http://bsrserver.com/index.php/site/index/ "Where Art and Ideas Meet" • Philadelphia, PA • Dan Rottenberg, Editor en drottenberg@broadstreetreview.com Copyright 2010 2010-08-31T21:07:44-05:00 http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/mauckingbirds_midsummer_nights_dream/ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/mauckingbirds_midsummer_nights_dream/#When:19:40:20Z Mauckingbird’s imaginative, gender-bending staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers a spectacle that the Facebook generation can sink its teeth right into, notwithstanding the limitations of Mauckingbird’s scatterbrained approach to Shakespeare’s text. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By William Shakespeare; directed by Peter Reynolds and Lynne Innerst. Mauckingbird Theatre Company production through September 12, 2010 at Randall Theatre, Temple University, 1301 W. Norris St. (at 13th St.).  (215) 923-8909 or www.mauckingbirdtheatreco.org. At its recent annual membership meeting, the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia reconfirmed its commitment to achieving the goals set by “Engage 2020,” an ambitious program of the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance that seeks to double the region’s arts participation by the year 2020. This benchmark presents no small task for Theatre Alliance members, who already enjoy an annual audience of 450,000. Doubling that number in the next ten years— especially if the Alliance also wants to fulfill its goal of shedding theater’s “elitist image”— would presumably require attracting a large number of young people with minimal prior exposure to theater. If anyone at the Theatre Alliance wants to see how to attract young people, they should head over to Temple and see Mauckingbird’s impressive, gender-bending staging of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This imaginative, highly theatrical production offers a spectacle that the Facebook generation can sink its teeth right into, notwithstanding the limitations of Mauckingbird’s scatterbrained approach to the text. If nothing else, director Peter Reynolds understands a young audience. Mauckingbird’s summer residency at Temple— where Reynolds also teaches— enabled him to populate his cast with young, attractive and energetic students or alumni. He and co-director Lynne Innerst chose a schoolyard setting, and they incorporate computer-generated multimedia without intruding upon the drama (a feat that directors rarely achieve). The production also pokes fun at text messaging while believably showing how it can work as a communication device in a character’s performance. Cross-gender casting Reynolds also chose a smart play for bending gender and blending homosexual romance into Shakespeare’s traditionally hetero world. From the outset, Midsummer reflects the foolishness of love across generations (“Lord what fools these mortals be!”), plays with the capriciousness of sexual attraction and notes something that young people experience daily: “The course of true love never did run smooth.” The level of engagement with Shakespeare’s play also benefits from the re-casting of Lysander as a woman (Emily Letts) and of Helena as a man (Patrick Joyce). Moreso than their elders, young people daily encounter— and mostly tolerate— homosexuality amongst their peers. A schoolteacher friend of mine in North Carolina says a week doesn’t pass without her seeing (and separating, as per school policy) girls making out in hallways. Across college campuses, students have adopted (mostly) affectionate terms for widespread collegiate sexual experimentation (for example “BUG,” as in “bisexual until graduation”). More than anything else where young people are concerned, Mauckingbird’s clipped 90-minute production justifiably subordinates Shakespeare’s verbiage to the spectacle onstage. The fairies rock Oberon to sleep with Samantha Bellomo’s slick choreography; Lauren Perigard’s costumes range from the prep school students’ crested blazers and plaid skirts to the fairies’ black vinyl, zippers, mesh shirts and goggles; and the Mechanicals present their play-within-a-play as a wild knockoff of Lady Gaga videos. All the action takes place inside Dan Soule and S. Cory Palmer’s vivid but minimal set design of luminescent dappled forests. Dom Chacon’s emotive lighting fuses with Chris Colucci’s microphone echoes and electronica beats to generate the feel of an ecstasy-fueled rave. A 90-minute party I would have partied there for far longer than 90-minutes if this production had let me. In its more raucous moments— mostly provided by Perigard’s audacious costumes (outrageous costumes of tinseled barbwire and shaggy red body suits) and the squealing, brash performance of Danielle Pinnock as Nick Bottom— I erupted with laughter. Unfortunately, the removal of huge chunks of text disjointed the play’s three subplots from their usual coherency. Why does Puck so willingly engage in his antics on Oberon’s behalf? Why do the Mechanicals put on a play in the first place? In this production, we don’t know. Like a music video, the fast-paced direction sweeps past every incoherent intersection of each plot line. Moreover, Mauckingbird’s “gay prism” approach loses credibility in its boarding school setting: I no more expected these kids to want to get married than I believe that a father at such a “school of the future” could then threaten his daughter with death if she doesn’t comply. Only the stellar bickering and longing performed by Joyce, Thompson, Erin Mulgrew (as Hermia) and Letts overcame my disbelief. In this production, spectacle covers the script’s logical flaws. Whether such a formula can consistently attract audiences to theaters is another matter. Lady Gaga’s previous incarnation Spectacle-driven singers like Lady Gaga, David Bowie, and Prince enjoy immense success because they build their visual outlandishness upon a tower of talent. As a result, you don’t see second-rate imitations, because neither the music industry nor the fans will tolerate them. However, if you watch old clips of Lady Gaga back when she called herself Stefani Germanotta, you can understand that without her dazzling costumes and the visual spectacle of her shows, this talented singer-songwriter wouldn’t have risen above the crowd of similarly talented singer-songwriters. By the same token, a more-straightforward production of Midsummer would have vanished into the ho-hum background of the four other stagings of that show in Philadelphia this season (with yet another to follow next year). This approach may work well for young people— at least once. For those directors tempted to imitate Reynolds, the key question must be:  Would you use this approach for Shaw or Ibsen? Theater 2010-08-31T19:40:20-05:00 http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/september_letters_why_piano_students_cry/ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/september_letters_why_piano_students_cry/#When:21:07:44Z Readers respond about why piano students cry, the “Ground Zero mosque” and Jewish artists.  Why piano students cry      Re “Why piano students cry,” by Dan Coren—      Actually, Dan, while I’ve never played a perfect concert, I have had moments when I really felt like God was playing through me, which makes all the struggle worthwhile. But you and Barbara Rottenberg are right: There’s something about approaching pieces as sublime as the ones you mention that makes me want to do them justice, and when the fact I’m a mere human stands in the way, it’s very frustrating.      The good news is, I doubt there will ever be a machine that can truly express the way a human pianist can, so our tears and frustration along the way (if we don’t curse and quit), are important if great music is to have a chance to live. And even if one’s audience is a reluctant cat (or just your walls), if you can “nail it” at home, that means you can nail it. Nobody can take that away from you! Maria Thompson Corley Lancaster, Pa. August 30, 2010      Editor’s note: The writer is a concert pianist. The imam, the mosque and Ground Zero      Re “The imam, the mosque and Ground Zero”—      There’s a zing in Robert Zaller’s agnosticism. Three centuries after Voltaire and his followers forced the Catholic Church to temper its semi-civilized Monism, we’re going to assent by our silence to monstrosities like Islam’s stoning an adulteress to death, with a men-only execution squad?      As a dues-paying MultiCulti, I think we should take away the citizenship of all those assenting to Sharia Law. Send them back to Mecca, where they can play God to each other.      There ought to be a minimum price for living in an egalitarian democracy: Don’t do unto others what you wouldn’t have done to yourself. Patrick D. Hazard Weimar, Germany August 30, 2010      Since Robert Zaller is a card-carrying member of the ACLU, I will forgive him if he thinks there is a separation of church and state clause in the Bill of Rights. That phrase does not exist in the U.S, Constitution.      Our first amendment gives us the right to freely practice our faiths without interference from disapproving minds like Zaller. Which means if the Imam wishes to preach that all Jews and Christians are devils, he’s welcome to his belief. This does not give him the right to build a mosque wherever he pleases.      His choice of a non-Moslem neighborhood in the shadows of the fallen towers seems to me, in the language of one of those Mets fans, “shoving it” to New Yorkers. No clause in the Constitution gives one the right to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Jackie Atkins Northern Liberties/ Philadelphia August 30, 2010 Jewish artists      Re “Why so many Jewish artists?”, by Joan Myerson Shrager—      Back in my misspent youth, I read an essay by a Fordham University conservative philosopher who attributed Jewish omni-excellence to a thousand years of Catholic celibacy. Get it? YOUgenics: While the clergy was busy wasting its semen, every bright young rabbinical student had first choice at the wealthiest and most fertile maidens in his flock.      I thank Ms. Shrager for informing me that my favorite 20th-Century painter, Sonia Delauney, was Jewish. I knew she had changed her name when she fled Odessa for a rich uncle in St. Petersburg, but religion wasn’t at the top of her “Must Do” list. Patrick D. Hazard Weimar, Germany August 31, 2010      Joan Myerson Shrager replies: I hope readers understand that I was moved by sense of curiosity about all this rather than a pompous claim that their having Jewish blood made them great. I am curious about how, why or if Jewishness influenced them. Letters 2010-08-31T21:07:44-05:00 http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/ellis_island_ghosts_at_michener_art_museum/ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/ellis_island_ghosts_at_michener_art_museum/#When:20:13:54Z At a time when anti-immigrant feelings run high in America, two photographers of different generations remind us of the need to show compassion to newcomers. “Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom”: Photographs by Stephen Wilkes and Lewis Hine. Through October 10, 2010 at James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, Pa. (215) 340-9800 or www.michenermuseum.org. “It is the dark side of the island. A place where the huddled masses yearning to be free remained huddled, remained yearning, many permanently, just inches short of the promise land.” So writes New York photographer Stephen Wilkes about the hospital complex that comprises the south side of Ellis Island. From 1998 to 2003, Wilkes returned repeatedly to photograph the decaying rooms, isolation wards and corridors where nearly 1.2 million people stayed after failing the initial medical assessment. Some 100,000 of them were denied entry into the U.S. “In the shadow of Ellis Island’s Great Hall,” says Wilkes, “forgotten by history and woefully ill-equipped for its battle with nature, I came upon the ruins of a great hospital: contagious disease wards and isolation rooms for the people whose spirits carried them across oceans but whose bodies failed them a stone’s throw from paradise.” In 2006, W.W. Norton published Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom, a handsome volume of 74 of Wilkes’s images, upon which the Michener Museum’s current show is based. Lady Liberty in a mirror The large crisp ilfochrome pictures (prints made from slides) were taken with natural light and without what Wilkes calls “the artifice of the photographic craft,” so that he could document the “living spirit of the place.” Each is accompanied by a caption written by Wilkes. One of the most powerful pictures, Tuberculosis Ward. Statue of Liberty, depicts a dirty sink and our symbol of freedom, reflected in a small mirror. For a woman who stayed in that room, Wilkes surmises, “that reflection would be the closest she would ever come to freedom.” This photograph, as all the work, reflects the melancholy of Atget. I returned three times to see the show and noticed that visitors move slowly and thoughtfully through the gallery, as if mesmerized by the scenes of rooms that our ancestors may have passed through. In many of them, doors and windows are the subject. Do they lead out to freedom? Or do the encroaching weeds and vines forever block their way? In one photograph, a lone dusty shoe remains on a table. What became of its owner? Hine’s companion exhibit Perhaps that owner can be found in the companion exhibit tucked away in its own space. When the Michener’s chief curator, Brian Peterson, decided to mount a show of Wilkes’s photographs, he got the inspired idea of pairing them with the iconic black-and-white images of Lewis Hine (1874-1940), who produced a body of work that has become synonymous with the immigrant experience in America. “My idea was to show two sides of the story,” Peterson explains. “While Wilkes engages in the act of honoring the memory of the place through attentiveness to decay, Hine portrays human beings full of vitality with a particular agenda.” Some critics view Hine’s photographs as overly sentimental, but Peterson stresses that Hine was hired to humanize the immigrants: “The point is that Hine was not documenting dispassionately, but showing the humanity of these people who were just as human as those immigrants who got off at Plymouth Rock.” This exhibit contains 15 exquisite portraits, all on loan from the George Eastman House in Rochester. Today, when anti-immigrant feelings run high in America, these two photographers of different generations remind us not only of our collective past, but of the need to show compassion to the strangers to our shores. Art 2010-08-31T20:13:54-05:00 http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/saturday_night_fever_revisited/ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/saturday_night_fever_revisited/#When:17:26:44Z Saturday Night Fever evokes a brief moment in pop culture history: the sexual freedom between the dawn of the Pill and the advent of AIDS. To those of us born to that particular slice of the Baby Boom, this gritty 1977 movie and its buoyant songs often strike a contradictory note. Saturday Night Fever (1977). A film directed by John Badham, based on an article by Nik Cohn. Saturday Night Fever, the 1977 disco film that made a star of John Travolta, suffers from numerous flaws: The plotting is obvious and the characters are caricatures. Even the dancing— the film’s alleged raison d’être—isn’t very good. Nevertheless, Saturday Night Fever retains its interest after more than 30 years for its power as a coming of age story and for its evocation of a specific time: that brief moment of sexual freedom, post-Pill and pre-AIDS. Its characters’ efforts to find themselves ring true to those of us born to that particular slice of the Baby Boom. Ostensibly, Saturday Night Fever was based not on fiction but on journalism— specifically, a 1976 New York Magazine article, “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” describing the nightlife of working-class kids in Brooklyn. Though most hip observers thought disco’s moment had already passed by then, the Australian producer Robert Stigwood bought the rights to the article and proceeded to make a film whose subject embraced much more than disco. Not until 1996 was it revealed that the original article’s author, Nik Cohn, had fabricated the whole story. Here was one film, ironically, that may have been more true to real life than its original journalistic source. The story concerns Tony Manero (John Travolta), a good Catholic boy who lives with his parents in Brooklyn and works in a hardware store. Where he really lives, though, is at the disco, where Tony and his pals drink, get high, pick up girls, and dance— ah, dance. One of his regular partners is Annette (Donna Pescow), with whom Tony executes precise but joyless maneuvers. One night, though, Tony sees a girl who is literally dancing circles around her partner. Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney) is another Brooklyn kid, but one who’s attempting to escape her blue-collar roots by way of an office job in Manhattan. Tony convinces the skeptical Stephanie to be his partner in an upcoming dance contest. Madonna vs. whore Tony, a product of his culture and his time, lacks a mental model for females beyond the extremes of Madonna or whore. Annette, who pines for Tony, struggles to embody either of those archetypes in order to win him, but she is elbowed aside by Tony’s fascination with the slightly older, apparently sophisticated Stephanie. The film’s secondary characters also struggle to resolve the conflicts between the strictures of family, church and neighborhood on the one hand and their own desires and needs on the other. Tony’s brother, Father Frank, decides to quit the priesthood. Bobby C., one of Tony’s sidekicks, seeks advice from one person after another as to what to do about his pregnant girlfriend. (None of them can suggest anything but marriage.) The various elements all climax in a single evening, during which (a) Tony and his friends attack a Puerto Rican gang in retaliation for an earlier attack on one of their own, (b) Tony and Stephanie score an undeserved win over a Puerto Rican couple at the dance contest, (c) Tony unsuccessfully tries to rape Stephanie, (d) Tony’s friends successfully gang-rape Annette, with Tony present but not participating, and (e) Bobby C., whose romantic travails had been played as a running joke until this moment, falls/throws himself off the bridge that had been used as symbolic leitmotif. From Serpico to Rocky The movie was first released with an R rating, reflecting its numerous dark plot elements and raunchy language (including, according to director John Badham, the first direct mention of a blow job in a feature film). To attract a larger audience, it was re-edited and re-released in 1978 with a PG rating—the version most of us saw at the time. (The current DVD has the R version.) The mid-’70s was the period during which Martin Scorsese was getting his feet under him (Mean Streets in 1973; Taxi Driver in 1976). Scorsese was just one of several filmmakers making urban dramas with Italian-American protagonists: there was also Sidney Lumet’s Serpico in 1973 and Dog Day Afternoon in 1975, as well as John Avildsen’s Rocky, set on the equally mean streets of Philadelphia in 1976. The gritty feeling of these dramas imbued Badham’s approach to Saturday Night Fever. The racism and sexism of its characters is utterly unselfconscious, and the casual approach to drug use and sexual encounters evokes that period when hippie hedonism hadn’t yet morphed into yuppie striving. Claustrophobia The movie’s visual style was also true to the urban dramas of the time. It was filmed on the streets, late at night and very early in the morning to avoid throngs of Travolta fans. (At this point he was still mostly the teen heartthrob from the TV sitcom, “Welcome Back, Kotter.”) The Steadicam was new technology then. Its use enabled filming in real-life settings. The hardware store where Tony works and the stairway down to the dance studio where he practices with Stephanie are presented with a claustrophobic immediacy. The urban dramas are only half of the film-history context of Saturday Night Fever. Its other innovation concerned its use of music. Plenty of musicals had been set in New York before: On the Town (1949) and its bleak successor, It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), plus, of course, the magnificent West Side Story (1961). These are the musicals that people who hate musicals hate. In all of them, the singing and dancing occur as breaks from the overall narrative. Between drama and musical But there’s a whole separate tradition of movie musicals in which the performances are integrated into the narrative, as something that the characters actually do. However, musicals of this sort traditionally involved characters who are performers, from Busby Berkeley’s show biz musicals (such as 42nd Street and Footlight Parade, both 1933) to Bob Fosse’s classics, Cabaret (1972) and All That Jazz (1979)— the latter, of course, also set in New York. Saturday Night Fever takes off from this latter tradition of integrated musicals. All the dancing is done by characters who dance. Most of the music is framed as recordings in the dance venues (disco, studio) where the non-singing characters do their dancing. Not all of it, though: The exception— the Bee Gees songs written for the movie— is precisely where the film straddles the line between urban drama and musical. Words vs. music The movie opens with Tony strutting down the street in time to the BeeGees’ anthemic Stayin’ Alive: “You can tell by the way I use my walk/ I’m a woman’s man; no time to talk./ Music loud and women warm,/ I’ve been kicked around since I was born.” The song perfectly encapsulates both Tony’s character and, with its quintessential “four on the floor” disco beat, the milieu in which Tony comes (and stays) alive. A few minutes later, we hear Night Fever in counterpoint to Tony’s Saturday night primping. Both of these songs are played over scenes in which Tony is alone: they are part of the music that shapes Tony’s not particularly complex interior life. The music thus serves to comment on Tony’s character, and functions somewhat more ironically than one might expect from the songs themselves. Other Bee Gees songs are played in the disco. Tony does his floor-clearing solo to You Should Be Dancing, which includes a telling bit of byplay. The scene opens with Tony dancing with some random girl; when the song starts, he mutters something and walks away from her. Everyone quickly leaves the floor, except for this girl, who stands at the edge but remains on the dance floor, watching expressionlessly as Tony struts and preens. Alone among the crowd, she’s not nodding or clapping or grooving along; she simply stands and watches, giving lie to the lyrics (“My woman gives me power,/ Goes right down to my blood”). Prelude to rape In the dance contest, Tony and Stephanie dance to a fourth Bee Gees song, More Than a Woman, ending with a long romantic twirl during which they lose themselves in the moment and forget the careful choreography they’d prepared. Tony then struts off the floor, Stephanie trailing behind him, as the song fades out. Again, Badham uses the song with a certain amount of irony: A few minutes later Tony is trying to rape Stephanie, proving that she isn’t, actually, more than a woman to him.  The final Bee Gees track is, again, used to show us Tony’s inner thoughts, now more tumultuous. He spends the night after the contest riding back and forth alone on the subway, trying to sort out everything that’s happened. The song is the gentle disco ballad (sic), How Deep Is Your Love. In the morning he finds his way to Stephanie’s new Manhattan apartment, begs for (and receives) her forgiveness, and the movie ends with them pledging friendship, if not love. In the late ‘70s you couldn’t escape the music from Saturday Night Fever. The soundtrack album sold 40 million copies, and its songs (only a third of them by the Bee Gees) were everywhere: on the radio, at parties, in bars and, of course, in discos. The album thus took on a life and a cultural resonance that ignored the film’s subtler usage of the music. As a repeat viewing of the film today will attest, that was itself a far darker experience than the buoyant dance beat might suggest. Cross-Cultural 2010-08-31T17:26:44-05:00 http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/eat_pray_love/ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/eat_pray_love/#When:15:23:07Z Eat Pray Love is a forgettable work of escapist fantasy. But its star, Julia Roberts, is evolving in the opposite direction: from bimbo to mature woman with real brains and real-life problems. Eat Pray Love. A film directed by Ryan Murphy, from the novel by Elizabeth Gilbert.  I just flew back from Ubud, on the resort island of Bali in Indonesia, where most of the Bali portion of Eat Pray Love was shot. So of course I had to see the movie as soon as we returned to Philadelphia. In the memoir/travel book of the same name, the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, rejected the urban rat race and left her husband, her rebound lover and her life in Manhattan, hoping to find peace and serenity through travel to India, Italy and Bali. But for all the breathtaking vistas of the countries Gilbert visited, I left the movie more enthralled by the transformation of Julia Roberts than the story line, or the happy ending (in the arms of Javier Bardem) or the film’s unrealistic postcard-perfect portrait of Bali. (Not many people live in the gorgeous teakwood, open-air cabin that Roberts inhabited in Ubud.) Indonesia is, after all, a Third World country. Eighty percent of its economy is tourism-based, and much of that industry was decimated by bombings in 2002 and again in 2005. It suffers from poor health care, high infant mortality, limited rights for women and no transportation infrastructure to speak of. The road from the airport in Denpasar to Ubud, for example, doesn’t take kindly to the sort of bicycle that pedals in the film. In real life, Roberts would have been squashed between trucks, cars, cabs and motorbikes that make three lanes of traffic out of a one-and-a-half-lane byway. Nor would she have sauntered the back roads of Bali, cycling between verdant (albeit muddy) rice paddies. Up from Pretty Woman Roberts, on the other hand, was worth the price of admission. This glamourpuss who once routinely played bimbo roles (in films like Pretty Woman) or Wonder Woman (in Erin Brockovich, for which she won the Academy Award for best actress) has evolved at age 42 into an entirely different actress: older, wiser and unabashedly heavier too. Her luminosity now reflects a maturity that wasn’t evident in her earlier films. Roberts smiles that gorgeous smile in Eat Pray Love, too, but not quite as widely or as frequently as in her earlier films. She doesn’t use her body in place of acting any more either. And by God, she thinks! You can almost see the wheels turning in her head scene by scene. She’s not only subtler and more reflective. She’s also larger, and her clothes didn’t come out of Vogue, either. Roberts wasn’t exactly dowdy in Eat Pray Love— she was more like a real woman. In many ways, it was a fairly courageous choice of script for a star long touted as a gorgeous icon of pulchritude. But if you’ve watched Roberts over the years— not so much her films as her utterances and acceptance speeches— you already know that she’s not just another pretty face. From Bette Davis to Lindsay Lohan Still, I couldn’t help thinking: What is in store for such an actress? In the past, Hollywood seemed to offer abundant real mature woman roles for real actresses like Lauren Bacall, Laraine Day, Ida Lupino, Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. The scripts were written for adults, not capricious, empty-headed girl-children like Miley Cyrus and Lindsay Lohan. Eat Pray Love isn’t a great movie. It isn’t even a good movie. It won’t resonate 15 years from now, if indeed it’s even remembered 15 years from now. But it is, for me at least, a harbinger movie. I want to see what Roberts will make of herself from this point on. She seems to have taken to motherhood and spousehood, and that contentment plays out in her acting and her choice of roles. But Hollywood has no place for real women these days. Roberts seems finished with a lot of things: shallow living and girly films. How she traverses this borderland between what audiences want and creating a body of work that stands the test of time, I’m not sure.  Here’s hoping Eat Pray Love was merely a first step on a path toward a more robust version of cinematic womanhood, a path leading away from stardom toward real professionalism. (I understand Roberts will collaborate with director Ryan Murphy in a forthcoming film about another woman of a certain age adjusting to real issues, this time because she lost her job.) Will Julia Roberts go the way of Botox, face-lifts and detrimental dieting? Or will the new Julia celebrate becoming a full-bodied woman playing full-bodied roles? We mature women can dream too, can’t we? Cross-Cultural 2010-08-31T15:23:07-05:00 http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/ethnic_humor_tips_for_dr_laura/ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/ethnic_humor_tips_for_dr_laura/#When:13:55:05Z As someone who has practiced journalism, comedy writing and speechwriting for a living, let me attempt to set Dr. Laura Schlessinger straight about the rules of rhetoric, which also happen to be the rules of common sense. “Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is ‘nigger, nigger, nigger’,” Dr. Laura Schlessinger observed on the August 10 program that provoked her departure from the airwaves. “I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing.” When Dr. Laura said, “I don’t get it,” she was being facetious. Her role as a talk show self-help advisor is not to listen to her callers but to lecture them. “I don’t get it” was her rhetorical way of insisting that she does get it— that she perceives a double standard that permits black people to use expressions that are verboten for whites. But Dr. Laura was right in the literal sense: She really doesn’t get it. As someone who has practiced journalism, humor writing and speechwriting for a living, let me attempt to set her straight about the rules of rhetoric, which also happen to be the rules of common sense. The rabbi, or the minister? Rule Number One: When you deprecate yourself or your group, it’s amusing and endearing. When you deprecate other people or groups, it’s mean and malicious. If you want to have fun, point your gibes in your own direction, not someone else’s. I once wrote a speech for a corporate executive who proposed to tell a joke about a rabbi. This particular joke would have worked just as well using any other clergyman as its butt, regardless of religion. So I persuaded the executive to joke instead about a Methodist minister— and to preface the joke by telling his audience that his own father was a Methodist minister (which he was). The joke was well received. Had I told it, I would have used the rabbi. Except…. Real Polish jokes Rule Number Two: It’s OK for underdogs to make fun of overdogs. Humor, after all, is one of the few tools the poor and the meek possess to make it through their otherwise gloomy days. So, yes, it’s OK for the poor to tell jokes about the rich and powerful but not vice versa. It’s similarly OK for blacks to make jokes about whites, for women to make jokes about men, and for gays to make jokes about straights, but not the other way around. This isn’t a matter of political correctness; it’s a matter of plain good sense. Among other things, this rule explains why Jon Stewart, who needles the pompous, is funny, while Rush Limbaugh, who tweaks welfare recipients, is not. The “Polack jokes” that swept America in the late ‘60s failed precisely because they ridiculed the ignorant poor. My antidote for this mean-spirited exercise was to collect real Polish jokes told by real Poles in Poland— jokes that were invariably directed not at people who neglect to wash their underwear but at Poland’s Soviet and Communist oppressors. Oppressed anti-Semites Granted, reasonable people often differ as to who is the underdog in a given situation. Corporate executives making millions sincerely believe themselves the persecuted victims of greedy unions and power-hungry government bureaucrats. Jews and anti-Semites alike perceive themselves as oppressed by the other. Ditto for conservatives and liberals. Many white middle-class Americans sincerely believe themselves oppressed by blacks and the poor. (See, for example, publisher Herb Lipson’s “Off the Cuff” column almost any month in Philadelphia Magazine.) Indeed, I am one of only 23 people in the entire world who don’t believe themselves the victim of some malign persecution. But still— most of us can smell nastiness when we hear it. Which brings me to…. ‘General Betray-Us’ Rule Number Three: Don’t criticize or ridicule people for things they can’t control. Such characteristics include someone’s name, age, nationality, race, family background, relatives and physical appearance. If you violate this rule, you’ll merely engender sympathy for your target while reflecting poorly on yourself. Case in point: In 2007 the anti-war liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org published a full-page ad in the New York Times that labeled General David H. Petraeus “General Betray-Us” because the general was allegedly “cooking the books for the White House.” Whatever valid point the MoveOn folks might have made was undermined by their bad-mannered attack on the general’s name. (Indeed, MoveOn subsequently erased all such references from its website.) Surname abuse abounds on the left and right alike, as witness Rush Limbaugh’s recent attack on “Imam Hussein Obama.” Obama didn’t choose his politically problematic name, and he deserves some credit for hanging on to it— unlike, say Ralph Lauren, who was born Ralph Lipschitz. (When your surname is Rottenberg, you’re especially sensitive about this issue.) Another case in point: The former Philadelphia Daily News columnist Pete Dexter once dismissed a young critic of Mayor Frank Rizzo with this put-down: “Noel Weyrich is 21 years old and in love with his mind.” Years later, Dexter’s 2007 anthology, Paper Trails, joked about his wife’s “tiny titties.” Ask yourself: Do these cheap shots endear you to Dexter or to his targets? My publisher’s lesson I learned this lesson from one of the wisest people I’ve ever met: my first boss, Hugh Ronald, the late publisher of the daily Commercial-Review in Portland, Ind. When that paper’s editor resigned to take another job in 1966, I was second in command in the newsroom. But I was only 23 and less than two years out of college. In the normal course of affairs, Hugh would have searched elsewhere for a new editor. Instead he took the extraordinary gamble of promoting me to the editor’s chair, making me for a while the youngest daily newspaper editor in the country. “You know,” Hugh told me on the night he offered me the editorship, “a lot of people in town are going to criticize me for doing this. They’re going to say you’re too young for this job— and they’re right.” Then he chuckled and added, “But that’s not your fault.” It’s a rule I’ve tried to live by ever since: Don’t criticize people for things that aren’t their fault. So should Dr. Laura be silenced and/or removed from the airwaves? I wouldn’t. She may be wrong, but she expresses views that are widely held; and by raising them in public she offers those who differ (like me) the opportunity to respond. If she really gets canned because of this incident, I invite her to take her provocations to Broad Street Review— assuming, of course, that she can tell me something I don’t already know.  Editor's Notebook 2010-08-31T13:55:05-05:00 http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/why_so_many_jewish_artsts/ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/why_so_many_jewish_artsts/#When:20:45:37Z Why are there so many Jews in the visual arts? And why now? Is it just a coincidence? Or did the unique experience of the Holocaust engender an unequally unique psyche that looks powerfully inward for self-expression and for an outlet for hidden fears? “Art and the Holocaust.” Illustrated lecture series by Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, Oct. 17, 24 and 31 at Congregation Keneseth Israel, 8339 Old York Rd., Elkins Park, Pa. (215) 887-8700 or www.kenesethisrael.org. I was raised in a non-observant Jewish home in a family with strong ethnic (but not religious) ties to Judaism. Consequently, in some ways I distanced myself from things particularly Jewish. Of course I knew about the Jewish imprint on American musical culture. I knew about Irving Berlin, Al Jolson and Eddie Fisher. I grew up hearing Gershwin and the Andrews Sisters’ Bei Mir Bist du Shein. My grandfather, an accomplished singer, always sang Yiddish and folk songs by Jewish composers. But the notion of a “Jewish artistic imprint” comparable to the Jewish musical imprint never occurred to me, even though I’ve worked as an artist all my adult life. The ‘graven images’ myth Then about five years ago I began volunteering my artistic services to my neighborhood synagogue, Congregation Keneseth Israel of Elkins Park, which has a strong museum collection as well as a history of featuring art and artists in exhibitions. My computer skills and artistic training led to work with on a continuing series of illustrated lectures about “Judaism and Art” by the congregation’s senior rabbi, Lance J. Sussman, who is also a visiting history professor at Princeton. From Sussman I learned that although it was customary— even traditional— to assume that Jewish culture lacked much in the ay of visual art because religious restrictions against “graven images,” this wasn’t really so. In fact, Sussman contended, Jewish art dates back to the Israelites. After Googling simple phrases like “Jewish artists” and “Jews in art” as part of my research for our project, I soon discovered that, without my having realized it, many of the great 20th-Century artists I had studied happened to be Jewish. My favorites My favorites, for example, include giants like Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Jacob Landau, Louise Nevelson, Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Jonathon Borofsky, Sonia Delauney, Jim Dine, Helen Frankenthaler, Audrey Flack, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Sol Lewitt, Amadeo Modigliani, Jules Olitski and Jules Pascin, George Segal, Ben Shahn, Nancy Spero, Raphael Soyer and Lee Krasner. Then there are the great photographers like Man Ray (whose work I always loved for its extraordinary innovation), Alfred Stieglitz and of course Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Alfred Eisenstadt and the great Robert Frank. Almost all of my favorites, it turned out, were Jews or at least had one Jewish parent who was. For that matter, a great number of Philadelphia artists I have known and worked with turn out to be Jewish as well. Of course, Jews hold no monopoly among history’s greatest artists, as countless examples from Michelangelo to Rembrandt to Picasso to Jackson Pollock can attest. Nonetheless, for the past half-century Jews have dominated most lists of the Top 50 contemporary artists. Why so many Jews in the visual arts? And why now? Is it just a coincidence? Or is there something about that Jewish genetic imprint that has produced such a plethora of brilliant artists? War’s ripple effect I can’t answer my own question, except to speculate that the ripple effect of being either much maligned or overly scrutinized and tragically singled out in the 20th Century has somehow produced a psyche that looks inward for self-expression and for an outlet for hidden fears— a combination of self-adulation mixed with pain, accompanied by the salve or burden of over-achievement. Add it all together and you might end up with that slightly twisted, slightly loosely screwed up inner core that characterizes many an artist. For a more scholarly historic perspective, you’ll have to attend “Art and The Holocaust,” Dr. Sussman’s latest exploration of art and Judaism. For myself I will simply add that my own work on this three-part mini-series has left me profoundly touched by the creativity and depth of my fellow Jewish artists before, during and after one of the most devastating periods in human history.&diamsTo read a response, click here.  Art 2010-08-28T20:45:37-05:00 http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/august_letters_varese_schubert/ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/august_letters_varese_schubert/#When:17:42:05Z Readers respond about gay marriage, flight attendant Steven Slater, the U.S.S. Olympia, the Fifties, professional soccer, Renoir and the Barnes, black classical audiences, Wolves of Fairmount Park, coach John Wooden, minor league baseball, All About Eve, an antidote for cheating, Ralph Lauren’s Thomas Jefferson makeover, Reading Woody Allen, Miles Davis, La Cage Aux Folles, Mum Puppettheatre, The Merchant of Venice, Edgard Varèse, medieval mania, Schubert vs. Beethoven, George Steinbrenner, and the Met’s high-definition Carmen. Gay marriage      “The ‘right’ to gay marriage,” by Dan Rottenberg (Editor’s Notebook) presupposes that parents in heterosexual marriages are all wonderful role models. But June and Ward Cleaver are pure fiction. I think parenting of all kinds needs society’s support. A gay couple can have many friends of the opposite sex, gay and straight, who offer the kind of contrasting views of life that you refer to.      Social conservatives cannot count on my support because, simply put, they are intolerant of gays only for their religious fundamentalist reasons, somehow making the status of being gay a “poor choice” when in fact those of us who are gay or who have gay relatives and friends know this is the height of ignorance.      I am afraid, Dan, that your attempt at a reasonable discourse on this topic falls flat when you examine the groups, such as the Mormon church, that have fought so hard to present this issue as one with moral and historic justification. These are the “Bible says” folks who find all sorts of justification for their biases.      There are no reasonable points of view when we deny the civil rights of certain segments of our society. Joan Myerson Shrager Elkins Park, Pa. August 18, 2010      The article makes a number of excellent points, but overlooks the issue of who should decide how marriage is defined. I would be happy if our elected officials were to pass legislation to expand the definition of marriage beyond its historical definition. There are strong moral and public policy arguments for this, and public opinion is moving in this direction.      But should a judge, who is not elected, take this issue away from voters and make this an issue of constitutional rights?      Legislating social policy from the bench can have profound consequences at the ballot box for decades to come, as traditional voters who are outraged by the decision become politically active. Roe v. Wade was a major factor in the resurgence of the Republican Party. Stanley Kull Wynnewood, Pa. August 19, 2010      Your defense of the “right to gay marriage” depends in large part on the assertion that gay men are thereby signing up “to a lifetime non-fornication program.”      But that is not accurate. From what I read, monogamy, as expected in marriage, is not part of the conditions of male gay marriage. Bourne Ruthrauff Center City/ Philadelphia August 19, 2010      As a math know-nothing, I must give you the benefit of my doubts about a zillion exposures to sexual infection in 20 years. But the rise of “hooking” as one-nighter sex for our most educated young people seems more dangerous.      The only thing more dangerous is Catholic virginism, the sad fate that befell my first wife and me. No experience is as bad as too much uncritical experience. And the U.S. boom in porn suggests that our future is more threatened by too much unloving sex.      I fear surging Christian fundamentalism will prevent our schools from tutoring the next generation into the sane relations your essay powerfully supports. Patrick D. Hazard Weimar, Germany August 18, 2010      Dan Rottenberg makes a very good argument for life-long monogamy. However, it begs the question about marriage, the validity of which is never quite defined anywhere in his article.      What is marriage? There really is no definitive agreement.      I learned from my late father (a clinical sociologist) the following definition, which he used in teaching his class on Marriage and the Family: A usual, normal marriage is one in which a man and a woman exchange verbal and behavioral commitment to each other, who meet the requirements of their culture, and who share sexual relations with one another.      The question then to be discussed is why marriage must be defined as only between a man and a woman. My father understood his definition to embody what is universally characteristic of marriage in both recorded human history and myriad cultural settings. If this is so, then a life-long monogamous relationship between a same-sex couple must be called something other than marriage.      "Social conservatives” will still object to the homosexual aspect of such a relationship, but, as the article points out, it would be more beneficial to society than the promiscuity that seems to reign at present. Craig R. Tavani Phoenixville, Pa. August 19, 2010      Editor’s comment: We haven’t reached the end of history. Definitions of marriage have evolved over thousands of years and will no doubt continue to do so. Steven Slater’s footsteps      Re “What hath Steven Slater wrought?” by Dan Rottenberg (Editor‘s Notebook)—      You forgot to mention that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs said the heck with laptops and cell phones and decided to read a few good books (hard copies). Joseph Glantz Levittown, Pa. August 25, 2010      Dan, let “Sooner or Slater” be our battle cry. If our lower orders suddenly and together sat on their abused duffs, the Casino Capital gang might understand who’s holding up whom. And how did I ever miss that it was a foulmouthed ms. who discombobulated our Slater? Patrick D. Hazard Weimar, Germany August 26, 2010      Editor’s comment: Like Steven Slater himself, you guys are going to give “service” a bad name. Saving the Olympia      Re “Why the U.S.S. Olympia matters,” by Andrew Mangravite—      Interesting— America in 1898 as China today. The question is whether or not the general public cares about that sort of notion— or even history in a general sense— any more. Rick Soisson East Falls/ Philadelphia August 19, 2010      Andrew Mangravite replies: They probably don’t. That’s why we keep making the same mistakes over and over at an ever-escalating cost. Santayana, anyone? Farewell to the ’50s      I laughed out loud when I read “Farewell to the ‘50s,” by Perry Block. The only things he forgot were S & H green/trading stamps.      Sadly, I’m that way now about the’60s. I meet kids who can’t name all four Beatles and I get sick. I went to see my son play at a big rock festival and no one was smoking pot.      And hippie is now a dirty word— I’m still trying to figure that one out, but I think 20-somethings who are still fairly liberal and use the word hippie as if their mouths are filled with bile are totally misinterpreting what hippies really were and tried to do. To kids today, hippies are simply unwashed moochers.      Oh God, I hate getting old. But it beats the alternative. Robin Slick Fairmount/ Philadelphia August 17, 2010      As it turns out, Annette Funicello was also the bridge between the Mouseketeers and Mary Poppins. See my blog in Creative Loafing. Perry Tannenbaum Tega Cay, S.C. August 18, 2010      Perry Bock replies: The bridge from Mouseketeers to Mary Poppins?  Maybe. For me, she was more the bridge from Mouseketeers to supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Professional soccer      Re ”The case for professional soccer,” by Tom Purdom—      As a die-hard Philadelphia Union fan, any article that raises awareness of the team and Major League Soccer is spectacular. That said, I must disagree with your assessment that soccer will necessarily be a niche sport with a niche market in the U.S.      The fact that we now have some 16,000-plus people heading out to Chester, Pa. to take in a local team— our local team— playing the sport that we love indicates, to me, a shift in the sport’s popularity and acceptance.      If Major League Soccer can continue to expand into would-be successful markets like Seattle, Philadelphia and (what looks to be very successful) Vancouver, I firmly believe that we’re talking about contention with at least two of the four “major” sports in this country— hockey and basketball, both of which are seeing dwindling attendance and lack of profitability.      The U.S. Men’s National Team got some of the sport’s best ratings in this country in the 2010 World Cup. The “designated player” rule allows clubs to bring in big international names. ESPN, arguably the most accurate barometer of American sports, continues to add to its soccer coverage. I think the recipe is ripe for the explosion of soccer onto the American sports scene. Kevin Sullivan Center City/ Philadelphia August 17, 2010 Renoir and the Barnes      Re Judith Stein’s review of “Late Renoir"—      Thank you for taking the Art Museum’s show and expanding its reference to other familiar Renoirs at the Barnes and elsewhere.      A review of high visual clarity and thought! Diane Burko Center City/Philadelphia August 10, 2010      Editor’s note: The writer is an artist.      It costs $25 a head to see “Late Renoir” at the Art Museum, when not too long ago more than 170 Renoirs and the rest of the Barnes Foundation collection could be seen for $5. It’s a sign of what is to come once the Barnes pieces are ripped out of the Merion gallery and parked down the street at a virtual Art Museum adjunct.      Those who claim to be “liberating” the Barnes collection (many with Art Museum connections) will be doing so only for those who can afford such outrageous fees. If the Barnes Foundation charged $25 a head in Merion, there would never have been the excuse of flagging income that the court accepted in allowing the trustees to move the collection.      I recall distinctly Barnes President Bernie Watson’s testimony dismissing the idea of raising the $5 admission fee as a way to balance the Barnes’s (hyper-inflated) budget. Not long after the collection’s move was court-approved, the trustees did just that, doubled the fee. And not long after they increased it by another third.      As for Judith Stein’s piece, it’s the kind of gushing nonsense that Barnes sought to overcome with objective observation and analysis. It’s pretty clear that this kind of critical thinking has no place in the new Barnes regime or anywhere else in a city Barnes once pegged as an ignorant backwater. Nick Tinari Jenkintown, Pa. August 11, 2010      Bravo, Judith. Your article matches the power of Renoir’s art, and is the first time that I’ve had an inkling that his canvases were anything but an old man’s revolting obsession with pink.      As I read your response, I had a historical vision of the emergence of women’s consciousness during Renoir’s time: getting the vote (!); going to work during World War II; the Pill that followed shortly thereafter; and then access to higher education that began in earnest in the 1960s. All these social leaps forward followed Renoir’s sensual, intuitive explosions of paint, almost as if his models’ souls passed through him as they struggled their way off of his canvases toward freedom and life.      Good for you to nail it down in such sensual terms. No doubt that he would have appreciated your skills, too. Margaret Chew Barringer Penn Valley, Pa. August 16, 2010 Black classical audiences      Re “Black audiences and classical music,” by Maria Corley—      I completed a number of videos with classical music. I’m likely one of few African-Americans who actually filmed a YouTube video of a white woman playing a violin (Bach In Bryant’s Tunnel). The color of her skin (or mine) shouldn’t matter: Classical music has worldwide appeal. Nevertheless, it’s not easy to find an audience for my work or even much response to it. Curtis W. Jackson Bay Shore, N.Y. August 19, 2010      Editor’s note: The writer posts his work on a YouTube channel titled “cjinspector.” Wolves of Fairmount Park      Can you please pass along to Bob Ingram my thanks for his very kind and thoughtful review of my book, Wolves of Fairmount Park?      It’s especially nice to get such excellent attention in my hometown. Dennis Tafoya Bucks County, Pa. August 20, 2010 A coach’s tone of voice      John Erlich’s remembrance of basketball coach John Wooden mentions Columbia coach Lou Rossini’s tone of “genuine surprise” upon discovering that Erlich, his player, had received a C in a chemistry course. Coach Rossini, my father, always referred to all of his players as “family.” I do remember when he would on occasion question my grades. His “tone of voice”, however, was a notch above “genuinely surprised.”      Thank you for the memory. Ron Rossini Deptford, N.J. August 23, 2010 Minor league baseball      Re “The charm of minor league baseball,” by John L. Erlich—      Take me out the minor league ball game any day! The view is better, the atmosphere is fun and, best of all, the prices are right, especially for a family day outing. Jennifer Baldino Bonett South Philadelphia August 11, 2010 All About Eve, reconsidered      Re “The trouble with All About Eve,” by Dan Rottenberg (Editor’s Notebook)—      As many times as I’ve watched this film, one of my favorites, I never considered the fact that Eve can act.      Thanks for the perceptive analysis. I guess in every field, there is always someone waiting in the wings to take center stage. On the other hand, Margo Channing’s downfall can be seen as a direct result of her character. Jane Biberman Doylestown, Pa. August 12, 2010 Antidote for cheating      Re: “An antidote for cheating,” by Maria Thompson Corley—      A wonderfully engaging and convincing piece! Unfortunately, in some cases (in pop music, for instance) the many shortcomings of people who haven’t practiced their craft enough are covered up by sound technology— even in performance.      Also, audiences are not always discerning; lots of technically lousy music gets an audience. But at the level of the family and the school, practicing a craft certainly teaches perseverance and humility, and performing offers nowhere to hide. Thanks for the piece! Janet Benton West Mount Airy/ Philadelphia August 4, 2010      Maria Corley replies: I admit, I wasn’t thinking about pop music, much as I enjoy it. In any case my idea was that students perform for their classmates, not the public. Performing for the kids you see every day is probably asking for a lot more, pressure-wise, than performing for “the public.”      Janet Benton replies: Ah, yes— performing in front of peers certainly offers one nowhere to hide! Ralph Lauren remakes Jefferson      Re “Ralph Lauren’s Monticello makeover”—      I couldn’t agree more with Caroline Millett: People visit Monticello to learn about Jefferson, not Ralph Lauren.      By the way, how much did Ralph Lauren pay/donate for the opportunity to do the makeover? Bill Abrams Encenitas, Calif. July 31, 2010      Just as critics of global warming confuse weather with climate, Ralph Lauren’s Monticello makeover confuses decoration with design. Thomas Jefferson’s designs are timeless; Lauren’s decor is topical. Please keep him away from the University of Virginia. Brenda Godwin Andover, N.H. August 3, 2010      I am a Virginian. This is unbelievable. What if they turned the oval office into a square? I guess it boils down to money talks. Is Lauren desecrating any other national treasures? Louise Mohardt Lancaster, Va. August 5, 2010      It’s very sad to see that one of America’s historic sites has been commercialized. I went to Monticello as a child and have wanted to return as an adult. Thank you for writing such an insightful article. Karen Zepeda Miami, Fla. August 11, 2010      This seems a very silly thing to do to Jefferson’s home, yet Jefferson’s image never quite takes into account that he was a slave owner all of his life, even after many others had freed “their” slaves.      History is a funny thing, sometimes a matter of what you choose to emphasize. Is Ralph Lauren redoing historic interiors that different than Chuck Connelly painting fashion photos? Tom Brady East Oak Lane/ Philadelphia August 21, 2010      Editor’s note: The writer is an artist who has been represented by Caroline Millett, as has the painter Chuck Connelly.      Editor’s note: To read a follow-up by Caroline Millett, click here. Reading Woody Allen aloud      Re “My words, echoed by Woody Allen,” by Dan Rottenberg (Editor’s Notebook)—      Congrats on your psychic connection with Woody Allen. I must mention, however, that you weren’t the only critic to conclude that some stories are better read silently than heard aloud or acted out. In my City Paper review of An Evening Without Woody Allen, I wrote, “Allen’s short works are better enjoyed on the page ... some brilliant lines were meant to be savored on the page, some moments meant to be read again and again.”      I don’t mean to diminish your insight; since I achieved the same realization, I must be in your league, and Woody’s. Thanks for the rare moment of vindication. Mark Cofta Ridley Park, Pa. August 4, 2010      That’s why some people write plays and others write like the rest of us.      To wit: “Carlyle notwithstanding, this coincidence supports the opposite view: that great ideas often occur simultaneously to many people in isolation. But the ideas perish unless a community connects such people, reinforcing their beliefs and emboldening them to convert their thoughts into actions. (Behind the Jewish requirement of a ten-person minyan for prayer lies the insight that a community of worshippers is greater than the sum of its parts worshipping alone.) Some communities perform this function better than others. And you thought Broad Street Review had no great overarching purpose!”      Try saying this out loud! Reed Stevens Campbell, Calif. August 4, 2010 Shakespeare and anti-Semitism      I very much enjoyed Rathe Miller’s article on the true New York outdoor theater adventure (“Jews 1, Shakespeare 0” ). But methinks thou doth protest too little.      "The play’s the thing,” no? Even if there is license granted to the artist to re-investigate the underlying themes in The Merchant of Venice, why send the bones of it to the closet and support the skin and flesh with an unwieldy frame, and not give a justifiable send-up of this new interpretation’s rhyme and reason?      Did you ever get any explanation other than “My ending’s better”? Erich DeHaven Glenside, Pa. August 2, 2010      I have no trouble with your conclusion, but I do find the headline (“Jews 1, Shakespeare 0”) in poor taste. Consciously or not, it implies that Jews form a cabal. And an anti-cultural one at that. It just seems unfriendly. David Millstone Philadelphia August 8, 2010 Miles Davis remembered      Re “My evening with Miles Davis,” by Bob Ingram—      In the mid-’60s when I was attempting to be a jazz trumpet player, I went up to Miles between sets at the Aqua Lounge (or was it Pep’s?) and asked if I could play his horn. I was 16, knew nothing about Miles other than his music and was an idiot. He stared at me, snorted, turned and walked away. Later, a guy in his group told me I was “lucky.”      By the by, Bob, I’m shocked— shocked! — to discover you once used drugs. Rathe Miller University City/ Philadelphia August 3, 2010      Bob Ingram replies: I’m shocked that you’re shocked. La Cage Aux Folles on Broadway      Re Jane Biberman’s review of La Cage Aux Folles—      Jane, you’re not alone. La Cage ranked at the bottom of musicals I just saw. See my comment in Creative Loafing. Perry Tannenbaum Tega Cay, S.C. August 5, 2010 Mum Puppettheatre remembered      Re “R.I.P., Mum Puppettheatre,” by Bob Cronin (Oct. 12, 2008)—      I served as the Mum’s house manager in 2007 for its production of A Christmas Carol. I had so much fun there and learned so much about theater from the great Robert Smythe himself. He was really a great mentor.      I’ll miss the Mum, but I’ve taken what I learned and applied it when I started my own theater organization, RebelYard Theatre Collective. I only hope we can embody some of those wonderful skills and values I learned from the Mum and Robert.      Rest in Peace, Mum! Corey A. Stephens Founder, Artistic Director at RebelYard Theatre Collective, Inc. West Philadelphia August 7, 2010 Edgard Varèse festival      Re “A sudden thirst for Varèse,” by Dan Coren—      It’s great to see that you’re big enough to “eat your words” about Varèse’s Ameriques. It was, indeed, an amazing evening, one full of 20 and 30-somethings, all revved up and cheering. But I think you’re wrong about Varèse lacking melodies. Listen again.      And if you were looking for another such miraculous and unlikely evening, you need not go back to Bernstein and Beethoven’s Ninth. Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic pulled off an even more unlikely triumph just a few weeks earlier, with Ligeti’s Grande Macabre, which also was a “can’t get a ticket” event— over three nights, not just a single performance.      There’s life in the old gal (modern Classical music) yet. And frankly, fur-lined teacups look a lot more appealing to me than sharks in tanks of formaldehyde. Andrew Rudin Allentown, N.J. July 28, 2010 Medieval mania      Re “Pennsic’s medieval make-believe,” by Kristen Eaton—      Yes, the fun does spill out over the rest of the year. I live out in Oregon and haven’t been to Pennsic. But there’s an event within driving distance nearly every weekend, and local meetings and classes every week. Heck, I ran a sewing class last Saturday, in my home.      Pennsic is probably the most visible thing that we medievalists do, but it is not anywhere near all of the Society for Creative Anachronism experience. Because that experience is all year-’round. Laura Minnick. (AKA Liutgard of Luxeuil) Portland, Ore. August 3, 2010 Schubert vs. Beethoven      Re Dan Coren’s “Schubert vs. Beethoven” (April 5, 2008)—      I find it hard to believe that someone would actually try to make the case that Schubert might have eclipsed Beethoven if he had lived as long. Most composers don’t produce their best works until they are well into their 30s and 40s, so Schubert, like Mendelssohn, are exceptions. Big deal. Schubert probably would have written crap like Mendelssohn did as he grew older.      Beethoven’s early work is uneven at times because he was meant to transform the musical world, not just merely be another “great” composer, and the styles he inherited fit him like an ill-tailored suit.      Even if Schubert had managed to come close to Beethoven’s middle period quality, he never would have reached the heights of the late works. No other composer has. Chris Cano Los Angeles, Calif. July 30, 2010      Dan Coren replies: I never tried to make the case that Schubert would have eclipsed Beethoven, nor do I believe that to be the case. My point was that Beethoven, at age 31, had nothing in his resumé to compare with, for example, Schubert’s C Major Quintet or Schwanengesang. We can’t know what would have happened had Schubert lived another 20 or 30 years; in fact, that’s really the point of my article.  Baseball’s armchair warrior      Re “George Steinbrenner in peace and war,” by Dan Rottenberg (Editor’s Notebook)—      Loved it! Erika Roth New York August 2, 2010 Met’s high-definition Carmen      Re Steve Cohen’s review of the Metropolitan Opera’s high-definition theatrical version of Carmen (Jan. 22)—      This was a five-star production! Elina Garanca was breathtaking. The movie was even better than a live performance at the Met. During the non-singing orchestration, the camera focused on the musicians playing the particular instrument, such as the flute, oboe, bassoon or violin, adding to the overall enjoyment.

 Sanford Gage Los Angeles, Calif. July 29, 2010 Letters 2010-08-28T17:42:05-05:00 http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/late_renoir_at_the_art_museum_4th_review/ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/late_renoir_at_the_art_museum_4th_review/#When:17:22:37Z Renoir grasped the poetry inherent in scenes of everyday life. In that case, what would he paint if he were alive today? Where is the artist who can bridge the chasm between technology and art?  “Late Renoir”: Through September 6, 2010 at Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and Benj. Franklin Pkwy. (215) 763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org. Each of us reacts to art exhibits in different ways. For this member of the Casual Art Viewer’s Society, the Art Museum’s “Late Renoir” show provoked a quirky, highly personal musing:  What would a 21st-Century version of Renoir’s portraits look like? Most of the paintings in the Art Museum exhibit portray members of Renoir’s domestic household engaging in commonplace activities like reading or playing musical instruments. One of the exhibit’s largest sculptures depicts a woman doing the wash. Lesser artists might have turned Renoir’s subjects into the kind of thing connoisseurs dismiss as “mere illustration.” Renoir produced something far more weighty. He created paintings that intensify our sense of the poetry inherent in life’s most mundane aspects. As the Art Museum’s commentary points out, many of Renoir’s paintings are everyday versions of classical subjects, such as Venus in her bath. We see the world through the eyes of an artist whose sensitive response to color, texture and personality reminds us that our day-to-day existence is just as aesthetic and enchanting as the doings of gods and heroes. So what would a contemporary Renoir paint? Young Woman with Laptop? Boy with Video Game? Woman with Kindle? Man with Blackberry? Is that an e-reader? A sarcastic critic of the modern cultural scene could toss out those possibilities. But they’re actually reasonable equivalents of the subjects Renoir actually chose. Most of his portraits depict women from moderately prosperous families engaging in activities— like embroidering or playing the piano— that filled the same position in their day that more technological pursuits fill in ours. In Renoir’s portrait of a woman reading, the book lying on the table is painted so vaguely that it could just as well be an e-reader. Renoir’s portraits may seem picturesque to contemporary viewers, but their real strength is the way he evokes the profundity of commonplace scenes. His subjects are dressed more colorfully than our T-shirted contemporaries, but they probably looked just as ordinary, in their day, as the young women who sit peering into their laptops in the Barnes and Noble café on Rittenhouse Square. A back yard comes alive I’m not a gallery habitué, so I don’t know if any contemporary painters are creating the kind of portraits I’m visualizing. Some contemporary landscape painters seem to be doing something similar. One of our local Philadelphia stars, Larry Francis, uses his mastery of light to permeate ordinary sights with the sharpness of experience. He can turn a Philadelphia back yard, with washing hanging on the line, into an image that makes you feel intensely aware that you’re alive. (See, for example, his Second Street.) But I can’t think of any painters currently doing the same thing with portraits. Any artist who painted uniquely contemporary subjects would have to breast a number of headwinds. One of the strongest would be the widespread perception of an inherent conflict between technology and art— a bias that has dogged our attitudes toward art ever since the first steam engines spread their smoke over the countryside. An answer from Eakins The best answer to that can be found at the Art Museum’s Perelman annex, which I visited after I took in the Renoir exhibit.  The major attractions at the Perelman are two Thomas Eakins paintings that combine astute portraits with a scientific and technical setting— The Gross Clinic and The Agnew Clinic. Renoir painted women engaged in commonplace domestic activities. Eakins painted men engaged in humanity’s epic struggle against death and disease. A young woman studying biochemistry on a laptop might have appealed to both of them. Of course, it helps if you can paint as well as Eakins and Renoir. But the artist who applied that kind of talent to contemporary subjects might be surprised by the response.♦To read another review by Anne R. Fabbri, click here.To read another review by Andrew Mangravite, click here.To read another review by Judith Stein, click here. Art 2010-08-28T17:22:37-05:00 http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/the_imam_the_mosque_and_ground_zero/ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/site/the_imam_the_mosque_and_ground_zero/#When:16:52:37Z The controversy about whether to build a huge Muslim study and worship center two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan isn’t about freedom of religion or constitutional rights.  It’s about a decent respect for the dead.  By now, it is clear that all right-thinking people regard Park51, the plan to build an Islamic study center two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks, as an exercise in the freedom of worship that is nobody’s business but the worshippers themselves. President Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have said so. So have The New York Times, The Nation, and the president of the ACLU, to whom I’ve just sent my annual dues. It seems, though, that the issue has caught me on the left side of my brain, because I don’t find Park51 a happy idea; indeed, I find it rebarbative. This is only partly because of my personal distaste for houses of worship in general, particularly those of a monotheistic persuasion. The idea that a branch of primates on a minor planet circling a mediocre sun on the rim of a mid-sized galaxy should be the special object of attention of a Universal Creator strikes me as absurd.  It was not always so, in the prehistory of the race before Copernicus and Darwin, but it is so now. I wouldn’t regard it as preferable that a church or a synagogue arise near Ground Zero instead of a mosque— sorry, study center, although worship will take place in it— just as I’m not relieved to know that Barack Obama is a born-again Christian rather than a covert Muslim. Hallowed soil? Of course, property owners have the right to use their space for any lawful purpose, including absurd ones. That’s not the issue. It’s legal for Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his followers to worship where they please and in whatever structure that local zoning regulations permit them to erect.  The question is whether it’s appropriate. No, not all Muslims are fanatics; they’re merely, like their fellow monotheists, deluded. But 9/11 did occur. Ground Zero is not, as some would have it, hallowed soil—the god that was worshipped there was Mammon— but it’s not just any piece of real estate either. Like Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor, it’s a site of national trauma.  It is also, through a combination of greed, incompetence and confusion, still a place of devastation, both the cause and the symbol of our deeply conflicted and tragically misguided response to the attack unleashed against us. It’s true that not all Muslims are responsible for that attack, although some of us will recall Palestinians dancing in the streets on hearing the news of it. But the attackers were all Muslim, and it’s idle to pretend that this fact can simply be set aside less than nine years later in the cause of interfaith conviviality. Prayer in the Pentagon It has been pointed out that Muslims worship in the Pentagon, which was also struck on 9/11. I’m not sure why anyone is praying in the Pentagon, or to whom— Ares, perhaps?— but apparently it’s done in an interfaith chapel open to all. The Park51 study center, by contrast, is designed for the use of one faith alone, and it’s no modest structure like the little Greek Orthodox church of St. Nicholas that was destroyed on 9/11 but a 13-, or by some accounts a 15-storey behemoth that will dominate its neighborhood and therefore a part of Ground Zero itself.  You have to be utterly tone-deaf to the temper of this country and to the pain it still feels not to understand why this project is perceived by many as an act of triumphalism. It’s not cynical or reactionary to feel so. It’s simply human. The wrong messenger Apparently, Imam Rauf is tone-deaf. Right after 9/11, he gave an interview in which he said that, while the attack was a terrible thing, Americans needed to appreciate the extent to which they had brought it on themselves. This was a perfectly valid observation, for 9/11 was indeed blowback from a half-century of American mischief in the Middle East. But the Imam was precisely the wrong person to deliver this home truth, and he chose precisely the wrong moment to do so. We don’t attend funeral services to speak ill of the dead, and we don’t lecture the victims of an atrocity on their responsibility for it, particularly while wearing the garb of their attackers. Now, it seems, the Imam is touring the Middle East on the American taxpayer’s dime to proclaim the virtues of “moderate” Islam, whatever that may be. I can think of lots better uses for my money. And speaking of the constitution— anybody ever hear of the separation of church and state?&diamsTo read responses, click here.  Cross-Cultural 2010-08-28T16:52:37-05:00