Maul Girls at the Westin!

Last night I was treated to an amazing performance by the Maul Girls at the Westin Hotel. They are a super fun pop rock band, with great danceable funky songs.

Their gig was full of wonderful energy and the musicianship was excellent. The lead singer was charismatic and kept the dance floor hopping. I stayed for both sets.

Top of the Lake

I forgot to post that over the weekend I watched the BBC miniseries Top of the Lake. This crime drama takes place in a small isolated town in New Zealand, amidst breathtakingly large uninhabited land.

The young female detective gets involved in the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year old girl. In the course of the investigation she interacts and gets involved with a number of strange, creepy, and unsavory characters.

Top of the Lake is dark and moody. Rich with unique performances. The crime investigation was probably the least interesting aspect of the miniseries.

Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra

Last night I saw the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra perform at Avery Fisher Hall.

The program included two Mozart pieces (Overture to Le Nozze di Figaro and Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major) as well as Beethoven's Symphony No. 1. Jeremie Rhorer conducted. The music was thrilling and delightful.

BalletX

Last night I saw BalletX perform at The Joyce. They are a contemporary ballet company that does somewhat cutting edge dances. They performed three pieces, "Still@Life", "Silt", and "The Last Glass".

I enjoyed all the dances, which featured quirky, unusual movements. The second piece was moody and haunting. The last piece, set to the music of the band Beirut, was exuberant and exciting.

Pippin!

Last night I saw Pippin at the Music Box Theater. This show is pure entertainment. A little thin on plot, and not a a lot of narrative complexity. But it is fun, fun, fun.

The costumes, dancing, and acrobatics were all amazing, enthralling.

The songs, all of which I remembered from my youth, were wonderful.

Some standout moments include the 66 year old Andrea Martin as Pippin's grandmother. She sang a wonderful "No Time At All", inviting the audience to sing the chorus with her. But most astounding: she performed an elegant trapeze act! It was wonderful to see and she got a standing ovation.

The actor playing Pippin, Matthew James Thomas, was terrific, as was the dynamic and sexy "Leading Player" Patina Miller. I also very much enjoyed Pippin's father, and Catherine.

Really a wonderfully entertaining evening.

Fairyland

The complex emotional power of Alysia Abbott's memoir, Fairyland, snuck up on me a little over half-way through. It is a moving story from the beginning -- a baby's mother dies in a car accident and the girl, an only child, is raised by her dad. Her father, Steven, is a young gay man, searching to find himself creatively as a poet. He is caught up in the emerging counter-culture of the era -- the political activism, the social idealism, and the drugs. As a parent he is loving and devoted, but his judgment is at times questionable -- leaving a young child alone in the apartment at night, letting her ride the MUNI by herself, etc.

What is fascinating about these early scenes is not only the unconventional childhood, but the glimpse of San Francisco in the 70s and 80s -- Abbot manages to chronicle these decades and the important shifts -- in gay life and politics, in the nation, and in her neighborhood, subtly and simply, from her unusual vantage point as the child of a poet in the emerging scene.

The relationship between Steven and Alysia comes across very powerfully. Their connection to each other, their interdependence is intense and special to their unique bond. Her father left copious letters, journals, poems, essays and publications that inform the memoir, and in the letters particularly we see how important each was to the other. The depth of this connection gains intensity as father begins to die of AIDS, and the very young woman, just entering her twenties, must care for him while beginning her own adult life. I was sobbing through the entire last third of the memoir.

Blue Jasmine

Blue Jasmine is wonderful. Woody Allen's most recent movie is his darkest and most focused. This tight character study stars Kate Blanchett as Jasmine, an excessively wealthy woman whose crooked Madoff-esque husband loses all their money and is imprisoned. She moves to stay with her sister in San Francisco while she tries to get her life in order.

She is emotionally disturbed (talks to herself, pops pills and swigs booze constantly), and there is a long history of animosity between her and her sister, Ginger. The conflict between them as well as between tertiary characters is less superficial than conflict in other Allen movies. It is gripping and tangled conflict that can't be easily resolved. Or easily laughed at.

There were definitely laugh out loud moments in Blue Jasmine, but for the most part this is a serious and sad drama about an isolated, self-deceived woman. Her neurosis and narcissism are less charming than the qualities are in other Woody Allen heroines, and are instead disturbing and sad. This is a haunting movie that I've been thinking about and will continue to think about for quite some time.