The Prisoner of Second Avenue is nowhere near Neil Simon's most famous play, but this performance for L.A. Theatreworks does happen to star two of NeiThe Prisoner of Second Avenue is nowhere near Neil Simon's most famous play, but this performance for L.A. Theatreworks does happen to star two of Neil Simon's most famous actors doing what they do best, sharing their exceptional chemistry and making us laugh.
Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason (once Simon's spouse) were the stars of Simon's The Goodbye Girl (one of his original screenplays), which remains as charming today as it was in 1977 when Dreyfuss took home the Best Actor Oscar for his performance. On screen, the pair exemplified that bickering style of New York couple we've seen a million times in romantic comedies, but they made the hate-turned-love cliché work. Their comfort with each other as actors, their clear connection on-screen, and their believable sexual tension took what could have been screechy pettiness and turned it into sincere seduction.
Dreyfuss and Mason are twenty-three years older in this staging of Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue, but their chemistry hasn't dwindled. It has become less incendiary, perhaps, and it is maybe a little less effervescent, but the two of them still have a bond that makes their characters -- who are also significantly older than their Goodbye Girl characters -- a completely believable middle aged couple getting beat up by the city of New York and the rat race they're trapped in. Yes they keep up the bickering, but there is no hate to turn into love. For Mel and Edna there is only love, and sadness, and a little bit of madness.
The Prisoner of Second Avenue was written and set during the Nixon presidency, but without the mention of the President in one of the scene change radio broadcasts the audience wouldn't need to know. The action of the play could be happening today just as easily as it happened in the '70s. There are only a few subtle signs that date the play, but these aren't visible until Simon reveals them himself, letting us know when we are. Point being ... the play holds up all these years later. Of course, the great performances of the actors certainly help to smooth over those signs too.
I vaguely recall having mentioned this in the past but Neil Simon doesn't really get the credit he deserves for his massive body of work. Some of his work is truly great, but the rest of it is really good. It's difficult to call to mind any plays that outright stink. That's an hell of an acheivement for a playwright as prolific as Simon. I wonder when folks will truly rediscover his work?...more
I have read and loved the Martin Beck series several times. The partnership of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö was a powerful voice in Scandinavian literatI have read and loved the Martin Beck series several times. The partnership of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö was a powerful voice in Scandinavian literature, a powerful voice in the police procedural, and a powerful voice for political change. This makes them precisely the sort of authors I can't get enough of, but I must admit I've been frightened to read Per Wahlöö's solo work for fear that his writing would suffer for the lack of Maj Sjöwall.
Although there is no denying his writing lacks something that Sjöwall must have brought to their collaboration (which I will expand upon later), I was wrong to be frightened. Murder on the Thirty-First Floor is all Wahlöö, and it is a cracking good read.
I expected -- as I imagine most of us would -- that Murder on the Thirty-First Floor was going to be a police procedural, and the back cover blurb reinforced that expectation. We are told that Chief Inspector Jensen has a week to find a would-be bomber, so the promise of a police procedural seems to be utterly fulfilled. And it is. But that only tells half the tale because it is the other half that seems to be the most solidly Wahlöö's -- the dystopia.
Murder on the Thirty-First Floor takes place, you see, in a sterile (Eastern? Northern?) European city where crime has been reduced to the constant rounding up of alcohol abusers (it's difficult to tell how many of them are actually alcoholics), the cleaning up of automobile suicides, and the rare "major" crime like theft or murder. It is a city where litter is non-existent, where the housing crisis has been solved by banks and banks of concrete apartment blocks designed to become derelict, and where the "Welfare State" has wiped away visible problems while deepening malaise to unprecedented levels. It is a city where one hundred and forty four publications -- comic books, magazines, newspapers, what have you -- are owned and operated by one "benevolent" private company, dedicated to making sure that nothing they print will ever bother anyone and to making as much money as they possibly can in the process.
This unnamed city creeps up on the reader with its stultifying civility until genuine discomfort sets in, and the city's traits are reflected in our Chief Inspector Jensen. He is our window into this city, our connection to the story, our POV, but he is just as sterile, conforming, uncaring and damaged as the city itself. It all makes for an uncomfortable sense of dread. And it is here that the absence of Maj Sjöwall is most felt (see, I told you I'd get back to it) because without her, Per Wahlöö's cynicism is untempered. The Martin Beck series is full of bleak landscapes and storylines, but it is offset by a sliver of hope if not genuine optimism. Murder on the Thirty-First Floor, however, is hopeless, but this doesn't mean that it suffers from the lack of Sjöwall; it is merely a different experience.
Indeed, this also doesn't mean Murder on the Thirty-First Floor isn't excellent. It is. And luckily, I appreciate hopelessness (if you don't, however, you may want to steer clear). Best of all, my fear of reading my favourite collaborating authors on their own has evaporated. Bring on Wahlöö's The Steel Spring, then I have to find something solo by Sjöwall too. ...more
I needed a new series to make me fall in love with a clever detective (informer) all over again, and I really wanted it to be the M Didius Falco serieI needed a new series to make me fall in love with a clever detective (informer) all over again, and I really wanted it to be the M Didius Falco series. The long and short of it is that Lindsey Davis failed to make me fall in love. It was more like a mild like. I can't see myself coming back for more of this series.
I came looking for a genuine mystery. I was hoping for some Raymond Chandler style Roman detection, or some brooding Henning Mankell style Roman detection, or even some frustrating Ian Rankin style Roman detection. What I got was Moonlighting meets Remington Steele meets Hollywood-sword-and-sandal-romantic-mystery-lightness.
It's not horrible (I bet it would make a cracking and very watchable TV series), but not for me. ...more
My first reread of The City The City was an experience as convoluted as the grosstopography of Beszel and Ul Qoma. A chapter read, four chapters listeMy first reread of The City The City was an experience as convoluted as the grosstopography of Beszel and Ul Qoma. A chapter read, four chapters listened to; three chapters read, two chapters listened to; and on. Teaching this book in a town in a different province than the town I live in, across a straight, over a bridge (my adopted country's longest, the adopted country that plays such an important role in the piece, which is itself a nation sandwiched between nations in our always); a soccer game was played with four teams and two balls, simultaneously filling the same grosstopography, unseeing each other, unseeing the other game, but there was I in net, in perpetual Breach, defending one goal from two teams, and my fellows from Breach were busy removing those who Breached during play. And I found myself loving the mystery of the book then thinking it was too weak then loving it all over again when the twist I'd forgotten reminded me of Miéville's genius and why the mystery really does work. And I found myself loving and loving and loving the alterity of the spaces that Tyador and Corwi and Dhatt navigated with their unseeing, unhearing, unknowing senses as they were forced to see and hear and know. The City and the City is a masterpiece. One hundred years from now this book, and others of Miéville's ouevre will be canon. He's the first writer I've discovered, and long before others had, that I can say that about. And one of the few of the future canon with whom I am contemporary. I am lucky to be reading him now, in his pomp, the way little boys were lucky to see Wayne Gretzky play hockey live. I will never see Miéville's like again....more
I was feeling pretty sick and shitty this past week or so with a summer cold and the coming of the new semester, and Duke came by to talk. He regaled I was feeling pretty sick and shitty this past week or so with a summer cold and the coming of the new semester, and Duke came by to talk. He regaled me with tales of Belgrade, and his time as a Montenegrin film star. We talked about screenwriting in L.A. -- a job we both did, though he was more successful than I in substanitive terms -- and I couldn't help being impressed by his credits, but mostly I was impressed by the way he absorbed the world he was moving through. That story about wandering the Paramount lot and trying to imagine those who'd come before is a fine example of his presence in those moments that matter, and its one of my favourites to hear him tell.
I found out a whole bunch about his friends that I didn't know. He surprised me with how comfortable he was talking about things that many people would want to keep hidden forever, knowing full well that there was nothing for him to be ashamed of and acting accordingly (which sounds so easy to do but is actually quite difficult for so many of us). He put aside his ego and told things straight, letting his stories speak for themselves, shit stains and all, embracing his own downfalls as thirstily as a bottle of Cutty Sark on a night of blackout madness.
And he pissed me off too, but of course that was going to happen. Duke, the doctor, D.R. thinks pretty highly of himself at times, and I was sick and crabby (and I think just as highly of myself), so I listened and nodded, and thought, "C'mon, man. Don't be such a douchebag," but then he'd sense my eye rolling and take just the right turn again, pulling back, redirecting with something self-deprecating or philosophical or surgically incisive, and then I'd feel like a prick for getting pissy.
Then he left me with a mix disc he'd made for me, pointed me to a couple of cool interviews he'd given, kicked my ass, and headed out the door back from whence he came, making sure that I'd never forget my weekend with him, snot infused though it was.
He's available for you too. When you need to just hang out, when you need a little motivation, when you need to remember what you're writing for, you can give him a call in these pages, and he'll come hang out, give you his unique form of therapy (deeply Freudian though it is), and you too will come out of it better for the experience.
p.s. You are the real deal, Duke. Seriously. ...more
Back when I got stuck in the doldrums of The Shipping News, finally tossing it overboard, then wasted my timeI admit it. I was surprised by Middlesex.
Back when I got stuck in the doldrums of The Shipping News, finally tossing it overboard, then wasted my time with The Stone Diaries a year later, I subconsciously vowed to ignore the Pulitzer Prize forever. I broke that vow in '99 for The Hours, but that was because one of my mentors knew Cunningham, and he recommended The Hours because he knew my love for Mrs. Dalloway. I went straight back to my personal embargo, though, and it stuck until 2009 when I finally caved and read The Road.
I wouldn't say the embargo lifted after that, but my conviction definitely waned, so when I needed something to listen to on my long commute and saw Jeffrey Eugenides's audiobook version of Middlesex on sale for $7.99, I caved and decided to give it a go.
I expected crap when I started listening, but when Lucky and Desdemona hit Detroit I really started to dig it, and when it ended today with Cal/liope learning the truth of the 5-alpha-reductase deficiency from his YaYa, the recessive gene that made him a hermaphrodite, I realized I'd been a convert to Middlesex's beauty for the bulk of the book.
I don't know if I would be as impressed with Middlesex if I had read it rather than listening to it because Kristoffer Tabori's vocal performance was absolutely mindblowing. I don't think I have heard too many vocal performances that can beat his work on Middlesex. He's no Orson Welles playing Lamont Cranston, but he kicks the crap out of most of the contemporary voice actors I've heard in animated movies and audiobooks. His voices were so distinct, his performance so complex, that characters masking their voices over telephones or through heating ducts had just enough of their original voices to be recognizable while still convincingly masking them from others in the story. Even better, Tabori turned much of Eugenides' prose into poetry. Or -- perhaps -- Tabori simply revealed the poetry of Eugenides' words that were there all along.
I like to think that's the case because the way Eugenides writes about Detroit, San Francisco, and Smyrna is some of the most beautiful metroprose I've ever heard, and I found myself caring for every character Cal/liope came in contact with. I'd hate to know that Tabori's performance made the story better than it really is (although I have a sneaking suspicion that I'd have felt some of Eugenides' descriptions and characterizations were a touch precious without Tabori's performance). So I will never actually read this book now that I've listened to it. I like this story, and I want to keep on liking it.
So am I finally back reading the Pulitzer Prize winners? I dunno. Perhaps. But even if I do start reading them again, I won't be seeking them out.
Maybe I'll buy them on audiotape, instead. You never know what the bargain bin is going to turn up....more
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