Review: "Leopoldstadt"

The madness of the Holocaust -- the Nazi's mass extermination of millions of European Jews during the Second World War -- remains one of history's greatest crimes. Grappling with it has confounded humanity ever since. Numerous artists have tried to make sense of something that is fundamentally insane -- most famously by Steven Spielberg in the 1993 movie Schindler's List. 

The brilliant playwright Tom Stoppard, himself a refugee of WWII, makes his own attempt in his new play Leopoldstadt which I recently saw on Broadway.

Whereas other Holocaust stories brood on the horror of the camps and the brutality of the Nazis, Stoppard does something different but, in some ways, even more devastating -- he tells the story of a Jewish Viennese family from 1899 to 1955 and how their safe, beautiful, sometime scandalous life is upended and destroyed by genocide. It's an intimate story of the fabric of family being torn apart, rendered asunder, only leaving lonely strands behind. In the play this is literally symbolized by the string game cat's cradle -- the strings are pulled apart but still connected, forever bound together.

The plot concerns the Merz family, a wealthy family of factory owners. At the turn-of-the-century, the family is happy and thriving, although not all is clockwork harmony. Some of the family members have converted to Christianity in order to blend into Viennese society while others have held steadfast to their Jewish faith and identity. Their existence in precarious -- in some ways they are respected citizens of the then-Austro-Hungarian empire, protected by and pledging fealty to the Emperor Franz Joseph, living freely and enjoying their hard-earned success. But as Jews (or former Jews), they are still held suspect by society, kept at arms lengths -- as shown when one of them is denied membership in an exclusive Viennese club. Clandestine love affairs and old family squabbles are upended by the First World War. By the 1920s some family members have been killed and maimed by the war, several relationships are strained, and the mighty diversified empire they belonged to, that gave them safe (if sometimes sneering) harbor, is now gone -- replaced by a weakened republic. Eventually, in 1938, the Nazis come, annexing Austria with the "Anschluss" and literally beating down their doors, hauling many of them off to the camps. A decade after WW2, in the mid-1950s, only three of them are left alive, living in different countries, forever haunted and distraught at the lost lives -- some of which they aren't even old enough to remember. This is an intimate story of a massive crime, where we see the almost complete erasure of a family -- a tradition, a way of life, a whole world -- as the actors literally vacate the stage. We see it in the void, the absences of the people who are not there but should be. It hits home in a way that only great drama, great storytelling can do.

Haunting.

Leopoldstadt is the name of a largely Jewish neighborhood in Vienna but, in this play, it becomes something more -- the place in memory where family happiness and acceptance thrived before horror invaded it. As always, Stoppard's scenes and dialogues are superlative but unlike some of his past plays (like the Jumpers, The Invention of Love or Arcadia), it's less intensely intellectual and dense or more emotional and free flowing. Unlike most plays these days which have small casts, this one has a huge cast of 39, that fill the stage before, as indicated, they gradually vanish. Amongst the large cast, Josh Malina plays Hermann, the family patriarch, heading a great cast including Brandon Uranowitz as Ludwig, his brother-in-law and intellectual sparring partner, and Faye Castelow as Gretl, Hermann's unfaithful wife. All of the performances are excellent.

Even though a Stoppard play is a feast of smart dialogue, there's one moment in Leopoldstadt that is purely visual and deeply powerful -- before the time-jump to 1924, at the end of the 19th -century fin-de-siecle part, Hermann has returned home to a family seder. While he knows his wife has been unfaithful, while he himself has converted to Christianity, he joins the seder and recites the prayers. He realizes he cannot run away from his roots or his family, he cannot deny who he is. Then he and his wife embrace while the other family members come together and dance, spinning around in joy while wearing their elegant clothes, purely happy. Its shows us the accomplishments and happiness of this family that will soon be destroyed -- a reminder that we should always hold onto the people and things we love, and be forever vigilant to those dark forces that seek to destroy them. 

In that Leopoldstadt is, sadly, more relevant than ever before.

Remembering "My Two Dads"

If you ever saw the movie The Player, you learn how movies get made -- a writer or director or producer or someone goes to a studio executive and "pitches," saying something like, "So here's the idea: we team a daredevil cop who doesn't play by the rules with a rookie or a babe or a chimp" (okay, so I stole this line from a Sonic TV commercial but you get the idea).

Much is the same for TV shows: "Okay, so six friends in New York who hang out in an apartment and a coffee shop and joke about their love lives" -- such pitches are what make TV history.

At some point in the mid-1980s, a writer named Michael Jacobs pitched a show to NBC called My Two Dads and I'd love to imagine he told Brandon Tartikoff and Warren Littlefield (the guys who ran NBC at the time), "Okay, so two guys who live in New York banged the same chick back in the 1970s, find out that she died and that she has a teenage daughter and that either of them might be the father, so -- work with me here! -- they decide to raise her together because, you know, that's believable."

But that's exactly the premise for this late '80 sitcom that starred a post-Diner, pre-Mad About You Paul Reiser, some guy named Greg Evigan, and a girl named Staci Keanan who went onto greatness in the 1990s sitcom Step By Step. Each episode presented the two VERY NOT GAY men living together in a stylish NYC loft with lots of neon lights on the wall as they negotiate taking care of this wonderful young lady who has completed disrupted their previously swinging single lives -- and learning important life lessons about along the way. 

Much like Friends, My Two Dads existed in an NYC fantasy land of huge apartments and jobs requiring little work. Unlike other NYC series, the city existed in the background, making it an almost generic setting. But I remember when I occasionally saw this show as a kid  that it was the rare show (besides Kate & Allie, about two other VERY NOT GAY people, in that case women living together) set in NYC. 

What makes watching this show interesting is that, while it's painfully dated, it's a perfect time capsule from the 1980s: a sitcom about how great family is, even when that family consists of two men as parents but of course they are VERY NOT GAY (hard to believe but this show ran nearly 30 years before gay marriage was legalized and the idea of two non-straight men raising a family was unthinkable) plus lots of neon, pastels, and music with saxaphones. 

Believe it or not, as absurd as the premise for this show was, it actually ran for three seasons (from 1987-1990) during NBC's 1980s glory days of Cheers, The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Night Court, and LA Law. It was one of those shows that was a minor hit and, after it was cancelled, completely and totally forgotten about (until now). Today if you pitched a show like this you'd get laughed out of the room but it was perfectly in tunes with its conservative times. 

A few years ago I heard Paul Reiser on a podcast talking about how he came to be on My Two Dads. In the 1980s, Reiser had a big stand-up comedy career and was also acting in big movies like Beverly Hills Cop and Aliens. His agent told him that NBC wanted him to do this pilot but that it was so silly that it would never get picked up and he'd get a quick and easy pay day. Instead ... he found himself stuck on a show he didn't really like for three years but, he said, it made him realize that he'd like to create his own show and that eventually became Mad About You (a vastly superior and much beloved 1990s classic). 

If you're interested in this very odd piece of 1980's TV and NYC nostalgia, you can find a lot of full episodes on YouTube or watch the pilot here:

Remember -- VERY NOT GAY

Mr NYC in London's National Gallery

In a city as crazily expensive as London, one if its greatest treasures in totally free -- the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.  

A stunningly gorgeous collection of classical paintings, it's a feast for the eyes.

During my recent visit, I paid a short visit and saw lots of great stuff. What follow are just a few selections.

First was the special exhibit about St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th century Catholic friar and mystic who founded the Franciscans. Pope Francis takes his name from him, sharing with his namesake a commitment to a life of service and helping the poor.

There were lots of paintings and sculptures of St. Francis on display, including clips of movies that were made about him. My favorite was this -- a hollowed out tree that's an example of "poor art" or art repurposed out of nature. The hollowed out tree reveals its history, its dimensions, its deeper meaning. I really loved it:

Moving on, there was a large-scale drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus, being comforted by her mother St. Anne.

Another was a portrait of a woman named Christina of Denmark (who was also Duchess of Milan) whose family sent this portrait to King Henry VIII to consider her as his next wife (after Jane Seymour died). It goes without saying that she didn't get the gig -- and it probably saved her life (not to mention she didn't have to sleep with that gross monster):

Then I saw some other gorgeous paintings, including one of St Mark's Square in Venice by Canoletto and "Two Crabs" by Vincent Van Gogh:

Two of my favorite paintings were ...

A beautiful, peacefully serene portrait of a Finnish lake:

And just to bring everything full circle, a painting by George Bellows from 1912 that portrays ... drumroll ... New York City harbor! A painting of day laborers waiting to get picked up for work, the towers of lower Manhattan rising in the background. It was a happy surprise, and an example of the New World being heralded in the old. 

Yankees Pitcher Domingo German Throws a Perfect Game

I'm Big in Singapore

More than a dozen years ago I blogged about the fact that this blog had, for a time, an unusually high readership in Russia. 

Ensuing events have certainly made me conclude that those "readers" were probably bots -- like the kinds that seek to conduct informational warfare and influence elections. 

Anyhoo, Russia is no longer this blog's biggest readership and hasn't been for a long time. Happily the USA remains the main source for this blog's readership which gives me a smidgen of confidence that perhaps real live human beings are reading this here 'thang.

But in the last year, in just checking the stats, it's actually Singapore that has been driving most of this blog's traffic, slightly ahead of the USA. Yes, instead of the world's biggest political landmass reading Mr NYC, now one of the world's smallest does so. 

As you may know, Singapore is a city-state located in southeast Asia, right off the coast of Malaysia. It used to be a British colony like Hong Kong but had been a thriving independent city-state for decades -- and one of the world's most desirable places to live. 

Now it's quite possible (in fact, most likely) that most of the Singapore readership is bots but -- haha -- if any real live Singaporeans are reading Mr NYC I'd love for you leave comment or three -- and I hope one day to visit your fine city-country, truly a sibling city to NYC if there ever was one.

Richard Ravitch RIP

Over the weekend I stumbled upon an old 1989 documentary made for the now- defunct WNYC TV about the monumental US Supreme Court decision of that year which eliminated the Board of Estimate and triggered a restructuring of how NYC government is run.

It's called Power! Who Wins, Who Loses and, given its subject matter, is a shockingly entertaining look at how this city was run for nearly a century -- before it had to change.

And seeing this doc coincided with learning that the great Richard Ravitch has died.

Who was he?

He's the man who saved NYC multiple times -- first, in 1975, he was part of the team that prevented the city from going bankrupt; second, in the early 1980s, when he was the head of the MTA and overhauled how that messy public authority was run; and third, in 2009, when he became the Lieutenant Governor and saved the state (and the city's) finances). Ravitch was never elected to anything, but as a lawyers and developer he understand the mechanics of governor better than anyone and 

While politicians, elected officials, may be the ones who make the laws and run things on a day-to-day basis, most of them sadly know little about how the government actually runs, how it works, how it finances itself. When it comes to government, most politicians are amateurs. It's people like Ravitch and Stan Brezenoff who understand this kind of thing deeply, they are the professionals who make it work.

And in a time when expertise is being trashed by the proudly ignorant, people like Ravitch should be appreciated all the more -- and their passing should be deeply mourned. RIP.

NYC Renewal & Renovation

What makes NYC so great is that we love and preserve our past without being afraid to step into our future. We appreciate what we have inherited while creating new things to bequeath. 

And then there's the spirit of renewal and restoration -- making the old new again, refreshing the past for the present.

This week saw two NYC icons being refreshed -- one is a literally a TV show that we renewed for another season and the other is a great museum that has reopened after a long renovation.

The Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That ... has just started its second season.  The show about once four, now three, NYC ladies and their glamorous if sometimes messy lives has kept this town enthralled for a quarter of century now. The show and its denizens are as much a part of this city as the city is part of them. New Yorkers seem unable to get enough of these quintessential city broads -- and their back, renewed and ready for action (!).

Also, having blogged about it earlier this year, it's great to see that the Hispanic Society of America has reopened after five years of renovations. This gorgeous and important museum in Upper Manhattan gives you a view of the massive and mighty Spanish world. A gift from the past to the city ... given again.

The Romance of the Underground Writer

The idea of an underground, an underworld or, as I once blogged about, the underwelt, is something I'm constantly fascinated by. This blog is an underground blog if there ever was one -- totally outside the gaze of, and unconnected from, the mainstream media, the square world.

This makes me an underground blogger -- an underground NYC blogger to be precise.

The idea of an underground writer, someone's whose work is mostly unknown and whose readership is small but passionate, is certainly something I can relate to. Many of them write about subjects that don't interest most people (like this blog) even if they're about some universal like sex and politics -- or the world's greatest city.

So it's with great interest to read that the brilliant filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is currently making a movie (possibly his last) about an underground writer from the 1970s. Few details about this movie are known except that it's tentatively called The Movie Critic, takes place in 1977, and is based on the life of a movie critic named William Mangold nom de plume Jim Sheldon who wrote movie reviews for a porn mag. Making a movie about an underground critic is certainly bold, the kind of unexpected story that Tarantino usually tells and that makes his movies so great and different. 

And if any other movie director, especially one as good as Tarantino, wants to make a movie about an underground NYC blogger, i.e. me nom de plume Mr NYC, I'm is happy to serve as the inspiration for such a project. Get in touch! 

Farewell Keechant Sewell

Review: "Dixon & Daughters"

When I visited London in 2008 I went to the National Theatre where I saw Jeremy Irons in a great play called Never So Good (I even blogged about it here).

On my most recent trip I went back to the National Theatre and saw another, more intimate play called Dixon and Daughters -- an intense, very British working class family drama about the deep trauma of generational abuse. 

Staged in a tiny part of the National called the Dorfman Theatre, Dixon is about an elderly woman named Mary who returns home after a short stint in prison. She had pled guilty to a minor crime committed by one of her troubled daughters -- meanwhile her other daughter has a troubled daughter of her own. There's also another woman named Briana who has infiltrated and created trouble in this family's life because she knows their deep dark secret that they want to keep hidden at all costs (literally hidden by rug over a patch of blood-stained carpet).

It's a dark, brutally unsentimental play about generations of women, dealing with the harm committed against them by men and each other, trapped in a world of near-poverty they can never escape, trying to find some kind of inner peace.

A relatively short play (only 90 minutes with an intermission), the cast featured an excellent cast of British theater actors who you really believe are they people they portray. Dixon and Daughters reminded me of a shorter, British version of August: Osage County and also of the movies of the brilliant director Mike Leigh who tells wonderful stories of working-class lives (Secrets and Lies and Another Year are very similar to this play). 

While not a great play, it was certainly interesting and it's a reminder of who wonderful and powerful the theater can be, especially in London. Despite Brexit and the unending soap-opera of the royal family, a play like this is a reminder that theater is perhaps the UK's greatest cultural export.

By the way, while sitting in a small waiting area for the play to start, a great British actress Harriet Walter strode into the National and I managed to get a quick picture of her. She's been seen recently on Succession, Ted Lasso, and The Crown and has had a long career in British theater and TV.  It was an honor to see a bit of British theater along with one of its greatest thespians.