Film Review: Three Thousand Years of Longing

Three Thousand Years of Longing

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of what we’ve recently been forced to call “reality.” 

The film industry hasn’t helped much. The proliferation of films about how many people one creepy human (or one nasty animal) can kill have become voluminous – and yawners.

But there’s a wondrous fine escape in Director George Miler’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing.” He of “Mad Max: Fury Road” fame picks on folklore and mythology this time. The source is A.S. Byatt’s 1994 short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.”

The plot is simple, but oh so complex. Tilda Swinton plays a British scholar and professional storyteller on a trip to Istanbul. Her name is Alithea Binnie, and shortly after she arrives, she encounters something that she’s convinced doesn’t exist: a djinn (or jinn, depending on your language) – an invisible, ephemeral spirit mentioned in the Koran and appearing on charms but not usually in the “flesh.”

She’s a very earth-centric type who deals in reality, reserving ghosts and the like to her storytelling time. But this particular djinn (Idris Elba) is big and black, and whooshes around in a blue whirlwind much of the time.

He needs Alithea because he did something bad and now has to grant a human three wishes in order to get his freedom. Djinns don’t see many humans, so these two are, so to speak, stuck together.

The problem is, Alithea can’t think of even one, let alone three things she wants. She is utterly content with her life as is. But she is rather fascinated by him.

Somehow, though they live in different worlds, they manage to communicate, though at first it’s in Greek. After a while the Djinn relaxes and starts to tell her his stories, from Solomon and Sheba on up to the present. 

These aren’t just stories, they’re trips to the past (from biblical times forward), and we are onlookers. Which brings me to the best thing about the film: the look, which thanks to cinematographer John Seale (who came out of retirement for this) alternates the historical past with the utterly otherworldly. Both are fascinating, colorful, and stunning to look at. 

Swinton and Elba are also fun to watch, as they match human and otherworldly wits and come to enjoy each other’s company.

Alithea may not have wanted anything, but I was thrilled to be transported out of the ugly present we now inhabit to another place entirely.

Film Review: Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul

                   Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul

It’s not difficult to satirize the phony elements of black megachurches in the South (or anywhere else, for that matter), and first-time writer/director Adamma Ego has a wonderful time doing just that in her debut film “Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul.” 

Ego knows whereof she speaks, having grown up attending such churches in Atlanta, Georgia. The plot here revolves around a fallen minister named Lee-Curtis Childs (Sterling K. Brown) and his wife Trinitie (Regina Hall), who closed the church down after a fall from grace. The setup is reminiscent of white televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of an earlier day.

Here, we get buried in the absurd opulence of the Childs enterprise up front – the type that is evident from the flashy clothing, absurd hats and other accoutrements that scream money but don’t mention humility or religion.

We don’t know how much time Lee-Curtis spends studying the Gospel, but we know exactly how much time Trinitie spends in expensive shops, because we see it. In fact, she appears to be pretty much running the church from what she would probably call the background.

Additionally, the Childs enterprise has hired a cinematographer named Anita, who is tasked with filming everything we see.

Lee-Curtis has survived his sex scandal and is planning a comeback – a major reopening of the church on Easter Sunday – with considerable help from clotheshorse Trinitie.

The problem is that his former assistant and his wife (Conphidance and Nicole Beharie) have started their own church in the meantime, and plan an Easter opening as well.

How will they manage that problem? Requesting the others to change their date doesn’t work, so it appears they will go pulpit-to-pulpit on Easter Sunday. At this point, the film just gets crazier and crazier.

I recognize this type of church, because I grew up in a (white) evangelistic church myself, not in Atlanta but in San Diego. The “Honk” cast seems to be having a whale of a time – and the film has many funny moments – but its extremes wore me out after a while. 

Theater Review: The Pleasure Trials

                          The Pleasure Trials

Leave it to the ladies of Moxie Theatre to come up with a play about the relationship between desire and happiness – in women. Even more to the point, the question is this: is sexual desire required for happiness?

The play is Sarah Saltwick’s most unusual “The Pleasure Trials.”

There are two main characters. Dr. Rachel Milan (Sarah Alida LeClair) is maybe in her 40s, a committed by-the-book scientist who likes doing research. She’s been studying sexual behavior in voles (small, hairy rodents), and has found a way to affect sexual behavior in the vole world. 

Now she thinks she’s found the answer for human females, and is about to recruit human subjects for a study of what she calls “Female Desire Deficit Disorder." She’s come up with a pill that she thinks will heighten desire in her subjects.

Her assistant is newly minted Ph.D Callie Young (Sutheshna (Suthe) Mani), excited about doing the research but seemingly less concerned with the rigors of research than with getting the result she wants.  

In addition to the scientists, several self-described sexually deprived women (all played by Andréa Agosto) will appear for an interview and be given several pages of questions to answer.

The physical setup is simple. Dr. Milan’s desk has a laptop and a box of pencils that keeps getting dumped on the floor. There’s a phone on the wall, not on her desk. Across the rear of the stage are rows of large bottles, each with a white or colored substance inside. These can be and are lit from behind from time to time.

The stage right area of Yi-Chien Lee’s set is inhabited by the excellent violist Sharon Taylor, who provides a lovely musical accompaniment throughout. This is welcome, though not explained.

One of the subjects is (or maybe isn’t) Jen, a friend of Dr. Milan, who seems to have past memories of being a previous experimental subject, in a problematic experiment. Their “past” isn’t really explained, but though Callie seems delighted with the present results, Jen ends the first act accusing Rachel of wanting to find “just the easy answers.”

Things go crazy in the second act, which I can neither explain nor understand. Callie seems to be almost but not quite getting married. Some research subjects want more of “those pills.” Rachel is just tired, and keeps getting unexplained migraine headaches.

The financial backer of the experiment calls to say he’s not happy. Uh-oh. That could be the end of this area of research. Or not. I’ll let you find out.

I’ve always depended on Moxie for fascinating, well-done theater. “The Pleasure Trials” is on-and-off intriguing, sometimes funny and wonderfully presented, but ultimately unsatisfying. I suggest a bit of rewriting.

The details

“The Pleasure Trials” plays through Sept. 11, 2022 at Moxie Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd.

Shows: Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.

Tickets: boxoffice@moxietheatre.com

Theater Review: The Lion King

                       

                The "Circle of Life" number from "The Lion King"

There’s a good reason Julie Taymor’s “The Lion King” has been playing on Broadway for 24 years. Here’s your chance to see it live at San Diego Civic Theater.

The eye-popping spectacle runs through Sept. 11 and captivates from the top, with a “Circle of Life” march of characters down the two aisles of the theater’s orchestra level, and continues with a huge cast of 38 singers, dancers and puppets (like giant giraffes, in addition to the lions of the title and umpteen others in colorful costumes by Taymor) and lovely choreography by Garth Fagan.

The basic plot revolves around the grooming of young Simba the lion (played at this performance by Jaylen Lyndon Hunter) to take over as head lion when dad Mufasa (Gerald Ramsey) retires.

Young Simba’s accession is opposed by his power-hungry uncle Scar (Spencer Plachy), who wants the job for himself. He’s gone over to the dark side, hatching a plot to kill his brother and take over the pride. He’s enlisted a trio of hyenas – Shenzi (Martina Sykes), Banzai (Forest VanDyke) and Ed (Robbie Swift) to help.

When Scar succeeds (and manages to convince Young Simba that it’s his fault), the young lion withdraws to the forest, leaving his wicked uncle in charge (but never fear, he will return in triumph later). 

But never mind all that. It’s the look of the show that will have you gasping, with colorful sets, terrific creature costumes and puppets manipulated by a superb group of actors and dancers. Where else will you see an antelope bike, or sky-high giraffes, or a four-man elephant?

The show is also stuffed with amusing characters, like Zazu (Jürgen Hooper), the hornbill who serves as Mufasa’s majordomo, Timon the meerkat (Tony Freeman) and the lumbering warthog Pumbaa (John E. Brady). But all can dance and sing and conclude at the end of act one that “Hakuna Matata” (No Worries) rules their lives. Don’t we all wish that were true for us humans?

Do yourself a favor and grab a ticket for this show. It’s too much fun to miss.

The details

“The Lion King” runs through Sept. 11, 2022 at San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Avenue, downtown.

Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m.

Tickets: broadwaysd.com/upcoming-events/disneys-the-lion-king/ 

COVID policy: Masks and vaccination strongly recommended.

Theater Review: Ragtime

Moonlight Stage Productions does it again, with a smashing version of the complex, three-hour but brilliant musical “Ragtime.”  

Based on the 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, the show was nominated for 13 Tonys in 1998, winning four.

“Ragtime” memorializes both the musical form and the experience of being or becoming American in the early part of the 20th century in and around New York City. With a book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, all you need is a fabulous, huge cast, an orchestra to match and a terrific director to put it all together.

John Vaughan has the directorial duties, Elan McMahan leads a 26-member orchestra, the tech team put together some movable set pieces and great backdrops (and a crew to manipulate them), and the stunning 24-member cast does the rest.

The plot involves three groups: a lily-white well-to-do family, a Jewish Latvian immigrant and his young daughter and an African American ragtime musician and his wife.

We get emotionally involved early on, after lily-white Father (Jason Webb) books on with Admiral Peary for a trip to the North Pole, leaving Mother (Bets Malone) alone with their little son (Daxton Bethany). 

One day while gardening, Mother finds a tiny package and realizes it’s a black baby. She is unable to find out at first who the mother is, but when she does, she takes the mother named Sarah (Brooke Henderson) in to give them both a chance at life.

When it turns out that this baby is the son of ragtime player Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (Charl Brown), Mother tries to get them together.

Meanwhile, a ragtime entertainer named Evelyn Nesbit (Emma Nossal) captivates Mother’s Younger Brother (Jake Bradford) and gets in her own trouble.

Latvian immigrant Tateh (Geno Carr*) is trying to figure out how to make a living in this new country for himself and daughter Little Girl (Leila Manuel). But he is horrified when a wealthy American comes by and offers to buy the girl. 

Historical figures come and go: the likes of educator Booker T. Washington (Bill Bland), magician Harry Houdini (Evan White), entrepreneurs J.P. Morgan (Berto Fernández) and Henry Ford (Johnny Fletcher) and Arctic explorers Admiral Peary (Johnny Fletcher) and Matthew Henson (E.Y. Washington).

Even famous anarchist and political writer Emma Goldman (Gerilyn Brault) shows up, though we don’t hear that she emigrated from what is now Lithuania in 1885 and was deported from the U.S. in 1919 by J. Edgar Hoover, who called her “one of the most dangerous women in America.”

The story of America is one of aspiration and disappointment, luck and its lack, kindness and beastly behavior. The whirlwind that is “Ragtime” shows it all, and Moonlight more than does it justice. This is a brilliant show. 

The details

“Ragtime, the Musical” plays through September 3, 2022 at Moonlight Amphitheatre, 1250 Vale Terrace Drive in Vista.

Shows August 17-28: Wednesday through Sunday at 8 p.m.;

August 31-Sept. 3:    Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m.

Gates open at 6:30 p.m.

Tickets: moonlightstage.com

Theater Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream

 Paul James as Oberon and Christopher Michael Rivera as Puck 

Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with its combination of Athenian royalty and “rude mechanicals,” young love and parental oppression, woodland fairies and magic potions, lends itself to unusual interpretation.

The Old Globe’s Resident Artist Patricia McGregor directs a most original version on the outdoor Festival Stage through Sept. 4. 

McGregor sees the play through a Marvel movies/Afrofuturist lens, so get ready for costumes and attitudes (of black culture and aesthetics) you’ve never seen in this play before.

It starts when you walk in, to find an unscripted DJ (Miki Vale) spinning platters and contributing original music and occasional (modern) commentary to the goings-on.

As the play opens, Theseus (a duke of Athens, played by Brett Cassidy) and Hippolyta (Camilla Leonard) are four days from their wedding when Egeus (Victor Morris) drags his daughter Hermia (Jamie Ann Romero) to Theseus in order to force her to marry his choice, Demetrius (Jeffrey Rashad), rather than her choice, Lysander (Bernadette Sefic). (Note that this Lysander is female.) Dad Egeus intends to make her decide between marrying Demetrius or choosing between death and life as a nun.

Hermia decides to run away to the forest, and tells her best friend Helena (who actually does love Demetrius) about the plot. They both split for the woods.

Meanwhile, Oberon (Paul James and Titania (Karen Aldridge), the king and queen of the fairies, have also come to the forest for the wedding. They are estranged because Titania refuses to give her changeling to Oberon. 

Oberon starts the comedic problems when he instructs his sprite Puck (Christopher Michael Rivera) to concoct a magic potion to pour into Titania’s eyes while she sleeps. This potion will make her fall in love with the first living thing she sees when she awakens.

That potion will mess up lots of things and lead to many funny complications.

Meanwhile, the “mechanicals,” a group of six guys led (sort of) by Bottom the Weaver (Jake Milgard), have heard about the royal wedding-to-be and decide to provide a little entertainment for the group, with a “play” about lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, who are separated by a wall. 

One plays the wall, one plays a lion and well, you can guess how it looks. It’s great for a laugh. And then the play is over, and so is the show.

The Afro-futurist elements are mainly in the costumes for principals Hippolyta, Oberon and Titania, and they are quite spectacular. 

This play also accomplishes a goal of the Old Globe: it has cast eleven student actors from the Old Globe/University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program.

This is McGregor’s last job here. After this show, she leaves the Globe to become artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop.

I might have wished for a more "forest-y" look, since most of the play takes place in the woods. But if you’re in the mood for some goofiness with fine acting and fab costumes, you might give this “Midsummer Night’s Dream” a whirl.

The details

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” plays through September 4, 2022 in the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre at the Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way in Balboa Park.

Performances: Tuesday through Sunday at 8 p.m. 

Tickets: www.TheOldGlobe.org or (619) 234-5623.

COVID protocol: Masks strongly recommended but not required.

Theater Review: Cabaret

     Karson St. John as Emcee in "Cabaret"

There are musicals, musical comedies, historical musicals, and then there’s Kander and Ebb’s 1966 stunner “Cabaret,” which fills all those bills and adds one or two. I’d like to add a category I’ll call cautionary tale, but this one is so skillfully done that you don’t notice until it’s almost too late.

Cygnet Theatre did a smashing and unforgettable production of “Cabaret” in 2011. Now it’s back, just as brilliantly done and deservedly selling out houses again. Cygnet's Artistic Director Sean Murray directs.

It’s 1931 and Germany welcomes American novelist Cliff Bradshaw (Will Bethmann) to Berlin. He’s looking for a little inspiration for his next book. Bradshaw runs into native Ernst Ludwig (Gerry Tonella), a local smuggler, and asks if he knows of a cheap boarding house. 

Ludwig takes him to the one run by Fräulein Schneider (Linda Libby), and they start haggling about the price. Cliff thinks it’s too high and offers less; she convinces him to stay by taking less and singing “So What?” in which she reasons that “You learn how to settle for what you get.”

When Cliff visits the Kit Kat Klub, the Emcee (Karson St. John) introduces pretty young English dancer Sally Bowles (Megan Carmitchel), who even at her young age sniffs coke and sleeps around. But when she sings “Don’t Tell Mama,” you know he’ll fall for her.

Cliff also meets “neighbor” Fräulein Kost, a prostitute who rents a room from  Fräulein Schneider for business reasons, though Fräulein Kost tries to deny what she’s doing in that room.

Romance must be in the air. Even Fräulein Schneider has a gentleman caller in Herr Schultz (Eddie Yaroch), a fruit seller who brings her a prized pineapple, inspiring the charming song “It Couldn’t Please Me More.”

Meanwhile, Sally also falls for Cliff, and even brought me to heavy sniffles when she sang her meditative “Maybe This Time,” hoping that Cliff will prove to be more than just another guy to sleep with.

But life isn’t all fun, booze, sex and laughs, and when politics rears its ugly head as Hitler gets closer to power, some of the group are in more danger than others. 

Brilliant in its time, the costumes (by Zoë Trautman, scenic design (Sean Fanning) and lighting (Amanda Sieve) set the scene, and the actors make the plot seem all too plausible.

Don’t miss this show.

The details

“Cabaret” plays through May 22, 2022 at Cygnet Theatre, 4040 Twiggs Street in Old Town.

Shows Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.

Tickets: boxoffice@cygnettheatre.com or (619) 337-1525

COVID protocol: Masks required indoors.

Megan Carmitchel & Wil Bethmann

Theater Review: Here There Are Blueberries

                     Here There Are Blueberries

Leave it to La Jolla Playhouse to come up with a new way to look at the Holocaust.

I was sure I knew all I wanted to about that unutterably anti-human time when  whole groups of people - Jews in particular – were targeted for extinction by Hitler’s Nazis.

But now comes “Here There Are Blueberries,” inspired by the 2007 donation of a previously unseen album of photographs of Auschwitz to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The donor  –  an unidentified American counterintelligence officer who lived in Frankfurt in 1945 after the war – found the album in a trash can. He insisted on anonymity.

You won’t see a single inmate or execution chamber here. This play concentrates on showing us the photos of those who were involved with the running of that death camp, taken by the people themselves. The truly horrifying fact is that they seem so utterly ordinary.

Playwrights Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, in a co-production with Tectonic Theater Project, have found eight terrific actors; all play multiple characters, speaking as the voices of the projected images we see, or as their living relatives. Kaufman directs the piece.

The play uses Rebecca Erbelding (Elizabeth Stahlmann), who runs the U.S. Holocaust Museum, as narrator. She takes the album and proceeds to identify as many people as possible.

Rosina Reynolds plays Judy Cohen, another museum employee who helps with the research. Much of this research involved talking to descendants of the Auschwitz staff. She says, “I try to get the facts right. I can’t think about the horror.”

Others discover previously unknown relatives among the Nazi staff. 

There are shots of Dr. Mengele and Rudolf Hess, and of a spiffy chalet (built by captive labor) called Solahütte, where Nazis went to relax. We will also see the Helferinnen, the “racially pure” female radio operators.

They are eating the blueberries of the play’s title.

The other actors – Scott Barrow, Charles Browning, Jeanne Sakata, Charlie Thurston, Frances Utu and Grant James Varjas – play multiple characters, all extremely well.

Bravo to Kaufman and Gronich for this thoughtful piece and excellent presentation.

This show does not rely on scenic design (Derek McLane) or costumes (Dede Ayite) as much as it does lighting (David Lander), sound (Bobby McElver) and projection design (David Bengali), but all are done excellently.

This is a play like no other, and I recommend it because it is so very well done, but I wonder about its longevity as a theatrical piece. The topic itself (“Oh, another Holocaust piece?”) may not inspire a stampede for tickets, and the main point that the Nazis weren’t monsters but just regular people gone wrong is almost too horrifying to contemplate.

But the last line tells the tale when the man who finds the album says “I share the album because time passes on and the gathering of knowledge is so precarious.”

The details

“Here There Are Blueberries” plays through August 21, 2022 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive in La Jolla.

Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.

Tickets ($25 to $62): (858) 550-1010 or lajollaplayhouse.org

COVID protocol: Masks required indoors