People Before Profit blog

Films critique modern warfare—abroad and in U.S. cities

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 13:15:00 +0000

Military drones are a popular subject in films nowadays, which is not surprising since more and more innocent people are dying from them. The deadly new weapon of choice deceptively frees the gunner from any direct participation, risk, or moral obligation. You can be sitting in a small bunker in Las Vegas while people around the world in Afghanistan get mowed down like targets in a video game. And you can go home every day and feel like you're leading a normal life protecting our citizens from terrorism.

National Bird is a haunting character-based study of three former drone employees turned whistleblowers. Heather, Daniel and Lisa are paying a heavy price for being part of the controversial American drone program that appears to be killing as many innocent victims as 'legitimate' targets.

Lisa was a systems analyst who couldn't take any more of the callousness and moral emptiness of some of her fellow employees, and became the first official case of PTSD in drone warfare. Daniel is being indicted under the Espionage Act for exposing the controversial elements of the program, and could face serious prison time even though he's given out no classified information.

Heather is planning her second trip to Afghanistan in an attempt to humanize her former targets. She was invited by an Afghan neighbor to join her on a trip to her home country to deliver loads of seeds to families of victims of war. Unwilling and unable to actually identify herself to the people as one of those invisible soldiers who push buttons across the world and kill their family members, Heather remained in the background observing the tragedies her actions have created. The film actually kicks into high gear when these farmers who have traveled for almost three days to attend a conference on drone warfare, also come to participate in a program to receive prosthetic limbs and learn how to live the rest of their lives handicapped. Over 100,000 people have been killed in the program that involved Heather.

This is director Sonia Kennebeck's first feature documentary and should be praised for its compassionate and penetrating human interviews with the Afghan people and the three whistleblowers and their families. The film is more cinematic than most 'talking head' docs, but then you can't go wrong with heavyweight filmmakers like Errol Morris and Wim Wenders as producers. Insolf Rudolph offers an emotional and unusual sound score enhanced by a song written by Soul for the closing credits.

Attorney Jesselyn Radack was also featured in last years Silenced doc, another important film bringing to light those daring souls willing to risk their families and careers to expose the wrongdoings of our government. Radack is a prominent lawyer defending committed whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden and the Daniel of this film, who may soon be arrested for espionage. In her cases she points out the failure of the drone program to distinguish civilians from militants. Since children and women can also carry weapons, it's hard to identify from the sky the intent of people on the ground. Drones are a terrifying, often indiscriminate threat from the sky. Whistleblower Heather pleads at one point: "Afghans are humans, too. Everyone's not a freakin' terrorist."

War and violence take on new and frightening forms, especially when it relates to our own country. Do Not Resist, which won the Tribeca Film Festival Award for Best Documentary Feature, tells about the war that's coming to America, ominously visualized by the militarization of our police forces. In the guise of preparing our country for terrorist attacks, it's not coincidental that military equipment is now being used against protesters and our own civilians. Towns are buying surplus war tanks and heavy military gear, often to be used by SWAT teams on raids against such minimal crimes as pot smoking.

Although the film crew had been stationed in the city months before the fatal shootings, the film starts with the historical confrontation in Ferguson, showing the looming images of military vehicles and armor amassing in the night streets of a mid-American town. First time director Craig Atkinson, who was cameraman on Detropia, displays rare access to private institutions and individuals. Candid interviews with attendees of the Police Chief Convention in Florida, reveals the common held belief that increasing surveillance cameras is justified, by characterizing victims as either "Darth Vaders or Luke Skywalkers," rationalizing that If they arrest a Luke - its just collateral damage. Atkinson adds "there's also a presumption of guilt along with surveillance cameras."

The director also gains a privileged seat in a SWAT van as they make 'no-call' drug raids throughout Ferguson. In one case, after busting windows and tearing a house apart, frightening all the family members and arresting a young man, they eventually find a few flakes of marijuana in the bottom of a school bag. The new and frightening arrest methods across the country, especially in communities of color, show the encroaching militarization of America. MRAP trucks are being sold to small cities where no cases of violence even exist!

Atkinson explains the government appears to be transitioning from the failed War on Drugs to the also most likely failed War on Terror, both sharing an amorphous undefinable target. In one scene a government hearing takes place where the Secretary of Defense explains that police departments are being offered used and outmoded war gear, but then is shown that some items on the list are still being used by the military. And why would cities want bayonets?

One segment of the film covers a study that sets up different categories of risk for becoming a criminal - for example, in the Black community a woman has a 50% chance of raising a child who will end up in prison, prompting one woman officer to say "it's good to catch criminals before they do it" - sort of like the 'preemptive war' concept.

The film leaves the viewer with a negative feeling that our country is going in the wrong direction. Militarizing the police force is creating war in our country. Keep pissing innocent people off and they will have no other choice but to defend themselves. Instead of spending money on prevention and health our country often chooses to depend on weapons and punishment. This powerful examination and indictment of the growing militarization of our police force is appropriately dedicated to two ex-prisoners, Dwight Hicks and Herbert Murray, who served many years in solitary confinement for crimes they didn't commit.

Spies R Us: Keeping it in the family on “The Americans”

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:47:00 +0000

Last week, viewers of The Americans spent some uncomfortable time in Elizabeth Jennings' shoes as she dealt with having to betray that most unicorn of creatures in her life-an actual friend.

Elizabeth (Keri Russell) works as a Soviet illegal, buried deep in American society as she carries out missions for the KGB. Young-Hee was supposed to be nothing more than the wife of a scientist Elizabeth's bosses saw as a way into a top-secret bioweapons lab. A means to an end whose warmth and good humor salved Elizabeth's wounded spirits.

Now, having vanished mysteriously, as far as Young-Hee knows, Elizabeth must move on with her life, both on a professional and personal level. Part of that process involves helping her teenaged daughter, Paige (Holly Taylor) come to grips with the knowledge that her parents are secret agents.

She hasn't wanted her daughter to know everything about spydom-certainly not about the violence and close calls. As dad Philip (Matthew Rhys) says at one point in the episode, "we didn't want you to worry."

But there's plenty to worry about one night in a rough neighborhood when Elizabeth battles two muggers (and would-be rapists) who make a grab for Paige. Seconds later, one mugger lies dead, a knife stuck in his neck, and the other has fled.

Another casualty of the night is Paige's illusion her parents' work is essentially peaceful. That can't be the case, not if Mom is a Kill Bill-style badass clearly experienced in self-defense.

When Paige and Elizabeth arrive home, even computer-besotted Henry notices how upset his sister is, but he's held off with a non-explanation that turns murder into just an attempted mugging thwarted by yelling.

Henry is beginning to suspect the rest of his family is keeping secrets from him. Given how much he's poked around in FBI agent Stan Beeman's house, Henry is likely to start spying on his own family any time now.

But for the moment, our focus is on Paige, who's in her room gulping down a glass of water and quietly freaking out. She wonders why they can't call the police.

Elizabeth reminds Paige that her parents are illegal aliens, saying, "We can't do that, honey. We can't draw any attention to ourselves."

When Philip is called away on business, Paige begins processing the experience. "It was so fast, I didn't know what was happening. I was so scared...you were calm. How could you be calm? You killed someone."

Elizabeth isn't deflecting or lying, nor applying her usual level of charm to the target. This is her daughter, old enough to know the truth.

"I couldn't let him hurt you. It happened so fast."

"Have you done that before?" Paige asks.

Elizabeth's eyes glisten with tears she's trying to contain. "To protect myself, yeah."

"How many times?"

"I don't know."

While Paige and Elizabeth continue their unusual mother-daughter talk, Philip goes to a park to meet up with William, an acerbic long-undercover Soviet agent who works as a bioweapons lab scientist.

It turns out that Philip and Elizabeth's joint project to learn the access code to the deadliest bioweapons research floor turned out to be successful.

He tells William (Dylan Baker) the code, but the scientist is reluctant to make use of it. The current pathogen Americans are working on is a modified version of Lassa fever.

Says William, "It's a very undignified way to go. You basically dissolve inside, then squirt yourself out your anus in liquid form. Whoosh, then a trickle."

He doesn't want to obtain a sample of it, and rejects Philip's suggestion that he's motivated by fear. "It's not that. I've been doing things I'm scared of for years. This is one of the deadliest pathogens on the planet."

And so Philip must report back to Gabriel, their handler, that the key figure in their mission is balking.

Meanwhile, at the Soviet embassy, analyst Oleg has an unsettling conversation with his lover and fellow KGBer Tatiana. She's been working on the operation to obtain samples of American bioweapons. Mission security dictates she doesn't share details with Oleg, but, flush with her promotion to Rezident (chief KGB officer) in Kenya, she lets slip the telling detail, "As long as I don't kill half the Eastern seaboard in the next week or two, I'll be happy."

Oleg trained in ultimate Soviet science geekdom. He knows his country is chock-ablock with brilliant scientists, but, due to defacto Western/American blockades, not flush with proper safeguards and equipment when dealing with deadly pathogens.

Tatiana basically has told him their compatriots are dealing with the worst possible counters to American hegemony. Bugs versus bombs. What could go wrong? Pretty much everything.

Tatiana does offer Oleg a powerful position at her new posting. He's politely interested, yet that remark about the Eastern seaboard rubs him raw. He has a lot to think about, but what can he do to stop an operation when he knows so little?

Back at the Jennings home, Philip and Elizabeth are processing the night's events. He's frequently troubled by the moral complexities of their work. This one, though, is simple enough: his wife rescued their daughter from harm.

For her part, Elizabeth marvels over something that happened before the attempted mugging. She shares the conversation she had with Paige. FBI neighbor Stan's son, Matthew, told Paige about his father's dinner with Martha's father. (Martha being the FBI informant and quasi-wife of Matthew who had to be expressed out of the country by the KGB when discovered.)

"Paige is reporting this to me," Elizabeth says. Their daughter is behaving like a spy in training. On her own volition, without coercion. Does this mean Paige is going willingly into the family business?

To underscore the ongoing dangers of the Jenningses' occupation, we next visit the FBI's counter-intelligence division, where Beeman (Noah Emmerich) and his partner, Dennis Aderholt (Brandon Dirden), suspect the mobile mail robot of playing a role in recent security breaches.

Silently, a computer tech finds a wire device in the robot. He reassembles the robot, wire included, then they confer with Wolfe, the division boss.

Wolfe is a bleak soul. "I don't give a shit who's doing it. We'll just do the usual. Flip him, have him do his drop, pick up some idiot from the Soviet embassy with diplomatic immunity," he says, adding that "in the end nothing changes."

Semi-seriously, Aderholt muses, "Maybe we can shoot him."

After setting up a security camera, the agents catch a female janitor in the act of switching out the wire. As Beeman puts it, "She met a guy at a Roy Rogers in Franconia, thinks he's part of the mob, like we're about to sting one of their gambling operations. Paid her $500 a week to change out the recorder."

A certain secret enemy of the American state doesn't have mail robots on the brain. Elizabeth is sitting with her daughter, continuing the new policy of truthfulness on a no-school day.

Paige sips her cocoa and questions her mother. "Did you know it'd be dangerous when you joined?"

"I wanted to serve my country," Elizabeth begins, but Paige is tired of protective half-answers. She wants all of it, and all of it her mother tries to deliver.

"I grew up in Smolensk," Elizabeth says. Her hometown was almost totally destroyed during World War II. "I was only two when it ended. Growing up there, it was...everything around me was destroyed, and the people who survived, without food, freezing, they all worked together and fought back. I guess I always wanted to be like that, no matter what. To fight back. Dangerous didn't matter."

Paige takes this in. The mother she's loved all these years has a past, after all. A history of toughness, reaching for survival at all cost, combined with a powerful love of country. Her people lost almost everything to foreign invaders.

Elizabeth continues. "By the time I left, they'd rebuilt so much of it, I can't imagine what it looks like now. I wish I could take you there, could show you where I grew up."

Driblets of details. Paige is learning more about her heritage. She's not all-in, not by a long shot, but she's contributing to the family business, despite knowing it involves a deadly butt-kicking element.

Back at the Soviet embassy, Oleg is studying photographs of U.S. rocket designs for NASA's shuttles. He's trying to figure out whether the U.S. military has plans for it. We viewers know the space shuttle turned out to have lethal design errors along the way. And yes, there was a military aspect to some shuttle missions.

Oleg believes that the Soviets' relative lack in technology makes them potentially poor stewards of bioweaponry. He may not know about U.S. incidents with nuclear and bioweapons, or how greater technology doesn't automatically mean better decision-making, given U.S. use of napalm and Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, for instance, and more recently, use of drone attacks against partly civilian targets.

Oleg is hostage to what he knows at that moment, and to the grief he's experienced since the combat death of his brother in Aghanistan, and the execution of his traitorous lover, Nina.

That's why he sets up a secret meeting with his frenemy, Beeman. Oleg tells him, "We have the best scientists in the world, but not much money. It's not a good combination. I get so worried."

In broad strokes, Oleg lays out that the KGB has an agent in place at a military bioweapons lab. He says nothing more, but that's plenty actionable for the FBI.

In his desire to save lives, Oleg is sympathetic, yet we know his good intentions could put other lives in jeopardy, and once the FBI pulls the string, who knows what else may unravel.

As for Paige's earlier reporting about Martha's bereaved father-via Stan's son-Philip has a response. He's lined up Gabriel to use a public phone to call Martha's parents. As they listen, Gabriel tells them, "She's being taken care of by people who respect her very much. She'll always be taken care of. She wants you to know that she loves you and she thinks about you. We'll be in touch with you when we can."

Another grieving parent is contacted in the next scene, for an agonized Oleg decides to call his mother. She's still a wreck over her younger son's death.

"You gave me such a start," she says. "I thought you were Yevgeny. It's strange, but I think I see him on the street sometimes."

"I see him, too."

"Your little brother is in America." A mournful laugh shared. She asks when Oleg will come home, which he tries to deflect. He's trembling when he gets off the phone.

Time for Gabriel's heart-to-heart with William, the undercover scientist. William shares his misgivings, then Gabriel responds, "It is hard to believe in things that kill people. You haven't seen the people you're defending for far too long. I promise you, what you're doing matters. You do this one last thing and when you go home all your loved ones and all our people will be safer because of it."

William leaves, his mood lightened by a certain belief he is reaching the finish line but elsewhere the FBI is plowing through employee records and getting closer to finding out William isn't who he says he is.

Paige at least has legitimate American citizenship, yet that won't insulate her during what more and more is looking like a spy internship. When Matthew gives her a ride back to their neighborhood after school, she continue to carefully question him about his father.

She learns that the elder Beeman hasn't been home in two days because of work. Then comes a different kind of exploration, when the two of them kiss. It's more experimental than passionate, then afterward, Paige says briskly, "Okay, I should get home."

She reports to her parents about Beeman being gone for two days. "Is that important?"

Elizabeth, concerned about more than espionage, asks her daughter about Matthew.

"Oh my god, I'm not dating him," Paige says in pure teenager mode.

"You have to be careful," Philip responds. "Don't get me wrong, you can have friends, we want you to have friends...You want to be Matthew's friend, be Matthew's friend. You don't have to do anything because of us."

When Paige cites her having to report on Pastor Tim and Alice, her parents point out that was due to Paige blabbing her parents' secret to the minister.

Paige isn't done. "You wanted me to be close to them, that I had to do that no matter how shitty I felt about being around them...You always say we'll get through this but you never say how."

Then Philip takes a call. Paige senses the message has to do with her parents' real work.

When he gets off the phone, Paige points out, "You killed a man in front of me, and you said you wouldn't lie to me anymore. Do you trust me or not?"

Philip and Elizabeth look at each other and come to the same decision. "I'm going to meet with a man who's going to hand something over to me," he says.

Elizabeth continues. "It's part of a weapon our military will use if our country is ever attacked."

"Great," Paige says. There's some sarcasm in her voice, but also the recognition that yes, she just got what she wanted. Now what?

The season finale likely will conclude the bioweapons arc for this season, but the family's journey is scheduled to last two more years, as FMX has signed a deal with the show's creators. Given how the real-life Soviet Union was damaged irreparably in the late '80s, one wonders how the show will end their story.

“Shadow World” exposes mega-industry of global weapon sales

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 11:27:00 +0000

A new film about the world arms trade merges two artistic styles and creates a political cinematic masterpiece. Shadow World is inspired by a book written by a former ANC member of Parliament and South African author Andrew Feinstein. His earlier provocative study, After the Party, is an analysis of the struggles and corruption within the post-Mandela ANC and considered one of the most important recent books from South Africa. Now he continues his probing into another little known world - the global arms trade.

In order to bring this timely book to a wider market, the talents of an experimental Belgian filmmaker by the name of Johan Grimonprez were enlisted. He is known for his two previous acclaimed cinematic exercises -Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, about airplane hijackings, and Double Take which is a clever study of Alfred Hitchcock and the Cold War period. Feinstein noted "we didn't want a conventional film, but something inspired by the book rather than based on it. We wanted a director who would understand the systemic nature of the trade. Johan became obsessed by it and now probably knows more about it than I do. Now it enables us to speak to a far wider range of audience by going to a non-mainstream director. The result is beautiful and important."

The book is a shocking exposé based on 10 years of research and covers the entire span of time since global arms trading began. Obviously only part of the book could be used for the film as Grimonprez stated his biggest challenge was "converting a large book into a cinematic treatment... It's a subject that wants to remain in the shadows." Facts revealed in the film are devastating while presented in a creative artistic style. This tension between art vs politics was addressed by the director in the Q&A, explaining, "both are very necessary, because without the poetry and emotions, how far do you get? Because that is why we do it. It's crucial, and also a challenge, to tell this story in an artful way so you feel and get moved by it."

The powerful narration was supplied by famed Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano who passed away during the making of the film. He reads his poetry from the heart which adds a profound meaning to the beautiful production which ironically is about one of the most ugly subjects in the world.

When asked what change can this film make, the director mused, "there are two sisters, anger and courage." People will watch this and know the system is broken. "Like the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al Zaidi who threw his shoes in the direction of Pres. Bush, Jr's head during a press conference, he explains in the film that it was not just - a shoe, but this shoe had a mouth. It created a voice, and this is what the film hopefully does, give a voice to the anger and the hope."

Feinstein adds, "Whether you drank the Kool Aid or not, the system is broken. Many problems are in the richest country in the world. Ideally the solution is we need systemic change, the only real change. But there are motions than create incremental change. Today there are bombings in Yemen with weapons made in the US. Why aren't we out in the street protesting this?"

Bitter Lake, a stunning film by British documentarist, Adam Curtis, addresses some of the similar subjects as Shadow World, especially the Saudi connection. Referring to one of the main themes in both films, director Grimonprez says, "one of our villains is Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the US, which we trace from the 80s up to today and how he was implicated in corruption schemes within the global arms trade involving Saudi Arabia but also Great Britain, and how this ultimately also affects foreign policy. The tragic situation in Yemen today is very much a result of this weapons trade." He adds, "of course Shadow World portrays not only the Saudi situation, but how the corruption in the arms trade is pervasive worldwide, and how, eg Great Britain, Israel, South Africa, the Gulf Cooperation Council Nations, etc. are all very much implicated as well."

It's not surprising that Danny Glover, who is known for his strong support of films about social justice, is the executive producer on the film which will be released by ITVS in the fall. Asked what can we do to impact this horrific reality, the writer Feinstein offered, "Many things. Don't pay taxes to fund Lockheed Martin. Take a stand as active citizens. Don't vote for candidates who want this to continue. As I stand here the former Senator of New York has received more money from the military industrial complex than any other candidate in all the parties. Get into existing campaigns to fight this."

Check out this profoundly effective and haunting work of art about one of the most important and secret subjects in international relations. And you can learn more about the film at www.ShadowWorldfilm.com

Photo: Official website

“The Fits”: An adolescent girl at the edge of transformation

Fri, 03 Jun 2016 11:14:00 +0000

It feels like a bit of a spoiler to quote director Anna Rose Holmer from a statement issued to the press weeks before the release of her new film, but nevertheless:

"At its heart, The Fits is a meditation on movement as seen from the perspective of adolescent girls. The film explores the particularly young female phenomenon of mass hysteria, also known as mass psychogenic illness. The rapid spread of symptoms affects members of a cohesive group whereby physical ills have no corresponding organic cause. The Fits juxtaposes the precise, powerful, and intentional movements of drill with subconscious, spontaneous, and uncontrolled movements of collective hysterics."

I had thought, watching the film, that the "diagnosis" of mass psychology would be more left to the viewer's discretionary interpretation: It certainly crossed my mind as the incidence of hysterical events multiplied, and as the "drinking water" explanation was ruled out. But there it is, out front, and even shouted in the very title. I wonder if that detracted from the more important coming-of-age story in which "the fits" are no more a part, finally, than young girls' oft-noted reactions at Frank Sinatra or Beatles concerts - not the defining character of their identity. (By contrast, there are other variations on "fits" that have much greater social valence, such as the trances, possessions, seizures and talking in tongues that sometimes occur in religious ecstasy.)

The adolescent girls who occupy the center of this film are members of a competition dance ensemble at a gymnasium at the Lincoln Community Center in Cincinnati's West End, where the boys in their peer group box and participate in other sports. Toni, played by the naturally talented and expressive Royalty Hightower, is only 11 years old, but by the end of these quirky 72 minutes, she has grown years in stature as the newest recruit to the Lionesses Dance Team, thoroughly prepped with all her moves down solid, costumed to thrill, and ready for the big parade. Ms. Hightower will certainly be heard from again.

It's her older brother, beginning the film as her boxing coach, who encourages her, saying, "The only way you can lose a fight is if you don't get in the ring."

The Fits is a community-based experiment in film, with real kids from the neighborhood as actors. It seems like one hip-hop step away from a documentary, leaning strongly toward the cinema verité aesthetic. Much of the dialogue is recorded as though from across the echoey gym, and spoken not like lines rehearsed from a script but as everyday dialogue patched together from hours of filming to create a through-line.

The gritty Cincinnati urban environment is presented as though it's going to be a significant player. Much use is made of a depressing highway overpass, on which athletes build up their quads running up stairs and dancers strut their energetic routines. Grim housing developments loom in the middle distance, but I did not notice any scenes set inside the homes of the characters. We know that the dance group was initially established in order to give young kids a healthy alternative to the crime and grime of their growing-up years, but we don't see much of what's going on in the larger world around them. We neither see them at school nor even meet their parents.

Toni spends a lot of her time observing the behavior of the older girls at the center through windows and doorways and studying her own features in mirrors and reflections - this may be typical of girls that age. But in such a short film, that kind of time-consuming introspection seemed to take away from our wider-angle view of her environment. I felt we could have been offered more than the few milestones of maturation, like "the fits," that Toni negotiates in her individual way.

If Toni is a quiet, almost affect-less girl trying to find her confident self in the world, her friend Beezy (Alexis Neblett) is effervescent and joyful, a sweet counterpart to Toni. One gets the impression these two will remain important pillars for one another as life unspools.

"Making a micro-budget film on an accelerated timeline has been a gift to me as a first-time director," Holmer says. "The objective of the Biennale [Cinema College] initiative was clear: Pitch a film that could be developed, written, produced, edited, and premiered in under a year...and with a budget of only 150,000 euros (roughly $163,000). From the moment of conception, we designed The Fits around those constraints."

As a dance-centered film, The Fits ends up being as much anthropological as dramatic. In fact, Holmer's two key collaborators - Lisa Kjerulff, producer and co-writer, and Saela Davis, editor and co-writer - both come from a background in documentary film. The choreography by Mariah and Chariah Jones is exciting (maybe a few more punching gestures than necessary) and the cinematography by Paul Yee is sensitive. I came away from it underwhelmed by the thin story for a narrative, even as I understand the limits under which Holmer was working. Still, my personal reaction aside, I hope that this film finds its audience.

The Fits received its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival 2015, and its North American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2016. It opens on June 3 in New York and June 10 in Los Angeles.

Photo: Royalty Hightower in "The Fits."

“Gruesome Playground Injuries”: Wounds, blood, and scars on theatrical display

Thu, 02 Jun 2016 09:24:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - Gruesome Playground Injuries (GPI) traces the relationship between eight-year-old schoolmates throughout the course of the next thirty years, but in zigzagging time frames, its eight scenes showing them at the following ages: 8, 23, 13, 28, 18, 33, 23, 38. Along the way they experience the usual stages of personal development - first kisses, loss of virginity, early loves, competitive vomiting, attempts at holding down a job, drugs, hospitalization, parents' funerals.

The play proceeds without intermission, with pauses in between scenes only long enough to accommodate the actors changing clothes and makeup. At each age, Doug suffers some horrible calamity - his mother claims he's "accident prone" - that begs for Kayleen's attention and pity. She too has much in her life that she literally cannot stomach. At one point (scene 6, age 33), they meet in rehab.

Presented as a dark comedy, GPI pulls the scabs off all the ways we hurt ourselves and then seek relief from pain - often by inflicting more damage. We see two emotionally troubled characters who are simultaneously drawn to one another and also repelled. Doug seemingly comes from a loving, balanced family, Kayleen not so much: Who can say why some people are cursed with such bad psychological luck?

The author is 41 year-old Rajiv Joseph, American born of an immigrant father from India, which no doubt accounts for the Indian or Middle Eastern setting for several of his works, though not this one. He is best known for his plays Animals Out of Paper, The North Pool, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (a Pulitzer Prize finalist which starred Robin Williams in its New York production), and Guards at the Taj. His libretto for the opera Shalimar the Clown by composer Jack Perla, based on the novel by Salman Rushdie, debuts on the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis stage on June 11th.

I have only seen Guards at the Taj, in a stunningly effective - and far more gruesome - production at the Geffen Theatre in Los Angeles. That work is premised on the conceit that the raja who commissioned the Taj Mahal ordered the hands cut off from all the workmen who built it, so that there would never be another creation of such beauty in the world. The play positively swims in bloody limbs, which does take some time getting comfortable with, but the reward is Joseph's profound contemplation of themes of duty and obeisance, order and freedom, art and the price we pay for it, with ample dollops of gallows humor thrown in as leavening.

GPI was written in 2009 and soon came to the attention of Sara Rae Foster, who describes it as "a wildly popular play" that "has stood the test of time" - perhaps a little hyperbolic for a work not yet a decade old. It seems to have been principally her project to perform in this work and get it staged. The two-hander stars Ms. Foster as Kayleen and Jeff Ward as Doug. Foster has appeared on Showtime's "Masters of Sex" and TNT's "Mob City." Ward recently played Charles Manson in the original Lifetime movie "Manson's Lost Girls."

Director John Hindman introduces GPI talking about the walls that we build, the defenses we erect, and how, just maybe, love and time help to bring them down - "in the case of this play, maybe as long as thirty years."

Running about an hour and a half, GPI is a tour de force for the two actors who must stumble through just about every life-sucking experience known to the modern world. They do so with admirable versatility and range.

The simple but highly utilitarian stage design is by J R Bruce. Little tables and benches and flats serve to hold the various costumes and props the actors will use over the course of their eight scenes. Projections show grainy clips of children and young people at happier times and introduce the next time frame.

The tagline to the play - "It hurts because it matters" - is vague. Yes, the hurt matters to Kayleen and Doug, and that's the content and essence of the work. But does it matter to their families? Not much evidence of that. Their friends? We don't even know if they have any. To us? After eight scenes of nervous, shuddering laughter at other people's angst, I couldn't help wishing for some larger meaning, a broader social relevance, some door leading into the world out there. It's a hothouse romance, or what the French call a "folie à deux" - a madness for two - that we don't easily relate to from the perspective of our (presumably) more stable lives.

And yet there are indications of caring, healing and love between these two, slender reeds on which to hang our hopes for these characters.

Rajiv Joseph is unquestionably one of the currently most admired and produced playwrights in America, an artist I intend to follow more closely. In his creative arc GPI may not rank as his most significant achievement, but it's extremely well done and holds a viewer's interest.

Gruesome Playground Injuries plays through June 26 on Fridays & Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 3 pm at the Hudson Backstage, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles 90038. Tickets may be obtained at www.plays411.com/playground or (323) 960-7773.

Photo: Sara Rae Foster and Jeff Ward / Ed Krieger

“The Americans”: Christ and the FBI come to dinner

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 15:20:00 +0000

Loyalty is a quality much prized by Elizabeth Jennings. Her core identity of being a Soviet citizen informs her decision making and this relentless dedication is her core strength as a person.

Yet, while she has repeatedly lied and upon occasion killed during her service as a secret agent, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) is not without conscience. Her lingering PTSD from various missions are echoed in the experiences of today's real-life American service members, where the moral lines are sketched in gray.

Instead of deploying a remote controlled drone that drops bombs on civilians and combatants alike, Elizabeth employs her professional charm and physical prowess at close range.

This makes her betrayal of Young-Hee all the more tragic, for she knows her targets all too well to be able to easily excuse her actions.

For several months she performed her mission of befriending Young Hee with the ultimate goal of using the woman's husband, Don, to gain access codes to a highly secure U.S. military bioweapons lab. Deadly pathogens are being manufactured at that lab, and she knows her countrymen are the intended targets should war break out between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

However, when the time comes to finish her part of the mission, Elizabeth initially balks. She had asked her Soviet handler, Gabriel (Frank Langella), to ask the Centre for some kind of workaround, but in a meet-up, she learns her request was turned down.

The order softened not one whit by Gabriel's offer of a pierogi, Elizabeth carries out the next phase.

Waiting for a moment when Young Hee is out shopping, Elizabeth as "Patty" delivers a bombshell on Don (Rob Yang): she's supposedly pregnant from a previous staged drugged-out sexcapade with him.

Faced with the results of his apparent actions, he punts, understandably. "You cannot have this baby," he stammers.

"So you want me to get rid of it?" Patty says with feigned outrage.

"It's the only way." This being the decade after the Roe v. Wade decision (and the decade before abortion laws began tightening once more), he knows she'll have access to that procedure.

"I don't want your money. I'll take care of it myself." Off she goes in high dudgeon, the distress not altogether contrived.

When back home, husband Philip (Matthew Rhys) asks how the revelation went. She says, exhausted, "I don't know. It's yours now."

Days later, his part of the mission unfurls, for, in disguise as a blue-collar blond, he stomps into Don's place of work with Gabriel in the roles of Patty's brother and father, respectively. A middle-aged female Soviet operative plays Patty's stepmother.

The trio is outraged over Patty's suicide and have come to extract money from Don for the body's transport back to the West Coast.

They look authentic, as well they should for such a sensitive assignment at a military bioweapons lab. Gabriel, who is playing up his frailty, cries out, "You killed my beautiful daughter."

A rattled Don feels obliged to leave Patty's parents in his office while he goes with the brother to a bank to obtain the money demanded.

Left to their own devices, Gabriel and the female operative go to work. She's the computer specialist mentioned in the last episode, brought in to copy files off Don's computer as Gabriel carefully looks for the security codes.

After all that, did the plan work? The news isn't encouraging when Philip talks to Elizabeth. "We didn't find the Level 4 codes but we copied all the discs, so maybe it'll come up," he says.

"Will he tell Young Hee?" Elizabeth asks. Her complete disinterest in the mission to uncover military secrets couldn't be more evident. How is her friend holding up?

Philip equivocates, but then we hear Young-Hee's telephone recording to Patty, in which she begs her friend to call her back. Something is wrong with Don, Young-Hee says tearfully.

Elizabeth, knowing she has destroyed her friend and engineered her own supposed demise, can only listen. Listen and grieve.

This Elizabeth-centric episode also explores her roles as wife and mother, particularly in interactions with Pastor Tim.

The man has returned from his mission trip to Ethiopia. While there, he went missing for a time, which unhinged his wife, Alice, so much she accused Philip and Elizabeth of engineering his kidnapping.

He stops by the Jennings home to offer an apology for his wife's threats. "I don't feel right about what happened. You felt frightened. I got lost due to my own stupidity. I felt terrified, what with my baby about to be born...I thought about you two and Paige, you being parents...anyway, I'm sorry for what happened."

Elizabeth graciously accepts and then extends the pastoral couple an invitation to dinner.

On a later occasion, when she drops by the church to pick up Paige from choir practice, she pokes her head in the pastor's door for a minor heart-to-heart.

"Philip and I have been under a lot of pressure," she confesses, and for once telling the absolute truth to him. "It's very hard. I think when Alice accused us of your disappearance-it's not her fault, but-I really felt like I was coming apart."

Pastor Tim is empathetic.

Another major character, FBI agent Stan Beeman, is facing his own crisis of faith, which he shares with Soviet embassy official Oleg in one of their secret meet-ups at the shipyard.

He tells Oleg that his bosses want Stan to blackmail his frenemy, but Stan is reluctant to go that direction. He rambles on about the violent death of his partner, Amador, as well as the execution of Nina, the woman both Stan and Oleg loved.

For the first time, Stan comes close to addressing his murder of a young KGB agent erroneously believed to have been complicit in Amador's death.

"I did something terrible, and I haven't felt the same since then," Stan says. He gives no further details than that, for this is more a goodbye moment than a confessional.

He tells Oleg that this is their final visit with each other, for "I don't want to cause anyone else's death."

Newly divorced and lonesome, he's prone to visiting his neighbors, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, on the slightest pretext. This time, he lands a just-to-be-polite dinner invitation, but this is a loaded minefield, as the hosts well know.

Stan doesn't know his friends are Soviet agents, but Pastor Alice and Tim do. Not something one brings up over pot roast and polite conversation, but son Henry Jennings enthusiastically brings up Stan's FBI occupation.

This brings the pastoral couple up short. Dinner for seven, plus the Cold War? The table is definitely crowded.

Pastor Tim is put off by Stan's off-hand declarations about divorce, while Stan gives Pastor Tim the side-eye about the latter's belief in social justice.

All parties survive the meal, so count that as a minor victory.

Later, when they're alone together, Pastor Tim is dubious about the opposing sides in the Cold War somehow occupying neighboring suburban homes.

Elizabeth points out that her family lived in their house "a long time" before the Beemans moved in across the street.

She assays a smooth segue. "We didn't choose each other, did we?" She then confesses that she'd been afraid she'd lose her daughter to the minister's faith, then thanks him for his guidance of Paige.

There's some more spiritual give-and-take, as Elizabeth continues to sound like half-spiritual seeker and half-asset manager.

How real is her interest? She gives us more reason to wonder in the final encounter in the episode between her and the minister. She's picking up Paige at a charity event being run by the church in a rough neighborhood.

Once again, Elizabeth approaches him. "What do you do if you have something on your mind you can't figure out?"

"I pray for guidance," he says.

"What if you don't believe in God or religion or prayer?"

He responds, "None of those things matter. All that matters is how we treat each other."

Given how guilty Elizabeth feels about her treatment of Young-Hee, his advice cuts her to the quick.

Time to pick up Paige and walk back to their car. Paige seems tired of being a church kid, which she's doing as penance for having outed her parents to Pastor Tim.

Elizabeth is okay with the status quo. "Alice accused us of something we didn't do. That works to our advantage."

"You pretend to forgive them," Paige points out.

"We'll do anything to make things better, including for Pastor Tim and Alice."

Paige isn't too thrilled, then switches subjects, slightly, to mention Stan's son's revelation that Stan ate out recently with the father of a disgraced FBI agency. "She was a spy," Paige reports, but being a teen, she's on to another subject: she's wanting more practice on her driving skills.

But before Elizabeth can negotiate drive time with her daughter, two muscled muggers pop up to demand money. They're sleazy and looking to add rape to the evening.

Elizabeth's not having it. She cold-cocks one attacker and plants a knife into the neck of the other. The episode ends with our focus on Paige as her mother rushes her away from the scene.

Her parents have been downplaying the dangers of their spy work, but now Paige sees what her mother is really capable of.

Paige is shocked. Shocked, and once again having to reevaluate her world view and her parents at the same time.

Revelations keep coming on The Americans.

Photo: The Americans Facebook page

Fresh faces almost compensate for plot issues in "X-Men: Age of Apocalypse"

Tue, 31 May 2016 15:34:00 +0000

X-Men: Age of Apocalypse was released nationwide May 27. The third film of the most recent X-Men franchise boasts a cast of A-list actors such as James McAvoy, (Wanted, Chronicles of Narnia) Michael Fassbender, (Steve Jobs, 12 Years a Slave) and Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games Trilogy). The newest addition of fresh faces also includes names like Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones) as the fiery Jean Grey, Tye Sheridan as Scott Summers, and Alexandra Shipp as Ororo Munroe, also known as Storm. The incoming generation of new X-Men added a delightful twist in what may have otherwise been the weakest link in the newest set of films.

The beginning of the movie is mostly devoted to setting up the foundation for conflict between Apocalypse, his four followers "the horsemen," and the X-men. The audience catches a glimpse into the background of newly introduced characters, such as Storm and Nightcrawler. Director Bryan Singer does his best at squeezing in what he can into a limited time frame, though it falls somewhat short for leading characters, such as Storm, who not only have rich detailed back stories, but also eventually become prevalent leaders in the X-Men. Punk rock 80's Ororo does, however, knock the socks off of previously-cast Halle Berry - who struggled for years to fulfill comic nerd expectations. Shipp, who recently starred in Straight Outta Compton, gives a refreshingly edgy portrayal of Storm, as a misguided but ultimately morally-inclined character.

The movie relies heavily on special effects and visuals, displaying the usual series of superhuman abilities, although nothing quite stands out the way that it did in the first or second film. There was no climactic moment where Magneto lifts an entire stadium, or wrenching instant where Professor X stops an entire fleet of missiles; rather, there is a short burst of individual fight scenes. The film teases the audience with hints of impending battles, as when Jean momentarily transforms into a bird-shaped burst of flames, and the rumored setup for the Dark Phoenix film. Even the ending sequence hints towards an upcoming appearance of X-men archrival, Mr. Sinister. Still, these moments sometimes fall flat without the time or capability to flesh out the story lines.

It was Evan Peters (American Horror Story) who unquestionably steals the show with his witty demeanor and daunting charisma. Peters revives his role as Quicksilver, Magneto's illegitimate child and fellow mutant. He is not only the much needed comic-relief, but also provides the best scene in the movie, in which he rescues all students at Professor X's School for Gifted Youngsters from an explosion. His super-speed abilities allow him to casually gather up all the mutants and relocate them to safety, while making time to down a soda. His chemistry and overall presence on screen work well with other new characters, like Kodi Smit-McPhee who plays lovable outcast Nightcrawler.

Age of Apocalypse also featured a diverse range of characters such as Jubilee, played by Lana Condor, Olivia Munn as Psylocke, and Latino Golden Globe award winning actor Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse. With recent controversy surrounding the whitewashing of ethnic characters it seems that Singer made a conscientious effort to acquire an group of talented young actors, while sticking to the authentic comic-book backgrounds of various characters.

While Age of Apocalypse can be entertaining at times, and the cinematography is rewarding on the big screen, it lacks a central story arc. The writing suffers from having to introduce so many new characters in such a short period of time. One can only hope that this was an attempt to lay the foundation for a more thorough follow up. Needless to say, Singer will have more opportunities to revive some of the key elements that made his previous X-Men films so successful.

X-Men: Apocalypse

Director: Bryan Singer

Writers: Simon Kinberg (screenplay), Bryan Singer (story)

Stars: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence

Rated PG-13, 2 hours 23 minutes.

“Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising”: Liberté, Egalité, Sororité

Wed, 25 May 2016 13:54:00 +0000

Put your brain into neutral for Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, a raucous romp full of bathroom humor, bodily functions, some body parts, drug use, beer blasts, frat parties and the like. This "long awaited" (that is, if you're a Universal suit anxious to cash in on another mindless franchise) sequel to the 2014 hit Neighbors has the same plot premise: 30-something parents (drolly referred to as "the old people"), Mac Radner (buffoonish Seth Rogen) and his saucy Aussie wife Kelly (Rose Byrne, who co-stars with Susan Sarandon in The Meddlers), once again find themselves living next door to a house inhabited by wild and crazy students from the nearby college, who lower real estate values by raising the block's decibel levels.

But what's "different" in this retread is that now those causing the Radners to declare "there goes the neighborhood!" aren't members of an out-of-control fraternity house, but rather sisters of a new sorority house. Hey, how original can Hollywood and Nicholas Stoller (who helmed both flix and co-wrote the sequel) be? However, by replacing the frat house with a sorority, now the by-the-numbers Neighbors 2 can also cash in on the "women behaving badly" trend that has filled screens since at least 2011's blockbuster Bridesmaids. (To thee I sing, ka-ching!)

The sequel even has an overweight female in the Melissa McCarthy mode - Jonah Hill's sister Beanie Feldstein as Nora - because, since Marie Dressler in silent films such as the 1914 flick Tillie's Punctured Romance opposite Charlie Chaplin, for sheer hilarity, gosh darn it, there's simply nothing funnier than watching fat women perform slapstick and especially when they aspire to be sexual. Her Kappa Nu sorority sisters include Beth (22-year-old Kiersey Clemons, who co-starred as the lesbian Diggy in 2015's Dope and appears in Amazon's Transparent) and Shelby (teenager Chloë Grace Moretz, whose credits range from 2014's artsy Clouds of Sils Maria to, appropriately, a movie about another horrible house, 2005's remake of The Amityville Horror).

Fans of the original will be happy to know that veterans of Neighbors' Delta Psi are back, notably the buff Zac Efron, who was so superb in 2008's ode to youth and art, Me and Orson Welles (although Neighbors 2 is no Citizen Kane). Other frat brothers also on hand include Jerrod Carmichael (who has gone on to star in the NBC sitcom, the imaginatively named The Carmichael Show, which explores African American issues in the topical tradition of the 1970s Good Times series) reprising his role as Garf. Jonah Hill isn't the only actor to have a younger sibling appear in Neighbors 2: Not to be outdone, James Franco's kid brother, Dave Franco, returns as a now out-of-the-closet Pete.

Several notables also have cameos in Neighbors 2, including Kelsey Grammer as Shelby's father. Lisa Kudrow returns as the image-conscious, bureaucratic college dean, and Selena Gomez, who has a lovely presence demanding more screen time, is wasted as rival sorority house Phi Lambda's head honcho.

In a nod to topicality, Neighbors 2 takes on contemporary subjects - although mostly for laughs. The film ponders the definition of sexism and who, exactly, is a sexist (and racist, for that matter). But whereas Berkeley's '60s students fought for free speech and against the Vietnam War, Neighbors 2's notion of "sisterhood is powerful" is that sorority houses should have the same right as frat houses to throw parties.

The flick's concept of feminism is unclear and vague. Shelby is, technically, a virgin but the pic drops that plotline and never follows up on what has been the centerpiece of many a teen screen romp. There is a good sight gag about police brutality re: Blacks, and same sex marriage is a subplot (along with numerous references to homoeroticism among fraternities). There is also an interracial couple and an Asian woman belying if not exactly defying celluloid stereotypes. But despite its nods to contemporary issues, including the presidential race, Bernie Sanders - a popular candidate among campus youth crushed by college debt - is never alluded to.

There are some touching, sweet moments celebrating parenthood and raising children. And the movie has that rarity: A married couple actually having sex (yes, with each other, wisenheimers!). Yet, despite its frequent tasteless references to babies and dildos (oh, excuuuuuse me, I mean "vibrators"), the R-rated picture has little nudity. Like Amy Schumer's Trainwreck, beneath all the bad boy/grrrrrrrl bravado about sex is the same puritanical streak (no pun intended) and lack of graphic nakedness (not that one would necessarily want to see Rogen unclad, in this, the best of all possible worlds). Even when characters have sex they are covered up in both movies (except for a brief Efron moment that is sort of the opposite of full "frontal"). So both pix lack the courage to exercise the rights hard fought for by artists for years, which became common in the late '60s and '70s, and is still commonplace on European big and little screens. What cowardice masquerading as being "daring!"

Nevertheless, for those who enjoy their comedy coarse with crude, lewd dudes and dudesses, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is likely to get a rise out of you. If in a past life the vomitoriums at the Roman Coliseum were your thing when it came to mass entertainment, this is just the ticket for you. Go yuk yourself!

Indeed, some may find Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising to be sheer hilarity. With his mind in neutral (or low gear), your reviewer enjoyed guffawing, having his ribs tickled and slapping his knees for 92 minutes. And while this might not exactly be Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 classic Battleship Potemkin, as auteur Preston Sturges noted in 1941's Sullivan's Travels, there's a worthy place for this on the screen. There's a lot to be said for laughing your head off, and if you happen to find mine rolling around on the floor of the ArcLight Hollywood, please kindly return to sender.

"The City of Conversations": Politics is all in the family

Mon, 23 May 2016 16:01:00 +0000

Playwright Anthony Giardina's The City of Conversations has an interesting premise: Beginning in 1979 with the Carter presidency, Conversations follows the evolution of American politics for 30 years through the lens of one family. Hester Ferris (Emmy winner Christine Lahti, who now has a recurring role in CBS' Hawaii Five-O retread as Steve McGarrett's cunning, mysterious mother with a covert past) is the estimable matriarch of a political clan that has held sway via her influential perch as a Georgetown hostess over the nation's capital, where the parties you throw can be as important as the party you belong to.

In Act I, home from graduate school, her longhaired son Colin (Jason Ritter, whose stage and screen credits include Wendy Wasserstein's Third, HBO's Girls and the new Susan Sarandon comedy The Meddler) and his conniving Minnesota fiancée Anna Fitzgerald (British actress Georgia King, whose scheming, leggy blonde gives Reese Witherspoon's Machiavellian Republican in 1999's Election a run for her money) conveniently show up a night earlier than planned in order to crash one of Hester's renowned soirees, where this Washington doyenne has played kingmaker since at least the Kennedy years.

Delilah-like, the overbearing Hester fusses over Colin's tresses, imploring him to get a haircut before the posh party Teddy Kennedy is expected to attend. And Hester visibly recoils at and positively disdains Anna's thigh-high, purplish, velvety boots. It seems that Hester is on the right-wing side of the so-called "culture wars," and that Colin and Anna represent the counterculture and a breath of fresh air in the stifling firmament of Washington in this three-acter with one intermission at Beverly Hills' Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

But in fact, [PLOT SPOILER ALERT!] the only uprising this hippie-style couple is down for is the onslaught of the Reagan Revolution. As for Hester, she can still smell a whiff of Camelot. So either Giardina is confused and being counterintuitive, or he is insightfully pointing out that beneath the surface - especially in politics, which makes strange bedfellows - things aren't always as they appear to be. In any case, Act I plants the seeds of a clash that erupts in Conversations' second act, which reaches the boiling point during a pivotal moment of the Reagan presidency (and which some audience members found to be quite timely, what with the current stalemate over a Supreme Court nominee).

This drama reveals American history through the political peregrinations of one family. It could be retitled Long Decades' Journey Into Politicking and is sort of later Eugene O'Neill meets Bertolt Brecht (but, alas, without his audacity and verve). Having said this, theatergoers uninterested in elections, primaries, Senate committee hearings and the like are likely to be bored. As its name suggests, Conversations is quite talky and there's little onstage action, which is confined to scenic designer Jeff Cowie's expertly executed set of a home where JFK might have sought wisdom during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The clips projected onstage to introduce each era are entirely obvious and predictable.

Two things redeem this play. The third act, set in 2009, raises an important question: Should people allow politics to divide relatives and friends? Is who somebody backs for office or what bill they support grounds for maintaining cordial, let alone loving, relations with friends and especially blood relatives? Must the familial be political? Or do the bonds of affection, forged by friendship and family, override the proverbial rough and tumble of politics?

For example, Che Guevara, the Left's knight in shining armor, at some point reportedly chose his friends based mainly on their ideological orientation. I have personally seen with my own eyes friendships destroyed by political disagreements and strains placed on family members because of one's stance on the issues of the day. But is even the most principled stand worth the heartache of estrangement from loved ones? As Conversations updates its sweep of American political life to tackle same sex marriage and LGBT rights, Giardina asks this pertinent question.

The other thing that makes seeing the West Coast premiere of this play that originally opened in 2014 at Lincoln Center is its cast, well-directed by Michael Wilson. It's a treat to see the lanky, lithe Lahti in person as the imperious Hester, along with actors such as Steven Culp, who plays her lover, the politician Chandler and - appropriately! - previously depicted Bobby Kennedy in 2000's Thirteen Days and in the 1996 TV movie Norma Jean & Marilyn, as well as JFK in 2012 in the Perception TV series. So, my fellow aficionados, ask not what the theater can do for you: Ask what you can do for the theater.

The City of Conversations is being presented through June 4 at the Bram Goldsmith Theater, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210.

For info: for tickets (310) 746-4000; www.thewallis.org/.

Ed Rampell co-authored "The Hawaii Movie and Television Book" (see: http://hawaiimtvbook.weebly.com/).

Photo: The City of Conversation. Pictured (l-r): Christine Lahti and Jason Ritter. Kevin Parry | The Wallis.

"The Americans": Sex, friendship, and lies

Mon, 23 May 2016 15:16:00 +0000

Season 4/Episode 10: "Munchkins"

For the first time since she came to the U.S., Elizabeth Jennings, Soviet spy extraordinaire, has made a genuine female friend.

The fact that she's under cover as Mary Kay seller Patty is a minor point, for Elizabeth (Keri Russell) feels such a connection to gregarious Young-Hee that the ultimate goal of using her husband, Don, has become a deadline Elizabeth can't bear to meet.

This was an operation that perhaps should have been over a while ago, but given the seven-month vacation gap in the last episode, Elizabeth continued her sole mission of being a friend to Young-Hee far longer than expected.

Now that the operation is back up, Elizabeth has already drugged and (not really) had sex with Don, who is racked with guilt over his self-perceived adultery.

Don is a military researcher into the use of pathogens as bioweapons. In an earlier episode, Elizabeth and husband Philip (Matthew Rhys) already experienced an unhappy run-in with another pathogen sample they helped transport to their side of the Cold War.

So for Elizabeth to have to a. betray her friend and b. deal with yet another U.S.-made deadly weapon, is entirely too much.

But before we learn what she plans to do, "Munchkins" visits other ongoing plotlines.

There's Pastor Tim's heavily pregnant wife, Alice, who bursts into the Jennings home to accuse them of kidnapping her husband. Thankfully, Henry is upstairs in his room, away from the drama.

Pastor Tim and a fellow believer are in Ethiopia on a religious mission where they've gone missing. Alice points out that Ethiopia is a "client state of the Soviet Union," which to her means he's finally paying the price for Paige's admission to him about her spy parents.

Philip and Elizabeth are authentically stunned by this allegation. After all, they'd considered then discarded the idea of killing the couple because they knew Paige would instantly suspect them of the deed.

Alice claims she has made a tape about them and given it to a lawyer to mail to the State Department in case she dies. She demands that they use their contacts to find and release her husband PDQ.

Paige (Holly Taylor), who has stood by throughout this exchange, has a somewhat cooler head than Alice but makes some of the same points. It's plausible, after all.

After Paige heads to her room, Philip and Elizabeth wonder briefly whether their compatriots offed the minister but realize they wouldn't have left Alice alive.

Once again, they're buffeted by the impact of Paige's initial mistake in confiding to her pastor, and by the fact that their effort to build a real family in the U.S. has created a daughter thoroughly spooked by the possibility they might ever have to flee to the Soviet Union.

Even so, Paige, who has been dutifully reporting to her parents all along about the pastoral couple, continues to show some spy potential.

When it turns out Pastor Tim had simply run out of gas in a remote area and is back in communication, Paige gauges that it's too soon to ask Alice to give back the tape.

Paige possesses a level head; however, she's beginning to show signs of interest in neighbor Matthew, the son of FBI agent Stan (Noah Emmerich).

Matthew shares her father's admission that his former boss's secretary turned out to be a KGB spy. An unsettling thing to know for Paige, as it underscores that her parents aren't the only ones playing roles.

She's continuing to learn more about her parents' authentic backgrounds, as seen when she and Philip are cooking dinner. She asks whether Philip's mother was a good cook.

"She made a soup I liked," he recalls. His father, who was a logger, died when Philip was six, so his mother had to be especially tough in raising the family.

As for Paige's question about happiness, Philip sees that as an American kind of obsession. "We didn't think that way. Life was about working hard and doing what you had to in order to protect your family. After the war, people didn't have much."

Young Philip aka Mischa worked after school in a rake-making cooperative. "The guy who ran the place got greedy and tried to pay only half of what he owed me. My mom went over there...and then he paid me all of it."

Philip later pays a visit in his hippy role as James to his ongoing target, Kimmy, a teenager not unlike his daughter. He's successfully avoided having sex with her, which is a level of ick he and the show have dodged, but since he planted a bug in her CIA father's satchel, he must continue the contacts.

Philip aka James has the "best weed," as a stoned Kimmy observes. She shares with him that her father works for the CIA, but Philip is more cautious than wowed.

"I don't think you should've told me. It's a secret. It could bring you and your dad together, but only if you keep it," he says, knowing full well the complications that have arisen from his daughter's admission to her pastor.

The truth is complicated and in the wrong circumstances it could kill.

Take former FBI departmental head Gaad, who is on vacation in Thailand with his wife. While she's out shopping, he's paid a visit by a trio of Soviet agents.

They're wanting to talk with him, perhaps to try to suborn him into revealing secrets, but he makes an immediate break for it.

By instinct one of the agents tries to follow him but he's unable to stop his stride in time to avoid crashing them both into a plate glass door.

Gaad by far suffers the worst injuries, dying in under a minute from a deeply imbedded shard of glass in his side. The lead agent is stunned, concerned, and yet unable to do more than say aloud that he's sorry, something he repeats as the trio leaves.

Back at the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., spy chief Arkady opens a diplomatic pouch to learn about this botched mission.

Shaken, he tells his operatives Oleg and Tatiana, "An operation went bad. Maybe it should never have been planned in the first place."

Back at the FBI office, Gaad's replacement-who agents Stan and Dennis Aderholt derisively call a Munchkin-gives them the news, which raises Stan's level of ambient anger to an even higher degree.

He has to do something with this rage, but what? This episode leaves the question hanging, and given its predilection for anxiety-laden plotlines, Stan may have to stew for a while longer.

Meanwhile, handler Gabriel and Philip play their usual game of Scrabble as the elder informs the younger about ongoing operational plans.

They have to obtain the security codes for the U.S. bioweapons floor. Since their KGB plant, William, doesn't have access to that level, other means must be found.

Elizabeth had been tasked with coercing Young-Hee's husband, Don, into providing the codes, but while that part of the operation is proceeding fitfully, Gabriel is putting together the rest of the team.

Turns out he's recruited an American librarian who is in her mid-forties. The quiet, unassuming type. "You wouldn't notice her if she was sitting on your lap," he says.

Gabriel began the recruitment when he picked up on the fact she had a copy of a radical newspaper called "The Militant" hanging out of her purse.

A little online research reveals that this is a Trotskyite publication, which makes it somewhat unlikely that such a person would willingly work for the Soviet Union. This is, however, a TV show about 1980s Soviet spies in the U.S., so a certain suspension of disbelief comes in handy at times.

Gabriel (Frank Langella) shares that their KGB plant, William, "has been monitoring things at the lab." Depending on certain factors, Gabriel's team may have to swing into action in anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

Philip is protective of his wife, a vital part of the plan, and as he points out, "Last time, we nearly started an epidemic."

"How could I forget," says Gabriel, who came close to dying when the stolen bioweapon sample leaked.

As for the current bioweapon target, "this is supposed to be 10 times worse," Philip comments.

Gabriel counters that "the best deterrent is strength. Furthermore, even the President [Reagan] says that."

At any rate, the radical librarian, South African student Hans-who we've met in earlier episodes-along with William and Philip are vital parts of the operation, which has yet to be laid out in much detail.

Laid out in detail elsewhere are Soviets Oleg and Tatiana who have taken an intensely physical liking to one another. During a break in their action, Oleg gently chides her about her having not yet tried Twinkies. He likes many material aspects of American life, and when he learns that Tatiana works for the mysterious Department 12, he naively protests the Americans don't have a biochemical weapons program. Tatiana knows that's untrue. She asks him for a little help in obtaining a trained agent from back home. Someone who speaks perfect English and knows computers, a woman in her fifties or sixties.

This is a show suffused with many types of relationships, where none of them are easy, or easily definable.

For Elizabeth and Philip, the primary condition under which they operate is one it happens they can admit to their daughter.

Elizabeth says to her, "The hardest thing we do in our jobs is trust. We never know if the other people are telling us the truth. The one thing your dad and I have is, we tell each other the absolute truth."

Philip adds, "And now that we've told you about us, you're a part of that."

Elizabeth continues. "We can't tell you every detail about our jobs, but we will tell you what we can."

Paige absorbs this then responds, "When are you going to tell Henry?"

"A lot of that depends on Henry," Elizabeth says. Being that Paige's rising suspicions played a role in her eventually learning the truth, she has to know that her brother, not so little anymore, is on the same journey she's on, but a few steps behind.

The episode concludes with handler Gabriel's visit with Elizabeth. Both he and Philip have questioned Elizabeth's desire to continue with the manipulation of Young-Hee's husband, Don.

Although she again denies any hesitation, Gabriel says, "It's possible for people like us who give everything for our country and for the world to forget ourselves...It's okay. You've already done the hard part."

"No, the next part is the hard part. After that, they'll never recover."

"Elizabeth, your feelings matter."

"No, they don't. They shouldn't," Elizabeth says with a well-splintered resolve.

Gabriel says gently, "Before we take the last step, we'll ask the Centre if there's another way in. We don't know everything they know. Do you want me to ask?"

Elizabeth, the strong, Elizabeth the nigh well unbreakable-Elizabeth pauses and says yes.

She always had a heart, however well disguised she contrived to make it. In a season of strong cast performances, Keri Russell delivers a gem.

For more revelations, both acting and otherwise, tune in next week for another episode of The Americans.

Photo: Young Hee and Patty. The Americans.

New book offers inside look at Soviet Communist Party discipline

Thu, 19 May 2016 13:34:00 +0000

It has been roughly 25 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union; in other words, since the first experiment in the construction of socialism on a national level came to a dramatic end. But Americans' curiosity about socialism hasn't waned with the passage of time.

Socialism has once again become part of the mainstream political discourse - especially among youth - with the emergence of Bernie Sanders as a serious presidential contender. Additionally, more people are looking anew at the practices, policies, successes and failures of the former Soviet Union.

Edward Cohn's The High Title Of A Communist: Postwar Party Discipline and the Values of the Soviet Regime paints a vivid picture of a Party-state seriously attempting to live up to its professed values, beliefs and moral code on the one hand, and the actual practices and flaws of its leaders - namely, communist officials - on the other.

In The High Title Of A Communist, Cohn provides a balanced, nuanced assessment of Soviet Communist Party discipline. He examines many facets of this discipline, including: communists' war-time expectations on the front; defining 'worthy' and 'unworthy' conduct of POW's; restoration and rehabilitation of Party activists in the post-war Stalin years; corruption and administrative misconduct; infidelity, drunkenness, labor discipline and public opinion under Khrushchev, etc.

As the Communist Party grew from a small revolutionary, underground organization into an enormous political, organizational and administrative apparatus its values and means of inter-Party discipline evolved to reflect new demographics, education and skill-sets.

In 1938, there were fewer than two million 'Full' and 'Candidate' members of the CPSU. By 1964, that number had swelled to over eleven million. Discipline in a smaller, tight-knit, underground organization was considerably different (and had a different focus) than in a large, loosely coordinated, above ground, mass organization responsible for directing and managing a national economy. By the mid-sixties, too, this was an organization nearly fifty years removed from revolution. Its needs were different and evolving. Correspondingly, its values and mechanisms of discipline were also evolving.

In 1939, the CPSU first drafted a charter defining the 'obligations and rights' of communists. The next version of the charter was enacted in 1952. Though much of the 1939 charter "remained in place," according to Cohn, the total number of "obligations jumped from four to eleven; the clauses discussing these duties often referred to major postwar initiatives, including requirements that Communists 'respect state secrets' and 'preserve socialist property.'"

The 1952 charter also hinted at a "critique that grew in intensity...that party organizations were becoming increasingly bureaucratic, passive, or even corrupt, and that the party discipline system had begun to treat office-holders and rank-and-file Communists in very different ways."

That these critiques came directly from higher party institutions within the Soviet Union means that they can't easily be dismissed simply as anti-communist misinformation born out of a Cold War capitalist context.

The charter emphasized communists "'public duty' that extended far beyond the workplace while helping to forge the New Soviet Person and maintaining the movement's moral principles." A later version of the charter went even further, "requiring Communists to conduct themselves well in private, mandating that workplace-based primary party organizations 'see to it that each Communist observe in his own life and cultivate among workers the moral principles set forth in the CPSU program, the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism,'" which was announced at the Twenty-Second Congress in October 1961.

The 'Moral Code of the Builder of Communism' "functioned more as an abstract summary of regime values than as an effective, concrete ethical code..." Though vague, the Code "illustrated the party's growing concern with personal behavior and highlighted a theme that was crucial to the vision of good behavior...the intolerance of misconduct."

Though imperfectly executed, writes Cohn, the party discipline system "was based on the idea that Communists were leaders at home and at work whose behavior should be held to a higher standard than that of other citizens." Resultantly, communists were "subject both to the law and to the demands of the party's internal disciplinary system. Party membership was, after all, a privilege granted model citizens, not a right, and those Communists whose conduct damaged their authority or threatened the party's reputation forfeited their place in the country's political elite even when they did not break the law."

Interestingly, the regime's "move away from Stalinist repression actually helped to push it more deeply into the family, since informal interventions were better suited for confronting problems in a Communist's private life," like spousal abuse, infidelity and drunkenness, all considered "antisocial acts," though not necessarily considered crimes by Soviet law. Therefore communists were often reprimanded and/or removed from their Party posts even though they may not have actually broken the law or been found guilty of a crime.

The High Title Of A Communist is an interesting read, focused on a largely ignored aspect of Soviet intra-Party values and discipline, namely, the sincere attempts by communists to live up to their professed values, as well as the human flaws, weaknesses and limitations of Party leaders. Cohn provides numerous case studies, highlighting individual communists - in their personal and work lives - as they struggled to live up to a higher moral code and standard, while acknowledging the collective nature of discipline.

For those interested in some of the finer nuances of CPSU governance The High Title Of A Communist is a worthwhile read.

The High Title Of A Communist: Postwar Party Discipline and the Values of the Soviet Regime

By Edward Cohn

Northern Illinois University Press, 2015, 268 pages

Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape”: A shocking protest against capitalist barbarism

Thu, 19 May 2016 10:34:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES -- Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape (1922) is a product of the short-lived post-World War I Expressionist school, which featured exaggerated characters, writ in bold strokes, often with harsh, mordant commentary on the kinds of gory horrors the world had just witnessed on the battlefields of civilized Europe, and lit up with bright spotlights at rakish angles to point up the deep shadow side of a distorted humanity. Both German and Soviet theater of that period were especially creative in this mode, and other playwrights and directors quickly picked up the style.

O'Neill's first play was produced in 1916, after he had fallen in with the Provincetown Players with radical journalist John Reed. By 1922 he had already won two Pulitzer Prizes - for Beyond the Horizon in 1920 and Anna Christie in 1922. He would later win two more, plus the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. O'Neill's next work after The Hairy Ape was Desire Under the Elms (1924), a decidedly non-Expressionist family drama whose plot traces back to Greek tragedy and to Swedish playwright August Strindberg.

The Hairy Ape is a stark broadside against the vast differential of wealth and power of "The Roaring Twenties." Excess consumption and privilege on the part of the few; degradation, humiliation and brutalization for the many toiling away in the engine rooms of capitalism. The protagonist Yank is the most class-conscious of his peers, fellow coal shovelers in the boiler room of a fancy ocean liner steaming toward Southampton, England. The sniveling do-gooder daughter of the ship owner is onboard and curious to see "how the other half lives." When she descends into the engine room, dressed like an angel in her pure white gown suitable for an elegant garden party, and when she hears Yank's brutal, frank, vulgar speech, she is appalled at his bestiality. Yank is driven insane with a frightening class rage that he cannot control. O'Neill endows this terrifying character "with a fierce elegiac poetry," in the words of the brilliant director Steven Berkoff. The seaman "represents all too powerfully and even poignantly the heart of the workingman" whose soul has never been touched by love.

The great African American actor Paul Robeson was identified with O'Neill's work in three different works: All God's Chillun Got Wings and The Emperor Jones (both 1924), and The Hairy Ape, of which he was able to give only five performances in London in 1931 before he quit out of pure exhaustion. Although Robeson was generally well received as Yank, the play received sharp barbs owing to the producers' "racially blind" casting in the part. One London critic wrote that "It upsets the balance or alters the whole direction of the piece.... One cannot help thinking that here is something which has to do with racial consciousness and the oppression of the [N]egro."

This issue, so remarked upon today, was also controversial then, but audiences have come "a long day's journey" since 1931: We can now appreciate not so much the contradiction of the author's original intent but rather the additional layering provided by unexpected casting.

That is indeed the case with the present production at the Odyssey, whose lead is taken by the virile, muscled Hailé (pronounced hi-lei) D'Alan, born on Chicago's South Side and now mostly resident in Austin, Texas. It should be noted that D'Alan is the only non-white member of the cast, so presumably the racial angle is intended in these Black Lives Matter times. However, his understudy Jeremiah O'Brian, another cast member who may have occasion to jump into Yank's role at some point, is white.

A "message" play delivered by thunderbolt

D'Alan is a phenomenon of nature in this role. It barely matters that in the early shipboard scenes with his seven heavily imbibing fellow coal stokers the language is shouted so gruffly and drunkenly that we barely understand a word. It's clearly meant to sound only intermittently human from a gang of virtual galley slaves, who indeed are seen knuckle-dragging in their simian-like gait. Yet Yank is a worker proud to "breathe and swallow coal dust." His awareness of class screams out of his guts. By contrast, the character of the old salt Paddy (Dennis Gersten) has memories of the old tall ships of decades past, when a sailor could enjoy the elements, hone his seamanship skills, and not be condemned to spending his voyages down in a hellish oven.

The crew move as one with the heaving and swelling of the waves. I almost regretted I hadn't taken a Dramamine before I sat down, so realistic did Berkoff make the impression of the movements of a great ship at sea. The other cast members compete with one another in exuding testosterone from every pore, but are less distinguishable as individual characters.

The two ladies on board, the heiress Mildred (Katy Davis) and her chaperone Aunt (Jennifer Taub) play their snooty parts to the hilt. There's little question where O'Neill's sympathies lay when he poured his heart into this tirade against the rich. This is a "message" play delivered by thunderbolt.

When the ship lands back in New York (from his accent this appears to be Yank's home town) the whole cast except for Yank and his sidekick turn into suave boulevardiers just leaving church services, looking like they danced out of a satirical George Grosz etching. They eventually call the cops on Yank for taunting and assaulting them. Yank turns to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which he's heard about as defenders of his class, thinking at last he has found the place where he can belong. But even they cast him out as "a brainless ape," believing that either he's too stupid for them or that his talk of violence and dynamite can only be that of a paid provocateur.

Berkoff directs his ensemble as if it's ballet, every movement calibrated to connect organically with the other actors on stage. It's a brash, surreal montage of speech, pantomime, and tableau. The set design is by Christopher Scott Murillo, lighting by Katelan Braymer, and sound design by Christopher Moscatiello. The live percussionist in this loud, powerful production is Will Mahood. Its 85 minutes, with one intermission, deliver a proletarian punch to the solar plexus that a viewer will feel long after the curtain calls.

In its recapitulation of the mind-numbing, soul-crushing repetitive motions endemic to industrial work, the 1922 Hairy Ape anticipates Elmer Rice's play The Adding Machine by one year, and the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times by a full 14 years. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the historic precedent O'Neill established. The play attracted the attention of the new Federal Bureau of Investigation, which kept a file on O'Neill. The FBI's report on him stated that "The Hairy Ape could easily lend itself to radical propaganda, and it is somewhat surprising that it has not already been used for this purpose." The mayor of New York tried to shut down the production for fear it would provoke labor disputes or riots.

But the Twenties were a hard time for labor in America. The anarcho-syndicalist IWW was by then largely routed, victim of the Palmer Raids and anti-immigrant fervor across the land, and the new Communist Party, inspired by events in Bolshevik Russia, had just recently been established. The national mood was caught up in the heady prosperity of speculation which ended, as we all know, with the crash of the stock market in 1929.

American Expressionism is not the most beloved period of our national theater tradition, as witnessed by the relative infrequency of stagings of this play. So now I have a mea culpa to offer: Because honestly I was not familiar with The Hairy Ape, in my 1989 biography of the composer Marc Blitzstein, I failed to note that it had to have been a strong influence on his 1937 musical The Cradle Will Rock, especially in its cartoonish portrayal of the ruling-class Liberty Committee and of the Reverend Salvation, who preaches pacifism when it's personally convenient, and war when he's properly compensated.

The Odyssey production utterly convinces that The Hairy Ape is one of the early masterworks of 20th-century American theatre. The ending is chillingly cathartic. Yet it is no period piece staged for our academic edification. It reveals truths about our society that are still very much on point. Do not miss it.

Performances run through July 17 on selected Wednesdays and Thursdays in May and June, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm, and Sundays at 2 pm. For exact schedule and for tickets and information, contact the Odyssey at (310) 477-2055 ext. 2, or www.OdysseyTheatre.com. The Odyssey Theatre also has a Facebook page. Three performances have been designated as $10 ticket nights: May 20, June 2, and July 1. The theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles 90025.

Photo: (left to right) Jeremiah O'Brian, Joseph Gilbert, Andres Paul Ramacho, Hailé D'Alan, Anthony Rutowicz / Photo by Enci Box

"The Americans": Nuclear winter of the heart

Tue, 17 May 2016 16:33:00 +0000

The Americans, Season 4/Episode 9: The Day After

Many American novels and movies depicted the supposed threat posed by the Soviet Union prior to its downfall.

In a television film called The Day After, nuclear war impacts a Kansas city. It being the 1980s, desolation reigned with no real explanation given for why the nuclear exchange occurred.

Who pressed the button first? While China, Great Britain, Israel and a handful of other nations possessed atomic weapons, the only plausible adversaries considered in popular media back then were the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

So it is that we and the dramatized audience of the time see the dreadful results of maximum war play out on the screen with only stateside victims depicted.

The Jennings family is at home, along with FBI agent/friend Stan Beeman and his son, Matthew, watching the movie. They're not the only ones. Soviet embassy operatives Oleg and Tatiana are in bed, riveted by the film, as well as elsewhere, Elizabeth's (spy project) friend Young-Hee and her husband, Don.

Basic map reading tells one that the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact faced off against American nuclear-tipped missiles-and NATO allies in-Western Europe, as well as in open waters around the world, where the U.S. possessed a strong strategic advantage given its numerous military ports.

Western and Russian nuclear submarines restlessly kept track of one another, yet the Cold War was never a contest of true equals, when one considers the actual disparity of weaponry between foes and not the numbers which U.S. propaganda trumpeted.

For Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (real-life couple Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell), who are Soviet spies, war's desolation is not theoretical. They each grew up in a Russia badly damaged by the repulsed Nazi invasion.

Their adulthood has largely been spent in a rich land where the prime lesson from American media and government leaders is that the homeland is inherently good. Good people of a virtuous nation don't kill others without reason.

We have since then learned about torture and other evils committed in America's name during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Only a naïve person would assume the U.S. is an amateur at state-sponsored aggression.

These days, with the Soviet Union erased as an enemy, fictional apocalypses tend to be framed around fascist regimes, corporate dystopias, global warming, and/or deadly viruses.

For people living in the '80s, however, the prospect of nuclear war felt real, even as civilians continued to be told who would be to blame should nuclear winter descend.

Paige (Holly Taylor) is troubled by the movie and wonders what her father thinks about the prospect of war. "That's why your mother and I do what we do," he explains, "to keep things like that from happening."

"Will you be able to stop it?" she asks.

He decides against false assurances. "I don't know."

As for a more personal challenge, Paige is still having to report on Pastor Tim and his wife, still having to pretend to be a church-loving teen. Paige may be on the fence about religion and her parents' true occupation, but she is most definitely a teenager, which means she's well stoked for driving lessons offered by Philip. During which, Paige mentions she'd liked for her parents to attend a church function, for the pastor "likes to see us together. It makes him think we're more normal."

Freed up from the tougher parts of their jobs, Philip and Elizabeth are enjoying just being travel agents, even though we do witness how hard she comes down on a mistake-prone foil via phone. Elizabeth may not be slicing and dicing targets these days but she'll never be Miss Nice when it comes to work.

Given the sole task for befriending a Korean national named Young-Hee (played by the ebullient Ruthie Ann Miles), Elizabeth is now faced with the next phase of her mission: babysitting.

That's right: the world's most rules-oriented mom is filling in for Young-Hee while she's at a convention. Patty aka Elizabeth takes advantage of the mission while kids are asleep to look for anything compromising but all she can find is a generic porn video. Nothing kinky, nothing gay (the latter being a criminal offense in almost all U.S. jurisdictions at the time).

Elizabeth's mission has finally been made clear to viewers, for it turns out Young-Hee's husband, Don, is a bioweapons scientist with a higher security classification than the Centre's planted agent, William.

Her search for blackmail bait coming up empty, Elizabeth knows she'll have to use her tried and true weapon of sex.

While she prepares to make a drugged Don (Rob Yang) think he's committed adultery with her, Philip is meeting with William, who's a bit rattled from watching The Day After. But before they get down to business, Philip updates him on the status of Martha. She's alive and free in Moscow.

"Free," William (Dylan Baker) muses. "I can't remember what that feels like."

He's typically acerbic about the fact that Philip had been enjoying an extended break from spycraft, but chief among his concerns is the latest killer bioweapon being tweaked by his military employer.

He calls symptoms caused by Lassa virus the "worst things I've ever seen," and is reluctant to send a sample back home, given how the container for the last pathogen leaked, causing their handler, Gabriel, to almost die.

Back home, and in bed with his wife, Philip discusses what to do. "What if this time, we don't report to the Centre [about Lassa]?"

The virus "liquefies your organs," he says, but Elizabeth points out, "They're making that poison to destroy us. These are people that dropped the atom bomb twice."

Philip reluctantly agrees to contact the Centre, probably hoping this mission goes much better than the last time.

Elizabeth in her Patty disguise is equally unenthusiastic about her role in the mission. She inveigles Don into giving her a ride to her apartment then invites him in for a (spiked) drink. While he's out of it, she undresses both of them and sets the scene. When he awakes, he's shocked by what he thinks has happened, stammers out an apology and leaves.

She returns to her real home and in the quiet of their bedroom, grieves over blowing up Young-Hee's trust in her. Elizabeth rarely lets people past her emotional defences.

Philip holds her hand as she says, "I'm going to miss her."

This was a quieter episode, all told, yet it contains clues of explosions to come. Paige's troublesome pastor is planning a trip to Ethiopia. When he comes back, he wants to revisit with Philip that troublesome issue of Paige's parents being Soviet spies.

Something tells me the minister may not make it back to U.S. soil. Check in with The Americans to see if a death watch is warranted.

Photo: Screen capture from The Morning After. YouTube.

Twenty years of cross-border solidarity: A history in photographs

Tue, 17 May 2016 15:38:00 +0000

Unions and social movements face a basic question on both sides of the Mexico/U.S. border: Can they win the battles they face today, especially political ones, without joining their efforts together? Fortunately, this is not an abstract question. Struggles have taken place in maquiladoras for two decades all along the border. Many centers and collectives of workers have come together over those years. Walkouts over unpaid wages, or indemnización, as well as terrible working conditions, are still common.

What's more, local activists still find ways to support these actions through groups like the Collective Ollin Calli in Tijuana and its network of allies across the border in the San Diego Maquiladora Workers Solidarity Network. Other forms of solidarity have been developed through groups such as the Comité Fronterizo de Obreras and the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras. And long-term relations have been created between unions like the United Electrical Workers and the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (Authentic Labor Front of Mexico), and the United Steel Workers and the Mexican Mineros. More recently, binational support networks have formed for farm workers in Baja California, and workers are actively forming new networks of resistance and solidarity in the plantones (sit-ins) outside factories in Ciudad Juárez.

Over the years, support from many U.S. unions and churches, and from unions and labor institutions in Mexico City, has often been critical in helping these collectives survive, especially during the pitched battles to win legal status for independent unions. At other moments, however, the worker groups in the maquiladoras and the cities of the border have had to survive on their own, or with extremely limited resources.

These photographs show both the conditions people on the border are trying to change, and some of the efforts they've made to change them, in cooperation with groups in the U.S. There have been many such efforts - this is just a look at some.

"Working Hands: Photographs of Longshoremen by Frank Silva and Photographs of Farm and Recycling Workers by David Bacon" will be on view at Photocentral Gallery, 1099 E St., Hayward, Calif., June 4-August 6, 2016. A reception will be held on Saturday, June 4 from 2-5 p.m.

"On the Streets, Under the Trees: Homelessness and the Struggle for Housing in Urban and Rural California," photographs by David Bacon, is on view at the Asian Resource Gallery, 317 Ninth St. at Harrison, Oakland, Calif., May-June 2016. There is a reception on Tuesday, May 24 at 6 p.m.

The extended article by David Bacon on cross-border solidarity is published in the NACLA Report on the Americas, May 2016, and can be viewed here.

See also the author's blog here.

Photo: "Tijuana, Baja California Norte, Mexico - 1993," workers vote in a union election outside the Tijuana maquiladora of Plásticos Bajacal. Voting is public, and workers have to declare aloud whether they're voting for the company union or their own independent union. Lic. Mandujano, head of the labor board in Tijuana and an ally of the companies and the company unions, points to a worker and demands that he declare which union he's voting for, as company officials look on, along with Carmen Valadez, a representative of the independent union. The maquiladora organizing drive at Plásticos Bajacal in 1993 first highlighted for U.S. unions the reality of public union representation elections and the lack of the secret ballot. The San Diego Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers raised enough money to pay lost time for fired workers, so they could continue organizing the factory.

Chicago Home Theatre reclaims domestic space for art

Tue, 17 May 2016 14:44:00 +0000

"Do you like theater?" That was the question my co-worker, Michelle Zacarias, asked me last week.

"Uh, yes," I said with visions of recent productions I had seen at The Raven, Teatro Vista, ETA, Court, Congo Square and, of course, Goodman. Simultaneously a twinge of regret welled up for the productions not seen and venues not visited in this terrific theater town. The possibility pregnant in Michelle's question made me eager to find out why she had asked.

"Great! I was looking for someone to write about this home theater festival. No one on staff here seems to be interested. I can't do it because I am in it," she said. "Would you be interested?"

"Uh, YES!" I repeated myself, feeling self-consciously unoriginal, although my emphasis and tone differed from my first answer.

"Uh, home theater festival?" I asked, realizing I had never heard of it.

"Yeah, it's held in people's homes in different parts of the city. I'll put you in touch with one of the producers. I'm in one in North Center. You meet beforehand, tour the neighborhood for context and then go to the host's home for the production," she said.

"Wow," I thought. "That is cool. How does Michelle get involved in such interesting stuff?" I wondered.

The Chicago Home Theater Festival began in 2012 and is unique in the pantheon of the International Home Theater Festival movement. The Chicago festival encompasses the IHTF mission, "to reclaim domestic space" for art production, but like giardiniera on pizza, adds its own distinct flavor by "addressing specific issues facing its home city."

Given the multiple crises Chicago faces - from unrelenting police and gun violence to brutal education and health care cuts, soaring unemployment, class and racial inequities - along with a poster-child for corporate ineptitude and corruption in its unpopular mayor, the 2016 festival promises to be "hot" on the giardiniera spectrum.

Michelle made good on her promise and put me in touch with Executive and Artistic Producer Laley Lippard who has been nothing short of gracious and generous in answering my multiple emails about logistics. She sent the festival's media release, which set the festival in the context of "heightened xenophobia and racial polarization" and how the two acts - performance and inviting "strangers" into one's home offers a chance "to get closer...to one another...to the stories of our neighborhoods."

I'm looking forward to participating in two of the events this week. The festival started May 12 but runs every night this week and ends Sunday, May 22. Tickets are based on income - starting at $10 up to $60.

I have been so excited about the festival concept, its form and function, that I have been a little obsessive-compulsive about the whole thing. Thinking about what that means to "reclaim domestic space" for the arts and what it looks like, feels like to go to Portage Park, Humboldt Park, South Shore, Austin and other neighborhoods for "performances and conversations that directly disrupt injustice."

I have had plenty of strangers - many of whom became friends - in my home for political events and meetings, especially during the campaigns to elect Barack Obama and then to pass healthcare legislation. But what the festival release describes seems more conscious, more "woke." Plus, art inspires us in different ways. Such an approach seems fresh, dare I say revolutionary, way of organizing and creating art and community. During the heyday of Organizing for America, the organization founded after the 2008 election to help mobilize the grassroots around the president's agenda, as part of the meetings we used to tell our personal story, or as the festival encourages, "to turn to a stranger and share the story of their journey." Everyone has a story and stories can change the way we think and behave.

At a time where divisions and inequalities based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation and identity, ability/disability, immigration status and politics, I look forward "to understanding the borders and boundaries which keep us divided." But my skeptical self nags at me. Is it really possible to do all that? Whether it is or isn't, it has captured people's imagination. All shows are sold out except for Portage Park, East Garfield and Austin, Laley Lippard said today in an email. But those shows will offer the chance to "explore history, politics, and personal narrative through a guided neighborhood tour, build connection to strangers over a shared meal, and feel the intimacy of transformative art in living rooms, rooftops, kitchens, and bedrooms. Get closer to a more just Chicago." A chance worth taking.

"The Americans": Making problems disappear, vodka optional

Wed, 11 May 2016 15:17:00 +0000

Way back, seasons ago, when KGB undercover agents Philip and Elizabeth Jennings began their tasks of befriending-and in Philip's case, bedding-American targets, their goals seemed apparent.

Martha (Alison Wright) was an underappreciated assistant to an important FBI departmental head while Lisa worked at a joint military-corporate factory that built advanced aircraft. These human cogs proved their value over and over again, as Martha, enamored of and then wed to Philip (Matthew Rhys, who also directed this episode), became a willing ally in providing intelligence about FBI surveillance of American and Russian targets. Lisa, on the other hand, was in it for the money. However, she dealt with twin issues of alcoholism and an abusive husband.

The (KGB) Centre might have thought Martha and Lisa to both be controllable assets. That assessment proved to be wrong in ways this episode of The Americans makes clear.

Philip and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) are pushed to the brink and beyond of their emotional endurance, dealing with long-standing problems in their work and in their relationship with one another.

Let's start with Martha. This unwitting dupe turned adept spy wakes up in the hours before dawn, lying next to Clark/Philip. The ensuing scenes play out in near silence. She sits at a table where Philip and handler Gabriel (Frank Langella) are eating breakfast. She's leaving the U.S., her aging parents and her old life behind.

What is she thinking when she picks up the jar of peanut butter? Is there peanut butter in the Soviet Union, she wonders. What is there behind the so-called iron curtain U.S. propaganda has constructed?

All Martha knows is that the husband she came to love will be left behind, and the suffering on his face is all too evident. On an isolated field, a small clandestine plane ready to spirit her away, Martha has made her peace with the situation and has resolved to be strong, at least through this phase.

"Don't be alone, Clark, don't be alone. Find someone," she says.

"You, too," Philip manages to choke out.

"I'll just learn Russian, and...you'll be okay. Me, too," she says, then, both in tears, they kiss.

Two passengers leave in the plane, one being Martha and the other being a bag containing a jarred dead rat, used in a U.S. bioweapons project. Perhaps Martha will receive a mini-story arc later on in the series, but odds are, given the ongoing threat posed to the Soviet Union by American bioweapons research, Philip and Elizabeth will have to deal with that problem again.

But back home, the mood is cheerful, thanks to their son, Henry, who's looking forward to an upcoming TV special featuring '80s magician David Copperfield, who's promising to make the State of Liberty disappear.

Henry (Keidrich Sellati) is happy to learn his weekend-disappearing father is going to be spending more time around the house. The travel agency his parents run has lost a major client. Sister Paige (Holly Taylor) knows that's a euphemism for something happening in her parents' real jobs.

Although Philip will now be spending a little more time at home, he's emotionally wrecked by all that transpired with Martha. He even pays a visit in disguise to a grave near that of the FBI office worker he had to kill in order to try to protect Martha.

But back home, he's reading a book on the '80s self-help, cultish movement called Est, and being uncommunicative with his wife.

Fine, if Philip's not talking out his problems, she'll go see Tender Mercies with fun-filled Young-Hee. Young-Hee confesses that she likes spending time with her Mary Kay salesperson friend, but that since the cosmetics company primes its employees to recruit more agents and thus make a percentage of that recruit's sales, Young-Hee (Ruthie Ann Miles) feels guilty for seemingly taking advantage of her friend.

Elizabeth assures her that Young-Hee's not exactly making much money off her and their friendship is very safe. That detail worked out, the two sneak into a showing of The Outsiders. Whatever the long game is between Elizabeth and Young-Hee, their friendship appears to be genuine.

Elizabeth is trying to understand what her husband is going through, so she attends an Est seminar, which she correctly sees as an operation designed to spark emotional insight along with ever-frequent extractions of the participant's money. At least with Mary Kay, there's cosmetics to go with the exhortations to find more recruits.

While Elizabeth is gathering intel on her husband's state of mind, he's receiving a visit from neighbor Stan, who's underslept and feeling bummed out.

Turns out Stan's been experiencing "a disaster at work" since an unspecified person turned out to be a double agent, for which there's not enough beer in the world to make him feel better. Even so, he gifts himself with a six pack of Philip's beer as he leaves. The news confirms Philip's hunch that Martha had needed to be extracted, after all.

Alone, the couple discusses Martha, but Elizabeth makes the mistake of describing the woman as being nice and uncomplicated. Simple, in other words. Philip defends her, saying, "Martha was very complicated," but thankfully Henry comes home before the bickering can reach ballistic levels.

Gabriel then takes a crack at managing Philip's emotional state by giving him a piece of welcome news: Philip's son is finally back home in the Soviet Union from serving a tour in Afghanistan.

"He's okay," Gabriel says. "Who knows, maybe what you got from Breland [another mission of Philip's] helped him survive."

Philip's son is the product of an adolescent relationship he had with a fellow spy trainee in Moscow, one he knew nothing about until he encountered his ex-lover during a mission.

The news about Philip's son doesn't quite do the trick of lifting his mood. He tries to talk Gabriel into letting him contact Martha's parents to let them know she's safe, but Gabriel points out this is something the Centre simply won't allow. The risk of exposure for Philip is too great.

Over at the Soviet embassy, operative Tatiana, who lined up the pilot to take both Martha and the pathogen sample off U.S. soil, can't rejoice in a job well done.

As she tells fellow agent, Oleg, she's learned that her brother has been called up to serve in Afghanistan, "He can't breathe a word but he thinks they're going to Herat. Oh, but you're the last person I should be crying to."

They clasp hands in mutual sympathy, for Oleg has recently lost his brother to the war. Herat saw much action during the war, for it proved to be a major stronghold of the U.S.-backed opposition.

After all the stress Gabriel has endured as of late-narrowly avoiding dying from exposure to a U.S. military pathogen as well as Philip and Elizabeth's ongoing sturm und drang-Gabriel needs his own kind of counseling by way of a visit with former handler Claudia, played by the estimable Margo Martindale.

"They're like children," he says, adding, "They say goodbye to their agent and they think it's the end of the world."

Claudia offers cold comfort. "Your officers are listening to you, boo hoo. Whose fault is it-it's the world. We don't have the answer. You think there's someone in the wings. There isn't." So much for bucking up the troops, Claudia.

In the next scene, Elizabeth tries again to make headway with her morose husband. Referring to Est, "You're not getting anything out of it, not really. You're not sleeping...it happens, Philip. We lose agents. That is what she was."

"She's a human being," he says petulantly.

Her temper flares. "At least you didn't have to send her out into the street to get mowed down." She's referring to her one-time lover, Gregory, an African-American dissident who sacrificed himself in order to protect her identity."

Philip and Elizabeth exchange torpedoes at close range. Philip fears he's the man she's stuck with over the lamented Gregory.

Elizabeth lashes back, "I'm stuck with you because I took you back, after you lied about sleeping with a woman you had a son with, and you lied to my face about it."

Boom. Elizabeth's feelings are still at a high-water mark later, when in a one-on-one confrontation with Paige, who's reluctant to keep pretending an interest in Pastor Tim's church, Elizabeth lays down the rules. "You may not be able to control what you feel, but you can control what you do."

Paige is to keep attending the church youth group, services and maintaining contact with Pastor Tim, for "that is all that's standing between our family and total ruin."

The last thing Elizabeth needs is to deal with another difficult situation, but that's what she gets in a visit with the aforementioned Lisa (Karen Pittman), she of the intel about a U.S. military plane and the toxic combo of alcohol and spousal abuse.

Lisa is unstable. Amply displayed when Elizabeth visits the woman's house. It's a mess, as is Lisa, who's on a bender and disturbed by her husband taking their money and leaving for Florida with a mistress. Lisa's also unhappy about the fact that the money came by way of Jack (Philip), who's the spy Lisa thinks both she and Elizabeth are working for.

Lisa demands Elizabeth join her in giving themselves up to the police. When Elizabeth tries to talk her out of it, Lisa makes it clear she'll do it anyway with the implied threat that nothing can stop her from doing so.

When Lisa turns her back, Elizabeth strikes her with a vodka bottle. Lisa is down but not entirely out. We see Elizabeth from beyond the blinds of the living room as she bends down to presumably finish the job.

Coldly speaking, Elizabeth had no choice in her action if she wanted to avoid exposure of the operation, yet Lisa had been a bad choice by the Centre all along.

When Elizabeth arrives at the safe house, it's abundantly clear to both Gabriel and Philip how devastated she feels. With spare words, she reveals what happens. A fragment of the broken bottle has left a gash on the side of Elizabeth's neck, to which Philip immediately attends. Despite the harsh words throw back and forth earlier, they still cling to one another for comfort.

Gabriel sympathetically gauges his worn-down charges. "Things have to change. I'm going to talk to the Centre and have them ease up on you. You'll continue with the two missions you already have, but other than that, you'll get a break. It'll be the closest you've ever been to a vacation."

Elizabeth says wanly to her husband, "You know what we should? Take our kids to Epcot." She's referring to the trip aborted episodes earlier.

Back home, when they arrive, Henry and Paige are watching David Copperfield's sleight of video magic to supposedly make the Statue of Liberty disappear then reappear. Martha has disappeared from FBI surveillance and Lisa will no longer pose a threat. And maybe, just maybe, Philip and Elizabeth can catch a break.

Suddenly, the episode jumps ahead seven months and we see Paige playing miniature golf with Pastor Tim and his pregnant wife. All seems well, but when she returns home, where her family is happily wrapping up a round of yard hockey, she gives her usual report once Henry is out of hearing.

Her parents may be taking it easy, job-wise, but Paige is on duty. She rattles off unenthusiastically details of her ongoing mission of keeping Pastor Tim under surveillance and less likely to reveal her parents' true identity.

Meanwhile, agent Stan visits with the disgraced and ousted Gaad [over Martha's betrayal]. Gaad tells Stan to continue his interactions with Soviet Oleg.

"You can't lose sight of who these people are," Gaad says. Advice useful for all concerned in this series, Soviet and Americans alike.

For more political and familial intrigue, visit The Americans next week.

Due to an oversight PW failed to print three recent reviews of the above named TV program. This is one of those reviews. Fans are now caught up! We apologize for the delay. "The Americans": How do you solve a Problem like Martha? "The Americans": Nowhere to run, someplace to hide?

Photo: Keidrich Sellati as Henry Jennings.

"The Americans": Nowhere to run, someplace to hide?

Wed, 11 May 2016 13:56:00 +0000

Last week, poor Martha, human pawn, decided to make her own move for a change. Under suspicion by FBI agents who think their longtime assistant may be leaking secrets to the Soviets, Martha has been rescued by her husband, Clark.

Except that we know Clark is actually Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), Soviet illegal, who already has a wife, fellow spy Elizabeth (Keri Russell). Martha has indeed been helping Clark/Philip steal information about FBI surveillance of U.S. military researchers, among other things.

When Philip has to go meet up with a researcher working on bioweapons, Martha freaks. Handler Gabriel (Frank Langella), weakened by the aftereffects of his exposure to one of those weapons, is unable to stop Martha from fleeing.

She's in the wind with no apparent clue as to where to go. When this week's episode begins, only forty minutes have passed when Philip and a disguised Elizabeth return to the safe house.

Philip drops off the jarred specimen of a rat killed by military-grade tularemia-which Gabriel places in the fridge with distaste-then they quickly work out a plan on how to find Martha. Gabriel points out Philip is the "husband" so he ought to have some ideas on where she might have gone.

Okay fine, he does remember a few places, all the while with Elizabeth, his real wife, standing next to him possibly thinking this is a part of Philip's life she'd rather not know about, even if she's a total pro and understands he isn't, technically speaking, being unfaithful. It's a job, that's all, yet Philip feels a powerful sense of guilt and responsibility for recruiting Martha. She's more than merely an asset, but what does Philip really feel about Martha?

After Philip drops off Elizabeth for her to use another car, he goes to the switchboard operator's place to hopefully receive a call from Martha and to map out places she might have gone on foot. The operator is an undercover Soviet-in-place, a borscht-making woman who handles equipment that can route calls from hacked phones. This '80s-era advanced tech underscores the limits of what Philip and his crew are able to do. He can't go wandering the streets, cell phone in hand, but this also helps out Martha (Alison Wright), for the FBI, despite its many agents on the street, have the same limitation.

Martha has indeed taken off for a familiar park, but not one Philip immediately remembers. Tortured by self-doubt and fear, she wants to see Clark, but knows now her old life is irretrievably gone.

Out to retrieve her are agents Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) and Dennis Aderholt (Brandon Dirden), who are leading a systemic ransacking of Martha's apartment, searching for clues as to her secret life and whereabouts.

The team is thorough: melting ice cubes, taking apart wall sockets and unthreading a package of tampons as they search in vain for anything that might hint to her private life. Supervisor Gaad (Richard Thomas) stares forlornly through the window, as if he'd been jilted by Martha. There's no hint he and Martha ever had a sexual relationship, yet her job as an assistant [back then called a secretary] made her indispensable to him. Indispensable, reliable, thought of as being hardly more than a sentient sock puppet, and thus the betrayal hits him hard.

Gaad's professional life is over, and he knows it. No one in FBI counter-intelligence could possibly keep their job with that gaffe on their resume. Even so, he stands up for agent Beeman when he rejects their superior's order to blackmail Soviet embassy official Oleg.

Oleg, you may recall, had tried to get Beeman to cut a deal for double-traitor Nina to remain in the U.S. Beeman refused, but Oleg had kept a back-channel going with Beeman. Both were gutted to learn of Nina's execution in Siberia.

Beeman may not be able to figure out his suburban neighbors, Philip and Elizabeth, are spies, but he does know in his gut that Oleg won't roll over for anyone.

The subject of their conversation, Oleg (Costas Ronin), is informed by his boss, Arkady, of their need to prepare for the evacuation of an asset out of the country. Coworker Tatiana (Vera Cherny), who's been handling a mysterious-to Oleg-project tracking U.S. bioweapons, works out with Oleg the logistics.

A small plane will fly under radar down to Florida, where the asset will board a boat to Cuba. From there, a flight to Prague, and then to the Soviet Union. Historically, the Soviets took care of their native assets when possible. Execution is the last option, but Gabriel regretfully points out to Philip and Elizabeth that if Martha looks like she's going rogue, they'll have to do just that.

Philip, while despondent and unable to eat the switchboard operator's no doubt excellent borscht, continues to search through his memory and study the map. Where could she be?

She's at one of her favorite parks, on the payphone to her aged parents. "I'm in trouble, so much trouble," she tells them. "It's not working...no matter what you hear...I love you."

With that, she hangs up, but her conversation has been picked up by the FBI. Once the location is ID'd, off go Beeman and Aderholt.

Atop a tall bridge, Martha stares down at the river rocks below. Suicide? Not today. She moves on. Time to make a call to the number Clark had given her.

Philip with relief answers. He apologizes profusely for leaving the safe house when she needed him. Learning where she's at, he relays the details to the switchboard operator and off he goes. Moments later, Elizabeth calls in with her scheduled check-in.

Now all the principals know in a general sense where she's at, but thankfully Beeman and Aderholt are still behind the curve. They check out the bridge and the rocks below. No sign of Martha.

Elizabeth arrives first. Martha is sitting on a park bench close by the phone. Elizabeth approaches Martha carefully. She's in the disguise of being Clark's sister, but Martha learned last episode that Clark's sister is another agent. Elizabeth's hand is in her pocket, wrapped around a gun.

She bluntly asks, "Are you Clark's wife?" Elizabeth says no. Martha's panic is escalating. She's not about to leave the park with this woman, so Elizabeth punches the breath out of Martha.

The quite lethal weapon known as Elizabeth has decided not to off Martha although that's probably an option still on the table.

As Elizabeth with visible effort keeps Martha on her feet she says with surprising softness, "There's nowhere to go, they know who you are. They'll arrest Clark, his life will be over. Do as I say and you'll live, you'll live."

Martha in tears and pain, accepts the inevitability of what happens next, and walks away with her.

Back at the Soviet embassy's spy center, Oleg tells Tatiana he can't get a hold of his pilot, but Tatiana tells him no problem. "I needed one for another operation; figured he'd be backup for this. We'll use him instead."

Oleg says okay, basically, but his eyes land on the mysterious folder Tatiana has kept in her possession. He wishes he knew what she was up to. He's ambitious, curious, and as agent Beeman well knows, a man possessed of a sense of adventure. Oleg may eventually figure out that the Centre is trying to uncover America's deadly bioweapon secrets. At the moment, however, all that matters is Martha's getaway plane and pilot are ready to take off.

A relieved Philip arrives at the safe house where Elizabeth tells him she didn't break any bones in apprehending Martha.

He goes in to check on Martha, who assures him it's just a bruise. Martha asks, "What's your name?"

"Philip." Oh, super spy, such a bad move, giving away your cover identity like that.

"No, the name you were born with," she counters.

Philip compounds his error by admitting his real name is Mikhail, Mischa to his family. A double fault, enough for him to lose everything if she were to fall into enemy hands.

Does this mean he truly loves Martha? He steps out of the bedroom to fetch some ice for Martha's bruise.

Elizabeth in a fumbling manner asks, "If our kids were grown...if it were possible, would you go with her?" She's offering Philip a way out.

Philip, who's been more about nonverbal expression of commitment to Elizabeth, responds emotionally, "I love you."

They kiss and hold one another. Their commitment to one another is total. Elizabeth would even let her husband leave if necessary, but his refusal to even consider it means that Martha cannot expect Clark/Philip/Mischa to accompany her into exile. Elizabeth gently tells him to spend the night with Martha, for the real American needs his company.

Martha is devastated to learn that Clark/Philip/Mischa won't be leaving with her. He promises that her parents will receive a message telling them she's alright, and as for her reception in the Soviet Union, "They'll take good care of you, they'll treat you with respect and honor. They know your sacrifice."

This part has a historical basis in fact. The occasional nutjob like Lee Harvey Oswald aside, many remained in the Soviet bloc.

Possible future honors aside, Martha knows her past choices have led to an irrevocable conclusion: her life as it exists is over. A new one awaits.

Her team of Philip, Elizabeth, Gabriel, Oleg, Arkady, Tatiana, and the mysterious pilot want to make that new life happen.

The FBI, on the other hand, will use all the means at its disposal to track down and capture Martha. She is an assistant, a secretary, a dupe, an asset, a wife, a woman who has faced up to her actions and in the next episode likely will face the consequences.

Will she escape or will she be captured, will she live or will she die? Find out in the next episode of The Americans.

Photo: Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys .

Due to an oversight PW failed to print three recent reviews of the above named TV program. This is one of those reviews. Fans can now catch up! We apologize for the delay. -- Editors

"The Americans": How do you solve a problem like Martha?

Wed, 11 May 2016 13:47:00 +0000

FBI assistant Martha has had the word "poor" attached to her name by reviewers ever since her introduction on The Americans.

As in: poor Martha (Alison Wright) is seduced by Soviet operative Philip, who she believes is an internal affairs officer named Clark. She skives off with FBI documents on Clark's behest. Poor Martha, who winds up getting married to Clark, then when Philip takes off his disguise, realizes there's more to Clark's cover story than she thought.

In this episode, poor Martha experiences one unpleasant surprise after another, but her workday at least starts out the usual way. She's carrying out her duties, not a handcuff in sight.

But FBI agents Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) and Dennis Aderholt are mulling over the details of Martha's background, for both of them think she may have leaked sensitive information.

A lowly secretary in their estimation, even her elevation to possible secret-passer doesn't spare her their stereotypical thinking. An early engagement broken off, an abortion-Beeman disapproves of her committing an illegal act-probably lonely and for certain has a married boyfriend she won't talk about.

That's a profile they can believe in: a weak, simple old maid. Aderholt (Brandon Dirden) at least throws her a bone. "She's kind of sexy," he observes. Given how many men have done the bidding of those they loved, the agents' musings reflects the sexist atmosphere in which they worked.

Time to check out the love nest where the agents know Martha met up with Clark. The landlord's signed lease with Clark gives them a name to go on but the apartment itself is barren of personal effects, even of phone message tapes.

Elsewhere, Philip meets up with military bioweapons researcher William, who we learned last episode is a deep-cover Soviet mole, as in twenty-five years of service. Neither of them are thrilled with the Centre's continued request for pathogen samples. Being that the last try almost killed Philip's handler, Gabriel, it's a sore subject all around.

William (Dylan Baker) doubts he can obtain another sample of glanders, but one of tularemia could be had. He tells Philip, "It's easily weaponized. Nasty stuff." The U.S. military conducted tests with weaponized tularemia in 1966-67 in Alaska. Nasty stuff, definitely.

Shop talk over, William asks how it's going with Philip's unnamed female asset, for during his recent quarantine experience with Philip, the pair found some common ground despite William's acerbic personality. Philip admits he wants to ex-filtrate the asset but the Centre thinks there's no danger and wants to keep her in place at the FBI.

"It eats you up, what we do," William says. "Our bosses don't know what they're doing."

"She trusts me."

"Yeah, it's always a problem." William brusquely leaves. So much for a bonding moment.

Returning to Beeman and Aderholt, their investigation isn't decisive but it's more than enough to show to their boss, Gaad. He is dumbfounded by their revelation, yet after some thought, he realizes Martha had been the logical suspect all along. Stunned and embarrassed, he admits, "She had access to everything."

The logical next step is to pick up Martha for interrogation, which in this pre-9/11 era probably wouldn't have involved waterboarding. Still, such a grueling experience might impel her to give a dead-on description of Philip.

As for Philip, he's not content with Gabriel and Elizabeth's assurances. He takes Martha to the safe house.

Despite his wife, Elizabeth's, assurance that Martha is okay and probably not under suspicion, Philip goes with his gut instinct and takes Martha to the safe house, where she's on hand when Gabriel arrives for a scheduled meet-up.

As Martha makes tea, Gabriel takes Philip aside and quietly says, "We can fix this. Have Martha return to work."

Philip takes off his Clark disguise and admits that Martha has seen the real him. Gabriel is disapproving, and when a disguised Elizabeth arrives later, she's just as unhappy. For all the times she and her husband have bedded other people in the course of their work, they've worn various wigs and identities.

Yet at the end of the assignment, they returned to each other's arms in (usually) complete honesty. Besides being a security breach, Philip's mistake with Martha is also a kind of betrayal of Elizabeth.

When a guilt-ridden Philip turns down Elizabeth's attempt to take a shift at the house, it is clear that although she is still the complete professional, she really would like to give Philip a piece of her mind.

In the privacy of Martha's bedroom, Philip gently tries to explain to his asset turned quasi-wife she can never return home again. As to her question about Elizabeth, he answers, "We've worked together for a long time."

"For who?"

"The KGB," he says.

She probably had her suspicions, but cries at their confirmation. Philip assures her she'll never have to do anything ever again, and everything is going to be okay.

Half in panic, half in desperation, she throws herself on her lover and he obliges for what may well be the last time.

The next morning, with Martha still asleep, Gabriel tells Philip he's received an emergency signal from William, and Philip is needed to go make a pick-up.

"There's always some reason," Philip says distractedly.

Gabriel, who is still fragile from his near-lethal bout with glanders, counters him sharply. "There's not just some reason. If they target our nuclear capacity and take it out with a first strike, we'll have nothing to defend ourselves with. I've been there, during the war, when we were defenseless."

The Soviet Union had a long history of being attacked, and not only during the high-casualty German invasion of World War II, but also the 1919-20 invasion by several Western powers, including the United States.

Sometimes, a nation's particular paranoia is well justified, and so Philip, after he slips Martha's gun out of her purse for safekeeping, goes off to meet with William near the shipyard.

Of all things, William presents Philip with a dead rat in a jar, explaining that he was the only way he could get a sample, by taking it from the dissection room.

William immediately asks Philip about Martha. When he hears that Philip was the one who decided to bring her in, he says he is impressed, adding, "When Eliza, my wife, was sent back [to the Soviet Union], I didn't fight back. I wanted to, but I didn't."

Back at the house, Martha's awake, realizes her gun is missing and most importantly, learns her husband, Clark, is mysteriously gone. She immediately gets dressed and has it out with Gabriel. She doesn't believe Gabriel's assurance that her husband will soon be back.

Gabriel is in no shape to stop her, and even if he were, she warns in a stage whisper, "Try anything, I'll scream and everyone will know you're KGB."

She walks off down the sidewalk, probably not knowing which way to go or what to do. Running out of options, and quite possibly out of time.

Will Martha survive next week's episode? Tune in next episode for The Americans.

Photo: Alison Wright as Martha Hanson

Due to an oversight PW failed to print three recent reviews of the above named TV program. This is one of those reviews. Fans can now catch up! We apologize for the delay. -- Editors

Online protest against Hollywood whitewashing of Asian roles sparks diversity discussion

Tue, 10 May 2016 16:49:00 +0000

There are plenty of Hollywood movies causing a stir right now with eager fans looking forward to all the upcoming releases. But some films are making the news not because of their fans' anticipation; rather, it is the anger and frustration of moviegoers over casting choices that's garnering headlines. The live action adaptations of the popular anime Ghost in the Shell and the comic book Doctor Strange are at the center of a controversy over race and casting decisions.

Both films have cast white actors in key roles that originally had Asian origins. The decisions by the studios producing the films to not hire Asian actors to play popular characters has resulted in a backlash from many in the Asian community and others who feel the castings are yet another example of Hollywood whitewashing. Likewise, it is seen as the latest episode of Hollywood's continued lack of racial diversity.

With recent movies such as The Last Airbender (2010), The Lone Ranger remake (2013), Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), and Gods of Egypt (2015), and a slew of others, Hollywood is no stranger in casting white actors in roles originally designated for people of color.

The viral twitter trend #whitewashedOUT burst onto the virtual scene following weeks of intense debate regarding white actresses Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton both being cast as characters of Asian origin. Johansson was cast as the lead in Ghost in the Shell, despite the fact that the original character, Kusanagi, of the popular manga and anime, is Japanese. Swinton, meanwhile, will be playing "The Ancient One" in the upcoming Doctor Strange movie, despite the fact that the character is Asian in the comic books of the same name. Marvel Studios, the production company for Doctor Strange, attempted to justify Tilda's casting by declaring that Swinton's character in the film will now be "Celtic" and no longer Asian. While Hollywood insider and veteran screenwriter Max Landis tried to claim the reason Johansson was cast is because there are no "A-list female Asian celebrities" to help make a large profit. Even with these justifications, Asian-American entertainers and others have spoken out condemning the castings.

The hashtag protest had many participants, including The Nerds of Color founder Keith Chow, YA (young adult) author Ellen Oh, comedian Hari Kondabolu, and others who wanted to bring attention to biased Hollywood casting practices and what they deem to be a persistent defaulting to white characters' plots as the center of films and television narratives.

"The whole idea of being whitewashed goes beyond just Asian characters being played by white people. It's the idea of centering whiteness in every story," Chow recently told the press. "Whiteness to them is 'colorblind.' Everyone can project themselves onto a white guy."

Famed Star Trek actor George Takei blasted Marvel's excuse of Swinton being good for sales by stating on Facebook, "Let me get this straight... You cast a white actress so you wouldn't hurt sales ... in Asia? This back-pedaling is nearly as cringeworthy as the casting. Marvel must think we're all idiots." Takei went on to write, "All the arguments in the world don't change the fact that Hollywood offers very few roles to Asian actors, and when one comes along, they hire a white actor to do it, for whatever the reasons... Until that mindset can change, and the studios do something to stop this practice I will continue to speak out."

Takei isn't the only Asian American in the industry taking a stand. Samson Syharath, an actor and producing Ensemble Member of Theatre Diaspora, spoke with People's World regarding the controversy. Syharath said the scandal would help bring about a much-needed discussion. "The more discussion happening, the more knowledgeable everyone becomes about the matter [the better]. Doctor Strange and Ghost in the Shell is a form of Hollywood Whitewashing. As an actor of color, it is difficult enough to get a substantial role. Most of the roles I get called in for are stereotypical or 'sidekick' roles," he explained. "The visibility of people of color in media has a direct effect on public perception. If there is not a diverse pool of relatable characters on television and film, there is a subconscious exclusion. It is set in everyone's mind that people who look a certain way are "the other."

To the topic of there being no A-List Asian American actors, Syharath went on to add, "How can Asian actors become known without being cast in major roles? Every actor needs to start somewhere, and without the opportunity to have that big break, actors of color are not given the chance to be recognized. They also say that white audiences won't relate to characters of color. I believe people will relate to the humanity of the characters. It's not about the color of their skin."

Lily Tung Crystal is an actress who has performed in San Francisco, New York, and Shanghai. She is the founder of Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company, as well as the Asian American Actors Collective. Tung expressed to People's World that "there is a huge lack of opportunity for Asian actors in the entertainment industry," and cited how a 2014 Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film in San Diego reported that nearly three-quarters of all female characters in film were described as white and that moviegoers were as likely to see a non-human or "alien" female as they were to see an Asian female character.

Tung went on: "Casting Caucasian actors in Asian roles is not only problematic because white people are embodying Asian bodies, but because there are so few employment opportunities for actors of color. When Caucasian actors take those Asian roles, it limits even more the already small number of roles that are available. Many people say there should be color-blind casting... In a perfect world where there were true equity, that may be true. But the fact is that while Caucasian actors play roles that were originally minority roles, the opposite is almost never true. To make matters worse, non-racially specific roles are almost always with Caucasian actors, as if Caucasian were the default race."

Tung is also about looking for a solution, but notes that it's a "complicated problem." "Producers need to stop reacting to unfounded financial fears" by casting exclusively white actors, according to Tung. She added that directors frequently complain that there aren't any good actors from Asian American and Latino backgrounds, but says that is "simply untrue. Those people are out there, it just might take more time and energy to find them." Syharath believes the answer lies in Hollywood taking a page from the success of Broadway and theatre when it comes to diversity. "Theatre companies are finally reaching out to artists of color. Broadway is thriving with shows such as Hamilton, Allegiance, and The Color Purple. Hollywood should follow suit and celebrate diversity."

Tung believes we need to stop calling it "diversity casting" and start calling it "reality casting. "It's not just diversity anymore, it's reality - the reality that our neighborhoods comprise people of all races, cultures and backgrounds, and that theatre, film and TV should represent that reality."

Photo: On left a photo of actress Scarlett Johansson in a promotional picture from the movie Ghost in the Shell, on right a photo from the anime Ghost in the Shell. In center a tweet from the online protest #whitewashedOut. AP

"Great Scott" in San Diego: Opera is dead! Long live opera!

Tue, 10 May 2016 15:00:00 +0000

SAN DIEGO - Composer Jake Heggie is the darling of American opera. His career began in San Francisco in 2000 with the powerful and often mounted Dead Man Walking, set to Terrence McNally's libretto and staring the beloved mezzo soprano Frederica von Stade. Other works for which he's known include Moby-Dick, Three Decembers, The End of the Affair, Out of Darkness, and the forthcoming It's a Wonderful Life.

McNally, a Broadway playwright of legendary accomplishments, re-entered Heggie's orbit with his original libretto to the new Great Scott, receiving its West Coast premiere here. Jack O'Brien, an equally starry stage director, joined the team early on, a rare instance of teamwork where the director got involved in the actual creation of the work from the onset.

For centuries audiences and critics have cringed at the laughable plots inflicted on them in the opera house. Let's face it, as anthropologists and literary scholars have told us, there are really only a very few basic stories to be told. So librettists have given themselves hernias inventing the most preposterous situations and human relationships (and don't forget the gods and cupids) to justify the need to fill seats each season with new works to delight the ear and eye. Plots also incorporated new stagecraft technology emerging in every generation.

Great Scott is a grand modern send-up of every imaginable operatic cliché and tradition. It premiered only last October in Dallas. Those who hate opera for all the right reasons who nevertheless find themselves in the audience will chuckle at the willingness of the creators to poke sticks at themselves and all the other denizens of this specialized world of peculiarly talented and opinionated folk. The faithful opera lovers in the crowd will be vastly entertained by the cascade of in-jokes and musical-historical references that spice up both the book and the score in practically every measure. It's a hoot and a half, held together magnificently by conductor Joseph Mechavich.

Basic premise is: World-renowned diva Arden Scott (Kate Aldrich) returns to her Texas hometown, recruited by Winnie Flato (Frederica von Stade), doyenne of the American Opera and Arden's early music teacher and muse, to present the world premiere of a never performed 1835 confection of silly plot and gorgeous music in the then-dominant bel canto style by the (fictitious) composer Vittorio Bazzetti. Rosa Dolorosa, Figlia di Pompei can only summon up memories of Gilda Radner's inane character Roseanne Roseannadanna on Saturday Night Live. Some idiot, however, has obliviously scheduled opening night at the same time as the Super Bowl, where the hometown Grizzlies have divided the attention away from Ms. Scott's appearance.

The opera star meets her foil in the new up-and-coming soprano Tatyana Bakst (Joyce El-Khoury), from some post-Soviet land, who is in love with the U.S. of A. and seeks to conquer hearts and souls in her quest for fame and fortune. She and her busy off-stage agent are also conspiring to steal all of Arden Scott's big roles from her.

Among the cast we also have the baritone Wendell Swann (Michael Mayes) who, in another swipe at one of contemporary opera's bag of tricks, appears half-naked to show off his hunky torso; and the girthy tenor Anthony Candolino (Garrett Sorenson); the aging gay conductor Eric Gold (bass-baritone Philip Skinner, who also reappears in the second act as Bazzetti's ghost); the campy stage manager Roane Heckle (countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo); and the diva's old lover Sid Taylor (Nathan Gunn), now a successful architect committed to redesigning their hometown. Sid, now divorced, as is Arden Scott, has an adorable little son Tommy (Ezra Dewey), who has a single spoken line in the bel canto opera, a child's warning that Vesuvius is about to explode.

Satirizing foibles and conventions

Great Scott draws on a rich tradition of composers writing about their own art. Structurally it has much in common with the two-act Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss, which opens backstage before the performance of a new opera with a sublime classical subject, and then in act two proceeds with the opera interrupta by unexpected goings-on emanating from the mundane everyday world. In his late opera Capriccio Strauss also addressed the delicate dance between music and words that has gone on perpetually since the dawn of art. Mozart himself, in the short chamber piece The Impresario, satirized the foibles and conventions of the opera world of his day.

Each of these characters has their moments of glory. Among the most luscious - and ludicrous too, but of course that's why we go into the theater carrying our suspension of disbelief - are the excerpts from "Bazzetti's" opera, giving the Scott role many opportunities for rich, molten chocolate vocalism. There's also a highpoint with the peripatetic opera stars playing the game "I Can't Possibly," where in quick repartee they have to use some marginally appropriate verb meaning "to sing" with a role and city, e.g., "I'm trilling Traviata in Toronto." They romp through the whole alphabet from A to Z on a whirlwind joyride for any opera fan.

The countertenor Roane (this unusual voice type has made a huge comeback in modern opera and there are quite a few excellent ones around) has a wonderful scene playing off the bel canto-loving conductor Eric in which he defends the new, the future, the sounds we have never heard, as opposed to revivals of old "shit" (yes, that esoteric musicological term is used more than once). He accompanies his argument with the latest in hip-hop gestures. "Opera isn't new," he grouses. "It's over."

And the upstart La Bakst is not too proud - as La Scott was - to open the Super Bowl with the national anthem, seeing this as a brilliant occasion at which she can introduce her talents to the American people. Our culture has undergone some serious self-examination surrounding the anthem, with ear-splitting butcherings from Roseanne Barr to jazz- and pop-inflections by any number of Black artists, and a Spanish-language version, all of which have offended certain über-patriotic elements among us. Bakst's foreign-accented, way over-the-top operatic embellishment, backed by a four-man crew of doo-wopping highway patrolmen and barely even recognizable amongst all the trills and decorations, has to be one of opera's funniest moments ever.

No one dies

Great Scott is definitely comedic - no one dies. But along the way we do get serious reflections on the nature of art, on risk-taking as a critical element in any worthy endeavor, on the evanescence of love, life and careers, on the empty feeling of fame, on the often underappreciated invisible workers, and on the conflict over civic values such as sports vs. culture.

Arden says she wants to "matter" to someone, and in a work that's so full of wordplay it's not hard to deduce that she wants to be a "mater" (that is, a mate and a mother) to someone - and there are little Tommy and his steady, loyal dad Sid waiting for her to make that commitment. The casting of Nathan Gunn as Sid, one of the biggest names in opera today, was a luxury boon to this production, as it's actually not that big a role. He may not turn out to be such a catch, however; in his big scene with Arden he acts like quite the self-important cad.

SDO may be the only major American company to provide the plot synopsis in the printed program in both English and Spanish. The eighth-largest city in the U.S. sits just a few short miles from the Mexican border. That program publishes the company's Mission Statement ("...to deliver...accessible programs to diverse audiences..."), Vision Statement ("...promoting diversified programming...") and Core Values Statement ("...new models of opera...deep commitment to the community...nimble adaptation to the changing marketplace...community involvement coupled with relevant programming will build the audience of the future."

Yet on-stage the cast and chorus looked extremely pale, with a paucity of color barely excusable in this day and age. Only three (white) principal singers from the Dallas production were re-hired for SDO, leaving the field wide open for the diversity SDO aspires to. It's not just "politically correct," it's socially responsible.

Some Ph.D. candidate one day will write a scholarly dissertation on all the musicological references and jokes in the highly self-referential opera-within-an-opera Great Scott, but you don't need to be an aficionado to enjoy it. It works on enough different levels simultaneously to entertain, delight, and inspire.

Great Scott will have a radio broadcast on Sat., May 14 at 8 pm on KPBS radio, 89.5 FM (97.7 FM Calexico ) and online at www.kpbs.org.

Remaining performances are Tues., May 10 and Fri., May 13 at 7 pm, and Sun., May 15 at 2 pm.

Tickets can be purchased by calling (619) 533-7000 or online at www.sdopera.org.

A 30-minute informative pre-opera lecture takes place in the Civic Theatre one hour prior to every performance, free to all ticket holders.

The San Diego Civic Theatre is located at 1100 Third Avenue @ B Street, Downtown San Diego.

Photo: A scene from San Diego Opera's Great Scott, 2016. Karen Almond.