So I'm behind in my movie going this year. The only nominees for best picture that I've seen are Arrival, Manchester by the Sea, and Moonlight. (My vote would go for Moonlight.) Three innovative and compelling movies, but not a large enough sample for my unsolicited and unofficial vote to matter much.
Still, I have seen some interesting off-Broadway theater recently. Though I admire Wallace Shawn both as an actor and a writer, I was a little underwhelmed by Evening at the Talk House. I liked the surreal meditation on death and murder, but I felt the show lacked the kind of humor that could have lightened the philosophical musings of the show. But the cast was excellent and the New Group's staging intimate and inviting.
Yen has been selling out at the Lucille Lortell Theater, no doubt in part because Lucas Hedges, Oscar nominee for Manchester by the Sea, is in the cast. I have to say the small ensemble cast in this British miserablism show was excellent, but again the proceedings were overwhelmingly depressing. The show presented a compelling depiction of an impoverished family and the toll taken by parental alcoholism and neglect (as well as some level of mental illness in the younger of the too sons and sexual violence), I wanted to see some levity or hopefulness, which was only present in one character for the most part (the girl who befriends the two neglected boys). That may just be my taste or mood, and I'm glad I saw the show. But it didn't exactly lift my spirits (as I'm sure it wasn't intended to).
But the best thing I've seen on stage recently was part of the Public Theater's Under the Radar festival. Chicago-based Manual Cinema's Lula del Ray made the most creative use of overhead projectors that I've ever seen, on stage or elsewhere. (And who knew you could still get your hands on overhead projectors!) Told with minimal dialogue and maximum silhouette and puppetry stagecraft, the show is about a girl who runs away from a bizarre and lonely home on a satellite field, where her mother is employed trying to detect communication from alien civilizations. The show features original live music, and the ethereal score really propels the story of this lonely girl who runs away in hopes of meeting her favorite country western duo (the show's notes say the show was inspired by the music of Hank Williams, Roy Orbison and Patsy Cline). The show blends and blurs the line between cinema and live theater, and does it to great emotive effect. After the show, the theater company invited the audience to the stage to get a close look at the puppetry and stagecraft employed in the production, and I've rarely seen an audience, adults and children alike, take such an enthusiastic interest in the behind the scenes workings of a show.
