Reggie Watts: Disinformation at the Public Theater

No question, Reggie Watts—he of the shaggy head; still, handsome face; stunningly flexible vocal chords—is a smart, creative, dynamic and often quite funny performer with a lot on his mind... the way we communicate, for instance, and language in general, and technology worship, and identity, corporate/authoritarian doublespeak (whether delivered by lackeys from the fictional conglomerate Carnaidesai—"There's not much future left, but we're using all of it..."—or a Star Wars-inspired "Dark Lord"), and the seemingly imminent destruction of our planet, and self-righteous bullshit of all kinds.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to snag a seat at Watts's almost-one- man-show Disinformation (he was joined by some dancers for what I thought to be the night's weakest moments), directed (and co-written?) by Tommy Smith, playing at the Public Theater as part of their annual Under the Radar Festival. Given the breadth and depth of Watts's concerns, and the energy and spark with which he conveys his many themes, I was surprised that I found the whole thing a bit repetitive, and was much more engaged—and laughed a lot more frequently—during the hour-long show's first half.

That said, Watts is a compelling stage presence, who excels at, for example, delivering empty phrases with such conviction that you're tempted, for a second, to ascribe them with meaning (he explains that a piece of sound equipment on stage "does everything it's been engineered to do by the people who created it"); mangling words for comic (deeper?) effect (in one bit, he tells of taking his "grainfather" to "Sweatserland" and pushing him off the "bal-CONE-y"); and telling shaggy dog stories that somehow remain interesting even as they spiral out of control with ever-more ridiculously unimportant details.

Best of all, Watts is a superb human beat box, creating on-the-spot, multi-layered looping rhythms and melodies with a delayer, and then overlaying the mix with often hilarious rap/soul-ified improvised lyrics. My favorite: the insanely intricate, rapid-fire description of his camouflage suit.

Disinformation's Under the Radar run ended yesterday, but you should definitely try to catch this man's stage show the next time he comes around, no matter what he's doing. Until then, there are lots of Reggie Watts videos online. Here's one of the best.

My First Time

It's a cute idea: set up a website that encourages people to submit their story of how/when/where/with whom they lost their virginity (what's the opposite of that, by the way? when you lose your virginity, you find your _______ ...?); take the best of the lot, and hire four reasonably talented actors to bring them to life with dramatic readings on stage.


A cute idea... but then, as Debbie and I were watching its Off-Broadway realization, My First Time, it occurred to me that, for the most part, people's virginity-losing tales aren't really all that interesting. In fact, sitting here now some two weeks after we saw the show, I can't remember a single story in any detail, beyond the unsurprising fact that some people were drunk, some were in love, some were simply bored, some were date-raped. Sure, there were a few chuckles to be had, a few genuinely tender moments, a few times when there was actually some sexiness to all the sex. And each audience member is asked to fill out an (anonymous) questionnaire about their first time, and the answers, read aloud on stage, provide some rapid-fire relief to the show's pacing. And two of the actors—Kathy Searle, above, and Marcel Simoneau—did a great job, we thought, bringing a welcome variety of expression and personality to their share of the stories. But really, it all seemed a bit remote, the staging cold and awkward, the whole thing a bit too nothing-new. Maybe they should do a sequel, called My Most Recent Time, and have the actual protagonists, including audience members, get up on stage and describe that experience.

My First Time is currently at the New World Stages, on 50th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. The show is 90 minutes long, and tickets cost a ridiculous $59. Thankfully, Debbie bought our seats at a discount... I really wouldn't recommend paying anything above half price for this.

The Best of 2007: Performance

I went to more than 30 "performances" of various sorts this year. Here are the ten shows which, for various reasons, I enjoyed the most, with links to the original posts.

1. The National* at the Music Hall of Williamsburg
2. The Arcade Fire at Radio City Music Hall
3. The Thermals at Bowery Ballroom
4. Fuerzabruta at the Daryl Roth Theater
5. Beirut at Bowery Ballroom
6. The Decemberists at the Landmark Loews Theater
7. Spoon at Rockefeller Park
8. The National at the South Street Seaport
9. David Byrne: Here Lies Love at Carnegie Hall
10. Fall for Dance Festival at the New York City Center


* Perhaps my favorite Christmas present? Three tickets to see the BAM show in February! Thanks again, gorgeous.

Things We Want

My gorgeous and apparently theater-mad girlfriend took me to see Things We Want on Monday night and, going in with no expectations—and not even realizing just how star-studded a production this was—I must say that we both enjoyed the show quite a bit.

The acting is first-rate, especially Peter Dinklage, Paul Dano and, most especially, Josh Hamilton, playing three brothers, all presumably in their twenties, living together in the apartment they grew up in, their parents... well I won't tell you what happened to their parents. The art direction (set design/propping) is terrific: this is one of those time-machine homes in which nothing's changed since these guys were kids. Except now it's a lot messier. And instead of toys there's bottles of Jack Daniels scattered about.

Anyway, the plotting here is propelled by the return of a forlorn Dano to the family home, dropping out of culinary school after an unseen Zelda broke his heart. When he arrives, Dinklage is passed-out-drunk on the couch, Hamilton is heading off to his job as some sort of assistant to a self-help guru. All of the above changes completely over the course of the play, spurred on by the introduction of the kind of lonely, up-for-anything, sexy neighbor no one ever really has, in this case played by a very good Zoe Kazan.

Jonathan Marc Sherman's script is clever and often laugh-out-loud funny and, like I said, the actors are all excellent (though I'm a little worried that Dano, now seeing him for the third time in something, may be too one-note... we'll see what he does in the upcoming There Will Be Blood). The problem with the play (ably directed, by the way, by Ethan Hawke): no emotional core. Very quickly into things both Debbie and I realized that we really didn't care what happened to any of these people, even as we had fun watching them get there.

Things We Want is playing at Theatre Row (42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues) in the Acorn Theatre, through December 23.

Weird coincidence postscript: my mom found an old roll of film in her house a couple of weeks ago and had it developed. Last Friday she showed me the pictures, which included several shots of me when I was probably 10 years old or so, goofing around in the snow with someone I haven't really thought about in decades, a kid named Barrack Evans... the same Barrack Evans who is the managing producer of this show!

Speech and Debate

Debbie and I had a great time on Saturday night with three of the out-est of outcasts from Oregon's North Salem High School, the setting for Stephen Karam's funny, engaging, dead-on portrait of those treacherous late-teenage years, Speech and Debate.

The three protagonists here are all social losers in their own way. Jason Fuchs and Gideon Glick deliver excellent, note-perfect performances as, respectively, Howie, the queeny, out-since-he-was-10 transfer student whose chat-room trolling for sex gets the plot (such as it is) rolling; and Solomon, a deeply awkward kid in tucked-in polo shirt and pleated khakis who channels his anxiety and nervous energy into being "mature" and reporting on controversial issues for the school newspaper.

But the brightest star is Sarah Steele as Diwata, a self-described "odd and frumpy" senior whose frustration over never getting cast in the school musical leads her to form a Speech and Debate team as a vehicle for her own creations, one of which features her playing her idol Mary Warren (of The Crucible) traveling through time to chat it up with a teenage Abe Lincoln. This bit is hilarious—Steele plays it completely straight—as are most of Diwata's utterly delusional ideas. Karam gives Diawata most of the best lines, and Steele knows what to do with them.

Anyway, the narrative is essentially about how Diwata convinces (blackmails, really) Howie and Solomon to join her Speech and Debate club, and the subsequent bonding that occurs as all three slowly reveal their (unsurprising) deepest secrets. But, of course, the enormous appeal of this show isn't in its mechanics; its in the terrific performances and Karam's knowing portrait of the ways in which teenagers—lacking adults they can trust or even respect—try to deal with their fears, loneliness, shame and insecurities through both righteous indignation and feigned indifference. And, again, watch for Sarah Steele in the hopefully near future.

Speech and Debate has been held over for second time, and will run through December 30. The Roundabout Underground, a new initiative dedicated to putting on the works of young playwrights, is being hosted by the Black Box Theater on 46th Street just west of Sixth Avenue, an industrial-looking little space with very comfortable chairs. Tickets are $20.

Broken Social Scene plays Kevin Drew's "Spirit If..." at Webster Hall

In a set as sprawling (and, occasionally, as awkward) as the show's title, Broken Social Scene's indefatigable frontman Kevin Drew outlasted a packed house at Webster Hall last night with two-plus hours of remarkably tight, bouncy rock-n-roll, as well as his trademark deadpan pranks and patter.

The band featured longtime members of Broken Social Scene proper, as well as guests from Metric, Pavement, American Analog Set and Dinosaur Jr. (no appearance by Feist, in case you were hoping). At one time or another it seemed like everyone played at least two or three completely different instruments, including Drew on drums. My favorite of Drew's bits (though it went on for too long) was when he talked 20 or so audience members to throw their coats, sweaters, hats, scarves, bags, etc., onstage, and he put everything on at once, and then staggered around and performed an entire song buried in what must have been an unbelievably sweaty mess.

Anyway, here's an incomplete set list: UPDATE: blanks filled in in the comments. Thanks.
1. Lucky Ones
2. Cause = Time
3. Fucked Up Kid
4. Safety Bricks
5. Tbtf
6.
7.
8. Frightening Lives
9. Backed Out On the...
10. Unknown American Analog Set song
11. Gangbang Suicide
12 Farewell to the Pressure Kids
13. Kennel District (Pavement song)
14. Almost Crimes
15. 7/4 (Shoreline)
16. Anthems For a Seventeen Year Old Girl
17.
18. It's All Going to Break
19. When It Begins (massive sing-a-long with everyone on stage)


At this point, Debbie and I left, Drew still up there trying to rouse the crowd, so it's possible we missed an encore. But I'm old (so's Debbie, but also gorgeous), and it was almost 12:30, and we were already more than satisfied with the night's entertainments. By the way, "Spirit If..." is an excellent CD, I think.

Shout Out Louds at the Music Hall of Williamsburg

Here's something I noticed throughout the Shout Out Louds's 18-song, hour-long set Friday night at the great Music Hall: the more Cure-ish the song, the better it translated live. So several of my favorites from Howl Howl Gaff Gaff fell kind of flat—notably The Comeback and Wish I Were Dead—while much of the stuff from their new (and quite good) disc Our Ill Wills really soared, especially, I thought, Impossible and Normandie.

Anyway, I arrived at about 10:45 and still managed to snag an excellent spot against the rail on the platform, stage right. The show was sold out, the crowd in the mood for dancing—particularly several large pockets of extremely enthusiastic Swedes—and the band energetic and in good spirits, if a little goofy, and sloppy in their execution.

The complete set list:
1. Time Left For Love
2. The Comeback
3. Suit Yourself
4. Oh, Sweetheart
5. Impossible
6. South America
7. Shut Your Eyes
8. Your Parent's Living Room
9. Normandie
10. Please Please Please
11. 100º
12. Wish I were Dead Part 1
13. Blue Headlights
14. Tonight I Have to Leave It
----
15 Hard Rain
16. Meat Is Murder
17. Very Loud (with an interlude of Train in Vain)

Film School at the Mercury Lounge

Not for the faint of ear, a show like this: the sonically-inclined Film School at the delightfully intimate Mercury Lounge. And, I must admit it, there were times during last night's mostly tight and reasonably rockin' hour-long set when I felt like the music drifted (and, thus, did my attention) into an almost headachey drone. But don't forget, I'm kind of an old man, and there were plenty of young'uns there who seemed to be loving every minute.


The set was a good mix of stuff from their newish CD, Hideout, as well as a few gems from their great self-titled disc of 2006, the one with the tulips on the cover (though personally I would have also really liked to hear Breet. And Harmed. And Like You Know). Anyway, here's the complete set list:

Plus two encores: Dear Me and Sick of Shame. Encores are so goofy at the Mercury Lounge because there's no backstage, so the band members just kind of milled around in the dark for a minute or two as we all clapped and screamed for more. When the stage lights came back on, Greg Bertens deadpanned: "We're back." The show ended a little after midnight.

Fuerzabruta at the Daryl Roth Theatre

My 24-hour-party-people daughters and I had SUCH a blast tonight at Fuerzabruta, the new show—still in previews—from the people who staged De La Guarda.

This is a non-narrative, dance/acrobatic performance that's loud, surprising, participatory, sexy, violent (in a STREB kind of way—not for nothing is it called "brute force"), and totally totally fun... like your dream night out at a club, where the music is thumping and you can't stop smiling and people are doing insane, startling, beautiful things all around you.

I don't want to get too specific, because part of the excitement lies in the (in Co's case, nervous) anticipation of what's going to happen next—and from which direction it's going to come!—but I will say that the excellent cast crash through things and dance like crazy and fall and scream and sprint and swim and spin and splash and slam and throw stuff and there's a giant treadmill and an enormous pool and a bizarre sail-like contraption and wind and water and smoke and a DJ wearing a George Washington wig.


Fuerzabruta officially opens on October 24 at the Daryl Roth Theatre on 15th Street, a half a block east of Union Square Park. Tickets for the few remaining previews are half price. The show lasts a little over an hour, and you're standing and dancing and being herded around the whole time. You will almost certainly get damp, and possibly covered in debris.

The National at the Music Hall of Williamsburg

OK, so Friday night's The National show is officially the best concert of the year. Seriously, what an amazing show. I danced, I sang, I bounced, I geeked out, I got chills and goosebumps, I was so happy for the entire 19-song, 80-minute set. Matt Berninger and his mates were in top form—confident, tight, ready to rip it up—and had the crowd eating out of their hand. And the spanking-new venue, the Music Hall of Williamsburg, is terrific... like the Bowery Ballroom in size and quality of sound (that is to say: small, and high), but in Brooklyn, and smelling still of fresh paint, and with these two great "viewing platforms" on either side of the floor, and with what looked like bleachers in the balcony (possibly a lame spot, actually), and even sold out, not horribly, greedily over-packed.

I arrived at around 10:30, got a perfect spot on one of the platforms, and The National went on about an hour later, ending a little after 1:00. Here's the complete set list:

1. Brainy
2. Secret Meeting
3. Mistaken For Strangers
4. Baby We'll Be Fine
5. Slow Show
6. Squalor Victoria
7. Murder Me Rachel
8. City Middle
9. Ada
10 Racing Like a Pro
11. Apartment Story
12. Daughters of the Soho Riots
13. Fake Empire
14. Abel
15. About Today
16. Start a War
---
17. Cold Girl Fever
18. Green Gloves
19. Mr. November

So great. I'm tempted to head out there again tonight and see if I can scalp, but I don't think these old-man bones could take it. If you're going, you're lucky.

Fall for Dance Festival at the New York City Center

My nimble-footed daughters and I had SUCH a great time tonight at the City Center's annual Fall for Dance Festival, a ten-night run featuring, at one time or another, short pieces by 28 companies from around the world... and every seat cost a ridiculously cheap $10. The marketing concept here is to expose a broader audience to dance as an entertainment option, so as you can imagine, the shows emphasize the lively, the loud, the crowd-pleasing. Tonight's two-hours-plus performance—including an intermission and a "pause" between each act—included five separate works, all very different, all of which we liked, and several of which we totally loved.

Just briefly, the show opened with QUICK! from Srishti-Nina Rajarani Dance Creations, an energetic, amusing and extremely appealing multi-media work that, in addition to the four excellent dancers, also featured three on-stage musicians and the most insanely rapid singing I've ever heard. This was probably my favorite piece of the night. Co's favorite was next, Camilia Brown's jazzy solo number, The Evolution of a Secured Feminine, which was tough and fast and funny and made me wonder why I don't see more women dressed in a half-suit.

Before intermission came Treading, apparently the signature work of the Elisa Monte Dance company, a sexy, lovely duet set to Steve Reich, circa 1979. Very nostalgic, that music; one of his classic, mathematical synthesizer pieces. Boston Ballet took the stage after the break with Break the Eyes, which we thought had some beautiful moments—especially when they played it straight, pulling off recognizably balletic maneuvers—but was trying a little too hard to be hip. Finally came tap, in the guise of a furiously entertaining performance by South Africa's Via Katlehing Dance that got the whole place clapping and shouting.

Really, I can't say enough about how great the night was... such a pleasurable way to experience something new. The Fall for Dance Festival ends tomorrow, Saturday, October 6. That show, like all the performances, is sold out, but supposedly some tickets do become available at 6:30 in the evening. We had great seats tonight—fifth row orchestra, dead center to the stage—which I had ordered online the exact minute they went on sale a few Sundays ago at noon. I will definitely be doing the same thing again next year.

Okkervil River at Webster Hall

You know what it's like, to have a band that you're kind of on the fence about. They have a few good songs, and maybe even a couple of great ones, and you definitely like certain things about them... but for whatever reason it doesn't ever fully click between you two. So you go see them live, just to settle the issue once and for all. Will you stay "just friends"... or will get into bed with them and fall in love—or, at least, in lust—for the long term?

Anyway, Okkervil River? We need to talk.

It's not you, it's me. Because, really, you put on a terrific, tightly-executed, high-energy show tonight, and the packed house at Webster Hall (not an insignificant number of people) were totally yours, singing along and swaying and dancing throughout your entire 90-minute set, which included:
A Stone
Unless It's Kicks
Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe
A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene
Plus Ones
John Allyn Smith Sails
For Real
and, I think,
Okkervil River Song
Black Sheep Boy #4
...and lots more that I didn't recognize.

Clearly, you have something special going on with a lot of fans. But although I'll definitely keep Our Life Is A Movie or Maybe and, especially, the excellent Unless It's Kicks in heavy rotation on my daily mixes, I'm afraid that's all I can give you for now.

Be well, Okkervil River. Stay in touch, OK?

Hair at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park

I kept thinking during tonight's 40th-anniversary performance of Hair how blown away people must have been by this show back in 1967. Imagine having a foot (or two) in the "straight" world, and walking in cold, or even halfway knowing what to expect, to the Public Theater in the East Village, and hearing song after traditionally-arranged song celebrate—in the most explicit terms—promiscuous sex and the glories of drugs; and seeing these young men and women strip naked; and hear them shout out the coarsest of racial epitaphs, and the most venomous of anti-government slogans.

Heavy, man.

Anyway, although some of Hair definitely shows signs of age (obviously, it's very much of a time and place—dig all that wonderful, goofy hippie naivety burbling just below the anger), there's still enough genuine power and solid songwriting here to make this more than just a nostalgia trip... though, tellingly, Bo and Co enjoyed it considerably less than me or their mom.

Highlights for me tonight included Manchester England (and, really, everything sung by Jonathan Groff as Claude), I Believe in Love, Where Do I Go, Black Boys, White Boys, and, especially, the last three or four numbers, performed almost like a medley, and ending with a true goose-bump moment when the company—or, I should say, the "Tribe"—launched into Let the Sun Shine In.

Hair is playing for free at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park for two more nights, Sunday and Monday, September 23 and 24. Tickets are distributed at the Delacorte and at the Public Theater on Lafayette Street at around 1:00 on the day of the show. Bo and Co's mom did most of the line-waiting for us today: she arrived in the park at 7:15 in the morning, and we got some of the last seats—all singles—available. However. Friends of ours missed out on the 1:00 distribution, received vouchers (numbers 44 - 48, I think), showed up that night and got MUCH better seats than us. Also: apparently everyone on the evening's "stand-by" line also got tickets, so who knows what the best strategy might be.

And I apologize for the terrible pictures... security was tight, I saw several people forced to delete camera-phone shots while staff looked on, and there were several pre-performance speeches on the no-photo rule, emphasizing without irony before this anti-authority celebration that to do so would be "illegal."

Mabou Mines does Song For New York on the East River

Full disclosure: we didn't make it through the entire performance of the Mabou Mines Theater Company's Song For New York: What Women Do While Men Sit Knitting, a five-song celebration of New York City, staged on a barge floating just off a pier in Long Island City. But, really, sitting through the first three pieces—Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx—gave me more than enough exposure to be able to suggest that, should you be tempted next week, the better idea would be to avoid this show for just about anything else you think of.

I know, that sounds harsh. But believe me, we weren't the only ones walking out early.

The singing voices ranged from barely OK to jarringly off-key. The lyrics to these epic songs about the different boroughs were reminiscent of the stream of consciousness a fifth grader might perform in front of a mirror... or, when they rhymed, recalled a particularly excruciating school play. For example, from The Bronx:
"Lee Harvey Oswald turns ten
But no one sees his hate;
Colin Powell comes from Trinidad,
is later Secretary of State."

Or this bit of civic boosterism:
"Eat jerk chicken and walk through the zoo;
See the flowers bloom, and watch a game, too."

The choreography was virtually non-existent, so that for the majority of the time the performers were just standing around. The barge setting couldn't have been more irrelevant to the staging, and, given its distance from the audience, served only to disengage us further from the actors/singers. All in all, a total disaster.

Song For New York will be performed at 8:00 on September 4, 6, 7 and 9, at the Gantry Plaza State Park (really, a pier) in Long Island City. Admission is free. We arrived at around 7:40 and grabbed two of the few remaining seats, but as the performance went on, plenty more became available.

Earlimart at Joe's Pub

About halfway through Tuesday night's Earlimart show at the intimate Joe's Pub I had an epiphany: I trick myself into thinking that I like this LA-based band more than I actually do. Sure, they've written some pretty melodies, and some rockers with decent hooks—The Movies, We Drink on the Job, Unintentional Tape Manipulation, The Hidden Track—so their stuff does get stuck in my head. But then when I actually sit down and listen to their music, it's all seems very elusive, and even their best songs are really more like half songs, either all hook, or all prettiness.

Anyway, personal revelations aside, the core Earlimart band was joined on this night by an underutilized string quartet, playing 14 songs—mostly from their new CD, Mentor Tormentor—in a charming and energetic, though ultimately uninspiring, hour-long set. Here's the mostly complete set list (little help on the first song, anyone?):
1. ?
2. Answers and Questions
3. Nevermind the Phonecalls
4. Heaven Adores You
5. Happy Alone
6. Gonna Break Into Your Heart
7. 700 > 100
8. Everybody Knows Everybody
9. Don't Think About Me
10. Bloody Nose
11. The Hidden Track
12. Lazy Feet 23
---
13. We Drink on the Job
14. Cold, Cold Heaven

We arrived about ten minutes before the doors opened at 9:00, and there was hardly any line. I had employed the usual Joe's Pub reserve-a-table strategy (don't worry about the posted drink/food minimum), and we had great seats.