Widows has been cast

I think we are good to go. I cannot believe it. But tomorrow is day one of rehearsals for widows. There are conflicts aplenty and it will be a logistical nightmare from start to finish.

My goal is to keep it together. To intill a level of calm and confidence throughout the proceeding.

I aim to give a decent accounting of it all start to finish.

Amen.

August: Osage County

Wow. Wow. Wow. And...

Wow. I just loved this show.

I had the fortune of seeing the show last night, opening night. And in a word: Wow.

I had heard a great deal of positive buzz, and Scott Morfee has been a huge supporter of Tracey Letts so I was pretty excited to see this. ANd sure enough, it did not disappoint.

It is a quintessential American play, taking place at the house of a midwestern family, the Westons. And it is essentially a view of how cruel we can be to the ones we love the most. I think the reason it resonates so well and crucially is that it is about family NOW. To call this a dysfunctional family play is to do it a great disservice. It is far more than that: it is an American Experience. Not political, but someone capturing the zeitgeist of the interpersonal.

It is a play fraught with humor and pathos, full of family secrets. When one gets uncovered, you are privy to it before the rest of the family is. But Letts is always one step ahead: one great closet skeleton pales in comparison to the next.

Hooting at the end of act two like I've not heard. Makes me feel like I was witnessing the next Angels. Wow. Hats off to Tracy, Anna D. Shapiro and a great cast. Also awesome to see a cast of "unknowns" sweep on to the stage and take it and us by storm.

Twelfth Night, or whatever

Yep - I blew off tickets to Stoppard's ROCK AND ROLL because my cousin, Bernadette, had the lead role in her 8th grade version of 12th Night (or like whatever).

It was fairly incomprehensible: it was sort of set in the fifties: Orsino was the Captain of a football team, Olivia was the head chearleader. We didn't get to meet Sebastian until the second act. Viola, my cousin, did great work though. She seemed to be the most passionate, and clearly had a sense of stage presence. Um - many of the folks had lav mikes which really didn't help when people who didn't have mikes had to speak. Plus, there seemed to be this meta-adventure involving a bad class, led by two bratty girls who liked to text, who were forced to do a report on 12th night, and they had a fat classmate named Betty.

And it took me 2 hours to get back from Westfrield...

Nearly 7 years or so...

I was talking to an old friend who I met out during the end of my san francisco days. I worked for a moment directing at her school - the Pacific Heights Prep School, I think. I directed the 7th and 8th graders in a production of PLAYLAND AT THE BEACH - which we created ourselves. It was pretty hilarious: a bunch of bad kids are forced to help this old age community and learn about PLAYLAND, an old amusement park. They go there together and the old folks teach the kids a few things. That's about all I remember - that, and there were songs.

Anyway, Tasha reminded me about how miserable life became for me after I'd moved back to NYC, after I'd given the dotcom world a try, and how I actually prepared for the LSATs and had my law school applications ready to fire. Fortunately, I canceled those tests within an hour after taking them, and within a few months resumed my life in theater...

And what a trip these 7 years have been....wow.