Some Musicals from the Archives

SOUTH PACIFIC

Fichandler Stage, Arena Stage

9 & 12 January 2003

On New Year’s Day evening [2003], my mother and I went to Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage to see South Pacific.  Now, I can’t be very critical about those classic musicals—I love them too much from my childhood.  They’re like theatrical comfort food to me—I hardly see any faults.  (Actually, I don’t think I’d ever seen South Pacific on stage before, believe it or not.  I have the original-cast album—courtesy of my dad—and I’ve seen the 1958 movie, but never the stage show.  There was also a TV version—excerpts, I think, back in the ’50s or ’60s—black-and-white, I recall—with Ezio Pinza (Emile De Becque) and Mary Martin (Nellie Forbush)—but that was a long time ago.)  This production was staged in the Fichandler, which is the arena stage of . . . well, the Arena Stage.  (The Kreeger’s a proscenium.) 

I found some quibbles with Molly Smith’s staging of some scenes in order to accommodate a four-sided audience—movements that were justified only to get the actors to face a new part of the house—but other than that, I loved it.  The Nellie (Kate Baldwin) wasn’t quite cute enough to make me believe that everyone would fall in love with her—she just had thick legs and they wear a lot of shorts and short skirts in South Pacific—but she was a good enough actress and singer to make everything else work.  (Of course, no one can live up to Mary Martin—but that’s not Baldwin’s fault.)  My mother and one of her friends thought that the actor singing Emile (Richard White) had trouble in the high notes, but I didn’t find it too noticeable.  (He even sounded a little like John Raitt.  I wonder if Raitt ever did that role?) 

Altogether, it was a more than enjoyable show.  (Funny side note:  At the beginning of the show, when the staff makes the announcement about photographs and tapes, cell phones and beepers, and so on, the Arena added this:  “No matter how hard you find it to resist, please refrain from singing along with the musical numbers.”  I gather they had trouble with that kind of thing in the past.)

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CAMELOT

Fichandler Stage, Arena Stage

13 January 2004

I saw Arena’s revival of Camelot on New Year’s Eve [2003-04].  As I’ve said before, I have little criticality when it comes to those old musicals, and this production was more than creditable overall.  (There were even some neat casting/costuming things.)  But I had the misfortune of having seen the real, true original—with Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, et al.—and nothing can ever really compare to that no matter who does it.  Especially since I was still a kid—that impression of the big, Broadway show, with all those stars and that story (I had read Once and Future King), is absolutely indelible.  I can’t hear those songs without hearing the original voices. 

(I’m afraid I have the same response to My Fair Lady, which I also saw with the biggies still intact—and I was even younger and more impressionable!  When I was in Oneonta, a bus-and-truck tour of My Fair Lady came through and played at the school theater.  All the theater students went, of course, and I met one of mine in the lobby during intermission.  “It’s really good, isn’t it?” she said.  “Of course, she’s no Audrey Hepburn,” she added.  I chuckled to myself and responded, “Yes, and Hepburn was no Julie Andrews.”  I smiled, both at the student and to myself.  To her, My Fair Lady was an old movie with Audrey Hepburn—using someone else’s voice—and Rex Harrison; to me, it will always be a Broadway experience with Julie Andrews and Harrison.  Perceptions, right?  Harold Hill is always Robert Preston, Maria von Trapp is always Mary Martin—not Andrews, by the way; besides Guinevere and Liza Doolittle, she’s always Cinderella—Fiorello is always Tom Bosley, Quixote is always Richard Kiley, Pseudolus and Hysterium are always Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford, J. Pierrepont Finch is always Robert Morse, Fagin is always Clive Revill, Fanny Brice is always Streisand, Charity is always Gwen Verdon; and, of course, Mrs. Lovett will always be. . .  you know.  Can’t help it.)

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SEÑOR DISCRETION HIMSELF

Fichandler Stage, Arena Stage

11-13 May 2004

I’ll start with the Arena’s world premiere of a Frank Loesser musical: Señor Discretion Himself.  Loesser had written this just before died, but hadn’t finished polishing it and it had never been staged.  It was based on a Budd Schulberg story, but Arena got the Latino writing group Culture Clash (Richard Montoya, Ric Salina, and Herbert Siguenza) to revise the book and dialogue, and some of the songs were shifted around and reassigned.  Even so, it’s not likely to show up here—it’s way too slight a piece to warrant the expense and effort of a New York production, and, despite Peter Mark’s Washington Post’s review, even the songs aren’t all that great.  (I won’t get into the feeling I had that the characters—it’s set in a Mexican village—come close to insulting stereotypes, even though the writers are Latinos.  They’re Chicanos, so I’d have thought they’d have been a little more sensitive.) 

Anyway, the plot’s sort of a Mexican Anyone Can Whistle (which the Post critic also noticed, coincidentally): An impoverished town needs a miracle to draw in tourists and pilgrims, so they engineer one in the person of a the local drunk (Shawn Elliott)—and former town baker—who can parrot things he hears when he’s passed out.  When a loaf of his bread seems to have the image of Mary, he’s hailed as a visionary who has been blessed with divine wisdom (there’s an element of Being There in here, too—which the Post didn’t spot; that’s my observation alone).  The complications are a little more soapy than Anyone: the baker has become a drunk because his business has declined due to the arrival of a big, automated bakery in town.  The owner of the rival bakery (John Bolton) has a thing for young girls, and the old baker has a teenaged daughter (Elena Shaddow) who’s caught the rival’s eye.  He also has an older daughter (Margo Reymundo) who’s less attractive, but who runs the business and looks out for her father.  The young daughter, however, is secretly in love with her tutor (Ivan Hernandez), a young student (whose books provide the “wisdom” her father spouts). 

The whole plot gets underway when the drunken baker comes to the tutor, who is also the town scribe—the baker’s illiterate, don’t you know—to dictate a nasty letter to his rival for his attentions to the older man’s younger daughter.  After he dictates the letter, he passes out, and the tutor rewrites the letter in a gentler tone.  The new bakery owner declares the old drunk a saint because of his forgiveness and generosity, and the drunk parrots a few philosophical phrases he heard while passed out in the tutor’s room.  The loaf with the image is carried in, and the phony miracle is declared.  Of course, the town gets all kinds of attention—tourists, pilgrims, press, clergy—and then the three priests start to fear that their machinations will be revealed when they discover that the tutor still has the drunk’s original letter.  They send him off on a scholarship to study in Mexico City—his dream—and ransack his room to find the letter hidden in one of his books.  When they can’t find it, they burn all his books—but the tutor has taken the letter with him.  He returns because he realizes that he loves the young daughter, who had confessed her love as he was leaving for the train to Mexico City. 

Meanwhile (see, I said it got soapy), the two bakery rivals have become partners and the old man and his daughters have moved into the other man’s mansion.  He thinks he’s waiting for the young daughter to turn 18 (she’s like 15 when the play starts), but the old man has other ideas—he’s planning to marry off his older daughter instead.  The years pass, and just as the young girl turns 18, a cop arrives in town looking for the upstart rival baker.  (This part’s not really funny—though the play glosses over the nastier implications.)  It seems that the younger man’s a fugitive (under a half dozen aliases—he may even be a gringo) as a con-man and an escapee from an asylum where he’d been incarcerated for his penchant for young girls.  (See what I mean.)  The town hoodwinks the cop to keep the man in town (the logic was really twisted, and I don’t remember how they did this anymore), and in the end, he does marry the older daughter (there’s part of the nasty implications no one deals with) and the younger daughter gets the tutor in a double wedding.  The End.  (The whole play is overseen by a sort of conjure-woman/witch, Doreen Montalvo—who looked like she was impersonating Frida Kahlo from one of her self-portraits.  It was a nice idea, but it wasn’t well used theatrically.  She didn’t have enough to do.  The idea of the corrupt priests and the phony miracle juxtaposed with this “old religion” character might have been interesting, but it’s way too dark for this play.)

As you see, the plot isn’t really very good—too contrived and predictable (and there’s way too much of it, too), even without the uglier elements that are swept under the floor covering.  The corrupt priests (Tony Chiroldes, Carlos Lopez, Robert Almodovar)—who are also a little too worldly: they are bored with confession unless someone has a really good sin to confess, like the newcomer’s pedophilia (this was written before the current scandals, remember)—are never caught, much less punished.  The drunk, who doesn’t ever actually reform, marries his daughter to a crook, an escaped mental patient, and a child-molester.  The town protects this guy for their own purposes but no one questions the appropriateness of this action.  It’s a little disturbing—or maybe it’s just me. 

Also, there was something odd about the revised book, too.  I gathered that it was up-dated and modernized—at least ostensibly—but there were some things in it that seemed out of place.  It’s the nature of the slightness of this text that I’ve already forgotten details, but one instance does remain: a reference to the student uprisings in Mexico City.  Those were in ’68, the year before Loesser died, but the play seemed to want to be set today.  There were a couple of other similar things, but I can’t remember what they were now. 

And there’s the fact that the characters all came close to negative stereotypes, as I mentioned before—something that might have happened in ‘69, but wouldn’t pass muster today.  I’d have thought the rewriting team would have up-dated that, too.  Furthermore, though the music and songs are sweet and pleasant, they’re no more than that.  I already don’t remember any of them.  (The Post reviewer mentions one song he thought was wonderful but even though I read the review the day after I saw the show, I couldn’t recall the song.  I remembered when it was sung and what it was about and all—but I couldn’t remember the tune or the lyrics.) 

The production, however, was excellent.  Thomas Lynch’s set—it was in the Fichandler, the arena space—was clever, with the stage ringed with little, tiny buildings of the village (which actually lit up) around a Mexican tile-floored central plaza.  Other set pieces rose up from the floor, including the three grave stones of the cemetery where the old baker’s wife is buried.  (They flipped up, like pop-up book figures; the other pieces came up like elevators.)  Emilio Sosa’s costumes were especially lovely.  I already noted the Frida Kahlo look of the witch, but the other, less prominent costumes were also nice.  (I don’t know if Arena uses the same costumer for all its shows, but this aspect of every production I’ve seen there lately has been excellent.  I remember particularly liking the Camelot costumes last year.)  Also, the singing for this show was the best all around that I’ve heard at Arena in recent years.  (Shaddow, the actress who sang the young daughter—none of the cast had names I knew—had a really wonderful soprano.)  If only the play had been better!

I’ve often said that when a play is neglected, forgotten, or obscure, there’s usually a pretty good reason.  If no one wanted to stage this 1969 script, even though Loesser’s widow had been promoting it apparently, that’s probably a good indication that it wasn’t worth a lot of effort.  It was a pleasant enough evening in the theater, but it really wasn’t worth much in the end.

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DAMN YANKEES

Fichandler Stage, Arena Stage

13 February 2006

I’ve had to be in Washington twice this winter [2005-06], and I caught a show at Arena each time.  Arena used to be a pretty exciting place, presenting new plays that went on to become important additions to American theater (Moonchildren, Indians) or productions that bordered on the experimental (Andrei Serban’s Leonce and Lena—one of his first gigs in the States).  After co-founder and longtime artistic director Zelda Fichandler left to take over the graduate acting program at New York University and after Doug Wager, her successor, was replaced by Molly Smith, the current artistic director, it can still be a pretty good regional company, but its selection of material is often more on the side of audience-pleasers than experience-stretchers.  (My mother has complained about Smith’s choices since she took over and has threatened to drop her subscription altogether.  Mother has cut back and no longer subscribes to Arena’s entire season—there’s a four-play subscription available, instead of the whole six-play bill.) 

So we went to the Arena on New Year’s Eve to see Damn Yankees.  I’d never seen the play on stage, just in the movie version and, in short, I’ll say that it was great fun and very well done.  (Some spectators may have known the name of the actor who played Mr. Applegate, the Devil originally played by Ray Walston: Brad Oscar, who was the original Franz Liebkind, playwright of Springtime for Hitler, the musical-within-the-musical of The Producers.  He later also replaced Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock.)  Oscar was quite good—he got excellent reviews, including one I saw in Variety—but I kept feeling he was projecting a little too hard, as if he forgot he wasn’t in a Broadway house but the more intimate Arena Fichandler (the theater-in-the-round space). 

As I think I’ve said numerous times, when it comes to the old musicals, I have no critical distance.  They’re all nostalgic for me.  If I didn’t see them on stage when I was a kid, I saw the movies (as I did with Damn Yankees) or I listened to the albums, which my dad had from his youth.  (Dad took my mom—both native New Yorkers, though Mom moved to New Jersey as a girl—to the original Oklahoma! on one of their early dates.)  I literally grew up on that music—and when I was little, I knew all the words to all the songs.  That said, Damn Yankees was a more than creditable production.  Oscar made a delightful devil—sort of a used-car-salesman-as-Beelzebub—and Meg Gillentine was very good as Lola.  (She’s no Gwen Verdon—but, then, no one is.  Please.)  She tends to be a better dancer than actor—though she’s an excellent singer, as well—so her witchy seductress is a little by-the-numbers, but given Lola’s routines, that works well enough.  (Lola’s numbers are almost all dance bits anyway.)

As for the Joes, Boyd and Hardy, Lawrence Redmond and Matt Bogart were both fine.  As it happens, I had seen them both at Arena before, Redmond as Luther Billis in South Pacific (another Ray Walston part, by the way) and Bogart as Lancelot in Camelot.  (Say “Bogart as Lancelot in Camelot” five times fast!)  Smith directed, and she did a nice job using the arena space, which I always think is hard to pull off smoothly in a musical.  I’m sure arena staging is tough for any play, but I think it must be harder for a musical—especially the old ones which were conceived for proscenium stages.  The need to get all four sections of the audience some face-time with the actors necessitates some awkward promenading sometimes—moving people around for little logical reason.  In a straight play, you can create a set that gives motivation for such crosses—put a chair on one side, a table in another corner, and the actors have to go to them to sit or pick up a prop. 

The dancing in a musical eliminates a lot of set pieces—the floor’s too small to accommodate both choreography and furniture—so the movements can seem arbitrary.  Smith and her choreographer, Baayork Lee, managed this nicely in Damn Yankees.  There was even one number with props that was marvelous—a dance with TV sets on wheeled stands.  It was a hoot—especially clothed and painted, as the production was, in the Day-Glo pastel colors that evoked the Eisenhower ’50s.  (It kind of made me think of Miami Beach back in the days when I used to visit my grandfather there—the houses were all painted pink, yellow, lime green, and baby blue!  This wasn’t art-deco Miami but kitschy Miami Beach.) 

Damn Yankees isn’t a very deep play, despite its take on Faust.  Yeah, Joe might lose his soul to the Devil, and poor Meg may never see her hubby again and never know why—but you know that’s not going to happen, even if you’ve never seen Damn Yankees before.  It’s not that kind of show.  I mean, we’re not talking Carousel here.  It’s the ‘50s, for goodness’ sake.  So it’s just for fun, a little gratuitous sexiness.  (Not sex—Joe doesn’t succumb, of course.  What do you expect from a show with a song called “The Game” in which every potential sexual encounter ends when the ballplayers “think about the game, the game, the game”?  Like I said: the ’50s.)  But who cares, right?  It’s just a hoot, and the Arena version was more than just a great way to run up to the midnight ball-drop—it was a more-than-enjoyable evening all around.  No one will ever make you forget Gwen Verdon’s Lola—I was barely a teenager when I saw the flick, but, man, that woman was still sexy when she was a grandmother!  But you just have to put that aside, I guess, go with what ya got.  (A little this-a.  A little that-a.  With an emphasis on the latta.  You betcha!)

(Yes, Gwen Verdon is special—and that’s putting it mildly.  I got to see her twice on stage—in Sweet Charity (1966-67) and in Chicago (1976)—with Chita!  Now that’s a pairing for all time!  She was already a grandmother when she did Chicago—and she was still great in every meaning of the word.  She could be a pretty good straight dramatic actress—but, man, when she did song-and-dance, she was in a world of her own.  There are—were; I don’t think they’re making any more like that—very few in that stratosphere.  I count myself very lucky to have gotten to see some of the last of the greats and near-greats before they passed from the scene—Mary Martin, Verdon, Zero, Guilford, Julie Andrews—who hasn’t passed, but her voice has—Stubby Kaye, Howard da Silva, Bea Lillie, and several who are still around but seem to be retired or semi-retired.  There seems to be a self-replenishing supply of good and even great straight actors—even if they go off to Hollywood too fast for my taste—but the great musical ones don’t seem to come along much.  Maybe it’s just me.)

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SHE LOVES ME

Fichandler Stage, Arena Stage

17 January 2007

When I’m with my mom on New Years, it’s our custom to try to find a play on the 31st and then go home and toast in the New Year—sometimes with friends and sometimes just en famille—as we watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV.  This year, the Arena Stage was doing She Loves Me, the 1963 Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick-Joe Masteroff musical adaptation of the Hungarian play on which the 1940 Jimmy Stewart-Margaret Sullavan movie Shop Around the Corner is based.  (By some coincidence, the cable channels Turner Classic Movies ran both that movie and then the 1949 film musical adaptation—In the Good Old Summertime with Judy Garland and Van Johnson—the week before we saw the stage musical.  That was kind of fun.  The same material is also the basis for 1998’s You’ve Got Mail, the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan romantic comedy, but the cable station didn’t run that one. 

All of these are based on Miklós László’s Parfumerie, which, as far as I can tell, has never been performed either on or off Broadway.  I’m not sure the script is even available in English.)  She Loves Me is an old-fashioned musical in the vein of My Fair Lady and Damn Yankees, though a lesser effort.  (Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, of course, had been previously responsible for Fiorello!—my very first Broadway play—and would ultimately create Fiddler on the Roof.  Joe Masteroff would go on to write the book for Cabaret three years later.) 

Still, it is charming and fun, even if the songs are not especially memorable, and it made a perfect entertainment for the New Year’s Eve hours leading up to the propitious moment.  Arena’s production, which included no stars or actors whom I knew, was even, solid, and much more than just competent, though no performance stood out in the ensemble.  Director Kyle Donnelly made good use of the Fichandler’s arena platform—I always feel that staging a musical in the round is particularly hard—and everyone’s voice was strong (they were miked, as usual these days) and vibrant.  I especially liked Arpad’s one solo number, “Try Me,” his self-promotion.  Clifton Guterman, the young actor playing the delivery boy-who-would-be-a-clerk, may look a tad older than a teenager, but his tenor is youthful and his enthusiasm in selling himself (and the song) was delightful. 

But in the end, this was an ensemble production (though its past includes stars: Barbara Cook as Amalia Balash in the original Broadway run along with Jack Cassidy, who won a Tony as the self-serving Steven Kodaly; and near-stars: Boyd Gaines, who won a Tony as Georg Nowack in the 1993 Roundabout Theatre Company/Broadway revival, and Louis Zorich—“Mr." Olympia Dukakis—as Mr. Maraczek); the cast as a whole did a very nice job in what I had actually forgotten (until I watched the movie again the week before) is really a Christmas story. 

Some Classics from the Archives

PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD

Abbey Players

September 1990

Seeing the Abbey Players perform John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World is akin to watching the Moscow Art Theatre do Chekhov or the Berliner Ensemble do Brecht.  It just seems to be part of them: they aren’t so much acting as remembering and reliving a collective heritage.  Historically, of course, this is so.  Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, dubbed the National Theatre of Ireland, premiered Playboy in 1907, and has continued to present Synge’s works, along with those of other Irish authors, ever since.  This material does belong to them, and they cherish it, as the performance at the Eisenhower Theatre of Washington, D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts demonstrates.

The story of Synge’s most famous play is simple enough.  Young Christy Mahon stumbles into the tavern of Michael James Flaherty (the set is by Noel Sheridan) and confesses that he is running from the “polis” because he has mur-dered his father.  After the townsfolk, particularly the young girls, make a hero of him, Old Mahon turns up, alive but with a crack in his skull, and the villagers turn on Christy.  There are half a dozen interpretations of the play’s meaning, including seeing Christy as a Christ figure, a Don Quixote, or a new Ireland rising up against its old masters, England and the Catholic Church.  Synge (1871-1909) has never given credence to any of these, saying, “I follow Goethe’s rule, to tell no one what one means in one’s writings.”  He did say that he “wrote the play because it pleased me,” and that it was “made to amuse” his audience.  The current Abbey production, directed by Vincent Dowling on a small but evocative set by Noel Sheridan, does this with a vengeance.

All the performances are praiseworthy, each actor finding the little idiosyncrasies and character traits that make even the briefest appearances alive and integral to the life on stage.  At the center of the production are Frank McCusker as Christy and Roma Downey as Pegeen Mike.  Downey is simultaneously romantic and strong, a dreamer who despises the weak, sniveling suitor, Shawn Keogh (Macdara O Fatharta) picked for her by her father (John Cowley).  She has a sweet face that turns a pout into an irresistible magnet, but she can set her jaw and mount a steely glare that cows the whole village.  It’s no wonder, in this production, that it is Pegeen Mike of all the fawning village lasses who attracts Christy.  McCusker’s would-be parricide is a boy-man: tall, blond and lanky with a baby face that seems most often to be gape-mouthed whenever he isn’t talking.  McCusker can effect both the blank gaze of utter incomprehension and the wide-eyed stare of childlike wonder. 

Among the wonderful character roles with which Synge populated his County Mayo village, cowardly Shawn Keogh stumbles and trips over his own feet in O Fatharta’s round-eyed performance and the Widow Quin is both sly and openly lustful as portrayed by Nuala Hayes.  Singling these players out should not, however, suggest that this company is anything less than a perfectly integrated ensemble. 

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In the end, it is neither the plot nor the characters which makes the Abbey’s Playboy a special theatrical experience.  It is Synge’s language in the mouths of actors for whom it is like a mother tongue.  Oscar Wilde, an expatriate Irish writer, once said, “The English took our land and left it desolate.  But we took their language and gave it a new beauty.”  Synge, who immersed himself in the study of the language of Irish peasants, has written what is arguably among the most beautiful prose poetry in English literature.  It was written to be spoken, and here it is spoken—almost sung—by people who know and love it.  Listening intensely, you could easily get lost in the thick brogues and unfamiliar vocabulary (the program includes a glossary), but by allowing the prose to flow over you, you can enjoy both the lyric beauty of the sounds the words make and the sense they convey.  The apparent effortlessness of the verbal performances enhances the enjoyment.

The Abbey has not made a tour of the U.S. in 55 years.  In case it takes another half-century for them to come back, which Heaven forbid, you would be doing yourself a favor to try to catch it on its current tour, arranged by American Theatre Productions, Inc.  After closing in Washington on 21 October, the production moves on to one- and two-night stands across the mid-west, with stops in the southwest and south, then closes in Toronto in late November.  (There is a tentative plan to add a Boston stop before returning to Dublin, but no play dates have been set.)

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TWELFTH NIGHT & UNCLE VANYA

Donmar Warehouse

22 & 30 Jan. 2003

The first thing about Donmar Warehouse’s Twelfth Night (at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theatre) is that it’s not terribly funny most of the time.  (I’d say that’s a problem.)  To begin with, Sam Mendes has paced it very deliberately, as if it were a drama.  Aside from the obvious, this also accentuates the consequences of the Malvolio plot (which has always presented a problem for me anyway), making it more portentous and horrific than it otherwise is played.  Everything else is played so soberly (Ben Brantley in the New York Times refers to the style superseding the content, and I interpret that to mean this effect) that there is little mirth, even among the buffoons.  The songs Feste sings are all also melancholy, even the drinking song with the two Sirs.  I was never under the impression, even given the Malvolio subplot, that William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1601-02) is a dark comedy.

Brantley mentions the ill-conceived picture fame, which is practically the only set piece on the stage.  (There are a few other occasional pieces of furniture—tables, chairs, a couch—but the rest of the set is the twinkling lights he mentions—upstage, forming a background of stars or, as I interpreted them, the lights of the rest of the town as seen from the two chateaux.  The sets are by Anthony Ward and the lighting design is by Hugh Vanstone, recreated for BAM by David Holmes.) 

This huge frame, center stage and silver-gray, becomes an unavoidable focus of the performance, and it was entirely confusing as to what Mendes means when a character appears inside it.  All the characters—except possibly Orsino, but I’m not sure—stand in the frame at one time or another.  Sometimes they face outward, like a portrait hanging in one of the living rooms (that’s what I thought it might be at first, but that doesn’t hold up), and sometimes they have their backs to us.  (Diana, my frequent theater companion, thought Mendes might have been trying to say something about mistaken identity, which isn’t far from Brantley’s idea that it was about the way others saw the various characters.  I had no idea what to make of it.  And that was a problem of its own—I kept trying to figure it out, distracting me from what was happening on stage.)  In any case, the device doesn’t work and adds only confusion to the production—exacerbated by the fact that it’s so prominent.

In the end, it was an interesting production without being good.  If Much Ado is my favorite Shakespeare (1564-1616), Twelfth Night is my second favorite comedy, and this wasn’t really enjoyable—just curious.  Diana thought it was a case of wanting to do Hamlet on rollerskates, but I suspect Mendes, who ought to be too good for that kind of conceit, had something more portentous in mind—and it just doesn’t work.

By the way, Brantley spends a lot of his review praising Simon Russell Beale, the actor who plays Malvolio (and also plays Vanya).  I can’t argue that he’s not a good actor—even an excellent one—but I think Mendes steered him in an ill-chosen direction here.  Until he’s imprisoned and tormented at the end of the play, Malvolio ought to be a legitimate figure of ridicule; this Malvolio is unpleasant, a prig and a martinet—but not funny.  It’s of a piece with the whole production. 

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Well, the Donmar’s Uncle Vanya is an interesting experience to try to describe—or evaluate, I guess.  All the parts of the performance of the classic play (1899-1900) by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) were good, even excellent.  The acting was superb, and the physical production was nicely conceived.  Even the music (live) worked nicely with the show.  Brian Friel’s translation is very good—contemporary without being anachronistic—and nicely poetic.  What was the problem, then?  Like Twelfth Night, it was slowly paced and deliberate, but that didn’t seem wrong in this case—even if the show went for three hours.  I can only say that Mendes fell into the Vanya trap.  The play’s about boredom; a play about boredom can’t end up being boring.  In spite of all the good elements that made up the production, it added up to a lassitude that was self-defeating.  I don’t know how else to explain it.  What’s more, I don’t think I’d know how to fix it, either.  The shame here is that the work is so good in all other respects.  The acting really is an object lesson in 19th-century Realism and the casting is superb: everyone just made their roles fit like gloves.  I can’t say it was too slow—like the Twelfth Night, which I thought was—but I don’t know what made it work so unsatisfyingly in the end.  I feel inadequate because I can’t diagnose the problem; I feel like I should be able to.  (I suppose it’s proof that a theater production is more than the sum of its parts.)

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GHOSTS

Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden

11 June 2003

Before I report on Ingmar Bergman’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts at BAM’S Harvey Lichtenstein Theater, let me tell you a few things about his translation and adaptation.  First, this staging is based on Bergman’s own translation, not some existing text.  Second, he amended it—with some scenes from two Strindberg plays and one scene he wrote himself.  (I wasn’t as familiar with the text as I thought; I didn’t recognize for sure which scenes weren’t Ghosts.)  The program note, at least the part that I got to read before the show started, didn’t say if Bergman also cut some of Ibsen’s text to accommodate the additions.  The play ran 2½ hours, but that only seems right—even short, perhaps—for an Ibsen; that suggests he might have cut some to allow for his inserts.

Third, he has clearly sexed up the play some.  Oswald (Jonas Malmsjö) and Regine (Angela Kovács) are pretty randy: he runs after her relentlessly, feels her up and down and jumps on her, usually between her legs, at every opportunity.  Manders (Jan Malmsjö) and Mrs. Alving  (Pernilla August) aren’t exactly passionate on stage, except for one Hollywood kiss that’s far from paternal, but it’s clear from the text that she did try to entice him to take her into his home—and, presumably, his bed—when she briefly leaves Alving after his fling with Regina’s mother.  They are also clearly closer friends from years past than most conventional productions indicate: she calls him Gabriel (I didn’t even know he had a first name), and Oswald calls him Uncle Gabriel.  Finally, it’s not sexual, but in the end, Oswald strips off his clothes in the throes of a syphilitic attack and rolls around the stage nude before his mother.  It’s not a sexual moment, but it’s decidedly un-Victorian, even, I suspect, for Scandinavians—either Norwegian or Swedish.  Oh, and Bergman’s text had a lot of vulgarity I know Ibsen (1828-1906) never used; one character even yelled “Fuck you” at Mrs. Alving (though I don’t know what she said in Swedish, of course).

I make these observations because, as you might have expected, I had Leo Shapiro’s production on my mind [see my report “Staging Classic Plays: Traditional or Experimental? (SHALIKO’S GHOSTS, 1975,” 6 September 2014) and the contretemps he had with the New York Times’ Walter Kerr and other critics who accused him of “messing around with Ibsen,” as one review headline put it.  The sexiness was castigated pointedly, though Shapiro didn’t change the text (he used a Rolf Fjelde translation).  Now, I suppose an argument can be made that a “great artist” like Bergman can “mess around” with Ghosts, but an upstart like Shapiro has no business doing it.  I won’t buy it, but you could argue it.  And Bergman has the temerity to fool with Ibsen’s text adding in Strindberg—whom Ibsen didn’t much like, I don’t believe—and words of his own.  Now, that’s arrogant.  (The word “bowdlerize” comes to mind—derived from the name of Dr. Thomas Bowdler who “improved” Shakespeare in the early 19th century by expurgating “offensive” bits.  I’m also reminded of a German practice of the 19th and early 20th century in which works like Shakespeare’s were published in versions verbessert—that is, “improved”—by an editor.)  Now, I’m not offended by Bergman’s having done this—just by the opprobrium heaped on Shapiro for doing much less.  It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.

Now, as for the production itself: it was a disappointment.  Once again, the acting was terrific, but the actors were subverted by one choice Bergman made that seemed ill-advised.  His main set, designed by Gören Wassberg, is a revolve, with three playing areas wedged into it.  (There’s a little area on stage right, with an upholstered chair and an end table, which is used in conjunction with some of the revolving areas when appropriate, and Mrs. Alving is seated there, quietly, in the first scene when Regina and her father have a scene down center.  Now, the problem with this set-up is that, except for one open playing area, the set pieces restrict the actors to a tiny little space at the front of the turntable (plus a little platform in front of that).  There’s no room to do any movements, and Ghosts is a talky play with little innate action. 

The first act, which took place mostly on or in front of a sofa (area “one,” if you like) and around or in front of a small table (area “two”), was virtually enervating; act two was a little more active—Bergman used area “three” more—an open floor bordered on each side by a small bench and chair, and there were more three- and even four-character scenes.  But it was still essentially a static production.  As my companion, Diana, pointed out, we felt little of the emotion that the characters seemed to be feeling on stage—it was remote and cold for all the realism of the acting.  I blame the staging for most of this.  It is, however, exacerbated by having to listen through earphones, which makes the dialogue flat, but also very prominent—it’s right in your ear.  (In past experiences with translations, the devices haven’t caused this sensation by themselves, so I attribute the effect to the production, but increased by the earphones.)

(I was thinking of Bertolt Brecht, of course.  Alienation works in Brecht’s own stuff and others’, but I don’t think it works in Ibsen.  I think Ibsen intended us to feel along with the characters, to identify with them.  That’s precisely what Brecht didn’t want—identification.  I saw a production of Ghosts at Arena in D.C. in 1997, directed by Liviu Ciulei, in which he tried to turn the play into a Symbolist drama—stuff was hanging from the ceilings.  It doesn’t work—Ibsen’s not a Symbolist, he’s a Realist.  I don’t think you can make those kinds of wholesale shifts in major style without either damaging the play or doing some heavy rewriting/reconceiving.  Turning Ibsen into Brecht is the same thing.  Not all plays are as flexible as the Greeks and Shakespeare—even great classics.  What Shapiro did, from what I can tell, is heighten the Realism in a sense.  I don’t think Shapiro violated Ibsen’s spirit; he took it the next few steps along the continuum.  I’m not sure that’s what Bergman did.  Ciulei certainly didn’t.)

Bergman was also obviously doing something with the color scheme, but I haven’t figured that out yet.  The whole set was green—the carpet, the drapes, the upholstery, the table cloth, the column and sculpture in the background, the lampshades—and the characters seemed to be wearing symbolically-colored costumes designed by Anna Bergman.  The Alvings were in gray—for ghosts, I’d guess.  Oswald even had what appeared to be grayish make-up—for his illness, to be sure, but also ghostly.  Regina’s father (Örjan Ramberg) was in brown, the color of earth, and I interpret that as an indication of his basic goodness and honesty, at least in contrast to the other characters who are all duplicitous and corrupt one way or another (either by their actions or by heredity).  Regine is in various shades of red (though not scarlet), which I take to be an indication of her lustiness and slight shamelessness—but this isn’t at all a secure interpretation because it doesn’t entirely fit.  The one I don’t get at all, not even remotely, is Manders, who’s all in purple (even his hat and shoes!).  Now, purple is the color of royalty or nobility, richness, or passion—none of which fit Manders at all.  But the colors are so clearly selected for a purpose other than just decoration, and purple is certainly not a common color for any man, especially a pastor (he’s not a monsignor or bishop—it’s the wrong denomination; besides it’s a suit, not a clerical robe). 

Still, as I said, Bergman is always provocative, even when he doesn’t work.  I didn’t think the production worked on its own level, but seeing Bergman try to say something of his own through the play was worth it.  I’ll be interested to see what the reviews say.  They may be in today’s papers, since this was opening and the show only plays through the 14th.  (And it was sold out—people were out front looking for spare tickets.  On the other hand, some people left at intermission.)

I didn’t see Shapiro’s Ghosts in ’75—I had only just gotten here and didn’t know what was happening around yet, and I was in grad school at Rutgers in those days, often 10-15 hours a day—but from what I’ve read and seen in photos, whatever liberties he may have taken with the spirit of 19th-century Norway, it was more exciting as theater than Bergman’s take.  And Shapiro, too, was working on something concrete: it wasn’t “Hamlet on roller-skates,” as it were.  (To be fair, of course, not all the critics lambasted Shapiro’s show—but the ones who did were the big names.)

———

The New York Times review of Bergman’s Ghosts was in Thursday’s paper, 12 June.  Aside from anything else, it says that this is supposed to be Bergman’s last stage production.  Ben Brantley’s never really said how he felt about the production.  I mean, it’s fairly obvious, I guess, that he liked it for the most part, but he didn’t actually say so. 

*  *  *  *

THE TAMER TAMED

Royal Shakespeare Company

13 January 2004

While I was in Washington for the holidays last year, I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater of The Tamer Tamed (first published in 1647, but written perhaps between 1609 and 1622), a sequel to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew by John Fletcher (1579-1625).  (Think Lysistrata meets Shrew.  Except that it’s awful.)  There’s a word often used to describe bad theater, and it is very apt for Tamer Tamed: leaden.  It just lay there lifeless.  The RSC tried so hard to animate it—the reviews all focused on the performances—that they ended up looking just manic, as if they were trying desperately to bring a dead body back to life.  There’s not a single line of poetry or even memorable prose; not one attractive, or even sympathetic, character; and a one-joke plot (the women are all denying the men sex) that reduces everyone to a cipher.  I couldn’t even keep most of the characters straight—but that was mostly because I didn’t really care.  Not only wasn’t it funny, it wasn’t even clever.  I repeat a caveat I’ve used numerous times: often an unknown or neglected play is unknown and neglected because it’s bad!!!  Why RSC decided to dredge this one up is a mystery to me. 

*  *  *  *

IMAGINARY INVALID

Comédie-Française

14 June 2004

Well, I’m batting 1.000!  Even the Comédie-Française was a disappointment.  Can ya beat that?  (And, then, why would you want to?)

There was a short article in the “Arts & Leisure” section on 6 June (“An Intricate Malady From the House of Molière”) that pointed out that the company is broadening its base by doing some contemporary stuff and using outside directors.  This guy, Claude Stratz, is Swiss German and it’s his first encounter with both the Comédie-Française and Molière.  This may have turned out to be a mistake—the latter more than the former, perhaps.  I’m not sure what he was up to, exactly, but whatever it was it didn’t really work.

I can’t really say that the play wasn’t funny because I don’t know if it was or not.  (I’ll try to explain this in a mo.)  I don’t know Imaginary Invalid (1673) by heart or anything, but I do know Molière some.  My French isn’t good enough to comprehend the 17th-century poetry without a trot—and the Brooklyn Academy of Music did provide supertitles at the Harvey, but even that was a problem for me—but I can get the gist of what’s going on what with my familiarity with the play and all.  I may have tittered once or twice, but more from a line than anything someone did on stage.

I had two problems even seeing/watching what was going on on stage, as a matter of fact.  First, those supertitles: they’re so high above the stage floor that it’s impossible to read them and watch the stage at the same time.  You have to choose between watching the actors and trying to understand the French, or reading the translation but missing all the action.  (And the supertitles went by pretty fast—I have the impression, too, that the actors spoke fast as well—so trying to glance up and then down doesn’t work at all.  That only ends up being like watching a flick that’s missing some frames while listening to a soundtrack with gaps in it—and the gaps don’t match!  Sometimes—often—I felt like I might as well have stayed home and read the script.  I think I would have preferred either headphone translation, even though that means you can’t hear the actual actors very well, or side titles (which some operas use now instead of overhead supertitles).  Either case would have at least meant I could have kept my eyes on the stage.  

The other problem with seeing the action on stage was that the director had lit the play so dimly (by Jean-Phillippe Roy) that I really couldn’t see very well even when I was watching the actors.  The lighting scheme seemed to be that Argan keeps his house unlit and the only light there is filters through the curtained windows.  Aside from making everything hard to see, this also gives the play a somber feeling more conducive to Macbeth or something Gothic than a Molière farce.  There were, in fact, no colors on the set and few in the costumes (Argan’s wife wears a blood-red dress), either—everything was subdued and grim.  (Both set and costumes were designed by Ezio Toffolutti.)  Umm—comedy anyone?  Ever heard of it?  (I hate to get ethnic here, but maybe asking a German to direct a comedy isn’t such a hot idea.  Name me a German stage comedy, or even a Swiss German one.)

Margo Jefferson in the Times on 11 June said that what was missing was “lightness.”  (I don’t think she had the illumination in mind, however.  But she gets megapoints for having written the only review I ever remember reading that quotes Italo Calvino!  Very erudite.  [See my post “Calvino Is To The Mind What Exercise Is To The Body,” 14 and 17 March 2016.]  I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that when I read the review, and I still don’t after seeing the play, but something was certainly amiss.  I don’t know if the cast was too earnest, or if they were trying to play Realism, or if they were just going too fast to have any fun.  (I don’t mean to place all the blame on the actors—surely it was the director who conceived all this, whatever it was.)  I might have been able to analyze the problem(s) better if I had been able to watch (and see, for God’s sake) what was going on on the stage consistently, but I have already explained why I had trouble doing that.  Even while I was watching (ahem), I kept wondering why I wasn’t enjoying this—what was going wrong.  (The very fact that I was busy wondering this while the play was going on is telling, I think.)  I still haven’t figured it out—maybe because I just didn’t see it—literally.

I hate to stress the non-performance problems, like lighting and supertitles, but I have another complaint that I think contributed to—or exacerbated—the trouble with this show.  It was a full two hours long, but it had no intermission.  It wasn’t a matter of attention span, but of fanny fatigue.  (BAM’s seats, at least at the Harvey, are less than plush.)  And sitting for two straight hours is enervating, even if there are no other problems.  I always figure a 90-minute stretch is about as long as an audience ought to go without an intermission.  (As a result of this three-act marathon—at least as far as I could tell, this was the cause—people started leaving the auditorium about two-thirds of the way through the show.  I don’t know if they left the theater or just had to hit the john and then found seats near the entrances so they didn’t have to pass in front of the rest of us again, or what, but about a dozen or so spectators started moving out from different parts of the theater at about the same time.)

You shouldn’t assume from this that everyone sat stone-faced.  Many in the audience seemed to enjoy the performance, and it was probably too large a number for them all to have been Francophones.  Language, by the way, should not have been a barrier for me.  I have seen many shows in languages I don’t understand at all, like Swedish and Bulgarian and even Marathi (the language spoken in Maharashtra State, India), and have enjoyed them immensely.  Indeed, a Lithuanian play I saw some years ago, The Square by Eimuntas Nekrosius (produced by the State Theater of Lithuania in Vilnius)  was one of the best theatrical experiences I’ve ever had, and it remains with me even today as a vivid impression.  Obviously, if there weren’t also something else important missing from Invalid at BAM, the language/translation thing wouldn’t have been a problem, would it?  It loomed larger than it really was, I’m sure, because the production was so lacking. 

I still don’t know what wasn’t working—I can’t pinpoint it, and that bothers me.  Hell, I’ve seen English-language productions that I haven’t understood at all, so language isn’t always the big impediment, is it?  That Bulgarian play, Retro, a comedy (by Russian playwright Alexander Galin presented by the Ivan Vasov National Theatre of Sofia) that was part of the Theatre of Nations in Baltimore in ’86, had no translation or supertitles (which weren’t yet common), but I “understood” everything that was going on because the acting, which was classic—and superb—Stanislavsky Realism, was so good and clear that the words were virtually unnecessary.  [I think I mentioned this experience in my report “Theatre of Nations: Baltimore, 1986,” republished on Rick On Theater on 10 November 2014.]  I can’t remember now if the Marathi performance I saw at TON, Vijay Tendulkar’s Ghashiram Kotwal (Theatre Academy of Pune), had a translation other than the synopsis in the program (which the Bulgarian play also had) but I followed that, too.  (I seem to recall that none of the Theatre of Nations performances had translations—the organizers decided that the technology was too complex for the many venues, a number of which were either outdoors or in non-traditional theater spaces.  In any case, I don’t recall having had any problems with comprehension at all.  But, then, I could see those shows!)

Melā! An Indian Fair (Washington, D.C., 1985)

[On 15 January, I published a post on the Natyasastra, the ancient Indian text on theater.  Looking through my archive of theater reports, I found this one on an Indian folk festival presented in Washington, D.C.; I wrote it in September 1985, almost 34 years ago.  Not all Indian folk performances are derived from the Natyasastra, but many are (or have been “sanskritized” during the modern era to align with the teachings of the treatise).  If you’ve read “The Natyasastra,” you may recognize some of the practices I described in that article in some of the performances I report on below.]

What do Louisiana and India have in common?  Well, probably not much—except in Washington, D.C., between 26 June and 7 July [1985].  [Note that I wrote this report decades before anyone ever heard of Bobby Jindal, an American of Indian heritage who was Governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016. Indeed, Jindal was barely 14 when I wrote this.  ~Rick]  Those were the dates of the 1985 Festival of American Folklife on the Mall, which this year included a Louisiana Program and “Melā! An Indian Fair.”  Exactly how an Indian melā qualifies as American folklife is not clear, but the celebration of Indian art, culture, and life has been all over Washington recently as part of the nationwide Festival of India.    

Besides the food and crafts of India’s many cultures and regions, much of the melā is given over to Indian dancing, singing, music, and theatre.  This combination of eating, selling, and performing is not strange; India’s traditional performances are frequently part of fairs and celebrations that go on all day for several days, or even weeks.  People come and go, eat, and sell or buy while the performances are going on all around them.  Spectators choose when they want to watch and when they want to do something else, much the way we do at a carnival sideshow.  The noise, smells, and competing sights and sounds are all part of the event. 

Many of the performances are rituals, with religious significance implicit in the very doing.  Others are rooted in ritual, but have lost the connotation of worship over the centuries.  This, too, is not strange: Indian fairs are often connected to religious celebrations.  Even so, commercialism is not alien to their religious purpose.  Unlike the money-changers in the temple, Indian merchants and worshippers belong together. 

The performances at the festival were presumably authentic in the sense that they are performed the same way back in the villages and towns of Gujarat, Punjab, or Bengal; however, the importation to America and the cultural mélange in which they were presented means we probably saw altered versions.  No matter, though: the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds all around still fooled us for a short time.  We were in India at a melā!

The performers appearing on the small stage at one end of the fairground or wandering among the booths included devotional singers, folk actors, folksingers and folk dancers, percussionists, puppeteers, acrobats, jugglers, magicians, and two bahrupiyas wandering about teasing the visitors with impersonations of one or another of 52 gods.  They came from West Bengal, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra, Uttar, Haryana—and Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Across Madison Drive, in the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, more Indian life was on view.  A child’s perspective of the cycle of village life was exhibited at “Aditi—A Celebration of Life” through July 28.  Aditi is the Aryan goddess identified with the source of life; it is also Sanskrit for the creative power that sustains the universe.

Visitors to Aditi started at the section depicting coming of age and traveled through the cycle of life from courtship through marriage and birth, and a child’s learning to participate in community life, to maturity when the cycle begins again.  Passing through each section, visitors saw village artisans and craftsmen plying their trades, and performers of many kinds displaying their talents for our amusement.  Here, too, were magicians, jugglers, puppeteers, singers, musicians, dancers, and the ubiquitous wandering “impersonators.” 

One of these last came down a corridor clanging tiny cymbals to attract our attention.  It looked like one man carrying another “piggy-back.”  Then it looked like a man with a stuffed dummy on his back.  Then, impossibly, it looked like a dummy with a man on its back.  Finally, when he was close enough to be seen clearly, it turned out to be a man with a stuffed dummy on his front so it looked like the dummy was carrying him.  The crowd broke into peals of delighted laughter when we realized how we had been fooled.

In a section resembling the courtyard of a house, a Rajasthani family performed a traditional “play horse” dance that is a ceremonial part of the Hindu wedding celebration.  It symbolizes the groom riding off to pick up his bride, with his whole family in attendance.  Formerly, there was an actual procession, with the groom riding a horse to the bride’s home; today, the members of the groom’s family perform this dance with a hobbyhorse.  It is whimsical and fun, as the “horseman” gallops, rears up, chases women and children, dances with the spectators, and swishes the horse’s tail.

In a curious performance, at the very entrance to the exhibit, a man danced to the beat of a drum.  Made up as a woman, he had a long veil hiding half his face.  With a flip of his head, the dancer shifted the veil to the other side of his face, revealing that it was made up as an old man.  The continuous switching—the ultimate in sex-role blurring—was so fascinating, it was hard to pull away to the rest of the exhibit.

Among the performances, traditional crafts people were making pottery, glass paintings, woven baskets, story scrolls—all the arts of Indian villages.  Displayed along with the modern products were their older—in some cases even ancient—counterparts.  Though there were differences in the artists’ styles, and contemporary influences were sometimes visible, the basic craft and product were unchanged.  These were not revived crafts such as we might see at Plymouth or Williamsburg—they were living traditions with roots thousands of years deep.  The same, one imagines, must be true of the performance traditions.

Beyond the village arts, Washington—and later New York—will also be treated to a sampling of India’s classical performing arts.  In September, the Kennedy Center will house the “India Festival of Music and Dance” with folksongs, Bharata Natyam [lit., “Indian dance”] and Kathak dance [an Indian classical dance form], and Kathakali and Kuchipudi theater [classical Indian dramatic forms] performed by some of India’s most famous artists.

Along with the Indian painting and sculpture on exhibit at many of Washington’s galleries and museums, the capital is being treated to a colorful and fascinating display of the living arts of India.  The Festival of India in Washington even occupies such unlikely sites as the National Zoo.  Unquestionably, “Aditi is all that has been born and shall be” (from “Hymn to the Gods,” Rig Veda, 1500-1200 B.C.E.).

"Critic’s Notebook: The Art of Complaining"

by Pete Wells

[Pete Wells is the restaurant reviewer for the New York Times.  In his “Critic’s Notebook,” which appeared in the “Food” section of the Times on 6 February 2019, he makes a distinction between “criticism” and “complaining” and then gives his take on the latter.  Curiously, if you translate “food” and “restaurants” into  “plays” and “theater,” much of what Wells says applies to theater reviews (and several other fields as well).]

It’s probably best not to yell like Gordon Ramsay.

Need opinions on where to eat? They’re easy to find these days, as consumers from around the globe fire off countless raves and pans about every known restaurant, cafe, chili counter, falafel cart and crêperie, not to mention post offices and jails. These mash notes and spitballs rain down endlessly not just from traditional review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp (171 million reviews at last count) and retailers like Amazon, but also from Facebook and Google, those all-purpose giants. Everybody’s a critic, right?

I happen to get paid for criticism, and I would like to criticize that old platitude right out the window: No, everybody is not a critic. What most of you are doing out there, online and in three dimensions, is complaining.

When we complain, we experience something that we don’t like and we say something about it. A critic doesn’t write about his own dissatisfaction, or doesn’t just do that. A critic has to poke his head out of his turtle shell, look around and gesture, with stubby legs, toward the sources of dissatisfaction. Done perceptively, with analytic thinking and an effort to connect the dots between this experience and others, this can be the beginning of a value system that readers might share, or reject, or at least attempt to understand. Complaining is as easy as breathing. Writing criticism is a real pain. That was a complaint, by the way.

But criticism and complaint are closely related enough for me to know that there’s a lot of complaining going on, and that most of the complaints aren’t having any effect at all. This may not be the point.

People who study complaints divide them into two categories, instrumental and expressive. An instrumental complaint is “directed toward a specific target and intended to bring about a specific outcome,” according to Robin Kowalski, a professor of psychology at Clemson University who has studied the social functions of complaining. Calling a restaurant’s owner the next day to say that you waited an hour for dessert and don’t intend to come back is an instrumental complaint. Texting a friend to say the polar vortex is making your skin peel off is an expressive complaint. We call expressive complaints venting, kvetching, griping or a number of other names.

It’s important to know which of the two types of complaint is right for you before opening the first can of invective. Venting has its uses. In one study, Dr. Kowalski and some colleagues showed that when we are asked to put our feelings of dissatisfaction with somebody into writing, our “positive affect” — good feelings, basically — will rise about 15 minutes later, after an initial downswing. In the same way, if a meal lets you down, taking a pair of pliers and a blowtorch to the restaurant on Yelp might give you a brief lift.

But once the rush of having gotten it off your chest is gone, you’d realize nothing has changed. You’re still out the price of dinner, and you won’t find out whether your grievance has reached the right ears unless somebody at the restaurant responds. Some owners make a point of scouring review sites so they can do just that. Others use the review’s date and details to identify and get in touch with the kvetcher. But there are more direct ways to get your gripe acknowledged than scrawling it on the walls of the internet.

“If there’s something that’s really bothering you, the ultimate benefits are going to come from targeted complaining,” Dr. Kowalski said. “Telling the person or restaurant.”

I know, I know. This is the part I avoid, too, by saving all my criticisms for my reviews. I hate confrontations, I run from them, I’d rather pay the check, even with my own money, and walk out never to return.

But let’s say you want something out of your complaint. Maybe you just want a rib-eye that’s still rare instead of the overdone paving stone you were served. Or you have a reason for wanting an item taken off your bill. Or (and I think this is what most people are looking for when they complain) you just want somebody to look you in the eye and say: “So sorry about that. Is there anything we can do to make it right?”

Whatever you want, you’re more likely to get it if you have a word with a manager either before you leave or later on. As a side benefit, you’ll be helping the restaurant, too; when somebody is unhappy at the end of a meal, almost any manager or restaurateur wants to know.

“We actually really welcome complaints,” said Melinda Shopsin, a film producer who cooks and waits tables at Shopsin’s, her family’s restaurant on the Lower East Side. This may come as a surprise to anyone who has heard the numerous accounts of customers’ being tossed out of Shopsin’s for any number of arcane infractions. And yet, Ms. Shopsin says that when her mother was still alive, she would ask what was wrong when she saw an unfinished plate, and then take a bite to see for herself. At other restaurants, this exploratory bite may happen backstage, in the kitchen.

If you’re going to make an instrumental complaint, though, you still need to figure out whether the reasons you’re unhappy are subjective or objective. Did Medieval Times undercook the chicken, or do you just not like eating with your hands?

Even if you’re pretty sure the problem is objective, it can be useful to pretend it’s subjective, for the sake of diplomacy. The chef John Tesar recalls a night, soon after he’d opened his Knife steakhouse in Dallas, when he got into an argument with a customer about the weight of a steak — an objective complaint if ever there was one.

“We had a 33-ounce rib-eye for two,” Mr. Tesar said. One customer who ordered it wasn’t convinced and began “screaming,” according to Mr. Tesar: “‘This steak is too small! This isn’t enough to feed all of us!’” He went to the table, and the hostilities quickly escalated, he said, until “I went into the kitchen, got a scale, grabbed the steak, weighed it in front of her, and said, ‘It’s 36 ounces!’” The story ends happily, with the two combatants meeting again at a dinner party some time later and getting along swimmingly. “We both realized how absurd and insecure we were being,” he said.

All this might have been avoided if the complaint had been cast subjectively: “That steak looks smaller than we expected. Are you sure it’s the one we ordered?”

Subjective complaints are still important data for restaurants. If one person doesn’t like the new hot-dog lasagna, it’s an aberration. If 15 people don’t like it, the recipe probably needs to go back to the workshop. The chef or owner needs to know this, but also needs to hear it in terms that won’t lead to a screaming match in the dining room. Perhaps you have seen Gordon Ramsay critique another chef’s cooking on television? Don’t do it like that.

In general, the more specific your complaint, the more likely it is to be understood. The worst, most useless and potentially dangerous complaints are broad, sweeping condemnations.

“There is complaining that makes you think about what you’re doing, and there is complaining where everybody thinks they’re entitled to say anything,” said Rita Sodi, the chef and owner of the Tuscan restaurant I Sodi in Manhattan. “Saying, ‘This is terrible’ is not complaining. That is being rude. It’s like, ‘You’re ugly.’ It’s telling me that I’m ugly. It’s personal. It’s my food.”

Even when the person you’re grousing to did not cook your pasta personally, you should proceed gently, in nonconfrontational terms. It may be helpful to imagine that you are speaking with an air traffic controller trying to land 20 jets during a snowstorm; you would try very hard not to add to the overall stress level in the tower, even if your child was on one of those jets.

“If you can be patient, open and polite, that’s really helpful,” Ms. Shopsin said. “The more collaborative and open you can be — ‘Excuse me, I’m sorry’ — even though it’s not your fault that it got messed up. People have to understand that sometimes to fix a mistake is not easy.”

And sometimes, a restaurant can make customers happy by changing something that isn’t a mistake at all. Occasionally, diners at Shopsin’s who had ordered migas complained about finding cilantro in the dish. Initially, the response would be that migas are supposed to have cilantro. Which may be true, but perhaps wasn’t the point.

Now, Ms. Shopsin asks customers whether they like cilantro. If the answer is no, there won’t be any in their food, even if, strictly speaking, it belongs there.

“Complaints do help change things,” she said.

[As a would-be theater professional, I’ve received my share of good and bad reviews (more good than bad, thank goodness), but I still remember one instance of what Wells would call a “complaint.”  I was in the house for a performance of a new play I had directed at a small theater downtown.  When the performance was over and spectators were leaving, I was standing at the back of the auditorium.  A man I didn’t know came down the aisle and as he approached, he asked, “Are you the director?”  I guess someone had pointed me out to him, and as he stuck out his hand, I assumed he was going to say something nice about the show like “Nice work” or something non-committal like “Interesting piece.”  But no!  What he said, while shaking my hand, was, “I want to thank you for the worst experience I’ve ever had in a theater.”  Then he turned and left—not that I could have come up with any kind of response.  Surely an “expressive complaint”—and not particularly constructive.

[Gordon Ramsay has hosted the American series MasterChef (2011-15), MasterChef Junior (2013-18), and Hotel Hell (2012-14), and the American versions of Hell's Kitchen (2011-18), and Kitchen Nightmares (2007-14), all on Fox.  As a reality TV personality, Ramsay is known for his irascibility, impatience, and liberal vituperation, often making insults and wisecracks about contestants’ cooking.

[Pete Wells has held the position of restaurant reviewer at the Times since November 2011, having joined the paper in 2006 as dining editor.  He’s the recipient of five James Beard awards for food writing.]