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• Hiking in Utah, the real formative memories.

  A couple of years ago, my friend Jim and I went hiking in Utah and Arizona. This was undoubtable some of the finest hiking i’ve done in my life: we made an impromptu decision to walk to the bottom of the grand canyon, and back, and many other hikes through more water, mud, dirt, and whatnot that you could imagine.

  A few days ago I had a flashback to a moment, sitting around in the middle of an eastern Utah desert. A guy next to us, living out of a little ute, pulls out his tent-for-one, sets it up, and just plays guitar, to no one and for no one, under the sparkling stars.

  There’s a hell of a lot of freedom in that kind of thing. I wonder what someone is thinking when they embark on a lone road trip, like he clearly was. I imagine he’ll write a memoir one day about that time in his life.

• Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo - A broadway review.

  Saturday night, I got super lucky and got a surprise — walking down times square to go to see this play. After screaming at tourists “New Yorkers coming through!” I managed to get into the theatre to see Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

  Theres a couple of small problems in the play, but they’re mostly to do with marketing. This is a controversial play, here: it’s about the Iraq war, or pretends to be, and has a greedy gold digging soldier as one of the main characters. the Saturday night production I saw wasn’t full, and it’s only been out for a couple of weeks.

  So whats this thing about? It’s about a dead tiger who haunts american soldiers in Baghdad, after meeting Iraqis dealing with bad memories, other ghosts, and the gold-seeking adventures they’re on.

  Firstly, the problem with this production is that one of the main characters is, the tiger; But it’s not the main character. In this production, the tiger is Robin Williams: and he steals all the marketing limelight. It’s a shame, since the other characters are excellent, and it feels that the tiger comes in for comic relief at intervals, telling us about the understanding that he’s attained in death. Ever wanted to hear a tiger having a moral dilemma about becoming a vegetarian? Robin Williams does it well. Ever wanted to hear Robin Williams say ‘motherfucker’ on stage and give you the finger? sure thing.

  So he’s pretty good – but he’s not the center of the play, even though he’s the title character. The main action centers around the living (and dead) Iraqis and Americans in Iraq, who are all dealing with horrible memories from the place. One soldier has to deal with being haunted by the tiger he killed, an Iraqi remembers talking and meeting Uday Hussain, Saddam Husseins purely evil son, whilst a third becomes haunted by his own memories while chasing loot, in the form of a solid gold toilet seat to sell back at home.

  It’s a sensationally well written play – the characters interact really well, and there are a lot of interactions between the ghosts and the living, which is interesting: it’s a good way for characters to reveal their feelings without the difficulty of monologues, and brings an added plot element that really works and grows on you as the play moves on.

  The play is controversial because it’s set in Iraq — but it’s really not. The Iraq war is used as a really good hook for the audience – a familiar tangent from the reality of the news, and one that can hook into peoples imaginations. Iraq also gives a good platform to have forces of pure evil, as Uday Hussain, in the play, while allowing for completely flawed and endearing american soldiers to come into the picture. Theres not much that ties this to Iraq, though: it’s fiction, that reads well, and has a good current interest. It could easily be adapted to any warzone in the past, or hell, the future. What makes this special is the good writing thats endearing, intelligent and flows together.

  Should you see it? sure. Don’t get fooled, and watch all the actors in the play: although most of the audience will be there for Robin Williams, the whole cast is fantastic, the dialogue is great. There might even be some people that leave, in disgust, by Robin Williams swearing, or by the portrayel of American Soldiers as imperfect. Ignore all that, keep listening to the dialogue, and you’ll walk out wondering what else you can see by the same writer (Rajiv Josef) or same director (Moisés Kaufman), or any of the other actors. You’ll probably be able to score a cheap ticket, too.

• Time Stands Still — A broadway review.

  Last night, I had the privilege of seeing Time Stands Still, Donald Margulies new play, that had an incredible cast: Laura Linney, Brian D’arcy James, Christina Ricci and Eric Bogosian. On top of all that, it was affordable: so I was comfy in my chair before the curtain rose.

  I found out after the performance that Laura Linney had just come back from the death of her father, so who knows how this affected her performance. I couldn’t tell. Either way, the play is about a war photographer, Sarah, wounded and dmaged, making her way home from injury with her long term boyfriend. The play chronicles a year in their lives, following the fissures in their relationship and showing the many layers they have.

  As a mirror, Bogosian and Ricci play their friends, who are having the seeming ‘sugar daddy’ relationship. The comparison, and questions about which relationship is healthier are both funny and poignant, and the differences in the problems are great.

  Really, Time Stands Still is just a really clever relationship drama. Theres the backdrop of a war wound, which is a good story basis, but the strength in the play is well written charaters, with a flawed relationship thats enthralling. The current wars in the middle east are used as a prop to allow a wedge to come into the relationship. It’s the focus, but don’t be fooled by it if you see the play. Actually, theres a hat tip in the play, where the characters see a play about suffering in Iraq, and comment about how shallow it can seem, and can just make the audience feel good about themselves to have gone to watch. Margulies clearly knew this was going to come up in a review of his show.

  Linney and James play their parts wonderfully, without hamming things up, and clearly showing the emotions that you’d expect a couple living together for years to have. The interaction between Bogosian and Ricci is, as comparison, much less interactive, but it’s supposed to be. Ricci plays her character well, though, showing a little humanity that an redeem her silly little girl aspect.

  Is it worth seeing? Sure. Is it going to stand the test of time? Probably not, unless the next production in 10 years will change the settings and place names. The story is a timeless one though: what keeps people together? What happens to love? I doubt there will be a better production of this show anytime soon, so if you want to see a period drama about 2010, go and see one of the last few runs of this show, which is on until the end of January.

Blog Posts

• 16 Oct 2011 » Hiking in Utah, the real formative memories. – View Comments
• 02 Apr 2011 » Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo - A broadway review. – View Comments
• 19 Jan 2011 » Time Stands Still — A broadway review. – View Comments
• 27 Nov 2010 » A Rose for Milton? – View Comments
• 12 Oct 2010 » Discovering the directory again. – View Comments
• 05 Mar 2010 » Review of The Belvoir St Theatres production of That Face (from the Royal Court) – View Comments
• 28 Nov 2009 » One of those little things I see, and I don't want to forget. – View Comments
• 25 Nov 2009 » A short story adaptation – View Comments
• 22 Nov 2009 » Bad ideas for the internet, number 1. – View Comments
• 17 Nov 2009 » Writing a quick Go package, as an experience – View Comments
• 04 Nov 2009 » Happy Days by Sam Beckett At the Belvoir – View Comments
• 26 Oct 2009 » The hardest part of writing is … – View Comments
• 16 Oct 2009 » God of Carnage, the STC production – View Comments
• 27 Sep 2009 » Super Size Me, The real experimental protocol – View Comments
• 31 Aug 2009 » Gethsemane, The Belvoir upstairs production – View Comments
• 26 Aug 2009 » The Lonesome West, at the Belvoir. – View Comments
• 24 Aug 2009 » Saturns Return, my review from the 2009 Production – View Comments
• 19 Aug 2009 » Follower counts, and do they matter? – View Comments
• 14 Jul 2009 » Comment Fragmentation, the result of content aggregation – View Comments
• 13 Jul 2009 » Review of 'The Promise' at Belvoir St Theater. – View Comments
• 12 Jul 2009 » My quick review and overview of PubSubHubBub – View Comments
• 05 Jul 2009 » The Triumph of Software over everything in consumer computing.. – View Comments
• 26 Jun 2009 » Back at home in Oz – View Comments
• 24 Jun 2009 » August, Osage County At the Music Box in New York – View Comments
• 21 May 2009 » When the Rain Stops Falling At the Drama Theatre. – View Comments
• 19 May 2009 » Erlang preview, And what makes content creation so hard? – View Comments
• 17 May 2009 » Half Marathon Afterglow. – View Comments
• 16 May 2009 » Good books - whats the line? – View Comments
• 15 May 2009 » Whats the answer? – View Comments
• 14 May 2009 » Back to business – View Comments
• 28 Apr 2009 » Kafkas Metamorphosis at the Sydney Theatre (All the way from Iceland?) – View Comments
• 20 Apr 2009 » The wonderful world of Dissocia – View Comments
• 19 Apr 2009 » Kafkas Monkey - a real letter to the academy. – View Comments
• 04 Apr 2009 » Get Smart, Whats wrong with it? – View Comments
• 02 Apr 2009 » Public transport rant of the day. – View Comments
• 31 Mar 2009 » Ladybird, the 1st BSharp play in 2009 – View Comments
• 29 Mar 2009 » The Man From Mukinupin, A Belvoir Production. – View Comments
• 28 Mar 2009 » A Reservoir sampling server for erlang, written as a gen_server. – View Comments
• 26 Mar 2009 » Travesties @ The Drama Theatre – View Comments
• 24 Mar 2009 » Concussion—The Wharf Theatre. – View Comments
• 09 Mar 2009 » What do Facebook Search results do? – View Comments
• 07 Mar 2009 » Dear Discount Fruit and Vegetable Shop. – View Comments
• 03 Mar 2009 » Downtime sucks! – View Comments
• 27 Feb 2009 » Junk Mail Targeting—How much is there. – View Comments
• 23 Feb 2009 » Creative Commons for Australian Beginners – View Comments
• 19 Feb 2009 » Tuesdays with Morrie @ The Ensemble Theatre. – View Comments
• 15 Feb 2009 » The Holiday @ The Griffin Theatre. – View Comments
• 14 Feb 2009 » Hooray for Valentines day. – View Comments
• 12 Feb 2009 » The Removalists at the Wharf Theatre. – View Comments
• 11 Feb 2009 » Defining the 'Personal Pub Crawl' – View Comments
• 10 Feb 2009 » Double Checked Locking: keep it volatile & above 1.5 – View Comments
• 09 Feb 2009 » Trying something new. – View Comments
• 09 Feb 2009 » Baghdad Wedding @ Belvoir: A quick review. – View Comments