Limited Perspective

For tonight, we are a music blog.  Compare and contrast these songs. First this one. Voodoo Mademoiselle by September Jones Then this one. 1-2-3 by Len Barry Then this one. A Girl Like You by Edwyn Collins  What do you think?  I heard the September Jones song on the radio the other day.  It reminded me of the Edwyn Collins song, which the internet (Wikipedia) says samples the drum track from 1-2-3.  They're all related, over a 30-year span.

You know what’s coming. [Miss] at Edmonds Driftwood Players is a play about thalidomide, the drug that was supposed to help pregnant women cope with morning sickness but had disastrous effects, causing miscarriages and birth defects. In one of the strands of the story, early in the play, you see a young couple, Betty Yoder (Emily Fortuna) and John Yoder (Daniel Hanlon) expecting a baby.   You know what’s coming.   It’s not until the first scene after intermission that the full, human truth hits.   Betty loses her baby.   Fortuna’s slow collapse into tears and grief was devastating.   Even though you know it’s coming, if you’re like me, you still won’t be prepared for how hard it lands.   I felt what she felt.   I was so sad I cried.   I was so mad at the system I wanted to lead the audience out to march into the street and do something to make it right. Until intermission, the focus was mostly on the other characters and the...

As I write this, I am listening to Rush on Spotify in remembrance, I suppose, of the band’s drummer, Neil Peart, who died recently, and who wrote these words, When they turn the pages of history When these days have passed long ago Will they read of us with sadness For the seeds that we let grow? There is too much to say about Reparations and a country and culture where the seeds of this play have grown.  At the reception afterward, the playwright, the director, the producer and the head of the venue all made the point collectively that telling this story is critical.  The play is determined to tell everything about being Black in America or at least point to what it doesn’t get in. The play begins with a harrowing scene of the burning of a farmhouse and the brutal, lynching murder of the parents while the children watch.  Among other gut-wrenching things, the young son recognizes the Sheriff, “That’s Bill Peck!” he says.  He says it in a way that you kno...

I can’t pick a best play that I saw in 2019.  It’s too hard. I don’t know what scale to use. Best-produced piece of theater: Indecent (Rep) – or maybe Romeo and Juliet (ACT).  Most impactful: Pass Over (ACT).  Most fun: The Light Princess (Dacha).  Most impressive: The Devil and Sarah Blackwater (Annex). Funniest: The Woggles (The Woggles). Most heartwarming: Keefee’s House of Cards (Stephen Hando).  Most mind-blowing: M _ _ _ ER (On the Boards.) And what about Bulrusher (Intiman) or American Buffalo (Red Curtain.) I can’t pick. I’m copping out. But what I will do is tell you what I think were the best moments.  Things that really grabbed me and stuck with me. It comes out to an even nine. In chronological order, here they are. Red Planet Blue, Edmonds Driftwood Players  Driftwood cast Justin Tinsley in this outer space adventure by local playwright James Lyle. Tinsley played the commander of a mission to terraform a distant planet. He had acted...

I was expecting -- hoping for, really, a rum tum train wreck but I actually liked it. I liked how they tweaked the story to have Macavity be a bad guy, trying to cheat the contest. I liked how they had Victoria, the outsider, draw Grizabella back into the Jellicle ball and thereby gain her admission to the group. I liked when Judi Dench, without even a trace of camp, delivered a line to Macavity that was something like "You'll never get to the heaviside!" thereby making it campy AF -- like in another movie when she said of Lizzy, "Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?" The show has persisted for decades because of Memory. The creative team here crushed it. They built a beautiful structure around Jennifer Hudson's incredible (snots notwithstanding) performance of the song, especially including the coaxing Grizabella needed from Victoria. I said out loud "sing it already!" two seconds before Victoria said the same thing. I also liked t...