Did “The Rolling Stone”
Create an Era When “The
Titans” Caused Paris’
“Moulin Rouge?”
By Tony Vellela
Clear a line in your agenda list right now for time to see “Rolling Stone,” which is in limited run at Lincoln Center for one more week. Others may tell you that this new play is the story of a deeply troubled, life-threatened family, caught between blood-ties and their obligations to their God. It is not.
It does involve both of those elements, to be sure, and contained as they are within the gripping story in this new play by Chris Urch, directed by Saheem Ali, they are symptoms of a condition, not the condition itself. When a small-in-number immediate family in recent-history Uganda learns that their prized oldest sibling Joe [a volcanic James Udom] has been named the new pastor for the village and surroundings, to tend to the needs of the Christian-embracing residents, their initial response is one of pure joy. The family’s widowed mother Mama [in a truly incandescent performance by Myra Lucretia Taylor]
has already been compiling her own secret list of acts and pronouncements her blessed son can now put into practice. In her role as the Mother, she believes she assumes the right to encourage her children, especially Joe, to hold sway over her beliefs and actions. Her immediate family consists of her younger son Dembe [who Ato Blankson-Wood presents with a quiet attractiveness that goes beyond good looks] and her daughter, Wummie (Latoya Edwards) [close in age to Dembe, but who has rendered herself voiceless since their father’s death in the recent past]. Mama’s eldest has been chosen. He will lead the congregation through this troubled time, when their congregation has been schooled in the warped beliefs of a black church from the American south, to risk eternal life if they don’t do all that is possible to eradicate their land of homosexuals and all they say or do.
It is not a spoiler to reveal that, in scene one, Dembe is seen sharing romantic and physical attractions with Sam, the white British-born vicar [a modest, appealing Robert Gilbert] who has come to this village to see the land where his now-deceased Ugandan mother met and married his English father, also passed away. The unlit grenades have been laid out before us. What Urch has done so skillfully is to avoid making the discovery by Mama
of Dembe’s secret gay liaisons the grenade. Grenades need to be lit. The match that is struck, to create the inferno that threatens to engulf all of them, is not telegraphed or played out live. It gets ignited behind the eyes of every member of the audience.
Because the basic element, the condition, the universal consequence of an act everyone is capable of bearing the burden of, that unites every aspect of every thread of these story lines, is fear. Strict doctrinaire types lead their small congregation into thinking any transgression from their beliefs will lead directly to the hell that awaits in the afterlife. Their compulsion to act on these transgressions leads to lethal violence. Fear of violating the wishes of parents will guarantee a hell-on-earth for children who cannot discern truth from mythology. Fear of one’s own secrets being discovered can condemn one to a life filled with days and nights of unredeemable self-condemnation.
This is a play that welds together small stories and very big fears in an overwhelmingly powerful tale that can touch you, even if you have nothing whatever to do with its specifics. It is, to use one of the most overworked phrases employed in criticism today, a must-see play. Don’t be the one who does not see it.
The ‘rouge’[deep red] that turns the ‘moulin’ [the grand windmill that tops the towering stairway-steeped district in the heart of Paris] is the opposite of fear. It is a blatant disregard for the consequences of joyfully vulgar actions that violate most every one of the commandments, and a few that were yet to be named. At the turn of the last century, Paris was the center of the world’s grand explosion of sexual drives, the fulfillment of every waking moment with music and where everything always seemed to be in motion. Everything moved, always, from the churning arms of the windmill to the barely-clad boys and girls [they all seemed so young] who draped themselves over bannisters and railings and iron-wound stairway handsets, all seemingly perilously close to falling onto each other, not to their peril, but to their delight.
It’s an old story. Naïve young man Christian [this one is from Lima, Ohio, portrayed by Aaron Tveit, whose talents seem to grow bigger each season] turns up in decadent Paris to find himself engulfed in the world’s most opulent, most raucous, most outrageous cabaret-nightclub, where the star attraction is the sumptuous Satine [Karen Olivo, from the most recent ‘West Side Story’ revival which garnered her a Tony Award]. Her late-night act launches when she is lowered into the center of the room in sparkling skimpy attire and not much else. In this dazzling spectacle of sparkle, sequins and shiny objects, Olivo falls somewhat short of depicting the centerpiece of ecstatic fantasy, whose very presence would/should drive men wild, wild, wilder.
Christian, poor and unworldly, is smitten. But the entire environment is under threat of closure by an appropriately aggressive villain determined to own the windmill, the building itself, and even every one of the dozens of performers who spark life into every corner of the place. Villain-in-residence is Harold Zidler [the lecherously antic Danny Burstein].
But wait! This is a musical! “Moulin Rouge! The Musical!” And like the surprising ground-breaking spectacle that gives master set designer Derek McLane [more than 350 Broadway, off-Broadway and regional and international venues, winning Tony and Emmy Awards along the way], a canvas unmatched by any of his other award- winning sets, this musical’s score by the ingenious Justin Levine, aided by Matt Stine, Cian McCarthy and Ashley Rodbro, also breaks all the musical theatre rules. McLane literally sucks you into the theatre space by surrounding you with red curtains, scarlet drapes, flame-colored set pieces and bright costumes and set pieces that dazzle effortlessly the moment you enter the theatre. And the music does the same to your ears that the set does to your eyes – it overwhelms with song sections, snippets, choruses, lyrics and melodies from no less that seventy songs from the turn of the last century to last week, and somehow manages to forward the love-starved couple’s tragic story without missing a ‘beat’ in the telling of the tale. Britney Speers meets Madonna who steals from Marilyn Monroe, while Elton John cozies up to “Lady Marmalade” effortlessly, all the while keeping your musical toes tapping and your story-line consciousness in perfect harmony. It produces an excellent melding of lyrics with story lines. An Annie Lenox tune joyously opens Act Two. And among director Justin Levine’s razor-sharp instincts on display is his giving permission to lighting designer Justin Townsend the freedom to allow the lighting to serve as another silent partner in telling the story so vividly.
Broadway forged its brand by presenting dazzling entertainment that, from time to time, sent the audience out not just humming the score, but replaying in their mind’s eye the sights and visuals that accompanied it, from George White to Florenz Ziegfeld, and rarely matched – recall the recently-departed and mourned producer-director Hal Prince, whose opening sequence of the original “Cabaret” reminded audiences what Broadway musicals ought to be like. It’s back.
While the cultural rules were being shattered, from Toulouse Lautrec to the can-can, at the end of the nineteenth century by thousands of Parisians and thousands more tourists from all over the world, it took only two men, four hundred years earlier, to shatter not merely the societal, but also the cultural, scientific, artistic, designer concepts, and even the very foundation of the era’s religious tenets. Born slightly more than two decades apart, Leonardo da Vinci [1452 – 1519] and Buonarroti Michelangelo [1475 – 1564, pronounced MIK el angelo, not MIKE el angelo], these two men, rightly called Titans, changed forever nearly every aspect of human life.
But as the subject of a stage play? Answer? Yes.
Formally titled “The Titans Experience,” this compelling work is the product of nearly a dozen years of tireless endeavors by Mark Rodgers, who spent hundreds of hours conducting the research that led to “Da Vinci and Michelangelo: The Titans Experience,” a unique combination of visual depictions of these great men’s hundreds [yes, hundreds] of creations, accompanied by Rodgers’ colorful yet remarkably detailed descriptions of their lives. They are known to most people who made it through their senior year of high school as artists [painters] and sculptors. But Rodgers has amassed hundreds of other examples of their genius, even though they were rivals and often disliked each other personally.
During their lifetimes most people were illiterate, and so the poplar method of ‘learning’ about important events, real [military battles, such as the Battle of Cascina and the Fall of Rome] or the object of religious orthodoxy [the saints and the holy figures from the Bible, such as the Last Judgment] were discovered through the work of these men, some of which took years to complete. Every inch of their paintings was scrutinized to learn about the stories behind the subjects of the art.
Like today’s popular political candidates, but not nearly as fascinating, they each have compelling childhood stories that led them down their respective paths to eternal fame. This clever production, situated in the comfortable theater space at St. Luke’s Church on west 46th street, brings their accomplishments to life. It makes the connections between their individual discoveries and inventions, from the lantern style gear and the ball bearing, and the chain link bicycle and the life preserver, to the classic works of art such as the Florentine Pieta, the Mona Lisa, the Last Judgment, the marvelous Sistine Chapel and da Vinci’s classic sculpture, the 17 foot tall masterwork, the David.
While both men often competed for the same commissions from rich families, businesses and especially the church, their motivations were not entirely in conflict. They both lived for their work. Da Vinci famously pointed out that ‘Artwork is never finished. It is only abandoned.” And the observation he made that he took a flawed massive slab of stone, abandoned by others, and chipped away until the David appeared, made his point that the art was always already there, and only needed to be freed.
This engrossing performance piece is being presented on an unusual schedule of days and times, so it is advisable to phone ahead to 720-504-9408 for exact details.
TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre ‘Character Studies.’ His play ‘Admissions’ was performed three separate times in New York, directed by Austin Pendleton, and published by Playscripts. He has written several other plays, books, musicals and newspaper and magazine articles, including for The Christian Science Monitor, Dramatics, the Robb Report, Parade and many others. His work “The Test of Time” was the best documentary award-winner for Lifetime Television. He is a member of the Writers Guild and the Dramatists Guild.
CARMEL CAR & LIMOUSINE SERVICE, in business since 1978, has been selected as the official transportation company for Intermission Talk. Its wide variety of services, including special theatre packages, and reservations, are available at www.carmellimo.com, the Carmel App, or at 212 – 666 – 6666.
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