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Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.
Saturday 06/21/2003
The search for naked naughty bits live on stage.
As briefly mentioned in a previous entry, instead of staying home and watching the Tony awards with baited breath like good gay boys, John and I saw Lily Tomlin perform The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe at the Alhmanson. I've read the play, and I once saw a version of it on PBS years and years ago, but neither experience prepared me for it being so good.
I enjoyed it possibly because I had forgotten lots of it. I forgot that even though it might at first appear to be fairly random; the story is actually rather tightly woven and cohesive. I also forgot just how specific it was to the time it was first written. There is nothing more early eighties as a club named the anticlub and nothing quite as "the seventies are over" than the legend of death by macram�.
I've seen Lily Tomlin on TV and even met her very briefly at a book signing ("Hi, you're great!") once years ago, but this was the first time I had ever seen her perform in person. She was excellent.
This is were I invariably mention that people were talking/being annoying during the show, or where I state that not everyone liked the show as much as I did. The former didn't happen (or at least not near me), so lets move on to the later. During intermission, John walked around a bit, and saw people leaving the theater, saying things to the effect that they were not enjoying the play as much as they though they would. I noticed a few folks leaving during the second act as well. When the play was over, there was a standing ovation, not an entirely difficult thing to achieve in Los Angeles (our reputation for giving standing ovations for any and everything is not undeserved). The ovation was probably made even easier since everyone not enjoying themselves had been weeded out by this point.
When I mentioned the audience mass migration to a friend, he commented that he wasn't surprised because the same thing had happened when he saw her the week before. He believed that this was to be expected with an experimental piece. It had never occurred to me to think of the play as experimental, but according to him, what exactly is a nonlinear story told in a series of monologues and depends on the audience's ability to think?
Dependence on intelligence, no wonder people left.
Last week, John and I made the trip out to Westwood, and braved UCLA graduation crowds for Franny's Way, the last play of the season at the Geffen Theater. The synopsis says something about a coming of age story in New York, with Elisabeth Moss, (West Wing's kidnapped presidents daughter) playing 17-year-old Franny, a young woman who loses the last remains of childhood innocence during the course of the story. A notice in the lobby of the theater warned of herbal cigarette smoke during the performance and also that the piece had nudity.
As promised, there was smoking on stage and a brief bit of both male and female genitalia action going on. While the nudity made sense for the story, it also had the side effect of pointing out that they were stretching casting a bit with the woman playing the mother of a newborn, since the actor's body was fit, thin, and taunt, and in no way, um, stretched.
Of the people we saw the play with, I liked it the least. It was a very good production, the acting was fine, and the story good, but I had a hard time getting into the story. Part of it was that I was in a middling to bad mood that night, and was much too self involved indulgent and pissy to enjoy it. Part of it was also that while the grieving couple was interesting, I just didn't really care about anyone else. My bad.
Before the show, our group had dinner at EuroChow, a no longer quite as hip as it once was restaurant (obviously since I was eating there). Despite being the kind of place that specializes in having an intimidating staff, the food was good, or at least my grilled Portobello mushrooms & vegetables were. One of my many food quirks is that I always forget that I like grilled endive, so while the rest of the table (Susan, Bob, and MyJohn) were telling stories and catching up with other, I was busy scarfing down everything on my plate.
After the show, we waited out traffic at a boba/yuppie teahouse and talked about life, jobs, and which plays were the best and worst of the Geffen season. I was the exception in not loathing Pearl. Then again, I was also an exception in really enjoying Rose and Walsh, even after having watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir last weekend. Johnny and I spent the entire movie laughing that Neil Simon had been reduced to plagiarism.
The nakkid floppy bits we saw earlier on stage eventually lead to an odd game of trying to recall all the plays we had seen with nudity. Considering that the promise of multitudes of penises flopping about is mandatory in "Gay" plays, it wasn't that hard a thing to do.
The next night was yet another play night, this time the L.A. Women Shakespeare Company's production of The Tempest at the 42nd St. Theater. Even though I've no memory of ever reading it, I was surprised that I knew almost the entire story.
Some of that knowledge may have come from once seeing part of the John Gielgud movie version. Although about all I recall of the film was that the noblemen all wore monstrously huge ruffled collars, and the men and women playing the spirits and sprites were all nude (a few of the men very impressively so). It was on IFC or Sundance or a similar channel late one night, and it very surreal and artsy. I was watching it half asleep and after staring at a large floating John Gielgud head spouting dialogue I could not understand while hovering over hell, or an orgy, or neither, or both, I decided that it was better to actually sleep and dream on my own instead of watching a simulation of one, so I gave and went to bed.
There were no naked floppy bits in the LAWSC production, although the woman playing Caliban did have on a rather rude looking codpiece. The play was well done, and the from the talk afterwards, it seems that the audience agreed that the idea of having Ariel played simultaneously by three different women, besides being an interesting idea, worked well.
I have a tendency to fixate a bit on the sets whenever I see a LAWSC performance. In the past the have been Balinese fantasies, stark aquariums, and even a large abstract spider to symbolize the web of politics and power. Well, at least I think that it was supposed to have symbolized all that.
Anyway, not everything here has been about the going out and the theater thing and the dinner thing. I�ve actually spent most of my nights a home being a fuddy duddy and getting nothing much of anything accomplished.
Boring is a very good word for me.
After all, John�s and my thirteenth anniversary was the 15th. Other than a family thing for Father�s day, we did nothing. No romantic dinners. No presents. No excitement. Which in a not entirely sad way was fairly satisfying.
More later,
nico
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