they began worshipping at a synagogue and sending her to Hebrew school.  He has no plans to convert.

     “It’s nice to have a sense of community, of coming together,” he said.  “I’m always examining what it is and what it means.” 

One-woman play uses biblical Mary's life to tell story of black mothers, sons

      Angela Polite had little awareness of the Blessed Mother when she was growing up in the African Methodist Episcopal tradition in South Carolina.  Now, though, some three decades later, she is about to open Off-Broadway in Mary Speaks, a world premiere one-woman play inspired by Holy Mary that she has been developing over the last decade. 

     “We were not exactly in love with Mary as our Catholic brothers and sisters are,” Polite said during a telephone interview last week. “I knew she was a young girl and pretty special.  As I began to think of Mary more as a mother and modernize her voice, I started to fall in love with her.”

     Having Mary for inspiration isn’t the only unexpected element in Polite’s journey to Theatre for the New City in New York’s East Village, where Mary Speaks runs from Feb. 16 through 26. The “very proud native of Charleston and descendant of Gullah people” was a TV producer in Washington, D.C. She had been part of the drama club at school, played clarinet and sung in choirs but had never performed professionally until she took a sabbatical to study acting in England in 2004, which led to some television commercials and a part on “The Wire.”  Three years later she decided to “take the big leap”  —   quit her job, sell her car and moved to New York to pursue acting. 

     Newly arrived in the city, she joined the First AME Bethel Church in Harlem.  When the pastor, the Rev. Henry A. Belin III, learned she was an actress he remembered seeing her on “The Wire” and asked her to take part in the annual combined parishes Advent program, Caring and Sharing, for about 200 people. Even though she had never written a show and had little perception of Holy Mary, she decided to modernize the Mother of God as the prototype of all mothers who had struggled to keep their sons alive when their very existence was deemed a threat to society.  

     “I saw her as a regular mother.”

     Although she has no children of her own, Polite kept that image of Mary in mind as she appeared in several Off-Broadway plays, one of which had her as the mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African-American boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1941 for reportedly flirting with a white woman. At that time, 2012, controversy was swirling over the death of another African-American teen, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old youth fatally shot by the neighborhood watch coordinator for a gated community in Florida. Parallels were repeatedly made during audience talkbacks and Polite started thinking about how she wanted to respond as a performer.  She pulled out her old work from the Advent program and began fashioning her play.

     “It’s been a big journey, a very big journey,” she says.

   In addition to her Off-Broadway engagement, Polite has been invited to perform Mary Speaks on March 4 as part of the International Human Rights Arts Festival at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

  Polite set her “passion play” in Charleston so she could write authentically. It begins in the early 1900s when her Mary, an African-American of Gullah descent, is 13 and conceives and gives birth to a son after a spiritual encounter in the wilderness one night. It continues through the Jim Crow South until Mary is 46.

     “I wanted to look at a timeline of African-American women and their sons.”

    While her Mary is post-slavery, the girl’s grandma remembers those days well. Polite sees a connection between her character and the mother of Jesus, who was a Jewish girl and part of a special people, a group set aside. Through narrative, monologues, music and dance she uses the life of the biblical Mary to creates characters, black and white, to tell a story of black mothers and sons. Polite wrote the play’s final song after the 2014 death of Eric Garner, the 43-year-old African-American man who died on Staten Island after a New York City Police Department officer placed him in a chokehold while arresting him.  Her lyrics span the sorrows of the centuries:

     “A Saviour on a cross

     “A Man swinging on a tree

     “A Dead boy on the street.”

    She wrote several songs as she developed the play.  “Telling a story in the African-American tradition, it would be unnatural not to have some music in it.”

     The first reflects Mary’s Magnificat:

     “I didn’t choose this fate.  I was picked from among the girls

      “Not yet touched and not yet opened to the bruises of this world.”

     Polite relates to that openness to God.

     “She was a young, innocent girl with the level of faith to say ‘let it be unto me as you will.’  My life is guided by God in the things I do.” 

     As she worked on the show, which runs 65 minutes, she sought advice from one of her ministers, a graduate of Union Theological Seminary who offered a “womanist perspective,” and her pastor who counseled her on scriptural references.

     “It was very important to me to keep the story along the timeline of Mary and for the writing to come from scripture,” she says.  “Mary only speaks four times in the Bible.  I wanted to make sure I stayed true.”

     The final scene ties all grieving black mothers together with Holy Mary. 

    “It’s quite overwhelming to me,” she said, adding that pain and mourning are universal.

    “I hope mothers grieving in South Africa, India, China and any race can feel the same pain as Mary felt.  We connect it to the cross, to connect to the pain of others.  I hope people understand that that’s what we need to get back to.

     “In the last year, politically and socially, there’s been a danger that we stop looking at each other as human. It’s been Republican, Democrat, black, white, millennials, baby boomers.

     “I hope the audience will come away with the idea of remembering the humanity of us all and remembering we are one and should be one.  We are here to witness the pain of others and to be open to it and have more peace in the world.”