The In Crowd

Matt Schudel looks at a holiday staple, the classic jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi for the Peanuts holiday TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas:

"When it was first broadcast in December 1965, no one was quite sure what to make of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the first Peanuts tale ever shown on television. Untrained children did the characters' voices, there was no laugh track and it had an overtly religious theme, highlighted by Linus' recitation of the Nativity story from the Gospel of Luke. Network executives were certain it would flop.

Then there was the soundtrack. Producer Lee Mendelson invited a pianist named Vince Guaraldi to compose the music, opting for grown-up jazz instead of the exaggerated effects of most cartoons. Guaraldi's high-spirited Linus and Lucy theme has become almost as recognizable as the Peanuts kids themselves.

"The music was absolutely essential to its longevity," says Mendelson, who has been the executive producer of every Peanuts TV project since the beginning. "It didn't catch on right away. It was all serendipity."

After four decades, Guaraldi's subtly infectious soundtrack has just gone double platinum, with sales of 2 million. It was recently released in an expanded and remastered version with a brighter sound that gives fresh clarity to Guaraldi's inspired work." (click here to read more)

On the net: Website  |  MySpace  |  Buy the remastered Charlie Brown Christmas album 

Worth checking out? Going down at the BAM in Fort Greene, Brooklyn this weekend:

You know I had to link this on The In Crowd: Shout! the Mod Musical

Read more:

"The new musical Shout! travels in time from 1960 to 1970 in swinging London, chronicling the dawning liberation of women. Just as Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, Cilla Black and Lulu became independent women with major careers, English and American women began redefining themselves in the face of changing attitudes about gender.

This revue-style musical features new arrangements of such classic tunes as "To Sir With Love," "Downtown," "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me," "Son of a Preacher Man" and "Goldfinger," among many others."

After inviting my sister to join me to go see the sexually explicit and provocative play Red Light Winter she forwarded an email from a friend of hers containing the following endorsement for it: "I saw that play—wow is all I have to say. You will want to f-ck during it...."

But now having finally seen it for myself, I question the judgement of Nadine's homegirl. While unquestionably a powerful dramatic piece whose nudity was neither gratuitous or over the top, it was possibly the most unsexy piece of art I have witnessed in a long time. The last thing I was thinking about, even during the sex and nude scenes, was wanting to have sex myself.

Described within the play itself by one of the characters as being the story of a (very twisted) "love" triangle whose hypotenuse could barely meet (or something to that effect), the story deals with morose themes of suicide, failure, loneliness, depression and unrequited love. In fact, there's not much in the way of hope offered in this dark play even with the flashes of sardonic humor offered mostly courtesy of anti-hero lead character Davis. It's only saved from being a total downer by strong performances by all three of the leads that breathe life into the somewhat contrived story line and a script by playwright, novelist and film director Adam Rapp that comes across more often than not like real conversation rather than dramatic verse.

Here's more on Red Light Winter:

"Red Light Winter follows two men and a woman in very foreign territory. College friends Davis Gary Wilmes and Matt (Christopher Denham) spend a wild, unforgettable evening in Amsterdam’s Red Light District with a beautiful young prostitute, Christina (Lisa Joyce). They find that their lives have changed forever when their bizarre love triangle plays out in unexpected ways a year later in the East Village."

Read Dork mag's review of Red Light Winter here.

Red Light Winter is playing at the The Barrow Street Theatre located at 27 Barrow Street, at the corner of Seventh Avenue South. Click here to learn more.

Preview clips (via YouTube):

- Trailer: click here.

- Red Light Winter (clip): click here.

- For handheld clips: click here and here.

I haven't been to a play in a while but this new politically-oriented production at the Public Theater that went into previews this past week looks like it might be worth investigating:

"A provocative and thoughtful play about how and why we went to war in Iraq, Stuff Happens brings to the stage an ongoing story of great national and international importance, with characters and dialogue seemingly ripped from today’s headlines. Inspired by actual events, both public and private, that have been authenticated from multiple sources, Stuff Happens is a powerful history play that brilliantly transforms “real life” into profound drama." (click here for more info and ticket information)

Last week I took my sister to see Staceyann Chin's one woman performance piece "Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires" at the 45 Bleecker Theater in the East Village. In a word, it was incredible.

Over 85 short minutes Chin was able to cover a variety of themes examining culture, race, sexuality, family, relationships, art and commerce and blend them in way that made for a compelling and dramatic work of art more impactful than many ensemble, big budget theatrical productions I have seen in the past. Humor, gravity and harrowing emotional episodes were linked together in a way that created a narrative far less jarring that you would imagine. With just a few on-stage props (among them a pyschiatrist office-like couch and a hope chest containing outfits for the few costume changes Chin underwent on-stage), a creative use of music from a surprising variety of genres (college girls in Jamaica listen to Sarah McLachlan?!) and an imagaintive use of lighting, Chin turned what is essentially just a one-woman performance into something that felt like a real play. Characters came to life though her recollections and monologues and a dynamic use of her voice evoked different moods and emotions while her physicality filled the stage with movement and action.

Sadly, Wednesday's performance was only about 75-80% filled and the production is running only one more week before closing next Sunday for good due to poor ticket sales according to today's New York Times. This is a shame because in my mind "Border/Clash" should be one of the hits of the theater world this season and on its way to a full Broadway run. Perhaps its treatment of homosexuality and rape are too graphic for mainstream theatergoers' palettes? I would say no and, as Chin herself said at the end of the show, everyone should be telling a friend to go see the show, especially if you have Caribbean friends or family who are homophobic (as many are. I know I was raised in a typical Guyanese expat family whose attitude towards homosexuality, while not outright vilification or condemnation, was one of benign ignorance and relative intolerance).

This play is more than just a pro-lesbian polemic though, it's an examination of identity issues and how one woman learns to come to terms with herself and deal with the adversities life has thrown her way. Go see it. You won't regret it - please believe it. Here's the Times' review for those who don't trust my amateur theater reviewing steez:

"Anyone who saw Staceyann Chin perform on Broadway in ''Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam'' knew that she was headed for big things. On a stage with nine charismatic artists, Ms. Chin stood out as a ferocious and slyly funny poet with a skill for turning a clever phrase. With her appealing autobiographical show ''Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires,'' she has the stage to herself, and commands your attention.

With razor-sharp cheekbones and two voluminous puffs of hair resting on top of a delicate wisp of a body, Ms. Chin is a caricaturist's dream. Like Sarah Jones, another poetry slam artist who made the transition to straight theater -- her ''Bridge and Tunnel'' was also produced at 45 Bleecker -- Ms. Chin has the paper-thin figure of a movie star. (Don't they feed the performers at the Nuyorican Poetry Café?)

''I am a lanky thing with more than a little swank in my swing,'' she says about her herself when growing up in Jamaica. With clear-eyed and unpretentious prose, Ms. Chin is especially affecting while describing her relationships with her Chinese father and Jamaican mother, both of whom abandoned her. But Ms. Chin is not one to wallow in her troubles. She confronts them and moves on. After coming out of the closet as a teenager, she was assaulted by several boys, which, as she tells it, was the impetus for her move to the United States, far away from the homophobia of her homeland. ''Jamaica,'' she says, ''is the kind of place that foreigners fall in love with.''

Once she moves to New York, the play shifts into a more conventional poetry slam voice. Ms. Chin settles into her familiar stage persona -- confident, fierce and street smart. With a voice that often rises into a shout, she describes meeting Danny Glover at the Tony Awards and explains how Eminem is a guilty pleasure. Ms. Chin also makes much of a trip to the studios of CNN, which she puzzlingly describes as the ''Antichrist of the modern media industry.''

The first half of the show is filled with honest and introspective reflections, but the second half seems less dramatic and, at times, a bit forced. Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't a wealth of clever lines, nicely crafted love poems as well as the following highly practical relationship advice: ''Though I believe two wrongs don't ever make a right/ sometimes slashing his tires makes you feel better.''"

Click here for the official show website and tickets.

Also check out Staceyann Chin's website.

I know I've been riding the Times' jock a little heavy cribbing from them almost exclusively with recent posts. But here's another interesting article, this time from their Arts' section, that I had to feature - a profile of rising British playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah:

"Kwame Kwei-Armah was starring in the popular television hospital drama "Casualty" in 2001 when he decided to fly across the Atlantic to see August Wilson's "King Hedley II." The eighth play in Mr. Wilson's 10-play cycle about black American life in the 20th century, "Hedley" was having a pre-Broadway tryout at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

"I was so touched by the magnitude of this man and his commitment to talk of and chronicle the African-American experience through the art form," said Mr. Kwei-Armah, who has never met Mr. Wilson. "I went back to my hotel room that night and said, 'O.K., I now know what I want to do; I want to chronicle the black British experience.' "

The product of that revelation, "Elmina's Kitchen," opened on the West End at the end of April to mostly warm reviews, making Mr. Kwei-Armah, at 38, the first homegrown black dramatist to have a play commercially produced on London's equivalent of Broadway.

"There's that feeling of a glass ceiling being smashed," Mr. Kwei-Armah said. "And I am tremendously humbled that it is my play that is involved with that kind of history."

That the play should be a groundbreaking event in London may strike Americans as odd, given the longer tradition of African-American playwrights dramatizing the black experience. But subjects like the lives of West Indians, former colonials, in Britain have rarely been given such a platform here, not to mention plays that examine the pressures on young black Londoners today to live outside the law." (Click here to read the full article)