Review: Elaine Stritch wows with her musical autobiography

Life isn't fair; neither is art. Who knew that "Elaine Stritch at Liberty," her one-time, one-woman show, done as a benefit for Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre with a fairly pricey ticket, would be one of the great theater evenings of the year?

You might say that I did know, since I saw the same show six and a half years ago on Broadway and loved it. In fact, it's still so vivid, I was surprised to discover it was that long ago. And in last Wednesday's preview article (read it here), writing with the advantage of hindsight, I did say Pittsburgh was in for a treat.

But I was still blown away.

It has something to do with the intimacy of the Charity Randall Theater at Stephen Foster. And it has something to do with the audience, which was packed in (downstairs, anyway) and primed from the start, an audience that knew Stritch and lapped up every anecdote and devoured every song.

But mainly, it was Stritch herself. Perhaps she's even better now, having done the show not just on Broadway and in London's West End but intermittently on tour. Perhaps six years have added depth and resonance.

No, I don't really believe that. But it sure hasn't lessened her onstage energy. That was a monster sacre that took the stage Saturday, all the more astonishing for coming on so simply, wearing just black tights and a white blouse, lugging her own stool.

I remembered the show's many highlights, but I'd forgotten how packed it is with memories, stories and names. You could almost accuse her of name-dropping, but if so, it's name-dropping raised to a higher power, because every famous name comes with a full-fledged anecdote or triggers remembrance of a whole slice of her eventful life in show biz.

Her favorite device is to use a famous song, like her opening, "There's No Business Like Show Business," as the framework for extensive reminiscence. There are several more of these set pieces -- "A Talent to Amuse," "I'm Still Here," "It's the Little Things You Do Together" and her show-stopping (no, more than that, a show in itself) "The Ladies Who Lunch."

The show is well-written and packed with detail, nothing slapdash or random about it, as the collaboration of writer John Lahr insures. At just over 2½ hours, it gives more than full value. (For fuller detail, you can read my original Broadway review here.)

Stritch was accompanied by music director Rob Bowman on piano with a five-man combo, locally recruited, that I could almost call an orchestra, it had that full a sound. The lighting was especially good.

In person, Stritch is known to be an acerbic, demanding handful. You may remember her pugnacious Tony Award appearance in 2002. (I was there, in the press room: you can read my account here.) And I've been hearing stories about how brusque she was on this visit.

But on stage, she deserves all the adulation she gets. For many years, my rule about standing ovations has been, "only for Laurence Olivier or Ted Williams, and both are dead."

I stood for Stritch.

Review: Peter Reder takes us on a museum tour for PIFOF

The familiar made new -- that's one of the aims of art, right? Of course, it's also an aim of lectures, tours, panel discussions, therapy, newspaper articles (even reviews) or other expressions of fact and opinion.

So what to make of Peter Reder's modest, mild-mannered, gently subversive "Guided Tour," part of PIFOF 2008? (That's the Pittsburgh International Festival Of Firsts.) When is a guided tour really a performance, or even art?

Maybe always, I'd say just now, fresh from the gently dislocating experience that Reder offers in his wry, self-deprecating, counter-donnish way. If you invoke the right perspective, maybe every behavior becomes a form of performance. Maybe it already is, whether you know it or not.

Actually, there's no maybe about it. What Reder does is make a familiar activity (a guided tour, a strolling lecture) freshly self-conscious: "We're starting now," he says. "I'm starting. . . . I've started. . . . I'm pretending to know everything and you'll be pretending to be interested." His compact performance skitters along in the borderland between the thing itself and its parody, setting off small explosions of fresh awareness as we both accept and question what he says and does.

Reder's site is the Carnegie Museum. We gather in the lobby and then follow him through a couple of galleries, including the Hall of Architecture, where he pleasantly destabilizes our concept of "museum" by pointing out its own performative, theme-park function. It's a small leap to Marie Antoinette, no more an exploiter of the work of others than we, as we consume the treasures of such an imperial museum, heedless of their cost.

Reder makes a pleasant, unremarkable appearance -- wry, owlish and balding. He introduces Walter Benjamin's concept of the Angel of History, looking backward as the debris of the immediate past keeps piling higher. It's comic but also melancholy, reminding me of that Wim Wenders film, "Wings of Desire." Reder points out some melancholy angels in both sculpture and image. 

We ascend the grand staircase, hearing about Andrew Carnegie and the banality and power of those World War I-era murals, all sweaty men down below and bare-breasted, inspiring women up above. Reder speculates with apparent diffidence on Carnegie's demons. He brings out some precious photos, supposedly from other museums, but he barely lets us see them, lest our gaze use them up.

We sit down around a table in a conservator's work space and watch slides from Reder's youth, or maybe just versions of that youth, while he insists on turning his memories into story and even archeology. But what's the difference? Some of it's LOL funny; some of it could be, if we were sure what it is; some of it is simply smart commentary, not a bad thing in itself. Maybe we are part of the joke, if we've come for entertainment and get education instead.

We follow Reder onto a freight elevator: being backstage at the Carnegie after hours is a treat in itself, with its own disorienting energy, undermining the authority with which the museum normally presents itself.

Finally, we watch a movie in which Reder's mother says she has become the Angel of History. Or is that just his "mother," whether played by the real thing or an actress? (How could we tell? Yet we want to assume simple transparency rather than ironic distance.) Whatever she is, the debris of the immediate past certainly does pile up, on film as well as all around us in life -- after all, we're in a museum and isn't the world a museum, too?

In just over an hour, we're set free, the doors of our perceptions opened a bit farther than they were to start. No, I don't think it's theater, but it entertains and challenges us as theater should. So I guess it is.

There are just two "Guided Tours" left (note how even the capital letters suggest wry distance), at 7 and 9:30 tonight (Wed.). Doubtless they're already booked to what I was told is the limit of 20, but there were 30 of us on Monday. Maybe you could just lurk in the hallway and slip into Reder's traveling pack.

Kyle Bostian in 'Sex, Drugs and Spiritual Enlightenment'

Woke up late today, somewhat hung-over (emotionally, I mean) from last night's "Off the Record" and the cast party that went on past 2 a.m. -- but to tell the truth, the big fat cigar I smoked probably had more to do with my late morning haze. I always light up one of those big Producer's Stogies right after I make my maudlin mid-party speech of thanks to the cast. Isn't this what they do in all those old movies about Broadway, while they're waiting at Sardi's or somewhere for the reviews? In our case, there wouldn't be any reviews -- I can't review my own show, the other papers aren't interested in a one-night event that has Post-Gazette affiliations . . . and anyway, it's all off the record.

As producer, my judgment is bound to be partial (in both senses), but it seems to me to have been a big success. Anybody who stayed home to watch the Veep Debate missed out on a lot of fun. I'm intending to write a full report on what you missed in the next day or two, complete with pictures, if cast members will send me some.

But right now it's more pressing that I report on Kyle Bostian's one-man confessional monologue that I just saw tonight, because it has just one performance to go, Saturday at 8 p.m. That's at Bricolage, 937 Liberty Ave., Cultural District.

So that's what I'm doing right now: writing that report. I expect to have it up in this space by 2 a.m.

Theater critic is a 24x7 job  

Baker Street, dummie! And 'Off the Record'

It's actually encouraging to find my email full this morning with corrections -- some gleeful, but many mildly supportive, as of some doddering uncle who isn't responsible for what he says -- of my blooper in this morning's review of "The Hound of the Baskervilles," where I gave Sherlock Holmes' address as 221B Wimpole Street. For the record, that's Baker Street.

But what's encouraging is that this shows the theater page has readers. There've been so many dire reports on the parlous state of the American newspaper business, it's good to hear you breathing out there. I could almost pretend that I made the mistake on purpose, to spark response, but that's nonsense, of course.

"What can you have been thinking?," my more supportive minders ask. Well, since you do ask, I've been a bit frazzled the past few weeks, what with a second full-time job to contend with, producing tonight's "Off the Record." That's not an excuse for the error: just a way to give the show one more plug.

It should be a hoot. Last night's tech rehearsal at the Byham had its usual ups and downs, so we know tonight's real performance is going to be good. This is all according to the law propounded most memorably by this exchange between Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) and Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson) in Tom Stoppard's great filmscript for "Shakespeare in Love":

HENSLOWE: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
FENNYMAN: So what do we do?
HENSLOWE: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
FENNYMAN: How?
HENSLOWE: I don't know. It's a mystery.

From their lips to Thespis' ear!

No, seriously, "Off the Record VIII: When Robots Rule!," might be just what the doctor ordered -- one thing Pittsburgh always does is offer of plenty of material for satire. And however the production goes, it can't go far wrong with Chuck Aber and David Flick in the leads and the chief supporting female character parts played by Christine Laitta (Hillary, no other name needed), Karen Prunczik (Mary Beth -- Buchanan, in case you haven't been paying attention), Laurie Klatscher (Heather -- Bresh, that WVU MBA business, remember?) and Sheila McKenna (Sophie -- but this time, it's really SOPH-E).

Check it out. The show is at 8 p.m. at the Byham, and there are tickets available at the door. The lobby opens at 6:30 with free munchies and a cash bar, and the party continues there after the show.

What, you think you're better off staying home to watch (a) the debate, (b) the baseball playoffs (go Red Sox!) or (c) Pitt football? Nonsense! If anything, "Off the Record" offers itself up as your good reason NOT to watch the debate, which you're going to hear about endlessly afterward, anyway. And your VCR has a record button, doesn't it? In fact, the debate will be repeated later, on (I think) C-SPAN. Further, we just might have a certain lady governor from up north make an appearance in our show, too.

Mainly, it all raises money for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, which has never needed support more than now. If you come, say hi to me and I'll apologize again about the Wimpole/Baker Street mixup.