Category Archives: Arts

Moving Things

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Back in 2009, Pawn saw a piece of art which was particularly moving. Days later, he brought friend L back to see it, and she, too, found it moving. Finally, on the last day of the visit, he met up with new friend A, and she convinced him to buy it. Shortly before leaving for the airport, Pawn returned one last time to the Crypt of Saint Pancras Church, and uttered the fateful sentence, “If you can figure out how to ship it to me for a reasonable price, I’ll take it.”

Short Stories in crate

It took several weeks, but the intrepid Claire Palfreyman, maker of said artwork, found a shipper worthy of the task, and Short Stories, Volume 1, was on its way across the Atlantic, safely ensconced in a custom made crate, protected from buffeting. Shortly thereafter it was installed in Pawn’s state-side offices, and he has shared an office with it ever since. Pawn LOVES this piece of art, and is proud to have it in his collection.

Short Stories, Volume One 2009

Also on that last day in London, May of 2009, was fortunate enough to meet Claire, creator of Short Stories and to have a brief chat with her. Upon returning this year, I reached out to see if she would be up for a visit, so that I could see her other work, and chat about art. Yes, and yes, and today that happened.

I hopped the train, first the tube to Paddington and then the Heathrow Connect to Hanwell, where Claire and Charlie, her Parson’s Jack Russell, met me and led me to her home. We chatted over tea in her lovely kitchen while she told me of her current craft projects, built around her We Make Here classes, “Workshops where you meet, eat and create” as her website touts. We discussed her ceramics work, of which Short Stories is but one component, and about how art moves life just as life moves art.

In her studio, Claire shared sketches of work both realised and not, as well as stories of the late, missing partner to Short Stories, and a photo of this poor, ceramic soul. I admired the maquettes of work planned but not (yet) made, and, back in the house, some beautifully realised works.

Some more chat, and a lovely stroll, with Charlie along, back to the station to wait for the train back to London. I treasure making friends abroad. Claire was an artist whose work I bought, but after an afternoon of chat and shared appreciation of the role art can play in our lives, I’d like to think she’s a friend, too.

Friendship, and thing which move us, is also at the heart of tonight’s entertainment, Port Authority, at the Southwark Playhouse Vault. If there is a theme to our shows, last night and tonight, is of hidden vaults, dank and beautiful in their decay. Last night it was Old Vic Tunnels, under Waterloo Station. Tonight it was the vaults under London Bridge Approach. Southwark Playhouse has been using this space for some time, so it is not as “fresh” as OVT, but OMG what an atmosphere!

Port Authority - Southwark Playhouse

The play, by Irish playwright Conor McPherson, is entirely constructed of long soliloquy, a McPherson trademark. It wasn’t that long ago that both X and I saw The Good Thief, presented by Theatre Gigante, with Malcolm Tulip in the sole role, making a 60 minute address to the audience seated around him in the pub, as though he were merely talking to friends and acquaintances. Tonight we watched as Dermot (Ardal O’Hanlon), Joe (John Rogan) and Kevin (Andrew Nolan) each, separately, and with no regard or even awareness for each other, told us of those with whom they were close, loved, idolized or ignored.

Kevin is a young man, telling us of his first attempt to fly the coop, and of the woman he loved, and the woman he shagged, and of the difficulty of maintaining that distinction, all whilst following his mate’s bands and drinking to blinding excess.

Joe is an old man, living in care, who has a secret, well almost a secret, with which he has lived for over 40 years. He knows he is near the end of his allotment, and he knows his God will judge him (He knows), but he has a totem now, a keepsake, which speaks to him of a road not taken.

Dermot is a likeable buffoon, a poor, pitiable man whose life takes an unexpected turn, and then doubles back to leave him just where he was. His life has been full of these types of turns, but he hasn’t even realised it until he finds his head falling, falling into…

Well then, that would be giving it all away, wouldn’t it? No, the text is too good, the acting too real, the space too perfect and the production too effing well done. Go see it yourself!

Spots, Shops and Ships

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Lower Marsh is a short little street along the southern side of Waterloo Station in Lambeth North. The street is anchored at each end by a Gregg’s Bakery, which seem to proliferate here like Starbucks does… everywhere. The entire north side of the street has patches marked out on it which are rented by street vendors of all sorts.

When we first got here, not knowing which flat to ring, and having no signal for our mobile phones, a gent, Ian, staffing the Wallabooks stall across the path from our door, offered to call for us, and has been a friendly face on the street ever since. There is food of all kinds – Mexican, Moroccan, Indian, etc. – as well as clothes, linens, miscellany. Every day the vendors start setting up early, many of the food vendors actually cook in the stall, having brought raw ingredients, or those slightly prepped. There are grocers set up at each end, near the Gregg’s shops.

We chose, today, to head over to Tate Modern for Yayoi Kusama. We walked over to Southwark along Southbank and Bankside, passed the tourist shrines of The Clink and The Golden Hinde. Tate Modern is in an old power plant (arts centres are a common re-use of these facilities) looming large on Southbank across from St. Paul’s majestic presence.

The show itself was a bit of a disappointment. We knew little about Kusama going in, but the Guardian had raved about the show, so we took it on faith. In brief, her work is compulsive, obsessive, derivative and in some ways exploitative. Kusama herself suffers from mental illness, and has most of her adult life. Inspired by the Pop-Art movement in the 1960s, she took her obsessive works, her “Infinity Net” series and parleyed that into fame through a series of very out, sexually expressive be-in type events: Kusama’s Self Obliteration.

Her sculptural works involve the application of thousands of fabric phalli attached to everything from row boats to couches, suitcases, tunics, shelves… Or macaroni, she liked to stick that to everything in sight, too. Hmm.

Her whole room installation pieces are the most successful in my eyes. She toyed with “Infinity Rooms” of various type, including one filled with typical living room objects – telly, couch, coffee table, lamps – yet covered with the little round day-glow stickers of the type used to tag goods in a tag sale. The whole room is then bathed in black-light. In another of the rooms, lights of varying colour are suspended in chains from the ceiling all around you, as you tread a reflective path between pools of water, surrounded by walls of mirror. The whole effect is quite pleasant and disorienting.

Well, enough of that. Famished, we headed next further down-river to Borough Market where our pockets were thoroughly picked by the various floggers of food all about. We sampled and bought with reckless abandon, coming back to the flat with a lovely Norfolk Hen, humongous baking potatoes, fresh cut sage, garlic, cheeses, prosciutto, cookies, and some of the most pungent licorice you will ever find. (“It’s okay, feel free to spit it out. I’ve seen that plenty.” said the candy seller to the woman who took a sample after I exclaimed how good it was.)

Back at the flat, X cooked up the hen, roasted a tater (one was big enough for two) and I dealt with salad and Brussels sprouts. Oh, what a feast had we! Yowser!!

A little wine with dinner, then off we stumbled down Lower Marsh street to the well hidden entrance to the Old Vic Tunnels, where we were to see The Sea Plays, by Eugene O’Neill. The tunnels are 30,000 square feet of abandoned rail tunnels, storage vaults, and drainage caverns underneath the Waterloo Station. Vast dank catacombs, sprawling for acres. We found a perch in the bar, on an old overstuffed, and waited patiently. Suddenly a team of firemen marched through the crowd. Not fire-engine and dalmatian type firemen, no the men who stoke the fire of a steam driven ship.

Soon, a bell, and we follow down a dark corridor towards the engine room of the ship. The air is acrid and dense with smoke. Bright orange and red light flashes from the great maw of the fireboxes as the men, streaked with sweat, shovel coal into them. The sharp clank-clank of the engine’s fills the air. We’re shepherded further into the ship, till we left gazing into the main hold, a calm night, just some fog in the air.

A sudden lurch signals the arrival of heavy weather, and the entire ship lunges first to one side then the other. Duct work swings down from the rafters as great washes of waves break over the sides of the ship, scuppering the gun’lls. We see a man washed into the hold, tumbling the vast distance from the deck ’till he disappears from view into the dark depths. There are the cries of his fellow sailors as they struggle to rescue him.

Finally, the storm subsides and we’re left in the fo’c’s’le, the men in their bunks, but one lies alone, on a stretcher. He is tended to by his friend and fellow seaman…

That is how dramatic our introduction was to O’Neill’s 1916 masterpiece, Bound East For Cardiff, and it never let up for a moment. The staging was nothing short of brilliant, the acting roundly good, the production values exceptional and the entire experience left the audience gasping for breath, holding onto our seats, and utterly absorbed into the experience of the show. Wow!

Cannot really pick out any particular performance here. It was a tight ensemble of 16 actors for the three pieces. The first act, in addition to Bound included In The Zone, a taught drama involving men on a merchant vessel trying to avoid U Boats during WWII. Act 2 brought The Long Voyage Home, set at port, where just-paid sailors try to find some R&R in a port of call, and some try to escape the sea at last.

One might ask, but what about the inevitable noise form the working station up above?  Well, for this show at least, it is an ever-present but not at all distracting or out of place sonic accompaniment.

We’ll be back to the Tunnels once more this trip. Silent Opera perform La Bohème next week, and we have tickets. Can’t wait!

Master Class

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Quick note here on Master Class with Tyne Daly at the Vaudeville Theatre on The Strand.  We scored two in stalls from TKTS in Leicester Square for half-price yesterday, and found ourselves in the same seats we had for Duet For One back in 2009.  Odd, that.

The show?  Well, a revival, so no new ground broken here.  Daly was stirring in her portrayal of Maria Callas, past her performing years and teaching a master class to aspiring young performers.  Daly’s performance is almost mask work, something which is alluded to in the script when she tells a student, “Always wear the mask.”  Playwright Terrance McNally tells us as much about how he sees opera as he does about Callas herself, and to be quite honest it is the scenes of instruction, Callas one-on-one with a student, which are the most enjoyable.

There are two long scenes of exposition — about her relationships with Ari Onassis or her first husband — which while quite revealing windows into her soul, slow the pace of the show and risk losing the audience.  The instruction, however, is the thing.  In the first act Callas is working with Sophia, a young soprano who lacks confidence.  What is striking about this scene is how much Diane Pilkington, under Stephen Wadsworth’s brilliant direction, is able to get out of the few lines she has.  Through the character of Callas, McNally channels his true love of opera.  He dissects, one after another, great aria, like so many Faberge eggs, revealing that inside, under all that surface beauty, lies all the basest of human emotions.  As he teases through the entrails of the wounded animals he finds inside, we see Sophia gain new appreciation for the words she has been singing but seldom understanding.  Tears don’t just fall, they spring from her face (and ours) and rain down her blouse.

All the singing performers were well within their range and beyond capable to their roles.  Garret Sorenson, as tenor Anthony Candolino (“Call me Tony!”) nearly brought down the house.  Soprano Naomi O’Connel, after nearly losing our sympathy with her obstreperous manner, finds her match with Lady Macbeth’s letter scene from Verdi’s opera.

All in all a good show.  Interesting that our first art exhibit was Big Art, in the form of Freud’s Portraits at NPG, and now our first show is Big Theatre on the West End.  Don’t expect much more of this — we have several more shows booked, but all are off or off-off West End.

Wiring For Freud

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The early bird gets the worm, or in this case the tickets. Following a typically fitful first-night’s sleep in travel quarters, Pawn was first to rise and after breaky of eggy~weggs and a rasher, with croissant and pot of forgettable coffee, was off blazing trails through Jubilee Park (home of the Eye) and across the footbridge to Trafalgar Square, the National Portrait Gallery and the same-day ticket queue for Lucian Freud Portraits, the enormous show (with some enormous portraits of some enormous bodies and some enormous egos) which just opened.

Lucian Freud - Evening in the studio - 1993

“…we tried going to that yesterday too! No luck. Our first ticket is 21 March… too many people in London.” wrote CP, yesterday, when I whined about a lack of tickets via the online ticket site.

Allow me a moment to rant about crap online ticket sites. This one, for NPG, is run by Ticketmaster, who with their monopoly and all you’d think would know how to run such a thing. But you’d be wrong. Their site is crap, and not at all easy to operate if you’re looking for an available ticket to a long-term event. One must keep drilling down into a date, and then back out again, with no opportunity to simply ask, “how `bout the next day?” Crap, utter, useless crap!

So with the gallery opening at 10, and the knowledge that they hold back tickets for same-day sales on-site, I head off and get on queue. Send a message to X, back at the flat (no comment here on her early rising record…). What I wrote was “Queuing for Freud: They’re saying 30 minutes but definitely tickets for today.” but what my inaptly named “smart phone” decided I meant was “Wiring for Freud…” Gotta love technology.

That was at 10:08. Turns out they had let people start queuing at 9:00, so I wasn’t exactly at the start of the queue, but by 10:33 I wrote, “close to counter. Will ask for 12:30 entrance time.” which would leave time for lunch prior to entering massive exhibit of massive portraits of massive people and massive egos. I’d been warned, “130 works! wow. Give yourself plenty of time for that one…” D wrote, jealous of my opportunity.

Lucian Freud - Nude with leg up - 1992

A few minutes later, tickets in hand, I strolled out into the BRIGHT SUNSHINE of Trafalgar Square and took my perch near the Fourth Plinth to wait for X to arrive fresh from her restorative ablutions. Lunch in a strange little diner (“MD’s where we don’t hide our ingredients behind a second slice of bread!”) and then we’re in, in amongst some of the largest canvases of some of the largest naked bodies you’ll ever see.

Lucian Freud - Benefits supervisor sleeping - 1995

Okay, in all seriousness, it was a fantastic show. While it’s easy to joke about Freud’s willingness – hell predilection – to paint large people, that’s really quite beyond the point. What Freud has taught us, perhaps more than any other portrait artist, at least in the 20th century, is how to see the human form for what it is. Freud’s portraits are almost entirely de-eroticized, lacking any prurient aspect and though stylized, fervently true. He will worry a face or a shoulder or… anything, to the point of nearly obscuring it beneath the many layers of paint, but he will pierce through to the core of that thing, and that person whose thing that is.

Lucian Freud - Naked girl with egg - 1980-81

Take women’s breasts, for example. Many painters (and photographers, sculptors, etc.) will pose their female subjects such that their breasts, if exposed, will be flattered, if not idealized. Freud, however, seems almost to strive for poses which show the breast in its most elastic, uncontrolled form. Pressed against the arm of a sofa, or flopped to the side, or cupped atop a sleeping subject’s arm. There is no romanticizing here, “Just paint it like I see it, “ one can almost hear him saying.

But the same fervour for authenticity carries over to all aspects of his portraiture – chins have waddles; foreheads, bony promontories; dimples, unflattering asymmetries; feet, bunions. Freud’s subjects, he tells us time and again, are normal people, just like us. When The Brigadier, 2003-4, sits for 200 hours for a portrait, Freud has him wear the same uniform he wore when he retired, some twenty years earlier after a victorious military campaign. An older man now, the uniform no longer fits as comfortably as it once did. The man cannot breath for these long, repeated sittings, so Freud suggests he unbutton the tunic. The result? The Brigadier’s paunch is prominent, it draws the eye, and what we see is not the idealized heroic figure, but the relaxed, retired and all too human man who lead others into battle and was brave or skilled or lucky enough to make it back in one piece so that twenty years later he could pose for this portrait looking like the relaxed, retired and slightly corpulent man that he has become.

Lucian Freud - The Brigadier - 2003-4

Freud has made us like this man, has found that part of ourselves, our everyman, within this man.

In his early work (which the exhibitors have thoughtfully but not rigidly arranged to make the most sense of an artist who’s work has matured as he has, not linearly but with parallel tracks, echoes forward and back, ripples which reflect off the mileposts of his own life) we see an artist who is working within constraints of the form as society understands it, before he begins to find his stride and his own true path. His wide-eyed portraits of the Girl in a dark jacket posed quite artificially, with unnaturally situated objects at once show him strain against the form of pose meets still life, yet also find new figurative language which suits him. He starts to break away in earnest with some self portraits, “Reflections” which are often truly that, from mirrors.

Lucian Freud - Girl in a dark jacket - 1947

By the time we get to the large commissioned and non-commissioned work for which he is best known, we are looking at iconic and iconoclastic work. There is no more Francis Bacon here, unless he chooses to show us that, there is no more of anyone else – just Freud and his models – even when the model is his dog, Eli.

Lucian Freud with Ria Kirby upon completion of Ria Naked Portrait - 2006-7

Something which merits mention is that until witnessed in person it is hard to appreciate just how much paint Freud slathers on to the canvas in his later work. In Ria Nude Portrait, 2007, the model’s right eye bulges out from the canvas so far she appears, under close examination, disfigured. Of course one doesn’t routinely view the great canvas up close and obliquely, so it may well go unnoticed. Faces, profound musculature, and genitalia are most likely to receive this treatment. I’ve mentioned already how de-eroticized Freud’s work is, and yet genitalia receive much attention under his brush. Women’s pubic areas are almost sculptural, three dimensional, in many of his works. Not surprising, perhaps, given his well earned reputation for prolific appetites, shall we say.

One last note, and then this essay shall close. Freud painted many self portraits, but his sense of reflection seems to go beyond this. When one considers the length of his sittings, into the hundreds of hours in many cases (some canvases took years) it’s easy to understand why he would make himself the subject so often, as he developed techniques or understanding. One thing which struck Pawn, however, is how often his own work figures in his work. He painted almost always in his studio, and often the studio itself is as much a subject as his models. It is not at all unusual to see one or more earlier, or incomplete canvases in a piece. For example, Two Men in the Studio, 1987-9, prominently features Standing by the Rags, 1988-9, made more interesting by the fact that the included painting was not started when the including work was.

Lucian Freud - Two men in the Studio - 1987-89

The Rags, of the latter pieces title, are well featured in both. Freud used recycled hotel linens for his paint rags, a fact which the unobtrusive but helpful exhibit text points out to us.

Lucian Freud Portraits is a exemplary exhibition, and well worthy of the crowds and praise it is thus far receiving. National Portrait Gallery have done themselves proud, and we were much the happier for having seen it.

If Blogs Could Speak

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Further ruminations from the City of Angels.

Thursday 19 January, wandered into The Library Bar around 6:00 or so and found only one seat at the bar. Figured we’d, AofSD and I, manage by trading off on sitting. Shortly, young man, about 30, sitting next to us starts to chat. Nice enough guy, insurance underwriter with frighteningly large international conglomerate. We end up chatting with him for hours, downing martinis (moi) and margaritas (A). After 3 rounds, time for Pawn to drift back to relative safety of hotel.

AofSD stays on with young turk, who by this time has revealed himself to be on the cusp of his 32nd B-day, and to share A’s interest in working out and gourmet cuisine. They muster the where-with-all to stumble over to Ilan‘s where three courses ensue, and further libations, and then to a tequilla bar for even more. AofSD stumbles in to room at 11:15 cursing the hangover he is sure will come.

The morning finds us both working, briefly, before checking out and heading off to BLD for brunch. Traditional eggs Benedict for A and a steak and burgandy Benedict for me. Good, but not as exciting as last night’s turk would have had us believe.

I had planned to try to take in Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2012, at the Barker Hanger in Santa Monica. Turns out tickets were $18 each, plus $13 for parking, and we only had a couple of hours. Hardly seemed worth it, so we headed to the Getty instead. More of Pacific Standard Time, the Southern California joint effort wherein some 60+ galleries and museums reflect on the regional art scene from the mid 70s to the late 80s. While not impressed by the showing at Geffen Collection @ MoCA yesterday, we give it another shot.

The Getty is a spectacular institution, and worth a visit if only for the breath taking architecture and setting. The collection itself is large and comprehensive. We only had time for a few galleries, and largely enjoyed what we saw. The room reconstructions from 17th and 18th century France, etc., were fabulous.  Particularly enjoyed the Narrative Inventions In Photography exhibit

Finally, A needed to return to SD, and so dropped Pawn at the LAX Hilton for the Scale 10x conference. After checking in, wandered down to the exhibit hall to find my firm’s booth. Yikes! I’m very unhappy with the booth design — the banners and such. It’s an embarrassment, like a Monty Hall fever dream or something. The only way I can think of to salvage it is to just explain to people that while we have good tech, our marketing guy has never recovered from a bad acid trip in 1978.

Colleagues want to take an excursion to Venice Beach, so off we go. It was like walking through the Internet; everyone yelling for you to watch them fly their freak flag and applaud their appalling lack of talent, vision, style, ideas… as if blogs could speak.

The other day, Pawn’s friend AofSD asked, reflectively, what comes after jaded. I told him I didn’t know, but I figure that an entire generation of hipsters has ruined their lives by rushing to embrace jaded indifference a good twenty years before they were really due it. Now they don’t even have that to look forward to.

Live from La La Land

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Okay, quick, when were you first in Los Angeles?

I said quick.

For me, moi, Pawn, it’s right now. Got here yesterday at noon PST and already feeling like it’s all just so much already done.

Business, that’s why. Came here for business, Scale 10x. That’s Southern California Linux Expo, 10th year.

Excitement incarnate, right?

Okay, it’s more than that. Pawn loves art, LA has lots of art, and I haven’t seen it all. So, called my old neighbor A from SD and asked if he’d like to join me for a little pre-conference R&R in the belly of the beast. Sure thing, says AofSD and off we go. He picks me up at the airport, and it starts.

First stop is food, Cafe Midi. I awoke at 3:30 CST, arose at 5:30 after trying too hard to sleep some more, and by the time we roll up to the restaurant (148 S. La Brea) it’s almost 2:00 PST. I have Dover Sole and AofSD has a breakfast burrito. I am soon to learn that this is what most Californians have for at least one meal per day; a wad of food you can hold in one hand whilst completing a phone call with the other and pretending you’re carrying on a conversation with your old friend across the table. At least that’s how it feels.

Don’t tell me I’m petty. I’ll walk out on you.

So here I am sitting in a Westin Bonventura hotel room, 23rd floor, with a view of the HOLLYWOOD sign (yes, really), watching Californication on in-room cable, and reflecting on two days of deep immersion. Let me tell you how it works.

  1. Lots of art, so lots of eyeball time.LA has always harbored a real, deep, inferiority complex vis-a-vis the elite, East Coast, New York art scene. This triggered a volcanic uprising about 50 years ago, and no looking back since. Lots of money flows through the hands of the wealth centers here – Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Asian Trade, etc. – and they have made their mark. There is so much money layed down on art here it almost makes you forget that Dubai exists… but it still does.
  2. Deep cultural diversity.New York may be the most cosmopolitan city in the US, but has nothing on LA when it comes to the actual diversity of the sitting population. In downtown LA one can walk a few blocks and cruise from one culture’s deepest, darkest, most embarrassing vices and most shameful fashion crimes, and right into another’s. Korea, Japan, China, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Vietnam… etc. You get the idea. There’s a few square mile area in the fashion district that is like the UN of bad attire.
  3. In NY, people want you to love them, want you to appreciate how hard they work to live, to actually live, in their city, but they don’t think you’re really up to the task. In LA, they just assume you appreciate it, they are so glad you do, and they will only judge you for your lack of physical discipline, diet, tanning habits… I’ll take New York, if you get me.

Hank Moody is no hero, and as such is a perfect role model for a 21st century LA.

Here’s what’s good and bad in LA. Consider this a capsule review which I have carefully crafted to save you the trouble of traveling here yourself.

  • Vivian Maier at Merry Karnowsky Gallery (170 S. La Brea) is da bomb!Vivian Maier has been a favorite of Pawn since John Maloof first started photo-blogging about her. I won’t go into her whole story here, but enough to say that she was a French immigrant to New York, then Chicago, who took to street photography when not working her day job as a nanny. Maloof found her (mostly undeveloped) film in a storage locker liquidation sale while she was in her last year of life in a nursing home. She never showed or sold her work in life, but Maloof has made a minor empire out of the Art Horde she left behind.

  • Naked Hollywood: Weegee In Los Angeles, at MoCA Grand Avenue is hype in its original, unadulterated form.

    Pawn has long known of and appreciated Weegee for his groundbreaking work in crime photography in New York, but knew little of his West Coast work in LA. Fear not, MoCA is here to help. Naked Hollywood is an unapologetic look at this most unabashed, self-promoting, cartoonish character. With hundreds of prints, dozens of original magazines, scores of other photographer’s shots of Weegee… well, it’s just a cornucopia of glamor-hype. Well worth the effort to see it all, and such a great counterpoint to Vivian Maier’s guileless work.

  • Under The Big Black Sun (California Art 1974-1981), at Geffen Contemporary at MoCA is not at all my taste.I don’t know, color me clueless, but I just saw so much self indulgent work in this exhibit that it makes me hope very much that there is really a lot more that California has to offer us from this era than what I saw. There was the occasional bright spot, but so much of this was video-cum-performance-cum-found-cum-documentatary-cum-family-portrait… Jeeze, give me a break! There was more ego-feeding nonsense here than you can shake a very long stick at. Not worth the ten block walk from MoCA Grand Ave. Give it a pass!

Here’s some photos from today’s excursion. Hope you enjoy!

Filming a commercial at Pershing Plaza

 

Window display in Fashion District

Window display in Fashion District

Store front in Fashion District

Sign in Fashion District

Variations on a theme

Sleek and moderne...

So many shops, so little time...

...and one thing leads to another.

Syndey Police Photos

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Eugenia Falleni, alias Harry Crawford, special photograph number 234

Eugenia Falleni, alias Harry Crawford, special photograph number 234

My favorite photo blog site, Heading East, today featured some photos from the collection of the Sydney Police Department.  It seems the Home Office has an archive site which is open to browsing, download, etc.  Raul Gutierrez of Heading East writes:

I finally dug through the original archive myself at the The Historic Houses Trust site today. It’s well worth the visit. The site allows download of full resolution versions of the images and provides context. Many of the descriptions are like that famous 6 word Hemingway short, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

“Child unknown, found wandering at large.”

“Eugenia Falleni, alias Harry Crawford, special photograph number 234”

“Nudist colony surveillance.”

“Film in stolen camera.”

The image above is my favorite, so far, from Raul’s list:
Eugenia Falleni, alias Harry Crawford, special photograph number 234, Central Police Station Sydney, 1920.

Description: Special Photograph no. 234. When ‘Harry Leon Crawford’, hotel cleaner of Stanmore was arrested and charged with wife murder he was revealed to be in fact Eugeni Falleni, a woman and mother, who had been passing as a man since 1899. In 1914, as ‘Harry Crawford’, Falleni had married the widow Annie Birkett. Three years later, shortly after she announced to a relative that she had found out ‘something amazing about Harry’, Birkett disappeared. Crawford told neighbours that she had run off with a plumber. In 1919 Birkett’s young son, who had remained in Crawford’s custody, told an aunt of attempts made on his life by his drunken stepfather. The aunt contacted police. A charred body which had been found in Lane Cove in 1917 was belatedly identified as Birkett’s. ‘Crawford’s’ astonished second wife, when finally convinced of Falleni’s true gender remarked, “I always wondered why he was so painfully shy …”
The photograph shown here shows Falleni in male clothing, probably on the day of her arrest. The negative was found in a paper sleeve inscribed ‘Falleni Man/Woman’. It is also possible that Falleni was made to dress in a man’s suit for the photograph.

Hay Fever in May

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Hay Fever, Noël Coward’s comedy of bad manners, swept into the Mainstage Theatre of the UWM Peck School of the Arts tonight, and brought riotous results.

It’s a summer’s day on an English country estate in the Berkshires, and each member of the Bliss household has decided to invite their secret paramour down from London for the weekend. Only thing is, none of them, mother Judith, former leading lady of the London Stage, nor father David, successful novelist, Simon, trouble making son nor Sorel, ever-romantic daughter, has let on to anyone else their plans.

To say more would give away the most peculiar entertainments of this decidedly outlandish family.

This production, cleverly directed by Rebecca Holderness, with classic Art Deco setting by Kurt Sharp, provides the perfect playpen for this raucous family and their sometimes witty, sometimes outrageous, pursuits. Pamela Rehberg’s costumes evoke the bygone era of the Roaring Twenties.

Holderness has done a brilliant job of interpreting this period classic for a modern audience. Without altering dialog, she worked with this fine cast (2/3rds of whom are graduating seniors), finding their way into characters from another time, understanding the sensibility behind the humor, and making the language speak clearly to us. Their first rehearsal of the script was at Ten Chimneys, the Genesee Depot estate of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, contemporaries and colleagues of Coward. In this setting, and through personal selections of inspiring totems from that era – photographs, music, etc. – the cast crafted their characters.

The cast and crew of the upcoming production of “Hay Fever” had their first read-through at the renowned Ten Chimneys.

A feature of this production rarely seen by Milwaukee audiences is the inclusion of “Knee Plays.” These action filled intervals, interstitial skits, allow the full thrust stage to be redressed between each of the three acts by the performers themselves, always in character, and often providing us further insight into them and their motivations. Of particular note in this regard is Brittany Lee McDonald in the uncredited, walk-on role of Amy, the scullery maid nursing a toothache.  She brings a refreshing insouciance to these interstices.

Other stand-out performance nods to Toni Martin, whose sheer force of will powers the towering character of Judith Bliss, undoubtedly the star of this family, and on the flip side, Evan Koepnick, whose sweet and subtle reading of Sandy Tyrell, Judith’s romantic notion, is a delight for his meek ignorance in the face of daunting excess.

Tonight’s performance brought one wholly unexpected piece of theatrical gold which is unlikely to be repeated. Near the end of the second act, Lineve Thurman, as Jackie Coryton, plops down dejectedly onto the divan, which one can only assume had been rushed to the stage, as it audibly cracked. Rather than being thrown by this, Thurman took it for an extra laugh, and worked it into the rest of her scene. This is the sort of skill that no class can teach, and Thurman carried the night with it.

New York – 18 April 2010 – Creditors

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This post is late, but what the heck.  The subject is the Sunday matinée of The Creditors, the August Strindberg psychodrama at BAM’s Harvey Theatre in Brooklyn.  Directed by Alan Rickman, this Donmar Warehouse production has just come over from London, where it was warmly received.  Rickman, in a New York Times article referred to the show as “Three characters dragged through a hedge backwards in 90 minutes,” and that is indeed an apt description.

Set in a seaside resort in Norway, this tense drama focuses on one woman, Tekla, and two men, Adolph, her younger husband and Gustav, a mysterious stranger also staying at the resort.  At the open of this roughly 90 minute show (no intermission, although it feels like 3 acts) we find Adolph, a self absorbed man who fancies himself an artist.  He is in conversation with Gustav, a new acquaintance whom he has just met at the resort — the same resort where, some years past, he met the older, married Tekla, who threw over her first husband for the young and bright Adolph.  The Adolph we meet now seems neither bright nor to possess any self assurance.  He prevails upon the older, and quite self-assured Gustav for advice.

Gustav claims to have diagnosed in Adolph incipient epilepsy and prescribes abstinence as the only treatment.  Though at first protesting, Adolph accepts this once Gustav succeeds in making him question both the love of his wife and the solidity of his marriage.  Gustav is vicious and hateful in his views on women, and we can only imagine that he has had a bad time of it with the fairer sex, or, as Gustav would have it, “A fat boy with overdeveloped breasts, that’s what you see. Basically, a badly made youth. A child who’s somehow managed to shoot up to adult height without growing any muscle—a chronic anaemic who haemorrhages regularly thirteen times a year.”

Gustav seems quite certain that Tekla is flirting with younger men — on the ferry, in town, at the resort — he seems to know exactly what is going on even though he admits to not having left the resort where they all are staying.  It isn’t long before we in the audience start to suspect the true motivation behind Gustav’s actions, but I shan’t spill that here.

By the end of this first scene, Gustav has convinced Adolph that Tekla is playing him for the fool, and that he need only lay in wait for proof.  This Adolph does, as Tekla returns from her outing.  Soon she is engaged in a familiar pas da duex with Gustav, unaware that Adolph is right outside the door listening to it all.

“Creditors” the title is explained a couple of times in a sort of massive transactional-analysis manner by both Gustav and Tekla in separate scenes.  We owe those we have wronged, and they may sometime collect from us.  This show takes this idea to the extreme as we see three players, or are they three pieces, push each other’s buttons and pull each other’s strings in fits and outbursts of painful jealousy and retribution.  The final scene, tho the most contrived of the script, is none-the-less believable, and most painful indeed.

The cast, Anna Chancellor as Tekla, Tom Burke as Adolph and Owen Teale as Gustav, are all as fine as one could wish for in this taught production.  Rickman’s direction is spot-on, the dialog utterly natural and unforced, no matter how banal or vicious it may be.  The set, by Ben Stones, is light and airy and feels just right for the action and setting.  I’ve seen Donmar in their London home, and can tell that this set was built for that thrust stage.  Plopped down here, in the Harvey’s deeper proscenium, it still works just fine.  Costumes by Fotini Dimou, lighting by Howard Harrison and music and sound by Adam Cork round out the technical credits.  And to their credit, in the finest tradition of current London standards, their pure naturalism and adherence to history serve to make them fall from view.  We see the characters and the story, not the trappings of theatre.

This was a great day at the theatre, and Rickman has succeeded in his goal of not just getting out of the way of his performers, but of getting them out of their own way.  This not only lets the script shine through, but more importantly lets it do so as compellingly believably as possible.

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