Bwog reviews the latest offering from LateNite Theatre. Remaining performances include one TONIGHT at 11 p.m, and two tomorrow night at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Opportunities for Columbia students to direct, produce and perform in plays abound. But opportunities for student playwrights, however, by and large are limited to the Varsity Show, XMAS! and LateNite. Although opening night of the LateNite fall play anthology reflected the talent of many of Columbia's playwrights, many of the plays admittedly lacked innovation. The stronger plays drew off familiar stories and situations, while the weaker, if more innovative, ones came off as unstructured and in the end unsatisfying. That said, the majority of the performances were highly entertaining and the two-hour run time passed quickly.

The strongest aspect of the opening play, Inside Voices, was its relatively novel premise. Although playwright Samantha Kuperberg gave her play an often-used setting, a high school math class, she wrote a script in which the characters spoke the subtext of their lines instead of using conversational language. The trope, however, did not lend itself to the development of a plot, let alone a purpose. The play was essentially a series of choppy cuts between the interior dialogue of the teacher and the different students. Nonetheless her characterization of the students was endearing, if a bit conventional. Michael Snyder, aptly playing a teenage heartthrob, and Allie Paddock, as an equal apt boy-craze babe, brought an adorable appeal to their parts, which made their brief interaction the highlight of the play. Kuperberg did an admirable job directing her cast, but the basic set-up of the play seems better suited for an acting class than for a one-act play.

If you're looking for a traditional, all-American musical, Tommy is not for you. That doesn't mean it's not worth seeing- it's a musical of a different formula, resembling Mamma Mia more than Aida.

Tommy is a musical by Pete Townshend (yes, that Pete Townshend) based on a concept album by The Who in 1969 of the same name. Tommy is a young boy, rendered deaf, mute, and blind by a tragedy from his past, who rises to fame for his skill at pinball (no other way to fit "Pinball Wizard" in the score, Bwog presumes). Like Rent, this is a "rock opera," and according to Wikipedia, Townshend wants it to be a giant metaphor for...something.

Looking for some student theater in your life? Bwog reviews the latest production from the CU Players.

Having had only a month to put the production together, the CU Players (or "CUPS," better-known for the plastic cups handed out during the activities fair) did a more-than-credible job of mixing the Bronx with the Bible Thursday night.

It was tentative and cliched in the beginning, complete with the awkward hand gestures of nervous actors. However as the performance went on and the audience warmed to the cast, the characters quickly fleshed out and captivated the viewer.

You have probably seen an ad for Oliver Stone's new biopic "W." (starring Josh Brolin, on the right, as the sitting president) and have been unsure what to make of it. Will this be chock full of half-baked conspiracy theories? A depressing psychological portrait? Most of all, is it worth your hard-earned dollars (or download time)?

Well, Newsweek enlisted popular Columbia history professor (and the outgoing Provost who seems to have a little bit more time on his hand these days to comment about politics and the economy) Alan Brinkley to review the film, especially on historical grounds. His verdict? "There are no conspiracy theories, no wild speculations, no paranoia. Stone's film is not hagiography. It is not propaganda. It is, surprisingly, more or less fair." That gets Bwog at least a little more interested.

Make you own judgment when the film hits theaters this Friday, October 17th.

This past weekend, Inside New York threw a party to celebrate the release of its 2008-2009 edition. The party took place inside the new Village Pourhouse, the uptown counterpart to the popular original location, which caters to the villianous downtown adversaries of New York University. Bwog took along our camera and a notepad.

What we're cautiously optimistic about:

• It's huge, and by Columbia bar standards -- see: claustrophobia-inducing Heights and misanthropy-inducing 1020 -- it's the biggest place around. There's a smaller bar area with several TVs, and this area opens up into a larger room with a dance floor and many spacious booths.
• It's sportsy. Athletic types and their acolytes have about 1,000 fairly large TVs to enjoy, all of which were invariably tuned to games, matches, races, etc. This is also a nice change of pace if you're sick of watching 1020's steady rotation of whimsical kids movies and bizarre vintage pornography.
  
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The first off-putting parts of "Exclusion Suite," the new campus soap opera, are the silences. The opening dialogue aspires to that cute, pause-filled pace that was charmingly offbeat before Aaron Sorkin pounded it into every episode of every show he ever wrote. But the tentative, plucky background music falls out of rhythm with the lines — oh, and the lines are terrible.

This, for example, is the reunion of Natalie (Alex Kudroff) and Brooke (Alice Hu), roommates and best friends, on move-in day:

Natalie: Oh my god! I missed you!

Brooke: It seems like you were doing all right without me. Did you have a drink for me last night?

Natalie: Um, more than one.

Brooke: Aw, you're the best friend a girl could want.

This afternoon and at 8 PM tonight, the CU players present Absurdité, a two hour-long presentation of three short plays by Christopher Durang and one by Eugene Ionesco. The performances of the four plays surpass mere tributes. Showing remarkable creative vision, the four directors produced innovative adaptations of Durang and Ionesco's works and successfully guided their casts through the murky territories of these renowned absurdists.

Making the most of the overwhelming space the Roone Arledge Auditorium offers, the CU Players seated the audience between the curtain and a screen set further back on the stage, and skillfully imitated the atmosphere of a black box theater.

For the last minute planner, Bwog correspondent George Olive offers a well-educated selection of options for the elite diner in search of a romantic night out.

Restaurants

Porcão Churrascaria

Though unconventional, a top churrascaria may be the perfect place to take your lover. At Porcão and similar establishments, diners pay a fixed price and then sit back as well-dressed waiters canvass the dining room with everything from bacon-wrapped filets to pork sausage to prime rib. The meat at Porcão is clearly the main attraction, and it delivers. The space itself is wholly recessed—as if you designed a dining room and then pushed all the walls back.

In which Bwog theater correspondent Michael Snyder ruminates on Broadway's take on familial destruction:

In our post-post-modern world of narrative tricks and linguistic games, it is easy to forget that a meticulously constructed, intelligently written, and vigorously performed family drama can still pack a powerful emotional and intellectual punch. If you need proof, look no further than Tracey Letts' spectacular new play August: Osage County. Not since my first encounters with Williams and Albee have I been so wildly entertained by viciousness, and not since Long Day's Journey Into Night have I been so completely invested in the lives of a family on stage. At this point, August has been so showered with praise that to write another rave review seems redundant, and yet it is difficult not to get excited over a play so clearly poised to become a classic for our generation of theatergoers.

In which Bwog generalist Chris "The Frank Bruni of Amsterdam Ave." Morris-Lent reviews the leftmost column of sandwiches offered by everyone's favorite surrogate cafeteria, Hamilton Delicatessen (est. 1991).

GODFATHER

Description: With a name suggestive of Al Pacino's greatest performances and a variety of meats within its buns that would put even the most diversified of Sicilian slaughterers to shame, the Godfather is the ultimate cold-cut Italian-style sandwich. Ham, salami, and pepperoni explode like a car bomb with flavor, and the two varieties of peppers, sweet and hot, are a nice touch. The only problem is the excess of balsamic vinegar, enough to dissolve the mothballs in Marlon Brando's cheeks, which soggifies the bun and overpowers the meats.

Rating: 3.5/5

AMERICANA

Description: The Godfather's emigrante counterpart, the Americana substitutes the traditional meats of roast beef and turkey for The Godfather's salami and pepperoni while adopting a more austere mix of veggies and cheese as well. The liberal drizzling of vinegar ensures that both taste largely the same, but I tired of eating the Americana far faster.

Rating: 2.5/5

Bwog reviewer Michael Snyder is back - and so quickly! - to report on what he peeping-tommed in somebody's Hogan suite.

"The Sublet Experiment" is, according to its posters and playbills, "a romantic comedy about mis-taken identity," and, as per its title, it delivers some solid laughs, some not-so-solid writing, and a happy ending. The CU Players production, which went up on November 9th, and goes up again next weekend on the 15th and 16th, is graced by a an outstanding four-person cast and a creative team that takes the play beyond its gimmick.

Sublet's central feature, you see, is in its staging: real apartments (or in this case, real suites). The play, by Ethan Youngerman, repeatedly asks to what extent our surroundings determine who we are, and engages with that question repeatedly by changing its surroundings several times, from a suite in Hogan this weekend, to an East Campus suite next Thursday and to ADP next Friday. It is certainly a cool concept, but the play itself stumbles when it comes to stepping outside that concept. The play's best moments are those that most closely approximate real conversations, and the charm of the quick banter early on can't quite stand up to a rather facile plot that seems to have been written largely to accommodate the concept rather than the other way around.

Bwog theater critic Michael Snyder sat through LateNite late last night, and has a few good things to say about it.

The Semesterly LateNite Anthology of student-written one-acts always feels like a handful of works in progress. When the anthology is good, they are refreshing and exciting; when the anthology is bad...let's just say that can make for a long night. This semester's LateNite is without a doubt of the former kind.

The opening and closing plays, though totally unrelated in content, act as clever little bookends for the evening. Flat out funny, they both are joyful, quirky, and undemanding, and if the main goal for each is to make the audience laugh, they both succeed admirably. The first of the two, written by Becky Abrams and Josh Breslow is a hysterical monologue about breasts, performed brilliantly by Colin Drummond. The closing play, also by Becky Abrams, seems to be about picking up girls in diners, and the relationship between grandfather and grandson, and tap dancing to Billy Joel. Whatever it's about, it's pretty damned funny.

Bella is about a former soccer player (Eduardo Verástegui) with a tragic past—though I'll try to avoid too much plot description. After his crazy capitalist brother (Manny Perez) fires a pregnant girl (Tammy Blanchard) from his restaurant, the soccer guy takes the girl to his family's house for dinner. If I could end my plot description with this unassuming list of events, Bella would be a high-quality film. More on that later.

In 2006, Bella won the People's Choice Award at Toronto Film Festival. Past winners include successes like Amélie, The Princess Bride, and Crouching Tiger: Hidden Dragon. Intriguingly, Bella also scored big at the Heartland Film Festival, which has previously bestowed honors on films like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Princess Diaries, and Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie. (For those of you who don't know about VeggieTales, it's a collection of Bible stories retold with vegetables in all the main roles. The interesting array of Bella's awards continues. According to Wikipedia, the director—Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, an American citizen born in Mexico—received the "American by Choice" (!) award from the United State's Department of Citizenship for Bella's "positive contribution to Latino art and culture in the US."

My point is that Bella has quite an interesting array of messages. On the one hand, it's about grittiness (when we see apples on the screen, they have bruises) and cultural diversity in New York City (by the way, I appreciate every film that has characters learning Spanish—hurrah for slow, measured dialogue). On the other hand, it's about the power of family, with an unabashedly pro-faith/pro-life message (this stance may throw off many Columbia students, although they seem to handle Six Feet Under pretty well).

Composer Portraits — Frank Zappa
Miller Theatre
February 2, 2007

I often try to think about things in terms of how I would explain them to Benjamin Franklin. On Friday night, I attended the latest in the Miller Theatre's Composer Portrait series, in which Fireworks Ensemble and Zephyros Winds (a string quintet and a chamber orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky) paying homage to the late Frank Zappa. Trying to explain Zappa and his scatterbrained classical compositions to Franklin may seem impossible, but since Franklin was quite the wild man himself, I'm pretty confident that if someone had exposed Benjamin Franklin to LSD, he would have grown a mustache and soul patch, moved to California, and explored musical territory would qualify as avant-garde 40 years later.

So, Ben:

The crowd was composed of an interesting mix of white haired men discussing the merits of Captain Beefheart (think Patrick Henry, but batshit insane), and Columbia students and hipsters (think Thomas Paine, but in tighter pants). The accessory of choice was either a beard or a musical instrument case, and all crowded into the sold-out theatre for a psychedelic Zappa experience (think of Betsy Ross' 4th of July party when someone spiked the punch).