Blanchett philosophizes a bit at Uncle Vanya interview

“Begin as you mean to continue,” the lumnious, Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett told a young questioner seeking career advice a couple weeks ago at an interview I attended at the Kennedy Center - during her just-completed run of Uncle Vanya. Even trying to make herself look plain, she couldn't. “Make yourself a five-year plan; that will help you maintain patience. And you can’t make too many compromises.” Blanchett was, of course, talking about a career in the arts, but there are some parallels to be drawn with any profession that one seeks to pursue. Her response also made me marvel at the English language. The question has been asked so many times before yet Blanchett can still find an original phrasing: (Must be the 10 years she recently spent living in England.) In fact, I believe it’s good advice not just for young people but for anyone embarking on something new, be it a new business, project or even a hobby.

Blanchett of course, needs no training to be comfortable in the spotlight. She was asked if it’s hard to find the time to do theater with such a demanding film career. She looked a bit puzzled actually and answered, “No, not really. I’m old enough to make my own decisions now. This is an extraordinary privilege.” I particularly liked what she said next when asked if it was a tough decision for her and her husband Andrew Upton to take over the Sydney Theatre Company. “It would have been cowardice to turn it down,” she said. That kind of takes us full circle in the direction of the famous Goethe quote: “Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”

"We all value theater," she said, speaking for the accomplished cast that was sitting around her. Jacki Weaver was nominated for an Academy Award earlier this year for Animal Kingdom and Hugo Weaving appeared in The Matrix Trilogy among many other films. "And we choose to return to it." Speaking of Australia and the bond it gives her company, she said, "You're talking about a company of 22 million, 17 million of whom are actors."
The interview ended with a question about great artists; one of the actors began very intellectually talking about Picasso. "Picasso was such a..." "Philanderer!" Blanchett shouted. They all laughed and went on to Uncle Vanya.

Sholom Aleichem Director Does His Job Well; And Almost Nothing Lets 'The Guard' Down

"I loved the film but had one criticism," an audience member at the West End Cinema told director Joseph Dorman following a screening of his new film, Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness,  "I wish you would have put more of his stories in." Dorman smiled. "You know, that's the perpetual decision: what should go in. I wanted to put him in a context and a world. But if my film sends grandparents and grandchildren back to read more of his stories, then I've done my job." The film documents the life of one of the greatest Jewish writers ever, and whose stories the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" was based. (So we get some wonderful clips of songs from the Fiddler movie.) Sholom Aleichem wrote a great deal about the little towns - the shtetls - of Eastern Europe. So we get photos of working-class people in these towns and - although it may not have been enough for that one audience member - snippets of his stories. "It took 10 years to make this," said Dorman, a winner of television's prestigious George Foster Peabody Award. "A professor of Yiddish suggested the idea to me." While the West End crowd was a tad on the older side - "Is anyone here under 40?" Dorman asked - he is trying to get the film to younger people, including school children, by developing lesson plans.

"The Guard" sort of snuck up on us this summer. It's a refreshingly original film from Ireland starring the incredibly versatile Brendan Gleeson and the busy Don Cheadle as mismatched investigators looking into a drug ring in western Ireland. The writer/director is John Michael McDonough, brother of the playwright Martin. Talk about talent in one family. The film is not afraid to show the many faults in Gleeson's character but then also shows the traits that really attract us - the way he treats his dying mother, refusing to take the payoff money that everyone else thinks is standard and drinking many Guinnesses. This is a film where the ruthless criminals ride in the car talking about Dylan Thomas and the beauty of Wales. The killer contemplates if he is a psychopath or a sociopath finally deciding that there's not much difference.  The policeman who gets killed turns out to be gay, which makes no difference except that his pretty Croatian wife can perhaps hook up with Gleeson's character in the sequel. Given the way the last Bourne film ended, I think McDonough didn't feel a need to have his character emerge from the water. I won't say any more.

Clybourne Park Is Still a Neighborhood You Definitely Want to Spend a Couple Hours in

Woolly Mammoth has brought back the revelatory and elegant Clybourne Park and it is even better than it was last year - this due to the comfort of the actors in their roles. The stage is again set up with people sitting everywhere - in the balcony, on the sides, behind the stage (my friend thought there was a mirror) and most importantly in the upstairs room of the house on stage. One young man sits there thinking, moving a bit. We'll soon learn he's an important part of the play, not given any lines, but the "cause" in a cause-and-effect play that examines not just race relations but the way people talk to each other.

Winner of last year's Pulitzer Prize for theater, Clybourne Park takes a brilliant conceit and runs with it. Where Tom Stoppard's Arcadia went back forth across 200 years to solve a mystery, Clybourne Park shows two acts 50 years apart to perpetuate a mystery: Why can't we still talk to each other without our preconceptions? The play takes the Chicago neighborhood where the Youngers of "A Raisin in the Sun" were hoping to get to and, in 1959, shows how the white neighbors react to a black family moving in. That family is not present but might as well be because the white family's maid and her husband are. Even one of the characters, Karl Lindner, who fights the move in Raisin, shows up here. Then in the second act, we move to 2009 when a white family wants to move into what is now a mostly black neighborhood. The black family now represents the neighborhood, and with a couple real estate people present, the situation quickly deteriorates into racial jokes and defensive mechanisms. Writing in The New Yorker last year about a concurrent Off-Broadway production, the wonderful writer John Lahr calls the second act "a dance of civility" turned into "a fracas of fulmination." Acting-wise, for me, Mitchell Hebert as Russ and Dawn Ursula as Francine continue to stand out, but there doesn't seem to be a wrong note. Go see it.

'Another Earth' Happily Brings Marling and Good Story to the Screen

A resplendent Brit Marling appeared as the lights went up - along with director MIke Cahill - following the premier DC screening of her new film, Another Earth. The two are graduates of Georgetown University and told the packed neighborhood audience that it was a pleasure to be back home with such a great project. The film, which opens Friday in Washington, is about the discovery a parallel Earth with all the same people, and a tragic accident between Marling's character and the family of an architect. Cahill and Marling wrote the script and ask questions like, "Can you undo your mistakes?" Is true love contrived if the path to is disguised? "We started with the idea of what it would be like to meet yourself," Starling said. "And then tried to work backwards."
I've heard several writers talk about a similar process, foremost John Irving who told a mesmerized crowd a few years ago, also at Georgetown, about working backwards for his novels "A Son of the Circus" and "A Prayer for Owen Meany." Cahill complimented Marling for her work, saying how much of the film is just shots of her face. Cahill tells a good story in the film. The sci-fi aspects are low-budget but convey the ideas they are looking for. The ending feels right and not contrived - no doubt evidence that they had this ending first. I recommend the film and Marling, who got written up yesterday in the Washington Post and just may be the new It Girl. As a writer, she may stay around for a while.

Set Your Scope on Venus in Fur at Arena

I'd like to declare that there's a new hit play in Washington. David Ives is certainly one of the leading playwrights around today. We are lucky in Washington to have seen his adaptation of The Liar - now in New York - that featured an amazing rhyming scheme. His collection of short one acts, All in the Timing, has also played recently. I love the Groundhog Day-ish episode of the two people having a first dinner date and then the buzzer sounding any time someone says something that the other person doesn't like. It's incredibly funny. Venus in Fur played in New York a couple years ago but I don't remember any huge buzz. However, when I went back and looked at a couple reviews, they very good. Well, the play just fits Studio Theatre perfectly and the two actors are also perfect. In fact, I think Erica Sullivan will be competing against Jenny Jules (now in the amazing Ruined at Arena Stage) for the next Helen Hayes award. She's amazing as an actress trying out for a role in a racy play in front of the guy who adapted it. Christian Conn doesn't have to quite show the range that Sullivan does, but he does have some hurdles to conquer. He has to be a bit likeable although his play and his morals may not be. But the play succeeds because of wonderful writing, and that's Ives. Two people talking for 90 minutes is not easy, but the dialogue flows so easily as Sullivan keeps us guessing with her many guises, and we don't know quite know what to make of Conn. Please don't miss this play!  The audience stood up immediately after the play ended when I went, and you don't see that very often. Incredible work.

Fire and Ice in Reston Is Worth a Visit

I don't think that I have previously told you to head to the Greater Reston Arts Center - or GRACE as it is known - in this space, but I am now. The Reston Art Show is this coming weekend - May 21 and 22 - so that's a perfect time to see what might be the best thing there.  An art installation by Heidi Neff that is really spectacular in its scope, vision and beauty. She calls it Fire and Ice, inspired by the Robert Frost poem that goes like this:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

The piece is about 8 feet high, 17 feet long and six feet wide. It contains 8 huge panels that divide into 98 separate drawings of conservatives (in ice) and liberals (in fire) and ceilings that remind one of the great ceilings of Italy. Why not 100 panels, someone asked Neff. Who's counting, she said. This seemed right and indeed it does. It will show until June 10.



 

Bang Bang Club Gives Good Take on War Photographers

In another lesson of, "don't listen to reviews," our Art House Meetup group went to see The Bang Bang Club on Saturday night at the West End Cinema where it continues this week. It's an extraordinary film, mostly because it's based on the true story of a group of photographers in South Africa in the last years before Mandela was elected president. These four guys do everything with style, flair, crazy courage and talent. Two of them win Pulitzer Prizes, and inevitably bad things happen from the risks they take. I think some of the criticism of the film has come from the parts where they go out drinking and show another side, but it seemed pretty reasonable considering the violence they preactically run into on a daily basis. Also I read that the timing was bad considering the death of photographer/director Tim Hetherington in Libya last week. I think that timing makes it a bit body-tingling; the stuff these photographers do in war scenes is real - and crazy.
It's beautifully filmed with some too-real-to-believe riot scenes. As some fact-based films have done lately, it shows us real photos at the end of the people and some events, and it sure looks like a lot did happen close to the way it's shown. Ryan Philippe does well in the lead role, able to portray enough vulnerability and humanity to go along with the craziness. Josh told us that the co-author of the book, Greg Marinovich, was in Washingtopn last week to visit the other co-author, Joao Silva, who was seriously injured in Afghanistan and is now at Walter Reed Hospital. Without notice, Marinovich visited the West End Cinema. It's a shame he couldn't have done a talk. Also a shame that the DC Film Festival could not have landed this film for opening night - with writer/director Steven Silver, Phillippe and Marinovich - instead of the awful Potiche - with nobody. That would have been amazing and I'm sure the Canadian Embassy would have gotten involved. (Many Canadian groups are thanked in the credits.)
Try to see this film if you can.