Culture Watch

"Brian’s Song": What Really Happened

by Barron H. Lerner

When Brian’s Song aired as a made-for-television film forty years ago this week, it was such a hit that it was eventually shown in theaters. Touching on sports, race relations and early death, it became known as the movie “men are allowed to cry at.” Although critics praised Brian’s Song for its frank description of cancer when the disease was rarely discussed publicly, the reality of Brian Piccolo’s illness and death was quite different than what was portrayed on the screen. It turns out the actual story of what happened to Piccolo is even more instructive, and especially relevant for modern cancer patients and health professionals struggling to balance hope and reality. Brian Piccolo was a 26 year-old running back for the Chicago Bears in the fall of 1969 when he developed a cough and difficulty breathing. The diagnosis was grim: a grapefruit-sized, highly malignant cancer known as a teratoma in Piccolo’s chest.

U.S. Theater Takes a New Look at Russian History

by Bruce Chadwick

It seems that everywhere you turn in American culture this winter, there are the Russians of the past, all the varying Cossacks, czars and revolutionaries of bygone centuries. They are everywhere, history’s ghosts.It started last spring at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York with a production of Diary of a Madman, the story of a disgruntled government clerk (played brilliantly by Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush) working in St. Petersburg in the middle of the nineteenth century.The flood of Russian theater in America continued with the premier of several of Anton Chekhov’s gems. In October, the Yale Repertory Theater, in New Haven, Connecticut, staged a new production of Three Sisters and the Classic Stage Company in New York is staging The Cherry Orchard next week as part of its Chekhov Initiative, a full-scale stage assault on the works of the late nineteenth century Russian playwright who made his money as a physician. The Cherry Orchard will star John Torturro and Diane Wiest. The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, in Ontario, Canada, staged a series of Chekhov plays over the summer months. The SoHo Repertory Company will stage a new production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya this season, too.

Blood and Gifts and Blood and Blood in the History of the U.S. in Afghanistan

by Bruce Chadwick

There is a scene in J.T. Rogers riveting new play, Blood and Gifts, about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, when a very calm CIA operative helps Afghan soldiers unload a series of large wooden crates full of weapons. The crates cover most of the stage and, at their size, represent an enormous amount of firepower. No scene in the play better explains the sordid American interest in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when we helped the local army battle the invading Soviets.This fall the Afghan war, at ten years in length, became the longest war in American history, and more than twice as long as World War II. It has cost the lives of several thousand soldiers (400 dead a year since 2008 alone) and an estimated $6.7 billion a month, plus an erosion of international prestige and heavy criticism at home.The play that opened last week asks why we are in Afghanistan in a dozen different ways, with no answer. The only answer in the play is that we jumped in with money, arms and supplies when the Soviets invaded in order to win the Cold War. Nothing else mattered. We came back fighting against the Afghans (Taliban) right after the 9/11 tragedy in 2001 here in order to, well, to crush the enemy, whoever he was.

White Christmas Makes Turn from 1954 Movie to 2011 Musical with Lots of Holiday Cheer

by Bruce Chadwick

White Christmas Paper Mill Playhouse Millburn, N.J. The 1954 film White Christmas, starring Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby, has been a staple of the holiday season on television for years. In the film, Bing sings the title song on a 1944 European battlefield. Ten years go by for him and his buddy, Danny Kaye, and then true love finds them both as they stage a Christmas show to save their beloved wartime general’s New England hotel from bankruptcy. All’s well that ends well on Christmas Eve. There are trips to Florida, train rides, television appearances, hotel scenes, offices scenes and, of course, a lot of scenes set in Vermont.How do you turn such a complicated 57-year-old movie into a stage play? How does anybody replace Bing Crosby?

The Cotton Club Roars Back to Life

by Bruce Chadwick

Cotton Club Parade City Center 130 W. 56th Street New York, N.Y. Harlem’s Cotton Club, which gained its everlasting fame during Prohibition in the 1920s and ‘30s, has to be the most glittering night club in entertainment history. It has appeared in story and song, novels, documentaries and Broadway shows. There was even a movie about it in 1984 (that, ironically, I saw on television on the morning I saw the show). It gained its luster because of its sensational floor show, its legendary musical conductor Duke Ellington, celebrity guests and its odd mix of all black entertainers and an all white audience. Now, well downtown at City Center, the glory days of the Harlem nightspot are back again in Cotton Club Parade, a quasi-musical that recreates the floorshow at the club and gives audiences a rousing night uptown at what was the glitzy emporium at Lenox Avenue and W. 142nd Street.

Iron Curtain Musical Is a Charming Jab at the Old Soviet Union in 1955

by Bruce Chadwick

Iron Curtain Baruch College Performing Arts Center 55 Lexington Avenue New York, N.Y. It is a fact that Joseph Stalin, and Nikita Khrushchev after him, had the artistic wing of the Communist Party produce numerous dramas and musicals that completely rewrote world history and pushed the party line for mass audiences in cities and villages throughout the Soviet Union. These awful, dreary shows, which the people madly applauded (naturally), were praised by the numerous censorship boards Soviet leaders formed to oversee, and rewrite, all literature, film, and theater. A musical or play would go something like this: in act one, a man in a small city who used to love the state thinks he might criticize the government over an issue. In act two he does and creates havoc with neighbors, who despise him. In act three, he realize the error of his ways, publicly repents and goes back to being a loyal party member and sings loving songs about the government as his smiling neighbors cheer madly.

A Grim Tale of the Destruction of Germany during World Wars I and II

by Bruce Chadwick

The Blue Flower Second Stage Theater 305 W. 43rd Street New York, N.Y. The Blue Flower, a haunting play by Jim and Ruth Bauer, is hard to categorize. It is bizarre, different, eclectic, avant garde and unusual, all in the same breath. It is a story in which extremely well done black and white movies and slide shows add a backdrop to the plot of the tale of four young Germans whose lives are ruined by World Wars I and II. The musical, which opened last night at the Second Stage Theater in New York, has a lot of problems. The plot veers off at strange angles. The audience is jolted left and right, up and down by odd events on stage. One character often speaks in a foreign language which is translated into a foreign language. There are dreamlike dance acts in a warehouse, crazy art collages, ghosts, sex parties, cocaine snorting and, for two hours, endless repression.And yet, despite all of this, there is an indefinable magnetism to the play, something strong and seductive in it that draws you into the story and the destruction of the main characters on stage over a long period of time. It is a bumpy night, but an interesting one.

Hollywood Jumps Into British History: Did William Shakespeare Write His Own Plays?

by Bruce Chadwick

Did William Shakespeare write his own plays?Did Abraham Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address?There is a new movie out, Anonymous, that suggests that the Bard was nothing more than a seventeenth-century lout and that a nobleman of the era, Earl of Oxford Edward De Vere, actually wrote Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear and all of the other beloved works of the playwright from Stratford-on-Avon, whose stories told us so much about British history. In the very confusing plot of the film, De Vere at first gave several plays to Ben Jonson, who put his name on them. Shakespeare, presented in the movie as a moron, then stole Jonson’s work and put his name on it, and then did the same for all the rest of the thirty-seven plays. The plays are beloved by all, especially Queen Elizabeth I, who is portrayed as a blithering idiot. De Vere’s work, with Shakespeare’s name, then stuns the world. Oh, it is also strongly suggested that William Shakespeare murdered playwright Christopher Marlowe, one of this rivals.Is this a literary dagger I see before me?

The Ghosts of the Vietnam War Haunt Riveting "Other Desert Cities" in New York

by Bruce Chadwick

Other Desert Cities Booth Theater 222 W. 45th Street New York, N.Y. Brooke Wyeth, the super-liberal daughter of a former ‘B’ film movie star and ambassador, has written a scathing memoir about her family. It focuses on the story of her brother Henry, who, along with others, blew up a U.S. Army recruiting station during the Vietnam War and then shortly afterwards committed suicide. The book blasts her parents for hating Henry, abandoning him in his hour of need and, indirectly, bringing about his death. It is the opening salvo in a seething battle between Brooke, her alcoholic aunt Sila Grauman and her parents in Other Desert Cities, last spring’s award winning play that just moved from Lincoln Center to Broadway. The powerful drama that opened last night is a stunner, a bombshell in itself and yet another chapter in America’s endless and infuriating Vietnam War saga.

Child Star Kiki Shoots to Fame in Ravished 1931 Germany and Everybody Cashes In

by Bruce Chadwick

Kiki Baby New York Music Festival Theater at St. Clement’s 420 W. 46th Street New York, N.Y. In just thirty seconds, you will fall in love with Kiki, a little four-year-old German girl who lives with her hard-working seamstress mother in a crowded apartment building. The amiable child, played marvelously by an adult, Jenna Colella, steals every scene she romps through in Kiki Baby, a winning new musical comedy that is part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Ms. Colella is wonderful, a sensation. She is dressed like a little child, and acts like one, with a deep frown or effervescent glee on her face. She is so good at the impersonation that you really think she’s young, although she is about 5’7” and the tallest four-year-old in the world. A music impresario hears her sing while he is giving a neighbor a tryout and signs her up, promising her mom fame and lots of money. Mom, who has been working tirelessly just to pay the rent, agrees quickly.

Racism Sizzles in a Small, Sleepy Alabama Town in the 1930s: To Kill a Mockingbird Moves From Screen to Stage, Impressively

by Bruce Chadwick

To Kill a Mockingbird Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey Drew University Madison, New Jersey Two weeks ago, I re-read Harper Lee’s haunting 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. One week ago, I once again saw the film version of the book, with Gregory Peck in his Oscar-winning performance as intrepid lawyer Atticus Finch. On Saturday, I saw the play version of the story, adapted to the stage by Christopher Sergel, at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey. I went to see it with great apprehension. How do you match up a stage version against one of the great films in U.S. history? How does anyone compare to Gregory Peck as Atticus in the role of a lifetime? How, eighty years later, do you call up the seething racism of the South in the 1930s? The stage version in Madison is, in parts, very different from the film version. In many ways, though, it remains the same. A play is anchored on a stage and cannot spread out through the countryside, as every film does. The performers get one chance to excel, unlike the film, in which everybody has as many takes as they need.

It Is 1947, but the War Is Far From Over for Jewish Refugees from Poland

by Bruce Chadwick

A Splintered Soul Theater Three 311 W. 43rd Street New York, N.Y. Should you bend over backwards to help someone who was the victim of a horrible wrong? That is the question facing Rabbi Simon Kroeller, a former heroic Polish Resistance fighter, in 1947 in San Francisco, where he has moved from Krakow after the end of World War II. A young Polish refugee couple seeking his help tells him a terrible tale of how a man forced them to become thieves, and sexually abused the woman, because he spirited them out of Poland to the U.S. and provided them with jobs. How can they break out of this evil man’s grip? They have no papers and will be deported if they go to the police. If they flee and return to Poland they will be arrested there. What to do?

Can’t King Tut Rest in Peace?

by Bruce Chadwick

Tut Theater at St. Clement’s 423 W. 46th Street, New York, N.Y. Tutankhamen, the boy king of Egypt who died at 19, has been the subject of movies, television shows, documentaries, books, forensics investigations, songs and a Steve Martin impersonation. He’s appeared in the 1960s Batman television series and even in a Three Stooges movie. If Bravo’s Real Housewives series was around when he ruled, 1341-1323 B.C., they would have featured him and the palace girls in a show, complete with chair throwing.And now Marcus Hummon has written a musical about King Tut, simply titled Tut, at the Theater of St. Clement’s, as part of the annual New York Musical Theatre Festival 201l, in which servant girls, generals, high priests and King Tut himself sing and dance along the banks of the Nile. Won’t people ever let poor King Tut rest in peace?

The Still Misunderstood Marilyn Monroe Wiggles through the 1950s with a Little Help from a Friend

by Bruce Chadwick

Siren’s Heart: Marilyn in PurgatoryTheater for the New City155 First AvenueNew York, N.Y. Is there anything left to write about Marilyn Monroe? The tragic movie star, who died at age 36 in the spring of 1962, has been written about in books, magazines and newspapers, made the central character in numerous films, documentaries and television shows and even pops up as a character for Halloween costumes.What more is there to say?Plenty.Actress Louisa Bradshaw takes on the long-dead sex symbol in a one-woman show, Siren’s Heart: Marilyn in Purgatory at New York’s Theater for the New City. She turns the Monroe myth upside down, cuts out the breathy voice and presents the behind-the-scenes Marilyn, speaking from purgatory. Bradshaw’s Monroe, usually without the blonde wig, offers a rather low-key explanation for many events of the movie superstar’s professional life, which began on the pages of Playboy and ended on a coroner’s table in Los Angeles.

Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett Climb to the Mountaintop in Powerful New Martin Luther King Jr. Play

by Bruce Chadwick

The Mountaintop Bernard B. Jacobs Theater 242 W. 45th Street New York, N.Y. It’s pouring rain, with rattling thunder and bolts of lightning in the skies of Memphis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Samuel L. Jackson) rushes into his room at the Lorraine Motel. He calls an aide to get him a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes and the front desk of the motel to order a cup of coffee. He’s tired, weary and unable to write much of his next speech. It’s another night in another town in another state on the long road to civil rights for King and his followers. It is also the night before he is assassinated.A few moments later, a motel maid, Camae, played by Angela Bassett, bangs on the door of his room with a plastic tray and a coffee pot, torrents of rain falling around her. The bouncy, bubbly, sassy Camae bursts into the room and settles in. She is there for a reason and so is King.

A Visit to the Museum of the Confederacy

by Kevin Impellizeri

A few weeks removed from my presentation at the “Implementing Connecting to Collections” panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for State and Local History, I am happy to report the presentation was a great success. The video of the presentation is not up as of yet; however the video of our work at the Laurel Historical Society is available through the Delaware Division of Libraries’ YouTube page. My special thanks go out to everyone who made the initiative a possibility.During the presentation, I feel I committed a great oversight in not mentioning by name the other members of the project, for which I extend my sincerest apologies. I hope by listing their names here, I help to further give them the recognition they deserve: Abbey Chamberlain (my co-presenter), Jen Matthews, Laura Muskavitch, Kate Duffy, Liz Jones, Retz Monroe, Jesse Gagnon, Nicole Belolan, and Jackie Williams-Bruen.

"Lemon Sky" Charts the Below-the-Surface History of the 1950s

by Bruce Chadwick

Lemon Sky Clurman Theater Theater Row 410 W. 42d Street New York, N.Y. What really happened in the 1950s? The’ 50s has got to be the most under-analyzed and under-studied decade in American history. Eisenhower was president, the Yankees won most of the World Series, I Love Lucy was the television show everybody admired, the Korean War came and went, Elvis Presley became a star and the Russians launched Sputnik.Beyond that, it was a quiet time, free of much public controversy. High school girls who were taught that marriage should be their only goal all majored in Home Economics, skirts were long, patience was a virtue, civil disobedience was unheard of, homosexuality was well-hidden, cars were all three blocks long and savage family feuds were kept quiet.That was the calm landscape playwright Lanford Wilson attacked in his 1970 play, Lemon Sky, just revived at the Clurman Theater on Theater Row, in New York.

‘Extra ! Extra ! Read All About It’: "Newsies" Makes Media History Soar

by Bruce Chadwick

Newsies: the Musical Paper Mill Playhouse Millburn, N.J. The Disney 1992 movie Newsies was one of the most boring films I have ever seen. I watched it on television about ten years ago and sat through another small screen showing of it last week. It was the story of the 1899 newsboy strike against New York’s biggest and most powerful newspapers, set to music. The movie was savaged by critics, ignored by audiences in droves and lost nearly $10 million. Now, nearly two decades later, the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey has brought the awful movie back as a stage musical. Now, amazingly, it’s just wonderful. Newsies: the Musical is not only a splendid show, but a marvelous look at raucous media history just before the turn of the century, when it was being written by unforgettable media moguls such as Joseph Pulitzer Jr. and William Randolph Hearst.

The Missed History of Ten Cents a Dance

by Bruce Chadwick

Ten Cents a Dance McCarter Theater Princeton, N.J. The first moment of the musical Ten Cents a Dance, which opened last weekend at Princeton’s McCarter Theater, is wonderful setup for the show to come. A forlorn young man slowly descends a spiral staircase, moves to a piano at the center of an stage, sits down and begins to play and sing the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart classic song Blue Moon. As he does, five women, all dressed alike, descend the staircase, very slowly, and the musical seems ready to begin.It does, and it doesn’t.Ten Cents a Dance is not a typical musical with songs, book and story. It’s not really a revue of hit Rodgers and Hart songs. It is not a jukebox musical, like so many staged in recent years. It is not performance art. It is not a concert.

The History of Show Biz Gets a New and Rousing Chapter in Gorgeous "Follies" Revival

by Bruce Chadwick

Follies Marquis Theater 1550 Broadway New York, N.Y. It is 1971 and the old Weissman Theater, where the fabled Follies show ran for years prior to World War II, is about to be torn down to make room for a parking lot. The proprietors of the theater invite some of the showgirls who were in the Follies show back in the 1920s and 1930s to a last night party on the stage of the theater. They arrive from all over the United States. They bring with them a remarkable ability to still sing and dance and, arm in arm, stage the legendary old choreography that made them famous.They bring with them, too, not only a scrumptious hit show in this revival of Follies at New York’s Marquis Theater, but an historical bouquet.