CATCHING UP: Three articles I wrote have been published recently! I reviewed Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution; also reviewed a really good novel, The Inverted Forest (link is subscribers-only for now); and reviewed two shows of war photography (also subscribers-only). Definitely recommend the photography--at the Corcoran through May 20--and The Inverted Forest.

OCCAM'S RAZOR IS THE WORST RAZOR! Some thoughts on revisiting The New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza, which has been revived at the DCJCC's Theater J and will play through April 1. My review of the original production is here, so these are just some scattered additional notes. (Oh, and here's a post about a Philadelphia production, over at The Groom's Family!)

First, the play is still fantastic, Alexander Strain is still ridiculously compelling despite playing a guy who is kind of a jackass (albeit a jackass under unbearable pressure), and they've toned down the cartoonishness of Rebecca a bit, which I doubt will pacify the people who didn't like her character the first time around.

I still don't understand why Spinoza is so in love with simplicity. Why is a belief, a God, a proposition, or an argument better because it is simpler than other possibilities? Why force a cube-shaped faith on a mountain-shaped world?

The focus on simplicity or unity, along with the strange, unsettling paeans to philosophy as a love with no beloved (or in which the beloved is totally unable to love you back), made me feel like this was all just backsliding into Platonism. Didn't we try this already?

Last time I'm not sure I noticed that both Spinoza and his Gentile Juliet, Clara, do the adolescent thing where they think they're in love with you because you deserve it so much. Everything about Spinoza's pedestal love of Clara is done so well--it's painfully endearing, it's totally wrongheaded, it's relatable, and it captures at least half of the problems with his philosophy. Plus Strain uses his voice really well, shifting perfectly from the ringing tones of the confident genius to a rougher, lower, more intimate register with Clara.

One benefit to the philosopher of having a definite, obligatory community is that he has to deal with everyone's questions, even the ones he doesn't like or see the point of. The Jewish community, because it includes so many people who are totally unlike Spinoza, can provoke and challenge him in a way that a community made up solely of his friends or equally-intelligent philosophers could not. (This, by the way, was one major failing of the "talk back" panel afterward, in which Leah Libresco very ably moderated two academic philosophy-types. We didn't get to talk back! It was insufficiently Jewish--specifically Jewish questions weren't raised at all, actually--and since the audience, full of feisty old Jews, didn't get to ask questions, the panelists were able to stick to their own preferred topics and approaches.)

Spinoza at one point comes very close to echoing this gnomic utterance of the squid!

I was weirdly reminded of this article about David Foster Wallace's use of popular self-help books and his fight against what in AA circles is called "terminal uniqueness" and which I think is called by Catholics spiritual pride. Spinoza by the end of this play has been through many shattering experiences: his father's death, his realization that he will die young of tuberculosis, and then the awful events of the play itself. But the thing is, none of the suffering or humiliation he undergoes happens because he's wrong, or in the wrong. That at least he's spared. And so in the end, when he thanks the congregation (aka us the audience) for what he's gained from what he's been put through, even this is not a gesture of full humility.

So. That's what the play made me think about. What about you?

BODY AND SOUL: What makes the difference between a tradition and a cliche?

Sucker Punch, at the Studio Theater through April 8, is your basic boxing movie translated to 1980s race-riot Britain. This is definitely not a criticism! The play is full of life and although its situations are all ones we've seen before, they feel completely fresh and new.

This is a story about the temptations of success, the pull of communal loyalty, the inevitable destruction of youthful hopes, and the waste and pity of violent, thwarted masculinity. So... it's a boxing movie, is what I'm saying. A terrific one. Predictable (the broken-down white coach has a drinking problem) yet still able to take the audience on an emotional journey. I heard actual sniffles by the end. The climactic fight scene, staged in slow-motion, is incredibly intense and physical. The actors are all fantastic--I'm pretty sure the only one I'd seen before was Dana Levanovsky, one of the stars of That Face. This is a raw, real play, and if it works familiar territory... isn't that where most of our lives are led?

PUBLIC FEARS IN PRIVATE PLACES: After that New York Times piece on me was published, the best and cattiest response I saw was the comments-box punchline, "She should join a silent order." Perhaps the characters in Next Fall should also take that advice!

Next Fall--playing at the Round House Theater in Bethesda until 2/26--is a play in which the subtlety of what goes unspoken is almost drowned out by the shallow, stereotype-laden dialogue. It's about a gay couple, generic atheistic Adam and blithely evangelical Luke; when Luke is involved in a serious car accident and falls into a coma, Adam has to deal with his parents, who never knew that their son was gay. (Luke at one point said that he would tell them "next fall," when his younger brother was out of the house and in college, so the title of the play itself alludes to something unspoken, unaccomplished, something left unresolved due to fear.)

There are a lot of problems with the play, especially in the more cartoonish first act. I saw it with two friends, both of whom liked it more than I did; at the intermission I wondered out loud whether it would just be two hours of self-centered people feeling their emotions. They're just all so American in the worst way!--they know that they're right, and they're proud of their opinions. I mean, look: This is the second play I've seen in a row in which not knowing the meaning of the word "tchotchke" marks a character out as gauche, clueless, and generally Not Our Kind, Dear.

Meanwhile the religious arguments seem to start and stop almost at random. The content will be familiar to anyone who has ever made the mistake of reading the comments: What about really nice people who aren't Christian, do they go to hell? What about Jeffrey Dahmer, if he accepts Jesus will he be allowed into the pearly-gated community with respectable homos like Luke? Don't we all have our own beliefs, what about the Jews, and--most poignantly, and least fleshed-out--isn't it a sin for Luke to sleep with a man? The disputes themselves are so brief that they feel chintzy. Adam comes across like he's constantly trying to pick a fight but never willing to finish one. Luke comes across like he thinks Jesus is magic, and if you just say you believe you can do whatever you want; but if you call him on any of the many ways he takes the easy way out, he gets upset (understandably, given how blatantly Adam is baiting him most of the time, but still!).

The key moment in their arguments might come when neither of them can sleep one night. Earlier, Luke had compared accepting Christ to taking a pill which could cure one's cancer, and said that some people are so angry to have cancer in the first place that they're not willing to just take the cure. So then later they're sleepless and dejected, and Adam says that he's going to take a sleeping pill. "Make it two," Luke says. He reminds Adam of their earlier conversation and takes the pill, looking up hopefully at Adam--who looks back at him with total exhaustion and says, "If it were that easy, everyone would swallow it." Adam walks back into the bedroom with the pill still in his hand.

More interesting than the spoken arguments, though, are the character notes which go unmarked. For example, there's Brandon, a repressed Christian. (He only wears tightly buttoned-up clothing, because why even have a costumer if you don't want obvious metaphors?) He doesn't say much, and in his one big scene, a lot of what he does say is just exasperatedly agreeing with the words Adam puts in his mouth. But he's there. He's a constant presence in the hospital waiting room, steadfast, quiet, immovable. There's a solidity to him, a doggedness which is manifested both in his blunt, unimaginative dogmatism and in his silent loyalty. (He's played by the really excellent Alexander Strain, whom I saw as Spinoza in this play. He'll be reprising that role this season!)

All the play's religious questions are framed in terms of the afterlife: Is there a Heaven? Will I get there, will you? I've already written about why this is not a good way to understand Christian life! But it does draw out the deep undercurrents of fear which run through the play. Luke is creepily cheerful, and professes not to fear death at all; Adam longs for that fearlessness. In day to day life Luke is terrified that his parents will find out about his relationship with Adam, and at night he's sometimes haunted enough that he will pray after they have sex, but he still manages to project a sense of sunny confidence which the neurotic, hypochondriac Adam picks up on. Their relationship makes Adam a bit more free and less fearful, even as it causes Luke anxiety.

I like a lot of things about this setup. I like that faith doesn't actually free Luke from fear or distress--it changes his questions and challenges, so it changes when he feels fear and why. I like the framing of Christian faith as hospital and cure, something you can only receive if you're willing to admit that you're sick, and I like that Adam the hypochondriac is deeply resistant to admitting any spiritual neediness or infirmity. (Luke's evangelical parents are recovering addicts; his mother Arlene, thoroughly inhabited by the terrific Kathryn Kelley, was the only character I genuinely liked. Even if she doesn't know what a tchotchke is!) I like the suggestion that Christ the rock can give inherently weak and silly people some depth, solidity, and insight.

I just wish any of that had been pushed to its limits! I want to see Luke's faith get really tested, not just harried. I want any backstory whatsoever for Adam, whose background is basically a cardboard cutout labeled, "White gay man who came of age in the '80s." Overall it felt like this play pulled all its punches because the playwright didn't know how to portray more intense religious conflict or more uniquely-articulated faith. So all the characters' religious beliefs seemed to deflate to the level of their self-comforting American emotions, rather than their emotions rising to the level of the exalting or devastating Christian faith.

DEVELOPING CONFLICTS: Some quick thoughts about Time Stands Still, at the Studio Theater through 2/12.

The play is about a war photographer and her reporter boyfriend; when she's almost killed on the job, they retreat to their Brooklyn apartment and try to figure out how to move forward with their lives. There are only two supporting characters, Richard the somewhat plastic editor and his new fiancee Mandy the cliched, saccharine Americaness. (After one scene with Mandy I found myself thinking, "Wait, but I thought this play was written by a woman?" It wasn't.)

There are a lot of problems with this play. It can be cheap and predictable (of course the photographer's much-divorced, horrible father is a conservative Christian! of course Mandy is much younger than Richard!) and the big-idea lines are often pat. The shifts in audience identification are what you might expect: Mandy gets her moments, etc. The actual war-zone descriptions are a bit tinny--I wasn't super surprised to find out after the show, from the playwright bio in the program, that David Margulies wrote it because he was troubled by his life in Connecticut rather than because he was troubled by his many trips to Iraq, you know?

That said, the play's heart is clearly in its portrayal of "emerging adulthood," anchorless people who are no longer as young as they act, people to whom life is starting to catch up.

I think one contrast between Sarah the photographer and Jamie the reporter/boyfriend is that he's trying to be a man, and she's trying to be an adult. Her task is more straightforward, and she's a more straightforward character in general. The way longing for connection and stability shapes a man is portrayed very keenly and subtly here. (I initially thought that Sarah had been captured, and that the suppressed aggression in Jamie's haunted eyes would come forward more directly. That didn't happen, and I think the play is better for it. Holly Twyford is pretty terrific as Sarah, but on the basis of those sunken eyes I'm giving the award here to Greg McFadden as Jamie.)

There are also some hints about the ways in which disaster-journalism requires the complicity of the suffering locals; the ethical dilemmas inherent in the practice are sharpened when the locals don't hand themselves over to the camera.

I'm glad I saw this and I'd generally recommend it, despite its flaws.

GIANT DEMON CAT OF DC! Worth it for the terrific Master and Margarita posters alone.

ALWAYS COMING HOME: The tally, Independence Day 2011:

Drunken renditions of the national anthem on the roof of our building: two. Plus another song I genuinely couldn't even understand, but the people singing it seemed very patriotic!
Number of people assigned to bring knives for the watermelon: two.
Number of watermelon-capable weapons achieved by our party: zero.
Number of heart-shaped fireworks: even one is too many.
Wine on my keyboard: not mine.
Books lent: ...I think, seven?
Books borrowed: one.
Things spilled on a book by Raymond Carver: salsa; rain.
United States policy choices denounced, current: only three in the conversations I heard; probable future: at least two; alternate-historical, one.

Happy Fourth of July, y'all.

"WHY BLACK MEN ARE WEARING PRISON JUMPSUITS IN CHINATOWN": The Museum of Crime & Punishment consistently has the most trivializing, jokey-worship-of-a-police-state advertising I've ever seen, so this is really not surprising. I suppose I've never seen them use a prison-rape joke so... that's something! But really, when a tacky tourist sinkhole like the Spy Museum outclasses you on a regular basis, you should rethink your choices.

Link via Racialicious.

PLAYING TO THE GODS: Last week I saw Venus in Fur, at the Studio Theater through July 10. Basic story: Pompous playwright/director who thinks nobody really feels passion anymore is auditioning actresses for the role of Wanda in his adaptation of Sacher-Masoch's novel (i.e. the one masochism is named for). A blowsy New Yorkeress stumbles across his transom in hooker heels, too late for her audition (which isn't on the schedule anyway), but insists on reading for him. She is more than she appears! An erotic game of cat-and-other-cat ensues as power shifts from director to actress and each one struggles for the upper hand--or are they really fighting to be the one who submits?

So far so cliched, really. The whole "topping from the bottom" power-shift dynamic seems really played to me at this point. It's so often presented as sexy and edgy and challenging when it's really a rejection of the idea of genuine submission, suffering, or unwanted self-knowledge. Four things raise Venus in Fur--by the same guy who wrote that Spinoza play I loved so much--above the old joke about the masochist who says "Beat me!" and the sadist who says "No!"

1. It's very funny! And it doesn't rely on faux shock or spray-on sexiness. The laughs allow the audience to relax enough that the genuine danger can sneak up on us.

2. Studio found two superb actors. Christian Conn is convincing as the playwright, whose shallowness hides hidden depths of his own, and Erica Sullivan is just terrific as the actress. She gnaws the scenery with aplomb! I loved watching her.

3. The power dynamics do come to a resolution, and it's not one which simply affirms the usual American preference for individuality, self-control, and self-acceptance.

4. This play made me think about the gods in a slightly new light. It suggests, or at least it suggested to me!, that genuine submission can only be submission to divinity, for two reasons. First, with any human-all-too-human beloved or master, there's a moment when it becomes obvious that their judgment is no more intrinsically or universally reliable than mine. There's a sort of "You're nothing but a pack of cards!" moment--when O ditches Rene for Sir Stephen, for example, giving the lie to the personae all three are pretending to embody. No merely human woman is going to know this playwright thoroughly enough to devote herself completely to his education. Actual humans make mistakes, say dumb things, miss their cues, fail to suss us out when we wish they would, and have their own agendas which are often pettier than the agendas we project onto them.

And then, too, any mortal beloved will be conquered by death. Death can in turn be conquered to some extent by art--this is one of the subtler themes of the play, surfacing now and then like a gilt thread in a big dark tapestry--but for real mastery you would need a real immortal.

Anyway I do recommend the play if it sounds at all interesting to you; it's very well done and I feel validated in my decision to make David Ives a playwright I watch for.

THE REAL WORLD: CHINESE GULAG. Last night we stumbled upon the Laogai Research Foundation's Laogai Museum, a very quick walk north from Dupont Circle. LRF was founded by Harry Wu, the fearless man who exposed the Chinese gulag system. We're visiting the museum soon, and if you're in DC, you should too. I'll tell you more about it once we've been inside.

(Post title is because of the bizarre coincidence that the museum is housed in the former Real World: DC rowhouse.)

DRIVING THE POINT HOME: It's entirely possible I just didn't get The Walworth Farce, part of Studio Theater's Enda Walsh/"New Ireland" series. It's about a violent, delusional father who forces his two sons to reenact, day in and day out, his version of the events which led them to flee Cork for London. Supposedly a comedy?

It got about half a standing ovation tonight and although all four actors are really good, I have no idea why anyone would offer more than polite applause to what struck me as an unfunny, strenuously written and obvious ("For what are we if we're not our stories?" and quite a bit more in this vein), and often boring "edgy" play. I almost left at the intermission, and while it did improve from there, I just... would like my mortal hours back, please. I'm sorry. The actors really were good, and I suspect the direction is really good if you overlook the decision to stage this thing in the first place.

IT GETS A LITTLE BOUNCY HERE SOMETIMES: ARGH SORRY. This was supposed to be a note telling you to check out Arena Stage's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But I didn't pay attention to the closing date, which was Sunday. I'm sorry! You should check out the rest of the Albee festival though, since this production was absolutely stellar. They made the show their own (despite the commanding Taylor/Burton/Nichols movie) without resorting to strenuous directorial choices. (I don't think they got away from the written, mannered quality of the last five to ten lines as well as the movie managed to, but those are literally the only moments which didn't completely work for me and they're really Albee's fault more than anyone else's.)

EASY READER: I'm pretty sure the Arena Stage production of At Home at the Zoo is about as good as it could be. Not entirely--the actress who plays Peter's wife can't quite get past how obtrusively written her dialogue is--but mostly this is as good a production as I can imagine.

It's also recognizably Albee. He wrote the second act as The Zoo Story, his first play. Decades later he wrote the backstory, which serves as Act One. First act is marital overcommunication, which is the same as miscommunication and anticommunication, with lots of male sexual inadequacy and passive-aggressive insistence on precision, and an overall sense that love is committee meetings punctuated by emotional violence.

Second act is... well, put it this way: My mother got in trouble for reading The Catcher in the Rye in school. I was assigned it. It's entirely possible that The Zoo Story would work, emotionally, for someone in the got-in-trouble generation; I'm not sure it can work for someone in the assigned-it generation. Its specific forms of rebellion have become predictable. The Zoo Story has been assimilated.

Edward Albee is ferocious, and he's been able to keep his edge--The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?: Notes Toward a Definition of Tragedy is as fierce and challenging as anything I've seen, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (I'll see the Arena production next week) is still razor-sharp despite being one of his earlier plays. I'm hugely grateful to Arena for doing an entire series of, I think, every Albee play there is. I'm so excited for the rest of them! This particular play is just not the right place to start with him.

...AND NEW THINGS TO HIDE: My review of "Hide/Seek," the *~*controversial*~* gay-themed exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, is up at the Commonweal website. I'll post some notes which didn't make it into the final draft in a bit. The exhibit runs through February 13 so you really, really should go if you're interested in the subject matter and you're in the area.

"It makes D.C. sense."
--a friend's cabbie, in response to a complaint that the quadrant system doesn't make sense

PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF...: Early on, I was convinced that Synetic Theater's adaptation of The Master and Margarita (showing at the Shakespeare Theater's Lansburgh through December 12, so go now!) would never work. Synetic, which typically does wordless dance/movement adaptations of classic texts, had two big things working against them: Their production has words, and takes place in front of an audience.

Both of these factors served to make the early parts of The Master feel really intensely unsubtle. Without the full context of Bulgakov's prose (which okay, I've only read in translation, but work with me here, people) and the privacy of one's own skull, the discussion of belief in God and the "seventh proof of God" (the Devil exists, therefore God must) felt heavy-handed.

However, by the end of the night I was once again completely on board with Synetic. Their total commitment to the portrayal of Soviet Moscow as a nightmare carnival probably had some personal resonance (much of the troop is made up of Georgian immigrants) and certainly had immense, sinister visual flair. They capture the novel's musical quality, in which motifs return and change key. They play up the Song of Songs aspect of Margarita's search for her Master, which I don't think I even noticed when I read the novel. And they hit hard on the Orwellian aspects of the novel, like the shifts in meaning of the final uses of the word "peace."

A really good, strongly horror-influenced, deeply Christian (or, more accurately, shaped around the space where Christianity would be) production. Recommended.

AND PRETTY GIRLS MAKE...: Having just seen House of Gold, the JonBenet Ramsey play, I am not convinced that it adds anything to that one chapter from The Brothers Karamazov other than exploitation. Please do argue with me if you think differently, but for right now, I don't know why this needed to happen.

ETA: The preceding should not be taken as a slam on the actors (or the director except insofar as I question the decision to stage this at all), who were all serviceable to excellent. Kaaron Briscoe as JonBenet was exceptional.

ICONICITY: Yesterday I went to the Meridian International Center's "Glory of Ukraine" exhibit, which focuses on icons but includes altar crosses, Bibles, and Ukrainian arts and crafts dating back to many millennia before the birth of Christ. It's a terrific exhibit, completely free, and if you're in the District area I highly recommend it. I may be writing about it a bit more for my Inside Catholic column.

Be sure to check out the directions before you go! The center is basically across the street from Malcolm X Park, but it's on a weird horseshoe-shaped street which turns into another street, so you have to operate on trust for a little while. Your religious metaphor: right there!

The center is open 2-5 pm Wed-Sun, and the exhibit will run through January 16.

A LIST OF COSTUMES SEEN TONIGHT (THIS LIST IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE): Pirate, white guys as a cowboy and an Indian (...really?), kung-fu master (an actual Asian), man-vampire, lady-vampire (unrelated to previous), sexy bumblebee, sexy NYT crossword puzzle, something green on head, trashy black wig, bearded lady or possibly male nurse, Joker, heterosexual jellyfish couple, Captain America, flapper, Red King, a Democrat, possibly a spoiled child???, and my personal favorite, a satyr in a sport coat.

YESTERDAY, WHEN I WAS MAD: Photos of DC in the late '80s. Dream City. Via PES.