| 10 October 2009
Imagine. John Lennon would have turned 69 on Oct. 9.
Would he still be writing songs? Would he again curl up with Yoko Ono, nude, for a retrospective of the Two Virgins album cover? Would he still live in Palm Beach? Would The Beatles have put aside their differences and staged a worldwide farewell tour? Maybe the Nobel Peace Prize?
With four hollow-point bullets in the waning hours of Dec. 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman made certain he wouldn’t
But in Delray Beach on Friday, Oct. 9, fans young and old gathered at Old School Square to celebrate his birthday among an exhibit of photos, drawings and memorabilia that recalled a seminal event in the late icon’s life: the Montreal Bed-in of 1969.
Give Peace a Chance, a multimedia examination of the bed-in, and by extension The Beatles, that wraps up Sunday, was conceived by Joan Athey and based on her book, Give Peace a Chance: John & Yoko’s Bed-in for Peace. Athey, a former Canadian Broadcasting staffer, was inspired by photographer Gerry Deiter, who was assigned by Life magazine to cover the bed-in. He was the only journalist present for all eight days. Life, however, killed the story to make room for escalating events in Vietnam and the pictures remained closeted until Athey befriended Deiter three decades later.
There’s John and Yoko curled up together on the stark white bed, John reading Lao Tzu as Yoko nestles on his shoulder, John strumming passionately on his guitar. Hey, isn’t that Tommy Smothers (not so dumb)? Timothy Leary! Dick Gregory. Cartoonist Al Capp, who refused to sing along on Give Peace a Chance. Music writer Nat Hentoff and Crawdaddy founder Paul Williams. The essay Athey convinced Williams to contribute to her book -- Doing the Bed-in for Peace -- was his last work ever. It’s included in the exhibit.
“The purpose is to show people that this isn’t a piece of dead history,” Athey said. “It’s as important now as it was then.”
The exhibit is attracting lots of families, Athey said, “multi-generations, kids who are becoming caregivers for their parents.” But the Beatles and Lennon are timeless, so age doesn’t matter. It doesn’t hurt that the new remastered albums were just released.
In a way, the exhibit, like the bed-in, is part history, part performance art and part participatory art. Local artists have painted Beatles-inspired murals. A collection of guitars, exact replicas of those played by Lennon, are on display. In one corner is a “Peace Tree,” a Japanese tradition. Actually a large stepladder, children covered it with statements of peace they’d written. The notes will be sent to the Imagine Peace Tower, a light sculpture created by Ono in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Today Lennon is revered, almost deified. In the late ‘60s, he was vilified, artistically for taking up with Yoko and taking apart The Beatles, and politically for his anti-Vietnam War stand. He and Ono married in March 1969 and honeymooned with a weeklong “bed-in” for peace in the Amsterdam Hilton. The world watched with mixed reaction, but John and Yoko considered it a success and planned another for New York in May.
The Montreal bed-in lasted eight days. (Photo by Gerry Deiter: Joan Athey/Peaceworks Now)
The Nixon administration, however, was not impressed. Citing Lennon’s previous conviction for marijuana possession, the Immigration and Naturalization Service banned his entry into the country. After an abortive first attempt in Nassau (too hot!), they began their eight-day week in Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel on May 26.
The exhibit takes on a slightly more personal tone for some because Lennon lived here, albeit briefly.
In January 1980, John and Yoko bought El Solano for $725,000. Addison Mizner built the magnificent home to be his personal residence, then sold it to Harold Vanderbilt. Later occupants included Jock McLean, who owned The Washington Post and the Hope Diamond, and his wife Brownie. After Jock died, she decided the 13,730-square-foot house was too big. She moved across Lake Worth to Trump Plaza and rented it out, among others to Lennon and to another who used the estate as background for a magazine photo shoot: Hustler’s Larry Flynt.
Strange mix, Lennon and Palm Beach. The town is home to conservative captains of commerce, hawks, wheeler-dealers, not exactly a haven for defenders of human rights. But the house was a good investment, and John must have enjoyed it. Compared to the paparazzi and fan adulation of New York, Palm Beach was downright desolate.
One morning Yoko woke up to find thousands of gardenia blossoms strewn about the house. John had ordered all he could find, some even from Texas, to surprise her on her birthday. Yoko later sold the house for more than $3 million. (Today it’s valued at $18.5 million.)
Yoko is 76. She’s still busy, still comes to Florida -- Palm Beach Gardens last year, Naples this year -- to sell prints of John’s artwork and keep the flame burning. She played a role in the remastering of the Beatles albums.
John Lennon was larger than life. One Internet site says he stood 5-11 and weighed 159 pounds. As he picked out cartons of Haagen-Dazs in Sunrise Health Foods in Palm Beach in the spring of 1980, he appeared closer to 5-8 and gaunt, maybe 130 pounds. With his unassuming demeanor and long ponytail, he could have been some ascetic who lived in one of the cheap rentals near the post office. Only with the sighting of Yoko browsing the shelves was the connection made.
They cleaned out the ice cream freezer, stacking the cartons on the small checkout counter, said thank you and with two bodyguards walked out.
“They love Haagen-Dazs,” a clerk said. “They’re very nice, very quiet.”
That autumn he was dead.
Thom Smith is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
JOHN LENNON AND YOKO ONO'S BED-IN FOR PEACE features 33 large-format photos by Life lensman Gerry Deiter from the Beatle couple's eight-day anti-war demonstration at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal in 1969. Through Sunday at the Cornell Museum, Old School Square, Delray Beach. Open 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Donation of $2 requested. Call 243-7922 or visit www.oldschool.org for more information.
| 09 October 2009
The cast of Sunday in the Park With George, in rehearsal.
Clive Cholerton, the new artistic director of the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton, is nothing if not a risk taker.
If the first two shows he’s produced – including the world premiere of an extraordinary melding of dance and song called Vices: A Love Story – didn’t make that point, his new one surely does: a concert version of Sunday in the Park With George, Stephen Sondheim’s 1984 study of the life of post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat.
This is the first time this show, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1985, has been produced in any form in South Florida. And while the unstaged version does leave one wishing for more visuals, this Caldwell Sondheim has to be counted a success. It has a standout performance from Wayne LeGette as the single-minded, work-obsessed Seurat, and the rest of the 14-person cast ably handles Sondheim’s tricky melodies and lyrics (without once getting tongue-tied).
That cast includes a talented group of South Florida actors, including Brian Minyard as Jules; his wife, Melissa Minyard, a Broadway actress, in the lead role of Dot, Seurat’s mistress; and Kim Cozort, a multiple Carbonell Award winner, as the nurse.
The concert series allows for the focus to be on the lyrics and music and there is only minimal staging, scenery and costumes, to keep production costs down. The actors work “on book,” meaning they are reading the score and dialogue, and they are accompanied only by pianist Jon Rose rather than an orchestra. It may seem like a dress rehearsal or recital, because all the actors are dressed in black, no small irony in a show concerned about a painter obsessed with color intensity, interaction, juxtaposition and light.
On Broadway, where it was directed by James Lapine, one of the highlights of the show was the pointillist lighting, and most memorable of all was the creation of a living tableau in which Seurat’s best-known painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, came to life.
So it is somewhat of a contradiction that this once visually oriented production has been pared down exclusively to its auditory sense. Granting that this production is a minimalist concert version, I couldn’t help but wonder if just the suggestion of scenery or some period parasols or dashes of pointillist colors wouldn’t enliven the set. There were large slides of Seurat’s paintings projected onto a screen as a backdrop to the actors, but perhaps more could be done.
Even more interesting, perhaps, would be if the actors interacted more while on stage. Mostly, they were aligned in a long row of chairs, stepping forward only when interacting with Seurat.
The story revolves around Seurat and his passion for painting, the personal toll it takes on him, his relationship with Dot and the assorted visitors in the park, and his search for new ways to express his art. His alienation and desire for connection are all evident in the production, as are his longing to be with Dot, despite her frustrations with his intense focus on his artwork.
Seurat’s pointillist theories were rejected by the Impressionists, and as the show makes mention, his colleagues Sisely and Renoir pulled out in protest from the Paris International Exposition in 1900. But in La Grand Jatte, painted in 1884-86, Seurat took a scientific approach to applying color theory to painting, resulting in a new artistic language and altering the direction of modern art.
It must be LeGette’s French heritage that makes him such a perfect Georges Seurat, and it doesn’t hurt that he bears a resemblance to the young Mandy Patinkin, who starred in the 1984 Broadway production with Bernadette Peters. LeGette effortlessly inhabits the character of a driven artist. His comedic ability and talent are evident in The Day Off, where he takes on the personalities of the dogs in the painting, barking, ruffing, sniffing and snorting. His voice and presence carry the show and cast.
Other performances of note include Elizabeth Dimon in the dual role of Old Lady/Blair Daniels, who possesses an extraordinary voice, and Laura Turnbull, another Carbonell winner who shines as Yvonne in the first act. Bruce Linser puts in a good effort and passable German accent as the coachman Franz. And a good word needs to be put in for Jon Rose, who proved to be a very adept keyboardist.
One of the most haunting numbers of the evening was the song, Beautiful, the duet sung by Dimon, whose rich voice lent clarity and resonance, and LeGette, whose deep baritone provided a counterpoint of emotional depth.
The opening-night house at the Caldwell was large if not full, but it was enthusiastic, and gave the cast a standing ovation.
To paraphrase a lyric from the show -- “It’s certainly fine for Sunday” – it’s certainly fine for me. I’m one of those people who finds Sondheim’s music a little remote, but while I didn’t leave the theatre humming, I did leave with more than I came with. And that’s what good theater should do.
Jan Engoren is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE will be presented four more times: 8 p.m. tonight, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday, at the Count de Hoernle Theatre in Boca Raton, with tickets ranging from $25-$35. They are available by calling (561) 241-7432 or (877) 245-7432, or by ordering online at www.caldwelltheatre.com. Future Broadway Concert Series performances will include Ragtime, The Most Happy Fella and City of Angels.
| 09 October 2009
I Love Lennon, by Sharon Koskoff.
Art: Beatle John Lennon would have turned 69 today, and at Old School Square in Delray Beach, artist and author Sharon Koskoff has been creating several large-scale murals to coincide with the Cornell Museum's exhibit of Gerry Deiter photographs from Lennon and wife Yoko Ono's legendary bed-in for peace in Montreal in 1969. Koskoff's 42-inch-by-120-inch painting, I Love Lennon, will be auctioned tonight at 9 p.m., two hours after the beginning of a Lennon birthday bash that will feature live music, a bed-in "re-creation" with look-alike actors, and the singing of Give Peace a Chance. Admission to the event and exhibit is $5. The Old School Square Cultural Arts Center is located at 51 N. Swinton Ave. in Delray Beach. For more information call (561) 243-7922.
Grant Strawcutter at work recently in Pietrasanta, Italy.jpg
Grant Strawcutter's love of art began in elementary school, but first he had a career as an award-winning designer of safe playgrounds. He sold his company in 1996 and since then the Fort Lauderdale-based sculptor has been pursuing his dream of being an artist. On Saturday, West Palm Beach's Palm Gallery will feature some of Strawcutter's work, which he says is inspired by the work of great masters such as Michelangelo and Bernini. Strawcutter will be at the opening reception Saturda from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Palm Gallery is located at 6758 North Military Trail in West Palm Beach. For more information, call (561) 494-2330.
Beach Overlook, Lantana Beach, by Robert Swinson.
Three dramatically different shows open tonight at the Armory Art Center: a photography exhibition, ceramic cup show and a juried mixed-media exhibition. Vanishing Florida, a photography exhibition from the Armory’s Photo Salon photographers, features shots of eroding beaches and run-down trailer parks, down-home people and vintage architecture, and are intended to remind people “of the beauty that brought us here and keeps us here.” The exhibit will be open until Oct. 29 and then will travel to four other venues in Palm Beach County. For more information, visit www.vanishingflorida.net.
Drink Up! Ceramic Cup Invitational features vessels made by locally and nationally renowned artists including Armory ceramics director Helen Otterson, Meredith Host (Kansas City, Mo.), Stephanie Stuefer (Sarasota), Jenni Brant (Lincoln, Neb.) and John Britt (Bakersville, N.C.). Women In The Visual Arts - Artistic Visions: On, Over, Off the Edge of Our World displays a variety of juried work including paintings, photography, sculpture and fiber-art by both sexes. Women In The Visual Arts Inc. is a nonprofit corporation whose focus is to promote interest in the visual arts in South Florida through its programs, activities and scholarships. The opening reception for the exhibits starts at 6 p.m. today and is free for members and $5 for nonmembers. For more information, visit www.armoryart.org, or call (561) 832-1776. -- K. Deits
Libby Larsen. (Photo by Ann Marsden)
Music: On Saturday, one of the best-known, most respected classical composers in the country has a world premiere at Florida Atlantic University. Libby Larsen, who has been in residence at the Boca Raton school, has composed The Encircling Skies, a piece for chorus and large ensemble consisting of the FAU Symphony and Wind Ensemble, plus soloists including three pianists. The work is based on a poem by the American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and premieres at 7:30 p.m. at the University Theatre on the FAU campus in Boca Raton. Admission is free, but a $10 donation is suggested. For more information, call 297-3820.
Violinist Mikhail Simonyan.
Meanwhile, Michael Tilson Thomas opens the new season of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach with music from Russia and France, as violinist Mikhail Simonyan (who can be seen in recital Feb. 24 at the Duncan Theatre at what will then be called Palm Beach State College) solos in the Violin Concerto of Alexander Glazunov. Also on the program: Berlioz' Roman Carnival overture, Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, and the Suite No. 2 from Maurice Ravel's score for the ballet Daphnis and Chloe. At Lincoln Theatre, Miami Beach. Tickets: $30, $50. Call 305-673-3331 or visit www.nws.edu.
The Delray Baroque mini-festival closes this weekend with Camerata del Re, the St. Paul's Episcopal Church house Baroque band, in music from England by Henry Purcell (Violin Sonata in G minor, Three Fantasias for string trio), Handel (Trio Sonata in B-flat), Stephen Storace, James Nares and Walter Claggett. 4 p.m. Sunday, St. Paul's, Delray Beach. For more information, call 278-6003 or visit www.stpaulsdelray.org.
On Tuesday, Lloyd Mims leads the first seasonal concert by the Palm Beach Atlantic University Symphony at the Borland Center in Palm Beach Gardens. On the program is the Concerto in F of George Gershwin, played by soloist Anita Castiglione. 7:30 pm Tuesday. Tickets: $10 general admission, $5 for students. Call 803-2970 or visit www.pba.edu for more information. -- G. Stepanich
alice
Dance: Maria A. Konrad runs a dance company called Reach at the Atlantic Arts Academy in Jupiter. This Sunday, the company presents a jazz ballet called Alice: Traditionally Twisted, an irreverent take on the Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland stories. Choreographed by Konrad and Devon Shearsby, the ballet is set to music by Sean Demis and songs by Neil Diamond and Massive Attack, among others. 3 pm, Eissey Theatre, on the campus of Palm Beach Community College in Palm Beach Gardens. Tickets: $16-$21. For more information, call 561-575-4942 or visit www.reachdancecompany.com.
| 09 October 2009
Gertrude Berg in The Goldbergs.
Long before there was e-mail there were tenement windows, an almost-as-effective communications vehicle for ethnic housewives to yell “Yoo-hoo” to each other.
That was the catchphrase that kicked off each episode of a pioneering radio and, later, TV show called The Goldbergs. Written by and starring Gertrude Berg as an upbeat, wisdom-dispensing Bronx matriarch, Molly Goldberg, the show and its creative force are affectionately recalled in Aviva Kempner’s new documentary, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg.
Kempner, whose The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg celebrated the first Jewish baseball player in the major leagues, has carved out a cinematic niche which she describes as “films about under-known Jewish heroes.” Berg certainly qualifies, having all but invented the domestic sitcom long before Lucille Ball, won the first Best Actress Emmy ever awarded, conceived and written every script of The Goldbergs and fought her network when it tried -- successfully -- to squeeze actor Philip Loeb, who played Berg’s husband Jake, out of the series during the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s.
Herself a housewife as well as a one-woman radio and television production mill, Berg, who died in 1966, was the most popular female entertainer of her day. Still, as the film recounts, when a writer pitched a script about Berg to the head of CBS in recent years, he had no idea who she was.
Kempner’s narrative style is fairly straightforward and chronological, leavened by extensive clips of kinescopes of Goldbergs episodes. Berg was big on imparting life lessons in each show, not unlike such WASPy latter-day series as Father Knows Best. But she also sneaked in social commentary from Molly’s Bronx living room and, surely more significantly, she paved the way for product placements and in-character commercials.
Kempner includes talking-head interviews with those connected with producing The Goldbergs, but all but the youngest cast members have long since died. More eye-opening are the selected figures who recall growing up watching the show, notably Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and National Public Radio’s Susan Stamberg.
Missing, unfortunately, is much footage of Berg herself talking about her creative process, success and the effects of the blacklist. The only glimpse of Berg as herself, as opposed to her accented fictional matriarch, is on a Person to Person program with Edward R. Murrow, where she comes across as a witty, cultured woman, quite in contrast to Molly.
Born Tillie Edelstein, the daughter of a Catskills hotel owner, she simply announced her intention to become an actress, reinvented herself as Gertrude Berg and forged ahead, seemingly unaware of the odds against her goal. Following the demise of The Goldbergs, canceled after an ill-advised move by the family to the suburbs, Berg moved on to Broadway, winning a Tony Award in 1959 for playing a widow who finds unexpected romance in A Majority of One.
But in terms of leaving behind a legacy, the only other medium more ephemeral than those early TV kinescopes is the theater.
YOO-HOO, MRS. GOLDBERG. Director: Aviva Kempner; With Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Susan Stamberg, Norman Lear, Ed Asner; Not rated. Opens today at Regal Cinemas Delray 18, Regal Cinemas Shadowood 16 (Boca Raton), Sunrise Cinemas at Mizner Park, and Cobb Theatres Jupiter 18. Opens Oct. 16 at Emerging Cinemas, Lake Worth.
| 08 October 2009
PHsCCysuxSYWwB_m
Claims that Curb Your Enthusiasm has jumped the shark have been circulating around the Internet from snarky bloggers since at least Season Five, when its ill-advised mortality plot thread saw Larry David die and receive a second chance at life.
Murmurs that the show had lost its luster continued into Season Six, when Larry’s wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) separated from him, severing some of the best chemistry on television. Larry’s relationship to new girlfriend Loretta Black (Vivica A. Fox) and her copious extended family introduced a great new character in Loretta’s brother Leon, but the new household dynamic lacked the witty interplay between Larry and Cheryl.
Judging by the first three episodes of Season Seven, you get the impression that David is regretting the dramatic decisions of the previous season, removing the Black family from the paradigm as quickly as possible and restoring the show to its provocative glory. The work in these three episodes is so inspired that you’ll be hard-pressed to find any rumors of shark-jumping this time around.
In the season’s debut, David takes aims at issues both quotidian and monumental. His character naturally finds great offense when a doctor helps himself to a soda from Larry’s refrigerator without asking, though it doesn’t stop him from hypocritically taking food from another stranger’s fridge later on.
But it’s the episode’s final moments -- showing Larry squirming uncomfortably at the thought of sacrificing his own freedom to care for his now cancer-stricken girlfriend -- that finds the already un-P.C. Curb reaching a controversial and comedic new high through its narcissistic antihero’s latest low. The implication is clear: Larry is going to dump Loretta so he can still play golf.
Sure enough, he finds a way out of his relationship one episode later, discovering a gold mine in a local doctor who believes obnoxious, self-serving and negative partners only worsen a cancer patient’s condition, physically as well as emotionally. Like a disgruntled employee who decides to do the worst job possible so he can wait to be fired -- rather than man up and quit -- Larry has found his out.
Of course, like any great Curb episode, there’s a lot of other stuff going on too, and it’s all magnificently orchestrated under David’s impeccable baton, everything converging under the lowbrow leitmotif teased in the episode’s title: “Vehicular Fellatio.” The act, or perceived act, of automotive oral-sex rears its head (is it even possible to avoid a pun here?) three times in the episode, destroying the relationship between friend Richard Lewis and his new girlfriend, damaging his new relationship to Loretta’s new oncologist and revealing Jeff and Susie Green (Jeff Garland and Susie Essman) to be hypocrites in the most embarrassing way.
In both episodes, there were small allusions regarding the season’s long-awaited bombshell, dropped in episode three: the Seinfeld reunion. In this, too, Larry’s actions are completely self-serving, corralling the principal leads of Seinfeld for a comeback show not for the entertainment of the show’s innumerable fans or to dust off some new comic chops but to offer a part to Cheryl, now an actress looking for work at NBC.
Simply titled “The Reunion,” Curb’s third episode finds Larry bringing the idea to Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards individually, causing minor faux pas with two of his former cast members and nearly upending the entire project when he curses out a chief NBC executive for offering him nosebleed --instead of courtside -- Lakers tickets.
Seinfeld uses his part to decry the very idea of reunion shows as saccharine, pandering and unnecessary, a self-reflexive implication that this unique spin on the comeback episode -- a reunion show about the making of a reunion show, how Seinfeldian indeed -- will break the maudlin mold. Alexander, meanwhile, uses his lunch meeting with Larry to suggest that maybe a tribute show could correct the lousy finale of the series, an episode which, more than any other, anticipates Curb Your Enthusiasm’s uncomfortable masochism.
Seinfeld, you’ll recall, had a rather self-flagellating culmination that took its quartet of self-absorbed Manhattanites to task for nine seasons of petty and passive cruelty -– after almost killing them all in a near plane crash. The same kind of conclusion might be assembled for David’s character when he finally retires Curb.
If the three two shows in Season Seven are any indication, the list of people for Larry to offend is far from complete. In fact, it might be getting more shockingly funny than ever.
John Thomason is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
Curb Your Enthusiasm airs at 9 p.m. Sundays on HBO.
