Theater Sucks

Guilty Party

Ok, maybe not all of it. I'm referring to Festen, a thoroughly shitty play I was unfortunate enough to catch while I was in London. With a gloriously renewed Netflix subscription, I finally got around to seeing The Celebration, the Dogma film the play was based on, and now feel I have sufficient authority to officially dump on this most offensive waste of my precious time, which could have been better spent continuing my rigorous one-way correspondences with the hottest indie celebrities of the day.

But I won't waste too many words on Festen (which, admittedly, I saw about four months ago), because ultimately it's a fluff piece...the play fails to engage any of the provocative issues it raises (incest, rape, the slow burial and gradual resurfacing of family wounds), and after seeing The Celebration I can't say that the film version exactly "engages" any debate that I came to expect from the play, either. The film -- the story of a son who confronts his father about childhood sexual abuse at the guilty father's 60th birthday celebration at the family's hotel -- establishes atmosphere and context, which, funnily enough, are important.

This play was a bad idea from the start, using the wrong approach (stylized noir) for the wrong source. The Celebration's narrative simplicity is a natural result of its technical restraints, whereas Festen -- which actually further streamlines the film's already spare storyline -- is all affect. The plot suffers poor translation to stage. In downplaying the significance of the hotel's staff (who in the film have always known about the sexual abuse and express this early in the film), Festen most closely resembles a murder mystery of sorts, where we're kept guessing about the nature of the suggested abuse until the father admits his crimes. This moment, included in both versions of the story, culminates in the following exchange:

Son: Why did you do it?
Father: Because you weren't good for anything else.

Won't man up on the T-ball field, eh?

This line is problematic in both versions of the story...the father is a rapist because little Christian wasn't a concert pianist by age nine? (This isn't entirely a joke -- the father also refers to his son as "talentless.") The response and its underlying sentiment ring false, to put it lightly. Of course, in the film this line is an indignant aside, spoken carelessly as the father, exposed and ashamed, hastily leaves his guests. In the play, the entire script leads up to this line. It's a revelation so gravely calculated that the entire audience let out a loud gasp upon hearing it. Subtle. The play consistently, and unwisely, sacrifices a pervasive ominous ambience for simpler, broader attempts to shock, a move that trivializes the film's subject matter.

Also crucial is the number of guests, which in the play is reduced from forty or so to a mere dozen, all major characters. The culpability by association is transferred from a relatively faceless group to a small clique of familiar individuals, which drastically changes a wider argument in the film about a collective willingness to overlook and ignore the crimes of friends and neighbors. One example that remains in memory: one of the sons incites a racist sing-along in response to his sister's African-American boyfriend (his nationality difference is eliminated in the play -- both Danes and Americans are, for obvious reasons, British). The scene is disturbing in the film because the crowd joins in intuitively. In the play, the song is sung by family members only, specifically and maliciously, lending the scene a forced sense of cruelty that feels superfluous -- it comes across not as a commentary on racism, but like...racism. The overall effect is reduced to mere shock value, essentially a perverse thrill (sorry, "shock") for the audience.

Anyway. Since about four people I know have even heard of this play, let alone seen it (any London people reading this fledgling blog yet? Can we talk about free refills?), I won't go any further. But if your name happens to be RUFUS NORRIS, who DIRECTED THE STAGE ADAPTATION OF FESTEN, or DAVID ELDRIDGE, who WROTE THE STAGE ADAPTATION OF FESTEN, or THOMAS VINTERBERG, whose film called THE CELEBRATION was MUCH BETTER THAN THE STAGE ADAPTATION OF FESTEN FOR THE WEST END LYRIC THEATRE in LONDON, ENGLAND...and if you just happen to Google this post for some strange reason, please comment below so that we can discuss why you pursued this project. I'm genuinely curious.

ROMA

Note: This is one of two pieces I wrote for a travel writing competition that won me a cool 50 pounds. The other piece is longer and decidedly angsty, so I'm debating whether or not to publish it here.

ROME

You can easily walk Rome in a day, so if you've bought a map larger than a placemat you've probably been conned. Here is how to get the most out of your day in fifteen simple steps:

1. Start at the Basilica of St. Peter, avoiding the marathon that's been put off until the day you arrived to make things a bit more interesting. Take the subway: Even though you can walk just about anywhere in Rome in about an hour, it's worth taking the subway at least once to see the graffiti that covers every square inch of every car -- including the windows, which will make it difficult to find your stop. When you finally get through the long line leading into the Basilica, stare blankly at the various religious paintings and statues for a respectable period of time, and try not to shudder as the Latin hymns at mass reverberate and drift through the cavernous palace. Also try not to think about how many people have stuck their fingers in the holy water.

2. Pass the St. Peter's museum, which is never open when you think it will be because that guidebook was written by Italians for Americans and is necessarily riddled with misinformation.

3. Pass the market on Via Andrea Doria, which is also closed the day you're visiting, but is a great place to get an inexpensive meal on any other day, provided you can speak Italian and have even the slightest understanding of the metric system.

4. Walk along the Tiber to the Umberto I bridge, where you can cross to get lost looking for the Pantheon. It's completely obstructed inside by scaffolding, anyway, so you might be better off buying a postcard.

5. Skip the Spanish Steps, because what's the big deal about a bunch of steps, and besides the person you're with has been there. Instead, go to the Trevi fountain off Via Del Tritone for the best gelato in the city -- if only because the place has been written up in the New York Times, which, as it turns out, is the only reliable newspaper in Europe.

6. From here you can go north if you like, up those Spanish Steps, which aren't much more than the name suggests (at any rate, stop at the Cafe Grecco for cappuccino, even though you never drink the stuff) and onward north until you hit the park in Villa Borghese, which is littered with dog poop but otherwise quite beautiful.

7. Pass the time at the Museum of Modern Art and pretend you know what it is you're looking at (because you saw that film once). Say something pretentious if you're with the opposite sex and otherwise say nothing. There's a giant hot air balloon you can look for if you get lost in the park, and when you reach it, you're five minutes from Piazza del Popolo, which allows the best view of Rome outside of the hot air balloon itself.

8. From here you can walk south down Via Del Corso all the way to Venezia Piazza. Look at the "Wedding Cake," an extravagant government building erected in the 15th century as a papal residence, and be sure to snort loudly and exclaim to your traveling mate, "Bah! The Italians HATE that thing!" as you snap a picture.

9. From here you can either walk to the Colosseum, which is better to view at night if you donít plan on going inside anyway (you should avoid this if your primary interest stems from the Russell Crowe film -- very disappointing, indeed) or the Imperial Forum, which will bewilder and possibly bore you if you don't know anything about Roman history, or mesmerize you if you know everything about Roman history. Since there is no in-between, pick a side and plan accordingly.

10. Backtrack to the "Wedding Cake," because regardless of what those Italians say (apparently), its sheer massiveness and flagrant disregard for any semblance of architectural refinement makes your heart flutter a little and reminds you of America.

11. Walk along Via Vittorio Emanuele II to the Teatro Argentina, which is notable for its dozens of stray cats. Quietly marvel for a moment at a city with so much history that it can spare a monument for a cat dump.

12. Get lost walking to the Jewish ghetto, which is difficult to find because it's exactly one block around, a fact that is so depressing and so miraculous when you really think about it. But you probably won't, because you've been lost for over an hour and you're starving and losing daylight. Be sure to try the renowned Jewish fried artichoke incorrectly, since asking for instructions would be slightly more embarrassing than making a minor spectacle. Also stop at the bakery that burns all of the cookies, and has amazingly built a solid reputation and steady clientele on this suspiciously misanthropic culinary style. Don't bother to take a picture of the synagogue, because if you lean back far enough over the edge of Lgt. Dei Vallati road to fit the image in your viewfinder, you'll have fallen in the Tiber.

13. Walk along the river and kiss your companion if your relationship permits.

14. Cross at Ponte Garibaldi to get to Trestevere, where you will scour a square mile looking for an amazing and ridiculously inexpensive restaurant -- the one adorned with a Popeye cartoon that probably wouldn't be all that funny in English, either. Don't expect to find it: What the Italians have kept secret, much to their credit, is that the alleyways of Trestevere were built upon a gigantic rail system, and with a few pulls of a series of levers, entire streets are freely rotated on their axes, reconfiguring like a horizontal Rubix cube about once a week. If you get out there early enough on a Saturday morning (strangely, no tourist ever has), you can see the borough unearth itself and shift right before your eyes. So settle for pizza instead -- which, incidentally, the Italians wouldn't touch with a stick -- and get lost again, this time in the dark. No map will save you this time, because no one has taken on the grueling task of charting Trestevere for obvious reasons.

15. Now you've seen everything there is to see in Rome, except for everything you've missed, and at any rate you've taken the three pictures (Colosseum, St. Peter's Basilica, "Wedding Cake") anyone will care to see (the lattermost being your parents' absolute favorite -- genuine Roman architecture, they'll say! If only the Freedom Tower had such grace!). Those three pictures are all you'll remember in a few years anyway, except for the spotty bus system, which was three-quarters on strike that day, and most of the restaurants, provided they weren't Italian. Fall asleep early, your feet bruised and sore from traversing cobblestones for twelve hours, and wake up in the middle of the night in time to get to Termini station so that you don't miss the bus to your early flight back. And do be careful -- that area of Rome is a bit dodgy this time of night.