Wednesday, October 30, 2024

BABBITT STEW

Closing this Sunday, November 3, in Washington, D.C. is Babbitt, Joe DiPietro's stage adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel.

None other than Matthew Broderick plays the title role in the Shakespeare Theatre Company's production, which I was lucky enough to see a couple of weeks ago when I was in D.C.

Strange to think that Ferris Bueller is old enough to play George Babbitt. We might tend to picture the role as the province of actors like Guy Kibbee, who played it in a 1934 movie version, or the grinning, wolfishly genial Edward Andrews, who played the character...

...in the 1960 movie version of Elmer Gantry.

But time marches inexorably on, and carries even an antic high school hustler like Ferris into the realms of complacent bourgeois middle age. And Broderick, who was born five days before I was in 1962, makes the role his own with a sort of dreamy, disassociated voice, as if he's halfheartedly playing at being an adult.

Even though it's in the third person, the book depends so much on describing its hero's sometimes barely conscious internal narratives that I wondered how it could really make the transition to the stage. DiPietro was way ahead of me. He locates his play in a library--the lovely, pristine set is by Walt Spangler--where a variety of attractive actors in contemporary clothes, in a variety of ages and races, are browsing.

The cast eventually starts reading aloud from Babbitt. Then a return cart is pushed onstage, with a large object on top, under a sheet. Said object turns out to be Broderick as we first see George Babbitt, rising from bed in the morning, brushing his teeth, having his breakfast. As George's day progresses, the readers, or "storytellers," assume the other roles. The device ingeniously allows for a diverse cast, and it allows them not only to narrate but sometimes to comment, omnisciently and often ironically, on the action. 

I was very keen to see this show, as I've been fascinated by all things Babbitt in recent years. In the early 2020s, I noticed an old Signet Classics edition of the book...

...in one of those little take-one leave-one libraries in an Italian ice place my family and I frequent, and reflected that I had never read the celebrated yarn, even though I love Lewis, and like so many people was astounded at the terrifying prescience and relevance of his 1935 It Can't Happen Here.

So I picked Babbitt up. A year or so later, I read it.

Even those who have never read Babbitt may have some idea of what it's about. The book was a sensation when it first came out in 1922, to the extent that the title character's name became a byword for a person of George's type, and his sort of behavior became known as "babbittry." 1945's Ziegfeld Follies even includes a duet between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly to a song by George and Ira Gershwin called "The Babbitt and the Bromide," in which two gents exchange the same mindless pleasantries in all of their meetings, separated by decades, the only variations being costumes and dance styles.

The book itself, however, is the chronicle of two years in the life of George Babbitt, a real estate man and loyal Republican, Presbyterian and civic booster in the midwestern city of "Zenith." A husband and father, George is a happy consumer--proud to own "the best of the nationally advertised brands"--and an unquestioning social conservative and conformist.

Lewis follows him in painstaking detail as he goes through his days, exchanging commonplaces with colleagues and lecturing his son, venturing into public speaking and local politics, throwing parties angled at social climbing and going on camping trips and business trips. A shocking crime committed by his best friend shakes him up; he has an affair and eventually even flirts with socialism, but he never really grows much as a person. 

What an extraordinary work. I had a funky reaction to it, though; I'm guessing I can't be the only person who ever felt this way about it. I can't think of one episode in the book that didn't ring true, and still relevant, to me. It's amazing and appalling, for instance, when you read the scene of the racist talk between Babbitt and the guys in the smoking-car and you realize that you could set the same scene today, one hundred fucking years later, between a bunch of awful old white guys talking among themselves, and you wouldn't need to change a word. (This scene is omitted from the play, by the way.)

But as to the general method that Lewis uses to observe his hero, I had to wonder whether, if you followed anybody around--certainly including and maybe especially me--on our daily routines and our little adventures, and accurately reported our nattering internal monologues, you wouldn't get largely the same results: the same platitudes and evasions and self-justifications. Sure, the political and social values would shift a bit, but using the banality of Babbitt's inner life as Exhibit A in your indictment of his specific values seems specious to me. It had the odd effect of making me feel a little protective of old Georgie against the snarky God's-eye-view narration with which Lewis describes him. Or is it possible that was the intention? In any case, to paraphrase Flaubert, "Georges Babbitte; c'est moi."

The stage version had some of the same effect on me; listening to a D.C. audience chuckle condescendingly at George's hypocrisies, I had to wonder how many of us, if any, saw ourselves up there, at least a little bit.

By the way, I was astounded by another detail about the book's influence. Apparently J.R.R. Tolkien, of all freaking people, was among its admirers; he claimed that the word "Hobbit" derived from "Babbitt" because "Babbitt has the same bourgeois smugness that hobbits do. His world is the same limited place." I'd love to see a sequel to Lewis in which Babbitt has to infiltrate a dragon's lair.

Friday, October 25, 2024

SWEET SISTINE

Opening in theaters this weekend:

Conclave--Ralph Fiennes plays the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who has the unenviable job of presiding over a contentious election to replace a recently deceased Pope. With liberal, conservative and shifty middle-of-the-road candidates and their factions jockeying, the sequestered old fellows can't arrive at the needed two-thirds majority.

Stanley Tucci is a liberal who insists, demurely and unconvincingly, that he doesn't want the gig, but is willing to take it and will embrace a broad spectrum of progressive reforms if elected. Sergio Castellitto is a cheerfully reactionary, Italo-centric Cardinal who still resents Vatican II. John Lithgow, playing the middle, is all wounded innocence when told that there's a bad report about his last meeting with the late Pontiff. Then there's the mysterious Cardinal (Carlos Diehz) of Kabul, who shows up out of nowhere, having only recently been appointed by the deceased Pope unbeknownst to the College.

This tale of an improbable papal ascendancy almost challenges Fr. Rolfe's Hadrian VII  for far-fetched wishful thinking. How possible, let alone plausible, any of it is I can't say. Nor do I much care. High ecclesiastical dramas are fun. Movies ranging from the naïvely pious Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) to the campy Monsignor (1982) to the wild and woolly Angels & Demons (2009) have all taken advantage of the splendor and grand theatrical ceremony of the Vatican, and the intrigues of its sumptuously outfitted habitués.

So too does Edward Berger, the German director of Conclave, adapted by Peter Straughan from the 2016 novel by the Brit Robert Harris. The movie starts a little slow, but very soon, abetted by the cinematography of Stéphane Fontaine and the fevered strings of Viktor Bertelmann's score, it becomes an exciting spectacle, swept along by Berger in a manner reminiscent at times of the great silents; he gives us carefully composed tableaux of clerics skulking about shadowy stairwells, or Eisenstein-ish masses of nuns under umbrellas, surging like tides into high-angle shots.

But Berger's eye on the settings also cuts through the superficial lushness and opulence to find an oppressive cheerlessness. The marble-paneled hallway into which Fiennes and his fellow Cardinals emerge from their austere dorm rooms during the conclave's lockdown has an institutional dreariness.  The figures in Michelangelo's Last Judgement glower down in reproach upon the Cardinals as they vote. Somehow the most hopeful presence in the film is a rather intrepid turtle.

Berger's skill is impressive, but it's the acting that makes Conclave lively and juicy, and ultimately even moving. Fiennes, always good at suffering, has rarely been so woebegone, or so wryly likable. Tucci and Lithgow could do roles like these in their sleep, and they're both crisply on point. Lucian Msamati and Brian F. O'Bryne are strong as a Nigerian Cardinal and as the Dean's sheepish aide, respectively. And as a large-and-in-charge, baleful-looking nun, Isabella Rossellini's role is almost wordless early on, but then she brings off her one big moment so flawlessly that her punctuating gesture wins applause.

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

REDIALING

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Arizona Theatre Company's production of Dial M for Murder...

...which plays through November 3 at Tempe Center for the Arts. I was fascinated to see ATC's production, which is revised for a contemporary audience by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher.

I've always had a soft spot for this show, having played Inspector Hubbard in it back in the '80s at the Peak'n Peek Dinner Theatre in Clymer, New York, directed by the late lamented Ben Agresti. It wasn't necessarily the best show I ever did, but it was certainly one of the most fun.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

GIRL POWER

Check out my quick article, online at Phoenix Magazine...

...interviewing Vince Kelley, left, who plays Blanche in Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue. The touring show continues through October 27 at Herberger Theater Center in Phoenix.

Saturday, October 19, 2024

CABINET POST

If the blessed, long-delayed drop in Valley temperatures isn't enough to get you in an October kind of mood, maybe a spooky movie can. Playing SUNDAY ONLY at 3 p.m. at Phoenix's Orpheum Theatre is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, one of the seminal cinematic creepshows, with live musical accompaniment.

Robert Weine's 1920 saga is sometimes called the first horror movie. It probably isn't, but it's a very early one, and it would be hard to find a much more influential work for the genre. This German nightmare offers iconic horror tropes--the mad scientist, the plodding enslaved monster carrying the beautiful heroine in his arms, the angry mob of villagers--probably for the first time.

The not-so-good Doctor, played by Werner Krauss, is a shabby, troll-like mountebank who works a sideshow, exhibiting a pathetic somnambulist, Cesare, played by Conrad Veidt, later memorable as the Nazi major in Casablanca. Cesare normally resides in the titular coffin-like cabinet in a perpetual snooze, interrupted only when Caligari wakes him up to feed him...

...or send him on some nasty errand. For instance, near the beginning the Doc is treated rudely by a town official when he applies for an exhibitor's license; the next morning the man is found murdered in his home. Courtesy pays.

Although these and other melodramatic devices undoubtedly seemed less corny and cliched when the movie was released, more than a century ago, than they do now, they aren't really what gives this dreamlike flick its charge. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari's true power derives from the weird visual atmosphere Weine and his designers, Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Rohrig, bring to almost every shot through boldly stylized, expressionistic sets and camera angles, externalizing a skewed, neurotic mental state and imposing it on the movie's settings. It can mess with your head.

If you've never seen the film, or never on a big screen, the Orpheum show, featuring live music by Tetra String Quartet, is a terrific opportunity. Tickets range from $11 to $20. For details go to orpheumphx.com

Friday, October 11, 2024

HOPPY DAYS

This week The Day Gig took Your Humble Narrator to Washington, D.C. for a couple of quick, eventful days. I found myself giving a short speech at the German Embassy...

...and hanging out with the likes of Robert Edsel, author of The Monuments Men...

(Courtesy of Monuments Men and Women Foundation / © David Trozzo, All Rights Reserved)

I also made it to Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of Babbitt...

...a remarkable new stage adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel, with Matthew Broderick in the title role.

Best of all, I got to hang out and chow down with my awesome nieces and their husbands...



For Taco Tuesday, I was taken downtown to Oyamel Cocina Mexicano, where I partook of...

...a taco filled with Oaxacan grasshoppers, aka chapulines. It was okay at best. I've since read that chapulines are said to have a tangy flavor; I couldn't detect it, or any flavor, really. It was like eating a taco full of empty popcorn kernel husks. Luckily I was able to follow it with two other tacos, one lengua and one pescado, both scrumptious.

Friday, October 4, 2024

SKETCHER ON THE RISE

Opening here in the Valley today; wide October 11:


Saturday Night--The evening in question is October 11, 1975, and we're at 30 Rock in Manhattan, watching the final rehearsal for the very first episode of Saturday Night Live. Out on the sidewalk an NBC page (Finn Wolfhard) is trying to scare up an audience for the show, but passersby aren't interested in free tickets for this moment in broadcast and cultural history. Up in the studio, the camera darts and weaves through the chaos backstage and onstage as the minutes tick down to 11:30 p.m. in something approximating real time.

Through most of the movie, director Jason Reitman follows the frantic pipsqueak Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) as he scurries from one absurd crisis to another. These range from getting a live llama up from the loading dock to getting bricks laid on the stage while union stagehands refuse to help to getting John Belushi (Matt Wood) to sign his contract.

Belushi is immobilized by anger at having to wear the silly bee costume, until he's taunted by his cocksure castmate and rival Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), at which point Michaels must keep the two men from pummeling each other. There are also executives and affiliates for Michaels to schmooze, with the diplomatic help of his long-suffering, appeasing Programming Executive Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), and technical difficulties to solve, and sketches and musical numbers to be cut; the earlier rehearsal ran three hours. And Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun) would like somebody to write a script for his Muppets to perform. 

And so on. At heart this is an old-school "hey kids, let's put on a show" movie, with Michaels in the Mickey Rooney part. But like it or not, this isn't just any show. Even in its formidable best vintages, Saturday Night Live has never been the finest sketch comedy show on TV. But it has almost certainly been the most directly and widely influential, and Reitman's movie makes the case that its very existence was a tenuous fluke, borne of a squabble between the network and Johnny Carson over weekend airings of reruns of The Tonight Show.

The script, which Reitman co-wrote with Gil Kenan, feels romanticized, but it also ingeniously finds ways to incorporate references to classic bits that came on later episodes, like Julia Child's kitchen accident or Garrett Morris singing "Gonna Get Me a Shotgun." When these and countless other iconic gags are spun past us in such a concentrated way, we realize the degree to which SNL has inhabited our generational psyches.

Not everything works, but like the show it's celebrating, Saturday Night barrels along even when jokes fall flat, largely through remarkable acting. LaBelle, from Spielberg's The Fabelmans, is willing to play Michaels as a bit of a pretentious, self-important young ass, which goes a long way toward holding sentimentality at bay. It helps you buy into the hero's determination to get the show on, both because he believes his vision could be great and because he knows this night might be his only chance to take over the asylum.

Rachel Sennott strikes a strategically seductive tone as writer Rosie Shuster, the insufficiently-recognized wife of Michaels. The huge supporting cast includes impressive work by Dylan O'Brien as a handsy Dan Aykroyd, Nicholas Podany as Billy Crystal, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, Kim Matula as an alluring Jane Curtin, Lamorne Morris nailing the voice and body language of Garrett Morris (no relation!) and Ella Hunt coming about as close as a mortal could to capturing some of the enchantment of Gilda Radner. Some of these work better than others, but none are embarrassments.

Amusing in smaller turns are Matthew Rhys as George Carlin, J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle, Jon Batiste (who also wrote the score) as Billy Preston, Tracy Letts as Herb Sargent, Willem DaFoe as forbidding NBC exec David Tebet and Robert Wuhl as director Dave Wilson. There's also a startlingly chameleon-esque double role; see if you can spot it.

With Batiste's insistent jazz pushing Michaels along through the halls and dressing rooms, the film often recalls Inarritu's Birdman, from 2014. But I found Saturday Night much more enjoyable than Birdman; it's Birdman with a heart, and without the sour, unearned cynicism.

I'm predisposed to like show-biz stories, and I well remember watching, at 13, that baffling but entertaining first "cold open," between Belushi and headwriter Michael O'Donoghue (Tommy Dewey). So Saturday Night admittedly had an advantage with me. But it wouldn't have held me without Reitman and his cast's skillful execution of Hawksian overlapping dialogue and manic ensemble hum. SNL has turned many of its performers into stars, and this film could do the same.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

GREENDAY

Happy October everybody! Your Humble Narrator must confess that I am all too vulnerable to seasonal marketing for this, my favorite month. Recently I tried...

...Fanta's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice tie-in pop, Haunted Apple, and also...

...Hostess Limited Edition FrankenCakes, "with SCREAM filling!"

The FrankenCakes tasted, to me, exactly like a regular, tasty cupcake. Perhaps the SCREAM filling would have had more creepy impact if, like the frosting, it was green. As for the pop, at least it commited to the macabre conceit; it had an elusive flavor that I might describe as "very sweet, but moldy." I finished one bottle but I suspect I am unlikely to buy a second.