Regime Change Begins At Home

This essay by Hal Crowther hit me like a punch in the gut this morning. Read it and pass it on. And God help us all.

Assassins Extends Thru June 12; Life In Philadelphia Continues

First, click here for the latest from playbill.com about the extension of the Assassins run. The show won more Tony Awards than any other, according to the author of this story, who was kind enough to mention my name - unlike Todd Haimes, I might add, harrumph harrumph. The show played at 95% of capacity last week. I guess life is good at Studio 54.
Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, things are interesting on a variety of fronts. We're off to NYC tomorrow for Gemini casting, which continues in Philly on Thursday. D'Arcy's show opened tonight at the Gay and Lesbian Theater Festival, and runs through Saturday. Kerry got the role of JoJo in Seussical at Upper Darby Summerstage, which opens July 30 (be there). And my mother comes for a visit this week! Never a dull moment!

Sociopaths Just Wanna Have Fun

Broadway.com just posted a bunch of photos from the Assassins recording session, showing the members of the cast clearly elated on the day after their Tony win! Tickets are officially on sale through August 1, though no Wednesday matinees are being offered in July, much to the dismay of the faculty of the Summer Pre-College Program in Musical Theater.

Planet Reagan (from truthout.com)

Thanks to Howard for sending along this essay by William Rivers Pitt called "Planet Reagan," in which he assesses the Reagan legacy. A sobering and forcefully written screed.

'Avenue Q' Tony Coup Is Buzz of Broadway

The New York Times offers this analysis of Avenue Q's Tony win. The story of its "campaign" was something I didn't know about; equally interesting to me is that the show recouped its production costs several months ago. Could this (along with Urinetown) be a harbinger of a new trend on Broadway: smaller, smarter, more shrewdly managed? Bodes well for Gemini The Musical!
Seriously, though, June 7 will have to go down in history as Chazzy's Blogday Blowout - this many posts is surely an indication of excess time on someone's hands! This is a pace I guarantee I can't maintain!

GRAND THEFT AMERICA

Go here now: GRAND THEFT AMERICA is a Flash video about the 1998 election in Florida. Regime change begins at home!

Alex's Birthday (Soundtrack by Attention Span Radio)

Happy Birthday, Alex! Son #1 turned 19 today, with attendant gastronomic orgy (orchestrated by domestic goddess) and bestowal of electronic gadgets (orchestrated by gadget god). He seemed particularly pleased that younger brother bought him a copy of Amon Tobin's Bricolage after seeing it on his amazon wish list. His musical tastes are astonishingly broad - the apple has fallen near the tree in this case. Another fave: Jaco Pastorius, who occupies a prominent spot in his electric bass pantheon. Miracles of Synchonicity: Soon as I wrote that, as if on cue, a song by Jaco came on aTTeNTioNsPaNraDiO, whose fabulous streams of funky-fusion can be found on iTunes and Live 365. Other recent cuts: Greg Rapaport, Jeff Lorber, Michael Brecker, Mike Stern. Makes post-orgy dish duty something to look forward to (almost).

Harriett Levy - Unleashed!

Oy vey! It's a new site featuring my favorite diva - Harriett Levy! I could plotz!

Assassins Wins Big at Tonys!

Here's the final awards tally for Assassins on the American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards Website: five awards, including Best Revival and Best Director of a Musical. The broadcast featured a rendition of "Everybody's Got The Right" as it's heard at the end of the show - did any viewers besides me think that Mario Cantone looked strangely out of it? The orchestra played a peppy, brassy version of that song as the Tonys cut to commercial and I couldn't help thinking how this event gives everything the same hyperenergized showbiz gloss. Certain theatrical experiences don't lend themselves well to such an event. Tonya Pinkins in Caroline seemed grotesque and over the top, trying to give a very emotional rendition of a very emotional moment that's probably quite heart-rending in context but just seemed ugly and shrill in excerpt. Avenue Q (which turned out to be the Birdstone of the event with Wicked as Smarty Jones) seemed shrill and shallow. And then you get moments like Carol Channing and LL Cool J, which feel like they were manufactured by the show's producer, a baldfaced attempt to give Broadway some borrowed cool. Gack!
But of course I'm happy for the Assassins win, and proud too, thought it would've been nice if Todd Haimes has found a way, in the course of thanking a skazillion people, to thank one more, the guy whose idea started the whole ball rolling in 1978. With any luck, the Tony will mean more audience interest in the piece, which will mean more performances at the Roundabout and another wave of regional theater, college and amateur productions. And maybe, just maybe, there'll be a little bit of residual magic that will spill over onto Gemini The Musical, so that some year soon, you'll see Albert and me on a future Tony broadcast, looking hyperenergized and over the top as we accept our award for Best Musical. Hey - it could happen, you know!
In honor of the occasion, here's the image of me in the lobby of Studio 54 at Assassins opening nite:

Greg Palast on Ronald Reagan - Ouch!

I'm an aficionado of Greg Palast's investigative journalism. Tonight, as the tributes to former President Reagan dominated every commercial break on TV, my young son seemed puzzled by the animosity my wife and I expressed about the Gipper. Palast's article KILLER, COWARD, CON-MAN helped me find concrete examples and words to substantiate those inchoate feelings. Read Palast's piece, and sign up for his e-mail updates.

Apollo, Dionysus and Camille

Faithful fellow-blogger Darko Vader seeks to exploit my current idleness by suggesting I post something about my UArts colleague
Camille Paglia, author of Sexual Personae and other light classics. While I can't claim I've successfully digested everything between the covers of her ambitious and provocative tome, I find her chapter about Apollo and Dionysus to be an especially provocative one. As with all her writings, the chapter shows her gift for mingling penetrating insights on classical scholarship (better brush up on your Greek before visiting) with vivid contemporary and personal imagery, creating a rich and resonant essay that explores both the highways and the byways of meaning of these icons of classical antiquity.

Here's a sample:

Art reflects and resolves the eternal human dilemma of order versus energy. In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysys in the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus a vandal. Every excess breeds its counterreaction. So western culture swings from point to point on its complex cycle, pouring forth its lavish tributes of art, word and deed. We have littered the world with grandiose achievements. Our story is vast, lurid, and unending. (Sexual Personae, pp. 96-7)

What makes this struggle particularly meaningful for me is that Apollo is the god of Music, while Dionysus is the god of Theater, and the Musical Theater is an artform where one can see this conflict played out both in composition and performance. Any good song must embody both energy and order, Dionysian fire and Apollonian algebra, and any valid performance of a song will have both ingredients as well. As a songwriter, I tend to favor the Tin Pan Alley tradition of the well-made song, with phrases laid out neatly and concisely and rhyme and repetition carefully deployed to promote clarity and comprehension. The innovations of rock and rap have done much to diminish the importance of these dimensions of songcraft, and listeners have grown intoxicated on the Dionysian brew of rant and rave; in the punk world, lyric writing is reduced in many cases to a shout and melody and prosody are swept aside in a roar of primal energy. In the musical theater, however, formal elegance and careful articulation of detail still have their place; Apollo is still in the house, even as Dionysus goads on the revelers at the orgy.

Post-Confusion

Several loud huzzahs for Neal Stephenson and the latest volume of The Baroque Cycle, The Confusion. A brief precis of the book can be found here, along with a few brief laudatory quotes - though I think the "hacker Hemingway" sobriquet that he got from Newsweek years ago hardly applies to this book, one that owes far more to Henry Fielding (or John Barth in his Sot-Weed mode) than to Hemingway. The book is daunting in its density of detail, as I mentioned in a previous blog, but it certainly packs plenty of narrative punch. I closed the book and felt weirdly disembodied, like I'd been in a trance whilst navigating the reversals of the last 100 pages. Was Quicksilver, the first volume, this good? I remember enjoying it, but not like this - I may have to go back and re-read it (but perhaps I'll save it for the beach later in June).

Anita Hollander's homepage

Newly online, the homepage of Anita Hollander, a talented singer, songwriter and actress who was a classmate of mine at Carnegie Mellon. Hard to believe her site doesn't prominently feature her appearance as Fraulein Schneider in the **HARVEY SEIFTER PRODUCTION** of Cabaret at Gretna Theater, conducted by yrs truly. (Well, at least two people might crack a smile if they read this!) Regardless, I'm a huge admirer of this talented and courageous woman!

Zerotasking

That's the caption of a cartoon in the current New Yorker, and it seems to describe my current state of mind fairly accurately. For one who considers himself a virtuoso multitasker, the knack for doing nothing comes surprisingly easy. The appearance of The New Yorker, which we just re-subscribed to, was a high point of the day, and Anthony Lane's lethal pan of The Day After Tomorrow justified the price of the subscription - he's at his best with a bad movie, spinning mots like shuriken (those throwing-stars flung by the protagonists of William Gibson novels). "...'The Day After Tomorrow' is irretrievably poor: a shambles of dud writing and dramatic inconsequence which left me determined to double my consumption of fossil fuels."
Other highlights of a zero-tasking day: breakfast at Sam's Morning Glory Diner with the Henderson-Prices (love the breakfast burrito, even if the chef was too liberal with the hot sauce this morning); a stroll among the Isaiah Zagar masterpieces along South Street; an impulsive tour of a house for sale (340,000 for two bedrooms, two baths); a long bike ride with Kerry that took us out past the Art Museum along the Schuylkill (we turned back and made it home just in time to beat a summer thunderstorm that blew up suddenly). and then (don't tell!) a nap on the futon. This is too decadent and will certainly have to stop soon.