Seriously, Saatchi?

THIS? This is what you come up with after $17 M?

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

Go, Billy!

Nice review of Billy Elliot from Ben Brantley at the NY Times. We saw the show a couple weeks ago. Some minor things could be tweaked, but overall, great. Incredibly difficult role for the Billys.

What struck me most with the show is similar to what Brantley said regarding the choreography--emphasized in bold (my emphasis).

Your inner dancer is calling. Its voice, sweet but tough and insistent, pulses in every molecule of the new Broadway musical “Billy Elliot,” demanding that you wake up sleeping fantasies of slipping on tap or ballet shoes and soaring across a stage. Few people may have the gift of this show’s title character, a coal miner’s son in northern England who discovers he was born to pirouette. But the seductive, smashingly realized premise of “Billy Elliot,” which opened Thursday night at the Imperial Theater, is that everybody has the urge. And in exploring that urge among the population of a down-at-heels coal town suffering through the British miners’ strike of the mid-1980s, this show both artfully anatomizes and brazenly exploits the most fundamental and enduring appeal of musicals themselves.

It’s been more than three years since “Billy Elliot,” directed by Stephen Daldry and featuring a score by Elton John, first sent critics and audiences into a mass swoon in London, where it continues to play. The delay in bringing the show to Broadway hinted at fears that it might not sit comfortably on American soil.

Adapted by Lee Hall from his screenplay for the affectionately remembered 2000 movie of the same title (also directed by Mr. Daldry), “Billy Elliot” is told in thick working-class accents and an argot that, even in London, necessitated putting a glossary in the program. What’s more, the show traffics in a particularly British brand of bitter treacle, wallowing in the glory of the bravely defeated and the pathos of small, trapped lives.

But the timing of the production’s arrival here, with the United States newly chastened by severe financial woes and fears, gives it a resonance it might not have had in 2005, when big spenders ruled with complacency. “Billy Elliot” is a hard-times musical. And as the culture of the Great Depression made clear, in times of economic darkness there can be blessed relief in dreams of tripping the light.

Much of the power of “Billy Elliot” as an honest tear-jerker lies in its ability to give equal weight to the sweet dreams of terpsichorean flight and the sourness of a dream-denying reality, with the two elements locked in a vital and unending dialogue. This isn’t wholesale escapism à la Busby Berkeley or “Mamma Mia!” In tone, it’s closer to the song-dotted working-class films of Terence Davies or, on television, Dennis Potter’s “Pennies From Heaven.”

This production never lets us forget the elemental tug of war between Billy’s longing to dance and the forces pulling him away from it. Mr. Daldry and his prodigiously inventive team make sure that the conflict is carried through on every level, from Peter Darling’s inspired scene-melding choreography, which gives a new spin to the idea of the integrated musical, to Ian MacNeil’s fluidly moving sets and Rick Fisher’s shadow-casting lighting. And it’s telling that Mr. John’s songs (with lyrics by Mr. Hall) are as infused with the energy of anger as of joy.

The plot, which sticks close to that of Mr. Hall’s screenplay, doesn’t even try to avoid the clichés common to tales of talented, odds-beating backwater youth. Billy is, natch, a motherless boy with a loving but unlettered father (a touching Gregory Jbara) and an adorably addled grandmother, played by the estimable Carole Shelley. Billy is portrayed by three young teenagers, Trent Kowalik, Kiril Kulish and, in the performance I saw, the excellent David Alvarez. (No public schedule is available for which Billy performs on which night.)

There’s the inevitable inspirational teacher, a Mrs. Wilkinson (the sublime Haydn Gwynne, who created the role in London), who sees a spark of greatness in the lad. There’s the time-honored progression from resistance — here by a rough, masculine culture — suspicious of all things arty (embodied by Billy’s brother, played by Santino Fontana, and his father) to acceptance, when the whole town bands together to help send the boy to London for his big audition. There are even, heaven help us, visitations by the fond ghost of Billy’s mother (Leah Hocking).

Yet Mr. Daldry and company turn tripe into triumph by making us understand the depth of the appeal of its classic show-business fairy tale, not only to us but also to the people whose dreary daily existences touch on Billy’s. The evidence of this appeal is abundant in “Billy Elliot,” most obviously in the motley ballet classes presided over by the wryly disparaging Mrs. Wilkinson and a Christmas frolic at the miners’ hall where everybody dresses up as their favorite villainess, Margaret Thatcher. But it’s not just the amateur performers who feel the ineffable pull of song and dance.

Billy’s grandma shucks her shabby housecoat to reveal a sparkling dress and summons a spectral chorus of partners past as she recalls the respite from an unhappy marriage provided by nights of dancing with her alcoholic husband. Mrs. Wilkinson’s grubby rehearsal pianist (Thommie Retter) strips out of his civvies to become a gyrating disco boy for a number called “Born to Boogie.”

And Billy’s best friend, Michael (Frank Dolce, who alternates with David Bologna), reveals the thrill of dressing up in his sister’s clothes and making like Sophie Tucker in the show-stopping “Expressing Yourself.” (The everyday metamorphosis-ready costumes are by Nicky Gillibrand.)

That number — and an electric outcry of frustration called “Angry Dance” — come closest to what one might expect from a venerable pop-chart topper like Mr. John. But much of his work here, far more restrained than his more mawkish scores for Disney musicals, is in a folksier vein, drawn from North country ballads and protest songs. And undercurrents of anxiety, wistfulness and melancholy run through the most tuneful pieces.

This show makes sure that we always keep in mind the grittiness and despair of the society that produced Billy, so that the poetry of his dancing seems all the more startling and inexplicable. Mr. Darling’s surreal blending of Mrs. Wilkinson’s dance class with a clash between miners and police is one of the freshest, most exciting uses of narrative dance I’ve seen in years. And until the finale (which is a tad overdone), he rations his big, knock-’em-dead sequences. “Billy Elliot,” you see, isn’t a dance show; it’s about why people need dance.

The performances, for the most part, are broader than they were in London, with more mugging and heart-tugging stickiness. But the two most essential portrayals — that of Ms. Gwynne and Mr. Alvarez — were spot-on the night I saw the show. Hard-shelled and all too wary of the limits of her life, Ms. Gwynne’s Mrs. Wilkinson perfectly embodies the tricky balance of sweet and salty the show requires.

And Mr. Alvarez, a natural lyrical dancer, exudes just the right air of conviction and perplexity. This Billy can’t articulate his need for dance, but he understands the potency and worth of his emotions. You always feel his ambivalence and, in the final scenes, his confounded sense of the privilege — and guilt — in entering another realm.

For everyone else in the play, like most of us in the audience, the transcendence of dance is something to be sampled, falteringly and only occasionally, rather than lived. Billy’s grandmother sings of her youthful nights on the dance floor: “It was bliss for an hour or so/But then they called time to go/And in the morning we were sober.”

“Billy Elliot” never doubts that it’s the sobriety that endures in life. Which makes those intoxicating, fleet-footed flashes of art, where leaden bodies fly and discord turns into harmony, all the more to be cherished.

OVER THE TABLE AND UNDER THE BAR

I am about halfway through the preparation stage for my newest writing project, Over the Table and Under the Bar.

When finished, this project will consist of 175 short plays written in 175 days. The plays will all be based on questions that I have compiled from a couple different sources: the conversation starter collection, Table Topics, and the book, Barguments. The questions have been randomized and sent to a group of friends and family, 7 to each, with no two people receiving the same set of questions. I am compiling the responses (ideally, each question will have 3 responses) and adding them to my own answers. When it comes time to write, I will pick a question and use the responses (or not) as inspiration for the play based on that question.

I will begin writing on Thursday, January 1, 2009, and will write one play a day for 175 days.

I still need answers to several questions, which I'll be posting. Comments/responses are encouraged!

I am also working on creating an inspirational soundtrack for the series. As with the questions, I'll be picking one song each day to aid in the inspiration. I've currently got 62 songs on my list, so just over 100 left to find. Suggestions/recommendations are welcome!

Muster Undulation, Your Table is Ready

It's amazing to me that some relationships are so difficult to develop, while others just seem to occur naturally. I have at least a handful of friends that I adore, and I am confident that they feel the same in return, but for some reason we just aren't able to make a fluid, impenetrable connection. And it's not for lack of trying. Or want. It just is. And that's fine. I put effort into my work, my writing, and my friendship with this person, and that person, oh and this person, too. And so on. Such is life.

But then there are people with whom I just click. Which, I think, is true for everyone, so big deal, right? But what strikes me is that I don't have to spend much time or energy in establishing, developing, or maintaining a relationship. The relationship just exists and seems as if it always has. As sure as I have green eyes and fair skin, I have an effortlessly unbreakable bond with her, with him, oh and her, too. And so on.

It's fascinating to me. And very inspiring.

Which may be what brings all of this to the forefront right here and now. It's certainly why I started this blog. Blog. Blog blog blog. What an awful word. It sounds like a 17-year old bulemic girl. Blog. Buh-lawg. Gross.

What was I talking about?

Oh, yes. Inspiration.

Yesterday, I had lunch with Jen Bou. We haven't had a full conversation in over 2 years, so it was nice to be able to finally do that again. During our conversation, as typically happens, we started talking about art and creativity. With my work and my writing consistently at high levels of activity, I don't feel deficient in the creativity department. But I always walk away from conversations with Jen with the need, a visceral, undulating need, to create.

Yes, it undulates. Causing me to muster my unexpressed emotions, desires, fears, and fill-in-the-blanks until all I can do is focus all that energy into a single force. Or maybe it focuses itself, I'm not sure. I certainly don't feel like I have control over it. And I don't want control over it, frankly. So quit pushing me.

Creativity. Such a bad reputation it has. Feared by many--I'm looking at you, Utah. Coveted by some--Julie Taymor would do well to pull back a bit. And revered by Paul.

Just kidding. Revered by most of us, really. How can I possibly be creative? Who would want to see what I've done? What if they don't like it? Blog blog blog. Such a waste of energy.

What Jen does so well (and unknowingly, until now. Unless she already knew, of course. But she's an actor, so she can easily pretend that she didn't know. Though, she'll remind me that she stopped acting. But I'll remind her that we act every day and in every situation. So there, Jen. Top that.) is bring me to the FuckIt point. After meeting with her, my self-created concerns no longer matter and all I want is to Do, with a capital D. So that's what I'm going to do, with a little d. I was never one for too much fanfare.

Onward, then, with my series, Over the Table and Under the Bar, with more gusto than before. Onward with my mosaic entry-way piece (my Butter Dinosaur). And Onward with this.

Blog.