Lisa Ha - Model - Volunteer - Friend
Saturday, February 22, 2014
My Mother's Red Shawl - El Rebozo Colorado
Lisa Ha - Model - Volunteer - Friend
The night I was modeling for this shoot I
was going on a first date with Jonathan to a restaurant called Dark table. It
was my first date with him. First dates are really awkward for me. I get really
nervous and I feel like I don’t know what to say to them. It’s the first chance you get to make the first
impression.
Jonathan and I chatted and got to know each
other before we set a date to meet. I let him choose the restaurant for dinner.
He wasn’t going to tell me where we were going until that morning. In the
morning I checked in with him to see where we were going for dinner. He told me
the Dark Table. I let out a really loud giggle.
We met up for coffee first before dinner to
actually see what we looked like before dinner.
Dark Table is a restaurant where it is
completely dark inside. You are served by servers who are blind. You order your
food outside and you are led in the restaurant by your server.
I giggled because it is a really
interesting choice for a first date. On a first date I usually make my judgment
of them by making eye contact with my date, watching his facial expressions and
body language. At a restaurant, I also can see how my date treats our server.
It’s important to me how they treat the server because it shows me how they deal
with other people. I can also see if they have a wandering eye. Sometimes other
things in the room catch their eye like, other woman or the decor of the room.
You can see what they are paying attention to (if it is not you) It is easier
to plan your escape route if the date isn’t going well. At Dark Table, I
couldn’t do any of that. I could not tell if wandered. Both of us could not see
anything. The only thing we could do was to talk to each other the whole time.
Come to think of it, having our first date
at Dark Table was a brilliant idea. We both had to turn our cell phones off
before going into the restaurant. That meant no cell phone distraction from
either party. We sat in complete darkness so we had to converse with each other. We tried each other’s drink. We
had to say which side our drink was on so we could pass the drink to each other
without spilling anything. I had to focus on our conversation. I couldn’t make judgment
on him about what he was wearing or his body language. There was no wandering
eye for both parties on who else was in the restaurant or how pretty the decor
was.
Carmen Alatorre Diseñadora de vestuario
Roberto Baschetti Sociólogo, Investigador Histórico - Amigo
Jennifer Froese Youth Worker
Rachel Cairns Actor
Jennifer Landels Espadachina
Judith Currelly Pilot- Artist
Jim Erickson Set Decorator
Alexandra Hill Soprano
Georgina Elizabeth Isles Figure Model
Emma Middleton Actor
Mark Pryor Author/Lawyer/Assistant DA Travis County TX
Brother Edwin Charles Reggio, CSC Mentor & Teacher
Veronica Vex Burlesque Dancer
George McWhirter Poet
Raúl Guerrero Montemayor Padre-Compadre
Alexandra Waterhouse-Hayward Maestra
Shirley Gnome Singer/Provocateur
Yeva & Thoenn Glover Dancers/Choreographers
JJ Lee Writer
Jacqueline Model
Cathy Marsden Psychiatrist
André De Mondo Wanderer
Colin MacDonald Saxophonist/Composer
Nina Gouveia Yoga Instructor
Stacey Hutton Excercise Physiologist
Colleen Wheeler Actor
Sarah Rodgers Actor, Director,Mother
Timothy Turner - Real Estate Agent
Kiera Hill Dancer
Johnna Wright & Sascha Director/Mother - Son/Dreamer
Decker & Nick Hunt Cat & 19th century amateur
George Bowering Poet
Celia Duthie Gallerist
Linda Lorenzo Mother
Katheryn Petersen Accordionist
Stefanie Denz Artist
Ivette Hernández Actress
Byron Chief-Moon Actor/Dancer
Colin Horricks Doctor
Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Columnist
Jocelyn Morlock Composer
Corinne McConchie Librarian
Rachel Ditor Dramaturg
Patrick Reid Statesman, Flag Designer
Michael Varga CBC Cameraman
Bronwen Marsden Playwright/Actress/Director
David Baines Vancouver Sun Columnist
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward Photographer
Lauren Elizabeth Stewart Student
Sandrine Cassini Dancer/Choreographer
Meredith Kalaman Dancer/Choreographer
Juliya Kate Dominatrix
For The Pleasure Of Seeing Her Again - A Universal Play
Friday, February 21, 2014
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| Margo Kane |
Rosemary and I went tonight Friday to the opening
performance of the Talking Stick Festival play, of Michel Tremblay’s For the
Pleasure of Seeing Her Again at the York Theatre.
Much has been written about this play and a
few might remember that at one time Tremblay’s work was deemed edgy and that
the Arts Club Theatre Company mounted it many years ago.
It would seem that age might have
diminished the power of this play which is all about the relationship between a
mother and son.
I am happy to report (in spite of some of
the sadness within part of the play) that For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again
is as relevant to our times as it ever was. That Margo Kane and Kevin Loring,
the actors of the play happen to be Native Canadian is almost irrelevant. The
play is universal even though our funny son and beginning narrator, Kevin
Loring tells us that the play is not Richard III or about Hamlet or any other
play of the Western canon.
I could rave about the acting which is
superb. I could elaborate on how Kevin Loring (a noted playwright) can play a
child, a dreamer, an adult, a loving son, an exasperated son, etc.
I am not.
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| Kevin Loring |
This play has a particular message which
was beautifully pointed out by Elder Shane Pointe who blessed the proceedings
with a chant and then said something like this:
In this festival and in this play you will
find out something about us, you may know little about us even though you sees
us in your midst all the time.
It struck me that he could have been
talking about French Canadians (consider that the play was originally written in
French and the two protagonists live in Montreal),
Vancouver Chinese and every visible and invisible minority of our city,
province and country.
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| Glinis Leyshon |
A good play should challenge. This one did
in spades while at the same time generating within me lots of warm laughs. Sitting behind me was director Glynis Leyshon. She was smiling. It could be that somehow the ending of the play could be perceived as a happy one. You must see the play to make up your own mind.
Anybody reading this should be aware that the play is on tonight at 8pm.
Grace Symmetry - Rachel Meyer & Darren Devaney
Thursday, February 20, 2014
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| Darren Devaney |
Quite a few years ago then editor of
Vancouver Magazine, Malcolm Parry, threw and expensive wide angle lens at me
and told me, “You are making the motions. Go back and take some good
photographs.”
I have never forgotten his passionate fit
of rage. Since that time I have tried to put as much passion as I can with what
I do.
And I must report herewith that after
seeing tonight’s first performance of Grace Symmetry, a Ballet BC collaboration
with the Turning Point Ensemble, that there was enough hot passion to perhaps
ease us into an early spring. That heat was comforting and thrilling.
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| Lauri Stallings & Owen Underhill |
But we live in a city with a penchant for
forgetting its past. Our memory is fractured.
I remember a day in 1997, during rehearsals for Ballet BC's Boy Wonder when I first met
composer Owen Underhill. He was a warm, self-effacing
man with a gently smile and rarely seemed to speak beyond a whisper. At the
time I was absolutely smitten by a ballet BC dancer called Lauri Stallings. She
seemed to be a dancer from another planet with an exquisite style that was so
different that when she danced I could recognize her from the ankles down.
I asked her if she would pose with
Underhill for a photograph. I asked her to be his muse.
The resulting photograph (I didn’t bother
to check that my picture was much too close and I should have given it more
room) is the one you see here.
But it is one of the most satisfying
photographs I have ever taken and I have been a fan of those two passionate
beings and what they represented. One was the passion of Ballet BC
the other of modern music of which now as the Artistic Director of the Turning
Point Ensemble I can more often dip into when I feel the cold setting in.
It might seem strange that this blogger and
amateur (no expert but in the 19th century sense of being enamored
by it) follower of new music and dance would even mention a dancer long gone
from Ballet BC
(who is happily heading a dance company in Atlanta).
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| Kevin O'Day & Owen Underhill |
I may be at an advantage over any real
dance critics here. Most usually base their essays on watching a performance
and or interviewing people with the long distance feeling of a phone. If
anything our diminishing media does not inform us because so many of their
writers remain within the confines of their offices. They don’t inform us because
they miss a lot of the peripherals which can be most interesting and can
enhance the pleasure of a performance.
Consider that tonight a little bird sitting
very near me told me that dancer Gilbert Small (you cannot miss him as he is
Ballet BC’s sole black dancer) sprained his ankle on Monday. The little bird
was afraid that Small might have gone to a hospital. But Small’s role was big
in all three works and he danced as I and the little bird bit our fingernails
figuratively. We expected something terrible to happen. It never did!
The second piece of the evening Prelude by
choreographer/dancer Medhi Walerski from the Netherlands Dance Theatre had to
be changed from what I saw in the initial rehearsal on Monday of the other
week. The change had to do with the white back wall of the Arts Umbrella’s
rehearsal hall. A crucial part involved the seeing of black string across the
stage while dancer Darren Devaney weaved and ducked with the lines. The Queen
Elizabeth’s dark back wall made it difficult for an audience to see this.
It was Walerski who explained this to
me when I spotted him in the audience. I asked him what had led him to select
Devaney for the piece. Walerksi put his right hand over his heart and told me, “He
touched me here.”
The last piece, Here on End with
choreography by Kevin O’Day (who told me he was from Detroit
via Germany)
had extraordinary lighting by James Proudfoot. When I first saw Here on End at
the Arts Umbrella rehearsal studio on 7th
Avenue, I watched Proudfoot with his iPad as he recorded
Here on End. The lighting was high fluorescent. I asked him if he knew what he
was going to do. He told me that he did not know.
Here on End begins with a dramatic overhead
spotlight that lowers itself onto one dancer. Then during the whole performance
several banks of these spotlights are raised and lowered (sometimes
dramatically low). The look I found nicely reminiscent with the swirls of
lights of flying saucers in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And to think
that it all began with an iPad!
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| Ben Kinsman, horn, Tom Shorthouse, trumpet, Jeremy Berkman, trombone |
|
All three works explored different
configurations of the Turning Point Ensemble.
The first one, In Motion by choreographer Wen
Wei Wang and with music composed by Underhill had lots of moments of special
silence where you could hear the swish the pointe shoes. The ensemble (a
smaller one) was behind the dancers, on stage and not on the pit. The music
like its composer was quiet and gentle not at all scary like some who shun new
music might tell you. If anything the music seemed to go very well with Wen Wei
Wang’s gentle and elegant touch. Proof of this was the solo performance of Brenda
Fedoruk on flute and violinist Mary Sokol Brown who separately went on stage
while a dancers (in the first it was Alexis Fletcher) weaved around them.
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| Dancing trombone mutes |
The second piece, Prelude choreographed by
Medhi Walerski and with music composed by a Russian resident of New York, Lera Auerbach
was unique in that it had only two performers, not seen on stage. They were
violinist Peter Krysa and pianist Jane Hayes.
While Hayes did tell me apologetically,
after the performance, that her piano was electronically enhanced I can
attest that she could have done without any enhancement. This piece also had nice long moments
of no music that compensated for a few, very loud, use of the piano for what it is, an instrument of percussion. This was unlike the third piece, Choreographer Kevin O’ Day and
music by John King, Here on End.
Here on End had dancers constantly dancing to
music that did not give ground. What came to mind was a school of sharks unable
to stop movement. It was a perpetual motion machine and Turning Point Ensemble
filled the pit with as many musicians as it could muster. After the performance,
in the lounge on the third floor I spotted composer John King chatting with
lots of laughter and excitement with Co-Artistic Director Jeremy Berkman who
had a big grin on his face. I can tell you why. Berkman is the Turning Point
Ensemble’s trombonist and Here on End had a nice long, very loud and very
beautiful trombone part!
To me it seemed that Ballet BC in the past
was short on men. Or it seemed then that I noticed the women but ignored the
men whom I saw as "picker uppers" and fillers. There were quite a few exceptions
of which I will not mention here but I must now note that I notice the men,
lots. You would never have suspected unless you read your program that former
Arts Umbrella Dance Company’s Scott Fowler was not a full fledged dancer of the
company but is listed as an apprentice dancer with that other colleague from Arts Umbrella, Ryan Genoe
who I am sure will very soon also have a longer time on stage.
I believe that many if not most of Ballet BC’s
dancers would stand out if the choreographer gives them the part. As a dance
ensemble you also have to fit in. It's that mix that makes some stars and some not. But I can safely say that none in Ballet BC just make the motion. They make motion with passion.
It is difficult for anybody watching dance
to not have favourites. When you list your favourites you might be seen as
insulting those who did not stand out simply because you might have been
looking elsewhere. So you are careful and try to be diplomatic. I won’t have to
because is would seem that my faves have the nod of all three choreographers.
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| Jane Hayes, piano |
Two of those dancers (my absolute faves) are
Rachel Meyer and Darren Devaney. More on these two below.
I missed Dario Dinuzzi, an excellent male
dancer has suffered an injury that kept him out most of last year and this
year. Alexander Burton shined in Wen Wei Wang’s In Motion (in a duet with Rachel Meyer). Thiboult Eiferman,
(the Parisian Newyorican) was smooth and especially when he danced with his
friend Devaney. Peter Smida got suddenly sick today and had to be relieved. He is
a very strong and masculine dancer. I missed him but happily Gilbert Small,
Connor Gnam and Daniel Marshalsay made me almost forget Smida’s sudden departure.
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| Rachel Meyer & Darren Devaney |
But back to the real stars, the divas, the super
dancers of the evening. They are Rachel Meyer and Darren Devaney. The
former you notice before she even moves. It could be her striking face and her
seriousness or her body which has no fat and is all sinewy muscle. The latter,
Devaney you would not notice at first. He is quiet, smallish. But then he moves,
then you cannot look at anybody else with the exception of his partner in
Prelude, Rachel Meyer.
I am no expert on these matters but when
Meyer dances everybody else fades away, though given a chance Alexis Fletcher
can give her a run for her money.
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| David Owen, Oboe |
Luckily for us all, Ballet BC
dancers are not baseball players so Meyer and Devaney will not be demanding
more money and a new contract for next year. On the other hand I would not
blame them if they did.
At the lounge I went up to Devaney and
asked him about his signature alternating movement of his chest and stomach (in
and then out) as he breathed heavily at one point. “What do you call it? His answer was short, “Posturing movement.” And
with that, like Medhi Walerski, I knew he had touched my heart.
And from the heart I would like to go back
to the head. And that’s Emily Molnar, Artistic Director of Ballet BC who has
the class and the credibility to get choreographers of the caliber of those
avant-garde dance companies from Europe while
nurturing our very own local ones like Wen Wei Wang.
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| Rachel Meyer |
Dr. Eric Vogt - November 12, 1929 - February 19, 2014.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Dr. Eric Vogt - November 12, 1929 - February 19, 2014.
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| Dr. Eric Vogt |
Dr. Eric Vogt and I played a game at Early
Music Vancouver concerts at the Chan which he attended with regularity. When I
spotted this large friendly grizzly-bear-of-a-man I would loudly ask him this
sort of a question:
How are the charms?
He would answer:
They are accelerating as we speak.
Or my question might be:
How are those neutrinos doing?
His usual answer:
They are going through me this instant.
People around him would look at him and
then at me stupefied. Dr. Vogt never smiled. It was our private
joke.
The Last Temptation Of Bond
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Honey Ryder - alive, seeking revenge.
The Last Temptation of Bond
Kimmy Beach
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| Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder photographed by Bunny Yeager |
It was the latter part of 1962 and I had
just graduated from a boarding high school, St. Edward’s in Austin, Texas.
I was confused and had no idea what to do with my life. So I crashed in my
mother’s house in Veracruz,
Mexico. Her
house was also the one-room schoolhouse for the children of the engineers and
employees of Alcoa Aluminum. My mother was the teacher.
My mother had two American friends who came
to visit to play bridge. The fourth player was a German woman who drove one of
those Toyota Land Cruisers and had a shop in downtown Veracruz that sold Mexican curios.
When the woman of the Toyota could not make it I was lured as the
fourth partner. I was taught to play the game. I could not know then, I was
much too naïve, that the pair were lesbians, and probably the Toyota gal, too and that somehow Alcoa did not
have any issues with my mother having such friends.
The pair were the ones who introduced me to
the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming. I had seen Dr. No (yum, Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder) in one of the port’s
movie houses and I was so excited that I was lent one of the original pocketbooks that
were being published at the time. As they came out, the two women would pass
them by me. I read them all. After our bridge sessions I would retire to my hot and humid room and read the novels until dawn. We discussed plots over subsequent bridge games. I came to
respect, admire and love these two women who (and I feel most lucky) introduced
me to the books of Ian Fleming. I have always thought that the writing should
precede the moving image. An of course since my mother was an Eric Ambler fan, she read the Bond novels.
In that light I am delighted to inform any
who might be reading this that there is a new and exciting book on things Bond, The Last Temptation of Bond. It is written by one of our Canadian poets, Kimmy
Beach who lives in Red Deer, Alberta.
On CBC Radio (bless them in spite of an
ever diminishing profile) on Shelagh Rogers (whose melodious voice is almost, but
not quite as good as her mother’s) The Next Chapter I heard her interview Beach
yesterday.
It seems that Beach became quite obsessed,
early in her life with James Bond films. Her fave James Bond, after considering
Sean Connery at length is Daniel Craig. She mentioned that Ian Fleming himself thought
that Hoagy Carmichael's looks matched his idea of the perfect James Bond.
In this book of wonderful poetry on all
things Bond, Beach invents a few what-if situations and also a very exciting
but mysterious woman she calls One.
In the interview she mentions the least
popular and almost unknown Bond, George Lazenby On His Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). I find that hard to believe if you are a fan (and I am one) of Diana
Rigg who plays Bond’s bride and who does not survive her day in church.
I have purchased the book at Chapters which
after reading will present as a gift to my 16-year-old granddaughter Rebecca
who has seen all of the James Bond films. I am sure that this book will delight
her.
Here (with no permission from the author)
is my favourite poem by her in this handsome but slim volume:
The World is Not Enough
I SEE HIM EVERY DAY, But she can have him
anytime she likes.
He comes into my office, tosses his hat on
the rack, embraces
Me. His lips on my cheek, his eyelashes brushing mine. He says,
“Moneypenny, what would I do without you?”
I honestly don’t know. I’ve saved him
repeatedly. I’ve made so many excuses for him!
I have everything. But I have such longing.
Such…I’d let myself be
killed for one night with him above me,
inside me, all over me.
There is so much darkness at my core. Darkness
I cannot confess
to myself, never mind to him. The horrifying
thoughts I have of
pulling his gun from its holster while he
is embracing me. I don’t
want him to know this darkness, this desire
that consumes me.
This temptation to pull that gun from his body,
shoot him in the
Chest. In the place where a heart would be.
The next shot for me.
I want to cut him limb to limb. I want him to
bend to my knife, let
his open veins come all over me. Then I’d cut
my own heart in half.
There’s no other way for us.
There’s my intercom. M and the bloody demands.
Just once I’d
like to tell M to stuff it, but I like my job.
I like the people. I like
the secrecy. And I hate James.
The Blood Promise - Mark Pryor, Cary Grant & James Bond
Monday, February 17, 2014
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| Mark Pryor at St. Ed's, Austin Texas |
There is an event happening at home that I could
have never predicted. After having seen 18 episodes of the Italian-made series
Montalbano based on the novels of Andrea Camilleri (I have read all of the
books, 16 that have been translated from the Italian) with Rosemary, my
wife, she is now on her fourth Camilleri novel. She is reading one per night.
Now this does not mean that Camilleri’s
novels are lightweight. The man from Porto Empedocle, Sicily is 89 but his style reads like
new-wave noir (I just invented the term) and consider that the old man wrote
his first Salvo Montalbano novel La forma dell'acqua in 1994 when he was 69. And
he has written 20 more!
No there are mystery novels in which the
principal protagonist suffers existential angst, a Chandler Marlowe or Leonardo
Padura’s troubled Havana
detective Mario Conde. The same could be
said of Pepe Carvalho, the book burning detective of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Vázquez
Montalbán wrote 13 of these (the best is the exquisite Quinteto de Buenos Aires
which is one of the best ever novels about a most real Buenos Aires).
Like Gregory Peck’s acting, when you read Camilleri
you must imagine what is going in Salvo Montalbanos complex mind. The TV series,
most faithful to the books take more time but do not reveal much more of our detective
who likes to eat and swim alone.
All the above is my prelude in raving about
Mark Pryor’s third novel, The Blood Promise, featuring the head of security at the American Embassy
in Paris, Hugo Marston.
The very Texan Marston as written by the
very British but Austin, Texas resident (he is an Assistant District Attorney
of Travis County) author seems to have few hang-ups. His protagonist as
described by his much more complex Tom Green, ex-FBI and active CIA agent (his
only competition for being a recovering, not always, drunkard is James Le Burke’s
Dave Robicheaux):
Tom knew that his own brain was pretty efficient in a
crunch, and the truth was that Hugo had been one of the first guys he’d known
to keep up with him on that score. And Tom was fine with having an intellectual
equal. What he wasn’t fine was the fact that this particular equal looked like
Cary Grant and acted like James Bond, but didn’t know how to be anything but
modest. Very fucking annoying, and a complete waste of chick magnetism, as far
as Tom was concerned.
New in this third novel, like the others
based in Paris,
is a man-turned-woman (and who likes girls) who is now a member of the Paris
Police. She works with that other Marston friend Raúl García whose family was
originally from Barcelona.
The plot in The Blood Promise involves a Xenophobic
US senator, a huge Château and Marie Antoinette. There are a few gruesome murders
as it would seem that Pryor has seen a few of them in his job as an Assistant
DA in that gun-toting state of Texas.
And you know that Pryor’s British demeanor
is beginning to fade as he uses that term of my youth in Austin, in the 50s, a
piece of tail.
But the excitement that I got from turning
one page to another is all there and while I cannot compete with Rosemary’s
speed with Camilleri, I can assure you that at the very least Blood Promise is
at the most a two-night read.
I must happily reaffirm that the well-adjusted
Marston almost reminds me of James Bond (not as slick, he is Texan after all!) and I
think the world of literature needs more James Bonds.
But this does not mean that you do not
learn a few important things during the fast ride through multiple-padlocked Paris bridges (read The Blood Promise to find out what I mean by that). Consider
that you may not know who Sebastian Melmoth was. Do you?
After Oscar Wilde’s buggery scandal which occurred
at the Cadogan Hotel (I slept in that hotel once!) he thought that changing his
name might help. It didn’t. Sebastian Melmoth is a combination of Saint
Sebastian and Melmoth a protagonist of Melmoth the Wanderer a gothic novel by
his great uncle Charles Maturin.
What is especially appealing to me is that Marston and his CIA buddy use the latest of techniques, DNA swabs, bugging devices, and even a British professional dominatrix to help solve clues. And there is another charmer here. James Lee Burke has his 12-step protagonist describe in great detail the condensation on a large glass of Jax Beer that he cannot or must not drink. Pryor does one better. Marston, believes that by not having booze in the apartment that he shares with Tom Green that the latter will not be tempted. And when they dine in fine Paris Cafes where Green orders mineral water, Marston feels guilty in ordering anything alcoholic. The best part is that Greens knows this and enjoys it to the hilt.
I hope Pryor writes a fourth novel soon and
that he manages to return a tired Hugo
Marsten on leave to Austin
where suddenly…
That Odd Couple
Sunday, February 16, 2014
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| The Odd Couple, Raúl & Alex in Veracruz, 1964 |
He objected when I put oil and vinegar, pepper and salt on my avocado halves. I couldn't stand his taste for Hungarian films. He sermonized me every time I had grapefruits. Oranges or lemons had more vitamin C. I could not stand the way he slurped his Corn Flakes with chop sticks.
Moving from one city in one country to
another, a few times, is a sure way of leaving one with blanks in events that
happen in those places when one has moved on. I really never knew who Neil Simon was until recently.
While I was in Buenos Aires when Evita died I was not there
when Perón was brought down.
I lived in Mexico City when Pat Nixon came to our school, was in Austin during the failed Bay of Pigs but was back in Mexico City and in a bus
when I found out President Kennedy had been assassinated.
It was then, in the
early 60s that I first met Raúl Guerrero Montemayor who was 12 years older than
I was. He was born, perhaps in the United States
or in Mexico.
None of us who ever knew him were quite sure where. But we did know that he had
a Filipino heritage, spoke 10 languages and looked very much like one of the
sons that the first president of the Philippines, Manuel L. Quézon,
might have had.
He was a friend of my
favourite uncle Don Luís Miranda.
It was Raúl who
educated me on the wonder of European films and good literature. It was Raúl
who drove me in his VW to Veracruz
for my first adult glimpse of the sea and it smells.
Most of us
suspected Raúl was a closet gay. Being gay in those days was tough in a macho
society. Raúl thus had a fondness for falling in love with women who were
always leaving town at the airport.
If I happened to spend
the night at his Zona Rosa apartment, after a late night of Antonioni and
coffee at the Kineret Café one of my cousins warned me to “make sure you sleep
with a book between your bum and your pijama pants.”
I can attest here that
Raúl was always a gentleman and when he died January 9, 2013, I knew I had lost
a best friend and an important influence in making me the man I am today.
Before I married my
Rosemary in 1968 I had been staying in Raúl’s apartment. Having returned from
my military service in Argentina
in 1967 Raúl offered his apartment and helped me get a job teaching English.
We saw more European
films, discussed philosophy, listened to Erik Satie and live a mutual life of
bachelorhood before I met Rosemary and whom if I do remember might have bedded
in Raúl’s loft which is where I slept.
It was a shock, but a
pleasant one to have seen Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, with Rosemary, on its
opening performance at the Art Club’s Stanley Industrial Alliance Theatre on
January 29.
Consider that I may have
been the only person that evening who had never seen any kind of Odd Couple, be
it on TV or in a film. It was virgin territory for me.
Listening to Sound
Designer Murray Price’s mood music (all 60s jazz ) of the 60s and close to the
writing of the play and its inaugural run in 1965 in Broadway immediately took
me back to my mid 60s and my love for the West Coast Jazz of California and the
cool jazz of Miles Davis.
There are those who
see the two women in the play Gwendolyn Pigeon and Cecily Pigeon (beautifully
played by Sasa Brown and Kate Dion-Richard) are there so that theatre goers of
the 60s would not read some sort of gay interplay between Felix Unger (played
by Robert Moloney) and Oscar Madison (Andrew McNee). All the men in this play
and particularly as peformed by the cast including Josh Drebit (Speed) Joel Wirkkunen
(Murray) and
Alec Willows (Roy) give no hint of gay shenanigans. And yet for me it did not
make a difference one way or another. It is a play about the beautiful intimacy (its ups and downs) that male friends share.
I enjoyed John Murphy’s
take, Simon’s humor was all there. Set Designer David Roberts and Costume
Designer Barbara Clayden, made sure that everything was right, from the stereo on
a shelf to the three circular bladed razor that Oscar Madison uses to spruce up
for the visit by the two Pigeon sisters.
The Odd Couple to me
was nostalgic romp in my past that made me appreciate how I got to be where I
am. Now if I could only figure out if I was Felix or Oscar!
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