Moonlighting

Other recent articles I've written for LGBT Weekly can be found below.

Richard III
http://lgbtweekly.com/2012/08/30/review-the-old-globes-summer-shakespeare-festival-production-of-richard-iii/

La Cage
http://lgbtweekly.com/2012/08/10/christopher-sieber-spreads-his-wings-in-la-cage-aux-folles/

Dames at Sea
http://lgbtweekly.com/2012/07/26/dames-at-sea-hits-the-deck-at-north-coast-rep/

This
http://lgbtweekly.com/2012/04/26/gen-x-meets-middle-age-madness/

A Danish Bad Boy's Clarity of Thought

“When you’re young you’re kind of judged on your Hamlet. If you get through that hoop successfully, you’re admitted to the classical club. When you’re older, you have to go through the Lear hoop to see if they were right to admit you to the club in the first place.” 

 Derek Jacoby

The Herculean, most recognizable and oft quoted play is Shakespeare's Hamlet. Playing The Dane of Elsinore is a pentathlon mixed with tag-team timing.

The role is routinely played by actors over 40. Sarah Bernhardt waited till she was 55 to give him a go (and with a wooden leg).

The Shakespeare's Globe Theatre production from London is led by Michael Benz, 30, with substantial and substantiated humor. The media has regularly mentioned Mr. Benz's youth and compared his performance to that of the traditional morose black clad actors.

Seasoned theatergoers can put aside their doubts that this pup would stumble in the role.

For the Globe's less brooding version what better training can a young man bring with him than an acting career begun at age 11, a Georgetown degree in Psychology and Theology and successful passage through the sacrosanct Royal Academy of Dramatic Art? He's also a natural blonde, a characteristic rarely seen in a traditional Hamlet.

Between meetings with directors and casting people the Espresso-Refill caught up with Mr. Benz by phone.

Espresso-Refill: What was your audition for Hamlet like?

Michael Benz: I did the first soliloquy, "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt." I was nervous they (directors) are so lovely and wonderful. Even if you don't do a good job they'll smile at you. (laughs) You still feel that confidence. They asked me to do it again and some other bits. It was about the clarity of thought they were going for.

ER: Does the Globe have company classes?

MB: We have experts at the Globe. We get movement support, voice support and text support.

ER: Have you played the outdoor recreation of the Globe?

MB: Yes.

ER: Are the voices amplified?

MB: No. No. Never. That's what the training is for.

ER: I find amplified voices in Shakespeare festivals extremely disappointing. For instance, Adrian Noble's productions at the San Diego Globe are amplified. At one performance the mics went out. The natural voice was pleasing to hear with the natural acoustics. It was much more human.

MB: I think the mic takes away the voice's levels and takes away subtlety.

ER: Your portrayal has a different take on the role, hence the production.

MB: It is a performance showing the Hamlet before everything happens. There is no evidence to show he was a melancholy young man before this (death of his father). There's evidence that he was the life of the party. We try and show the Hamlet that was before his father died, before his uncle marries his mother. When horrible things happen to you, people don't completely change their personalities. That's the harder thing (to play).

ER: What is your response to the Jacoby quote?

MB: (laughs) Any actor at all who takes on this role, takes on those thoughts, these broad thoughts, not to mention the lines, the movement, the through-line through this big mythic, huge play. Anyone who can do that, to get on-stage in front of people for three hours I applaud them. Ferociously.

ER: Do you have a daily regimen?

MB: I sleep a lot. And I eat a lot. I can't eat much before a show. I am absolutely starving after the show.

ER: Does your performance change?

MB: Yes. Depending on the venue. The Folger Theatre there's only about 250 people (in the audience), (its) very quiet and very intimate. The audience can hear you breathe. That's a different type of performance than if you are at the the Globe with 1,700 people or on the edge of a cliff in Cornwall with the rain coming down. Over the course of months and months my performance has shifted and changed. I hope (its) gotten better. I'm so lucky to not be doing it with an amateur group above a pub. I'm doing it for the Globe.

# # #

Now in the last leg of its U.S. tour, the production plays Santa Monica's Broad Theatre where it closes on November 25th.

http://thebroadstage.com/

Further reading: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/hamlet-fast-and-furious-at-the-folger/2012/09/10/778a7ce8-fb82-11e1-98c6-ec0a0a93f8eb_story.html

Bloody Gifts

A late night survey of New York Times headlines captured my attention: "C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Rebels." Having just returned from J.T. Rogers's exercise in arms games, Blood and Gifts, the headline's irony crossed my face with a grim smile. 


Mr. Rogers's play chronicles the 1980s Afghan-Soviet war and American under-the-radar arms supply. It is refreshingly restrained with only single uses of f*ck and sh*t, no small accomplishment. 


Special kudos go to Ursula Meyer for her superb work as the accent coach and language coordinator.

Demosthenes Chrysan

Where some spies delve for accurate information, Mr. Roger's spies aggressively trade ambiguities. When CIA operative James Warnock repeatedly instructs desert militia not to use his gifts of artillery for assassinating Soviet officers he barks, "Do you understand what I just said?" The nomads reply "No," and the satisfied Warnock purrs, "Good." Paradoxically, after tossing down a duffel bag of dollars he soon learns a cassette of "Hot in the City" is also valuable tender for information.

So goes the recurring compartmenting. For civilians, "compartmenting" is the CIA term for "have-a-need-to-know" information, the preferred maneuver employed to sinister effect. "We did not have this conversation," terminates a debate. However, ominous dialogue create little theatrical danger.

Demosthenes Chrysan recreates his role from the National Theatre. As the pivotal warlord, Abdullah Khan, he is a bearish multifarious commander who repeatedly checkmates to assure primogeniture in his tribe. Squeezed into an Armani suit and further pressured by a Washington spin-doctor to perform U.S. propaganda is a comic highlight. 

Though his performance is Russian-Lite, Triney Sandoval as the rueful Gromov finds the right balance of humor and disillusionment.

UCSD's student actors blend into the scenery in non-speaking roles and are vocally wan when called upon to speak.

The play's moral center is MI6 agent Simon Craig, a dyed-in-the-wool Brit portrayal by Daniel Pierce. He is an ambulatory casualty of this last generation cold war. The alcoholic Simon wrestles his conscience daily. His frustration so legion he bold-facedly asks Warnock, "Is your word any good?" and expects an honest answer. Even as his sense of humanity swarms his head he quips of an obstinate Pakistani Colonel, "Let's shoot him." He's dead serious.

Kelly AuCoin (L) and Daniel Pierce

As our patriot field agent, Kelly AuCoin plays Warnock with government issue machismo, which elicits little audience empathy. His Warnock's anger jumps for zero to 80 in two seconds with network television precision. When called to attend his wife's complicated delivery he chooses to continue back room politics. As with most of Blood and Gifts, the impacts continue to the head, not the heart. 

When stung by a stinger missile sale gone bad, Warnock reluctantly acknowledges his responsibility for wholesale slaughter. Sounds glib? Ultimately, glib is the evening's tone.

American ears are conditioned to glib journalism and grown numb with reports of atrocities. When "take out" is the euphemism for assassinate and spoken with the casualness of "supersize me" we have sunk to a deeper level of denial. 

Blood and Gifts smartly fills La Jolla Playhouse's "outraged leftist " slot for the season, which becomes increasingly formulaic.

----------------------------

Through July 8, 2012

lajollaplayhouse.org

Photos by Craig Schwartz.

----------------------------

A Goya (1746-1828) illustration of war's insanity came to mind postscript. 

  Los Desatres de la Guerra (Bury Them and Keep Quiet). Image courtesy of franciscodegoya.net.

Handling a Hard Body

(L-R) Dale Soules, Kathleen Elizabeth 

Monteleone and Jon Rua. Photo by Kevin Berne.

"I'm a redneck, not a hick."

Janis Curtis

Hands on a Hard Body

What do you say when a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of your Tony decorated show asks for a commission for a new musical? This is the case with Doug Wright ("I Am my Own Wife") and the La Jolla Playhouse's "Hands on a Hardbody" (based on the documentary of the same title).

The body of the titillating title is a 2,8000 pound Nissan Hardbody truck, the object of inescapable desire for ten Longview, Texas contestants. Such publicity students date back to the 1920s flag-pole sitting. In this endurance competition the last person standing with hands on the truck drives away with pure-bred Texas-Amecian identity.

Mr. Wright's libretto maps out a lightly engaging trip through the static competition. The story's outcome doesn't hold much mystery. Amanda Green (lyrics and music) and Trey Anastazio's (music) score takes an excursion through Country Western ballads, Country Western waltz, Country Western honky tonk, Country Western R&B, Country Western tear jerk, Country Western swing, Country Western anthem and the inevitable gospel number (twice).

It seems we can't go to a new musical that hasn't appropriated African American music forms to assure a punched-up act ("Rent's" act two opening). Christopher Ashley's recent Broadway "Leap of Faith" is a recent example. The first sure-fire occurrence in "Hardbody" is Jacob Ming Trent's (Ronald) American Idol over sell in Act 1. 

A more profitable example is the ecstatic Bible thumping Keala Settle (Norma) who puts the pedal to the metal with Joy of the Lord that stops the show. Emerging as a private chuckle, Ms. Settle winds her way to petite snicker, laugh, guffaw and belly laugh enriched with convulsive giggles and silence in a magnetic performance that inspires the company to primal drum beats. With truck as percussive instrument we are beat into believing. By show's end Norma's crisis of faith poignantly brings us into her fold. 

Hunter Foster (Benny) plays the devious returning winner with cock-sure vocal power. Bigoted Benny unexpectedly befriends a fellow middle-aged man, J.D. Keith Carradine. J.D. is a disillusioned married man whose remaining flaccid passion driving off to a fishing weekend with the boys. Mr. Carradine turns in a tempered subtle performance. He blends into the ensemble and rises appropriately when called. His singing has a pleasant oboe-like quality that proves moving in his attempt rekindle a semblance of worth in his heart.

The truck as character, set piece, metaphor, symbol, weapon, fetish and the dubious prize turns out to be handled with dexterity and aplomb in choreographer Benjamin Millepied's (Black Swan) musical staging.

Director Neil Pepe periodically surprises with silent moments he's beautifully solicited from his actors. The nonverbal impact of the psychosis that overcomes the few remaining contestants jolts us into the emotional story as strongly as does the score.

The Broadway tourist industry has a target market for "Hardbody." The "suits" have been south to see it and picked it up for a 2012-2013 opening. With Broadway Across America as a lead producer, the show has wheels.

Hands on a Hardbody

Book by Doug Wright

Lyrics by Amanda Green

Music by Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green

Through June 17, 2012

Mandell Weiss Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse

http://lajollaplayhouse.org/

Alone with a Cast of Thousands

It was in a shared dressing room that I first met Phil Johnson during an actors' festival. These one-ring circus's bring out the giddiness in actors and occasionally a generosity. Mr. Johnson displayed both. While listening to his work via intercom, it was obvious he drew from a deep well of technique and impeccable comic timing. Where actors played one piece, he ambitiously played two pieces both of which he co-wrote. The audience was putty in his hands. 


Now in his adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles he mashes-up Victoriana and mayhem playing all Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters. Here is a glimpse of Mr. Johnson's monomaniacal creativity.

TV: How did you end up in San Diego?

PH: I was doing a lot of touring shows and on the road, Les Miz in New York, Miss Saigon, Sunset Blvd., and I came to know that I really wanted to do comedy, not that I didn't love those shows all about “dead people and guns,” but I wanted the cheap tasteless theatrics of LA comedy. I did a lot of sketch comedy with a great place there, ACME Comedy Theatre. I was there for three years. So, LA was where I started first and I began splitting the time between here and there. Steve Gunderson's replacement in Forever Plaid was my first job here.

Don't Dress for Dinner, NCR

When did you know you wanted to become an actor?

Yikes. Maybe when I started making puppet shows out of refrigerator boxes, last year. No! That's when I was seven, I think. I learned so much from the great old 30's & 40's black and white movies they used to show when I got home from school and TV shows: Carol Burnett, Flip Wilson, remember him?

“The devil mad me do it.”

Sonny and Cher--all those great comics from those days-- those great lines, Burnett as Scarlet wearing the drapes, “I saw it in the window and I just had to have it.”

What took you to the next discipline of writing sketch comedy and playwriting?

My days at ACME Comedy Theatre taught me a lot about what works in comedy, how to write fast. I started doing a one-man show that I debuted at Actors Art Theatre in LA with my great acting teacher Jolene Adams. It was, strangely enough, about a singer/ actor who was auditioning for the latest mega-musical, but with a crazed maniac at the helm, loosely based on Nicolas Hytner, our director on Saigon. He was fascinating. I wanted to do shows that were loose and conversational and there weren't many I liked, so I had to write (them).

The Hound of Baskerville, NCR

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote during Queen Victoria's reign as did Dickens. Do you see a similarity in their work?

There was this wonderful morbid fascination with death and freak shows at the time, those wonderfully suppressed people did the most amusing act-out things! There was something called memento mori, I believe photographs were fairly new then, and people would photograph pictures of themselves with newly dead loved ones, really. They would make these little vignettes, with the live people, like the dead people weren't even dead; like painting their eyelids, or sticking their arms and hands up with pins. Fun. Sometimes it was the only a photo people had taken of themselves. Brrrrr.

Doyle wrote over 50 short stories. Why Hound Of The Baskervilles?

It's probably the most popular, everyone has a recollection of it. It's common to a lot of people. You can't imagine the different things people have done to the story over the years! It's an adventure story- I love that about it.

Doyle practiced Spiritualism. Does the metaphysical figure into Hound?

Yes! The MGM movie with (Basil) Rathbone added a séance that isn't in the book, and people loved it so much, it's been in every version since then. This was another of those weird wonderful Victorian delights, séances. It's a big climax for me in my play. It heightens the anxiety so well! People love to be scared. Strange, isn't it?

Sounds intriguing. Do you have superstitions when in the theatre? Ever see a theatre ghost?

Not really. My insane friend Eileen Bowman seems to see ghosts coming out of every broom closet in theatres, but I have not joined that particular club. I don't say the “M word” though. Should I?

Little Shop of Horrors, Cygnet Theatre

The other side of Phil may ask you dispel the curse; exit the dressing room and turn around three times. You received a $15,700 San Diego Foundation Creative Catalyst Grant for Hound. Congratulations. Was the competition tough? What was your response on hearing the news?

I was overjoyed. It was wonderful to have that support for something you think is good and someone else does as well- that's the best. I've always wanted to be able to write a one-man show that was elegant and well-produced and could

tour. This is a very big dream of mine and that's what this is. I believe the competition was quite tough. I couldn't believe what prestigious organizations didn't get picked and I did. Does that mean a mistake (was made) somewhere?

How did your collaboration with your director Cynthia Stokes come about?

We had worked together on a very funny comedy Mike Sears and I wrote a few years back called Nemesis, and we were lucky enough to get this big S.D. Opera director, Cynthia. It was a real laugh-riot, the funniest thing I've ever worked on.

She suggested the project to me at that time and I didn't give it much thought, but what a wonderful experience it's turned out to be. She is a great “actor's director.”

Is it difficult to incorporate cuts and changes?

No. I think that's the easiest. I know my own rhythms so well and when I write, almost everything is written the way I would say it playing that character. A 76-page solo show though is quite another matter.

Playing multiple roles in a one-person show is an audacious endeavor. What does it take to synthesize research, writing and performance?

You just stew with the story for a while, read everything. Watch some movies, look for inspiration and something will start bubbling up, that's what happened for me. I started saying “Here's this very famous classic that I am going to destroy. How can I possibly start (writing)?” But I did and I let myself off the hook about the whole thing. Hopefully Mr. Doyle hasn't noticed.

Comedy is one of your fortes. What are your three rules of comedy?

Location, location, location. I think comedy is about averages, like baseball? People try so hard, but what makes you a comic really, I think, is your always present “intent to amuse” and a love of people. When your intent is unwavering, you will be funny and hopefully not annoying more often than not.

And not ignoring the reality, maybe pushing it a little. Oy.

Who would you like to be seated next to on a flight to newark?

Newark? Don Rickles? Alan Rickman? Maggie smith? The President maybe? Can you arrange that?

I’ll get back to you on that. How would you finish this sentence: New work in the theatre is _____.

Essential. You have to keep putting your voice out there somehow. And hopefully retelling old stories well is included in there too.

Are merde and “break your legs” still terms of good luck backstage?

You better believe it. I'm buying a full body cast right now.

                                                                                                                                            

Phil Johnson’s sketch comedy video: http://www.philjohnson.net/comedy.html

Hound of The Baskervilles

May 3^rd through 6^th
Box Office: 858-481-1055
http://www.northcoastrep.org