Prairie Home Companion at Town Hall - April 11, 2008

Tonight Alison and I saw Garrison Keillor present his public radio variety show live (though not broadcast) at Town Hall. The show had all the energy of the radio broadcast but with stronger degree of intimacy and some local Brooklyn flavor. In addition to the usual suspects on the show Keillor brought three Brooklynites including Raul Melo, a tenor covering the role of Rodolfo in the Met’s production of La Boheme. He also had Chris Thile, formerly of Nickel Creek and now of Punch Brothers, sitting in with the “house” band on a fierce and crisp mandolin. He also had Nelly McKay who had several numbers go over very well with the audience, especially her first “Vote for Mr. Rhythm” and her last “Do the Zombie” though perhaps she was featured a little too heavily. Guy Noir’s story was about him spending a few weeks in New York as a “surrogate,” standing in line for very busy New Yorkers, and almost getting cast as Emily Dickinson in a Broadway musical “Stop for Death” which his competition for the role said they “fleshed out” and turned into four acts.

Tales from Lake Wobegon covered what repressed Lutherans do when they get snowed in (stock up on carbs and fats, go to school in 8 feet of snow, keep old toothless women named Cooter in their houses, and relay their true feelings and opinions on the craigslist-esque zipzone.com). All in all a wonderful 2 and a half hours. Live broadcast from Town Hall tomorrow though I believe it’s sold out. Another Friday/Saturday run next week with Robin Williams.

[Update: I was pleased to see that Richard Dworsky was the leader of The Guy's All Star Shoe Band (Keillor's regular band. I was first introduced to Dworsky when reading the liner notes to the album by his sister, Sally Dworsky on which he played the piano accompaniment. I had first heard her perform "Red, Red, Robin" on PHC a year or two ago. Her presence there is now explained.]

[Update 2:  The show was linked together with the theme of love.  Raul Melo stole the show with his arias from La Boheme and especially Romeo and Juliet.  Garrison Keillor sang a number of love song duets with "sonnets" (Alison pointed out that they were definitely more than the appropriate 14 lines) interspersed through out them.  That alternation he does between stories and song (or in this case poems and song) was, as always, incredibly effective.  It was a nice melding of the theme of love in springtime and national poetry month.]

Neither Here Nor There

Jared, a friend and teacher, has an amazing gig working one-on-one with a student in Abu Dhabi.  He periodically sends transmissions of his experiences there.  Below are a few paragraphs that I found to be particularly enjoyable:

Speaking of driving, I had my first experience behind the wheel when Andrea and I took our trip to Oman, and I must say it was far less harrowing than I had expected, though the fact that we rented a car at the airport, which is half an hour out of town, limited the amount of city driving we had to do and kept us away from most of the automotive lunatic fringe I mentioned in my last email. What I did find interesting about the trip was the border crossing. In order to get to our hotel, we had to enter Oman, but we didn’t cross a legitimate border checkpoint and as a result did not have to have our passports stamped or show any form of identification. Instead what we got was a dude in camo gear with a machine gun standing in the middle of the road and basically waving as motorists immigrated and emigrated in front of him. I don’t think he would have even stopped me had I not rolled my window down in the expectation that he would demand some sort of ID from me. Quite to the contrary, we had a short and pleasant conversation that tested the limits of my current mastery of Arabic (”Hi, how are you? I’m good”) and then he asked me (in English) where I was from and told me how to get to the hotel. Apparently the Omanis are not very discriminating about who they let into their country. The experience reminded me of my stint in south Texas when I would frequently cross over into Mexico and back. Upon returning to the states, I was always subjected to the most thorough of inquisitions by the border patrol: “Are you an American citizen? Yes? Well then, go right ahead! We don’t need to see your ID; you’re white, so we trust you implicitly. Would you like to upgrade your crossing today to our Contraband Special by helping yourself to some illegal fireworks and non-native flora and fauna?” Thank god for the Homeland Security Act: your tax dollars hard at work.

All hyperbole aside, the concept of borders, geographical and otherwise, has come to fascinate me since I arrived here. In a country in which some boundaries, such as those governing interactions between men and women, are so clearly delineated, others, such as where one country ends and another begins, are remarkably fluid. What I find most interesting is that the very same boundary can be both rigid and dynamic depending on where and when you cross it. So as not to delve too deeply into the philosophical, I’ll illustrate with some examples.

In my short time here, I’ve been to Oman four times, each time entering it at a different place; only half those times have I needed to even present a passport and only once has it actually been stamped. Sometimes the border is demarcated by nothing more than the aforementioned dude with the machine gun; other times there are a whole series of toll-booth like gatehouses at which you must present, in a particular order, various legal documents that you may or may not have. And regardless of the type of border post (or lack thereof), it’s not always clear exactly when you have exited one nation and entered another. When going to Muscat, my friends and I first had to stop at the UAE side of the border, get exit visas stamped in our passports, and fill out some other forms. Then we got to the Oman side of the border where we had to get entry visas. Perfectly normal…except that the Oman side of the border is 25 miles away from the UAE side. Where exactly we were in those intervening 25 miles remains a mystery. Though we had officially left the UAE, we had not officially entered Oman. Even better, during one of my rock climbing trips with my boss and a co-worker, we were driving down a road between two fences. On the far side of one fence was the UAE; on the far side of the other, Oman. The road itself, however, was technically not in either country and apparently exists in some sort of liminal zone between the two nations, terra firma’s version of international waters, I suppose – I was tempted to open a casino or rebroadcast football games without the express written consent of the NFL just to see if I could get away with it.

“Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still / Should without eyes see pathways to his will!”

Jenn and I went to see Theater Breaking Through Barriers’s production of Romeo and Juliet tonight.  It was fantastic.  The entire play was performed with a four-actor cast playing the full range of roles.  Moreover, the show followed the TBTB practice of mixing able-bodied and disabled actors.  George Ashiotis was visually impaired if not fully blind (which it took us a while to figure out thanks to his phenomenal skills and a simple but ingenious physical compass rose on the stage floor) and Gregg Mozgala has cerebral palsy which affects the way he walks but not the way he jumps off the various 3 and 6-foot tiers of the multi-level stage.  The entire cast was particularly versatile with Ashiotis’s switching between the Juliet’s nurse and the priest being particularly well done and amusing.  Also, Emily Young’s Juliet was extremely well executed as was her interpretation of an awkward and foppish Paris.  Both of these pairings led to interesting scenes in which the actors engaged in dialog with themselves.  I have Neil Genzlinger’s brief review in the Times to thank for bringing the show to my attention - and now you have me.  The show runs through April 6th.  Call for tickets.  Now.  212-279-4200

Getting back on the (blogging) wagon . . .

The cries for more Rattle My Cage have been becoming too loud to ignore.  Things I still need to post on include: the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Bruce Springsteen in St. Paul’s Xcel Center, The Red Stick Ramblers at Joe’s Pub, Tift Merritt’s show at Mercury Lounge, and Jerry Lee Lewis at Town Hall.   For now, however, I’ll leave you with a link to a brief article about my CSA farm here.

More soon, I hope.