Saturday, November 19, 2005

The Cleverness of My Cat




Oftentimes the keenness of cats are underestimated. I'm watching my beloved cat right now (or I was watching him until I started typing). He's quite a clever little (old) cat.

At the moment, he's giving himself a bath and he's clipping his own nails. Now, he's quite good at giving himself a clean bath. Many people, upon seeing him for the first time, comment that his fur looks so soft. And, he's pretty good at trimming his nails, although they could be a tad shorter.

And, earlier in the week, I witnessed him doing something for the first time. Only after the fact and after my husband explained matters to me, did I realize that he was sliding his butt across the diningroom and livingroom floor. He was holding his front two paws pretty steady while he slid his back end and legs forward. The action looked very strange. The first thought to cross my mind concerned the fact that he's quite old and perhaps he's beginning to . . . retire various parts of his body. Well, the story that had a sad and confused start has a bit of a funny ending. My husband, while the cat was still in the activity, said that "he is sliding butt all over your floor." Not long after he stopped, we figured out why he was sliding his bottom around on the floor; he had something stuck on his bottom. And, his antics worked; the foreign object was no longer attached to his bottom. Instead, with such wonderful timing, as I was finishing breakfast, my husband drew attention to the present he left behind on the floor. Thankfully, my husband cleaned it up off the floor. In hindsight and even now, I think that's so clever! Imagine not having arms to be able to get something off of a part of your body, such as your bottom. How would you get it off?

My kitty-cat's brilliance doesn't stop there. From reading a book on training and with some diligence, I taught my cat to come to me on command. He does in fact come to me when I call for him! And who said cats are dumb? Not I, said the fly.

Friday, November 18, 2005

The Latest Andrew Lloyd Webber work: "The Woman in White"

Many who know me well are aware of the fact that I love musicals. I ran across a review of "The Woman in White" today in the New York Times. I know little about the musical, other than having heard the name. The review I found to be well written and informative.



  • The New York Times

    November 18, 2005
    THEATER REVIEW | 'THE WOMAN IN WHITE'

    A Tutor, a Triangle and Hearts That Sing

    Bravely flouting centuries of accepted scientific theory, the creators of "The Woman in White" have set out to prove that the world is flat after all. Inspired by the spine-tingling Wilkie Collins novel of 1860, this latest work from the poperetta king Andrew Lloyd Webber, which opened last night at the Marquis Theater, seems to exist willfully and unconditionally in two dimensions.

    It's not just that this import from London, directed by Trevor Nunn and designed by William Dudley, has rejected a conventional set in favor of computer-animated projections that make you feel as if you're trapped inside a floating upscale travel magazine. It's that everything concerned with this reshaping of a landmark English mystery novel (adapted by the playwright Charlotte Jones, with lyrics by David Zippel) gives the sense of having been subjected to a similar process of flattening and compression.

    Plot, characters, words and most of the performances in this tale of love, deception and unspeakable secrets in Victorian England emanate the aura of autumn leaves ironed into crisp immobility between sheets of waxed paper. There is, of course, Lord Lloyd Webber's music, which swirls and slides and glides its way into your inner ear, where it will rest for many a day, whether you want it to or not.

    But even the music has the feeling of freeze-dried Lloyd Webber motifs to which water has been added for the occasion. Like the show's visuals, its sounds - with British folk and liturgical accents, along with occasional atonal ominousness, spicing the usual melodic stew - tantalize with a promise of substance that is seldom delivered.

    Before we go further, let's cut to the real drama of "The Woman in White," which has nothing to do with ghostly apparitions in churchyards and virgins in jeopardy. As was reported in this newspaper, the show's star, Maria Friedman, received a diagnosis of Stage 1 breast cancer on Oct. 31, and after performing in only five of the show's previews, underwent surgery. A week later she was back onstage, in a physically and vocally taxing role.

    In the best tradition of backstage stories of determination and triumph, Ms. Friedman, a longtime favorite of London musical audiences, makes an impeccably professional Broadway debut. Portraying Marian Halcombe, the plainer and cleverer of two sisters exploited for evil ends by a sinister nobleman, Ms. Friedman is required to be incorrigibly perky and to scamper a lot in heavy period dresses, a form of movement that should be forced upon no one over 12.

    But when she sings of hope and heartbreak and honorable vengeance for dirty deeds, her deeply expressive voice has the sheen of emotional truth. Ms. Friedman's Marian clearly believes every word she sings. Would that the audience could share her conviction.

    Lord Lloyd Webber has described his latest score as his most operatic and complex. And when the show begins, amid clouds of stage smoke, Lloyd Webber fans may be slightly disappointed by the fragmented, dissonant quality of the music, more reminiscent of Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes" than of "The Phantom of the Opera."

    But within 10 minutes, that familiar glucose sweep of melody has begun. And while the score periodically wanders into less sweetly harmonic territory, as in a wedding sequence that turns the carol "The Holly and the Ivy" into a dirge out of a Hammer horror movie, you can always feel the music ready to return to its natural valentine frilliness.

    If in Lloyd Webber productions like "Cats" (the longest-running musical on Broadway) and "Phantom" (poised to surpass "Cats" for that same distinction) the music seems on the verge of segueing into an aria by Puccini, in "The Woman in White" you often expect the songs to mutate into older Lloyd Webber beauties like "Memory" and "All I Ask of You."

    Such numbers are here mostly sung by the love triangle made up of Ms. Friedman's Marian, her beauteous half sister, Laura Fairlie (Jill Paice), and Walter Hartright (Adam Brazier), the handsome young man who comes to tutor the girls (orphans, of course) in art on the grand country estate of their hypochondriacal uncle (Walter Charles). (A shriller counterpoint is provided by a pre-Raphaelite madwoman, screeched by Angela Christian as the title character.) Though much of the novel's tension stems from feelings repressed or unacknowledged, the characters here find their hearts right away. Belonging to Lloyd Webber land, those hearts refuse to stay quiet.

    "I believe my heart," they sing, as flocks of musical notes, suggesting butterflies and cherubs, flutter around them. It took me three months to get that darn tune out of my head after seeing the show in London more than a year ago. And I am now resigned to having it whispering in my mind for months to come. Like it or not, Lord Lloyd Webber is a master of brainwashing. And in "The Woman in White" he takes that mastery to new extremes, with insistently reiterated motifs that act on listeners like branding irons.

    Such sounds are deployed in a long march of recitative that explains and re-explains the elaborate plot in exceedingly clunky lyrics. (My personal favorites include "I must disregard his charms/ And his manly rugged arms," and "I was sure I heard her screaming/ But they told me I was dreaming.") Scenes of fight and flight, of seduction and betrayal occur as Marian, Laura and Walter step into and escape from snares set by the fortune-hunting bounder Sir Percival Glyde (Ron Bohmer) and his mustache-twirling accomplice, Count Fosco (Michael Ball, wearing a fat suit and a music-hall Italian accent).

    The physical action (Wayne McGregor is the movement director) feels annotative instead of organic. The show is all big generic set pieces - of discovery and catastrophe and confrontation - that fail to stir because they seem only to further the plot, not define the characters. There's a cold efficiency in both Ms. Jones's streamlining and rearranging of the labyrinthine novel and in Sir Trevor's staging, which keeps the ensemble moving with martial surefootedness on a constantly revolving turntable.

    It's not surprising that the performers have little chance of establishing personalities beyond that of decorative chess figurines. As the sybaritic, amoral Fosco, Mr. Ball, in a role created in London by Michael Crawford, certainly has the flashiest part and liveliest songs. But while the only genuinely chilling moments belong to him (as when he kisses an unconscious, drugged Marian on the lips), Fosco is basically a Disney cartoon villain. Since everyone seems robotically programmed, it's especially refreshing when he puts a live white rat on his shoulder for a jaunty number about making crime pay. There is, for a moment, actual suspense, when it looks as if the rat might not respond on cue.

    "The Woman in White" has the misfortune to be the second musical slice of Victorian Gothic to open on Broadway in the last several weeks. The first was John Doyle's reconceived staging of "Sweeney Todd," the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler tale of a homicidal barber. Both shows make a macabre case for there being "no place like London" (to borrow a Sondheim lyric), with nightmarish street scenes of urban hell.

    But despite (or perhaps because of) having a much smaller cast, orchestra and stage - and nothing approaching the literal-minded scene-setting of Mr. Dudley's projections - "Sweeney Todd" draws you straight into an anxious fever dream; the songs seem to come from within you. By contrast, "The Woman in White" feels as personally threatening as a historical diorama behind glass. It's not a terrible show, but it's an awfully pallid one. The difference between it and "Sweeney Todd" is the difference between water and blood.

    The Woman in White

    Freely adapted from the novel by Wilkie Collins; music by Andrew Lloyd Webber; lyrics by David Zippel; book by Charlotte Jones; directed by Trevor Nunn; orchestrations by David Cullen; orchestration supervised by Lord Lloyd Webber; musical supervision by Simon Lee; movement direction by Wayne McGregor; associate musical supervisor/musical director, Kristen Blodgette; technical supervision by David Benken; projection realization and system design, Mesmer-Dick Straker/Sven Ortel; music coordinator, David Lai; production stage manager, Rick Steiger; associate producers, Stage Entertainment BV; lighting by Paul Pyant; sound by Mick Potter; set, costume and video design by William Dudley. Presented by Boyett Ostar Productions, Nederlander Presentations Inc., Sonia Friedman Productions Ltd., the Really Useful White Company, Lawrence Horowitz/Jon Avnet, Ralph Guild/Bill Rollnick, Bernie Abrams/Michael Speyer and Clear Channel Entertainment/PIA. At the Marquis Theater, 211 West 45th Street; (212) 307-4100. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.

    WITH: Maria Friedman (Marian Halcombe), Michael Ball (Count Fosco), Jill Paice (Laura Fairlie), Angela Christian (Anne Catherick), Adam Brazier (Walter Hartright), Ron Bohmer (Sir Percival Glyde), Walter Charles (Mr. Fairlie), Norman Large (Signal Man and Pawnbroker), John Dewar (Mr. Fairlie's Servant), Justis Bolding (a Village Girl), Richard Todd Adams (a Con Man) and Patty Goble (the warden).

    Saturday, November 12, 2005

    Anyone out there?

    I don't know what I'm doing, other than putting off going to bed, like I did when I was an itty-bitty kid. Wait, but I'm not that little anymore.

    Actually, I'm dreading the mere possibility of another night of tossing and turning. And, I don't want to bother my husband with my tossing and turning and tossing and turning and tossing and turning. You get the idea. How is it that we get these restless sleep nights?

    Who are the people that are up at this time? Are you adventurers in the night? Are you nightcrawlers?

    Okay, way seriously, I'm quite exhausted. It's time for me to head to the world of dreams. Good night all.

    Saturday, November 05, 2005

    The Love of My Life

    My husband is the love of my life. But, when I refer to him as "the love of my life," I am not utilizing some Hollywood notion of love. The Hollywood notion seems focused on feeling continual pleasure of some sort. Plus, the feeling can be fleeting.

    The love I speak of runs deep. By now, we've known each six years in the running, three of which we have been married. The love of which I speak involves so much I'm not even sure I can describe half of it here at this juncture. For starters, at times I do feel quite giddy and excited when I think about him. But, I really desire to understand him and grow closer to him. And, the longer I know him, the better I comprehend him. I confess, there are times I find him extremely irritating for various reasons. Our relationship, our marriage, is built on more than moment to moment events and feelings. We've taken a covenant to be with one another for the rest of our lives. This means more than merely being roommates. This means more than being best friends.

    On my better and more mature days, especially as time progresses, I realize more and more that I love my husband for who he is. I don't love him for the final product after I mold or change him. I didn't marry him so I could turn him into a clone of myself. Surprisingly, a lot of women believe that they can and will change their significant other after marrying them.

    No, this man is the love of my life. What does that mean? Well, I find him physically attractive, extremely intelligent, spiritually mature, intense - and I love him for all of that! I love that he values his time alone (even though I am naturally much more extroverted than him). And today, bless him, he bought groceries and took care of some housekeeping matters (including calling a previous landlord that is trying to cheat us out of our money by making up stories that never happened). But, he didn't stop there. He took a leap far beyond his comfort zone, and he not only went to the mall to walk around with me, but he helped me scope out some cute clothes. I walked away with a fun, stylish, cute skirt. Before he grew too weary, he let me know that he was tired of the crowds and tired of shopping. But, the way in which he told me was polite but explicit. Towards the end of the evening, we watched some of the older Batman animated short films. We both love watching animated films.

    Anyways, I'm not sure I'm very coherent. Got to hit the sack. Auf wiedersehen.