NaBloPoMo: I did it! Well, almost.

Hey, today is the last day of November, which means NaBloPoMo is over! Wow, I can't believe how fast it went by. And a whole Broadway strike, and I still managed to have something to write about! I'm still pissed that I missed that one day when I was stuck in Pennsyltucky. I've learned a lot from blogging every day this month, but the most striking thing I've realized is that writing begets more writing - that the more you write, the easier it is to do, and the more naturally it flows. I expected this month to be really tough, but it was easy!

So here are two fun things to check out, one theater-related and one totally off-topic.


First, warm your winter-frosted heart with Bixby Elliot's list of the best of Broadway Youtube. He compiled it as a cure to the bway strike blues, but everything on there is great musical theater fun, strike or not. Highlights: Carrie the musical, Jeff Whitty doing a Katherine Hepburn rap in 1986, high school versions of Les Miz with through-the-roof production values, Lea Salonga's Miss Saigon audition, and of course, the legendary performance of Jennifer Holliday at the Tony Awards, singing THAT song.


And then there's this, the blog of a woman who rescued Charlie, a wild Coyote puppy, and is raising him and blogging the whole thing. Dooce says it better than me, "the photos alone will make your heart explode". Charlie the Coyote's mama says:

“What are you going to do when Charlie grows up?” Well, only one can answer this question, and it’s not me. It’s Charlie.

I took Charlie in because the alternative was him being drowned in a water tank. There was one clear answer at that moment in time, one clear answer of what I needed to do for him. And I know the answers will continue to come as he grows up and as we grow together....

...From the beginning, I have made the commitment to let Charlie decide his destiny; to do right by him without attaching my own desires to the outcome or interfering with human logic. You can join me in seeing what unfolds.

Don't Tell Mama You Fell Off The Chair

Just enjoying some old posts from Bixby Elliot's superfun blog Two On The Aisle, including this one that directed me to THIS amazing video of Natalie Portman performing a number from Cabaret at everybody's favorite CAMP - Stagedoor Manor!! One of her co-stars has a little mishap...

Does Disney think large flying objects are more interesting than good performances?

Is it me, or does Disney design its productions in a way that ends up swallowing the actors whole? These pictures of The Little Mermaid look like the actors are getting eaten up by the set, and I felt the same way about Mary Poppins. Everything was so supercalifragi-ridiculous that I could barely connect with the actors over the general din of the production values. Like the message is "Hey, Ashley Brown can sing real pretty, BUT LOOK AT THIS HUGE UMBRELLA!!!" It feels so disrespectful to the whole performance aspect of live theater. How is Sierra Boggess supposed to command the attention of the 1,000 people in the audience when there's a GIGANTIC SHIP passing over her head? It's like the whole audience is at Disney World, riding the Pirates of the Carribean ride, and tucked away in back of all the fake puppet pirates is Johnny Depp giving an actual live performance.

Speaking of supercalifragelisticexpial-atrocious, these costumes look like the aquatic version of that number in Mary Poppins.



Whatever. Bixby is right - no matter what, it will still probably make bijillions, because it's got "that song". Sing it with me now: "I wanna be where the people are. Ask 'em my questions and get some aaanswers! What's a fire, and why does it - what's the word - buuuuuurn???"

Review: Hotel Oracle

Hotel Oracle is a play about "peregrinations and post-its." For those who don't know what peregrinations are (I was in the club when I entered Walkerspace last night), a peregrination is a journey, or a travel. Indeed, Hotel Oracle is populated by a motley crew of travellers, all unfulfilled in their own ways, all searching for an answer to their emptiness. There's a no-nonsense reporter, a self-help guru seeking clients, a winsome expectant mother, a possibly-mad scientist, and a mysterious shaggy-haired hipster, all greeted by an unsettlingly even-keeled clerk at the Hotel Oracle. He welcomes them, and us, to a dreamlike world where sounds are bottled up and stored in jars, walls are paper-thin, and everyone is quietly hungering for something.

A vast loneliness quietly percolates through Bixby Elliot's haunting play, smartly produced by The Sum Of Us Theatre Company. The setting is at first strange, even disorienting, but the doubts, fears, and questions the characters carry are immensely relatable to all of our human hopes and fears. "Do you find me attractive?" "Will she ever love me again?" "Will I ever be happy?" Elliot (a recent grad of Columbia's playwrighting program) deftly manipulates these questions with the lightest touch, illuminating not the answers, but the painful human experience of articulating the questions at all. Happily, the serious, poetic tones are seasoned with a healthy dose of humor and reality, making the themes very palatable and preventing the characters from ever taking themselves too seriously.

The play's poetry and near-experimental feel could be too challenging for a lesser company. Sometimes it seems that downtown theater is plagued by overambitious productions that make a lot of noise but are able to say very little. The Sum Of Us is not one of these companies - Nicholas Vaughn's creates many locations out of a sparse set, and along with lighting designed by Anjeanette Stokes and costumes by Donald Sanders (associate of none other than William Ivey Long), the world of Hotel Oracle is both ironic and serious, cozy and ominous.

It's also SO nice to see an ensemble of such fine actors who are able to live in the play with such gentle sensitivity. Katie Honaker particularly stands out as a cheerful, chatty woman who seems to hardly notice her very-pregnant state. The performances are skillfully directed by Stephen Brackett, who keeps things action-driven rather than philosophy-driven, letting the most thought-provoking elements of the play speak for themselves.

Clocking in at two hours, the play might benefit from a few trimmings here and there, especially since the real action (the aggressive hunt for answers from the Oracle) begins near the end of Act One. Of course, it must be acknowleged that I saw the first preview, and things are very likely to pick up as performances continue.

Hotel Oracle runs at Walkerspace through March 31st. Do you have reservations?

Photo of Katie Honaker and Tessa Gibbons by Becky Holladay.