Johnny Baseball

American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, MA

6/2/10

I didn’t hate it until really close to the end. So I guess that’s saying something.

Let’s get one thing really, really clear first. I am the polar opposite of the target audience for this show. I don’t like musicals. Big strike one there. I’m also a pretty serious Red Sox fan – I’d wager that I know the history better than the average fan, which puts ART in jeopardy of pissing me off if they get too cute with the artistic license. So I had a sneaking suspicion I was going to be cranky when the final curtain fell on this one.

So the fact that the first four-fifths of this was mostly inoffensive to me is fairly high praise, considering the circumstances, even if I ended up walking out with an awful taste in my mouth thanks to the last 20 or 25 minutes.

Another caveat – before I go on the inevitable rant about what I hated so thoroughly near the end, I want to stress that I think the vast majority of people who would even consider going to this would probably get a kick out of it. The music is more fun than not, all of the performances were strong (more on that later), the production elements are really nicely designed and put together really well. 100% of my issues with the show fall in the lap of the writers, and not any of the other countless artists and staff involved in the production. I firmly believe that there are a lot of people who will connect with this show in a different way than I did, not be bothered at all by it, and have a wonderful time. In fact, that’s definitely the impression I got from some other guests at the post-show opening night gala.

But where theatre is an entirely subjective experience, I can’t speak for those who had a pleasant time from open to close. I can only speak for me, and talk about my experience. And my experience as a historically-informed Red Sox fan found a script that slowly deteriorated over the course of two hours until finally, in two connected moments, it spat on the long, storied, damn-near-mythologized history of this team. A history that is revered by the team’s fans and some of its players, current and from years past. A history that has undoubtedly made a red “B” in blue trim one of the most recognizable entertainment symbols from the past century. All I could think about as I walked out of ART last night was that the writers of Johnny Baseball, one a member of Red Sox Nation himself, had no respect for the team, its fans, or the specific players who gave us the most exciting, rewarding sports moment of the last 90 years.

Johnny Baseball follows Johnny O’Brien (Colin Donnell), an orphaned rookie pitcher with a helluva fastball who works his way up to the Boston Red Sox during Babe Ruth’s (Burke Moses) final season with the team in 1919. Ruth takes the fellow orphan under his wing, and introduces him to Daisy Wyatt (Stephanie Umoh), a young African-American jazz singer just finding her way in Boston. Sparks fly, of course, and as Johnny’s career takes off and his romance with Daisy deepens, the two of them must confront the realities of race relations in the early 20^th century.

Their story is told through an old African-American man, who is sharing it with a young Red Sox fan. They also happen to be sitting in the Fenway Park bleachers during Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees. Eventually, the stories merge, and the audience sees a what-if scenario of the progression of the fabled Curse of the Bambino.

According to ART’s website, Johnny Baseball “traces the origin of the Curse to a collision of three orphaned souls… these three lives contain both the reason for the Curse and the secret to its end of the bat of Big Papi in 2004.” When you’re dealing with a mythos like the Curse of the Bambino, of course everyone is entitled to their opinion. But I have a very hard time swallowing that opinion when it relies on a very selective list of conceits that don’t really jibe with the legitimate history of the Red Sox. Without going into any details of the surprises and reveals throughout the play, the authors (Richard Dresser, Robert Reale & Willie Reale) sort of mangle some of the important aspects of the story. Their curse starts – and it has a very clear, active “start” – in 1948. But if you’re really going to play with this particular story, and you decide to bump the generally accepted start date of The Curse by nearly 30 years, you damn sure better give a good reason why the Red Sox, the greatest team in the first 15 years of the modern era (1903-1918), failed miserably for the next thirty years… and then got cursed. Why should I believe that 1948-2004 was a vindictive (if not undeserved) curse placed on the team, but 1919-1947 was just really bad management? To me, that just seems sloppy.

I’m also not at all pleased with the implication of how the curse was lifted. The writers drops two clear, contrived and cheesy instances of deus ex machina onto the end of the play – watching the otherwise-beautiful lighting and set flicker and flash as the hex was placed made me want to scream – and instead of being at all enlightening, or even all that interestingSox Nation finally got satisfaction after 86 years of heartbreak because one selfish bastard decided he’d punished people enough, and recanted his curse at the perfectly convenient moment.

The issue is that in the same two hours that the play is touting baseball’s place in American history, it’s also implying that the game itself has no actual impact or importance on its own – it’s merely a social mirror to what’s going on in the country as a whole, vulnerable to the whims of those involved in it. It’s a very contradictory when compared with the group sitting in the bleachers, watching this infamous game, and all of the stock they’re placing on it. In one song, they all plead with God for “One More Run,” because that’s clearly something important enough to them to make such a high request. In another, “Do or Die,” a couple’s entire relationship is dependent on the outcome of Boston’s season. Do these two contradictory messages really belong in the same show? If the point is to show the pointlessness of fans placing such importance on inconsequential games, then sure. But that’s not very generous to the fans you’re likely trying to lure into the theater to watch the show.

Of course those are overblown examples – of course they are, this is musical theatre. But you’ve got one hand setting up the sanctity and importance of baseball and this team for so many people over many generations, while at the same time the other hand is showing just how meaningless the entire sport is – the 2004 team, heroes to unexaggerated millions,  don’t even factor in. They were just in the right place at the right time.

Talking with my fiancée after the show, she was a little amused (but not at all surprised) by my fury, and came up with a pretty good reason why I was mad. “It’s blasphemy!” she said. And that’s partially right. I am pretty well wrapped up in this team, and the ups and downs of their seasons, and have been for the better part of 15 years (I know, I’m a rookie compared to some of the long-suffering fans. That’s still three-fifths of my lifetime, so cut me a little slack). So to have someone twist this mythology in this way certainly pisses me off on a personal level, but that’s not the bulk of it. Being angry about blasphemy is being angry because someone disagrees and has the gall to talk about it in front of you. Much more than that, I’m angry because in writing what was disguised as a love letter to the game, these guys ended up disrespecting it, disrespecting the Boston Red Sox, specifically the 2004 team, and every player who made that historic World Series title possible. And that’s infuriating to me.

Dismissing the accomplishments of that team as a happy coincidence completely undermines the game and the place that baseball or any other athletic competition holds in our society. Admittedly, that place might be a little higher than it ought to be at times (BEAT LA!), but this is a Trojan horse into the minds of the fans who revel in those sports and pastimes.

I don’t want to end this on that sour a note, so let me just say that until the writing took that very unfortunate turn, I was fairly amused for the first good chunk of the play. First off, the set is gorgeous, featuring a very versatile set of Fenway bleachers, set on casters and able to be rearranged into different configurations. It allows for a nice variety of levels and dimensions without getting repetitive, even though you spend a good amount of time looking at different ballparks. I’m also pretty sure ART rebuilt their entire deck and stage to accommodate the show, pulling out what would have been considered “orchestra” seating to create side sections, performing the show on a thrust that gives much more of a ballpark feel. Even the light grids above those sections are reminiscent of the field lights at Fenway. Nicely done. There’s also a fantastic moment when Ruth hits a home run during a game – a combination of lighting, blocking and performance that perfectly and hilariously imitates film from the time period. Pretty sure I laughed louder than anyone else in the room on that one.

The performances are quite good, as well, in particular from Johnny “Baseball” O’Brien himself. Colin Donnell finds nice moments throughout the play to highlight Johnny’s growth. He hits small-time pitcher well; his starstruck introduction to Babe Ruth is hilarious; he picks up an appropriate swagger as his stock rises, and then finds a wonderfully contrasting darkness and bitterness as an older Johnny lives out the rest of his life wondering what could have been. It’s a really nice progression that Donnell handles with ease.

I wish I could say the same about the romantic plotline, but I don’t think it’s a good thing when you view the female lead and love interest as an extraneous character. The story seemed stunted, and the actual courtship between Johnny and Daisy felt condensed into about half of the amount of time it needed to have to really carry any weight. You only see two or three meetings between the two of them, and none of them really hold the significance to generate the impact the relationship is supposed to have later in the play. I think this weakness also led to some of the less-inspired directing in the show –when given nothing significant to portray emotionally, the scenes fall flat and stretch too long, often ending up with Daisy staring off into space longingly while Johnny stares longingly at the back of her head. Elsewhere, Diane Paulus’s directing is sharp and fun, highlighted by a raucous scene in a Boston brothel where all ten or twelve characters onstage never run out of things to do. Despite the writing’s shortcomings, Stephanie Umoh is charming and sweet as Daisy, and her voice will blow the roof off that theater for the entire run of the show. The scenes featuring Daisy as a jazz singer, though inconsequential to the show as a whole, really do a great job featuring Umoh’s talent.

The show’s ensemble is equally strong, with standouts in Burke Moses, who spends most of his onstage time playing Babe Ruth, and Jeff Brooks, who plays a collection of older characters including early Sox catcher Wally Schang and controversial (yet legendary) Sox owner Tom Yawkey. An honorable mention also goes to Alan H. Green, whose short turn as a certain legendary player produces a lot of laughs and the best song of the show. The modern-day crowd scenes portray some unwelcome but not uncommon (and, admittedly, not entirely untrue) stereotypes about Boston fans, but they also produce some of the most enjoyable songs in the show. The opening number “Eighty-Six Years” is catchy, goofy fun, and also lays out the history for those who might not be intimately familiar with it.

I’ll say it again: there’s a lot to like here, and maybe I’m being petty by letting those two moments ruin the entire experience. But those two moments are crucial to the plot, and in my mind forces all of the show’s credibility to come crashing down. They ruined an otherwise enjoyable night at the theater for me, and one that obviously still has me fuming a day and a half later. If you don’t care as much about the history as I do – and there’s no reason you ought to – forget the entire middle section of this review and go enjoy a peppy, sweet musical with the Red Sox as a backdrop.

But you most certainly will not see me there again.

Why the “Online Pass” in Videogames is a Terrible, Terrible Idea

Fitting that this will be the first post after PAX East.

There’s been a couple of announcements recently that are pointing toward an alarming trend. EA announced last week that starting with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011, all EA sports games would ship with a code inside the box that grants access to the “Online Pass” for that game. Once the user entered that code, they’d have access to some premium downloadable or online content that would be released by the publisher.

Oh right, and they could play online multiplayer.

No big deal, right? It’s in the box, everyone gets one when they buy a (new) copy of the game. Oh, you bought a used copy from Gamestop, Glyde or Amazon? No code? Well, you can buy a code for $10. Everyone’s happy!

I disagree.

Here’s a little story. The first videogame I remember buying for myself was a tiny little game called Half-Life, which came out in 1998. If you’ve played videogames at all in the last decade, you probably know what Half-Life is, and you know what it (and publisher Valve Software) has become. I bought Half-Life cause it looked cool. I was 14. I was correct. It was cool. One of the best things about Half-Life was the multiplayer system. It worked out of the box better than any other I’d seen, and probably beats most systems to come out since. Further proof of that is that Valve hasn’t really changed their matchmaking system since then. It just worked, it worked well, and that’s all there is to it.

It was also free.

Well, as free as something can be when it’s part of a $40 purchase. Bottom line is that once I got the game, so long as I had an internet connection, I was good to go. All the features of the game were there, unlocked and ready to go. I bought Half-Life new, but I bet it would have worked that way if I’d gone into Gamestop or EB Games and bought a used copy as well.

Fast forward to 2010, and that system – one that you pay one price for a product, and that product belongs to you – seems to be falling apart a little. EA’s announcement; THQ announced the same thing for UFC Undisputed 2010; Ubisoft, already making friends for their restrictive PC DRM that forces you to be connected to the internet while you play Assassin’s Creed II (if your connection to their DRM-approval server drops, you get booted out of the game), is talking about their own online pass program.

All of these – every single one – is a way to squeeze a bit more money out of your customer base. And in an industry where the price of a game has jumped by $10 with every new console generation, that’s not cool.

I bought a used copy of Mass Effect 2 through glyde.com. I knew when I bought a used copy that I wasn’t going to have access to the Cerberus Network, EA’s built-in news feed, without coughing up some more money. That was a little disappointing, because I knew they would be sending out some free content to subscribers, running some contests and whatnot, but that’s not why I bought the game. I bought it to play Mass Effect 2, in its entirety, as shipped, and I could do that without the Cerberus Network. Am I missing anything by not having that access? Maybe. But I bet if they put out something mind-blowing, I’m going to hear about it, and that might be enough to get me to cough up ten more dollars.

EA’s Online Pass and other similar programs handicap used games from the very start, especially when you’re talking about sports games. I buy sports games to play single-player franchise modes, but I’m in the minority – most people buy sports games to play online with their friends. So now, if someone’s trying to save a few bucks by buying a game used, they can’t use a feature that has been part of the gaming industry since the late 70s?

How do you get this message to parents buying the next Madden game for their kid, and see this used copy over here, which looks exactly the same as the one over there, only this one is five bucks less? They bring it home, the kid pops it in, and suddenly he’s disappointed with a gift because he can’t get online. In fact, in order to get online, the game is now going to cost more than the new copy.

I started getting a little worried a couple months ago, because there was (and still is) a growing trend of games that are offering release-date DLC. If you have this extra content ready for the day the game is released, why isn’t it just on the disc, part of the game? At least a good number of these publishers have the common sense and decency to make release-date DLC free. But just like online pass programs, what it points to is a new fragmenting of content. It’s the ugly stepsister of the microtransaction model that Facebook games are making enormous right now. Why package everything into a game – every feature, every outfit, every mission, every team, etc – when you can put the bare minimum in and then charge a little extra for everything else?!? IT’S GENIUS! SELL PARTIAL GAMES FOR FULL RETAIL PRICE, AND THEN STUFF WALLETS EVEN MORE WHEN PEOPLE COME LOOKING FOR THE REST OF THE GAMES!

I understand the copyright argument, I do. And I know game-related piracy have made the gaming community a little more difficult to trust. But this isn’t the way to regain that trust. Remember, EA/THQ/Ubisoft, you’re the big scary company, and we’re the tiny little gamers. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that you ought to be the ones taking the first step.

There are ways to convince us to buy new games that don’t involve punishing us when we don’t do it. And you’re already doing them! When I preordered Red Dead Redemption on Amazon last week, there was a promotion where Amazon would send me a code that would be redeemed in game that would give me a set of golden guns that only Amazon customers would get. I know Gamestop had a similar promotion. A reward for buying new? Cool!

It’s value-adding for loyalty, not restriction for frugality. The issue a lot of publishers have (though you’ll never hear them say it) is that they get a cut of every new game sold through the game retailers. Not true for every used game. They see none of that cash. And Gamestop puts out some pretty nice numbers for their used game sales. Can you blame them for wanting a piece of that action? But if the problem is that the retailers are selling your products without giving you a cut, it seems to me that that is something you might want to work out with the resellers, not take out on your customers.

Besides, even if the publishers aren’t seeing money from the used game transactions, it’s still potentially very helpful to them. After I bought my 360, I bought a used copy of Assassin’s Creed from Gamestop. Ubisoft saw none of that money. But you know what I did a year later? I walked into Best Buy and bought Assassin’s Creed II the day it came out. Cause the first game had made me a fan. By punishing used game buyers, you’re potentially stunting your fanbase growth. If the kid who buys Madden 11 used can’t play online, and loses interest in the game because he doesn’t want to spend the ten extra bucks for a basic feature, how likely is he going to be to pick up a new copy of Madden 12? Or what if that same kid decides he doesn’t mind being without multiplayer, and decides to buy Madden 12 used as well, because he doesn’t need that feature that has suddenly become an extra, not a basic reason to buy the game.

Bottom line, I’m concerned about the idea of breaking games into pay-by-the-feature. If that were going to go the way of paying $40 for a game with no multiplayer, and $60 for the full game, that’s fine. But it won’t. It will keep games at $60, and then another $10 for multiplayer. It’s a slippery slope, and one I’d rather the industry not start heading down.

PS - another excellent side note raised by the guys over at IGN Game Scoop is that if you own an Xbox 360, you may very well already pay a premium for online contest in the form of Xbox Live. I know it's different companies, and technically a different service, but that feels an awful lot like double-dipping to me.

PAX East Tomorrow

For those of you interested in that sort of thing... you'll note a new box over on the right there. I'm spending the day at PAX East tomorrow, so I've set up a little photo depository. I can't promise a ton of pictures, or that any of them will be any good, but if you're not at the show and you want to see what I'm looking at, take a peek over there.

Becky Shaw @ Huntington Theatre Company

Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo

Directed by Peter DuBois

Seen Friday, 3/12 @ Huntington’s BU Theatre Mainstage

Becky Shaw is funny. In a really, really mean way. Which of course makes it worlds funnier than it would be if it were nice. This is about the least politically correct play I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s entirely to the benefit of the play. If you decide to write a mean-spirited comedy, you have two choices: you can either play the cruelty for a bit and then allow your characters some revelation that forces them to change their ways, or you can commit to it and… for lack of a better term (cause Tropic Thunder introduced the BEST EVER term), go “full retard” and keep your characters as mean-spirited as any ever written in entertainment. Gina Gionfriddo is committed, and for that, I thank her.

That’s not to say that the characters aren’t likable. Far from, actually. Walking out of the show, my fiancée and I both agreed that Max (Seth Fisher) was by far the most abhorrent character in the show, and yet we both loved him. He says awful things. By most people’s definition, he does some awful things. But he’s just like anyone else (OK, he’s just like me) except he’s got no filter. He says what he thinks, no matter who those comments might end up hurting. It may make him look like an awful person, but even that’s not exactly black and white, because he is fiercely loyal and dedicated to the Slater family, no matter what. He’s certainly not the nicest person in the world, but does he really have to be? He knows what is important to him, and fights for it. I don’t think anyone can fault him for that.

The story starts out in a New York City hotel room, where Max has brought mother and daughter Susan (Maureen Anderman) and Suzanna Slater (Keira Naughton) together to discuss the family’s finances following the passing of the family patriarch. Apparently Suzanna’s dad wasn’t quite the businessman everyone thought him to be, especially in his later years, and now the family is more or less broke. That sets up both ladies for a bit of culture shock as they need to move away from the privileged life they had previously led. Susan gets by with her new twentysomething boytoy Lester (whom we never see), while Suzanna – much more affected by her father’s death – takes comfort, at least for one night, with Max. Max is as close to being family as one can be without blood or marriage, but that doesn’t stop them from distracting themselves from the financial disaster the Slaters are facing.

Fast forward a bit, and we find Suzanna married to someone who is not Max – a sweet guy named Andrew (Eli James) that she met on a group ski trip. Four months and a quickie wedding in Vegas, and the happy couple are now living in suburban Rhode Island and just barely making ends meet. Suzanna thinks it’d be a good idea to set up Max with a girl from Andrew’s office, so a double-date is planned and Max arrives to dryly deride everything about Suzanna’s now-“pedestrian” life. Enter Andrew’s coworker, the sweet, apparently-naïve Rhode Island girl who gives the play its name. Saying Max and Becky hit it off would be… inaccurate at best, but they end up heading out on their own for what turns out to be the worst. First date. Ever. From there, we get to watch as friendships, marriages and all thresholds of sanity are tested in every which way, and along the way no one is spared from being the butt of a brutal joke.

And it works so well. The jokes, particularly the ones at Becky’s expense, are well-executed and perfectly timed (and, by the end, REALLY well-deserved). In fact, the cast as a whole has a really good rhythm going. Max and Suzanna in particular work exceedingly well together. There’s a perfect mix of familial, platonic love and blatant attraction, and the history there is made clear enough from the beginning of the show that the combination never tips into creepy territory. These are best friends who will always be best friends, but even that can’t stop Max from displaying his clear adoration of Suzanna. He’s protective of her and her family to a fault, especially where it concerns her husband, but that’s a shield that doesn’t apply to him. He will often dump all over Suzanna and her decisions, always in hilarious fashion. Fisher and Naughton hit their marks just right and sell everything about their relationship with a tone that allows the audience to appreciate and relate to that particular brand of love, even as Max says something awful about Suzanna’s life choices. Though it may not seem so at first, this story is about the two of them and how they grew up together, with the ultimate lesson being that sometimes you need to make a tough choice in order to point your life in the right direction, even if that direction moves you into territory that isn’t as comfortable or as safe as the way you’ve lived in the past.

The rest of the cast is equally fun. Anderman doesn’t get nearly as much stage time as the others, but she makes every moment worthwhile, particularly when discussing her late husband and his alleged indiscretions. It’s a brutal take on a high-society woman who took a tough fall but has thus far refused to acknowledge it ever happened. In parts she reminded me of Martha Rodgers on ABC’s “Castle,” which is a good thing – just the right mixture of upper-class grace (even if the legitimacy is questionable) and a biting tongue that spares no one in her life. James’s Andrew initially comes off as the weakest of the bunch, but you quickly learn that it’s not an issue of performance, but the result of a deeply flawed and naïve character who’s wishy-washy because he doesn’t really have any idea what he wants in life. For better or worse, he’s stuck with Suzanna, and we get to watch him work out if that’s really what is best for him in the long run.

And then there’s Becky Shaw. She doesn’t really come into her own and show all the cards in her hand until into the second act, when she meets up with Max for the first time since their disastrous date – a meeting that she seems to need, but Max wants absolutely no part of. Wendy Hoopes puts Becky through a transformation so brilliant, so devious and so… mean that for the first couple minutes it seems out of character, only because her persona in the first act was so beautifully sincere and believable. But once you figure which personality is really Becky, it makes the whole change so rewarding, and suddenly turns Becky not only into a fascinating character to watch but also into a very worthy foil for Max, and in the final scene leads to some of the most hilarious interactions I’ve seen onstage in a long time. It doesn’t matter how you look at it… one way or another there is one constant about Becky Shaw: the bitch is crazy, and the show is better because of it.

What I found interesting and unique about the script is how we come to realize Becky is nuts. On face value, the show isn’t all that unique – it’s a couple different standard “slice of life” stories wrapped into one package – but the presentation is the difference. Where a lot of other plays of the type do most of their communication through open discussion of feelings and emotional processes, Becky Shaw says a lot more through everyday marital arguments and family quibbles. In fact, the people who are much more verbally open emotionally are at best seen as weak (Andrew) and at worst called (and proven to be) completely freakin’ insane (Becky herself). Whether or not it was Gionfriddo’s intention, the derision of a character like Becky Shaw provided me with a nice little piece of theatrical parody which made her character progression all the more enjoyable. Even independent of Becky, scattered throughout the show are a couple beginnings of emotional diatribes and stereotypic overshares that are swiftly mocked as ridiculous. Naturally, most of the mocking comes from Max, ironically the only character who could probably use a proper examining of his feelings).

The technical aspects of the show are extremely well-managed, if not groundbreaking. Peter DuBois’s directing is nice and relaxed; nothing ever felt forced or seemed to get in the way of the very conversational dialogue style the cast managed so well. The sets were nicely functional, and did well to distinguish between the personalities in the show (see Andrew & Suzanna’s Rhode Island apartment vs. Susan’s Floridian sitting room). One piece that did stand out nicely was the music choices, pretty much used only during scene changes, but the sound nicely matched the modern, urbanite style some of the characters so desperately clung to.

Ultimately, though, the show is held together wonderfully by the cast and the writing. Gionfriddo’s got a pretty damn funny show, and on the nose delivery from the entire ensemble makes it a pleasure to watch. It’s maybe not for the faint of heart – these are “real people” who use real language (many words have four letters), which has never bothered me, but I was happy to find myself giggling along with a good portion of the audience, many who looked to me to be prime examples of the Huntington’s subscriber base (twice my age, and probably twice my income to match). Either the crowds in Boston’s traditional theater scene are loosening up a little bit, or Becky Shaw is just a damn funny show no matter who you are; I know the latter is true, but I’ll hold out some hope for the theatergoing regulars as well.

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost by Clifford Odets

Directed by Daniel Fish

Seen 3/5/10 at American Repertory Theatre, Loeb Drama Center

There’s nothing wrong with ART’s production of Paradise Lost. It hits all the points it tries to hit, and very easily draws the intended parallels between the 1930s that Clifford Odets writes about and today. It’s also not particularly difficult to imagine a family today having struggles and setbacks of the Gordons; you hear about them in every human interest story on the nightly news, or any time a politician needs a story about “Main Street.” It’s all very believable, all very timely. And all that might even work against the production, because by the time the curtain falls for the final time, it just might not be that interesting to watch anymore.

The story revolves around the Gordon family: Leo (David Chandler), who runs a handbag manufacturing business with a business partner; his wife Clara (Sally Wingert), a driven matriarch who very clearly runs the family; their older son Ben (Hale Appleman), a former Olympic runner who hasn’t really found his place post-Olympics; their daughter Pearl (Therese Plaehn), a quiet piano prodigy; and their younger son Julie (T. Ryder Smith), a financial superstar who has become sickly for reasons unknown. Coming in and out of their lives are an assortment of neighborhood characters that are vague enough to be found anywhere, but specific enough that the audience can point to any of them and say, “I know that guy!” Through three acts we watch Leo’s business spiral, Julie’s health get worse, Ben deal with an uncertain future, and Clara fight to hold everyone together and survive as a family. It’s a pretty stereotypic post-Great Depression story that has gained new relevance in light of the world's recent economic issues.

If I had to choose, I think I’d have to place blame on some design and directorial choices, and maybe on myself for believing too much hype about the director. Director Daniel Fish has a reputation for doing some crazy things, but I feel like that drive only made it about halfway through the production. The design is fairly abstract, and at face value pretty cool. One of the best elements is the use of video projected onto the backdrop behind the performers. Sometimes it’s used for atmospheric effect – the entire cast starts the show by watching the end of a movie together – but most of the time it’s used with live video to give the audience a different perspective on the stage action. That’s especially beneficial because a good deal of the action in Acts I and II take place significantly higher than the audience if you’re seated at floor level, as I was. It’s useful to get a better view of what’s going on off on stage left when the actors themselves are obscured by the dining room table. There’s a particularly good use in Act II as things start to fall apart for Leo Gordon and his business partner. Without spoiling anything, Leo’s partner introduces him to someone who can potentially “fix” their business in a particularly insidious way. The fixer is played by T. Ryder Smith, who also happens to play Leo’s son Julie, but there’s a nice negative filter used on the projected video that allows Smith to portray a much more treacherous nature that he had on his own as Julie, which furthered the distinction between the characters and added to the treacherous atmosphere of the scene.

Beyond that, though, a lot of the technical elements fell a little flat for me. At seemingly random times throughout the play, characters would pick up wireless microphones and use them for dialogue. There are some times when it was very helpful – again with the moments when you couldn’t quite see what was going on over near the wings or upstage – but many times they were used when actors were front and center, and their dialogue didn’t really strike me as needing to be accentuated in that way. It’s very possible I missed something, but it just didn’t work for me.

It also struck me as odd that Fish had all of these out of the box technical elements at work, but his staging itself was very straightforward. There are some seemingly clunky blocking decisions - characters staying onstage long after they should have left, and it isn't clear if their physical presence places them in the scene, or if they are there representing something more abstract. Again, it just doesn't quite mesh with the otherwise relatively straightforward staging. Again, there’s nothing wrong with traditional blocking combined with abstract design, but it seemed to me to draw more attention to what was out of place – the design – than it drew to the story being told. The story is very timely, so one would think you’d want the focus there. It almost seemed as if the ability of the story to draw relevant parallels was taken for granted, and so the creative focus moved elsewhere, but all it did was draw attention off the story and performances, which should have been the stars of the show.

And if you’re paying attention, there are some shining stars here. Clara Gordon, Leo’s wife, is brilliantly portrayed by Sally Wingert. Her performance is very engaging, but it’s also a credit to Odets as well; this is by all definition a modern woman in the 1930s script, something Wingert accentuates with a ferocity that no one else on stage can match. She’s got the independent, speak-her-mind attitude of a flapper out of the ‘20s mixed with an undying dedication to her family that truly convinces the audience that if anyone can keep a family together in light of all the crap thrown at the Gordons, it’s Clara.

Also of note is Karl Bury as Kewpie, Ben Gordon’s best friend who turns out to be not so good for him. Bury has a history on Showtime’s “Brotherhood” and HBO’s “The Sopranos,” both of which he channels for Kewpie’s small-time con personality. He strikes a good balance of clearly being terrible for Ben and this family, but also clearly caring about them. It’s a tough note to hit to put someone you claim as your best friend directly in harm’s way without degrading the friendship to nothing, but Bury does it well, and his guilt in the final act over what happens to Ben is a genuine as it is well-deserved.

Leo’s business partner Sam Katz (portrayed by Jonathan Epstein) and his wife Bertha (Adrianne Krstansky) also rise to distinction thanks to a particularly potent breakdown in the second act. It struck me through the first act that Sam was probably in the most “real” situation in the show, trying to keep Leo’s floundering business afloat, but once you hit the end of the second act you realize that Sam is on much more unstable footing than the Gordon family; the Katz family spiral is much more accelerated and precipitous than the Gordon family’s, and the Katz demise, while in less focus, has as strong an impact as the main story.

The rest of the cast is a little more muddled, though no one is out of place. I’m not sure if the issue lies in performance or writing. At various points throughout the play everyone is given their moment of focus, but there’s such an overwhelming malaise that hangs over the script that it takes a spectacular performance to break through that and be noticed.

The malaise is not misplaced – both the period of the setting and the modern time it alludes to deserve a melancholic attitude. And hope does fight through in the end – once again in the hands of Wingert’s Clara, who stubbornly (in a good way) INSISTS on maintaining her family’s pride, however damaged by tragedy and circumstance it might be. There’s no doubt why ART and Fish chose to preset Paradise Lost now in 2010, but some weakly-written characters and questionable design choices hold it back from being the poignant commentary it might otherwise be.

A noble experiment...

In yet another effort to reinvigorate this blog and give some direction to my Netflix queue, I'm gonna give something a shot.

Every Best Picture winner. In order. Mostly.

I'm not gonna set a bunch of parameters on this like a deadline or
anything like that, cause there's a damn good chance I'd never hit it. There's a damn good chance I'll never finish this. But I was looking over the list of winners of the past, I realized how few of them I've seen. Of the 81 movies that have received the award, I've seen 23 of them - 28%, which is a relatively acceptable percentage, but I know I can do better. Also, considering only 8 of the ones I've seen were released prior to me being born, I have much more significant coverage in the last 25 years than I do in the first 56 years of the award's existence.

This presents some challenges for me. One thing I am committing to doing is watching the ones I've seen again. That'll be great in some cases (On the Waterfront, Schindler's List, Shakespeare in Love), and painfully difficult in others (Crash, Amadeus), but I'm gonna do it as a way to give those movies that I saw a long time ago or that I saw only once another chance with a fresh set of eyes and a different perspective. There's also some movies that I've actively avoided over the years based on poor recommendations (Ben-Hur, The English Patient) that I will buckle down and watch for myself, so we'll see how that turns out.

I can't promise a full review of every movie - I've found the time I spent actively reviewing movies actually made me less enthusiastic about watching movies, because I felt I was always looking at them with a more critical eye, and thus not enjoying them as much. But I will pop on and give a quick update and a general impression after each one. There's also three winners - Wings, Cavalcade and Tom Jones - that Netflix does not have either streaming or on DVD, so I'll try to track those down if I can, but they may appear out of order... especially since Wings was the first-ever recipient.

I know there are likely better lists of better movies I could use, but I still enjoy the Oscars to a point where I see this as an exercise worth my time, no matter how stretched out the experiment might become. I'll definitely be putting things in between the winners from time to time, and there may be stretches without an update - my workload at the office will pick up as we head toward the summer, and I'm also planning my wedding for September - but eventually I'll be able to knock 58 more titles off the "you should see this" list.

Let's see how it goes...