Jersey boys

I'm a huge musical theatre fan. Recently I had the privilege of watching "Jersey Boys" with my good friend Geoff (who is also a huge musical theatre fan), and it was brilliant.

"Jersey Boys" is the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (as the poster explains), one of the biggest American bands of the 1960s. Apparently they're still pretty well-known; I say apparently because ironically, I didn't really know who they were before watching the show. I'd heard a few pop culture references about them in TV shows, but that was about it. In any case, I really enjoyed the show.

The story of the group's rise to fame from the poor, rough and trashy suburbs of New Jersey is told from four different perspectives. Frankie Valli, the small and charming lead singer with a powerful falsetto. Bob Gaudio, the songwriting genius who wrote all the group's number one hits. Tommy DeVito, the hotheaded guitarist who got into huge trouble with loan sharks. Nick Massi, the quiet bassist who quit the group after Tommy became sequestered in Las Vegas by the loan sharks chasing after him. The group enjoyed huge success, but behind the scenes and in their personal lives, things weren't so great. For example, Frankie split up with his wife because the group's touring put a huge strain on their marriage, and a few years later his daughter Francine died of a drug overdose. But they all kept going in their own ways, and in the end the Four Seasons made it to the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame.

Yeah, I had a great time watching the show. The actors (whom I thought were Americans but discovered later were Australians, doesn't matter) were all amazing, and the music was great. I was surprised to find out that Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons were responsible for loads of songs that are still really well-known today, like "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" (I LOVE this song) and "Big Girls Don't Cry".

Musicals are awesome. I hope to catch another show or two before the year is up.

G.

The Hermitude of Angus, Ecstatic

Last night I went with Geoff to watch this one-man show called "The Hermitude of Angus, Ecstatic". It was a Fringe Festival show, and was, as expected, quirky. But it was also very entertaining.

The show was about this (I think he was homeless and mildly retarded) guy named Angus, who hangs out on his bench at his park. Angus is trying to figure out the "pattern of life" and where he fits into it. His philosophy is that matter is energy slowed down, and energy is love sped up, so to understand the universe he has to understand love, and to understand love he has to understand people. In order to understand people, he has to interact with them. Angus interacts with people that come to his park and sit on his bench, by taking snapshots of them using a hard hat-camera and going through their photos. He also has this cardboard sign that reads, "I hope you're having a really nice day!" Angus loves to dance, to read, and is doomed to die alone at the age of 72 in the same bed that he's had since he was 6-years-old.

There wasn't really a coherent narrative to the play. It was broken up into segments by the turning of amusingly-titled chapters in Angus' big book (e.g. "Chapter Green", "Chapter Retpahc"). And it was all over the place. But the dude who played Angus handled all the different roles very well. As well as Angus, he played Mary, Angus' crazy mother; Conroy, a guy who had an earpiece phone that made it okay for him to be mean to others; Manabohzo, Angus' evil alter ego; Byron, a bum on the street who philosophised about Japanese literature; the Librarian who turned into an ape, based on the theory that all humans were animals; and the Receptionist, who was lovely but also quite annoying, like many receptionists out there actually are. Also, in the middle of the performance, Angus came out of character and started talking about the very real and concerning phenomenon of crop circles. There was also a scene where Angus read a book on cakes and an erotic book at the same time, and he ended up making love to a chocolate cake to R.Kelly's "Bump'n'Grind". Funny, what? Yes.

I really liked Angus' exuberant dancing (he just got SO into it, flailing his limbs about and losing himself in the music), and the fact that we could see Angus' heart on his sleeve (he literally had a red paper heart clipped onto his shirt sleeve). He moved his arm to make the heart beat when he was dancing with his lady friend in one of the chapters of his book, and also when he was listening to his heart. Clever. Manabohzo was hilarious in his vulgarity and total disregard for others. It was interesting because Angus hated Manabohzo and tried to fight him off whenever he could feel Manabohzo trying to take him over. I thought this inner struggle was actually really interesting. I don't know if this was the playwright's intention, but I felt that it depicted a struggle that is present in all of us: we all have our own innate, sinful alter egos deep within us, and we have to suppress them to be good human beings. Also, Angus' life philosophy resonated with me: life is about love, it is about people (community, yo); these form the so-called pattern of the life and are central to its meaning. And the dude playing Angus was a very talented actor, despite the fact that he was a crazy Australian who ended up getting very sweaty and very covered in chocolate cake. A lot of the time he had us all cracking up with just his face. I also enjoyed the narrator's narration, who told us about Angus' life and his hobbies.

This post doesn't make much sense. Exactly.

G.