Worry and anxiety

"My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened."
-- Michel de Montaigne

Prayer for healing

“Lord, we adore You present in our inmost being and among us. Draw us inwardly by the greatness of Your love so that we might taste that peace that surpasses all understanding and that, little by little, we might understand what it means to be ‘lived in’ by God.

“Heal the wounds of a lifetime -- body, soul and spirit as we wait lovingly upon Your presence and healing action within us.”

-- Father Thomas Keating

Joy

“Joy and happiness are not the same thing. Joy is an internal process grounded in knowledge of spiritual truth, the ability to trust the wisdom of the Divine, and faith in the perfect and perfecting process of life. Happiness is generally a mental and emotional response to temporary external stimulation, in response to a perceived need. Joy is a state of being. . . Joy, because it is grounded in the spirit, has a more far-reaching and lasting impact. Happiness, which is more often than not based on something physical and tangible, can come and go, moment to moment.

“Joy stays with you no matter where you are and what is going on. Happiness is a response to where you are and what happens to you while you are there. Joy is the knowledge of unconditional love. Happiness is the quest for temporary pleasure. Can you have joy without happiness? No. Can you have happiness without joy? For a brief time, yes. Can joy lead to happiness? Almost always does. Can happiness lead to joy? Absolutely not! Whenever your state of being is dependent on external factors, it is temporary and not joyous.

“Does it mean you will never again experience a moment of fear, doubt, shame, guilt, anger or loneliness? Absolutely not! It means that when you are challenged by these pesky little varmints, what you know will shake you, slap you, rise to the surface and remind you that there is a strength in you that nothing and no one can take. Your strength will become your guidance, your protection and your salvation. Joy is the willingness to keep moving no matter what. . . Joy is . . . accepting and acknowledging that you are a creative being on a divine journey . . .

“It can be quite challenging to remain happy when we face the unknown, unexpected, unplanned events of life. This is why we must develop a sense of inner joy. . . Joy is a state of being fulfilled simply because you are alive. The difference between joy and happiness may seem like a very small thing, but when the wolves start chasing you, it can make a very big difference in whether you get away or if you are eaten up.”

from One Day My Soul Just Opened Up by Iyanla Vanzant

Exit the King

It was good to see Susan Sarandon on stage, a first for me -- and probably for most people since it’s been 37 years since she’s been on Broadway. Playing Queen Marguerite, she’s haughty and controlling in the revival of Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King, which opened last night at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

I’m not going to comment too much on specifics of this production because I have never liked absurdist comedies, so it’s hard for me to judge its quality. I’m actually not a big fan of comedies in general, but ones that rely heavily on farce and low comedy really bore me, and Theatre of the Absurd is full of these two elements. Perhaps when the show premiered in 1968 the form was shocking and exciting, but to me its tedious.

What I can say is that Sarandon (in photo) is commanding in this her return to the stage and fellow Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush gives an energetic, larger-than-life performance as the king.

Neil Armfield directs a cast that also includes a laugh-out-loud funny Andrea Martin as the maid, Juliette, Lauren Ambrose as Queen Marie, Brian Hutchison as the Guard and William Sadler as the Doctor.

The “plot” centers around a 400-year-old despotic ruler whose incompetence has left his once formidable country in near ruin. Queen Marguerite and other members of the court try to convince him that he will die in 90 minutes, but he refuses to relinquish control, even as he begins rapidly aging before our very eyes. The idea is certainly timely after George W. Bush’s disastrous eight-year reign.

Dale Ferguson has created powerfully colorful sets and costumes and Damien Cooper’s lighting is bright, and really fun in the strobe light scene.

Tickets for Exit the King, which plays a limited run through June 14, are available by calling (212) 239-6200, by logging on to Telecharge or by visiting the Barrymore Theatre box office at 243 W. 47th St. For more information, visit ExitTheKing.

West Side Story

“. . . the minutes seem like hours. . .” Those words from “Tonight” properly sum up my reaction to this lifeless revival of West Side Story at the Palace Theatre. Director Arthur Laurents and cast have taken beautiful songs, inspired choreography and a story of hatred, love, death and forgiveness and turned them into an evening of boring, amateur-quality theatre.

I was looking forward to West Side Story, a show I haven’t seen onstage since a West End production in London when I was in college. What a disappointment to encounter another flat revival, so in keeping with the others in the 2008-2009 season -- Pal Joey and Guys and Dolls. Our Drama Desk category for Best Revival of a Musical should be changed this year to Least Dreadful Revival of a Musical. Voting will be a challenge this season, as it was last year for the opposite reason when it was hard to choose between such gems as Gypsy and South Pacific.

West Side Story was a groundbreaking musical when it made its world premiere at Washington’s National Theatre in 1957. It still could be dynamic because the show itself doesn’t feel dated. It’s just the execution that is static. Jerome Robbins’s killer choreography has been preserved and restaged by Joey McKneely, but these dancers seem to be just going through the motions. I’ve seen more passion -- far more -- in cardio classes at my gym.

And that’s the problem with the whole production, a profound lack of connection -- between dancers and their numbers, between singers and their songs and between characters. Their bodies are going through the motions, but no one seems present. It’s a waste of the classic music of Leonard Bernstein, lyrics of Stephen Sondheim and book by Laurents, especially since this is the first Broadway revival in nearly three decades and the producers have gone all out with an onstage cast of 37 and 30 musicians in the orchestra pit.

Matt Cavenaugh is a bland Tony who delivers the absolute worst death scene I have ever seen onstage. (Of course, if you’ve already come across as dead for two and a half hours I guess it’s pretty hard to make the real thing convincing). As Maria, Argentinean actress Josefina Scaglione is in her own orbit, George Akram as Bernardo is a cliché and, biggest disappointment of all, Karen Olivo (in photo with Shark Girls), who had been so winning in In the Heights, plays Anita like a frustrated middle-aged aunt .

While Laurents takes a laissez-faire approach to directing his performers, he was more aggressive with the script. For the first time Spanish is spoken in an attempt to make the Sharks and Jets appear equal, but since I don’t speak Spanish those dialogue scenes dragged an already dragging show for me, plus I felt left out when other members of the audience laughed. I know the story so I got the gist of what was being said, but I mainly just tuned out and waited for them to get back to English. I also know the words to the two songs they sang in Spanish -- “I Feel Pretty” and “A Boy Like That” -- but I would have preferred them in English.

Another change Laurents made that I don’t like is leaving Tony’s dead body on the stage at the end. He said in an interview that this is more realistic because the police wouldn’t allow a crime scene to be disturbed by letting the Jets and Sharks carry Tony away. That’s ridiculous! What’s realistic about gang members singing and dancing, in ballet movements nonetheless? The two gangs coming together is a mirror of the Montagues and Capulets making peace at the end of Romeo and Juliet, the Shakespeare play that inspired the musical. It was a beautiful touch and should have been kept.

Tickets for West Side Story are available by visiting Ticketmaster.com or by calling (212) 307-4100.

Impressionism

A more appropriate name for this play would be Abstract, since that is the style of painting it most resembles. But even that would be giving it too much credit. Impressionism, which opened last night at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, may be set in an art gallery, but it is completely artless.

Press notes describe Impressionism, which is written by Michael Jacobs and directed by Jack O’Brien, as “the story of a world-traveling photojournalist and a New York gallery owner who discover each other, and that there might be an art to repairing broken lives.” I never would have figured that out. My reaction to the show was expressed by Katharine (Joan Allen), the gallery owner, when she said: “I don’t understand a thing.” Thomas (Jeremy Irons), the photojournalist, agreed. “I don’t either,” he says. Too bad the characters didn’t have the press notes so they would know what was going on.

Artificial dialogue is one of the problems, the biggest one actually. Another involves the memory scenes. In the one of Katharine at 6 we learn that she never wants to put her clothes on; in the Katharine at 30 flashback we meet a woman who doesn’t want to take her clothes off. What either of those incidents has to do with the middle-aged Katharine of the play’s present I have no idea. A third problem is that neither Katharine nor Thomas is interesting, appealing, sympathetic or any of the things that would make them into developed characters.

Other roles, also undeveloped, are played by Marsha Mason, André De Shields, Michael T. Weiss, Aaron Lazar, Margarita Levieva and Hadley Delany. 

The creative team is Scott Pask (scenic design), Catherine Zuber (costume design), Natasha Katz (lighting design), Elaine McCarthy (projection design) and Leon Rothenberg (sound design), with original music by Bob James.

O’Brien is said to have described Impressionism as a play for intelligent people of middle age. Well, I am both of those and it did nothing for me. The best part of the show, actually the only good part of the show, was the lovely projections of Impressionist paintings. I was just glad the show was only 90 minutes.

Impressionism plays through July 5 at the Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W. 45th St. Tickets are available from ImpressionismThePlay.com, the box office or by calling (212) 239-6200. 

Ah, life in New York . . .

One recent morning I heard a truck idling outside my window and looked out to see a Department of Transportation worker in a cherry picker putting up a Don’t Honk/ $350 Penalty sign on the lamppost. A line of cars began backing up behind the truck, many of which started to honk.