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Friday, March 25, 2005
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UPDATE: "HIMSELF AND NORA" [for background skepticism, see UD, 2/13/05] From Sandiego.com: ' Now Playing... "HIMSELF AND NORA" 03/25/2005 Old Globe Theatre Review by Welton Jones There's nothing tougher in the theatre than trying to make the writing process interesting. No matter how fabulous the result, the mechanics are booorrrrring. So a new musical about James Joyce, an author of famed complexity and passion, probably more revered than read, has a double burden to bear: Making drama out of a boring activity that produced, many would say, a boring result. The makers of "Himself and Nora," now in its world premiere version at the Old Globe Theatre, began by making the title characters improbably handsome and goofy in love. Joyce, a dour, lanky gent with a pinched look, was certainly no Matt Bogart, the clean-cut and lively actor who plays him at the Globe. And, while pictures of the young Nora Barnacle show her to be a fine broth of a girl, she hasn't the poise and polish of Kate Shindle at the Globe. ...The Joyces caper about on Tobin Ost's intricate set as if revolving masonry were an everyday affair and their three supplemental colleagues David Edwards, Frank Mastrone and Kathy Santen join them in endless variations to suggest stage pictures containing far more than just five faces. As for deeper meanings of roiling passions, there are none. If making a writer at work interesting is hard, than finding some fun in a tortured, egoistical genius is truly labor-intensive. Why Nora puts up with this Bozo is sometimes hard to understand, especially since he denies her even the comfort of marriage. And when he starts getting famous, he's insufferable. Ezra Pound brings him a rich heiress. Sylvia Beach begs to publish "Ulysses." They're seen as worshipful fools while he just becomes a bigger boor. Of course, everything should come clear in the songs, drawn, one might expect, from the rich musical tradition of Ireland as filtered, perhaps, through the influence of Italy and France where the Joyces spent most of their exiled lives. Sorry. But for a minor-key lick here and a twirl there, the source of these songs is Broadway, USA: The choppy rhythms and jagged sentimentalism of Stephen Sondheim in "Kiss;" the production-number pizzazz of "Let's Have a Drink" and "River Liffy;" "What Better Thing," a soulful love duet later reprised as a justification; and two or three finales. (Jana Zielonka leads the five musicians through orchestrations barely sketched by the composer.) After a couple of early duds, true, the songs are pleasant and useful enough. Two are more than that: "All Expenses Paid," a ragtime fantasia by the hard-working quintet during which all problems are solved, and "Lucky," a tough, wry torch song in the Brecht-Weill manner, sold with true bite by Miss Shindle. But the chance to paint Ireland's most influential author with the musical palette of his homeland must await some other show. Perhaps the same show that finally finds something of interest in the act of writing. ' |