With the winter solstice rapidly approaching, it helps to take stock of specific coping mechanisms that can bolster one's spirits in the face of potential political and natural disasters. Partying works best for some people, solitude for others.
Though some anticipate the dreariest possible outcomes, I prefer to look toward nature's annual cycle of vegetation for solace and a sense of renewal. After all, the only true constant in life is change. And accepting change becomes much easier with practice.
Whether change means transporting the setting of Verdi's Rigoletto to Las Vegas or Puccini's La Bohème to a lonely spacecraft, when it comes to the performing arts, operagoers have long been accustomed to experiencing new interpretations of old works. In recent years, such beloved musicals as 1964's Fiddler on the Roof and Hello, Dolly! have received impressive makeovers that did not rely on the artistic visions of their original set designers (Boris Aronson and Oliver Smith) or legendary director-choreographers (Jerome Robbins and Gower Champion).
With a new approach to 1957's West Side Story set to open on Broadway that does not include the original choreography by Jerome Robbins, it will be interesting to see if the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's motto, "True Art Transcends Time," will apply to this revised staging of a classic musical (based on a Shakespearean classic) that tests the faith and flexibility of its fans.
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Most readers of this column will view the following two images and be able to recognize Lon Chaney in the title role of 1925's The Phantom of the Opera or the logo for the 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that has racked up more than 13,000 performances at Broadway's Majestic Theatre and is still going strong. |
| Lon Chaney in the title role of the 1925 silent film version of The Phantom of the Opera |
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| A triumph of branding: the poster for Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera |
As part of its December 7th mini-festival (A Day of Silents), the San Francisco Silent Film Festival offered a screening of Rupert Julian's famous 1925 adaptation of Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel. Though most film lovers are familiar with Lon Chaney's epic portrayal of the title character, in her program note Monica Nolan reveals that, following a January 1925 preview in Los Angeles:
“...[Producer Carl] Laemmle cancelled the February premiere and turned his efforts to salvaging his half-million dollar investment. The scenarists feverishly rewrote while a new director shot additional footage, including a whole new ending. Editors put in comic relief, beefed up the romance, and even added a duet and barroom brawl while a series of production managers attempted to make Laemmle happy. It was Universal stalwart Lois Weber who reviewed all the footage and reorganized the movie into a form that finally satisfied the boss. The studio recut the film again, adding new scenes and actors, for sound and silent releases in 1929 – which is the basis for the restoration seen today. In this streamlined version whole characters from the original shoot disappeared (along with most of the added footage and large chunks of backstory), yet the cuts that undermine narrative logic also refocus the film on the monster at its center. The film’s new ending (in which a torch-bearing mob pursues The Phantom through the streets of Paris) both delivered audiences from their fears and created another horror film cliché.”
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| Poster art for the 1925 silent film version of The Phantom of the Opera |
“If the plot holes left by the hasty extraction of so much material are still evident, the Phantom’s obsessive and terrifying pursuit of Christine gains from the very lack of explanation. His menace becomes archetypal (he is every shadow we have started at, every dark fear, every unnamed threat). The perverse curiosity that leads Christine to snatch off his mask becomes part of the dream logic of classic horror: her need to see the monster trumping common sense. When Christine creeps up behind him and pulls away the mask he has forbidden her to touch, the Phantom doesn’t immediately turn on her. He stands up from the organ, hideous face revealed, and glares, instead, at us.”
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| The Phantom appears at the masquerade ball in the 1925 silent film version of The Phantom of the Opera |
Using a print from Kino Lorber, the audience at the Castro Theatre received a special treat: a return of the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra. However, instead of receiving a visual makeover, The Phantom of the Opera got a glorious new soundscape. Having a 28-piece orchestra (along with a vocalist for Christine's arias) perform live during the screening was a grand and glorious thrill that sent the audience home on a musical high.
In the following video, the BSFO's artistic director, Sheldon Mirowitz, explains the process by which the Berklee School of Music has transformed its Film Scoring Department into a powerhouse program. Once Mirowitz finishes his presentation, you can then watch the entire 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera in a screen-within-a-screen format as members of the BSFO perform the 2014 score that was composed and conducted by their fellow students.
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Is there a connection between these two events?- Last week, after Donald Trump had spent three years whining like a little bitch about how he has been so unjustly persecuted, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, Michael E. Horowitz, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was absolutely no evidence of what the President's brazenly bilious bleats keep calling a "witch hunt."
- This week, McSweeney's published a delicious piece of snark by Michelle Ephraim and Caroline Bicks entitled "I Am Lady Macbeth, and Your Facebook Post About Your Kid’s Early Acceptance to Harvard Really Pisses Me Off."
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| Megan Trout (Alice) and Celia Maurice (Joan) in a scene from Vinegar Tom (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
Churchill's play revolves around a mother (Joan) and her daughter (Alice) who have been accused of practicing witchcraft by a disgruntled neighbor who insists that Joan’s cat (Vinegar Tom) harbors an evil spirit. As the playwright long ago explained:
“I wanted to write a play about witches with no witches in it; a play not about evil, hysteria, and possession by the devil but about poverty, humiliation, prejudice, and how the women accused of witchcraft saw themselves. During my research I discovered for the first time the extent of Christian teaching against women and saw the connections between medieval attitudes to witches and continuing attitudes to women in general. The women accused of witchcraft were often those on the edges of society, old, poor, single, sexually unconventional. Also the old herbal medical tradition of the cunning woman was being suppressed.”
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| Sam Jackson (Ellen) and Sharon Shao (Betty) in a scene from Vinegar Tom (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
In addition to demonstrating how poor women were targeted as witches, the playwright's insertion of modern musical numbers between certain scenes has a wildly disorienting effect. With musical direction by Daniel Alley, costumes by Brooke Jennings, and choreography by Natalie Greene, the original music composed by Diana Lawrence for this production is performed in a Bob Fosse-"jazz hands" style that leaves the audience feeling like a production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible has been invaded by the garishly dressed taxi dancers from a touring production of Sweet Charity. After two witches are hanged in the public square, Churchill's lyrics dare the audience to:
“Look in the mirror tonight.
Would they have hanged you then?
Ask how they’re stopping you now.”
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| Perry Fenton sings in the musical ensemble for Vinegar Tom (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
Working with set designer Nina Ball, lighting designer Ray Oppenheimer, and sound designer Matt Stines, Ariel Craft has done an impressive job of staging Churchill's piece as the action ricochets between intense drama and flashy musical numbers.
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| Melanie Dupuy (Goody), Amanda Farbstein (Susan), and Sarah Mitchell (Packer) in a scene from Vinegar Tom (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
Among the women suspected of witchcraft, standouts include Celia Maurice as Joan, Megan Trout as Alice, Amanda Farbstein as Susan, and Sharon Shao as Betty. Sam Jackson portrays a sympathetic local herbalist (Ellen) with Sarah Mitchell scoring strongly as an aggressively Puritan authority figure and Dov Hassan (the only male in the cast) as Jack, a poor man who seems to be suffering quite severely from erectile dysfunction.
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| Jennifer McGeorge (Margery), Sam Jackson (Ellen), and Dov Hassan (Jack) in a scene from Vinegar Tom (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
When one looks at the GOP's vicious ill-advised, and ignorance-based war on women, its toxic victim blaming, and its pathetic leader's puerile attacks on smart and brave women such as Nancy Pelosi and Greta Thunberg (whose real-life accomplishments so easily grab the spotlight away from Trump), there is no question that Churchill's play lives up to the motto "True art transcends time." As director Ariel Craft explains:
“Vinegar Tom takes place in rural England in the 1600s, when witch hunts spread like a pandemic and tens of thousands were executed for imagined dalliances with the devil. Almost all of them were women. Whether or not a fear of sorcery remains in the zeitgeist, 'witch' is a word that persists -- weaponized against women -- to scapegoat and to shame. 'Witch' is a word given to women who inspire discomfort, who brandish a kind of power that can’t be controlled or commodified. That power, though, isn’t a power of privilege: the accused in Vinegar Tom are poor or husbandless, living on the fringes of polite society. They lack the matrix of currencies that might allow them to navigate their society without disruption: money, youth, purity, the endorsement of a respectable man.”
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| Amanda Farbstein as Susan in a scene from Vinegar Tom (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
“In unsubscribing from their culture’s convention of what sort of woman every woman must be (by existing within the chasm of the unacceptable), they become a threat to the enduring fallacy that there is an unimpeachable mold for womanhood. By eschewing dominance and docility, they cut new paths to create change for the women that will come generations after them. They refuse to conform or to make themselves smaller, simpler, more manageable than they are. That’s the power of the witch. You won’t spot any magic in Vinegar Tom, but you’ll see plenty of witches: women who complicate the way we conceive of womanhood, and who fight to stake their claim in a shared society. And while they may be punished for it in this recreated rural England from the 1600s, their challenges and their refusals to be contained are triumphs and echoing calls to action. Stay in the fight, witches.”If you're looking for a happy, family-friendly holiday show, keep moving. the Shotgun Players production of Vinegar Tom aims to challenge audiences and make them think without being pegged as a kid-friendly form of edutainment.
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| Amanda Farbstein (Susan) and Megan Trout (Alice) are two women condemned to hang in Vinegar Tom (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
Performances of Vinegar Tom continue through January 19 at the Shotgun Players (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer:
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