God of Carnage

There is a very specific chatter that takes place in the opening dialogue of God of Carnage that sets the audience on an unnerving tilt between fear and laughter. It pointedly mocks every overheard conversation ever to have taken place between the Brooklyn-professionals-originally-hailing-from-somewhere-in-New-England-stroller set.

If you have ever been to a gentrified Brooklyn playground, you know to what I'm referring... the small talk, the found energy, the obligatory exchange of pleasantries over a stunning yet thrown together backdrop. Your tulips are lovely; I ADORE Frances Bacon; do you have any other children?; it's the Korean deli on the corner, you know the one? It's so funny when regurgitated on stage. I could have watched entire play of that, to be honest--simple observations subtlety replayed.

However, the tone shifted quickly-- almost too quickly-- from compliments and thank yous to hysteria and name calling, just as we knew it would. (The first Lucy Liu cell phone outrage at her husband came too soon. She leaked that anger before it was necessary, I wish they had kept the audience at 'polite tension' a bit longer. Moving on.) God of Carnage is the story of two couples coming together over a playground brawl between their eleven year old sons. Both sides thought it civil to meet and discuss what happened (two teeth knocked out and an apparent name-calling boys gang), and decide how to proceed moving forward.

The entire 90 min play is acted in one long scene without an intermission. The stage is washed in a stark red lacquer (can you use the word 'stark' to describe 'red'?) with a minimal set that forms a Cobble Hill apartment. A modern design sofa with a generous offering of African print throw pillows sits center; book-ending side tables with large vases of white tulips; a massive coffee table housing stacks of art books; and a telephone.

It isn't a set as much as it is a collection of props, and time can actually be measured by the number of items left untouched. The books went first in a spray of vomit (I kid you not, it was awesome), then the side table hiding a bottle of rum, the plates, the cups, the cell phone... Those perfect white tulips were the last to go-- spraying hysterically and wonderously in a fountain of green and and white and water by Ms. Liu upon her final cracking.

The characters took their turns dropping as well. They each hosted a monologue of sorts that revealed an inner madness, each more poignant than the next. Liu, as Annette, had the best monologue, I'm just going to put that out there. Maybe not the best acting, but she had the most to work with and the stage direction and pace were impeccable. She circled the room while her three comrades lay like fallen soldiers, addressing them in turn (Well, Veronica was standing, but slumped facing the wall). Annette started seated against a side table and ended in the same spot and same pose-- a classic theatrical two-step but it worked.

The story itself circled around a constant trading of alliances. This, my friends, is why 90 min of constant conflict was bearable. Yes, the comedy helped most of all, but the switching of sides made what was essentially an ever growing fight interesting. The couples riffed against each other, then the women took sides, then someone poured someone else a drink, and shuffle-ball-change, we got a break and some breathing room and could move onto another layer of id and ego and primal understanding.

Remember those African print pillows? The Frances Bacon book? It's all intentional. Each word, each prop, each movement points toward a central theme that gets to the gut of humanity. It's all there for a reason-- so perfect it makes my teeth hurt.

I loved this play. Loved it. I didn't know what I was getting into upon arrival (I was picturing something more Tony Soprano. James Gandolfini + the word 'carnage' just doesn't read Cobble Hill proper to me.) and I don't remember the last time I was that engaged with a story on Broadway.

...And later that evening, a bit further downtown, two more Brooklyn professionals acted our their own little comedic tragedy. What started out as a standard evening of theater-and-conversation morphed into something else entirely. That happy little game of verbal ping-pong, dueling wit, and intermittent jukebox snapping suddenly collapsed into a pile of dirty laundry, prime for the taking. You see, that's the thing about New York and its people-- in the end we all want to rip tulips from water. And whether or not we chose to admit it, we like the game and will take carnage over ping-pong any day.

*Note: The cast I saw was Jeff Daniels (in the Gandolfini role,) Dylan Baker, Lucy Liu, and Janet McTeer, but there weren't any photos of this cast online. I have been told that the original cast was better, as usually happens, but I didn't see that cast and I thought that this one worked well.

Woodwork

After a crazy, rainy Sunday spent in the farthest reaches of Queens, I needed a shower, a blowout, some makeup, and most importantly-- Brooklyn normalcy. I also needed a glass of heavy red, real conversation, exposed brick. What we got was exactly that-- plus a fellow redheaded waiter with a fully formed elimination plan for the French (but not France), a clear opinion (our ricotta is crap, stick with the manchego) and comped glass of Quinta do Crasto Douro (yum).

You will need to forgive the good people at Woodwork for describing themselves and a 'sexy soccer bar' and just give them props for making it into New York Magazine's 'Best Of' issue within its first few months of opening. Alison and I read the entire issue aloud on the 7 train (to the ends of the earth), and noted Woodwork as the best soccer bar in NY.

Well, we don't necessarily like soccer, but we do like soccer fans and we do like new bars that we can walk to from our apartments. We also like things like reclaimed wood (from a Massachusetts dairy farm. Love that.), local produce, and $3 Red Stripe.

Go Arsenal!

MODERN photos

Look for these photos in the next issue of MODERN magazine! Thanks, little friend, for helping your girl Sarah get published!

(okay, not actually these photos, but these are more interesting than the two of mine that were chosen. Artistry wasn't really a factor in the decision to use my photography, it was more like 'we need someone with a good camera who can take high resolution photos', but STILL. I get photo credits and that's good enough for me.)

A View from the Bridge

I first fell in love with Arthur Miller for all the wrong reasons, I will admit that. It probably had more to do with the movie Hocus Pocus than it did with The Crucible (although that 1996 adaptation with Winona Rider certainly sealed the deal), but my interest still culminated in a trip east to visit Salem, Massachusetts with my ever patient mother and ever adventurous sisters the summer I was sixteen.

We did the ghost walk, we toured the House of Seven Gables, and we saw the (claimed) pile of rocks under while Giles Corey famously muttered 'More weight!' as he was being crushed to death. It was awesome. (See, I have a dark side too. It's not all flowers and sunshine over here in Sarahland.)

When I discovered that Miller was also romantically linked to none other than Marilyn Monroe, my swooning reached new heights. I read Death of a Salesman shortly thereafter, and a few of his short stories, but, alas, my love quickly switched to boredom upon realizing that all of his stories weren't about witch hunts. My sixteen year old interest then shifted, I believe, the more racy Miller-- Henry Miller-- and his dear Anais Nin, blushing all the while.

Now that you know a sliver of my own literary history (if you are still reading this post, bless you), I suppose I will get to my point: A View from the Bridge. A View from the Bridge is what I would like to talk about today. This Arthur Miller play hit Broadway with a bang due to its young starlet, Scarlett. I'm also curious if Katie Holmes had anything to do with it-- would anyone have seen All My Sons without Mrs. Cruise along for the ride? And would Broadway have lit another Miller aglow without the financial success of All My Sons? I digress. Scarlett Johansson, Liev Schreiber, and Jessica Hecht (WHO PLAYED SUSAN ON FRIENDS! ONE OF MY FAVORITE SMALL ROLES EVER!) took on this doosey of a play with vigor.

I attended the show early last week with Allison (before the art madness began), in lieu of her actual date, JP. (Thank you, JP, for the ticket!) We sat in the first row mezzanine, my very favorite spot to see theater, and ate up this uncomfortable tale of family, passion, and regret.

Liev Schreiber rocked this role. So well, in fact, that I cannot remember him as anyone without a strong Brooklyn accent and a nervous, snapping anger. His gruff demeanor was a nice contrast to the script itself, which felt slightly Greek in its approach. It opened with a classically thought monologue by a secondary character and a held brief, yet steady chorus to bookend the tale.

I can't say that it was the best play I've ever seen, not even the best I've seen so far this year. I will argue the set design, the movement, and even ScarJo's acting. It was too obvious; too little; too much. But what this play succeeded in, it succeeded well. The story made us physically uncomfortable, to the point of squirming and covering our eyes. The tension was incredibly felt, and we left with a rock lodged somewhere between our stomach and our heart. I haven't felt that since a small production of Macbeth that I saw in North London at the Almeida Theater with Simon Russell Beale-- I left that show angry and upset, hating the play so much that I knew it had indeed worked its intended magic.

This production also brought forth multiple conversations between my girls and I about women and women's historical role in the home. I think it was supposed to have encouraged more talk about immigration, incest, jealousy, and morality, but whatever. We talked about women. We talked about how few options we, as a sex, had in early America and how very dependent we were on husbands just one hundred years ago. We wept for Beatrice, Hecht's character, who must have feared her husband beyond belief. Yet, we didn't blame her for sticking with him, how could we?

This show closes soon, this week maybe. See it. But go for the right reasons-- not because you have a strange schoolgirl fascination for witches, or because you wanted to see ScarJo's curves in person, like I did. Go for the brilliant and classic tragedy that Miller intended. You will not be disappointed.

Up in the Air

Did you all enjoy the Oscars? Despite getting SO BORED at the end (Can anyone sit still for that long) I was thrilled with the results, the gowns, the winners. I love Sandra Bullock, and have since While You Were Sleeping, circa my childhood. Love, love, love. And I liked that she made jokes in her speech and ended by thanking Meryl Streep, her lover. Oh, the world needs more Sandra Bullocks, and it needs more people who appreciate the Sandra Bullocks.

Anyway. My favorite movie of the year was Up in the Air. Hands down. I didn't have high expectations for it to win anything, and I don't think it did, but I LOVED this movie. I saw it twice in the theaters and think about it often. It struck and cord in me-- a humanity cord, I think.

Up in the Air is a story about the human condition. It is about what we need in order to be happy, to be alive and content and functioning. I remember hearing a statistic once about dolphins-- that if we were to make a checklist of what it means to be human, then tested it against other species, that dolphins would beat out babies.

According to this study, dolphins are tool users, they are highly creative (perhaps even artistic), they enjoy recreational and social activities, from surfing to sex, and they have proven time and time again that they are self-aware. They’ve also formed symbiotic relationships with fisherman, and recent reports suggest that dolphins even have names for each other.

On this same accord, if you tested George Clooney's character, Ryan, against a standard of human living, he may drop on the list below dolphins. Yes, he is cognitive, and a tool user; he likes recreational activities and has a name; but he lacks the basic instincts that most of us go our entire lives seeking-- Home. Family. Relationships. Marriage. Comfort. Material things.

The film succeeds in playing Ryan's character against two other super-humans. Natalie, the driven, confident, naive young girl with a checklist in place of a relationship, and Alex, the love-interest-without-strings. First off, I will say that I was SO GLAD that the script didn't turn to a romantic relationship between Ryan and Natalie. Didn't you all get worried about that in the trailer? It was simply a work relationship turned friendship in which both parties were changed as a result. It was a halting in the lives of two people who are always moving forward.

Natalie's character is one of my favorite ever written. Anna Kendrick nailed it, with each forceful stroke of the keyboard and each forced syllable in her sensible suit and sensible shoes and sensible haircut. Her character let us move deeper into a sort of Wonderland, initiated by Ryan's character in his shiny shoes and standardlized cufflinks.

I'll tell you the other reason that we all went to see this film (in addition to that deep voice and dreamy jawline... love me some Clooney...) It was the same reason we all saw Avatar, and will see Tim Burton's Alice sometime this week. This film was another WORLD. One in which we all pass through quickly, in transit, hurriedly, sure, but also one in which we haven't ever stopped to consider it as an actual structure and universe.

The click of the roller bag handles, the beep of the security lines, the zip of the hotel key-- there was something sensual and romantic about a world so standardized and sterile. Natalie's little skirt suits and simple necklace created for us a character SO SIMPLE that she was actually considered outside of normalcy. The articulation of ever syllable made her untouchable and awe inspiring from her very first presentation.

Ryan and Alex (ironic names, right girls?) began a relationship that from its onset didn't temp us with magic. It was about sex and convenience and fun. No expectations, no feelings, no stopping. It was the wedding in Wisconsin-- that lovely little montage at his old high school, in the snow, on the dance floor-- that made our hearts swell, that made us yearn for it to work. Yet at the same time, it wasn't something that we could see lasting, either. The loophole was that Ryan and Alex didn't have lists like Natalie did. Their lives were already started, moving, flying. A relationship wasn't on the horizon. (Please excuse my airplane metaphors, its just so easy!)

The beauty of this film's 'unhappy' ending is that we didn't find Ryan's character as flawed. It wasn't a story about breaking someone down, forcing them to love, to stop, to settle. The ending showed us his real emotion and heartache. He is human, after all. But being human doesn't exist in two-and-a-half baths and fireplaces and Christmas dinners and white picket fences. Ryan taught us that living exists without rules.

Up in the Air is a film that I will own. One that I will pull out on a Saturday morning and overanalyze with my coffee and buttered toast time and time again. It didn't depress me, not even a little bit. (I heard a lot of people say it was depressing?) Instead, it cleared an understanding in my mind for second chances, for starting over, and above all else-- what it means to keep moving forward.

William Kentridge

Yes, there was an after party. An Armory Show after party at MoMA at lasted well into my Wednesday night (Thursday morning? eek). I was able to snag a few comp tickets for John and myself, and ladies and gentleman, after-party we did. I will spare you the fancy-cocktails-and-beautiful-people commentary, but I will share a bit about the art that I saw. Because, yes, one is supposed to look at art at these things, even with an open bar and hip Brooklyn band rocking out in the lobby.

In fact, I am ashamed to admit, that I didn't even realize that Kentridge's work would be in attendance until I was literally standing in front of his most famous drawing saying to John, "there is a Kentridge exhibit tonight?" I know, I'm ashamed of me too.

William Kentridge is one of the very first contemporary artists that I fell in love with. Well, more accurately, that I was made aware of. My art history knowledge has a jagged past, and at the age of 18 I still hadn't been to a contemporary exhibit, I kid you not. But senior year in college, the great John S----r introduced my printmaking class to a few artists a week, drilling the need to read/see/think/study CONTEMPORARY work. Contemporary work would make us better artists, he said. It would make us better thinkers. And he was right.

If you've never seen Felix in Exhile, Kentridge's most famous piece, stop reading this silly blog and watch it on you tube. Here. I remember John explaining his work a bit, but more importantly, he let us watch it. He let us take it in, breathe it, consider it. We did very little discussing afterward, but I was left with this huge swelling of realization upon its completion: there was an entire world in which I wasn't aware. Art exists outside of Picasso and Warhol and Botticelli. It is being made today and being made in ways I never imagined. Video art? Give me more.

The show itself is expansive. The videos stretch well up those mezzanine gallery walls as you walk up the front stairs into the atrium. It's all blue and dusty and calm-- you can almost smell the chalk he rubs so heavily across paper. I dragged John (John Morrow, not John my professor, or John-the-editor-of-a-very-relevant-New-York-website that I also met that evening) by the arm from room to room, gasping at all that existed before us.

I need to go back, to be honest. Parties aren't as conducive to looking at art as one might expect. It was fun, though. And John will tell you that it was epic.

Now, onto three more fairs before I can sleep. Hello, art week. Loving every second.

The Armory Show

How gorgeous is that James Nares piece? I love his work, and saw his newest paintings at Pier 94 last night at Paul Kasmin's booth at The Armory Show. That, and about a kajillion other pieces and a bagillion other people and egos and poses. I don't even know what to say about The Armory Show right now, to be honest, other than it was a treat. A real treat. I have to take a step back every now and then to realize that I'm lucky to work in a job that I love with people I find funny and kind. And I was lucky to attend the vernissage (why they insist on using the French term and not 'opening' or 'preview' like normal people, I do not know...) of The Armory Show last night and then Pulse and Volta and The Art Show tomorrow. Whew.

It's a weird week, New York. And unless you're in it, you have no idea its even happening. But out there in the chilly March air are the best paintings and photographs and sculptures in the contemporary market today. It's the best of the best of the BEST, stuck salon style in a room built for storage. Anthony Gormley, Cindy Sherman, Erwin Wurm, Uta Barth, Susan Collins, Mary Heilman, and my dear James Nares' work can be found, to name a limited, favorited (favorited?) few.

They are hidden in concrete blocks jutting off the west side of the island, and a few uptown on the east side. This world exists behind closed doors and private parties, but it is there for you. And now that you know-- now that you have been told by your token art friend-- you must go see the zoo that is art week in New York City. It's an absolute treat.