PERFORMANCE NETWORK’S BECKY SHAW STIMULATES, ENTERTAINS, TITILLATES, AND SATISFIES

Last week, I saw the premiere of Becky Shaw at the Performance Network: funny, touching and troubling, it gives us five interesting (frightening in one case) characters and five outstanding performances, with perfect timing and pacing under the direction of Phil Powers.

The characters are richly drawn by playwright, actors, and director. Sarab Kamoo and David Wolber, play non-siblings who were raised together, have a complicated relationship, and let us peer into to every nook and nuance of it. Wolber’s Max and Kamoo’s Suzanna are obviously damaged. He hides his insecurities behind manly bravado but lives as a responsible man, the picture of the Yiddish “Mensch.” She lives through her insecurities but leaves us with the feeling that she’s going to be all right.

 Only the title character (Maggie Meyer) dismays and confounds, a stone idly tossed into a pond, making ripples that radiate from the point of impact, a playwright’s shortcut, like the crazy neighbors in A Delicate Balance or the goat in “The Goat.”

The script leaves the conclusion of the story in doubt, which is far better than a forced happy ending, but suggests a conclusion which, as I understand it, would have sold out cheaply one of the characters. Can’t say more without ruining the second act for you, but since nothing seems final when the house lights go on, does it matter?

 Monika Essen turns in her usual excellent and serviceable sets: there isn't a false note anywhere in this production.

Once, I said to an actress friend that plays are about characters; she said, no; plays are about relationships. Either way, Becky Shaw draws us deeply into the lives of some very lively and very human people, a fine place to be for a couple of hours.

THE TEA PARTY SILLY SEASON

The silly season, having degenerated into stupid on its way to the psychotic season, moves on. Two recent Huff Post posts may be seen as guide posts to the end of the journey. Or to put it another way, there seems to be a stampede on the road that should be less traveled. One from June 28 reports:

“Matt Davis, a Michigan attorney who was once the state Republican Party's spokesman, sent out an email that asked whether armed rebellion would be justified in the wake of the court's [Affordable Health Care Act] decision. 

… It begins: ‘Implicit in Benjamin Franklin's fabled response at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention was a dire warning: That the Republic would one day devolve into tyranny unless we the people prevented it.’ 

It goes on to characterize Obama's election as the end point of a "100-year progressive trek to tyranny."

In fairness, according to the Detroit Free Press, Mr. Davis later apologized for sending what he called “unedited work product.” He took back what seemed to be a call for armed insurrection but he didn't retract or explain his misquotation of Ben Franklin.

Franklin never said what Davis attributes to him. He did say this at convention’s end about the Constitution,

“. . . I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”

The meaning is obvious: despotism will come only if the people become so corrupt they are otherwise ungovernable. Then, Franklin goes on to laud the constitution:  “It approach[es] so near to perfection … I expect no better, and … I am not sure that it is not the best.” Yet conservative websites quote only the part about despotism and pretend, as Davis has, that Franklin predicted the inevitability of despotic government. Quoting out of context and distorting the plain meaning of the words, Davis and others have wandered far from the truth to tell a bald lie.

The other whiff of political sulfur came July 2.

“Tea Party lawmaker in Montana [Krayton Kerns] said the relocation of 60 bison -- which he blamed on Walt Disney's creation of "Bambi" -- could lead to gas jumping to $25 a gallon as part of a liberal federal government plot.” …

Kerns said the moving of the 60 bison from Yellowstone National Park to the Fort Peck Native American Reservation this winter is part of "a four step process to crush the republic and bring our populace into perfect dependence on big government -- just as Karl Marx dreamed.”

I don’t know what Marx’ dreamt but there is no record of it in his voluminous writings. It’s contrary to what he wrote in “The Communist Manifesto” where he predicted that at the end of the process begun by a working-class revolution the state would “wither away” because people satisfied by economic justice won’t need a government.

These folks are not ordinary private idiots, but serious public ones. As Davis made up a pseudo quotation for Ben Franklin, Kerns put an idea into Karl Marx’ dreams that would have been anathema to him. Two Tea Party activists, two plain lies, batting a thousand for the team. The level of divorcement from reality that informs these people and their websites is awe-inspiring. Their willingness to distort and ignore the truth for political ends is a fine example of the corruption among the populace that Franklin was afraid of. Ironic, no?

Thomas Huxley wrote, “If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is a man who has so much as to be out of danger?” 

Surely not in the Davis-Kerns wing of the Tea Party.

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BRIAN BEDFORD-ANOTHER TONY NOMINATION

Congratulations to Brian Bedford: Tony nominated -- as Lady Bracknell -- for the fifth time in five Broadway appearances over the last eighteen years He'd already won for Jumpers in 1974, School for Wives, 1971, and The Misanthrope, 1968 -- the last two having opened in Ann Arbor with the APA (Phoenix) Company before New York. He's also won several Drama Desk awards for other performances. Because of his frequent visits to this town in the sixties and seventies with APA, and our proximity to his Stratford (Ontario) base, we've seen him on stage more than any other great actor.

His comic appearances, in Moliere plays, as Dogberry in Much Ado, as Elyot in Private Lives (ones I've seen) make him one of the best comic stage actors of our time. His understated approach magnifies his gifts; he has an almost supernatural ability to use long silences to brilliant effect and uproarious laughter. In The Moliere Comedies at Stratford he took his curtain call in full period costume and bowed with a great arcing swipe of his feathered hat then stood straight and stared unsmiling at the full house for an almost unbearable time, eventually provoking giggles, and then, just when you could stand it no longer, he raised an eyebrow and brought down the house.

He'll be back at Stratford this summer in The Misanthrope.

Thanks, Brian Bedford. I hope to see you again soon.

AN AMATEUR CYNIC ASKS, "WHITHER CHARLIE SHEEN?"

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KRUGMAN'S COLUMN TODAY ON BOND RATING AGENCIES

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An old joke: an accountant is asked, “how much do one and one make?” He answers, “how much do you want them to be?” Such was the attitude of big accounting firms, suborned by huge consulting contracts, that abetted Enron and other frauds a decade ago and has informed the more recent behavior of bond rating agencies suborned by lucrative commissions.

They knew prospective buyers, unaware that the agencies had been bought off by sellers, would rely on evaluations biased in favor of their deep-pocket customers.

Of the securities acts, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, mail and wire fraud statutes, and state fraud laws surely some will apply. This isn’t much different than real estate appraisers who abet mortgage frauds by over-valuing properties in order to keep sellers’ business. Eliot Spitzer would have been at the courthouse by now.

New regulations aren’t enough because Wall Street can find a way around any rule by creating new frauds. That’s why, along with better regulations, frauds must be prosecuted to take the profit out of them. This is what President Obama must do if he truly wants to show he isn’t in Wall Street’s pocket.

If the Federal government won’t act, attorney General Cuomo should ask, “what would Eliot do?” Yes, the crooks in Brooks Brothers can hire expensive lawyers, but the State of New York has much to gain and will surely find good lawyers to fight for the people.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS AT PERFORMANCE NETWORK - DON'T MISS THIS!

Little Shop of Horrors at the Network is an absolute delight with great singing and acting, direction that is crisp, fluid, and precise but not rushed, and a great set that sets the tone and changes quickly. The mood of the show is comic at first yet the actors take the characters seriously which heightens both the drama and the comedy. This is probably a joint choice by director Carla Milarch and her actors and it works perfectly

Courtney Myer's first song "Somewhere That's Green" was an anthem of joy and wistful, dreaming, hopefulness. She told her story of faint hope with her lovely voice and her eyes. Naz Edwards looked like a plant and sang like a black man, an operatic soul singer, sort of Porgy and bitch. Her voice carried her anger and meanness to the last row and beyond. Jason Richards, who seems perfect for every character he plays, morphed into Seymour. His singing is excellent as always and nailed his character.

B.J. Love was a funny and bouncily youthful old man, a cross between Phil Silvers and Phil Foster.

Little Shop is a morality tale with some Don Giovanni, some Sweeney Todd, and some Mad Comics. I found myself laughing a lot and very loudly yet rising and falling with the fortunes of Audrey and Seymour. I hoped for them although I knew it was hopeless.

The staging of the plant’s carnivorous excess was genius. It happened quickly and believably.

Altogether, and much to my surprise, Little Shop was one of the best evenings I’ve had in theater for a long time.

Miss this and be very, very, sorry.

SEC SUES FINANCIER FOR IGNORING SIGNS OF MADOFF FRAUD

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The Times reports that the SEC filed a civil suit in June against the operator of a “feeder fund” to Bernie Madoff and the Justice Department is investigating the same setup for possible criminal violations. The basis asserted by the SEC and, presumably, the Justice Department, is that he “ . . . steered clients’ money to Mr. Madoff — and collected hundreds of millions of dollars in management fees — ‘despite having clear indications that Madoff was conducting a fraud.’ ”

It is tempting to put the last quotation in screaming purple italics. Is the SEC not the same organization that for over a decade ignored complaints about Mr. Madoff’s operations from knowledgable sources “. . . despite having clear indications that Madoff was conducting a fraud?” This gives us a new definition of chutzpah: in place of the old one, a child who murders his parents and pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan, we have a government watchdog suing an individual for not acting on evidence that the watchdog itself ignored the whole time

Surely the defendant will try to point this out to the jury, but the SEC’s lawyer, or the prosecutor, will object on the ground that following the example of a government agency is not a defense. Everyone involved in the SEC’s show trial will take it with a straight face. But I won’t. I’m laughing already.

This Bizzaro standard of responsibility advocated by the SEC is as ridiculous as Jeffrey Dahmer complaining that his victim's corpse assaulted him with its final twitch. If there is justice in the world we’ll see the feeder fund operator let off the hook and the entire SEC marched off in chains in an internationally televised perp walk. Of course, that won’t happen, but I’m still laughing.