Posts from — November 2008

As you walk across the glistening White Sands desert in central New Mexico, you would never have imagined that a historic event had happened there 63 years ago. You pick up a green, glassy substance. What lies on your hand is trinitite, evidence of the first atomic explosion. What happened here, the events that lead to the detonation, and the psychological fear and stress of those involved in the Manhattan Project is the subject of the opera “Doctor Atomic” with dramatic music by John Adams and a libretto by Peter Sellars. Doctor Atomic brilliantly revived the historic yet modern event that marked mankind’s highest ambitions and deepest fears. [Read more →]

Source: www.stevenkasher.com

He walks into the room, momentarily addresses the class, and swiftly proceeds to installing his collection of photographs into the projector.  As if trying to avoid attention, the man works silently until his work is ready for display, only voicing his concern for the abundance of light.  Once the projector turns on, he simply switches from picture to picture and they themselves incite the questions that follow.  If you were to see a man of such simple demeanor toying with his camera in some Manhattan district, you would fail to realize that you are bearing witness to Jeff Mermelstein, worldwide authority on street photography, contributing to an art that is as much his as anybody’s. [Read more →]

Source: www.apple.com

Director Ari Folman described his work as applicable to the soldiers of any war. True to this description, Waltz with Bashir, while avoiding mediocrity through its unique art style and articulate direction, fails to ever accomplish anything previous war movies have not. [Read more →]

When it was decided that Yvonne Latty’s In Conflict: Iraq War Veterans Speak Out on Duty, Loss and the Fight to Stay Alive would be adapted into a play, the director should have paid particular attention to the format of the work that, while built upon socially responsible subject matter, is of a very unique nature and difficult to interpret in theater. Unfortunately, director Douglas C. Wager fails to do just that, not realizing that a play with narrative can have an audience but a play with interviews needs to have listeners. [Read more →]

Source: www.metoperafamily.org

What’s makes judging Sellars and Adams’ Dr. Atomic difficult is not that any individual element is or isn’t done particularly well.  On the contrary, there is no doubt that very little in Dr. Atomic is done well.  What makes passing verdict difficult is that Dr. Atomic, despite using a laudable libretto as its foundation, still displays enough insightful thinking to make it worth watching. [Read more →]

The audiences recognized the success of the play. South Pacific, opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, captured the audiences with the originality of the music by the orchestra and the theme of love and racial prejudice. Although the original play had a bigger impact, South Pacific was able to convey the idea that many issues from the past are still relevant today, such as the debate on the legality of gay marriage, very similar to the arguments on interracial marriage sixty years ago.
South Pacific centered on the love story between Ensign Nellie Forbush, naïve Navy nurse from Little Rock, Arkansas, and Emile de Becque, affluent French planter owner, with the subplot of love between Lieutenant Joe Cable and Liat, daughter of Bloody Mary. The play advanced with the struggles both couples have had for facing racial prejudice from the society as well as inner conflicts within the characters. The play also showed other elements of struggles of soldiers during World War II, particularly the African Americans. During one of the musicals, they were separated from the rest of the Seabees. By including this small part of the play, the director achieved his goal of not only questioning interracial marriage but as well as military segregation.  [Read more →]

Source:www.chicagocritic.com

There aren’t many who can bear the burden of being responsible for virtually every aspect of production.  It can prove suicidal because the result, be it success or failure, is all pinned on that one person responsible.  In the case of Clay, Matt Sax wrote, scored and performed this New Works Program production and, by assuming this gargantuan responsibility, Sax gave himself unlimited liability if the production were to fail.  However, such a disaster didn’t occur and Clay, despite having a predictable plot, succeeds in being an original, enjoyable production. [Read more →]

We were on the top of the world.  Encapsulated in a tiny pod of yellow the three of us watched the lights get close and farther, closer and farther as we swayed in our make-believe rocket ship.  Sea-shanties echoed across the port, if you could call what that crazy Romanian chick in her red sparkly dress was singing sea-shanties.  Charlotte, in her French-accented, somewhat broken English, told a story constantly interrupted by our laughter.  She told a humorous horror story about our Ferris wheel breaking and the three of us falling to our deaths and the next day in the newspapers it would tell of the Englishman, Frenchie and American who died together in a tragic accident.  The Englishman, Ben, turned to me and smiled, and I smiled back.  After Charlotte went back to the boat that night we would lean against one of the warehouses and kiss while drunken French people made rude comments in the darkness.  [Read more →]

At first, I didn’t know how to respond to Jeff Mermelstein as he began to prepare his old-fashioned slides for our class. He seemed a little confused and I was nervous that he was going to turn out to be a grumpy old man. I was half-expecting a boring presentation, one slide after another with a few monotonous descriptions of when and where each photograph was taken. Then, Jeff Mermelstein began to describe, with fervor, his experience with being a street photographer. All of my predictions were proven wrong. His use of language was vivid as he spoke of his love of color photography. He mentioned how seductive color photography is to him, like “colored M&M’s.” [Read more →]

My mixed emotions about Dr. Atomic, an opera composed by John Adams, are quite alike those of Robert J. Oppenheimer when he was creating the atomic bomb. The process of watching the opera in its beauty was alluring, but the end product was puzzling. My expectations for an intriguing opera ended with disappointment. [Read more →]