Last year, a one-man show played in Los Angeles, called Alex Edelman: Just for Us. It got raves reviews, and friends who saw it said it was great. I'd heard of it -- it began off-Broadway, and then transferred to Broadway, again to rave reviews. But I didn't see it. For several reasons, most notably because I'm still not going to the theater as much as before the pandemic. I was sorry I didn't go -- but thrilled when I saw that HBO recorded the show, and is airing it now. And for my taste, it was as terrific as its reputation. It’s very funny, but it’s not a comedy act. Rather, it’s a long, true story (with him playing many characters) about the night he decided to go to a meeting of neo-Nazis in New York City, but with a great many, long diversions into him talking about his life growing up in a very Ashkenazi Jewish household, anti-Semitism and more. I had heard Alex Edelman interviewed at length on the Naked Lunch podcast which I'd posted here, and he was funny and interesting. So, I was very glad when I saw HBO had recorded the show. (What I didn't realize until I tracked down the podcast, is that he briefly appeared on another of the Naked Lunch podcast. That was the one with guest Hannah Einbinder, who starred in the excellent HBO Max series Hacks. She and Edelman were dating at the time (and may still be, as far as I know -- or not), and host Phil Rosenthal called him up during the interview.) The Just for Us special is available On Demand, and HBO will be airing it again. At the moment, I counted 10 airings ahead. It runs about 85 minutes. If you do decide to watch, my only recommendation is that Edelman talks very fast (which he actually addresses, having ADHD), so I put on close captions so I could check if I missed a laugh. It’s not necessary, but it definitely helped. If you're interested, whether before watching the special to help decide if you want to watch, or afterwards if you enjoyed the special, here's the link for hour-long interview he did for the Naked Lunch podcast. This is the minute-long trailer, which will give you a very brief idea of the show, though it’s much more diverse and textured than this.
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In 1995, Jacques D’Amboise received the Kennedy Center Honor. D’Amboise was a ballet dancer and choreographer, and I suspect is not extremely well-known today. But then most ballet dancers aren’t as well-known as movie stars and singers even at their height. But I post this for two reasons – but one above all. It’s because the first number of the tribute is a superbly choreographed and fun dance to the tune of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Misbehave”. Oddly, the video cuts out Walter Cronkite’s introduction of the performers, which is a huge shame, since the two of them are his children, Charlotte and Christopher D’Amboise. Christopher has had a successful career as a dancer, choreographer and director, and Charlotte is a highly-accomplished dancer and actress who’s received two Tony nominations on Broadway. (In fact, I’ve posted a glorious video of her in the Kennedy Center Honors tribute to Mary Martin, where she recreated the number she was then-performing in the revue Bob Fosse’s Broadway, superbly singing and soaring in “I’m Flying” from Peter Pan.) The two siblings are absolutely great in the number, but the best part is whenever the camera cuts back to their father -- with the biggest beaming smile you can imagine. Let me put it this way, I don’t particularly like dancing…and I absolutely love this. It’s great. And it’s topped by the glow from the father watching them honor him. Very nice as this full video is, this number and that reaction alone are the reason I’m posting this. But I do also like the finale number in the segment – which is a lot of fun for a reason you’ll discover – but I specifically like it, too, because it’s sung by a performer I like a great deal, Judy Kuhn. Okay, as a bonus, here's the performance I referred to above, the re-creation of the “I’m Flying” number from Peter Pan with Charlotte D'Amboise. Notable for me is that they do the full number, which includes my favorite part, the great (and rarely seen) Flying Ballet at the end, which I dearly love. And you'll note the reaction from the audience here -- and these are all sophisticate adults in tuxedos and ball gowns, not a child in sight. And above all that, as great as Charlotte D'Amboise is here -- can you imagine the pressure (and joy) of her performing this in front of Mary Martin?! UPDATE: And something I never noticed before, for all the many times I've watched this, but did finally after having posted this: at the very end, a moment before the video cuts off, you'll see applauding her and joyously beaming in the audience, a man at the 5:17 mark wearing glasses -- her father, Jacques D'Amboise. For this morning's Holiday Music Fest, we have a real treat. As readers of these pages know, I'm a huge fan of the "Goes Wrong" folk -- who've done several stageplays, most recently the hilarious Peter Pan Goes Wrong which was on Broadway this year and I saw when I toured to Los Angeles, which I wrote about and posted the hour-long TV version (which also features David Suchet, TV's 'Hercule Poirot') here. And they also had a wonderful half-hour television series, The Goes Wrong Show, from which I posted their episode The Spirit of Christmas the other day here. Well, they did the same thing with A Christmas Carol -- a production that they unsurprisingly called A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong. It's a hilarious, utterly lunatic joy, which spins insanely out of control in the 51-minute production. And there are a couple of guests stars appearing, as well. And impressive guest stars they are, too -- Sir Derek Jacobi and Diana Rigg, throwing themselves deep into the insanity. (They have smaller roles in this than Suchet in Peter Pan, where he played the onstage Narrator, but both their performances are still notable throughout the production.) Joyeux, joyeux. Today, marks the anniversary of when Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap opened on London's West End. That was on November 25, 1952 -- 71 years ago today. It's still running, after over 28,000 performances. By way of comparison, not long ago Phantom of the Opera closed as the longest-ever running production in Broadway history. It ran for 13,981 performances, over the course of 35 years. If it hadn't close and played for another 35 years…it still would be short of The Mousetrap. And that's if The Mousetrap closed tomorrow. Even the longest-running show in New York, off-Broadway's musical The Fantasticks, which had a remarkable run of 42 years and 17,162 performances fell far short, just over half as long. And again, The Mousetrap is still running. I have a theory about that. At some point long ago, it stopped by just a long-running play and instead become a tourist attraction, a stop to make when in London. As a kidling, I saw The Mousetrap on a family trip to Europe in 1966, the play's 14th year. A couple years later on another family trip, I picked up a poster which I have up on my walls. At the time, I was a little sorry that the poster had as many years as "16." Little did I know how paltry that number would be. When I saw the play in 1966, I went with my older brother. (Our folks went to a different play that day.) I was very excited about going, since I liked Agatha Christie mysteries and had heard so much about this monumentally long-running play. I'd read the novella beforehand, so I knew whodunnit -- but at intermission I asked my brother who he thought the killer was. (Don't worry, I won't give it away.) He kept changing his guess -- "No, wait, don't tell me, I think it's..." -- and I just politely sat there smiling at him. (Fun fact: He didn't guess it.) I do remember after the play, when we waited for our parents to leave the theater next door -- it was a matinee -- the cast eventually left the Ambassadors, and we spoke with one of the actors, and I still have the program he signed. I didn't know who he was, and while he might have done a lot in London theater after that, he didn't become known in the U.S. But it was fun. And I still have the program. (Sorry, "programme.") The Mousetrap has never played on Broadway, though there are plans to finally do so. In fact, they were trying for this year, but clearly that scheduling didn't pan out. That said, if you've seen the 2022 movie See How They Run with Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan and Adrien Brody, it's a fun, comic-murder mystery that's centered around a murder that occurs backstage during the early days of The Mousetrap. The story is totally fictional, but real details are mixed in -- including Richard Attenborough being a character in the film (having starred in the original production, as is the show's producer John Woolf (who won an Oscar for production the movie musical Oliver!), it taking place at the Ambassador Theatre and a few other matters, as well as Agatha Christie taking part in the film, as well. And speaking of film, the most fascinating story surrounding The Mousetrap is that when movie producers signed a contract with Agatha Christie to make a movie of the play, it was with the one stipulation that no movie could be made until…the play closed! That was 71 years ago. In another odd twist, somewhat similar to that of the movie rights, Christie requested that the short story not be published in the United Kingdom as long as the play was running in London's West End. When I read about that, I couldn't figure out how I was able to have read it. But it turns out that the story was allowed to be published in the United States and appeared in the collection Three Blind Mice and Other Stories. I've still kept my copy all these years. A whopping 45-cents. And the original title is duly noted on the cover. And of course, as old as my copy of the book is, it doesn't compare to how old the play is and has been running. And Ol' Man, Mousetrap, it just keeps rolling along... To celebrate 60 years, the National Theatre is offering for a special free stream of Othello. It will stream for free on YouTube starting today, on Thursday, October 19, beginning at 7pm BST (which is 11 AM here in Los Angeles -- so, by the time this is posted, it will be up and running). And it will stay on YouTube until 22 October. It will then be available for free on the National Theatre at Home website until October. 26. UPDATE: In an earlier version of this "Media Alert," I wrote that it starred Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear. That was incorrect. I wasn't able to find who was starring in this production, but tracked down that they had starred in an acclaimed 2013 National Theatre production, and figured that this was a repeat of that. It's not -- it's a new staging done this year. Sorry for the mistake. This is where it will stream on YouTube here. And this is the link for National Theatre at Home here. Here's the official trailer for the production. On the surface, this is just a piece about entertainment. And basically it is. But I also think it deals with a major news story -- actually, the major news story today, the attack on Israel -- and how people grab onto a false narrative because it's what you want to be true. Even though, at heart, this is just about a song. A couple days ago, I got a text message from reader (and Camp Nebagamon camper when I was a counselor) Bill Guthman who'd come across an article online about the writing of the song, "Over the Rainbow," and how -- supposedly -- the underlying meaning of the song is that it was written about Israel as the homeland for Jews. This didn't seem right to Bill, so he wrote me to find out what I might know about it. This is part of the article in question. Did you know that “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was written, not about the mythical Land of Oz, but the homeland of the Jews - Israel? Honestly, and I say this not knowing much about the history behind the writing of the song, though knowing about writing and writing song lyrics, I don't even remotely believe the song is "about" Israel. I do understand why many would want to believe it so, most especially now -- and a great many of the readers comments clearly did believe it. But wanting to believe something is true doesn't change it from being a false narrative, no matter how noble the wish. It reminds me -- from a less noble perspective -- when there was an effort to show that the song "Puff the Magic Dragon" was about cocaine and drug use. At least in that case, nuts as it was, the original article about (in a Newsweek cover story, of all things) that used what purported to be supposed "evidence," dissecting the lyrics. Here, though the guy just basically says "Their family were Jewish immigrants, so this must be about Israel." That said, I'm sure -- like all writers/ songwriters E.Y. "Yip" Harburg (who was very openly radical left) looked for inspiration to help add impact to his words and might possibly have used a homeland for Jews to add a source of inspiration to perhaps part of his thinking. Perhaps. Maybe. But -- The songs for The Wizard of Oz were written in 1938. Though there had long been efforts to create a Jewish homeland, it seems inappropriate to overlay today's political awareness of "the Holocaust to come" (which wouldn't begin to reach the public for three years) on the meaning of the song. Further, and importantly, they were writing a song to fit the very specific plot point of a story about a girl unhappy with her bland, black-and-white life who is about to go to a magical, Technicolor world in the sky! So...of course that's what the song is (and must be) about. Whether the idea of an Israel homeland helped add a touch of texture to that, who knows? Perhaps. But again, the suggestion in the article is not about a touch of texture, but that "Over the Rainbow" is actually and specifically "about" the birth of Israel. Also, many, if not most Broadway songwriters of the time were Jewish and likely had similar backgrounds. (For starters, Irving Berlin, whose real name was Israel Beilin, and whose family emigrated to the U.S. from Belarus in 1983.) So, the fact that Harburg and Arlen’s families were immigrant Jews (!!) is borderline meaningless. Moreover, I've posted a video on my website of Harburg talking about the song and him singing it – which is maybe the most moving version of the song I've seen -- and he talks of the song being about wanting to make "a better world, a rainbow world" which fits far more into his personal politics of having been a blacklisted, lifelong socialist. So many of his lyrics were about social conditions. Like “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime.” Consider, too, many of his lyrics in the musical Finian's Rainbow (which for all its fantasy about leprechauns is highly political) like “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich,” “On That Great Come and Get It Day,” and, of course, another rainbow song, “Look to the Rainbow.” Rainbows -- a mixture of colors blended together -- are clearly important to Harburg. For his Broadway musical Flahooley, the story is fully, blatantly political, notably relating to Harburg's own blacklisted, socialist life, even though on the thin surface is merely about toys. (It deals with a genie misunderstanding a wish and giving away a company's top-selling toy, which infuriates capitalist forces who then start a witch hunt and attempt to destroy all the free toys.) That’s the political, social “better world” Harburg wrote about so often, and directly in "Over the Rainbow." (In fairness, he wrote a lot of whimsy, too, like "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" for the Marx Bros.) But here's that video where he talks about it, says what it means. He's not whimsically wondering about things, but Really Wants to Know, with all his heart, if birds can fly, why then can't he??! It's so meaningful and moving to Harburg that, even though he must have sung this hundreds if not thousands of times, he's in tears at the end. And further still, and importantly, after reading David McCullough's 2015 biography on the Wright Brothers, I made a discovery that at least one very famous passage from “Over the Rainbow” (those words about how if bluebirds can fly over the rainbow, why can’t I?) is surprisingly very likely related, at least in a tangential way to that -- a famous poem from Harburg's childhood and man now being able to fly! Rather than relay the whole story here, this a link to the piece I wrote about it. So, while it’s certainly possible that thoughts of a Jewish homeland helped color Yip Harburg’s great-many ideas worked into the song, to state without evidence an unsubstantiated presumption that the song is “about” Israel seems to be very unlikely. Though the goal in this case about "Over the Rainbow" (declaring that it's "about" a Jewish homeland) was well-meaning these days, it was still -- I'm near 100% certain -- wrong. If people want to take a song and interpret it to have deep meaning for themselves as a sort of anthem, that's another matter entirely and completely valid. But to create a false narrative is never good to take as fact and pass along as fact. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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