Go see this show, even if I didn't like it

Photo is by Rob Levine.
Pictured are Namir Smallwood, Matthew Rein, Jahi Kearse, Keith Hale and Traci Allen

You won’t find grades – or stars, or digits in one position or another, or even an adorable little man – attached to any of my reviews. There are a couple of reasons for this. First off, I know from my own experience that grades lead to readers not actually reading what you wrote. “Hey, it’s a three-star review, sounds boring. Let’s go on to the next thing.” Or they become so watered down as to be meaningless (this could be called the Rolling Stone 3 ½ Star Syndrome).

The main reason, however, is that something as simple as a grade often isn’t adequate to describe the experience. This is especially true in theater, where so many elements are fused together for a whole. You can have great acting, but boring direction; the set may be exquisite, but the actors are off; the production is top notch, but the script doesn’t work. And even those examples aren’t nearly as nuanced as the entire experience.

Which brings me to “Five Fingers of Funk,” the latest original work presented by the Children’s Theatre Company. Created by award-winning artist Will Power (his “FLOW” was a big hit in recent years), “Five Fingers of Funk” is at times thrilling, engaging, staid, boring and cringe-inducing, sometimes all within the same scene. It’s a grab bag of influences, emotions and story lines that don’t mesh together at all. It’s a show I ultimately didn’t like, but one that I think would be a valuable show for people to see, especially those with an interest in musical theater or the soul/funk/early disco sounds of the early 1970s.

What’s good? The five members of the teenage band at the center of the story are fresh and engaging, with solid musical and acting chops. The music – crafted by Power and composer Justin Ellington – often find the groove. And the production does a fine job of evoking the era via some epic threats.

What’s not? Well, there is the plot, which sticks close to an after-school special path and never really digs into any of the characters’ hearts. The path of destruction for band leader Poppo is clearly telegraphed from the earliest scenes, and the other kids are often just representations of their various places in society (the angry militant; the token white guy) as fully fleshed character.

Those descriptions don’t even do this justice. Some of the songs are so on point lyrically as to strip them of their power, such as an otherwise lovely duet between lone-female Ruby and the mother of talented-but-shy Big Ced. While at times the characters and story come into focus, revealing a much deeper, if potentially darker, story underneath.

Ultimately, the reason I would recommend people see the show – despite all of my misgivings about the production – is the potential. There’s a great nucleus of material here – songs, the starts of characters, a storyline loaded with ideas if not focus – and plenty of food for thought. So I think it’s worth taking a chance on “Five Fingers of Funk,” just don’t ask me to give it a grade.


What: Five Fingers of Funk
Who: Children’s Theatre Company
Where: 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis
When: Through Nov. 16
Tickets: $14-$29
Phone: 612-874-0400
Online

OK, maybe there is Life on Mars

I wasn't particularly looking forward to the U.S. remake of Life on Mars. The original British show is one of my favorites of the last few years -- a tasty mix of weird fantasy, SF, cop shows and 1970s cultural commentary, not to mention lead turns by John Simm and Phil Glesner -- and I couldn't imagine how a U.S. version could improve on it.

After watching the show's debut, I'm still not sure. At times, "Out Here in the Fields" was a shot-by-shot recreation of the original show, with the changes working in a hit and miss faction. On the up side, the cast is top notch and slip easily and convincingly into their roles. The chemistry between confused time traveler Sam Tyler and 1970s woman cop Annie also shows a bit more fire from the get go. The New York milleu is a perfect way to contrast the high-tech '00s with the grungy '70s (with a heart wrenching view of the Twin Towers -- hopefully the creators don't go back again and again to the image; once is touching; more than that just feels explotatitve).

On the downside, I knew exactly where it was going, with the exception of one incredibly stupid twist. The modern-day suspect turns out to be the actual killer in this case, aided by his -- surprise! -- twin brother, who provides an alibi. Don't you think the high-tech, highly competent cops of the 21st century might have sussed this out before they brought their suspect in? (It also doesn't explain why the suspect, a young boy in 1973, waited so long to start his copycat spree). Also, 30 seconds of Internet research would have shown the creators that a New York City cop wouldn't be surprised by someone driving a "Jeep," as they had been commercially available for decades by that point. Oh, and the music could have dug a bit deeper -- only one of the tunes was actually from 1973. Considering the era and the location (one strain of punk rock was in the process of being born downtown) they could do better than "Signs."

That aside, there is potential here, but we won't really get to see it until the show moves beyond the British one into its own space, much in the way the American Office has done. That will be born out in the coming weeks.

Back from the world of madness with 10 thoughts

Really, I don't want to go into what's been up for the last two months. Suffice to say, not a barrel of fun (or even of monkees). A few thoughts to get the day going:

1. Two million more people watched Knight Rider last Wednesday than Pushing Daisies. So, Americans are choosing a Ford-commercial retread of a show that wasn't very good in the first place over a colorful and innovative fantasy. This is why the terrorists hate us.

2. Can we come with a new term for "science"-based TV shows that have little-to-nothing to do with, you know, actual science. It used to be that creators appeared to have sat in some general science course, but had not really paid attention. Now, it appears that the creators just half-listened to a couple of people talk about a science class that they, in turn, really had paid attention to either. To be frank -- I'm tired of shows about guys having information downloaded into their heads, having chips implanted in their heads, using shitty "science" to solve either very easy or needlessly Baroque problems. Most of all, I'm really sick of time travel. Well, at least on Heroes and Sarah Connor Chronicles. Doctor Who gets grandfathered in, because, well time travel is really just a means to an end on the show.

3. Of all this awfulness, Fringe has emerged to be something that's, at least, OK. There's a great mad scientist vibe about it (John Noble is gold in the role) and some hints about a strange and dark world underneath it all.

4. On the other hand, Shirley Manson -- the new liquidy villain on Sarah Connor -- is the worst actor I've ever seen. And I've covered community theater in my day.

5. Finally saw Iron Man over the weekend. A fun romp that scratched at the barest surface of an interesting story about an arms dealer dealing with he world he helped create. However, I really wish we could get past remedial plotting 101. It took about 10 seconds to work out who the villain was, and much of the action went by the numbers. Come on, we've all seen these superhero movies in the last decade. We know the plotting drill. Give the audience some credit for brains and try for something a tad more complex and deep.

6. On a sports note -- while I don't expect a football game to approach art, the Vikings-Lions game yesterday was enough to make my eyes bleed. Truly the worst performances I've ever seen. And again, I've covered community theater.

7. The spoils of an 8 1/2 minute interview with Rufus Wainwright are now up at Lavender. With any luck, I'll see the songster this Wednesday.

8. As a result of one of the aforementioned things I don't want to talk about, I have a new car. It not only runs better than the old one (it had better for what I paid), but came with auxilary jack in the stereo, perfect for plugging an iPod into. I may never buy a CD again.

9. However you do it -- physical album, download, listening to a friend listen to it on their headphones -- check out the new Lucinda Williams disc, which comes out tomorrow. It's another brilliant chapter in a consistently brilliant career.

10. My copy of Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book arrived last week. I've been putting off reading it, because I wanted to savor each moment. I'm just a few pages in right now, but am absolutely hooked. Sadly, another item that I don't want to talk about prevented me from attending Neil's reading last week. At least it's available online to watch.

You got zombies in my Shakespeare...say!

The big hit of the 2008 Minnesota Fringe Festival is Shakespeare's Land of the Dead. It starts with an alarmingly simple concept -- what if a George A. Romero-style zombie apocalypse happened in 1599, the night Shakespeare's Henry V opened -- and builds from there. The show deserves its hit status. The play is polished, well-conceived, written and acted. Beyond that, playwright John Heimbuch understands the conventions and rhythms of this kind of horror story, with echoes of Night of the Living Dead (either staying in the safety of the Globe theater or making a go of it outside) and I Am Legend (destroying London Bridge to stop the spread of the plague; though this is a motif that could have been pulled from any number of films). This isn't as easy as it looks -- witness the complete failure of another Fringe show, The Great American Horror Movie Musical, to show any understanding of the genre and, consequently, falling flat on its face.

There's also an interesting drama going on inside the Globe, with a number of personal and political currents running throughout, from the return of Will Kemp, an actor who has left the company; to Francis Bacon asking for Shakespeare to put his name to a play the knight has written; to an appearance by the Queen herself. 

The show needs a bit of polish -- what Fringe show doesn't -- to focus us more on the inside drama, especially early on in the show, before the zombies appear. As far as the zombies go, they're off stage for long stretches here and it's easy to forget their presence. That decision is understandable in this production, as they're on the Rarig Center's Thrust Stage, and it would look just silly to have the zombies hanging out, waiting for their cue. It's not that I want to see them constantly, but their presence needs to be felt throughout. Oddly enough, a smaller stage would fit the show well. It would give them a chance to sell the work's claustrophobia (another important part of a zombie film, even the mall in Dawn of the Dead confined the characters to a small world) and maybe do more tricks with the creatures.

The show is near the end of it's Fringe run, though I'm sure it'll be part of a last-night "hits" showcase. And considering the huge audiences (the line for tickets last night stretched outside of the Rarig Center) I imagine a future production(s) is in the cards here.

My Fringe reviews are up at City Pages now. Go, visit, plan your weekend.

"Fuck you - me! Fuck you - Me!"

The 15th annual Minnesota Fringe Festival opened yesterday with a flurry of activity. For those not in the know, the Fringe is an 11-day festival spread out through Minneapolis. During it, more than 150 shows are presented. The shows tend to be rough and ready -- things pieced together by artists who want to explore new frontiers, get the word out about their work or do a trial-run for a new company.

I'm reviewing the Fringe for City Pages, so I'll hold off on specific opinions about those shows (check back next week and I'll post a link for those reviews).  But as a holder of an all-access "gold" pass (even laminated this year!), I will share opinions about other shows I take in, along with general Fringe-y opinions.

Today's headline is from Mike Fotis' spoken word piece, "An Intimate Evening with Fotis: Part Two." It's basically Fotis, sitting in a chair, reading his stories. It's a bracing evening, full of humor and quite a bit of geek-tastic insight. Like any good storyteller, Fotis is willing to mine his own phobias and shortcomings for material. His first story -- a mix of video-game anger and a fight in junior high -- hit close to home. While I've never broken my hand after a frustrating attempt to, say, destroy a boss, I have broken more than a few controllers; not to mention tossing just about everything across the room -- game discs, boxes, the useless instruction manuels -- at one point or the other (I even recall tossing down my GBA/DS in the same way, though thankfully onto a soft cushion, preventing permanent damage to either one). And the fight thing? Well, I pretty much stayed out of that in junior high, but I did get into an altercation in middle school when a dude named Victor Hell (really) decided to wail on me because -- remember, we were 12 or something -- we kinda looked the same (we eventually became sorta friends; it helped that we both liked loud rock n roll).

Fotis went from strength to strength, from talking about a particularly awful pair of encounters with bats (the type that flaps around) to admitting his love of loud rock n roll (not to mention Wilco and the Pixies -- white guys in their 30s, unite!) And ended with a rant about the power of his... blog. Right on.

Tonight, I'm off to the U for another City Pages assignment (An Inconvenient Squirrel), but since there are four venues within Rarig, I may take in more while I'm there. More anon.

Journey's end indeed

SPOILERS AHEAD! IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FINALE OF DOCTOR WHO, DO NOT PROCEED!

(to prevent unintentional spoilerage, here's a picture of David Tennant, copyright BBC)

Right....

The title Journey's End resonates in a lot of ways. It of, of course, marks the end of the fourth season of the revised Doctor Who. It also is the end for the current production team, with showrunner Russell T. Davies stepping aside (he will craft several specials over the next year, but this is his last series) and both BBC producers leaving the program. The behind-the-scenes work of Phil Collinson, Julie Gardner and Davies cannot be underestimated. They took a moribund franchise and turned it into a commercial success (Journey's End has an excellent chance of ending the week at the top of the British TV charts -- something that has never happened in the 45-year history of the show) and more importantly, an excellent piece of TV.

The episode is action-packed from the first moments and doesn't let up until it ends and hour later (though that action is of a different nature, but see below for that). Along the way, we have a parcel of companions (basically all of them from the current series, along with cameos from the Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures sets), a vast army of Daleks, the return of Davros (an absolutely lovely and barking mad Julian Bleach in the latest incarnation) and absolute peril to the whole of blasted creation. It's more than over the top -- I don't know if words can describe how over the top it all is -- but that's really just the action-y overlay to the story. Inside, there is something darker, heavier and far more human.

At the end of episode 12 (a cliffhanger that caused me to grab the edges of my chair and scream "you fuckers!" at the screen) we left the Doctor in mid-regeneration. Thanks to his ever-bubbling extra hand, he didn't turn into a new actor. Instead, the extra energy went there -- and a few minutes later, we had a second Doctor. And because it was Donna's touch that sparked the regeneration, he's a human/Time Lord hybrid (shades of the Fox movie!) and, now, so is Donna.

Plot-wise, this becomes important, as it takes the efforts of all three (with nifty assists from Torchwood, Mr. Smith and -- good dog -- K-9) to finally (finally? it is Doctor Who) to crush the Dalek threat.

Yet the real moment -- the throbbing heart of the episode -- comes as the Doctor is confronted by his companions, all who have plots to eliminate the Daleks. Martha Jones is on Earth, prepared to destroy the planet, while Sarah Jane, Captain Jack, Mickey and Jackie have their own device, one that would kill all of the principals, but leave the universe intact. At this point, Davros -- you know, the one who created the Daleks and gave them the drive to destroy all that is different and is about to annihilate all of creation -- lectures the Doctor about his influence on people, noting that he takes ordinary folks and turns them into "weapons." 

A running theme through all of Davies' series has been how the companions "humanize" the Doctor. In fact, that's a key moment in Turn Left -- because Donna is not there on Christmas Day to shock the Doctor out of his reign of destruction, he gets caught and killed by the flooding Thames. Yet here, we come face to face with the flipside of that equation. What good has the Doctor done, really?

Well, let's look at the people we are talking about. Captain Jack was a liar, thief and coward. Rose and Mickey had little to look forward to than life on a council estate. Jackie was trapped i the same flat she'd lived for decades. Sarah Jane certainly had a life ahead, but her time with the Doctor transformed her existence. The same for Martha, who unlocked the heart of a true bona fide hero who saved the Earth through her own determination and unrequited love for the Doctor.

And let's not forget Donna, a go-nowhere temp who cluelessly glided through life without noticing anything before she met the Doctor. So, weapons, yes, but also heroes; people will to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

Of course, they're not called on to do this (it would be a nasty, Blake's 7 kind of ending to the series) and instead it is the ingenuity of the three "Doctors" who save the day. It does, however, come at a cost. For the human Doctor (who has one heart and no regenerative abilities), it's a positive cost -- he is left on the alternative Earth with Rose, allowed to finally "spend the rest of his life" with a companion. For Jack, Martha and Mickey (who wisely stays on the main Earth, as he knows he has no chance against two Doctors for Rose's heart) it may be the start of a new friendship (perhaps to be played out in Season 3 of Torchwood). But for Donna and the Doctor (the proper Doctor) there is only heartbreak.

The Time Lord "brain" Donna absorbed is going to kill her and there is only one way the Doctor sees to save her -- by erasing all knowledge of her time on the Tardis. In an instant, Donna is "reset," forgetting the stronger, wiser and heroic soul she has become. Her mother and grandfather know the truth, but cannot say anything; and the Doctor can never again be with his friend. For him, Donna has died as if she had stopped breathing.

The question is left whether or not Donna is better for the experience. Certainly she'll get a good push from Mom and Granddad, and we saw her bravery in Turn Left when she sacrificed herself (there's that theme again) for the greater good. On the other hand, her chatting on the phone at episode's end doesn't portend for good things; just another temp from Chiswick, moving from day to day but not really living.

And that leaves the Doctor. Near the end of the episode, he has a Tardis packed with his friends, all joining together to fly the old beast as it saves the Earth. Yet in a very short time, they are all gone, leaving him alone, drenched in rain and unsure of where to go next with his eternal ramble through space and time. That's the essence for the show for me -- the reason it has lived on in my imagination in the 30 years since I first saw an episode -- of a man, surrounded by humor and love and adventure, but also so, so alone. It cuts into the loneliness we all have to survive with every day.

Doctor Who has always been at its best in these moments, from the beginning the Doctor was an exile, unexplained, accompanied only by his granddaughter and a couple of school teachers who were dragged into the adventure. It doesn't surprise me that I find his interactions with other Time Lords to be the weakest parts of the show. Like any mystery, the more you explain, the less interesting it becomes, and the Doctor is about the darkness that can envelop us all -- and how important it is to fight it at every turn; to not give into loneliness or despair or evil.

So there's an ironic meaning of Journey's End. Sure it marks the close of several eras (though not Tennant's, he'll be around at least for the specials, including the Christmas episode -- which promises Cybermen in Victorian England), but the Doctor's journey never really ends. He'll be out there, rickety Tardis careening around the Universe, looking for adventure and new friends to ease the pain.

The view from Mars

Sometimes, all of the speculative fiction about the universe can't hold a candle to the real thing, such as these images from the latest unmanned mission to Mars.