Our infinite capacity for bullshitting ourselves:):):)...
Mood:
chillin'
Now Playing: Indigo Girls...Galileo...Closer to Fine...Kid Fears...Ghost...Power of Two...
Topic: courage
...or how fear and cynicism distort our sense of the possibilities of life...
Melissa ushered EMU Theater's production of The Big Funk, last night:):)...which was much better than I expected, I have to say:):)...I love John Patrick Shanley...I am probably the biggest fan of Joe vs. the Volcano of anyone I know:):)...but the reviews of the Big Funk (Shanley's script, not this performance) did not look so hot, when we first heard about the play...and while it is definitely not the greatest play written by Mr. Shanley, it is a decent script...and this cast did a pretty decent job with it...especially the female lead, Elizabeth Ahrens, who I think is perhaps the best female lead I've seen in an EMU production...
Shanley's script is basically an existential reflection on the fears and insecurities that drive too many peoples' lives...that lead to what Shanley calls "The Big Funk"...Ahrens performs powerfully in a scene with colleague Jason Bradbury, who, after her character, Jill, shares strong feelings for Bradbury's character, Gregory, proceeds to tear her to pieces, emotionally, symbolically wiping petroleum jelly over her face...Jill resigns herself to this treatment...as Gregory mocks the self-image that Jill carries that permits this resignation...
Elizabeth's co-star, Steve Ducey, also performs well in a final scene where his character stands as a naked man shining a large mirror on both the remaining characters and audience members...having them look at themselves...and encouraging them to give up the fears that leave so many people in the Big Funk of life that traps people who spend their lives inside those fears...
Shanley's script is all over the place...and is more existential play than a script with any strong sense of direction...but it makes for a fun theater experience...and for an opportunity for this cast of actors to demonstrate some powerful acting abilities...Ahrens' presence anchors the play in her ability to communicate, non-verbally and verbally, some sense of the internal conflicts that Shanley is getting at...and Steve Ducey, playing Austin, Jill's love interest in the play, gives one of the play's stronger performances as a young, disgruntled unemployed twenty-something who seeks to treat Jill with the decency that he thinks she deserves and to do something -- anything -- constructive in the society that he consistently reminds the audience that he hates...
All and all, it was a fun night of theater...
Melissa and I watched the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory before the performance...which started strong...with a much more serious presentation of Roald Dahl's serious and beautiful children's story of the same name, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...and with a really terrific first musical number...
But from there...the new production of Charlie devolves into a dark interpretation of the hopeful and sweet Roald Dahl story, led by Johnny Depp's Michael Jackson-like portrayal of Willy Wonka...what at first seems creative, eventually just seemed kind of creepy...to both Melissa and I...
And Roald Dahl's story and general theme in his children's stories of the hope and power and magic of childhood, even in a a poor childhood like Charlie's, is distorted into a psychoanalysis of a deeply troubled Willy Wonka and an affirmation of the need for children to accept the firm hand of adults in their lives...which pretty significantly twists the playful mocking of parents, teachers, and other adults that pervades Dahl's work, for not humbling themselves before the innocence and possibilities of childhood...
So Melissa and I returned to my apartment after the play and watched the older much better, overall, interpretation of Dahl's beautiful story, starring Gene Wilder, Peter Ostrum, and Jack Albertson...admittedly, the musical numbers -- especially the psychedelic trip through the chocolate river tunnel -- are kind of cheesy in the original film production of Willy Wonka...but overall...the film is not only much more genuinely geared towards children and an appreciation for the virtues of innocence and hope and possibility that come with childhood...but it centers itself around a flawed but generally child-friendly Willy Wonka in Gene Wilder...in contrast with the creepiness, pettiness, and self-centeredness of Johnny Depp's depiction of a man who, frankly, I would be very wary of leaving my own children with:):)...
The popularity of the second Willy Wonka -- at least in the household we were watching it in -- was yet another opportunity for me to reflect on peoples' abilities to bullshit themselves...
Depp's performance is brilliant...if you divorce it from the story...but it and the rewrite of the screenplay are a significant and meaningful departure from the original intent of Dahl's story...
Dahl is not affirming the firm hand of family...in fact, most of his work is a challenge to the firm hand of too many adults in handling children...he is constantly and playfully mocking parents and teachers and adults who have lost touch with the experience of childhood, so wrapped up are they in their fears and certainties about life...a trap that Tim Burton's production seems to fall into...in an attempt to re-write a story for the current popular political moment, I suspect...I'm sure Tim made quite a bit of money with this movie...but the classics that are Roald Dahl stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach this Willy Wonka is not...if Tim plans on doing any more interpretations of Dahl's work, I would definitely encourage him to look back to his much stronger sometime-live, sometime animated production of James and the Giant Peach, which is a children's movie classic...
Why so much fascination with the dark side, lately, in contemporary entertainment, I have to wonder?...it's pervasive in contemporary music, theater, and movies...in a way that has just not really encouraged much real innovation in any of them...especially in a children's movie, where it's presence seems only tangentially relevant...
It's so ironic, isn't it, how our cynicism moves us closer and closer to the very dangers that we are so afraid of...
And that's where great children's literature...like Dahl's...is so powerful...as an enlightening correction for adults' -- parents and teachers, in particular -- who so often get so lost in their own fears about the world...
Thanks to Roald Dahl for that reminder for all of us...and thanks to Tim Burton...for his marvelous production of James and the Giant Peach, especially, that you should definitely see if you haven't yet...and thanks to him and Johnny Depp and the rest of the cast for an exciting look into Roald's brilliant story of the magic and possibility of childhood...even as it fell short...
And thanks to Laura Leffler-McCabe, Elisabeth Ahrens, Samantha Raines, R. Troy Hirsch, Steve Ducey, and Jason Bradbury, and the rest of the gang for giving EMU fans an opportunity to enjoy an thought-provoking night at the theater:):):)...
Have a great weekend, everyone:):):)...and if you get a chance:):)...and if you're in the Lawrence area:):)...you might check out The Big Funk at the Lawrence Arts Center:):)...
Love,
Ben
Posted by benfrankln
at 2:05 PM CST
Updated: Sunday, 27 November 2005 11:07 PM CST
