An Olio
a miscellany of thoughts

April 22, 2006

 

Rent's Numbers

Kenneth Jones Playbill April, 22, 2006

How Many Minutes Have Passed Since Rent's Broadway Opening? We Did the Math

The second-act anthem, "Seasons of Love," in Jonathan Larson's Rent tells of the 525,600 minutes that make up a year in the life of friends.

It doesn't take a genius to determine that when Rent celebrates the 10th anniversary of its 1996 Broadway opening on April 29, it represents the passage of 5,256,000 minutes since opening night. (We can't figure out the math for the addition of two days in the Leap Years 2004 and 2000 - we are theatre geeks not really to be trusted with math.)

What other facts, figures, stats and trivia have we uncovered about the past 10 years of Rent? Read on.

Numbers are provided by the production and represent statistics up to the April 24 performance, which is a gala benefit concert version of the show featuring members of the original cast and special guests. The official milestone is April 29 - the day of the 1996 Broadway opening at the Nederlander Theatre.

Regular performances of Rent including April 24, 2006, gala, as of April 24? 4,157.

Number of $20 orchestra seats bought in same-day ticket lottery since the offer began? 141,338. (34 orchestra seats, in first two rows, for each performance.)

Number of actors the Broadway production has employed? 139.

Number of Broadway Rogers? 13.

Number of Broadway Mimis? 10.

The actor who played Roger for the most performances on Broadway? Manley Pope. (He also toured.)

The cast member who has played the most performances? Owen Johnston II.

Number of paper lantern "moons" on the Paul Clay's set since 1996? Two.

Ounces of glitter in Mimi's hair over the decade? 2,080.

Number of Ricola brand herbal cough drops for company members? 123,162.

Actor who has played most roles in Rent? Darius de Haas. (He went on as Benny, Tom, Angel and many ensemble parts.)

Number of company marriages as a result of Rent? Three. Actor Chad Richardson (an ensemble member, a Mark and a Roger) and actress Cristina Fadale (a Maureen) and prop person Billy Wright and assistant stage manager Kathy Haley. Need we mention original cast members Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel, who are now married?

Number of engagements? One. Matt Caplan (a Mark Cohen) and Karen Olivo (an understudy, a Maureen, a Mimi, a swing).

Yards of spandex for Mimi's costume? 106.

Number of hair extensions for Mimi? 103,925.

Number of sound systems used since 1996? Two. (The first one was replaced during the run - this is a rock musical, after all.)

Number of kimonos worn by actresses playing Mimi over the years? One. The same costume has been passed down. (Angela Wendt is the production's costume designer.)

Visit Rent.

April 20, 2006

 

Bobby Zimmerman, DJ

DJ Dylan

With Bob, You Won't Be A-Changin' The Station

By Mary Huhn
New York Post

April 20, 2006 — The answers may be blowing in the wind, but not on Bob Dylan's new radio show, which will debut May 3 on XM Satellite Radio. The Post got a sneak preview of the hourlong weekly program, which is steeped in the roots of American music but surprisingly leaves out folk.

And forget the 21st century: Dylan doesn't move beyond the '60s, either. The closest he gets to modern rock is Jimi Hendrix's The Wind Cries Mary.

But that doesn't matter.

Dylan's mix, which includes pop, blues, R&B, gospel and country, is wildly eclectic — even by his standards. Dubbed Theme Radio, the show will present a slice of related songs — the first week, it's all about the weather.

Produced to sound like an old-time radio program, the show completes the vintage effect with authentic zippy station-promo jingles ripped from the Leave It to Beaver era.

Dylan himself doesn't pontificate on anything but the songs, which he often introduces with an emphatic reading of favored lyrics.

It's easy to imagine him happily bopping along to Dean Martin's I Don't Care If the Sun Don't Shine — which, he points out, was also recorded by Elvis, "who wanted to be Dean" - or singing along to Jim Davis' You Are My Sunshine.

It may be all about the music and "themes, schemes and dreams," but Dylan's poetic voice shines through - often giving a glimpse into his early musical past. Here are some highlights of his introductions.

* Hendrix — The Wind Cries Mary: "Everyone thought Jim was a wild man, but he had his more gentle side. Sometimes the wind whispers Mary. Sometimes it cries Mary."

* Judy Garland — Come Rain or Come Shine: "Just like Prince, Judy came from Minnesota."

* Slim Harpo — Raining in My Heart: "Slim wrote a lot of his songs with his wife, Lovelle. Boy, I wish I had wife like that to help me write songs."

* The Spaniels — Stormy Weather: "An awfully happy song for blues and misery."

 

Julia Bombs

I thought that Julia Roberts' choice of a Broadway debut vehicle was a mistake. Beyond that, the idea of Julia Roberts on Broadway at all was not something I would want to see. Movie stardom does not necessarily translate to the stage.

There are movie and tv stars who have done well on Broadway, but most often it's because they have theatrical experience, like Jerry Orbach.

Three Days Of Rain

Julia's 3 Dull Days Of Rain a Soggy Eternity

By Clive Barnes
New York Post April 20, 2006

Hated the play. To be sadly honest, even hated her. At least I liked the rain — even if three days of it can seem an eternity.

Why, for heaven's sake, did Julia Roberts, film star extraordinary and box-office attraction incredible, decide to make her professional stage debut at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in last night's half-baked, fully drenched revival of Richard Greenberg's 1997 play, Three Days of Rain?

The whole magic world of the theater was wide open to the Midas touch of Roberts' enormous fan appeal. And, I should have thought, her talent. Possibly, I was wrong on the latter count.

Certainly Three Days of Rain was by no means a smart choice — especially when you get upstaged in the first act by your two furiously overacting male co-stars (Bradley Cooper and Paul Rudd) and in the second by a rainstorm that's easily the most realistic aspect of the evening.

Greenberg's play, especially on this second visitation, seems wafer-thin. With its corny soliloquies coyly offered to the audience through the fourth wall, and its smart-aleck dialogue skidding along as pleased as punch with its own phony cleverness, it seems extraordinary that it was ever thought Broadway material.

Still, here it was. A young man named Walker (Rudd), unkempt and clearly disturbed, and his sensible, married sister, Nan (Roberts), meet up with their childhood friend Pip (Cooper), ostensibly to settle up and, even more, discuss, the legacy of their two fathers, famous architects and partners.

That's the first act. The second is an extended flashback, with the men playing their own fathers, and Roberts playing the charming, yet potentially loco, woman in their lives.

The play's one point of mystery, in the first act, is the questionable bequest of a house. The second act merely makes that bequest more, rather than less, inexplicable. Was the playwright asleep when he wrote it?

In any event, the badly plotted, barely plotted play — staged as tautly as a slack rope by Joe Mantello — proves a rickety vehicle for Roberts.

Her film-star brother, Eric Roberts (whatever happened to him?), chose far more wisely, years back, with Lanford Wilson's Burn This.

Three Days of Rain was, for his sister at least, more a case of "burn that!"

In the first act, she looked long-faced, long-nosed and almost ordinary. How come? In her movies, do they use magic cameras on her or something?

She's allowed to cheer up a bit in the second act. Her voice projection still isn't great, but she smiles, laughs, grins and even shows glints of the Julia Roberts, that feisty movie identity we all love.

As for the men, they, perhaps urged on by some frantic act of overcompensation for their co-star, either prompted or permitted by the director, rush through the play as if they are nervous it is going to end before they do.

Really, the only nice things I can say about the evening are to praise the wonderfully atmospheric sets and costumes by the always brilliant Santo Loquasto, the lighting by Paul Gallo, and the "rain" — yes, all three days of it are actually credited as such on the playbill — by Jauchem & Meeh.

If ever I feel the need for rain, I'll know exactly where to go.

I understand that it's virtually impossible to buy tickets for the 12-week limited run, although it seems there may be some "premium" seats available at $251.25, which I presume includes tax.

Don't feel bad about it if you can't get in. Count your blessings.

April 07, 2006

 

Ghost in the Machine

I'm okay with the "ghost in the machine" but doubt I'll use Windows much.

From today's The New York Times:

Windows on Apple

Editorial

Published: April 7, 2006

Everyone saw it coming. First, Apple chose Intel, synonymous with Microsoft, to make chips for a new line of personal computers. Now Apple has announced Boot Camp, which will allow some versions of Windows to run more or less natively on an Apple machine. How you feel about this depends very much on whether you're a Windows or an Apple person.

From one angle, Boot Camp looks like a sensible effort to expand Apple's slice of the personal computer market. So far, switching from a Windows desktop to a much sleeker iMac has meant abandoning Windows for Apple's Mac OS X operating system. That means giving up some highly specialized applications for which there is no Apple equivalent. For better or worse, Apple has never quite been able to destroy the preconception that Windows belongs to business in roughly the same way that Apple belongs to the arts. An Apple computer that can run Windows will do away with such distinctions.

Apple people do love their hardware. But the soul of the machine is still the operating system. And most people who switch from Windows to Mac OS X do so not merely for the pleasure of owning Apple hardware. (An iPod would do, after all.) They switch because, so far, Apple's Unix-based operating system has been far more stable than Windows — as clean and elegant as the product design for which Apple is noted.

So the prospect of Boot Camp raises two very different scenarios. Windows users will buy Apple machines to run Windows. Or they may try out Apple's operating system just for the fun of it and get hooked.

All well and good. Still, serious Apple users who are very worried about letting Microsoft into their Windows-free environment can take comfort in the fact that Apple will allow Windows into its computers, but will not actually support it. It will merely be the ghost in the machine.

April 06, 2006

 

"Guy" Ballet



The Twin Cities' classy ballet company, The James Sewell Ballet, got a good review in today's New York Post.


IT'S A 'GUY' THING

By Clive Barnes

April 6, 2006

The James Sewell Ballet

The Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., between 18th and 19th Streets;
(212) 242-0800. Season runs through Sunday.


If it were on "Jeopardy!," the mix of Garrison Keillor and ballet might well prompt the question, "What is Swan Lake Wobegon?" But at the Joyce Theater Tuesday night, this oxymoronic pairing of humorist and dance came together wittily and well in "Guy Noir: The Ballet."

The James Sewell Ballet — one of the Twin Cities' cultural gems like the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra — was actually founded in New York by Sewell and his wife, Sally Rousse, in 1990, but three years later relocated to Sewell's native Minnesota.

Sewell, trained at the School of American Ballet and for many years the leading male dancer of the Eliot Feld company, is a dyed-in-the-wool classicist with a modern dance streak and a sense of humor.

The latter came to the fore in this collaboration with Keillor, who wrote and recorded the voice-over commentary that has his all too public private eye, Guy Noir, mixed up with a dance contest involving . . . power tools.

It's a fun piece, with the dancers led by Benjamin Johnson in neat Raymond Chandler trench-coat mood, and balanced the other two works, both richer in choreographic density and structure, "Anagram" and "Involution."

This is a company well worth catching. It wears its charms with a difference.

April 03, 2006

 

End of An Era

I'm a feminist, so I generally applaud accomplishments of women, including those who are "first" at something. But I don't agree with the selection of every woman who gains every position. If I did, I would be like people with whose stances I disagree, for example, those who follow their political party unwaveringly, no matter how wrong it is on an issue or how unqualified or incompetent a politcian/elected official may be.

So while not suprised, I am dismayed that Katie Couric has been chosen as the first sole woman anchor of a major network news show, the CBS Evening News. The only real quaification she has is cuteness, which palled years ago. I will not be watching her on the news show.

This is the end of an era for me. I have watched the CBS evening news program for 48 years. First with Walter Cronkite, who has never been and never will be equalled. Then Dan Rather, no Walter, but good in his own unique way.

Being stuck in a rut is not such a good thing, especially as you get older, so hopefully this change will lead to a new era of national news show watching for me.

I will soon be watching the NBC evening news show with Brian Williams. He has impressive qualifications, which Katie Couric comes nowhere near matching. As a former journalist, hard news experience is a must for my satisfactory news watching and reading.



From the NBC online bio: Since joining NBC News in 1993, Brian Williams has become one of the nation’s most accomplished and acclaimed anchors and traveling correspondents.

His live nightly hour-long newscast, The News with Brian Williams, has established a new brand of journalistic style and excellence. The broadcast is proud to count many of the nation’s lawmakers and opinion-makers among its nightly audience, and his work has been praised by many television critics and national publications.

In over 20 years of broadcasting, Williams has reported from 23 overseas nations on countless stories of national and international importance, including intensive live coverage of the September 11th attacks and their aftermath. After his election night coverage of the 2000 Presidential race, he was named Best Anchor by USA Today. In 1997, his continuous coverage of the death of Princess Diana was watched by countless millions worldwide on the networks of NBC. Millions also watched his many hours of live coverage following the crash of TWA Flight 800 and the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Among other overseas assignments, Williams covered the historic election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, the Arafat-Rabin Mideast peace agreement from Jericho and Jerusalem, and the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Williams has anchored live newscasts from the Middle East, Russia and Europe on numerous occasions.

While serving as NBC News’ Chief White House correspondent, Williams circled the world several times, accompanying President Clinton aboard Air Force One and covering virtually every foreign and domestic trip by the President during his years covering Mr. Clinton. On perhaps one of the most historic trips of the Clinton Presidency, Williams was the only television news correspondent to accompany three U.S. presidents — Clinton, Bush, and Carter — to Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral in Israel.

Williams has been awarded three Emmys: for his 1987 coverage of the stock market crash, his 1993 coverage of the Iowa floods, and in 2001 for his live coverage of the crash of a Singapore Airlines 747 in Taiwan.

Before joining NBC News, Williams spent seven years at CBS’s owned-and-operated stations division as anchor and correspondent for WCBS-TV in New York, where he covered the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He began his service at CBS as a correspondent for the network-owned WCAU-TV in Philadelphia and was a correspondent at WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C. He started his broadcasting career “doing everything but operating the transmitter,” as he puts it, at KOAM-TV in Pittsburg, Kansas

Prior to his broadcasting career, Williams worked in the White House during the Carter administration, beginning as a White House intern. He later worked as Assistant Administrator of the Political Action Committee of the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington.

April 02, 2006

 

Poetry for April

April is National Poetry Month, a time to specially emphasize a very satisfying genre.


Photo by Kevin T. Houle


From The New Yorker 3/27/2006:

Some Lines Against the Light

How awful the light is for the eyes.
How awful it is to be flooded with light,
how unpleasant to be David's Citadel or the Wailing Wall
or an actor
or something like that.
How awful is the light left on in the henhouse
by wily farmers
so that the hens will lay and lay
thinking it is forever day.
How awful of the light in this way to sow feelings,
to be leaping, always to begin loving anew,
to spew love.
Sometimes I stumble into history
the way a small animal, a rabbit or a fox,
stumbles into a passing car's beam of light.
Sometimes I am the driver.

Yehuda Amichai
Translated, from the Hebrew, by Leon Wieseltier.

April 01, 2006

 

Happy Birthday, Apple!




Thirty years old today — you've come a long way!

From the first Apple computer built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak:



















to my PowerBook G4:
















and beyond!


Photos are from my son Kevin T. Houle's Photoblog where you can see many terrific images.

The Happy Birthday representation is from his blog intermittent thoughts.