When the Rain Stops Falling

(Studio Theatre, 3 September 2011)

British plays excel at exploring class, American ones at rebellion, Russian ones at despair. Each subject could be regarded as a dominant trait of the corresponding national character, if there were such a thing as the national character. This Australian play explores whether a sick parent can conceive healthy progeny. Andrew Bovell, the playwright, answers in the affirmative (at least after sufficiently many generations), thereby salvaging the Australian character.

In the same way as the expression of an individual's genes is influenced by his environment, the national character is largely shaped by the rules of the game prescribed by the political and economic systems. A collection of individual characters is an inept metaphor for a country's national character in the same way as an individual's genotype is a poor protagonist for a novel. At best, an individual's character is a symptom, not a cause, of his country's condition. Being mutable, the national character is not as useful a concept as the individual character; politics and economics can be altered in ways that brain cannot be.

Occasionally grotesque, the play nevertheless leaves some room for acting. Each player finds a scene in which to excel. Donna Belleville and Peter Millard excel consistently.

The Heidelberg Project

(Heidelberg St, 20 August 2011)

Art is an exercise in control of an imagined world. Wealth diminishes the artistic urge, as it confers the powers to control the real. Art is an advertisement, an identity broadcast. Age diminishes the artistic urge; over time, one will have been discovered by sufficiently many. Art is a desperate plea to gods in whom one does not believe. Desperation wears out. The art that lasts is a conversation.

Friends with Benefits (2011)

Not quite a motion picture, but an (unintentionally) impressionist painting executed by a group of friends and acquaintances in the course of an evening. Not a manifesto, but a memento of friendships, serendipitous encounters, and the both coasts. The supporting characters (of Richard Jenkins, Jenna Elfman, and Woody Harrelson) are well conceived, but poorly integrated---in a way that is true to life, defiant of the Hollywood formula, and, perhaps, compliant with some aggregation rule for the votes collected at the test screenings.

Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis are well prepared (even when directed by a committee) to star in the impending era admitting that the lives of the articulate can be, if not comprehensible, then at least gratifying to observe.

Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera

(George Eastman House, 17 July 2011)

Rockwell painted what the public wanted and what he found pleasing: friends---numerous, in safety, and in comfort. Advertisers and editors paid for the best and rejected the worst. What he thought mattered to him most, he could not paint, and so he has never lost his public.

The intensity of the contact with what matters most may overwhelm the artist unless he operates by swiftly releasing the shutter. The vitality of pictures fades faster than that of words, which evoke ever changing images in the artist's maturing mind. The consolation of Rockwell's art is not that a conflict can be resolved, but that no conflict exists; at most, there is brief misunderstanding.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

It is an insult to great minds, to wish to have lived in their times, for that wish implies that they have left little of lasting value, and have consumed more than they have produced.

"Визит Дамы"

(Ленком at Dailes Teātris, 18 June 2011)

Just as Hitchcock encouraged Diane Baker in "Marnie" to extinguish her smile instead of frowning, Александр Морфов, by the second act, tempers the first act's farce and unchecked verbosity so as to intensify the tragedy, delivered in few well-chosen words and economical moves. The first act's mediocrity (powered by all but Анна Якунина), however, is probably mostly due to the script's deficiency and the method actors' desire to conserve their strengths for the second act, which all involved must have deemed more important. The cast is at greater ease inhabiting the characters in pain than in joy.

The production takes one on an emotional journey, exploring which emotion is likely to follow which, instead of an intellectual journey, describing which action leads to which outcome.

In expectation of money, the characters get so far by barter that one wonders why they needed any money in the first place.

Future Pass: From Asia to the World

(Abbazia di San Gregorio, 7 June 2011)

Consumerism 1.0 is materialism---a short-lived, private enjoyment from using and owning rearranged physical matter. Consumerism 2.0 is a longer-lived and often intrinsically social enjoyment derived from associating with and rearranging the elements of popular culture. Both vintages of consumerism are bolstered by fads. Vintage 2.0 advances the society's interests further than vintage 1.0 does, by bringing more durable gratification, being more social, and less passive. Scarcely mediated by material goods and hence scalable, Consumerism 2.0 creates enough demand for ideas in order to make it rewarding for most to create them.

Thus emerging popular culture, to Generation 1.0, may seem deceptively asexual. Because of Generation 2.0's earlier exposure to sexuality, its adopted symbols seem immature---but are durable. Mediated by these symbols, eternal youth will begin early and last late.

At the Exhibition, while no single work excels, the entire collection conveys a vision. Traditional art observes a gratifying aspect of reality and exaggerates it. By contrast, modern art---when it aims to profit from beauty at all---does not assume that its subjects' plausibility increases enjoyment. Thus the scarcity not only of the physical matter but also of truth is overcome.