Here’s To 2024
The last time I wrote one of these, a hopeful blog post to the coming year, was in the beginning of January 2022. The year had already begun and the post for my New Years resolutions was already a couple days late. My goals were largely about doing more things: write more, read more, submit more short stories for publication, submit my novel for publication and representation to more people.
I wrote a little bit. I read a little bit. I had submitted several short stories for publication, got nothing published. I had submitted my novel to many agents, I think I’ve sent it out to over a hundred agents by now, received no interest.
At the end of 2022 I didn’t consider any plan for 2023 beyond writing. There was no need for New Years resolutions when I only intended to do the one thing. I planned to write a novel for the purposes of self-publishing. I had a whole outline for it, but that’s the thing with writing a novel: ideas are easy, it’s the work that’s hard. The work wasn’t done.
It should be said, before I go on, that this objective of mine isn’t necessarily easy. A lot of people want to become a writer, a lot of people have written novels, a lot of those novels don’t get published. It’s an already crowded market where publishers and agents find themselves with slush piles so thick that they have no choice but to stop accepting material just to get through what they’ve already received, where agents reject over 90% of the queries received because it wouldn’t be possible to represent the amount of people sending submissions, let alone all the work that they consider to be good enough to publish.
Failure is way more likely than success.
That said, failure is guaranteed if I don’t try. What’s the saying? You miss all the shots you don’t take? I shall try not to be disparaged by the ever-increasing existential toll on my psyche, even if my goals this year are the same as they were back in 2022.
My goal for 2024 is to do more, plain and simple. Read more, write more, pursue financial gain. In other word: hustle.
Writing Goal
So that novel I was intending to self-publish? It’s about 25% done. My goal is to finish it at the earliest by April, the latest by July. That’s about 75k words in 3-6 months, which should be possibly to create a first draft.
My plan to accomplish this is with writing springs, an idea I’m stealing from writer and YouTuber Kate Cavanaugh. I find that it’s hard for me to focus sometimes, so if I have specific writing sessions where I carve out blocks of writing, thirty minutes at a time, I’ll have something done. The other day a friend of mine asked me to write something for his site, and two hours later I pounded out a few paragraphs that I thought were pretty good, for themselves, and for the time it took to make. I can do it. I just need to do it.
Reading Goal
Just sit down and read! I did terribly for most of the second half of last year. Right now I’m reading The Outsider by Stephen King, so I can then ready Holly, as his character Holly Gibney is in both books.
The plan to do that is to read before bed. Maybe audiobooks, but forty to sixty pages a night will get through at least a few books by the end of the year.
There are also a number of other goals that I wish to accomplish in the year 2024, despite the obvious chaos the upcoming election will undoubtedly bring. They are, without further ado:
- Get an increased by rate or promotion at work/Get a new higher paying job
- Expand my YouTube channel to include opinion pieces alongside the commentaries
- Eat a taco
- Watch the movie The Exorcist
- Jog more/Expand my exercise routine
- Get a new computer
- Eat two tacos
- Watch Rocky II (gotta find out what happened to Rocky’s pet turtle, is the turtle still hungry for food?)
- Submit my novel to more agents and/or small publishers
- Eat three tacos
I’m hoping for an excellent 2024, and I’m hoping you have an excellent 2024 as well. With any luck I’ll do a couple things I planned on. I hope you have an excellent 2024, and may you have just as much luck on things you plan to do, too.
The Other Place – Theatre Tallahassee – In Review
In short, the play The Other Place, recently produced over at Theatre Tallahassee, is like the movie A Beautiful Mind, except it starts later and it ends earlier.
In long, The Other Place, is a one act play about a successful scientist, an inventor of a drug that repairs a specific brain condition. In the first half of the play the story is centered on a presentation at a medical conference but also jumps back and forth in time. Her life, and the eventual truth as to what really is happening to her, are slowly revealed piece by piece in flashbacks and flash forwards, and culminating in a singular moment in which fact and fiction are presented side by side.
The other half of the story is coming to terms with it.
The play was presented on Theatre Tallahassee’s smaller studio stage, which made a perfect fit for its smaller cast. Theresa Davis’ performance, as the protagonist Juliana, is the pillar that holds up the play. Arden Loftus jumped back and forth between several characters in the story, giving a variety of great performances in a single production. Kevin Nickens was excellent as Ian, Juliana’s husband, who finds himself always trying to play catchup with whatever mood she happens to be in at the moment.
That’s what makes Juliana so unlikable, at least at first. When Juliana is introduced, she isn’t just moody, but is actively hostile to the people around her. She doesn’t seem to be paying attention to anything people are saying, often forcing them to repeat themselves. She makes statements and contradicts those statements immediately. She even finds her own way to be cruel to someone while presenting her drug at the medical conference.
It’s an odd kind of introduction, in that Juliana is presented after the bad times, after her condition has already started to take hold and is detrimentally degrading her life. Take, for instance, the same situation in A Beautiful Mind. It doesn’t begin with the idea that something is wrong, but rather it begins with the idea of possibility. A young mathematician embarks on a journey into Princeton University with the ambition to create something new, and for a while it seems like everything is going fine.
There’s a saying that if you want to boil a live frog, you put the frog in cool, room temperature water and heat it up slowly, rather than tossing the frog directly into the boiling water. While I can’t say exactly why enough people were so dedicated to boiling live frogs that an idiom was developed from their attempts, I can say that the problems in A Beautiful Mind are like that. You don’t realize something has gone wrong until its protagonist is knee deep into his own paranoia.
The Other Place skips over that. While it’s not clear what actually is wrong with Juliana at the start, or what happened to her before, or what the other place actually is, by the time the story actually starts the water is at a near boil, the frog having already been simmering in the increasing heat for a while. Juliana’s paranoia, and her absolute abrasiveness, are front and center. It’s not until later that you discover that there was a time in which she wasn’t like that, of which we never really see, and that her attitude is itself a symptom of her condition.
After that second half the time periods don’t quite jump around as much, and more time is spent seeing her trying to understand what is wrong, seeing the ones she love trying to help her despite herself. It’s that second half that makes the first half understandable, and ultimately surprisingly relatable. All of that time in which it seemed like she was off putting; she was herself suffering. We weren’t looking at her in her best light because she wasn’t in her best light.
Where A Beautiful Mind is more focused on a man slowly coming to terms with his own condition, I feel that The Other Place is more about the effects of a deteriorating mental state on a person and the ones that love them. It’s fast and to the point, beginning with an unfocused structure to better reflect her fractured reality, and ending with a sliver of hope, shrouded in fear.
RENT – Theatre Tallahassee – In Review
Writing anything about RENT today feels a little bit like writing an essay on Shakespeare in college, the kind that requires peer reviewed sources. There is already an abundance of opinions on RENT out there, and writing anything now is like entering a discussion that’s already gone on for decades. What am I going to say about Mark, or Benny, or Angel that hasn’t necessarily been said before?
The fact that I’ve only just recently seen a production of RENT for the first time, produced locally at Theatre Tallahassee, is the kind of thing that also makes me feel even more the amateur theater critic than anything else. RENT is one of the biggest shows! It came out over two decades ago! Seasons of Love is such an iconic song that even myself, who has never seen the musical until late, could have told you exactly how many minutes there are in a year given only a few intro chords!
I have only recently been really exploring live theater, largely due to the availability and exceptional performances over at my local community theatre. This has been good because I feel like it helps me appreciate the live performance, but also this means that a lot of these live performances are first times for me. When I write about them, am I writing about the performance or the show? How much can I really say about the production if I don’t exactly have any other production to compare it to?
When it comes to RENT, I suppose I could have watched the movie, but considering the movie’s reviews I figured I’d be better off waiting for a stage production of it.
The productions over at Theatre Tallahassee have shown themselves to be very ambitious for its small stage, and RENT was no exemption. With a cast of sixteen moving throughout its impeccably crafted set plus a live band providing the music, the stage was constantly energetic, leaving one song with barely a pause for actors to find their places to start a new song again.
There were two issues (one bigger than the other) that I had with the production. The first was the choice to have a constant light haze from a smoke machine. I’m not entirely sure what was the reasoning for the decision, aside from having the entire show be mostly visible through a light haze.
The second (and larger issue) was that the sound mixing could have been better. With so many people on stage, each of them with their own microphones, plus the band, meant that every individual source of sound found themselves competing against each other for speaker output, and quite often throughout the show there were moments where the articulation from the singers was lost, and words began to blur or simply were lost to the chorus of everything else that had encompassed it.
Which is too bad because individually there are some great performances all delivered by a very young and talented cast. I really enjoyed Bryson Thomas’s performance as Roger, and his delivery of One Song, Glory has without a doubt propelled the original Broadway cast recording of it directly to my iPhone playlist. Makaira Fisk’s performance as Maureen has solidified the lyrics, “Only thing to do is jump over the moon,” to occupy previously rent-free space in my head. Was Shadin Jordan excellent as Angel? Yes. Does the song Today 4 You need more lyrics than, “Today 4 you, tomorrow 4 me,” over and over and over again? Also, yes. But that’s the nature of performing an existing show, you work with the material you’re given.
I must admit that I found myself walking away from Angel’s subplot of murdering a dog for money with some unexpected thoughts. Is Angel a bad person for killing a dog? Is Angel a good person because she distributes her wealth so easily, and takes care of Tom? Is the fault more on capitalism for valuing money over services, the ends over the means, to the point that it doesn’t matter what a person does to have money, as long as the money is available for exchange?
Like tick, tick…BOOM! there is an emphasis on the idea of art and the fear of selling out. While John Larson’s career was tragically cut short, it can be seen that that fear was important to him, and the idea that art can’t just be for money, it needs to mean something to the person creating it. In RENT there’s a number of characters who are all trying to figure out who they were through their art. Roger has his music, Mark has his filmmaking, Maureen has her live performance that, for some reason, Benny was worried would stir up the crowd to riot. I’m not entirely sure what kind of riot would be motivated by an allegorical retelling of Hey Diddle Diddle, but maybe I just had to be there.
What I found especially interesting toward about these characters was the idea that it wasn’t just about knowing who you were as an artist, but also trying to find the inspiration to create art, even as life’s circumstances are constantly changing. Mark wants to make a movie but he doesn’t know what he wants to shoot so he shoots everything. Roger wants to make one last song before he dies.
If there’s anything that I don’t necessarily care for in regard to the musical, it’s that it has so many subplots. It feels less like a musical with a main plot and more like a number of subplots interwoven as the story slowly makes its way toward Maureen’s inevitable performance (I did find it fun that so many people talk about Maureen, but it’s not until after an hour passes that she actually shows up).
And then there’s that iconic song: Seasons of Love. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. Is that how you measure, measure a year? For the first Act there is so much happening in a single day, and now time is moving faster, and regardless of our intentions things change. No one thing can last forever, so it’s important to embrace it while its here, because tomorrow it might be gone.
It’s here that everything also starts to simplify itself. The subplots start to resolve themselves. Angel passes away, Mark achieves success but hates himself for selling out so he gives it up, and Benny, despite seemingly being the villain for most of the show, is now kinda there in the background most of the time. Was he forgiven for trying to evict everyone? Did he stop doing that? Is he a bad person for being happy that his dog died?
Regardless, I’ve finally seen a production of this iconic musical. It was an energetic and fun performance, and there are some bangers in this soundtrack that I’m going to have to revisit. I can now watch the movie, but based on what I’ve seen of the movie’s version of Over the Moon I don’t necessarily feel like rushing out to do that.
Oppenheimer – In Review
In the weeks before the release of Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer, there were two major sticking points that found themselves repeatedly circling about the social media platforms. The first was that the IMAX film prints are eleven miles long and weigh in at 600 pounds, a point that is useful only to theater owners or theater managers that have IMAX screens, trivia enthusiasts, and prospective IMAX film collectors who have not yet discovered the impractical nature of their newfound hobby. The second bit is that the detonation of the nuclear bomb in the movie would be an entirely practical effect; no computer-generated images would be required for the entirety of this film.
It’s interesting, but not surprising given that Oppenheimer is largely a movie of people talking in rooms, arguing in rooms, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, sometimes a combination thereof. It’s interesting, but not surprising given how Nolan usually operates. Most of his movies have already opted for practical effects over CG when given the chance.
Ultimately, there’s a choice to be made. A nuclear explosion, whether recreated practically or digitally or some combination thereof, is a problem for the filmmakers to solve. How is it going to be presented? How is it going to be filmed? How can practical explosions look like a nuclear blast? How are the actors going to be shot? How many attempts can be made to get it right? It’s not like the movie was being filmed on digital either; there were IMAX cameras running about, and the film stock isn’t cheap.
Half of the battle is the conception, the filming, the editing, and then it goes out into the world and it is no longer in the hands of its creators, it’s there for the audience to experience and to remember for years to come. Both methods could have sufficed for the recreation of the nuclear blast, but for a film to be finished a choice has to be made one way or the other, and the consequences of that choice will be there, in print, for all to see.
What the 600-pound IMAX reel and the practical nuclear explosion discussion leave out is that the movie isn’t just about the bomb itself. About half of the movie is about the leadup to its research, to its development, to its testing, to its use. The focus of the story is largely inspired by the biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, following the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer in his educational pursuits, his politics before being pulled into the Manhattan Project, the project itself, as well as a set of security hearings that occurred years after the test of the bomb. For the movie Nolan uses the hearings as a narrative frame for the plot.
Nolan is hardly a stranger to using time as a story device (see Dunkirk and Memento for excellent examples), and while here time is generally moving forward, progressing from Oppenheimer’s school days toward the inevitable detonation of the bomb, there’s still plenty of room for the story to jump around. The movie really begins in the end, shifts back to the beginning, and then slowly works its way back to the end just to answer the question it asked and left unanswered so long ago.
This is a movie that relishes in setups and payoffs, especially with dialogue, possibly to an excessive degree. A line about denial works out to be incredible in its timing and delivery, but maybe the story didn’t need to set up the idea that Oppenheimer was familiar with the phrase “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” from its original Sanskrit before he says it again later on. That said, Nolan delivers these setups and payoffs with confidence, including one moment that isn’t paid off until over two and a half hours after its setup.
For a three-hour movie, it didn’t necessarily feel like that much time had gone by. Everything moves at a brisk pace, slowing down and letting a scene breathe when it needs to, running along when it should. It’s arguable what could have been cut for the sake of time, but every scene adds to the story, casting a light on Oppenheimer through a prism. Characters are shown in many lights, but never defined by their presence within them.
These characters are brought to life by a tremendous cast of fantastic actors and actresses, some of whom are barely in the film at all but still manage to leave a lasting impression, both in regard to their performance and their impact in the story. Leading the pack, as Oppenheimer himself, is Cillian Murphy in his first lead role in a Christopher Nolan film (out of six). He advertises pro-union materials but never joins. He befriends communists but is never in the party. He commits to a relationship and commits to another. The only consistent thing in his life is the science, and the science is like the rest of his life, always ready to be redefined by a new discovery.
Opposite Oppenheimer is Robert Downy, Jr. as Lewis Strauss. Strauss is also answering questions about Oppenheimer and the events that led to the development of the bomb and acts as an alternate narrator to the character and the events. It’s a meaningful choice, especially as we get to the end of the story when the black and white view that Strauss has of Oppenheimer turns out to lack the color and definition of the real story up close.
Emily Blunt is especially brilliant as Kitty Oppenheimer, J. Robert Oppenheimer’s wife. She’s rarely seen without a drink, but the movie doesn’t linger on her alcoholism, instead highlighting her defiant protectiveness of her husband. I had actually seen dialogue from one of her scenes quoted, just text in an online post, before seeing the film, and while seeing the scene in full helped give context to a quote that was given without, Blunt’s performance adds tremendous gravitas to every given word.
Beyond them is a plethora of folk, from Matt Damon, Alden Ehrenreich, and Florence Pugh in medium size roles that have time to develop, from Casey Affleck and Gary Oldman in individual scenes, there and then gone, to members of the scientific team that include the likes of Jack Quaid and Rami Malek. It’s a very large and talented cast, but like the nature of the Manhattan Project itself, it wasn’t an individual’s capabilities that achieved success alone.
There’s a line from the classic American film Jurassic Park that goes, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” In that case they were referring to the idea of cloning dinosaurs for the purpose of developing an amusement park on a remote island that technically doesn’t belong to any government, while also lacking hotel space for visiting guests.
In the case of Oppenheimer, the question is of whether or not they should is constantly asked and answered, but there’s a specific line from the film that defines the movie’s message, a line that’s also heard in the trailer of the film: “They won’t fear it until they understand it. And they won’t understand it until they’ve used it.” It’s a line delivered by Oppenheimer to describe the people in charge, but in reality it’s a line that cuts deeper into everyone involved in the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer included.
Ultimately, there’s a choice to be made. It’s one thing to create a bomb, no matter if it’s uranium or plutonium or hydrogen, the making is half of it. The other half is the choice to use it, sending it out into the world where it would have its destructive consequences. Arguments for why it needed to be made suddenly start to fall flat against the absolute horror of its destruction, leaving the second half of the film as an indictment on the type of person who would see a weapon of mass destruction be used, and think that it needs to be used again.
The Play That Goes Wrong – Theatre Tallahassee – In Review
A perfect performance, regardless of the scope of the production, the size of the stage, or the notoriety of the actors involved, is built on a foundation of repetition via rehearsal. The lines are memorized, and the direction is practiced again and again until the elaborate machination of movements that is a play is ready to be performed in front of a live audience. That said, a live performance can go wrong in many ways, from a line misremembered, to a cue forgotten, to a prop misplaced, which still doesn’t take into account the number of strange and supernatural effects caused by a careless individual speaking the name of that Scottish play aloud on the premises.
Regardless of disaster, the show must go on. At best, the error might seem purposeful, at worst it’ll be a distraction, but what if there was no end to the things that went wrong? What if everything went wrong, each disaster building into a fresh, new one, escalating until the play was a whirlwind of chaos barely clinging on for life?
That is the premise of The Play That Goes Wrong, written by Henry Lewis, Jonathon Sayer, and Henry Shields, with a recent production over at Theatre Tallahassee. It’s a play within a play, featuring the fictional Cornley University Drama Society and their production of the play The Murder at Haversham Manor. Functionally, this meant that the crew was there on stage repairing the set minutes before lights were up, and the director was there to apologize for their last few shows, with a promise that this was the one they would get right.
There’s an interesting meta dynamic in which the actors and actresses played as characters playing as characters. Some of the dual roles had a stronger presence for both versions of the character, such as the director of The Murder at Haversham Manor, who also was the Inspector. That was a dual role performed by Martin Peacock who gives the character a genuine earnest, nerved wracked enthusiasm. There was also Jania Sanchez Kadar and Ken Catullo, both playing stage crew who found themselves having to perform to opposite levels of enthusiasm.
As for the rest, there’s more of an implication as to that dual role in the way that the characters are performed, most notably with Ryan Moore’s performance as Max, playing the brother Cecil. With leaps that defied gravity it felt like there was the implication that the fictional actor was a ballet dancer who was cast in a role that wanted no dance, and wasn’t told differently.
The story was straightforward enough. Charlie Haversham was dead, but by whom or by what nobody knew. At its heart it’s a classic murder mystery with the usual suspects: the fiancé, the butler, the brother, the friend, and only an expert investigator who happened to be more available than the police on a terrible winter night could arrive just in time to solve the case. The story wasn’t terribly important, it was just a vehicle for the chaos. The performance of The Mystery at Haversham Manor was a goal for the characters to achieve: the real focus was the things that go wrong.
It all begun simply enough. Sure, none of the bulbs in the chandelier matched up, and sure the mantlepiece wouldn’t stay in place, and sure, the Duran Duran CD is nowhere to be found, but who hasn’t lost their Duran Duran CD before? The show must go on. No pencil on the tabletop? The show must go on, the keys would be a pencil. No paper on the table? The flowerpot would have to do, the show must not be stopped at all costs.
It’s not long before things started to fall off the walls, props broke, actors were knocked unconscious, and the pace of the show built to such a frenetic frenzy that it just didn’t seem possible for things to escalate anymore but somehow it did and still there’s doubt that things couldn’t possibly get worse than the state it was in and everything somehow did get worse, again and again, falling apart in surprising and new creative ways every minute.
Now, with that kind of pace, and that kind of focus on a show falling apart, it did mean that the story itself was largely ornamental. It’s treated as such, often with unveiled secrets presented while others were exerting themselves so loudly that by the time it’s revealed who did the murder it needed to be shouted to be heard over the commotion. It’s a slapstick comedy that harkened back to the Buster Keatons, the Leslie Nielsens, the Abbott and Costellos. In essence it’s kind of like Mel Brook’s film The Producers. The Cornley Drama Society brought the wrong director, cast and crew, The Murder at Haversham Manor was the wrong script, and the result was absolutely hilarious.
Mystery at Upton House – Monticello Opera House – In Review
The play Mystery at Upton House, by Robert J. LeBlanc, is not a traditional one. There’s a stage, and there are actors, and there are scenes for which the actors walk onto the stage and perform, but there’s just as much of not that then there is of that. The play is built around dinner and interactivity from the audience, one of several interactive plays from Sleuths Mystery Entertainment. It’s a half play, half dinner party, this time catered by Porch on the Green and performed at the Monticello Opera House on their lower floor. It’s a light mystery that focused less on plot and character development and more on inviting audience interaction, and it all begins with the appetizer.
Like an actual restaurant there’s a short time before you get your appetizer. First, you had to find your table, adjust to your new surroundings, see who your neighbors are. This led to one of the two technical issues the play had: there wasn’t much space in between the tables themselves. When fully seated there was often no space to move around, which meant that if you wanted to visit the bar, or the bathroom, you had to plan your route based on who you could actually squeeze past.
I was seated over at table 16, way in the back, one of several tables equally far from the stage itself. There were seats for eight people and all of them were filled, and prior to sitting down at the table I didn’t know six of these people. Introductions were made, but not too in depth: this was a shared space for the next few hours, no need to worry about anything more than that.
There were no menus, but instead Playbills and Sleuth Mystery Sheets and mini-golf pencils. Half the sheet was instructions on what to do during the play (analyze clues! ask questions! solve murder! punish the murderer!), and the other half had space to fill out notes, put your name, who you think did it and what they deserved for doing it. My guess on who did it was incorrect, but I can assure you my punishment (the killer would have to write a 60,000 word dissertation on the deeper themes of the film Morbius with Jared Leto) would have been most severe.
The First Course – Cuts of bread with butter, served on a platter for the table
The bread was fine, arriving on a single plate delivered to the table as a whole. There were a variety of cuts which to someone with an eye for bread would be able to tell you what kind of breads were involved, what their ingredients were, what really separated one bread from another. I am not that person. I picked up a bread and a butter, I buttered up the bread, and I ate the buttered-up bread.
When it comes to classic restaurant staples, bread and butter is probably the top of the list for what I would expect to get served at the beginning of a meal. Sometimes it’s a very specific bread known at the establishment (see breadsticks at Olive Garden), while other times it could very easily be just a random assortment of bread-like materials (I have fond memories of going to a restaurant called Omega back in Chicago, which served a tray that had cuts of bread, some muffins, and saltine crackers). Regardless of variety, it’s not meant to be a meal in itself, but a taste for what’s to come.
If the classic murder mystery were a meal, the appetizer would be the story that happens from the start up until the murder happens. The characters are introduced, along with their motivations for being there in the first place. You don’t know who’s going to be the murderer, or who’s going to be the victim, but you can tell that there’s a number of people with grievances, not to mention the possibility of a murder weapon being shown (a regular Chekhov’s gun sort of situation).
For Mystery at Upton House the setting was the home of the late Lord Crawley, where his wife was having herself a dinner party to raise money for the war effort against the Nazi regime. There’s the butler, the maid, the son and his fiancé, and lastly the constable. Without giving anything away, I’ll have you know that one of them died, and at least one of them was the killer, and that the play was designed so that the killer, and their motivations and methods, changed for every night.
The audience also technically existed within the universe of the play, and the characters were often speaking directly to the audience. It made the opening introduction almost feel closer to a Saturday Night Live monologue with jokes that happened to set up the plot.
There’s a second technical issue that showed up right from the beginning and sticks with the show until the end, and that was sound. The second floor of the Monticello Opera House has the theater proper, and was designed to carry sound. The first floor was not. If I was at a table set closer to the stage I probably wouldn’t have noticed this, but all the way back against the opposite wall made me spend a good amount of attention just trying to make sure I can hear what the actors are saying.
And yes, lady over there, that coughed throughout the show. I could hear you, especially.
The Second Course – Iceberg salad topped with pears, feta, candied pecans and lemon basil vinaigrette
When it comes to salad, if you’re not concerned about what’s going on beneath the surface, then iceberg lettuce is for you. This salad happened to have two things that I, in particular, love most: feta and vinaigrette. The first I could eat on its own, the second is my choice on any salad. Also, it’s important to note the absence of croutons, which in my case only made the salad better. I do not like croutons on my salad because they are difficult to pick up with a fork. As a part of a meal, I’ve always considered it to be a part of the entrée. Not the entrée itself, but also not the appetizer either. It’s the direct lead into the main event.
For a mystery, that is the understanding of who the suspects are, and their possible motives to kill. The more suspects, the more believable the motivations, the more intriguing the mystery inherently becomes. In the case of Mystery at Upton House, that meant the introduction of a final character, the driver Charlee Weeks, that attempted to solve the case. It’s here that the play diverted from more expected storytelling to something that better suited the format of the interactive dinner party.
Charlee moved from one character to the next, summarizing what their motivations are, as well as their suspicious behavior. This was especially important for the audience’s sake, because it’s that interaction that was required for the play to be a success. If the audience wasn’t invested in the mystery, then they wouldn’t notice that the characters and the story don’t really develop past this point. Characters don’t really interact with each other from the second scene onwards, with the focus being on Charlee and her interviews/interrogations.
On the surface the actors seem like they played stereotypes of classic mystery conventions, but there’s also an equal helping of improv with the actors walking around during meal courses to answer questions in character. Martha Winters was excellent as Lady Crawley, the Countess accustomed to her title, eager to entertain but also on edge. Tim Nettles played the stiff butler Mr. Rowley, proud when he needed to be, defensive when I accused him of murder. Michael Herrin’s bumbling Edgar was a table favorite, even when he was laughing at his character’s own jokes.
The Third Course – Mrs. Baxter’s chicken marsala over white rice
Did I mention that I don’t know much about bread types? Well, as it turns out, I also don’t know much about marsala types. I’m aware of chicken and white rice, but had to google what a marsala is (which only led to more questions such as: what is a marsala wine? What is a fortified wine?). More google searches only led me to information that probably wasn’t even relevant to the meal, let alone the performance. Either way, it was alright, but I’m relatively easy. You throw some meat and sauce on top of rice and I’m going to be happy enough.
If I was to imagine what would have happened in a traditional mystery during its entrée, I would imagine it would be the part of the story where complications happen. Maybe someone else dies. Bigger clues are revealed as to who actually did it.
The scene that follows the salad felt more like the entrée, and the scene that followed the entrée felt more like the salad in that very little is added. Charlee moved from one character to the next asking everyone one follow-up question, and then the scene is done.
The Fourth Course – Apple pie blossoms with caramel and whipped cream
It’s here at the end of the story that both the audience and the killer(s) received their just desserts. For the audience, it was apple pie, and it was delicious. For the killer(s)? It was the requirement to sing happy birthday to a member of the audience. Oh, they were also arrested and taken off stage, that too.
Was I a great detective? Not particularly. I got the suspect wrong, but the method right (though there was a 50/50 shot for that). I don’t know how well all of the bits and pieces added up, though. As a mystery there’s more red herrings than in a red herring natural habitat, but as an interactive mystery I don’t necessarily think that’s the point. It’s not about being right or wrong, but having a good time doing it.
It was a fun play on its own right, though I would imagine that the amount of fun is highly dependent on who you’re sitting with. I feel like the people at my table had some interesting discussions as to who might have done it, and that level of investment was necessary to make up for the play’s lack of depth.
tick, tick…BOOM! – Theatre Tallahassee Production – In Review
I’ve never actually seen Jon Larson’s musical Rent, neither live or the maligned film adaptation, but it’s one of those shows that has had such appeal that it’s hard to ignore even pieces of it by osmosis. Just give me the opening chords of “Seasons of Love” and I’ll know that every year takes five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, the most apathetic way to measure a year.
tick, tick…BOOM! makes for a different sort of musical, in that it’s based an an autobiographical one man show created by Larson, adapted after his death into a three actor production by David Auburn. The story follows Jon Larson in the year 1990, just before his thirtieth birthday. He’s a writer, or at least he’s trying to be. He’s still waiting for his big break. He only owns one belt. It’s not Gucci, but it holds up his pants just the same.
I saw a performance of it just this past weekend at Theatre Tallahassee, a production that in its playbill its director, Naomi Rose-Mock, had written that the choice for a minimalistic and abstract production was meant to emphasize the story’s internal presence, in the mind of Jon Larson. It was performed on Theatre Tallahassee’s smaller studio stage with a backdrop of three vertical panels plastered in torn music sheets and playbill covers. There were crates set on the stage that were sometimes tables and sometimes platforms and sometimes a store counter, moved and turned and stacked as needed only to be separated again.
I’ve seen productions at Theatre Tallahassee that have featured piano accompaniment, but this one also had a guitarist and a drummer to go along with the keyboardist, all three of them set behind the panels. There was a lot of talent on the stage, but it didn’t take long before the singers were lost in the volume of the instruments.
Maybe I was sitting next to one of the speakers, that I can’t say. I can say that I was in spitting distance from the stage and vocals from the opening number as well as parts of “Green Green Dress” were lost against the speakers, which makes me think that maybe the instruments were mixed a bit too loud when considering that in the studio the actors didn’t have microphones. From “Johnny Can’t Decide” onward I didn’t notice that problem anymore, which either means that the instruments stopped drowning out the vocals, or I got absorbed into the story and the performance.
It helped that Conner Fabrega was incredible as Jon Larson, while Tyler Jones and Elyssa Brooks slipped back and forth between multiple roles with ease. The backdrop of torn playbills was only interesting at first, and it wasn’t until later on that I noticed how the lighting was used to cast silhouettes across them. Is it an accident that the silhouette of Jon is cast onto a panel with the torn cover of “One Man” above his shadow?
Jon Larson is the center of the story, but there’s also his friend Michael, a former actor that became a business man, and his girlfriend Susan, a “former” dancer who went on to teach. Jon is presented early on with several choices, but each choice cancels the others out. Does he pursue his creative vision at the expense of his career and his potential family? Does he pursue a career at the expense of his creativity and his girlfriend? Does he follow his girlfriend and leave all potential for a career and his creativity behind?
I admit that a lot of this did hit very close to home. I’m not turning thirty, per se, in fact last year I turned forty. See, I’m a writer, or at least I’m trying to be. I’m still waiting for my big break. I only own one belt. It’s not Gucci, but it holds up my pants just the same.
The questions that Jon has to answer feel like the questions that are already on my mind. I’ve written a novel, three actually, and if this last one doesn’t work out it just will make the motivation to try again harder then the last time. Michael’s choice for a career makes sense, especially considering his situation, and Susan’s choice is understandable, both choices would mean an end to creative ambitions.
While the musical ends after Jon’s workshop, it’s known that the show he was trying to get produced, titled Superbia, didn’t. It’s known that the next show he workshopped did get picked up. It is known that the idea of turning forty, the luxury of it, was not afforded to Jon Larson, as he had passed away in 1996, at the age of 35.
I feel like that’s the ultimate message of the story: making the most of the time you have. Every road is a path to be taken, each valid for their own reasons. You just have to make a choice, and be able to live with it.
And follow through.
John Wick: Chapter Four – In Review
John Wick: Chapter One? That was a surprise hit that came out of nowhere, bringing Keanu Reeves back into the spotlight and pairing him alongside stunt actor and coordinator turned director Chad Stahelski. John Wick 1 told a strong self contained story of revenge within a secret underground society. Realism isn’t the right word to define it, but rather grounded in a sort of action reality that emphasized why Wick’s name caused his enemies to tremble in fear.
John Wick: Chapter Two? For the longest time that was my favorite of the three: it expanded on the world and action. The sets were varied, but it wasn’t just about stylized action. The cinematography and the editing were at the top of its game. Keanu Reeves wouldn’t need to ask Liam Neeson how to climb over a fence here. It was also the franchise’s first step into the more absurd, almost cartoonish elements that would find themselves escalated as the franchise continued: specifically the custom tailored suits that stopped bullets. This marked John Wick 2 as one of the few movies that allowed the main character to be shot many times and still live, uninjured, but it was also the franchises first step towards a very specific and silly style of combat the centered around using your suit jacket as a shield.
John Wick: Chapter Three – Parabellum, the only Wick film with a subtitle? That was just ridiculous. There was a part of the movie where John asks where he could find someone and he was told to go out into the desert and then just keep walking until he passed out. And he did that. And it worked. Also, now the bad guys have even better armor that stops all regular bullets. There’s a whole action scene that could have been cut and the story would’ve have been affected. John spends a minute assembling a gun just to shoot one bad guy. I didn’t care for this one so much.
John Wick 2 and 3 both ended on cliffhangers, and the fourth film only sort of picks up from where the third one leaves off. The ending of the third film seemed to explicitly state that John and the Bowery King (expertly played by Laurence Fishburne) were going to be teaming up against the High Table, only for the King to largely be sidelined into the role of tailored suit delivery. Instead, Wick goes on a path of violence across the world in order to figure out who’s hunting him, and how he could get off the assassins most wanted list.
The story isn’t that much of a priority here, possibly less so than in the previous films, with extended action scenes that at their best are incredible works of cinematography that other action movies should look to for inspiration. There’s the simple stuff at first: this is a movie that’s happy to just point the camera at the action and film it, unlike the countless films that prefer to shake the camera around as if the film was produced in the middle of an earthquake, edited by goldfish, but there’s much more to it than that. There’s a focus on variety in its choreography and the set pieces and stunts. One scene in particular features a camera that shifts upward into a tracking oner that showcases the precision in the craft.
At its worst John Wick 4 stops behaving like a story that’s being told, unrestrained by the size of its budget. An early fight in a hotel goes on for far too long as replacement goons replace the replacement goons that other goons had already replaced. A car chase goes on and on, as more and more barely seen bad guys are killed off, while the story and the characters are frozen in place, unwilling to move until the next round of extraneous villains are defeated.
The character dynamic in the movie was actually pretty well done. On one end there’s the Marquee (Bill Skarsgard is amazing as expected), the leader of the hunt for Wick. He has the entire might of the High Table at his disposal, along with retired assassin Caine, and a newcomer called only by his alias: The Tracker.
Caine, played by Donnie Yen in his second major role as a blind swordsman, is blackmailed into hunting Wick. The Tracker, played by Shamier Anderson, is in it for the money, with his eyes on both Wick and the prize. It results in a chase that makes for a surprisingly strong dynamic between the three characters, both while fighting and while not, and when more than one of them is on screen everything becomes more interesting in the process.
When there’s only one of them on screen? When it’s just one of them fighting bad guys? It’s then that the stakes seem to drop away, the tension evaporates. When John is fighting unnamed masked opponents, when Caine is fighting random guards, when the Tracker is fighting miscellaneous goons, there’s no illusion that any of them are in any danger, and when those fights drag on it feels like the story has stopped entirely to support excess.
I still feel that John Wick: Chapter Four is a really good action movie, with stuntwork that excels in every area and cinematography that’s creative while also incredibly functional. If it was at least twenty minutes shorter, at least, then it would have been great.
Young Frankenstein – Theatre Tallahassee Production – In Review
Out of all of Mel Brooks’ films (that I’ve seen, I still haven’t seen A History of the World Part One), Young Frankenstein has always been my least favorite. It’s not that it’s bad, though I would argue that it starts off slow and the story gets very disjointed as it gets closer to the end. I watched it again just a few days ago, just to see how much, if anything, was different from the film to the musical and it’s still good. I think one of the issues for me is that it’s parodying an era of film that I still haven’t gotten around to experiencing. I’ve watched the first thirty minutes of Dracula, with Bela Lugosi, the entirety of White Zombie, and that’s it.
The musical adaptation, recently performed over at Theatre Tallahassee, was a riot. The adaptation into musical theater added a lot of energy to the story, it upped the pace without cutting back on what was already good about the movie. It still got disjointed toward the end, just faster, but overall it was a fantastic production that was a lot of fun to watch.
If you’re not familiar with the film Young Frankenstein, it’s a Mel Brooks directed, Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder written movie spoofing the monster movies of old: the Frankensteins, the Draculas. It was released in 1974 but was still in black and white specifically keep it in line with the genre it was a parody of. It followed the character of Frederick Frankenstein (that’s pronounced Fronkensteen), who inherits his grandfather’s castle in Transylvania. All he wants to do is settle his accounts, but it’s not long before Igor (that’s pronounced Eye-gore), his laboratory assistant Inga, and the caretaker Frau Blucher (*cue whining horses*) rope him into reanimating another corpse back to life.
The musical follows the same journey to the point that it’s almost a perfect copy of the film (plus songs). The bookcase gag is there (done possibly a little better, as the stage performance couldn’t rely on camera tricks), the encounter with the hermit is still there, nearly every line of dialogue is reproduced in some fashion in the musical.
Some lines from the movie found themselves expanded upon and converted into whole songs. Frau Blucher’s (*cue whining horses*) line about Viktor Frankenstein being her boyfriend became a whole song. Inga enjoying a good roll in the hay, and inviting Fronkensteen for one, became a song in itself, and it occupied part of the journey to Castle Frankenstein. Elizabeth’s mid-coitus song got an extension, while Puttin’ on the Ritz tapped a shadow dancer for extra time on stage.
At the same time there were some songs that expanded on their initial lines in different directions, creating new meaning for the characters involved. Elizabeth’s insistence on not being touched, due to the precarious stability of her wardrobe, makeup and hair, extended itself to emphasize her and Fronkensteen’s lack of physical romance. The villagers got their own song to invite Fronkensteen to the neighborhood, replacing Inspector Kemp’s dart throwing scene. Eye-gor and Fronkensteen even got a duet of their own, celebrating their upcoming partnership.
Act One was the longest of the two acts, and somehow just kind of blazed by, a fast paced series of events that combined the fantastic energy and abilities of the cast with a surprisingly intricate production. The second act felt much in the same way to the film, in that the story became more disjointed and meandering.
In the movie once the creature got loose (for the first time) the next scene followed the creature onward. The creature confronted a little girl and a hermit before being caught. There’s the performance of Puttin’ on the Ritz, and then he escaped again, and was caught. Fronkensteen and Inga romance, Elizabeth came to town and romanced the creature (who escaped again), and then the creature was caught again. Fronkensteen performed another experiment, that wasn’t discussed at a single moment prior to, and the movie came to an end.
After the creature got loose in the musical the story instead skipped to Fronkensteen and Inga, as well as Elizabeth’s arrival. The creature only confronted the hermit before being caught, put on the Ritz, escaped again, romanced Elizabeth, and then was caught again to take part in Fronkensteen’s undisclosed experiment. The story, which felt like it moved so quickly through the first act, felt like it just was meandering from scene to scene in the second
Even with a second act that didn’t hit quite as hard the first, even with an unnecessary amount of song reprises that occur immediately after the performance of the song they’re reprising, the musical was a blast to see. This might be one of the most interesting productions I’ve seen at Theatre Tallahassee. There was a revolving backdrop for the castle, a revolving bookcase for the door to the lab, but it’s not just about the things that were built to appear in the background. When the carriage was making its way to Castle Frankenstein (pulled along by two members of the ensemble wearing horse masks), other members of the ensemble ran by carrying trees to give the illusion of distance being passed.
And the cast was fantastic, the whole lot of ‘em, from the ensemble that turned from scientists to trees and horses, to angry villagers and back to scientists again, to Ken Lambert’s take as young Frederick Fronkensteen. Laura Smith was a great Inga, alongside Jessica Catherine Fraser as Frau Blucher (*cue horse whining noises*), and David Stein’s performance as Eye-gor was a hoot. While Young Frankenstein may not be among my favorite Mel Brooks’ films, the Theatre Tallahassee production of its adapted musical was a blast.
The Good Life – A Short Story – Fiction
On the outside the mall store looked like a tourist agency: large panes of glass that gave view to the narrow but deep interior, TV monitors presenting people smiling in their various utopias. There was a set of automatic double doors beneath a sign that read: The Before After. The doors opened as Charles approached, and he stepped inside.
There were more televisions inside, but in here each set played the same video. There was a counter in the back of the room. A blonde woman was leaning against the countertop, tapping a touchscreen. She looked up from the screen and said, “Take a look around, but stop by if you have questions!”
Charles tried a smile and a nod.
She smiled and turned back to the screen.
He walked slowly through the shop, his eyes shifting from one television to the next. There was an image of a beach, the waves gently lapping against the shore. A woman in a thin bathing suit looked off to the water. The wind blew her hair to the side, revealing a green light that pulsed beneath her skin behind her ear. A voice over said:
“Imagine this moment
Capture this moment
Frame it in your mind
The perfect solitude
An eternity in peace
You deserve all of this
You deserve the good life
It might not be right now
But we can guarantee
You will have a good life
In that eternal moment
Right before the after.”
The image changed to a city, its tall buildings like mirrors to the morning sun. He stood and watched as the sun rose, its reflection shifting across the glass. As it set in the distance the lights of the city turned on and the night was aglow in bright neon.
The woman said, “Do you live in the city?”
“Not this part.”
“Where do you live?”
“A condo in South Upton.”
“You own?”
“I-I don’t have much, but it’s part of the little that I have.”
“Of course.”
He didn’t turn from the TV when he asked, “How does this work? What is the cost?”
She stepped back around the counter. “Nothing you’ll take with you. Uh, my name’s Naomi, and you are?”
“I’m Charles.”
“Nice to meet you. Charles, are you a religious man?”
“Not really.”
“What do you think happens after you die? Have you lived a good life, the kind free of guilt? Do you have any regrets? Do you think you will rest in peace?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve made mistakes.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know either, and the Before After can’t guarantee what awaits you will be the good afterlife, but we can, at least, give you an almost eternal moment, where all your problems will fade away, and you can slip away into whatever comes next with a clear conscience.”
“You mean death.”
“And the hereafter.”
He asked, “How does it work?”
She said, “Well, we install, and by we, I mean specialists with degrees in this sort of thing, they install a chip in your head. It mostly checks your heart rate and brain function. If the latter fails first, then the chip doesn’t work and your contract is void. If the former fails first, once you flatline the chip will turn on and in your mind you will live out your personal utopia.”
“While I die.”
“Before you pass on.”
He asked, “What if my heart stops, but someone brings me back? Gets it beating again?”
She said, “Then you’ll step away from your utopia. It’ll be-it’ll be there when you need it again.”
“Once my heart stops that can’t be for very long.”
“Time is relative. A few seconds will give you what will feel like hundreds of years in our custom-built simulations.”
Charles asked, “Just me and…”
“The AI populates some of it, your mind the rest.”
“Isn’t that just a dream?”
“Does it matter how real your last moments are, as much as it feels?”
“How much does it cost?”
Naomi said, “You mentioned owning your condo. I can set you up with one of our accountants and they can go over your assets and figure out the math with you, but I have no doubt you’ll be ready to enjoy the good life when it’s time.”
Charles asked, “When can I schedule an appointment?”
She smiled and said, “Let me see what’s available.” She turned to the touchscreen and pushed her hair back, and for a moment he could see a green light beneath her skin before her hair fell back into place.
*
He left the mall behind and drove past stores and homes and apartment complexes and warehouses, and as he drove there were more homes foreclosed, more stores boarded up, more warehouses abandoned. He parked his car in his personal compartment in the parking garage, and locked it up, and quickly walked the narrow halls that led to his cramped space on the forty seventh floor, a one bedroom condo that was barely more than a hundred square feet.
When he turned on the lights he could see the mail he had left on the table. Most of the letters were bills. He knew it without opening them, and he was sure he could pay at least half of them on time. He locked the door and sat in front of his TV and turned it on.
On the screen there was the image of an old man in a hospital bed, and behind him the cardiac display flatlined, accompanied by a single long tone. There was a green glow beneath his ear, and a soft smile on his face.
Greetings and salutations, folks 