Liberation (5*)

I couldn't help it, thoughts of Taylor Swift kept intruding while I absorbed a kinda heartbreaking critique of feminism in Liberation, a self-described memory play that examines the lives of five women, all members of a women's consciousness-raising group that meets in an Ohio recreation center with a basketball court.  "19:70" appears on the scoreboard.

Lizzie (Susannah Flood, flakey but sincere) welcomes the audience as well as the women with a mission statement:  in a double role, she's going to interrogate how her mother, the kind of woman she never has wanted to become, could have organized the group and what happened to its members over the last 50 years. Playwright (and Gen Xer) Bess Wohl uses the first act of Liberation to introduce the era's archetypes including Margie (Betsy Aidem, who transcends cliche oh-so-movingly), a semi-embittered housewife; Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd, fierce), an Angela Davis lookalike with her short Afro and hexagonal glasses, convinced of her acute intelligence but hiding a secret; Susan (Adina Verson, fiercer) a radical Marxist lesbian, who believes only artificial wombs will save humankind; and Dora (Audrey Corsa, FANTAStic), a Barbie whose brainpower, if not her sexual pleasure, is on par with her good fortune and determination.  Only Isidora (Irene Sofia Lucio, galvanizing) as an Italian immigrant with peculiar politics, seemed unfamiliar to this regular reader of popular feminist fiction back in the day (The Bluest Eye, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, Fear of Flying, Rubyfruit Jungle & The Women's Room, off the top of my head, in chronological order).  The women's interactions are fairly predictable, too, as their "community" and politics evolve but watching the winning cast establish their characters is thoroughly enjoyable. 

To feminize a male metaphor, director Whitney White (Saturday Church) takes off the gloves in the second act, after the brief but critical appearance of Bill (Charlie Thurston, persuasively anodyne) the chivalrous, ambitious hunk who competes with Lizze to clear the meeting chairs before shooting some hoops.  Sparks fly and Lizzie turns her mother's role over to Susan (Kayla Davion, fiercest) because "it would be creepy" for a daughter to be sexually interested in her father, and begins watching the action instead of participating in it, an effective sleight of theatrical hand.  Susan, as a woman with four kids who, like Bill, hasn't been given much to do in the first act, dominates the second playing both Black and white and poor and privileged characters, a performance that serves as a powerful metaphor for what appears to be Wohl's theme:  as much as women's age, bodies, class, race and sexual orientation differ they all face the same challenges when fighting for equality, challenges that have diminished over time but remain formidable particularly in the face of love, the chemical reaction that fuels human reproduction for the majority of people.

Which brings me back to Taylor Swift, who from this fangirl's perspective seems to have it all.  The megastar's track record prior to her engagement and the release of her latest album surely more than qualifies her as a contemporary feminist icon.  To cite just three examples:  as a young woman, she successfully sued a radio promoter who grabbed her ass; her lyrics for "The Man" offered the most tuneful, transgressive and amusing distillation of sexism to ever appear on a pop album; and she re-mastered much of her back catalog when a male recording executive refused to sell them back to her, a seemingly impossible feat.

Now, in The Life of a Showgirl, Swift admits that she lied when she said "I don't believe in marriage" ("Eldest Daughter"); she's queerbaiting in a public catfight with another pop star ("Actually Romantic"); and she's rhapsodizing about her fiancé's endowment ("Wood").  I can't say that I'm looking forward to her songs about motherhood.

Lizzie, look no further than basic biology for the answer to your question.  Maybe Susan is right about those artificial wombs, after all.

*  *  *  *

Liberation, because of its second-act shocker, has a better reason than inconsiderate people to insist that audience members secure their phones in Yondr pouches upon arrival at the theater.  For me it's a worthwhile inconvenience because use of phones during live performances and movies DRIVES ME NUTS.  So when I sat down in my orchestra seat and immediately spotted a masked woman about my age in front of me removing her phone from her purse, I confronted her. 

"You know, you're supposed to check your phone upon entering the theater," I admonished. 

"You don't understand, sir" her companion, also masked, replied.  "She's got diabetes."

"Oh yeah?  What did she do before she had a phone?" I snapped.

"It's none of your business," replied the diabetic who continued to scroll her phone in a manner that suggested she wasn't monitoring her blood sugar.

Furious at the insensitivity of an individual who would use her phone in a theater where everyone else had been denied access to theirs, I got up from my seat to look for an usher. "If she's wearing a white band around her wrist, it's OK now, but not during the show," the usher explained.  Somewhat chastened, I returned to my seat where the woman's scrolling continued on and off with nervous looks over her shoulder until Liberation began.  I couldn't see if she was wearing a white band or not.

As soon as the curtain dropped for intermission, out came her phone.  She briefly checked her mail, but returned it to her purse as soon as she heard me scoff in disgust.  Fifteen minutes without my phone gave me even more time to stew.

Am I the asshole?  Would I have confronted a man in the same situation?

Little Bear Ridge Road (3*)

 

Call me shallow, but enduring 90 minutes of mostly misery isn't how I want to spend a night on Broadway, even at reduced prices.  Based on "Little Bear Ridge Road," and "The Whale," the film adaptation of his 2012 drama, playwright Samuel D. Hunter seems to specialize in gay men in flyover country whose sense of victimhood gets in the way of their lives.  

Ethan (Micah Stock), a sad sack, shows up at the rural Idaho home of his aunt Sarah (Laurie Metcalfe), bearing a grudge he has nursed since the age of ten, to settle the estate of his estranged father, a meth addict.  He's masked and within the first few minutes, the audience understands this is a Pandemic play with a capital "P," although covid isn't primarily responsible for the mismatched pair's isolation.  Sarah vacuums, Ethan mopes and they watch a series that may or may not feature aliens from a double Barcalounger, the only piece of furniture on stage.  It hints at a long-gone lover or husband.  

The "action" jumps forward quickly; along the way, Ethan hooks up with a budding astrophysicist whose metaphor about star watching forecasts the play's teachable moment (duh!), and Sarah, a nurse, is forced to disclose her treatment for cancer.  Before you know it, the pandemic is over and Ethan has begun to mirror his aunt's spirit but when given an opportunity to change his life, he scrolls his phone instead.  Director Joe Mantello more subtly indicts the role technology has had in stunting our emotional lives with "content" always distantly audible in the background.

Much of the audience found the characters' mostly tentative interactions funny, guffawing as if they were watching an episode of Roseanne, and may have come to see Metcalfe personify irascibility which she does, faultlessly.  The bond she develops with James (John Drea, pitch perfect in his kind befuddlement) suggests she wasn't always the fighter she is now, no thanks to Hunter, who provides so little backstory for either character that the audience is left to project their own motivations.

There's redemption, of a kind, narrated by a competent health care professional who can't pronounce "infinitesimal."  I didn't believe it for a moment.  People don't really change. Somewhere in Portland, Ethan is still feeling sorry for himself while James enjoys the kind of life available to most self-respecting gay men who get their asses to a big city.

Saturday Church (5*)

 I bought a ticket for a show celebrating queens before I knew the matinee at the New York Theater Workshop would be taking place on a day of nationwide "No Kings" protests.  I probably should feel guilty for enjoying myself as much as I did, but at least Saturday Night Church, based on a little-seen 2018 movie, offered a mostly Black universe where love finally trumps hate.

Imagine Pose, Ryan Murphy's indelible FX series about ballroom culture, scored by Sia and you'll get the idea.  It's true that we've seen this story many times before, although perhaps not presided over by a Black Jesus in drag.  Silly me, I didn't even realize that J. Harrison Ghee, Tony Award winner for Some Like It Hot, was performing that role as well as that of the butch Pastor Lewis until I glanced at the program during intermission.  He believably (and sympathetically) embodies both characters while towering over the rest of the cast not because he's more talented but because he's sooooo damn BIG, especially in platform boots.

But the real draw here is the vibe conjured by a fairly large and always exuberant cast with no weak links, the kind of pipes I always thought I might hear if I went to Sunday services in Harlem and the footwork of the Globetrotters.  As Ulysses, 2025 Voice contestant Bryson Battle sings like an angel and convincingly behaves like one, too.  Young Jackson Kanawha Perry, as the tender teen hustler who introduces him to his true self, has charisma to spare, and B Noel Thomas, the house mother nursing other ambitions, exudes a maternal warmth that runs as deep as her décolletage. 

Director Whitney White keeps things moving as fluidly as Michael Bennett did in Dreamgirls, no easy feat on an off-Broadway budget.  Saturday Church begins and ends with the kind of ferocious energy I've rarely seen sustained for more than two hours, although Hell's Kitchen did come close.  During the finale, everybody--including the too-busy blood mother (Christina Sajous) and frightened aunt (Joaquina Kalukango) whose resistance you know will eventually be overcome--gets to compete on the runway.  Aside from the WOW factor of Kalukango's Easter-appropriate costume, designed by the surely fabulous Qween Jean, it comes as no surprise but the house goes nuts anyway.

Broadway is about to have its own ballroom culture moment when Cats: The Jellicle Ball opens in March.    Producers should make room for Saturday Night Church, too!

Hell's Kitchen (4*)

For some reason, Alicia Keys had never been on a Chiffon playlist; as I scanned the musical numbers in the Playbill for Hell's Kitchen, I recognized only one, "Empire State of Mind," a song I associated more with Jay Z.  Definitely a blind spot and my loss for the past two decades.  

Set for the most part in Manhattan Plaza, where Keyes grew up, Hell's Kitchen resonated for a personal reason, too.  Barnet, one of the buildings earliest tenants, lived there with a spectacular view of the George Washington Bridge when we met, four years before the musical prodigy was born in 1981. The one-room apartment where Ali and her mother resided was the same size as Barnet's, and I recall listening with excitement to his stories of riding the elevator with Angela Lansbury.  And early in our relationship my encounters with the doormen, typically Black men like the ever-reliable Ray (Oscar Whitney, Jr.), were frequent.

From "Gospel," the super kinetic opening number, bolstered by vivid projections of the 'hood and multi-purpose scaffolding that emphasizes the high rise of Manhattan, Hell's Kitchen felt true to me in ways that other juke box musicals haven't, perhaps because it focuses strictly on the most relatable years before its adolescent subject became famous, while she banked the experience she eventually communicated through song. Has the Hudson ever served as a more relevant metaphor than it does in "River," plaintively sung by Amanda Reid, a fellow Texan making her Broadway debut? 

The production reminded me for the umpteenth time how much talent there is on Broadway.  Although I wasn't familiar with the 2024 Tony winners for Best Actress and Best Featured Actress in a Musical, the energetic and diverse cast, and first-rate band had the joint stompin' and shoutin', particularly during "Kaleidoscope," a new song Keys wrote for the show, when I almost felt young and hopeful enough to be dancing in the aisles along with them.  Jessica Vosk, as a strict mom, and Angela Birchett, an understudy who played Miss Liza Jane, Keyes's beloved mentor, both deliver powerhouse vocal performances that bring down the house.  Though Philip Johnson Richardson and Benjamin H. Moore don't have as much to do in what is essentially a thin but still resolutely feminist book, they sing well and deliver performances that add social justice nuance to stereotypes of sensitive, sexy men.  Speaking of sexy men, I have a weakness for chorus boys, but few have commanded the stage the way that Eliazar Jimenez does, tirelessly.

As for "Empire State of Mind," the closing number: let me just say I fell in love with my adopted city all over again, with the now besieged Statue of Liberty still capable of bringing tears to my cynical eyes.

Chiffon went to sleep listening to Alicia Keys "Essentials" on Apple Music and put the original cast recording of Hell's Kitchen on repeat the next morning.  Congratulations, Ms. Keyes, director Michael Greif and choreographer Camille A. Brown for raising the juke-box-musical bar as high as Barnet's apartment on the 37th floor.

Lazarus Man (4*)

I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the novels of Richard Price, which I've been reading for as long as I've lived in New York.  That's due at least in part to his gifts as a prolific writer for both film (his Oscar-nominated gig as author of The Color of Money screenplay) and television which left less time for publishing books.  No doubt his nitty gritty contributions to both The Wire and The Deuce helped make those HBO productions among my favorite series of all time with their realistic depictions of the way that ordinary people talk and behave.

In Lazarus Man he's back to the south Bronx, his home turf, where a building has collapsed. Price is less interested in what caused the disaster--although he does nod cursorily to the callous corruption that generally accompanies real estate development in New York City--than its impact on people in the neighborhood.  His characters include a biracial recovering addict who survives the collapse and whose journey gives the book its title; a separated cop on the community relations beat who obsesses over a missing person while semi-neglecting her two children; a Black undertaker who fears he may lose his parking area to a community garden; and a young photographer from upstate New York whose work provides an essential clue to Price's theme.  All, including the woman and half a dozen secondary characters, are what Mr. LaGrone, my enriched English teacher in high school, would have described as "well-rounded" and Price orchestrates their interactions with the kind of naturalism familiar to anyone who has walked the borough's mean streets. 

While there are no big revelations or epiphanies in the somewhat meandering Lazarus Man, it is the kind of sympathetic book only a man who has lived a long life could write.  In the larger scheme of things, faith is more important to Price--who survived his own struggles with cocaine-- and can be more life-changing than knowing the truth.

“I’m not one to talk about religion [says Anthony, the recovering addict] but it’s like God buried me under that earth, wiped my slate clean, then brought me back up to be who I never thought I could be before … And all I want, all I want now, is to be worthy of that gift and … and to be…”

If only I could believe that . . . 

Bolognese Leftovers

Although Bologna is a gated city, its richer residents primarily repelled pillagers from towers. Few remain.  Duo Tori were built by the Asinelli (the taller) and Garisenda families 70 years apart in the 12th century.  I'm not sorry the Asinelli tower was closed for renovation; otherwise I would have been tempted to climb 500 steps to the top for bird's-eye views of the city's well-preserved, walkable historic center.

I passed a gate en route to my hotel from Bologna's confusing train station which has accurately been compared it to Dante's nine circles of Hell.  Oddly, Bologna was the only city I didn't encounter his scowling image although the poet shouts out the Garisenda tower in the Divine Comedy.  .

Porta Galliera, Piazza XX Settembre

Valentina, a Taste of Bologna tour guide, claimed that the Garisenda tower leans more than the one in Pisa.  She's right, by a single degree.

Heavy brass keys must be a thing in Italy's three-star accomodations.   My cramped room with scuffed walls at the Hotel Atlantic had a three-step marble staircase but no chair and a rack too small for my regulation-size luggage.  Still, had the proprietors not demanded 40 euros to return an expensive souvenir t-shirt from Lisbon, I might have pulled my punches in an online review.

Bologna is a great place to tour on foot for two reasons 1) the historic center is reasonably compact; and 2) extensive porticoes shield people from the weather.

They also make great places to hang your wet umbrellas outside.

This bulldog took advantage of a portico on a drizzly morning.

The University of Bologna prides itself on being Europe's oldest university in continuous operation and they've got the professors to prove it.  Glossatori, or legal scholars, were the continent's first higher learning educators. They're buried in above-ground tombs near the original site of the university.  Its doors opened to students in the late 12th century, about a decade before England's University of Oxford, and a century before Portugal's University of Coimbra.

The performing arts scene in Bologna goes way back, too. I regret missing out on that aspect of Italian culture completely during my two weeks of travel.

Teatro Arena del Sole

Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Italy's political history is complicated to say the least, with lots of independent city states (some under rule by other countries or the Vatican) that eventually united into a single kingdom for the last time under the rule of Victor Emmanuel II in 1861.  Three statues in Bologna pay homage to other individuals involved in the struggle: 

Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian general and revolutionary who was born in Nice when it was under Italian rule, fought for independence and unification;

Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882)

Marco Minghetti, an economist who was born when Bologna was still a papal state, served twice as Italy's prime minister; 

. . . and Ugo Bassi, a Catholic priest, whose support for Garibaldi and unification cost him his life when the once liberal Pope Pius IX repudiated the Italian nationalist movement.  A papal governor betrayed Bassi, setting in motion a chain of events that ended with his execution by firing squad in Bologna a decade before the Kingdom of Italy was established.

Ugo Bassi (1801-1849)

Less controversial, Luigi Galvani is a scientist best remembered for making a dead frog's leg twitch using an electrical charge; his name gives the verb "galvanize" to the English language and Mary Shelley cited his research in writing Frankenstein!

Luigi Galvani (1737-1798)

Much smaller architectural details in Bologna delight the eye, if not the mind.

More Northern Italy

Bologna

$100 Baloney Sandwich

Let's Do The MAMbo!

Piazza Maggiore

So Many Churches, So Little Time

Odd Collections

Trieste

Sunny Trieste

Castello di Miramare

Museo Joyce

Museo Revotella

Venice

Canals, Gondolas & Bridges

Size Matters in La Serenissima

Ungepatchke House of Worship

Working @ Home

Art OD

San Michele Cimitero

Piazza San Marco

Vaporetto Sunday

Venetian Leftovers

Odd Collections

With only half a day remaining in Bologna I had a decision to make:  which would be more up my alley, a restored theater in where 17th century medical students at the University of Bologna began attending lectures or a collection of mostly waxen medical oddities?

I'd already wandered past the Archiginnasio of Bologna, so I was pretty sure the experience would be more aesthetic than visceral.

Besides, the Collezione delle Cere Anatomiche "Luigi Cattaneo was free and its location also provided an opportunity to see University of Bologna buildings in current use.

Some of the displays were even more disturbing than these, which illustrate conjoined fetuses, albinism and Protean syndrome, the illness that caused David Merrick's incandescent suffering in The Elephant Man and more recently, that of the protagonist in A Different Man, a sublimely creepy exploration of identity.

Prior to X-rays and CAT scans, doctors didn't have much to go on when treating patients with arthritic knees like mine.  These cross sections look like lamb shoulder chops.

Obstetrics used to be just as primitive, although after listening to season two of "The Retrievals" podcast from Serial, medicine now entails technical risks that can make pregnancy even more painful!

Not all the models were wax.  When I asked a very knowledgeable docent if the displays had any similarity to Bodies: The Exhibition, she said only a few items--like these dehydrated brain slices and skulls--came from actual human beings.

We also had a long conversation about childhood vaccination attitudes in Italy.  "It's very similar to the United States," she replied in a tirade that could be boiled down to this: science skeptics exist everywhere.

I didn't get to the church on time to see San Maria dei Servi so I ducked into the Museo Civico d'Arte Industriale e Galleria Davia Bargellini, more commonly known as curiosities of old Bologna.

I inadvertently set off an alarm in this gallery.  The guard shrugged his shoulders, as if to say "It happens all the time."  The jewel hesit at the Louvre had not yet occurred.

Elaborately costumed Venetian puppet shows toured the city in the 18th century.

Little Bolognese girls played with doll palazzos

. . .  which included fully stocked kitchens.

The patron saint of Bologna holds a model of the city in his lap.

San Petronio by Innocenzo da Imola (16th Century)

I wonder what Cupid would think of Materialists?  It gets a 👍 from me.

"Love Reposing" by Marcantonio Franceschini (17th Century)

If I managed the gift shop, I would sell reproductions of these fans.

More Northern Italy

Bologna

$100 Baloney Sandwich

Let's Do The MAMbo!

Piazza Maggiore

So Many Churches, So Little Time

Bolognese Leftovers

Trieste

Sunny Trieste

Castello di Miramare

Museo Joyce

Museo Revotella

Venice

Canals, Gondolas & Bridges

Size Matters in La Serenissima

Ungepatchke House of Worship

Working @ Home

Art OD

San Michele Cimitero

Piazza San Marco

Vaporetto Sunday

Venetian Leftovers

 

So Many Churches, So Little Time

Would you believe I visited 13 churches in Bologna during a two-day stay, including one where Michelangelo sculpted this angelic candlestick holder? 

 

Madonna di San Luca

My church hopping began with a nearly mile-long ascent to the top of a forested hill completely covered in the porticoes for which Bologna has earned its status as a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Pilgrims, tourists and runners alike use the 666 arches--an odd number, to say the least, given its association with evil in the Book of Revelation--erected more than two centuries ago.  

Arch number 444 offers a great view of the city's historic center.

After a partial knee replacement slightly less than six months ago, I took some pain-medicated pride in reaching my destination a thousand feet above sea level where a chapel or church has existed for a millennium.  The Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca dates back to 1723.

If there was a water fountain or even a concession stand, I didn't see it.

For five euros I could have climbed 100 steps to inspect the dome.  No thanks.

Basilica di San Domenico

Interior scaffolding--not for the only time--kept me from seeing much of this church which has been a magnet for artistic works created or donated by the faithful since its construction in the 13th century.

Tiny metallic hearts surround the bottom of a crucifix in one of the chapels.  I'm guessing they were once left as offerings.

The context of this exquisite marquetry gave its depiction of knowledge a certain frisson.

The church houses the Arca di San Domenico, a sarcophagus that took 500 years to complete.  Michelangelo was only 19 when he sculpted the two candlestick holders at the bottom.

"Madonna of the Rosary" stands atop a marble column in the square outside the church. Designed by Guido Reni in 1632, it commemorates the end of the plague in Bologna. He also painted "Saint Dominic's Glory," the dome directly above the Arca.

Basilica di San Petronio

The facade of this Gothic church, which dominates the Piazza Maggiore, has remained unfinished since construction began at the end of the 14th century.  It houses the relics of the Bologna's patron saint who served as the city's bishop in the 5th century.

Santo Stefano

OK, so maybe seven of the churches I visited were in the same place.  Until 2000, the relics of Saint Petronius were housed here.  Big must trump old in Catholic diocese politics.

Whoever designed this pulpit definitely had a sense of the dramatic.

An 8th century representation of Pilate's Bowl--where the fifth governor of Judea washed his hands before ordering the crucifixion of Jesus--rests on a pedestal in a courtyard behind one of the churches.  I couldn't keep them straight as I wandered through the maze-like complex.

Much of the art pre-dated the Renaissance.

More Northern Italy

Bologna

$100 Baloney Sandwich

Let's Do The MAMbo!

Piazza Maggiore

Odd Collections

Bolognese Leftovers

Trieste

Sunny Trieste

Castello di Miramare

Museo Joyce

Museo Revotella

Venice

Canals, Gondolas & Bridges

Size Matters in La Serenissima

Ungepatchke House of Worship

Working @ Home

Art OD

San Michele Cimitero

Piazza San Marco

Vaporetto Sunday

Venetian Leftovers