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June 19 – Stephen invited me at the last minute to see
Lizz Wright with him at the Jazz Festival. I rode my bike over the Society of Ethical Culture. I paused for the stoplight at the corner of 64th Street and Central Park West, next to a tall, sorta spacey-looking black woman carrying a guitar case. “Is she just coming from playing in the park?” I thought. “Is she going to work at Lincoln Center? Is she playing with Lizz Wright?” I parked my bike and went to get my ticket, since I was late and the opening act (Raul Midon) was on. The spacey-looking black chick turned out to be Lizz Wright, just arriving for the gig on foot. She was amazing. She’s tall, she’s young (28), she’s eccentric and anti-diva (her hair was up in tight curls she hadn’t brushed out, and she wore a simple flowery sleeveless sundress), and she has a fantastic voice.
Not quite like anybody else, though a few traces of Anita Baker, k.d. lang, maybe Cassandra Wilson. She had an unusual, rocky band – guitar, bass, keyboards, drums. Two black guys, two white guys, and
Toshi
Reagon, that big butch gender-bender, who co-wrote a bunch of songs on Lizz’s new album
The Orchard, played guitar, and sang beautifully. Wonderful concert in a lovely intimate space.
See Stephen's review here.
June 20 – Bash’d, the gay rap opera at the Zipper Theater. I’m reviewing it for
the Advocate, so more about that later.
June 21 – The Polish production of Macbeth at
St. Ann’s Warehouse in DUMBO. One-word review: wow! Fantastic staging by
Grzegorz Jarzyna at the roofless Tobacco Warehouse across the street from St. Ann’s Warehouse. Not unlike
the Wooster Group’s
Hamlet, it assumes you know the play backwards and forwards so it doesn’t bother explaining anything but roots around in the subtext in a crazy, imagistic, highly theatrical way. The opening scene is a kind of homage to
Black Hawk Down, with Macbeth and his men defying orders from General Duncan and helicoptering onto the roof of a mosque and taking out an enemy target named Ryazan, apparently an Islamic terrorist. The celebration dinner chez Macbeth is a drunken soldiers jamboree complete with female Elvis impersonator. There’s only one designated witch, who shape-shifts from a burqa-wearing servant to a glamorous bald fashionista to a video apparition, though the witches’ presence also seems to be played here by a party magician in a red top hat and someone in a bunny suit. Really, sort of like Deborah Warner’s production of
Medea starring Fiona Shaw, this Macbeth seems to take place in the completely deranged mind of the title character (played by Cezary Kosinski not as a heroic warrior but as a kind of existential anti-hero on sensory/emotional overload from, among other things, beheading his enemy captives). The production plays fast and loose with Shakespeare’s text, delivering only a few recognizable passages unpredictably, with fantastic swatches of music, video, fire, explosions, and theatrical effects. It’s pretty sexy – after killing Duncan, Macbeth furiously fucks his wife against a Coke machine, and Banquo returns from the dead to wander through the banquet butt-naked except for his boots. It is, of course, about the war in Iraq and the sheer madness of war. The final, unforgettable scene has Macbeth receiving the fate he’d bestowed at the beginning of the play and his assassins rolling around on the floor with his severed head, laughing and completely out of their minds.
It's all in Polish, of course, with projected surtitles. (I
went with my Polish friend Mark, above, who laughed at some of
the cursing and jokes that weren't translated.) I wish they’d extend the run – I’d love to see it again. Apparently there are a few tickets left for the closing night, but those will be gone the minute the reviews come out, I’m sure.
see previous entry here
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