Sunday, my modern opera friend Betsy and I went to the first production of the season from Chicago Opera Theater. Splendid is a modest description of Everest. The editor of PictureThisPost.com, Amy Munice, wrote a review that says everything and more about the performance.
Chicago Theater in October and November – Toad Kissing and Mosquitoes
Lindiwe, Produced by Steppenwolf Theater Company, Written and Co-Directed by Eric Simonson and Jonathan Berry, Music by Ladysmith Black Mambazo – Short Review
This is the same Eric Simonson who write Tony award-winning Song of Jacob Zulu, featuring the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. I felt Simonson got tagged with the credit for playwright because someone had to take the blame. The program notes clearly state that amid the desire for the two groups to work together again, they were both coming through rough patches due to mourning the passing of ensemble members. A year and a half ago they conceived a workable idea and began to develop it collaboratively. (Note to self: beware the word collaboratively when used with plot development.) So it’s likely that Simonson did no more that nip, tuck and tidy the uninspired story.
The music is wonderful. Ladysmith Black Mambazo sings in tight harmony, sometimes so low that it whispers. Their dance is joyous—high kicks that would be welcome in Radio City Music Hall. Nondumiso Tembe (Lindiwe) has a rich, vibrato free voice. When she joins Ladysmith, you would swear she is a company member, as her hushed voice sits just above the men before it breaks into its own soaring melody.
Recommendation: Worth the price of the ticket for the music, but don’t go expecting a “Steppenwolf” play.
Sombras Tango Cabaret, Produced by Tango 21 Dance Theater (T21DT),created by co-founders Jorge Niedas and Liz Sung - Short Review
DBH and I love a good tango especially danced by non-professionals who feel the music and glide effortlessly on the dance floor--no daring dips, no flipping feet, just ordinary people like us, except they can dance. So, the opportunity to see a tango cabaret presented by non-professionals promised just such an experience. And there was some excellent tango, singing, and a polished pianist/composer (Bob Solone.)
Here’s the big BUT—Niedas and Sung tried to tie the performances together with a hackneyed plot of talented gay son mimicking the Cabaret Emcee (Trent Oldham with a great baritone voice) , estranged mother who reconciles, and a cast of dancer/musicians performing a corny script about a group of non-professional dancer/musicians who perform in a Tango Cabaret. And no one can act.
Recommendation: Not worth the price of admission, though some performances were lovely.
Julia Siple as Jennie
Mosquitoes, Produced by Steep Theatre, written by Lucy Kirkwood, Directed by Jaclynn Jutting – Short Review
Can one play encompass the cosmic macro and micro reality of our relationships with each other and with our world? In Mosquitoes, Lucy Kirkwood knocks it out of the park with the micro family relationship—not so much with the macro universe and our place in it.
While scientists are reveling in the validation of the existence of Higgs Boson particles in 2008, the nuclear family of Alice (Cindy Marker), one of the scientific team, is falling apart. Her sister, Jenny (Julia Siple,) embodies the inflexible will of the anti-science crowd. Informed by the internet, she refuses to have scans of her womb while pregnant, fearful it will harm the fetus. Later, when her healthy child needs to be vaccinated, she again refuses, butting against the objections of her scientist mother and sister.
Twined into this conflict is that of Alice with her teenage son, Luke (Alexander Stuart), hungry for a relationship with his estranged scientist father. Luke is sufficiently klutzy with his first girlfriend, Natalie (Upasna Barath) that he finds comfort from his needy Aunt Jenny. She and her irascible and incontinent mother, Karen (Meg Thalken in a wickedly sharp role) have moved in with Alice. Everything about the conflicted family is rich with angst and uncensored retorts. Julia Siple resounds in the role of Jennie; maddening, conniving, a prime manipulator—an award-winning performance.
And then there is the cosmic world intersticed in three or four plot-fogging video segments of nebular particles and planets rushing at the camera. The performers, clad in lab coats and goggles, stand in ranks while The Boson (Richard Costes) recites lines meaningless to me. Perhaps a student of cosmology would understand/engage, but in my humble opinion, this play would be “stellar” without the cosmos.
Highly recommended; use the cosmic breaks to rest your eyes.
The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution, Written by Peter Hessler, Penguin Press, 2018 Press,
Hessler at Abydos where you can clearly see the narrow Nile Valley and the abrupt change to desert.
Excavating at Abydos
Beautiful two daughters in from of the apartment entry.
Looking up the elevator shaft with the spider web iron work.
Dive into this engrossing book of creative non-fiction about Egypt, mostly since the overthrow of Mubarak. The focus is on the Arab Spring, beginning in 2010, through 2016. Hessler, his Chinese wife and identical twin toddler daughters, arrived in Cairo in 2011. On the strength of his three previous books about his experiences in China, he travels with an idea, but no contract for this book. He had just received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship that enabled the venture.
In a unique way, the Hesslers immerses themselves into Egyptian culture. He and his wife study Egyptian Arabic, the street colloquial spoken and written in Egypt. It differs significantly from al-fusha, Classical Arabic, which is the bridging language among the 26 or 27 colloquial versions used through the Arab world. They hire a unique tutor who uses words and situations from their immediate experiences to teach. Thus, the weekly vocabulary he shares with us is a springboard for what is happening around Cairo.
Portraits of the people who live and work with the Hesslers, for them, and around them populate the book. The garbage man and his family are front and center representatives of the role reserved for Coptic Christians and the illiterate lower classes. An Egyptian reporter becomes a fast friend. He is a homosexual in a country that still executes men and women who are caught in this “sin”. The site manager at The Buried, the oldest of Egyptian ancient burial sites and located in Upper Egypt at Abydos, exemplifies how ingenuity wins over bureaucratic stupidity and rapacious looters. Chinese retailers come to Egypt with nothing and succeed selling sexy lingerie in a country where most women are covered from head to toe in public.
Hessler’s picture of Egypt the country is not flattering. Egyptians lack the basic skills of organization. Their sense of time does not work with the Western world. Theirs seems influenced by the eternal time of their history rather than impetus of the present. Education is a muddle; better schools are taught in English, French, German—there are no significant schools based in the Egyptian language and culture. Yet, with Hessler, you will cheer for the small successes—which like everything else in Egypt can easily be buried by the immense desert sands that line the ten-mile wide oasis of the Nile River that is this country.
Highly recommended for all readers of history, the Middle East muddle, and travel books.
When you read this book, you learn that the Hesslers live in a Cairo apartment building adorned with ironwork spiderwebs. There are no photos in the book, but Peter Hessler was kind enough to send me some. He and his family now live back in China.