A Tale of Two “Juliets”

The evolution of the Miami City Ballet into the world-class company on display in its current season-ending production of Romeo & Juliet (left) has been wondrous to behold for local dance fans who have witnessed the troupe’s artistic growth first-hand since its beginnings 25 years (!) ago. It also reminds that there are certain ballets, and Romeo & Juliet is one of them, where you must clear your mind of things come before as you approach any new performance.

For many balletomanes, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev (below) are unmatched in the title roles, familiar to most from the 1966 film with England’s Royal Ballet. (Much later, Italian ballerina assoluta Alessandra Ferri and partners including Julio Bocca.) But not to digress into a discussion of dancers too much; MCB’s choice of the John Cranko choreography for the story of the doomed Shakespearean lovers is an interesting one.

Being far more familiar with the Kenneth MacMillan version, I was struck by some differences between the two, especially in the key moments of the “balcony” pas de deux and the finale. Fonteyn’s joyful run down the steps for her encounter with Romeo in the balcony scene is not easily erased from memory; there’s no staircase in the Cranko rendition, however, as his choreography has Romeo bringing Juliet gently down from the loggia above.

Likewise, Cranko’s interpretation of the final act in the burial crypt is minimalistically subdued compared to the hammier MacMillan counterpart (but as far as dramatic impact, MacMillan has the edge). Romeo’s choice of suicide (dagger or poison?) also varies; the former in Cranko, the latter in MacMillan. The one constant: a glorious Prokofiev score.

Anyway, what’s wonderful, as in anything related to the arts, is discovery and fresh analysis just when you think you’ve got something covered.

“Eyre” – and Heirs

The latest– and umpteenth– remake of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (with accolades for Mia Wasikowska as the title character) is a might-as-well moment to think about some other films based on classic novels that go ‘round in the cinematic carousel of the mind. A brief few:

Barry Lyndon: Took a very long time for the consensus to catch up with what was always the case: Stanley Kubrick knew exactly what he was doing with William Thackeray’s novel (though the 1975 film was parodied at the time as “Borey Lyndon”). Every nuance reflects the masterful director’s touch (and as usual, his choice of music was uncanny).

The Age of Innocence: Martin Scorsese’s 1993 interpretation of the Edith Wharton tome set in 1870s New York City was beautifully brought to life by his attention to period detail, as well as the simmering earnestness of Daniel Day Lewis’ performance as the tormented suitor obsessed with the unconventional Countess Olenska, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. (Which reminds me, what happened to her?)

Death in Venice: Hopefully, this will remain the last (and only) film rendition of the Thomas Mann novella, as it’s impossible to replicate the perfection of Dirk Bogarde as the tragic von Aschenbach (or the inspired use of the “Adagietto” from Mahler’s 5^th Symphony as the musical backdrop for this melancholy masterpiece, directed by Luchino Visconti).

The Great Gatsby: Feel strangely contrarian to the general opinion of the 1974 version with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Especially thanks to my bow-down admiration of the Fitzgerald novel. But always liked it! Even Farrow! The movie had a not-big-name director (Jack Clayton, though the script was written by Francis Ford Coppola) and forever widely panned, but still get pulled in whenever I run across it. Maybe I’ll be able to replace this guilty Gatsby pleasure when the latest adaptation, directed by Baz Luhrman, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby and Carey Mulligan as Daisy, eventually reaches the big screen. (It begins production this August.)

And lastly, Wuthering Heights, William Wyler’s 1939 Hollywood recreation of the Emily Bronte Gothic weepie, with the eternally lovely Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff. Merle Oberon was kind of pretty as well.

Pop Culture Musing for a Wednesday 3/23/11

A Taylor Moment: In another time, the passing of screen ______ (fill in the blank, as “legend” is so terribly overused, and small in this case), Elizabeth Taylor, at 79, would have been a wall-to-wall event on the cable-news-net planet. Watching the coverage on MSNBC this morning, stories like “Ways to Improve Memory” seemed just as important. Changing world, changing demographics. For me, the iconic Taylor image is at the end of 1951’s A Place in the Sun, as she appears in slow-motion memory in Montgomery Clift’s mind as he’s being led to his execution. Ethereally beautiful and elusive, the ultimate unattainable goddess fantasy. Freeze the frame, now forever.

Supermoon Over Miami

The lunar event as seen in Bal Harbour, Florida 3/19/11
(Photo: Jody Campbell-Ingellis)

Poetic Principals

Another month, another Top 10 list, this time the 10 Greatest Poets in history, as compiled by Dean Rader, a poet, professor, and cultural critic who writes for the San Francisco Chronicle. The idea was spurred by the “10 Greatest Composers” project at the New York Times from a few weeks ago.

What catches my attention is the relative lack of discomfort at the absence of T.S. Eliot by readers and commentarists alike. I guess I live in a parallel universe, as Eliot and poetry are disengageable in my mind (with many lines ready at a moment’s notice). It’s a valid list nevertheless, though Rader probably expected some controversy with Pablo Neruda at the top. Not here. The Captain’s Verses and Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair are both requisite and exquisite.

Following Rader’s American-centric direction, I may have added the pediatrician-poet William Carlos Williams to accompany another compatriot who also had a second life, insurance executive Wallace Stevens, as well as a couple of other favorites, Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell. (Rounding out the list are Li Po, or Li Bai, or Li Bo — choose the name, same poet — and one who followed, 13th-Century Persian, Rumi, described as [currently] the “most popular poet in America.”) The final lineup:

1) Pablo Neruda; 2) William Shakespeare; 3) Dante Alighieri; 4) Walt Whitman; 5) Wallace Stevens; 6) John Donne; 7) Emily Dickinson; 8)  Li Po/Li Bai/Li Bo; 9) William Butler Yeats; 10) Rumi.

And just because, I’ll end with Williams’ 28-word imagist jewel, “This is Just to Say”:

William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Suddenly, A Centennial

My awe-miration of the playwright Tennessee Williams led me to a distant shopping mall back in the mid- ’70s, where he was engaged in a book-signing of his then-just-published Memoirs. When the time came, I exchanged a few words with him, saying that maybe someday (I was then in high school) I would like to be a drama critic, to which he (sarcastically) replied: “Just what we need.”

In this year of the Williams Centennial, one remembers a great artist who endured the savage slings and arrows of the critics’ wrath in the latter stages of his career. In 1974, Williams had the following relatively tame (for him) words on the subject:

“Critics can praise to high heavens an inferior work and make absolutely merciless ridicule of something much superior. So, how can you possibly predict which way they are going to jump?”

The discussion will likely continue in 2011, as an assortment of Williams festivals and productions appear on stages across the country, weighted heavily toward the mid/late period (Vieux Carré, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, Small Craft Warnings), but also including such pieces as Suddenly, Last Summer and Camino Real. The most showy, high-profile event promises to be Sweet Bird of Youth, with the megawatt star duo of James Franco and Nicole Kidman, on Broadway this fall.

By the time Williams died in 1983, his reputation as having never regained his glory post- Glass Menagerie/Streetcar Named Desire/Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was pretty much set in stone, but an editorial in The Nation noted: “The plays for which Williams will be remembered…transformed the American stage, they purified our language, they changed the way we see ourselves. None of his later plays, however erratic they may have been, diminish that accomplishment by so much as a hair.”

Critics and audiences alike consider Streetcar as Williams’ apotheosis, yet I’ve always been drawn to Menagerie’s lyrical beauty. (The wayward reviewers struck here again, with one caption at the London opening in 1948 stating “Bad Play, Well Acted”.) Its poetic incandescence extends even to the acting directions (as near the play’s conclusion: The holy candles in the altar of Laura’s face have been snuffed out. There is a look of almost infinite desolation). Perhaps more than any of his works, it summarizes Williams’ philosophy of “[capturing] the constantly evanescent quality of existence.”

So Happy 100th, Tennessee (and no, didn’t become a drama critic after all. At least not yet).

 

[Postscript 8/11: The Broadway revival of Sweet Bird of Youth was in limbo after James Franco announced he was dropping out of the project.]

Second Lives

I’ve always been fascinated by creative personalities extending their channels of expression beyond what they’re most known for (see an earlier entry) and this past week brought news of two not-so-young talents continuing to do just that. Paul McCartney joins the world of the dance with the New York City Ballet and a ballet score to be called Ocean’s Kingdom, that will premiere at Lincoln Center’s New York State Theater (ok, now called the David H. Koch Theater) this fall. NYCB ballet-master-in-chief Peter Martins will provide the choreography. (Martins & McCartney; neat ring to it.) It’s described as a fanciful love story in four acts, with the earth and ocean realms intersecting as settings. Just another niche to tackle for McCartney, 68, who’s already branched off into classical music, poetry, painting, and even children’s literature.

And across the pond, the lesser-known musical dimension (surprise to me) of actor Anthony Hopkins, 73, will be showcased in a UK tour this summer that will include an original piece written for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, as well as compositions from his films August and Slipstream. His most recent foray into music was “Venetian Medley,” featured along with Jorge Drexler’s score in the Ivory-sans-Merchant film, The City Of Your Final Destination (2010).

(The endeavors for both McCartney and Hopkins related to the arts for sure, which is why the Nabokov literature-and-science mix seemed so interesting. Which reminds me: Alexander Borodin, a composer I noted as one of the worst in history, had a parallel life as a chemist — he should have given up the day job).