Jersey Boys, National Theater

Jersey Boys at the National Theater

As stated in Wikipedia, Jersey Boys is a documentary-style musical based on the lives of one of the most successful 1960s rock 'n roll groups, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The group sold more than 175 million albums. The musical opened on Broadway on November 6, 2005 at the August Wilson Theatre.

(Washington Post photo by Joan Marcus. From left, Steve Gouveia, Joseph Leo Bwarie, Josh Franklin and Matt Bailey in the touring production.)

As mentioned in the Washington Post review, this show is great entertainment. It was a great show. The audience loved it, and so did I. Most of all, the audience (and I) loved the singing of the old songs; the singers were truly excellent, singing the songs as they were sung by the original singers. The story of the group was also interesting, but the songs were what the audience wanted to hear.

A complete list of the songs in the performance is given in the Wikipedia article. The audience was particularly excited to hear the top hits of the group, beginning with their first huge hit, "Sherry", then "Walk Like a Man" and later, "My Eyes Adored You" and "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You". Many in the audience were moved to tears on hearing the songs sung so well.

The theater was filled to capacity, and when I entered the theater, I noticed that the audience was different from a "normal" Washington, DC, audience. Washington is a white-collar town, and when Washingtonians go out to the theater, men wear white shirts and ties, almost exclusively, and women wear dressy clothes. In this audience, very few men wore ties; I guessed not more than a dozen ties in the entire audience, and a similar number of white shirts. Instead, men wore open-neck colored shirts and sport jackets. I had the very strong feeling that most of the people in the audience were from out of town. Then during the performance, I began to understand the audience.

At one point in the show, one of the cast members said, "We weren't a social movement like the Beatles." He explained that their fans were blue-collar workers: "They were the factory workers, the truck drivers, the pretty girls with circles under their eyes behind the counters at the diner." The audience reflected that fan base -- blue-collar workers, now retired. It was wonderful, just as the show was wonderful. I left the theater feeling uplifted and happy, the way I love to feel, and the way all audience members want to feel after seeing a show. It was entertaining; it was joyful; it was wonderful.

The Little Book, Selden Edwards

The Little Book by Selden Edwards

This book is a time-travel fantasy. Many fantasies of time travel have been written, and this is another one. In this book, the author travels back in time to Vienna in the year 1897, and describes the famous people, such as Freud and Mahler, who are beginning their famous work, as well as the political climate of that time, in which the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, is using anti-semitism to gain political popularity. The book seems to follow Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and indeed the author includes Mark Twain in his tale as a visitor to Vienna in 1897.

All books require a good story and good writing. In my view, this book has a bit of both, but only at the "C" level. Parts of the fantasy are interesting, amusing and completely unexpected, while I found other parts of the fantasy too corny, too contrived, too fake for my tastes. I found it interesting to read about Vienna in 1897, and I enjoyed reading the author's description of Freud and Mahler's work, but I thought the author's description of the origins of anti-semitism to be mistaken.

While I was amused by much of the tale, I found the author's need for the protagonist to lead and teach EVERYTHING to be too much. The tale would have been more fun for me if the protagonist had been more human. The story also did not hold together in some ways. For example, it was interesting to me that both the protagonist and his father were illegitimate. The father was the illegitimate child of a Jewish teacher and friend of the mother, and the protagonist was the illegitimate child of his mother and an unknown military man in England just before D-Day in World War II. Yet, the author constantly referred to the protagonist as having inherited traits of his "father".

The story has several twists that I found interesting or amusing. The illegitimacy of the two principal male characters was interesting. Why did the author include that in the book; it was unnecessary to the story, although it was interesting. In addition, the love affair between the protagonist and his grandmother in 1897 Vienna was also interesting. The author required 33 years to write this book, so he had plenty of time to get all the details straight, and yet he did not do that.

All in all, the book was good subway reading, but certainly not great literature.

I found some of the reviews at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powells interesting.

Special Assignments, Boris Akunin

Special Assignments, Boris Akunin

Boris Akunin

Boris Akunin official website.

Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri

Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri

Phedre, Shakespeare Theatre

Phedre, Shakespeare Theatre

Phedre with Helen Mirren. Phedre is a Greek tragedy, dating back to the fifth century, BC, of a woman who falls in love with her stepson and then struggles to manage her feelings, which consume her. Phedre is about a certain type of relationship, a forbidden one, and a woman's struggles to control her emotions, in the end, losing her struggle. This version of the play was written by the French writer, Racine, in 1677. The story is so tragic and so filled with negative emotion from start to finish that I had not felt good about going. However, I wanted to see Helen Mirren in her signature role. I was surprised that the play was not as difficult as I had expected it to be, although it is indeed filled with heart wrenching emotion from start to finish. Helen Mirren was really special. It is easy to see how great she is, and how this role has so come to define her career. The play was long -- with no intermission -- and I didn't get home until midnight.

The Washington Post ran a review of the opening night of Phedre.

The Baltimore Sun review.

The Examiner noted that for an extra payment, patrons could join Helen Mirren at a reception at the British Embassy. I didn't attend, but I did notice that a limousine was waiting for her outside the theater.

The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov

The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

King Lear, Shakespeare Theatre

King Lear, Shakespeare Theatre

King Lear at the Shakespeare Theatre. The play was well done. Of course, it was what we all know, a tragedy -- not just any tragedy, but a Shakespeare tragedy. That means that everyone was killed in the end. It was gruesome. It seems that in Shakespeare's time, with only men in attendance at the shows, it must have been popular to have a lot of blood and killing in the shows, and that is what Shakespeare gave his audiences in his tragedies.

All Shakespeare plays have at least one play within the play, and this one was no exception. The "inset" play was also a tragedy, making the overall play a double tragedy. In both, the protagonist makes the same mistake, which leads to his downfall. In both, the protagonist disowns a child for perceived lack of love, but the perception was mistaken, and the other children, who feign love of their fathers, are really the ones who are taking advantage of their fathers falsely. The moral of the play was not to throw away the love of your children because if you do, you may be sorry later. Of course, Shakespeare plays, especially the tragedies, are overdone in order to please the audience, and I suppose that was also necessary to make the points emphatically in those days. The play was really well done, and as always, I enjoyed going.