‘Forum’ Is a Pleasant Diversion at the Maltz Jupiter Theater

The Maltz Ensemble  -- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

 

Why see this production for the umpteenth time?  Sondheim. 

 

It’s now been a little more than a year since the passing of Stephen Sondheim, the leading composer/lyricist of 20^th century musical theater.  His genius at wordplay is on full display with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  After gaining fame as a lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy, he finally had the opportunity realize his dream of being a composer as well with Forum.  It is the first Broadway production where he is credited as a composer/lyricist, some sixty years ago.   It was mainstream Broadway at the time but alas it is now a little dated.  The risqué sexual undercurrent was cutting edge then, but tame by today’s standards. 

 

Writing a farce was a challenge for Sondheim. The characters in Forum exist to keep us laughing, and Sondheim took up the challenge, bending rules of the “book musical” he had been taught by his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein.   It helped that the book is by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (of M*A*S*H fame) who were influenced by the plays of Plautus, a Roman playwright who is considered the father of contemporary farce,  

 

In a talk which was transcribed for the August 1978 Dramatists Guild Quarterly, Sondheim said: “… we worked on Forum for three years because Farce is, I think, the most difficult form of playwriting….. I think that Forum is the best Farce ever written…elegant and…tightly plotted. There’s not a wasted moment in Forum and the truth and the test of it is that the play is just as funny when performed by a group of high school students as it is when performed on Broadway it is based on situation, so solid, that you cannot not laugh.”

 

Which is the other reason for seeing this production in the newly renovated Maltz Jupiter Theater:  it fits their vision of becoming “Broadway South,” using their expanded and updated facilities to mount a full-blown production with original scenery, costumes, lighting and orchestration, and auditioning for very talented actors. 

Paul Louis (Marcus Lycus), Scott Cote (Pseudolus), Andrew Sellon (Senex), Jeremy Morse (Hysterium)

 

The plot is pretty straight forward, filled with sexual innuendo (albeit dated and schtick); it is about a conniving Roman slave (Pseudolus) who wants his freedom while his master (Hero) wants the virginal girl next door (Philia), and so the slave concocts a plan to achieve his master’s desire IF he will give him his freedom.  Every complication known to vaudevillian theater is thrown in the way.

 

When collaborating with Shevelove and Gelbart, Sondheim had Phil Silvers in mind when creating Pseudolus. Silvers played the role in a revival, but the original Broadway role went to Zero Mostel.  Nathan Lane is another luminary who played the role, so it’s a tough act to follow, yet this production’s Scott Cote measures up to the demands of the role.  He also has a better singing voice than those well-known predecessors.  The young master, Hero, is played by Steven Huynh with wide eyed innocence. He is in love with virginal Philia. Mackenzie Meadows delightfully displays Philia’s naïveté of just about everything but attracting a man.

 

Steven Huynh (Hero), Scott Cote (Pseudolus), Mackenzie Meadows (Philia)

 

One of those men is the Roman Captain, Miles Gloriosus, to whom the brothel owner, Marcus Lycus (Paul Louis), sold Phila (one of the many farcical complications).  Miles is indeed gloriously played by Sean William Davis.  (Think of the bravado of Lancelot singing “C'est Moi" in Camelot.).  Davis just oozes majesty and sex appeal on stage, his voice clarion.  He appears at the end of the first act and dominates the production from then on.

Sean William Davis (Miles Gloriosus)

 

There are many memorable and or amusing songs, particularly “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,” “Pretty Little Picture, “and “I’m Calm” (the latter laughably delivered by Jeremy Morse as Hysterium).  But the best known song, sung with gusto by the cast, and one that Sondheim added to the show more or less at the last minute, is “Comedy Tonight” -- heeding the advice of Hammerstein that an opening number can make or break a show.   

 

Joining the ensemble of this production is Roberta Burke (Domina), Wayne LeGette (Erronius), and Andrew Sellon (Senex). The courtesans –  “Tintinabula, Panacea, Geminae Twins, Vibrata, and Gymnasia” – are so amusingly and seductively played by Cat Pagano, Ashley McManus, Melanie Farber, Minami Yushi, Laura Sky Herman, Kellyanna Polk Wackym, respectively, while ”The Proteans” who are called upon by the characters to play different roles to move the comedic plot along are entertainingly and energetically played by Cameron Benda, Alex Jorth, and Deon Ridley.

 

Director Jennifer Werner and Choreographer Ariel J. Reid have such a large cast rotating around the stage that there is never a dull moment.  The two hour running time with one intermission passes fast.

 

Musical Director Cary Fantel’s ensemble of eight musicians comes across like a larger orchestra and Scott Stauffer’s Sound Design is clear.

 

Maltz bolsters the professional nature of their production with the visual delights of Leslye Menshouse’s costume designs and Adam Koch’s colorful scenic designs of the homes of Lycus, Senex, and Erronius on a Roman street.

 

If you are a Sondheim fan or appreciate a night of diversion from the times we live in, you will want to see the Maltz’s production of Forum. Indeed. “Goodness and badness / Man in his madness / This time it turns out all right -- /Tragedy tomorrow / Comedy tonight!” 

Photographs by Jason Nuttle Photography

 

 

Catherine Grace Katz’s ‘The Daughters of Yalta’ Brings a Forgotten Story to Life

 

When David McCullough passed away a few months ago, we lost one of our great American historians / biographers.   I think of him as being among a select group such as Walter Isaacson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meacham, Joseph J. Ellis, and Erik Larson.

 

Catherine Grace Katz’s The Daughters of Yalta; The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War establishes her as the “new” American popular historian worthy of being mentioned with that group.  They all have one thing in common: prodigious research does not mean that a historical work is merely for fellow scholars.  To the contrary, their work reads like historical novels, making non-fiction the stuff of literature.

 

My wife read this for a book discussion group and knowing my interest in WW II history highly recommended it.  She was right.  She had bought her copy on line and unexpectedly we were delivered an autographed copy of the clothbound edition, which we will now treasure.  The young historian, Catherine Grace Katz, is just beginning her ascent into that rarified group I mentioned.

 

This is the fascinating story of the adult daughters of two of the “big three” who attended the famous Yalta conference, Anna Roosevelt the only daughter of Eleanor and Franklin, Sara Churchill,  one of Clementine and Winston’s daughters (in full WRAF uniform), and Kathy Harriman, the youngest daughter of Averill Harriman, then United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union.  Harriman was not only a key figure at the Conference but a confidant to Churchill as well (and lover of Churchill’s promiscuous daughter-in-law, Pamela, who in later years became his wife, the third marriage for each).  Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, did not attend with her father.  And the location, Livadia Palace, was a character in the story itself as “everywhere the delegates turned, they found opulence and primitiveness in stark juxtaposition.”

 

I wish I had time to write a full review of this important book by an equally important new historian on the scene.  In particular this book makes an appropriate “book end” to Eric Larson’s, The Splendid and the Vile; A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance during the Blitz

 

They are fascinating to read in tandem, Larson covering the beginnings of the war and Katz the concluding moments of the European Theater.  Add Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Home front during World War II for those in between years.

 

As usual I made pages of notes but there are plentiful book reviews out there (and I thought Jennet Conant’s “Managing the Bedbugs, Bathroom Shortages and Big Egos at Yalta” in the Sept. 29, 2020 NYT outstanding), but I’ll make some bullet points, the particular things that will stay with me regarding this work.

 

·         Although Kathy, Anna, and Sarah were not included in the plenary sessions of the conference, they played a critical role in supporting their fathers and organizing aspects of the Conference.  Without them probably the outcome would have been very different.  Churchill’s wife, Clementine, always served as Winston’s confidante, but she was needed on the home front and this gave Sarah the opportunity to fill her mother’s role.  Anna Roosevelt had perhaps an even more critical task as she was one of the few people who knew the extent of her father’s congestive heart disease and needed to carefully monitor his meetings.  She “detested sycophants for her father’s attention.” Kathy Harriman was accustomed to being with her famous father, had been with him in Russia, and was the only one of the three daughters who spoke Russian.  The three were indispensable to their fathers and were ideal companions for one another.  Kathy already had a close relationship with Winston’s daughter-in law Pamela, who as I mentioned became Harriman’s third wife later in life.  It just shows one of the many connections of these three famous families.

·         Although these women served their country, their roles were essentially a family affair.  Each wanted to draw closer to their famous fathers.  Perhaps that was a particular reason for Anna to attend as ever since she was a little girl her father was serving in some governmental capacity and he was an enigma to her, remote.  All three left Yalta with a closer attachment to their fathers and in turn Winston, Franklin, and Averill had a deeper respect for each of them.

·         Diplomacy sometimes demanded treachery.  I think of the many “minor” players at the Conference – and Katz covers them all -- such as the sickly Harry Hopkins and even sometimes Averill Harriman himself.  They could easily be mistreated or ignored by their boss.  Winston too had his filters.

·         Speaking of treachery, although we have had some first-hand knowledge of life in the Soviet Union from our trip there (and as a tourist was exposed to a much idealized version), nothing quite prepared me for the details Katz recounts.  Perhaps the worst was the “work” of the Soviet Secret Police, the NKVD, under the direction of Lavrentiy Beria who was in attendance at Yalta, but who was also in charge of executing more than 20,000 Polish officers and political leaders, having those murders disguised as Nazi atrocities, so his boss, Stalin, would have an easier time of controlling Poland after the war.  Kathy Harriman was escorted to the scene of the The Katyn Forest massacre when her father was the ambassador to Russia, having her believe it was the work of the Nazis.  The NKVD was also active in Yalta, bugging virtually every meeting place, bedroom, etc.  Beria cast a ghostly, goulash presence there and Stalin always had the upper hand.  At one of the lavish banquets Stalin staged, Admiral William Leahy, Roosevelt’s’ Chief of Staff of the US Army and Navy who was in attendance, turned to Stalin and asked “’Who’s that in the prince-nez opposite Ambassador Gromyko?’” “’Ah, that one.  That’s our Himmler,’ replied Stalin…with more than a hint of gleeful malevolence…’That’s Beria.’” 

·         If one wonders why there is a Ukraine war today, one needs to look no further than Russian history and the Russian belief in empire.  Crimea is part of Ukraine but was the subject of Putin’s annexation of the Republic of Crimea in 2014.  At the time Zbigniew Brzezinski compared Vladimir Putin's "thuggish tactics in seizing Crimea" and "thinly camouflaged invasion" to Adolf Hitler's occupation of the Sudetenland in 1938.  Reading Katz’s description of the Yalta is a stark reminder of today’s times.

 

This book HAD to be written because previous histories of Yalta might have made reference to these three women, but it took a young, eager, gifted historian, Catherine Grace Katz, to capture the wide-angled truth, how Sarah, Kathy, and Anna were not just a pleasant back story, but essential in the workings of the Conference, one later deemed a failure, but alternative realities are difficult to prove.  I’m happy that serendipitously we have a signed first edition by the author, as we hope to enjoy many other histories from her for years to come. 

 

 

Franzen’s ‘Crossroads’ -- A Masterpiece of Contemporary American Literature

 

When Jonathan Franzen’s Purity was published some seven years ago, I expectantly looked forward to his next. Crossroads was well worth waiting for, Franzen moving beyond his usual cerebral examination of his characters finding heartrending and redeeming qualities in the Hildebrandt family, set mostly in the fictional town of New Prospect, Illinois during the early 1970’s Vietnam War era.

 

It is a multigenerational work, Franzen reaching back into the past of the two main characters, Russ Hildebrandt who is an associate pastor of the First Reformed Church, a liberal Protestant church probably not unlike the Congressional church in which Franzen was a youth and Union Congressional Church in which I was raised (although I long, long ago dissociated myself from that or any other religion).  His wife’s (Marion) past is also carefully scrutinized by Franzen, revealing secrets that rupture into the plot.  

 

Their children’s stories and their interaction between each other, their parents,  and “Crossroads” a church youth group first headed up by Russ, but later displaced by the more charismatic (and less religious) Rick Ambrose, are central to the novel. 

 

The oldest child, Clem, at first has a close relationship with his younger sister, Becky, but as the novel evolves, Clem is off to college, and his first intense sexual relationship with another student, Sharon. The consequences of that relationship have a lifelong impact on him.

 

Becky, in turn, becomes attracted to Tanner Evans, a young folk/rock singer whose group has a lead singer, Laura, perhaps modeled after Janis Joplin.  Becky is one of those young women considered cool and attractive, a cheerleader.  She joins Crossroads, as does her younger brother, Perry, brilliant but manipulative.  Rounding out the family is the youngest, Judson, who at this stage is the least examined character by Franzen (who envisions this novel as the first of a trilogy, so figure that Judson’s turn will come later).

 

His last novel was concerned with the possibility of a nuclear holocaust and this one is focused on the “nuclear” Hildebrandt family.  Franzen treats the family like a slow moving suspenseful but inevitable explosion, with religion being the main control rod in the nuclear family reactor. 

 

His ability to mix the psychological development of his characters with an element that has been dormant in my own life, religion, is striking.  This novel awakened those recollections of my own teenage religious training.  The confluence of religion, family scars, drugs, and sexual exigency move this novel into the pantheon of an American classic.

 

“Crossroads” goes beyond the usual youth church group, at least the one that existed in my time which was every Sunday night, a chaperoned social mixer (Coca Colas only), dancing to songs like “The Theme from Summer Place” and an occasional theatrical production in the Church’s auditorium (the only stage performance of my life besides playing the piano, “singing” Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” outlining a fence beginning with the second beat in the measure (imagine, remembering that moment from more than 60 years ago, probably a testament to the stage fright I experienced). 

 

When Russ was in charge of the youth group, it probably resembled more of the one I was a member of so, so many years ago, with the notable exception of a once a year trip Crossroads would go on for a week to a Navajo reservation in Arizona to do Christian good works, building or improving whatever facilities are needed.  There the kids would interact with the local cultures.

 

Russ named the group after Robert Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues,” one of Russ’ favorite musical genres.  Later in the novel, as he pursues a widowed parishioner, one he has intense fantasies and feels guilt about, she plays the record at her house while they attempt to get it on with marijuana. He comes to the realization he’d never felt more pierced by the beauty of the blues, the painful sublimity of Johnson’s voice, but also never more damned by it. Wherever Johnson was singing from, Russ could never hope to get there. He was an outsider, a latter-day parasite—a fraud. It came to him that all white people were frauds, a race of parasitic wraith-people, and none more so than he.  Social commentary is yet another dimension to the novel and his feeling as a fraud pervades the novel.

 

The reason for choosing the Navajos for such an annual project was Russ’ work there as a conscientious objector at the end of WW II.  There he made friends and his religious devotion was deepened by ties to that community.

 

Franzen’s dissection of Marion’s and Russ’ failing marriage is extraordinary, its rise, fall, and its resurrection.  His writing encapsulates the guilt which overhangs much of the action in the novel, leavened by religion.  Russ thinks about his now middle-aged wife: It was unfair to have enjoyed her body when she was young and then burdened her with children and a thousand duties, only to now feel miserable whenever he had to venture into public with her and her sorry hair, her unavailing makeup, her seemingly self-spiting choice of dress. He pitied her for the unfairness; he felt guilty.

 

But Marion, emboldened by her work with a therapist, Sophie (“the dumpling” as she thinks of the therapist in her mind, confessing her worst sins to a psychiatrist was nothing like her Catholic confessions), stuns her husband later in the novel about his affair: “It annoys me that you want to fuck her.” The kitchen seemed to spin beneath his feet. He’d never heard that word from her. “It’s really quite annoying, and if you think it’s because I’m jealous, that’s even more annoying. I mean, really—me? Jealous of that thing? Who do you think I am? Who do you think you married? I’ve seen the face of God.”

 

When Russ loses control of the Crossroads group to Rick Ambrose, that coincides with significant developments in the novel, both Russ and Marion having realized or fantasized affairs, and the cocaine addition of their son Perry erupting into a disaster on the Navajo reservation and his having to be institutionalized.

 

That incident – again God’s will – ironically brings Russ and Marion together in a competition of guilt: “I was committing adultery while our son tried to kill himself!” “Oh dear. I’m sorry.” “You’re sorry? What is wrong with you?” The ground beneath her was firm. She was secure in God’s punishment. “I’m just thinking how terrible that must feel. If the two things really did happen at the same time—that’s terrible luck. No one deserves that.” “Terrible?” He staggered to his feet. “It’s beyond terrible. It’s beyond redemption. There’s no use in praying—I’m a fraud.”

 

Meanwhile, Becky becomes estranged from her once close brother, Clem, and her parents as well as she become Tanner’s lover, and then wife.

 

Clem and his father Russ grow apart, Russ hardly realizing the extent of Clem’s contempt until they have a face to face confrontation, Clem saying “Because I’m so fucking sick of you.” “And I am sick of your disrespect.” “Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to be your son?” “I said that’s enough!” Clem would have welcomed a fight. He hadn’t thrown a punch since junior high. “You want to hit me? You want to try me?” “No, Clem.” “Mister Nonviolence?”

 

Clem has an epiphany, a moral, not a religious one, realizing that his college draft deferment and low draft number is the reason why a less advantaged young man is being sent to Vietnam.  This realization  is ironically prompted by his girlfriend Sharon who is devastated by Clem’s informing his draft board that he will not return to college and therefore can be reclassified 1-A, in his mind righting that wrong.  His parents in their deep religious state are similarly shocked.  Ultimately, he is not drafted but winds up in a long labyrinth to Peru as a laborer, an education which ironically turns him, the non believer, into a sort of a Christ figure, finally returning to the conundrum of his nuclear family, fittingly (and not fully conscious to him) at Easter.

 

The concepts of free will and determinism are constantly being tested in the novel, with the latter on the wings of religion generally winning out.  At one point in the novel Becky has a confrontation with Laura who had been Tanner’s girlfriend.  It becomes ugly, Becky pleading Laura to do one more performance with Tanner as a booking agent was there to see both in action.  At first Laura declines.  But the inevitability of her relenting is mired in a series of events as if, to Becky, they were directed by God…

 

The fact that Laura, after a moment, made a petulant, hand-flinging gesture of assent—the fact that she would never have done this if she hadn’t hit Becky, which wouldn’t have happened if Becky hadn’t fallen to her knees to pray, which wouldn’t have happened if the spirit of Christ hadn’t brought her to Laura’s apartment, which wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t found God in the sanctuary, which wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t smoked marijuana—seemed to Becky, as she followed Laura down the snowy stairs behind the drugstore, the most beautiful proof of God’s mysterious workings. She’d done bad things, she’d accepted her punishment, and now she had her reward. She could feel a whole new life, a life in faith, beginning.

His novel, Freedom, explored similar territory, sans religion.

Stylistically, Franzen weaves these interrelated stories back and forth, time periods as well, retrospective view or present, but at the heart of the writing is deep psychological insight and compassion.  Unlike his previous novels, I hardly met a character I couldn’t empathize with in some way.  His writing is a throwback to the American realism of a Sinclair Lewis or a Theodore Dreiser, but with deep psychological roots.  This is literature to think about, indeed a worthy successor to Updike and Roth.  Bring on the second of the trilogy!