Sappy Solstice, Everyone! Hey there folks. As usual, the season is filled with the sounds of the season: the clash of battle axes as you join the barbarian horde fighting your way through Bloomies, the soft crackling sounds of fire as you set ablaze all the crappy fuzzy sweaters given to you by Aunt Mildred and what's Christmas without a little stressed out screaming with the one you love? In that spirit, Japhyjunket is going to take a brief winter's nap. When I return in January, expect some new changes and new features, including my interview with Pansy Division. And now, a request: I'm currently looking for a few good bloggers. Or even a few good non-bloggers. I would like to continue developing this blog or another like it, but can not do it alone. If you are or know of someone who has opinions about culture and and has an interesting way of expressing them, please send them my way. Japhyjunket has grown to the point that it needs to be more than one voice. Have an idea for a column? Let me know. This need not be a weekly gig or even a monthly one. My goal for this site has always been to be an experiment. If you'd like to join me, hollah. Wishing you all the warmest of holidays. - Japhy

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posted by Japhy at 12/19/2003 03:26:00 PM || #

Theatre Review: Conspiracy Mom A trip down memory lane leads to saccharine tears in “Frame 312” When I used to work at ABC, one of my co-workers would try to bond with me over his pet interest in the JFK assassination. One day, he actually explained to me, using real English words, how Elvis was in fact, responsible for the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. JFK’s death was undeniably the touchstone for a generation and the slight Frame 312, now playing at the Atlantic Theatre Company, wants desperately to capture both the greatness of the event as well as the intimate impact it had on the private lives of Americans, but instead winds up being little more than a very special Lifetime event, that is neither very special, nor ultimately, much of an event either. Lynette (Mary Beth Peil) is celebrating her first birthday since her husband died, or rather, her grown- up children are celebrating it for her, since she shows little interest in marking the day, and who can blame her? Her daughter Stephanie (Ana Reeder) defines herself by her depression medication and her son Tom’s (Greg Stuhr) defining characteristic is that he’s both bombastic and banal, asking Mum for cash and then, when Mommy reveals that she has the original Zapruder film, takes it as proof she never really loved him. I found myself praying to God that these characters were drinking something stronger than iced tea; nothing is as maddeningly dull as a sober suburban family gathering, even if Mommy does have the most valuable piece of conspiracy evidence- ever. The aforementioned Zapruder film is, as conspiracy buffs know, an 8mm film that shows President Kennedy as he is shot. It was purchased by Life Magazine and eventually turned over to the government, where some allege it was altered to conceal evidence that there was a second gunman. The conceit of Frame 312 is that Lynette, who was a secretary at Life at the time (played in flashbacks by the perennially pert Mandy Siegfried) winds up with the original copy through a series of circumstances fueled by subterfuge and paranoia. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the bulk of Frame 312 is set in the present, where we get to watch Tom and his wife (Maggie Kiley) bicker about whether he knows his kids names or not. The main point of this play is not Kennedy or assassination at all; rather, it’s that Lynette’s ungrateful kids need to realize that Mommy once had a very interesting life before they came along. Playwright Keith Reddin could have easily titled this play Parents Are People Too, and nobody would be the wiser. Do Mom and her estranged daughter share a tender bonding moment watching Jack and Jackie-O get shot at? You bet your Oprah Book Club subscription they do! It’s telling that the program notes that the “modern day” of this play is the 1990’s. Throughout the play, listening to Lynette tell us about how That Day affected all Americans, I couldn’t help but be drawn to the parallels to our generations’ own Day of Infamy. What does Lynette’s silence and acquiescence to live a suburban life say to our own times when we our leaders warn us to watch what we say and when Americans mysteriously disappear into the night? Not much. The larger issues here are repeatedly pushed aside so that we can focus on lukewarm fuzzies like Stephanie giving her mother a teddy bear she made out of her grandmothers old coat. Oh wait! Is Stephanie’s addiction to depression medication an indication that not much has changed? If only there was a line from Lynette to Stephanie like, “You’re not that much different from me” to bludgeon the point into my skull. Oh wait! There is! Where’s Lee Harvey Oslwald when you need him? As far as the acting goes, Mary Beth Peil’s Lynette is luminous and believable and lends a gravitas to the proceedings that is lamentably missing in the text. Ana Reeder is worth looking out for in the future, but the same can not be said of her co-stars. Greg Stuhr plays Tom as well as a number of equally one-dimensional characters throughout the play and seems too caught up in the business of playing multiple roles to ever really inhabit any of them. Maggie Kiley has the same multiple roles challenge, but solves the dilemma by playing all characters exactly the same way, however Mandy Siegfried as the younger Lynette and soap opera scion Larry Bryggman, who plays Lynette’s boss at Life have real chemistry as two people caught up in something larger than themselves. Walt Spangler’s set is a fantastic hyper-pretty white meditation on suburbia and Robert Perry’s lighting inventively moves us between the past and the present. The only thing I will remember about Karen Kohlhaas’ direction, however, is that she forces the audience to endure a ten minute scene in which Lynette’s son Tom doubts whether she has the actual film or not while having her hold the film in her hand the entire time. The greatest conspiracy of this play has nothing to do with reels of film, but rather the clever foisting of another kitchen sink drama onto an audience that has grown desperately weary of the genre. Frame 312 is currently playing at The Atlantic Theatre Company (336 W. 20th Street) Tickets are available at the Box Office or through Tele-Charge (www.telecharge.com)

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posted by Japhy at 12/11/2003 11:48:00 AM || #