Going down with the ship

Our production of Pirates is definitely cursed. Peter, Greg and Bobby please return the tiki to the ancient Hawaiian burial ground ASAP (anyone? if you guessed Brady Bunch Hawaii triple episode, season 4, you're a bigger loser than I am)! Anyway, following some nightmare casting (both Fredericks dropped out of the show 2 weeks before opening) and opening week falling directly before a holiday weekend so we couldn't rehearse, we have been served yet another ridiculous obstacle. Midway through the first act of last night's final dress, the Pirate King fell deathly ill and had to be rushed to the hospital. Of course, it just so happens that this is the only role that we DID NOT assign an understudy or double cast. We jokingly threw our stage manager onstage on book to fill in thinking our PK was just suffering from intense pre-opening jitters. Our stage manager is about five foot tall, somewhat portly, well over the age of 40 AND a woman (but a lovely, kind soul). Did I mention that this is a student production? Anyway, although she is an immensely talented performer in her own right, something about watching a middle aged woman in pirate drag cavorting onstage with a bunch of teenagers is just slightly disturbing. Anyway, turns out that the PK caught an intense virus and can't go on tonight - OPENING NIGHT! Oh well. The show must go on and tonight will be no exception. All my fingers (and toes) will be crossed and hoping for the best. Hopefully, by closing performance on Sunday afternoon, all will be well. I will most likely be drunk, if not slightly tipsy by then. Did I also happen to mention that I'm the orchestra? Just my ten fingers and an extremely out of tune piano. The indignity continues. Please come witness it this weekend while contributing to a worthy cause - my paycheck.

Is facebook a sign of Armageddon?

How am I expected to get any work done in the office when I have access to facebook on my computer? I mean, really, it's like digital crack. Soon enough, face-to-face social interaction will become obsolete. Instead, we'll communicate via sentence fragment on each other's walls. Very sad. Although I'm all for finding new ways to stay in touch with friends and family, is it really realistic or necessary to have 235 friends? Is it even possible to have 235 "friends"? Can you really define a "friend" as someone you have little or no communication with except for an occasional poke, or superpoke? Are we raising a generation of socially retarded kids who don't know how to hold an actual conversation in person? Oh dear, I'm getting a bit too philosophical here, but you get the idea.

Anyway, last night's first dress rehearsal for Pirates was, well, interesting, to say the least. Half the cast wasn't there because they had their High School chorus concert and the half that did show up only knew about 65% of their lyrics, lines and blocking. Tonight's final dress is going to be a doozy. At least they'll have four performances to get it together. I really can't wait until Sunday night. No rehearsals for anything until the end of June. I'm free! I'm free! I'm free! And I'll finally get my weekends back, at least for a couple of weeks.

Memorial Day = meat

Well, I’m back to the grind today after a successful weekend of holiday partying. And by successful, I mean ingesting the equivalent of my body weight in grilled pig and cow products. My one disappointment? - being unable to show a lonely fleet week sailor my special brand of NYC hospitality. Oh well, there’s always next year. Actually, I think the fleet’s still in town until tomorrow morning so that leaves me a couple of hours. I do enjoy a challenge.

Anyway, thanks to Peter & Ray and Damienne & Steve for inviting me to their respective rooftop barbecues and to my homeboy, God, for supplying such lovely weather. I can’t even believe I actually know people who have rooftop apartments, let alone who like me enough to invite me to their parties and let me meet their friends. Hello newly found self-esteem!

P&R’s party Saturday night was such a delight because there was nary an actor or performer in sight (ooh, that rhymes). It was such a relief not to have to answer the dreaded and annoying, “Are you doing anything right now?” I was actually able to hold full conversations without once mentioning an audition or callback or having to explain why Bernie Telsey hates me or why Audra is so fierce. And the food! Leave it to the gays to convert the lowly barbecue into a culinary extravaganza. Although I’m still not quite convinced about the watermelon and mint sprinkled with English salt.

The usual suspects were spotted at D&S’s rooftop on Monday. A party there is always welcome because you know the regulars will show up and you can just be your stupid self. I’ve known these characters since I moved into the city over a decade ago hanging out at the now defunct Le Beaujolais Restaurant - which is, coincidentally, the location of one of my worst alcoholic binges. I will always be indebted to Chris Johnson for cleaning up the puddles of puke on the restaurant floor where I laid clutching a silver champagne bucket, while Damienne (who owned the restaurant at the time) and the gang sat at the bar laughing at my misfortune. Ah, the memories. Anyway, the party actually did get more interesting, since the cast of The Lion King showed up because Steve happens to work at the Minskoff. How many people can say they got to taste Mochi’s lumpia? Alas, we weren’t able to get her to give us the skinny on the final episode of Step It Up and Dance. So I guess we’ll just have to watch the episode like everyone else this week. FYI - 30 years old? Really? If you say so, sweetie.

Chris and Betsy have promised to send me pics from the weekend’s festivities to post here, so you’ll see ‘em when I get ‘em.

Hmmm, what else? Oh, Trish and I caught the new Indiana Jones. It was thoroughly entertaining, if not extraordinary, and Shia was actually not as annoying as I thought he would be. Great special effects and interesting storyline, but Harrison sure is getting old. Aren’t we all? You’ll always be Han Solo to me.

LOC’s Young Artist production of Pirates of Penzance goes into tech week tomorrow. Should be extremely, extremely scary considering we’ve had maybe half a dozen rehearsals and we haven’t really run anything more than once. Pray for us.

Drugs are your friend

I was finally able to get to the doctor today for some powerful drugs to knock out this nasty sinus infection I've been toting around in my noggin for the last two weeks. I know you're supposed to lay of the antibiotics lest you become immune, but I couldn't take any more of the groggy days and puffy eyes.

My week-long drug cocktail of Sudafed and Zyrtec just wasn't cutting it anymore. And my mental sluggishness combined with severe sinus pressure even caused me to forget to mention seeing my home girl, Jaygee, in her off-off Broadway show last week, Honor. Forgive me, mi amour. I'll owe you a gourmet spam and eggs feast when I see you again. Anyway, Jay Mac was fantastic in the comic role of Mitsuko in this Prospect Theatre musical adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It transferred to feudal Japan. The story worked wonderfully within this new framework and the exoticism of the Asian milieu helped soften some of the more far-fetched plot convolusions. Having done my time in countless productions of the Asian bread and butter shows (King and I, Miss Saigon, et al), I was not surprised to see that I had worked with a majority of the cast. Well, at least the chunk of the cast that was over 30. Everyone looks so young to me now. It was totally ego boosting to know I've worked with so many of these talented people. But it was equally depressing knowing I wasn't onstage with them, but instead spending my days at a desk submitting expense forms for spoiled investment bankers. Oh well, you gotsta' make a living, right?

With some work, I think there is indeed a future for this show. But the first 15-20 minutes is in desperate need of some judicious editing. It starts a bit slow and tries too hard to be "important." The somber tone of the opening doesn't really match the rest of the show. I'm not saying to take out all the blood and drama, but the story doesn't really start to get moving until the girls escape from the palace. Until then, it's almost just static atmosphere - beautiful atmosphere - but not necessarily plot forwarding. If I was James Lapine and taking this show to the Broadway, I'd ask the writers to streamline the opening, get to the mother's suicide quicker, and cut a couple of verses of the title song. We get it already, they act with "honor." wink, wink, nudge, nudge, sledgehammer over the head. This show is screaming for a move to a bigger house and a bigger budget.

Those wacky Christians!

Conservative Christians do the craziest things, don’t they? The High School kids in Saved!, a musical based on the cult film of the same title, try to pray and sing their way through the pearly gates. Along the way, they deal with teen pregnancy, coming out, pot smoking and sex (and my favorite show euphemism - oral fornication - of which, I know a thing or two - don’t ask). The authors have also updated the story to include current trends like texting and facebook pages to firmly set the action in the present (it’s so f*cked up how fast technology develops, I mean, the movie was only released in 2004).

Full disclosure - I didn’t pay to see the show, so I didn’t have any kind of monetary expectation of quality. Trish and I signed up to usher, so we ended up front row center, literally inches from the actors on the tiny Playwrights Horizons’ stage. Trish was even lucky (?) enough to get spit on by hunky Aaron Tveit, who plays Dean, the lead character’s gay baby daddy. It’s really amazing that by just devoting an extra hour of your time before the show you can save seventy bucks. The only real requirement is that you know the alphabet and can count to eighteen.

Well, I was a little concerned through the first act. The performances were uniformly excellent and the book scenes were great. But the music was - eh - not terrible, but not particularly good. Mind you, not as boring as Cry Baby’s monotonous five chord score, but way too subtle for a pop-inflected score - in other words, no pop hooks. It definitely needed an Altar Boyz-ish musical sensibility. To its benefit, although still firmly satirical, the musical adaptation doesn’t stray too far into camp territory. It successfully streamlines the story, emphasizing the dramatic and emotional qualities of the situation rather than exploiting the obvious opportunities to pound us over the head with anti-fundamentalist rhetoric. It was actually refreshing to see a new show that doesn’t “wink” at itself or tells us how “smart” it is by inflating the book with self-referential asides. In fact, this particularly dramatic adaptation, to me, didn’t even particularly scream, “Musicalize me!” By intermission, I was almost wishing it was a play.

Either my cold medicine kicked in and I was totally high or there was a major improvement musically in the second act. Starting with the psychedelic Hilary Fay fantasy dream sequence “Heaven,” act two got off to a trippy Partridge Family vibe. Closely followed by an honest-to-goodness rock-driven quartet by the men of the cast “I’m Not the Man I Thought I’d Be.” The first and only true “love” duet also came in the second act, between Mary and her mother, Lillian - played by the amahzing, yet underused, Julia Murney - get this biyatch a Broadway show already!

I did leave the theatre feeling a little dirty, because Jesus (well, the actor playing Jesus, Daniel Zaitchik) was totally hot. But I guess I’ll have to work those issues out with my therapist. And although I’m fine with suspension of disbelief re: the actors’ ages (none were anywhere near high school age), I wish I had sat a little further back. Celia Keenan-Bolger was near perfect casting for the role of young Mary, but I couldn’t help but stare at her “adult” hands flailing only a foot or two away from me. There is definitely great potential here and since the show’s still in previews, a lot could change for the better. I may even try to catch it once it opens and see if they were able "fix" the first act.

On a side note, I ended up seating Nick and Jessica. No, not that Nick and Jessica, but Nicholas Rolfing, one of my Danny Zucko's from the Grease! tour in - gasp - 1996(!) and his wife. He totally gave me the "I know I know you" look but couldn't quite place my face as it is now attached to my now middle-aged round body. Oh well, things start to spread when you get older. For those of you who care, also on that Grease! tour with me were Gaelen Gilliland (Legally Blond, Wicked) and Kendra Kassebaum (Wicked, Assassins).

OK RIP

Of course, I was deathly ill for the closing weekend of Oklahoma! There was a nasty bug floating around the cast and I wasn’t even lucky enough to contract it through some sordid means. After calling in sick to work on Friday, I attempted to sleep through the day in order to get through the show. Since I’m “only” playing in the pit for the performances (yes, in case you missed it, I was co-director, choreographer AND pit musician for this production, thank you very much), personal appearance was of no consequence. Good thing, because I definitely looked like sh*t when I arrived at the theatre.

Anyway, we had full houses and enthusiastic audiences for the closing. All in all, a great first experience with community theatre. I’m such a jaded b*tch. While the actors were tearful during the final curtain call, I was, quite frankly, looking forward to getting a break from my weekly reverse commute to the suburbs. Now I have to decide if I can possibly force myself to choreograph this theatre’s upcoming production of High School Musical in the fall. Decisions, decisions.

A glutton for punishment, the remainder of the weekend was spent in rehearsals for Pirates... which goes up in two weeks. There’s nothing like blocking an entire second act in one eight-hour long stretch on a Sunday afternoon! The upcoming holiday weekend prompted our marathon staging-fest. Still suffering from a fever, I dozed in and out of consciousness throughout the day. Admittedly, this will not be my best work. Oh well. I’m sure even Hal Prince has an off-day.

For anyone who's ever told me to "f*ck off and go eat sh*t"...

Last night, Trish and I decided to explore the wonderland we call Queens and go out for Vietnamese food in the heart of ethnic Elmhurst. Trish had been feeling nasty all day, and not the good kind of nasty, the nasty that has you hugging the toilet, Ms. Jackson (anyone over 30 get that reference?). I thought that maybe some hot Pho would get here blood pumping, so we jumped in the van and headed to a restaurant that we had spotted several times on our way back and forth from my fave deparment store, Target. As we sat down and started perusing the menu, we realized that this in fact was not a Vietnamese restaurant, but a Taiwanese restaurant. Oops. Well, we decided to stay anyway since the food looked interesting and it seemed way cleaner than the Vietnamese dump we passed a few blocks earlier.

On the menu, the waitress thought I had pointed to the fried pig intestines, but I corrected her and told her that no, I was actually pointing to the chicken roll listed next to it. She nodded and wrote down the rest of our order. Long story short, after wondering why the chicken roll had such a weird consistency, we discovered that the crazy biyatch obviously didn't really understand English and had still ordered us the intestines. I actually ate a fried, once sh*t-filled tube of pig flesh. Though they actually didn't taste bad, I wouldn't exactly recommend them. They're basically chewy and tasteless and if you didn't know any better, look like they would probably taste good (see pic). But just thinking about where they've been and what had been flowing through them makes me almost throw up in mouth a little.

La Fille du Regiment and Tony Noms

Well, it was nice to see a cast of opera singers actually try to act. I will give Natalie Dessay and company an “A” for effort, but I’d have to give them about a “C+” for execution. She broke - no shattered - the golden rule of comedy, which is not to try and “be funny,” but to just play the intentions and let the comedy result from the given circumstances. She was like a little energizer bunny on crack, waving her arms and jerking around the stage as if in the throws of a petit mal seizure. She sounded gorgeous, though, especially her high pianissimos. I also had no trouble hearing her over the orchestra as I had with her Lucia earlier in the season.

Idiot me chose the one performance that dreamy Juan Diego Florez (left) was not scheduled to perform. I really have no idea how I missed that, considering I bought the ticket a YEAR ago just to see the Dessay/Florez pairing. Oh well, Barry Banks was sufficient. Nice big, warm voice (much warmer than Florez, but lacking the “star quality”) and he had no problems with the nine high-C’s. Though he received an extremely long and deserved ovation after the aria, he, unlike Florez, did not perform an encore. His acting was fine, if a bit stiff.

I’m still a little disappointed because I really expected a more grounded performance from Dessay, a self-described “actress first,” and not the spastic performance she delivered. I guess I can’t really complain. She was vocally excellent and never boring. What-ev’s, it was still a good, almost great, night at the opera and my last until next season. Damn, this year really flew.

All That Chat was buzzing this morning with Tony nom talk. I love how those catty bitches go at each other because they just can’t believe the travesty of so-and-so getting snubbed by the nominating committee. It’s so High School Musical. Get a life you crazy queens! Sadly, many of those crazy queens are probably close friends of mine. Oh well, click here for the full list of Tony nominations.

My only Tony hope is that Kelli O’Hara beats out Patti LuPone for best actress so we can see PattiLu force a smirk onto her face for the camera and feign congratulatory wishes to Kelli. Either that, or we’re gonna’ see a full on girl fight. And I’m pretty sure Patti could beat the sh*t out of Kelli. Watch your back O’Hara.

O - K - L- A - H - oh shut the f*ck up already

We’re finally past the halfway point in our Oklahoma! run. Frankly, it seems like we’ve been working on it for years. Our opening night was a hit and despite my snarky jab at the reviewers, the notices have all been good. Not that it’s been smooth sailing. The mix of newbies and more experienced actors is definitely a difficult balance, especially when it comes to consistency of performance. We’re still giving notes and trying to make sure the show we directed continues to play intact throughout the run.

The good news is it seems the crowds are coming out in droves and closing weekend looks to be a sell out. My favorite overheard crowd comments:

“It actually was good!”

Perplexed old lady: “I’m so confused, did he just kill Curly?”
Old lady, audibly annoyed: “It’s a dream!”

Perplexed old lady: “What did she say?”
Annoyed old lady: “She said he’s Persian.”
Perplexed: “He’s WHAT?”
Annoyed: “PERSIAN! Sheesh.”

Serious old lady: “The orchestra sounded wonderful.”
Me: “Thank you.”
Serious: “You’re usually way too loud.”

How can I tell that Oklahoma! is finally nearing the end of its run? Because we’ve started rehearsals for our next production, Pirates of Penzance. Of course, a Pineda production would not be a Pineda production without at least a requisite major catastrophe. For Pirates, it’s the fact the both Frederick’s (we double cast the lead role) dropped out of the production at the same time leaving us high and dry just a few weeks shy of opening night. Luckily, we were able to convince our youthful looking Curly (a college Junior) to take on the role that he understudied earlier in the year in his college production. It’s still going to be a nail-biter, considering we’ll have just enough time for a basic block through before tech week. Fingers crossed.

Deconstructing the reviews

For the most part, I think reviews are basically meaningless ego trips (for the performer, if it's good, and for the reviewer, if it's bad). I mean, really, isn't a review basically just one person's opinion about one specific performance anyway? I know what you're thinking, "Why, Fausto, that's quite hypocritical of you, considering you post your own very opinionated reviews of every show you see on this very blog." Well, just calm the f*ck down, sister. The difference is, I'm always right. Oops, did I just type that? Sorry, that wasn't supposed to work its way down to my fingers from my brain. Too late. Moving on... Yes, good reviews are also a nice box office boost. But if you can't sell a 7-show run with a cast and crew of over 40 in a 200 seat house, you've got some serious PR/marketing issues. It's friggin' Oklahoma!, for God's sake. The title alone guarantees to pull in the q-tip crowd (Janet's, one of our violinists, affectionate term for the "more mature" audiences - think about it, you'll figure it out). While I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, I can't really take the basically glowing reviews for our recent Oklahoma! production seriously because they're filled with either non-sensical criticism or blatant hyperbole.

So below are some of my critiques of our critic's comments. Obviously, I don't give a rat's ass whether these reviewers read my comments. And quite frankly, they probably don't give a sh*t what I think anyway. Since I get paid zilch to write my reviews and they are making a living writing professionally, I'm sure they're laughing (or cursing me) all the way to the bank. So here goes.

"Choreographer Fausto Pineda's vision awakens at the end of the...first act..." - what the hell does that mean? Was it asleep during the beginning of the first act? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it appropriate? Is it pedestrian? Is it interesting? Review the choreography - I'm a big boy, I can take it.

"Co-directors...have given license to the actors, with the comic roles especially, to go full out in their characterization" - as opposed to "half-out" in their characterizations? Who would want to see any show where the actors didn't go full out in their characterizations? Does this mean the dramatic roles weren't fully characterized?

"The staging of two songs, which features girls sitting on the floor, provides the audience with merely a view of talking heads. A small movable platform would have remedied that situation." - I'd actually have no problem with this criticism except for the fact that 1) the sight lines were specifically checked from all parts of the house to make sure that the blocking would be seen and 2) the same reviewer wrote a rave (with no mention of floating heads) for our recent staging of Madama Butterfly - in the same theatre - where at least a third of the opera was performed by singers sitting on the floor. And a movable platform? On the Oklahoma plains? Um, OK, sure.

"...[the creative staff presents] their surprisingly wonderful offering of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical, " Oklahoma!" - "surprisingly"? What was she expecting, a train wreck? Wow, talk about coming in with low expectation.

"...dances — where no one, astonishingly came near to bumping into each other..." - I had to laugh out loud at that one. Is that supposed to be a compliment to the choreographer (me)? Was she expecting people to crash into each other and kick each other in the face? That's why we have rehearsals.

Yes, I'm sure this is all coming off as just a rant from a pompous, egotistical know-it-all. And it sort of is. But I've been called way worse. At the very least I expect professional reviews to be coherent and contain real criticism. Be specific about what you like and don't like and why. And exaggerated praise only makes you sound like a gushing sixteen-year old girl.

Oh, and lest you accuse me of being ugrateful, thank you to the Cranford Eagle and Westfield Leader for their positive reviews of our show!

Oklahoma! pics...

*Curly (Chris Grimm) and Laurey (Corinne Chandler)

Curly and Laurey

Will (Michael Miguel)

Curly

Jud (Kevin Kessler)

Ado (Allison Acquafredda)

Dream Ballet

Dream Ballet

*Farmer and Cowman

*Pictures courtesy of Ann Riegel.

All other pictures courtesy of Brooks Crandall

Tech week

Have you missed me boys and girls? I've been busy this past week in tech hell with Oklahoma! I can't believe the damn thing finally opens tonight. Having participated in numerous tech weeks throughout my career, I didn't think I'd be learn anything new with this one. Well, color me surprised. I have learned one new thing. Never move to New Jersey. Before you Jersey freaks start burning effigies and boycotting my show, I have nothing against Jersey personally. It's just that the commute sucks. Well, I guess the commute itself doesn't suck as much as having to do it on very little sleep. Since rehearsals were scheduled late into the evening and I had to be at work early in the morning, it seemed only reasonable to pack up some clothes and just stay in Jersey- thus, the commute. So I've spent the last couple of days getting on a 7:00am train to Penn, jumping on the subway to work, sitting at my desk for eight hours, running to Port Authority to catch a bus to Jersey, going straight to a five hour rehearsal, going to bed at Juan and Val's, hitting the sack for a couple of hours and then starting again from the top. Glamorous? Hardly.

The show itself is shaping up to be quite good. But It's sometimes a challenge working with non-professionals, not because they are less talented, but because they consider this their hobby. Certain things that I expect from an equity cast, i.e. learning your lines, writing down blocking, knowing upstage from downstage, are considered "optional" in community theatre. At least the one I'm working at. The stage manager actually set a date by which the cast had to have their lines memorized. A date that was over a month after rehearsals had started. Really? Um, I was always under the odd assumption that after a scene was blocked, it should be memorized. I guess I'm just crazy that way. Oh, and forget requiring actors to memorize the lines as written. God forbid you say what Oscar Hammerstein actually wrote. I don't want to name names, but there were actually actors who showed up to rehearsal without ever having read the scene they were about to rehearse. And yes, the scripts were distributed before rehearsals began, so don't even try to defend them.

It's also odd that the cast seems surprised that we have so many notes for them after each run-through. It's as if they just want us to say, "That was perfect." I don't think I've been in any production, even one that received stellar reviews, where the director didn't have notes for us all the time. There is always something that can be tweaked, made clearer or improved. Anyone who thinks their performance is perfect is seriously deluded. Anway, enough ranting. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, knowing my cast will come through for opening night. We're actually nearly sold out. That's some crazy sh*t. Stay tuned for details about my big opening tonight (hehe, that sounds dirty - at least to me.)

Below is a crazy pic of our Ado, Laurey, Curly and Asian Will (more on that scandal another time. God forbid we cast the most talented person for the role - regardless of their skin color) in a "lost" number from Oklahoma!, "The Farmer and the Cowman - Just Friends?"