Put out the light, and then put out the light.

Matt Sax & Eric Rosen's new musical Venice, on at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City through November 14, is one of the best new musicals I have seen in the past couple of years.  In brief, it is a post-apocalyptic hip hopera transposing Othello to the not-too-distant future.  In practice it is a wonderful modern play that provides a commentary on current sociopolitical issues, invoking Shakespearean tragedy while taking on enough of a life of its own to make the audience forget about the links to the Bard's original.

Sax, who wrote the music and co-wrote the lyrics, stars as the Clown MC, a Greek chorus of a man who has grown up in a city called Venice, having been born after the war which isolated Venice as a city on lockdown, under constant threat of terrorism.  A politician by the name of Venice (who, coincidentally, preaches a message of "Hope" and "Change") is seeking to save his city from a bleak future, and plans to do so by marrying Willow, who like Venice, is the child of a slain figure from the war of twenty years ago.  Unlike Venice, she grew up in the safe zone outside of the city.  So did Michael Victor, the young soldier whom Venice has recently promoted to be his second in command, incurring the jealousy of Markos, Venice's half-brother.  Markos and Venice share the same mother, a freedom fighter who died in a terrorist bombing, but Markos cannot let go of the fact that Venice is the product of a rape perpetrated by members of the enemy forces.

What follows is a tumultuous tale with all the dread of Hamlet, but with modern flourishes referencing the 24-hour news cycle and other specifically contemporary experiences.  The adaptation is faithful down to characters analogous to Roderigo and Emilia, though it takes liberties in how the story concludes.  Markos' and Venice's mother plays a role as important and affecting as a Shakespearean ghost.  The music, lyrics, and choreography are as compelling and exciting as the music in In the Heights, if more consistently dramatic in tone.  I was hooked from beginning to end while watching Venice, and I definitely think it is going to be a hit on Broadway when it makes it there.

If you can make it to a showing sometime in the next month, I highly recommend getting to Venice.

Summer in the City, Pt. IV (Books)

One of the upsides to a long commute is that every day you have a couple of hours to yourself. No internet, no television, just you and the commute. In cities with comprehensive public transit, you can read on your commute, which I am jealous of daily. In L.A., the best I can do is audiobooks. I'd never read an audiobook before, and surprisingly it didn't take much getting used to. They are expensive though, so I think I'm going to have to start going to the library, which I always forget exists. If only the library worked like Netflix. So here's some books I've read recently -- some audio, some not:

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
I bought this on a whim, because Me and You and Everyone We Know, the movie July wrote and starred in, was so interesting, that I wanted to see what she'd done in short stories. This one was an audiobook, and July's voice was surprisingly perfect for every character. Almost all of them melancholy, she transformed to suit different genders and age brackets and levels of sanity, without really putting on different voices. The stories are strange, some are a bit vulgar, and there is a sense of humor and hope even in the sad scenes she depicts.

Always Looking Up: Adventures of an Incurable Optimist by Michael J. Fox
I have loved Michael J. Fox for as long as I can remember. Family Ties, Teen Wolf, the Back to the Future trilogy. I had a crush on him before I knew what a crush was. In high school, I watched Spin City, and wept when he left the show to be replaced by Charlie Sheen. I read his first autobiography Lucky Man as if I were reading a loved one's diary. Always Looking Up is very different than Lucky Man, but a welcome sequel. It focuses primarily on Fox's advocacy for stem cell research and his work to find a cure for Parkinson's. It's an interesting look at his life's work, a calling clearly more fulfilling to him than acting. It's clear that celebrity is a big part of his life, but that he has completed the transition to who he will be remembered as, far more than an adorable Canadian teen actor. (Note: audiobook read by the author himself)

Blankets by Craig Thompson
A coworker recommended this graphic novel to me, and I really wish someone had told me about it when I was a few years younger. I definitely enjoyed Thomspon's skillfully illustrated memoir, and it would have really struck a chord with me when I was a teenager. As an autobiography, Thompson's story has been heard before. Lonely child grows up poor, in an oppressively religious home, and finds hope when he finds love as a teenager. But his salvation comes through his artwork, his break with Christianity, and his escape from Tinytown. But the drawings are so graceful, his pain and subsequent deliverance drip off the page.

Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
To date, the only other Bryson book I've read is his Australian travelogue In a Sunburned Country, and as I am currently reading his Shakespeare biography, I am very eager to continue reading his ouevre. I've previously read and enjoyed Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World, and while Bryson's book covers much of the same information, it approaches it in a different way. Bryson opens the tome by explaining that while the world doesn't need another Shakespeare biography, his collection does. It's clear that Bryson is this curious genius, setting out to know what he can about our world and its history. And it's fun to have him explain what he's learned. Which in the world of Shakespeare, isn't much. The audiobook is read by Bryson himself, and it's like attending a teatime lecture by a friendly professor.

Next up, I've got Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women on CD. I think for audiobooks, I'm going to be sticking to educational nonfiction and classics, as in all honesty, those would be the hardest for me to get through by reading the traditional method. Speaking of classics, I'm still reading Tolstoy's War and Peace which my boyfriend gave me for Christmas, and I am embarrassingly only about halfway through. I'm enjoying every bit of it, but it is simply not a page-turner.

lady business

Last semester I took a course that focused entirely on Jane Austen. We read her novels, her letters, her juvenilia, her unfinished works, her biographies. We read articles about her, watched adaptations of her novels, and we talked about her role in society. It was very interesting to see how at the end of the semester, after we had all become Austen scholars, all of the students' opinions of her had changed. Many people came into the class with the same stereotype as exists in the rest of society, which is that Jane Austen is only read by teenage girls and housewives looking for something light to read about romance. As it turns out, Austen is ranked among the greatest of British authors to have lasted since her lifetime. Readers' devotion to Austen's work and the mysterious minutiae of her life parallels that of Shakespeare addicts, and yet Austen maintains this less-than-flattering public image.

I recently saw a trailer (see bottom of post) for the upcoming Austen biopic entitled Becoming Jane. It stars Anne Hathaway and tells the story of "her true love" or some other such nonsense according to Mr. Voice-Over man. Here's the thing - we don't know a whole hell of a lot about Austen's romance by the sea. We know she rejected a proposal from an eligible suitor, which was a very bad financial decision for her to make. I am really curious how this movie is going to be all happy and romantic if the true story ended with her being a spinster writing letters to her spinster sister and being dependent on the kindness of her brothers. I mean, this is basically Shakespeare in Love but probably with less nudity.

Reportedly, Anne Hathaway does a good job and was coached into having a very appropriate dialectic accent for Austen's time and location. She is quite pretty, though, and Austen scholars will always point out how since her death, Austen has been 'prettified' by those promoting her. The best image there is of her is a sketch done by her sister in which she looks pointed, sour, and a little old. Her relatives revamped this portrait to be published with her works, making her look young, angelic, and quite lovely. Yet more changes are being made to her appearance nowadays, which continues to fly in the face of the feminist Austen tradition.

I guess I'm just curious to see how Bennetizing this film will be on the image and reputation of Austen herself. My hope is that some of what scholars know to be true will be left untainted by this movie, as it is being released in conjunction with a new biography of the same name, I believe. Maybe after it comes out I should have a marathon of all the literary biopics, from Shakespeare in Love to Wilde, Sylvia, The Hours (kinda), Capote, Miss Potter, and any others I can find.



P.S. I did a Google search of "literary biopics," and apparently Michelle Williams, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Evan Rachel Wood have been cast to play the Brontë sisters. Yowza.