Northward
Spring was a little late in the Chequomegon Forest this year. Last weekend, there were still pockets of snow on the ground and the spring ephemerals weren’t at their peak as they were last year at this time. But the forest—pure, wild—doesn’t disappoint, whatever the time of year. (Click on the photo to expand it.)
Rhiannon Giddens
I’ve been following the work of the eclectic Rhiannon Giddens since her time with the Carolina Chocolate Drops (their album Genuine Negro Jig won a Grammy in 2011). Over the years, she has continually surprised her fans. She’s recorded minstrel banjo tunes, hosted an opera podcast, written a ballet score, performed indigenous American music with the multi-national SIlk Road Ensemble, which she directs, and collaborated with the likes of opera soprano Renee Fleming, New Orleans icon Allen Toussaint, and the Kronos Quartet. This expansive and embracing career earned her a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2017.
And now, she has won a Pulitzer Prize. Omar, an opera based on the life of Omar ibn Said, an Islamic scholar who spent most of his life in Ameican slavery, is a collaboration with Michael Abels, best known for his scores to Jordan Peele’s films Get Out and Nope. If you don’t know her music, here are some places to get acquainted.
Giddens, Francesco Turrisi and Martin Hayes perform Paul Simon’s “American Tune.” (2022).
And if your interest is piqued, you can watch the new PBS series, “My Music, with Rhiannon Giddens.”
Stories Left to Tell
Spalding Gray
Looking at the empty set in the Kenilworth 508 theater, you almost expect a ghost to appear. Table, chair, microphone, glass of water, composition book, portable cassette player. It’s been the “setting” of countless performances of Spalding Gray.
But Gray died in 2004. That set—along with dozens of notebooks stacked and shelved behind it—was part of a memorial service of sorts. Stories Left to Tell, created by Gray’s widow, Kathleen Russo and Lucy Sexton, is a whistle-stop tour through Gray’s remarkable life, using his own words drawn from diaries, performances and letters.
The memorial was courtesy of Theatre Gigante, the Milwaukee company lead by Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson, which has championed Gray’s work over the years in letter and spirit. And despite the boldly personal anecdotes and admissions found in these stories, no privacy was violated. Gray treated the stage as his very own public confessional and therapy couch.
Theatre Gigante’s Stories Left to Tell.
The piece unfolds in mostly chronological order, from Gray’s first memories of childhood to his harrowing final years, when he was in and out of hospitals due to an auto accident. The five “roles” are geared toward different aspects of his life: Love (Kralj), Journals (Shawn Smith), Adventure (Anderson), Family (David Flores), and Career (Jane Kaczmarek). The stories range from the hilariously absurd to the shockingly baudy to the delicately moving. One of Gray’s “motifs” in his monologues was the search for the Perfect Moment. He looked for it in art, personal revelation, outrageous adventures, but it seems—judging from this survey of his life—that he ultimately found it while looking into his infant child’s eyes.
Rest in Peace, Spalding.
Living
It's an ambitious title for a movie, right? Isn't “living,” essentially, what all stories are about? But like Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (To Live, 1952), on which it is based, this movie digs deep. Screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro hews closely to Kurosawa’s original story, but his work demonstrates how powerfully it speaks to us across decades and different cultures.
Bill Nighy in Living.
Mr. Williams (Nighy), a staid and somber lifelong government bureaucrat , receives a death sentence from his doctor and tries to find a meaningful way to spend his last six months (in the stiff formality of this world, everyone is either a “Mr.” a “Miss” or a Mrs.”). He travels to the seaside resort, Brighton, where he finds a sympathetic bohemian writer who takes him on a drunken tour through the local night life; he spends time with a young woman--a former coworker--who becomes an ersatz daughter for a few glorious days. He finally finds purpose and carpe diem in a project—converting a neglected, junk-filled courtyard into a playground—that his office has rejected several times.
Director Oliver Hermanus assembles a crowd of somber, bowler-hatted Brits to populate the Kafkaesque government agency where Mr. Williams works (he recreates the look of Kurosawa's original, where stacks of papers tower around the workers at their desks.) But the glorious core of Living is Bill Nighy, who finds a deep spring of emotion in the smallest gestures. In Ikiru, the lead was played by Takashi Shimura, fleshy and childlike in his somberness. Nighy, by contrast, is stony and practically skeletal (his sweet-natured co-worker has nicknamed him "The Zombie"). But his reserve makes the flashes of satisfaction and contentment burst through the mood like a flash of sunshine.
Hermanus isn’t fond of fancy director moves. He prefers to let his actors make the most of Ishiguro’s delicate and warm screenplay. The final scenes risk sentimentality in a big way, but Nighy and Ishiguro—with their understated performance and writing—have earned the right to tug at heartstrings. Contra Gershwin’s Summertime, the living here is not easy. But finding a glimmer of sunlight in a gray world is a noble thing indeed.
A Month of Shorts
Alice Munro
National Poetry Month has come and gone, but there is yet another calendar-related reason to curl up in a comfy chair with a book. May is National Short Story Month, and our friends at Literary Hub, the source of all things literature, have helped navigate the month by picking one great story for each day. So far, the list has included the likes of Stuart Dybek, Diane Cook, Wells Tower, and Edward P. Jones. It’s not too late to catch up. Start with the suggestion for May first, the unchallenged genius of the form, Alice Munro, then work your way through the list day by day.
Have a good week.