The Place Where Anything Can Happen

The world is divided into two classes of people: those who don't get or like Paul Ruebens's Pee-Wee Herman, and those who do. I have the perfect solution for all parties: if Pee-Wee isn't your cup of fur, don't watch his show, and leave the rest of us in peace. If you must watch Pee-Wee (say, you're a critic for The New York Daily News), don't come crying to us with comments like "There isn't enough plot!" or "It's like being trapped in a room with a sugared-up four-year-old for ninety minutes!"

Both comments actually miss the point by a wide margin.

Actually, there was plenty of plot, if you were paying attention, in Saturday night's HBO Broadcast of The Pee-Wee Herman Show on Broadway, and no, it's not like being trapped with a sugared-up four-year old, it's like being one and still being grown-up about it.

Not only was there plenty of plot, but there was all the usual layering of subtext and winking pop-culture parody, wrapped in a very sophisticated technical production, performed by a talented cast of true believers who really all seem not to be acting so much as becoming the characters.

From the beginning, Pee-Wee Herman was Paul Ruebens's subversive take on that long-extinct species, the '50s afternoon kid's show. Maybe you had to be around in the day. It wasn't just Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody -- every local station worth its salt had an afternoon kid's show that involved specific ingredients: a kid-friendly character host, puppets, colorful sidekicks, an in-studio kid audience, and cartoons.

I actually appeared on the Portland, Maine iteration of that show in the late sixties when I was a practicing Cub Scout. They gave us bags of candy and soda pop, got us all sugared up, let us all say our names on TV, introduced a few cartoons (we didn't get to see them, they were spliced in later). We got a tour of the studio and saw where they filmed the evening news. We all had a grand time.

That kind of show went the way of the dinosaur more years ago than I care to think about. But off and on over the years, its memory has been kept alive -- and satirized, and reinvented, and gloriously undermined -- by Pee-Wee Herman.

It was danged good to see him and all the Playhouse gang again. Understand, Time has taken its physical toll on Pee-Wee and Jambi the Genie and Miss Yvonne just like it's taken its toll on you and me. People said the same thing when William Shatner and the rest of the original Star Trek crew made Star Trek: The Motion Picture -- and that revival was done just a little more than a decade after the original series went off the air.

It's been nearly thirty years since we last were invited into Pee-Wee's Playhouse.

So, what's really remarkable here is not that the gang shows signs of physical wear and tear, but that they can do a marathon, highly physical ninety minute show at the exact same level of energy and enthusiasm that they did all those years ago. Paul Ruebens is pushing sixty, and he can still sell this character like there is no tomorrow. That is a mark of greatness.

The show itself was a mix of the old and the new, very shrewdly and slyly written and performed. Ruebens doesn't dodge any of the questions or concerns we might have had going in, but faces them head-on and makes us believe in Pee-Wee and the Playhouse all over again by sheer force of will.

In addition to the visible cast, a crew of fifteen puppeteers brings the Playhouse and its characters to life in wonderful style. Again, a lot of thought went into this, and most every theatrical trick I can think of was employed to great effect. This was not a hap-hazard or cheaply mounted production done to cash in on the affection of old fans. Rather, a lot of effort went into it to reward us and recreate the Playhouse experience in a vibrant way.

I won't describe the individual gags or reiterate what was done on the stage other than to say that it was Pee-Wee, and it was perfect. The ending is particularly delightful, and involves interaction with the audience, puppetry, music and wish fulfillment. When Pee-Wee sang "I'm the luckiest boy in the world | Much luckier than YOU," I confess my eyes were not dry. It felt genuinely like a personal triumph for Ruebens & Co., one that resonates with the audience.

You get over things, and you fly.

Welcome back, Pee-Wee. Don't stay away so long this time, hear?

-- Freder.

Life is a Cabaret, old chum. . .

Dame Judi Dench has an autobiography just out; I can't say whether she actually wrote it or not. I've enjoyed her work a lot over the years, but I was surprised to learn that she played Sally Bowles in the original 1968 London production of Cabaret.

It's one of those things that doesn't seem right, somehow. Of course I hopped over to Google to see if I could find any photos of her in the role, and was surprised again to find that someone actually had film of it, and had posted it on YouTube!

This is a surprising age we live in.

Not surprising (to me, anyway), was to learn that I was correct to think this was a strange casting choice. My apologies to Dame Dench, but she was all wrong for the part. She didn't look the part, and she didn't manage to capture the spirit of Sally Bowles. Her delivery of "Don't Tell Momma" was nowhere near as good as that of Jill Haworth, who originated the part on Broadway.

Haworth was crisp, light, insouciant. The young Judi Dench seems plodding and frowzy by comparison.

The clip includes the introduction of Sally Bowles by The Emcee, a character played so remarkably on Broadway by Joel Grey that he has become forever identified with the role. The young man playing the Emcee in the London production looks the part, all right, and has the voice, but again, his interpretation is woefully wrong-headed.

I've performed the part myself, and seen it performed by actors other than Mr. Grey, and it amazes me how many actors simply don't get it.

The Emcee is not meant to be fey and limp-wristed and comical.

The Emcee is meant to be EVIL. Evil, evil, evil! He doesn't just introduce the acts. To some extent he controls the events and dominates all the characters in the play. The somewhat good-naturedness of his perversion (as exemplified in the song "Two Ladies") is meant to be deceptive. The Emcee represents all the corruption of the Nazi regime, all its murderous enmity, all its bigotry. When Sally is condemned at the end of the play to return to the Cabaret, it must be given to understand that Berlin is about to erupt and her life under the spectre of The Emcee is about to become dark and dire.

That message cannot be delivered if the actor playing the Emcee would rather charm the audience than frighten them. In my opinion, even Alan Cumming's portrayal in the Broadway revival was misguided. By sexualizing the Emcee, his menace becomes too specific and down-market. He needs to be above the earthy concerns that he markets as his wares.

All of this got me to thinking about Jill Haworth as well, and I Googled her just to see what she had been up to over the years. It turns out that she died just recently, on January 3, at the age of 65, of "natural causes."

This is from her obituary:

"They underestimated her," Cabaret's director, Hal Prince, told the New York Times. "Sally Bowles was not supposed to be a professional singer. She wasn’t supposed to be so slick that you forgot she was an English girl somewhat off the rails in the Weimar era. When Jill came in and auditioned, she nailed it right away, walked that line. That’s what we wanted, and that’s what she delivered."

The Peter Pan Syndrome

Jason Isaacs as Hook in P.J. Hogan's delightful film version of Peter Pan

There are rights and wrongs in art as in life. Here are two wrongs having to do with J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, before I move on to the rights.

J.M. Barrie gave a remarkable gift. For nearly one hundred years, his royalties from Peter Pan have gone to benefit the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London.

Now that the copyright for Peter Pan has lapsed and the character is in the public domain, the moral right of the Great Ormond Street Hospital is under attack by none other than the Walt Disney Company. In a move that can only be described as a crass attempt to glom the copyright of Peter Pan for themselves, their book publishing arm Hyperion has issued several new novels about the character co-authored by the otherwise respectable Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.

It seems strange to be working in a bookstore and to ask you all not to read or support a book, but that is exactly what I am doing. By publishing these unauthorized rogue “prequels” to Peter Pan, the Disney Company is literally stealing from sick children. So much for the vaunted “family values” of the suited corporate criminals hiding in the shadow of Mickey Mouse.

In an effort to hang onto their bequest, the Great Ormond Street Hospital has authorized an official sequel of their own, Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean. If you must have new stories featuring Peter Pan, please support (and encourage your children to support) the official novel, which promises to take the Barrie bequest well into the new century.

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And now, on to the travesty that is Hook. Anti-intellectual, wallowing in stupidity, this shocking rape of J.M. Barrie twists and contorts his play into a contemporary parable about finding one's "Inner Child." Despite Hoffman (who is fine), this is typical Spielberg soft-headed manipulation. Stay away -- stay away!

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On the other hand, Finding Neverland is more of a right than a wrong. It's merely an incredibly efficient machine for making people cry. The audience I saw it with all blubbered unashamedly. For my part, I am entranced by the movie's portrayal of the original Victorian-era stage production of Peter Pan.

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But the real reason I'm yammering at you today is to encourage everyone to check out P.J. Hogan's little-known and under-appreciated 2003 version of Peter Pan. This is, by far, the best, most faithful film adaptation of J.M. Barrie's play. Somehow it manages to balance a modern approach and very showy computer work with respect for the source material. A terrific cast all up and down the line is highlighted by Rachel Hurd Wood in her first-ever acting job as Wendy, and Jason Isaacs following in the tradition of the stage play by taking the roles of both Mr. Darling and Captain Jas. Hook, and doing a smashing job at both. The delightful Richard Briers co-stars as Smee, and, in a major milestone that finally allows some of the play's subtext to come to light, Peter himself is at last played by a boy, Jeremy Sumpter.

This changes everything, and allows the play to breathe deeply. For the first time, Peter Pan becomes what it really was all along: a Romance. It's made quite clear that Wendy is on the verge of becoming a young woman, and her feelings for Peter are colored by frustration at his refusal to grow up with her. Meanwhile, Isaacs's Hook turns out to be something of an embittered Romantic, a Poe in Pirate Drag whose motivations in hating Peter go far deeper than just the loss of his hand. He's jealous, and choked with regrets so powerfully strong that he actually distills poison from his own tears (this is a detail right out of Barrie). In fact, he is able to manipulate Wendy because he understands her.

The one real liberty that's taken with the play happens at the end, when Hook discovers the power of flight and the final swordfight between him and Peter takes spectacularly to the air. Happy thoughts, to him, involve murder and lawyers, so, with the requisite dose of Fairy Dust, he soars quite well -- until Peter, in a very nice twist, realizes Hook's dark secret and turns it, fatally, against him.

A Theatrical Epic

Clocking in at just over three hours -- an almost unheard-of runtime for a picture made in the middle '30s -- and splashed with truckloads of sequins, The Great Ziegfeld is both a zestful discovery and an ordeal.

It's like getting two pictures in one: the first is a pretty good, fun biopic chock full of familiar faces; the second is almost a documentary re-creation of some of Ziegfeld's great shows.

William Powell is always worth watching, and here he delivers an engaging characterization of the great theatrical impresario, warts and all. Although second-billed, Myrna Loy doesn't appear until well into the final third of the film, as Ziegfeld's second wife Billie Burke, she of the quavering voice, Topper and the land of Oz. Without trying to imitate Burke, Loy evokes her splendidly, and grounds the movie so well that the billing is deserved.

But the whole cast is wonderful, really -- we get a much larger taste of Frank Morgan than in The Wizard of Oz, we get Will Rogers and Fannie Brice and Ray Bolger not just playing themselves, but recreating the very acts that attracted Hollywood to them; and it's all contained by a solid drama that Ziegfeld himself created as surely as he created his own shows.

The man was financially irresponsible to say the least, too fond of the female exterior, and too shallow to produce works of any depth. He was all surface, and so were his shows. "More steps!" Powell whispers as a cadre of Ziegfeld angels guide him out of this life. "I've got to have more steps!"

The musical numbers are indeed as spectacular as any ever filmed, but after a while, much like pornography, their sameness becomes apparent and they begin to become monotonous. Another cluster of girls arranged artfully on another spectacular set, not doing much of anything other than standing there and letting the light play over their sequin-studded costumes.

This was made and marketed as a "spectacular," and oh, how it tries. From an extravagant opening in an idealized sideshow to its final scene with Ziegfeld dying in a tiny room while the lights of his own theater glitter through the windows like a Heaven that's just out of reach, it marshals all of MGM's considerable resources to throw glamour at the screen by the trough-full. The Great Ziegfeld isn't -- not quite. But it has a lot to offer, and for the most part it rewards the endurance required to sit through it.

-- Freder.