Puss in Boots

I have to confess I am mad about puppets. I remember making papier mache puppets at our next door neighbor's house in the seventies. We'd use pieces of old knitting wool for the hair, fabric cut offs for the clothes and our imagination for the face.

Later, I was enthralled by the puppet show created by the Von Trapp family in The Sound of Music, and dreamt I was part of a big family with our own marionettes, painting extravagant backdrops and delighting friends and family with a show in a grand and spacious ballroom!

The local Punch and Judy show scared me but also mesmerized me, as I watched simple puppets literally bash out very adult concepts.

And of course, my favorite puppet growing up was Pinocchio.

As I got older, I yearned to collect those wonderfully elaborate Venetian masks and puppets.

And still the love of puppets is with me. As it is with other people so it seems, because there is a wonderful production of Puss in Boots on in New York this week. And it's for children and adults alike.

The very clever director Moises Kaufman (The Laramie Project, Gross Indecency: 33 Variations) and his Tectonic Theatre Project have teamed up with the Gotham Chamber Opera and London's Blind Summit Theatre who specialize in creating puppetry, to present a wonderful opera/puppet pageantry of the famous fairytale Puss in Boots. The opera part is by Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge, with singers telling the story beside the life size puppets, or becoming part of the puppets in the case of the fat little king and his merry men. The puppets are remarkable as are the people who make them move. Somehow they inject personality into an inanimate object so no longer are you watching a puppet, but a cunning Puss or a raging ogre.

It is a heartwarming 70 minutes that should not be missed if you are here. Alternatively, Blind Summit have another puppet opera on in London in November. Go on. Delight your inner child. 

And to relive a magical puppet moment from our childhood, enjoy the Goatherd clip from The Sound of Music.

images: (1) new victory, (2) more things, (3) catherine wheale, (4) askville amazon, (5) photopedia, (6) puppet stuff blog, (7-11) gotham chamber orchestra

"I'm Not Here to Paint Pretty Pictures"

I have always been a Rothko fan, but without constructive or intellectual reason. I just love his use of primary colors, his interjection with black and his seeming simplicity of form-vertical or horizontal strokes.

Tonight, I learnt a whole new side to this man and I love him even more. I have just got back from the West End production of 'Red' now on Broadway, with Alfred Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as Ken, his ever suffering assistant. It is through Rothko's masterclass with Ken that the audience really learns about the meaning of the black in his paintings and the eternal struggle of an artist to admonish both critic and fan, but also to be emotionally and financially dependent upon them.

Molina dominates the stage as the towering, barrel-chested monolith that Rothko was. Last time I saw Molina was on celluloid as Diego Rivera, another hulk of a man, in "Frida". Kind of interesting that he now plays another conflicted artist.

The play "Red" is set in 1958 at a defining moment in Rothko's career, when he was asked to paint a series of murals for the now iconic New York restaurant The Four Seasons (not to be confused with the hotel chain). It was to built in the new Seagram Building, designed by architectural titans Philip Johnson and Mies Van Der Rohe.

The commission was one of the highest for the day and certainly the largest Rothko had been offered. However, he was under the impression that his murals would be displayed in the lobby, not the restaurant. When he went there to dine once it was finished and saw the type of person who patronized it - rich and clever "monkeys" and jackals" who were more interested in discussing business and what was on their plate rather than on the walls - he threw the commission back at the architects. This was after completing all 40 canvases. "I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch that eats in that room". 

Ultimately he donated 9 of the works to the Tate in London in 1969, a year before the black swallowed the red in his life and he committed suicide.

Apart from being mesmerized by the fractious, arrogant, insecure but brilliant artist that Molina brings alive on stage, you become involved in the creation of Rothko's art itself. Paint is mixed on stage, canvases stretched and prepped, brushes and rags collected, and all this energy being played out against a blaring background of intense classical music. In one electric scene, both artist and lackey attack a canvas in tandem, saturating it from top to bottom in red - or scarlet, or crimson or plum-mulberry-magenta-burgundy-salmon-carmine-carnelian-coral - "anything but red!" as Rothko rages in a heated moment. This two minute explosion of activity exhilarates the audience and surrounds them with the passion of the artist.

I have not been exhilarated like tonight by a piece of theatre for a long time. If you are in New York before end June, I implore you to get tickets - if you can. If not and you happen to be in Moscow, 13 of Rothko's works including his monumental studies for the Seagram Murals are on display at Dasha Zhukova's Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture. This is the first time a Rothko exhibition has been mounted in Moscow, a lifetime after this Russian Jew fled his homeland with his family in 1913.

Images: guardian, imdb, lindraxa, dan dickinson

Shaw at the Players

One of the marvels of this city is that there is always some type of theatre happening and usually in a distinguished, history-laden building. Last year I came across a wonderful program called Project Shaw. On the third Monday of each month, the Gringold Theatrical Group puts on a reading of a George B. Shaw play at the legendary Player's Club overlooking Gramercy Park. Between 2006 - 2009, they presented every sketch, full length and one-act play that Shaw had ever written. And they are continuing the tradition again this year, still at New York's most legendary private club.

The Player's was started by a Mr Edward Booth in 1888. He was America's leading Shakespearian actor at the time and wanted to create a private "gentleman's club" based on the Garrick in London. According to the Player's website, the purpose of the club was "the promoting of social intercourse between members of the dramatic profession and the kindred professions of literature, painting, architecture, sculpture and music, law and medicine, and the patrons of the arts...."

Mr Booth certainly seems to make a dashing Hamlet in the picture below. And not withstanding a historical scandal in his family - his younger brother John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln - his memory lives on in the form of a bronze statue standing in the park, directly opposite the Player's.

He also had some very influential friends. Mark Twain founded Player's with Booth and the famous architect Stanford White was in charge of converting the 1847 townhouse at number 16 Gramercy Park, purchased by Booth in 1888 for the handsome sum of US$75,000. This building - a national historic landmark since 1963 - sits in one of the most coveted neighborhoods in Manhattan. Not only is the private park surrounded by the most beautiful townhouses, inhabited through the years by politicians, actors and artists, it is also home to the National Arts Club and only residents facing the park are granted a key to enter the hallowed compound.

When I wandered there late one afternoon in fall, I had to make do with peering through the wrought iron fence and only imagine walking along the impeccably maintained pathways.

But back to Player's. Some of the more notable members have included Henry James, Norman Rockwell, Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart and Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1989, women were finally allowed to become members and greats like Lauren Bacall, Angela Lansbury and Liv Ullman have all wandered the grand rooms of yesteryear. The walls are full of wonderful portraits of past members including some by the famous artist and Player's member, John Singer Sargent. There are also props and costumes on display from notable theatre productions - like the throne used in Booth's first production of Hamlet.

Even if you don't like musty old men's clubs, it is worth going to a Shaw reading just to get inside a legendary institution and breathe in the talent of so many famous past artists.

IMAGES: Player's, wikimedia, mine