Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The Farnsworth Invention (stage)


JUST AARON BEING AARON
Words, not images, power The Farnsworth Invention

By Stan Friedman

If one were to psychoanalyze the work of Aaron Sorkin, one might infer a problem with authority figures. Look at Kaffee vs. Jessep (Tom Cruise vs. Jack Nicholson) in "A Few Good Men," Toby vs. President Bartlet in "The West Wing" and Matt vs. Jack Rudolph in "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," and what you'll find in each case is a highly gifted underdog, with a taste for booze, who must confront a powerful, experienced bossman. In Sorkin's gripping new drama, "The Farnsworth Invention," this formula is once again put into action as Philo Farnsworth, a lowly, genius, alcoholic farmer from Utah competes against David Sarnoff, the President of RCA, to invent and patent television.

Sorkin is an emphatic writer and this play is testament to his skills in creating zippy dialog that entertains and educates an audience even if it often sounds more like the playwright himself doing the talking. Farnsworth (Jimmi Simpson) and Sarnoff (Hank Azaria) serve as narrators, speaking directly to the audience and to each other from across the years. This approach deflects some of the sympathy they might otherwise earn and plays havoc with the depth of the characters. Also, Azaria suffers from being Azaria, which is to say that his Simpsons menagerie forever haunts, and here Moe the Bartender's gravelly voice keeps emerging from Sarnoff's otherwise majestic countenance.

But no matter, Sorkin's wordplay, given life by director Des McAnuff, builds waves of sadness and glee by its sheer momentum. As he did with "Jersey Boys," McAnuff takes a minimal, two-tiered set and lets loose upon it a rapid-fire series of vignettes that matches the torque of the playwright's dialog. Boldly, the staging of the first successful broadcast of a televised image is done with the TV facing away from
the audience, the reactions of Farnsworth's assistants providing a vicarious thrill.

Sometimes showing off ("Music is what Mathmatics does on a Saturday night"), sometimes using his familiar ironic understatement ("You're going to want to not screw this up") Sorkin delivers what his established fans and critics have come to expect: a showcase of his own formidable talent.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Cashino

Jack of Hearts, Queen of Clubs

Ca$hino brings down the house

By Stan Friedman
NYPress.com

Look out Kiki & Herb, there’s a new fictional, dysfunctional duo in town. They have their own lounge act and they mean business. The business, of course, that is show.


It’s been a long road for the two dreamers, Pepper Cole and Johnny Niagra, known collectively as Ca$hino. They took their best shot at Vegas, but the rejection and the backstabbing drove them to despair. Pepper hit the sauce and grew despondent, announcing what many a financier has recently proclaimed, “We’re losers and we can’t get a job!” Then inspiration struck.

Returning to their hometown of Los Angeles, they began touring the suburbs in their Ford Taurus, going door to door, performing in living rooms for online gamblers who couldn’t pull themselves away from their virtual slots. By entertaining one lonely housewife at a time, they found their niche and a new confidence. So Johnny packed his keyboard, boxed his “sexy beast” blond wig and flew to New York. Off the bottle but afraid to fly, Pepper followed on a Greyhound bus. Now they’ve taken up shop a block away from the Port Authority, at the Laurie Beechman on Sunday nights in November.


Paying homage to their history of house calls, each show opens with one of four 30-minute videos that chronicle a particularly unfortunate outing or missed opportunity during their time out west. There’s a run-in with a terrifying Liza Minnelli impersonator and a marketing plan that centers on Valpak coupons. Filmed between 2000 and 2004 and filled with celebrity cameos, Left Coast gags and marvelously cruel bouts of failure, the works share the same sensibilities and Schadenfreude satisfactions as Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.


Then Pepper and Johnny hit the stage for an hour of ad-libs, an audience raffle and the most energized and hilarious musical time capsule to be found in the city.


The Ca$hino songbook is composed of both classic Broadway musicals and power-pop ballads from the 1970s and ‘80s; two great sounds that sound great together. The duo’s best offerings not only combine the two genres but also meld their DNA. Yul Brenner metaphorically waltzes with Freddie Mercury in a medley entitled “The Queen & I,” while “Annie” finds the common ground between “A Hard Knock Life” and Annie Lennox’s “Walking on Broken Glass.”


Pepper has the pipes of Patti Lupone, the comic wherewithal of Carol Burnett and the social blindsight of Amy Winehouse. She belts, chicken-dances and oozes insecurity all at once. Meanwhile, Johnny is cool as a cuke behind the piano, keeping Pepper from falling off the deep end while taking suggestions from the audience to create instant compositions, or scat singing what it sounds like when doves cry.


In real life, Pepper is veteran singer-actress Susan Mosher. Having spent time in Vegas and L.A, on stage, in film and on TV (notably, a recurring role on Showtime’s The L Word), Mosher moved to Manhattan to perform on Broadway in Hairspray. She can still be seen there, eight shows a week, until the production closes in January. But in this more intimate, downstairs venue, she not so much lights up the stage with Pepper as she ignites a blazing basement fire that transfixes the crowd. It’s a bravura performance.


Her co-star and pal for over 20 years, John Boswell still calls L.A. home and has a bio as eclectic as his arrangements. He’s written music for General Hospital, served as music director for Judy Collins and has released eight albums of inspirational instrumentals. Tune into the “Soundscapes” cable music channel, and you’re more than likely to hear one of his works. Boswell’s Ca$hino compositions are uniformly clever, endearing if you grew up listening to Heart and Neil Diamond, inanely gratifying if you know your musicals; and at times they’re unexpectedly transcendent. In a mash-up of Bette Midler and “Fiddler on the Roof” (yes, “Midler on the Roof”)—when Pepper launches into “From A Distance,” while striding like Golde being vanquished from the homeland—there is a sudden poignancy. Conversely, when they meld “Dust in the Wind” with the 1967 classic “Windy,” the tune climaxes in such total silliness that a ridiculous and all-encompassing truth cannot help but crack up the audience: “Everyone knows we’re dusty.”

--
Ca$hino
Nov. 23, Laurie Beechman Theatre in the West Bank Café, 407 W. 42nd St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.), 212-695-6909; 9:30, $15/$20.