brilliant

"pretty isn't beautiful, mother. pretty is what changes. what the eye arranges is what is beautiful."

today i was overwhelmed. perhaps it is because i am easily overwhelmed, perhaps a bit overly emotional. and theater--really great theater that is--can really REALLY get me. bad theater therefore utterly destroys me, and i usually sink low in my seat and start reading the program to try to forget the screeching going on the stage in front of me.

but this was certainly not the case today. sunday in the park with george, one of stephen sondheim's many great musicals, is in a limited engagement at a fringe theater (better way of saying off-broadway) in london. i think that most people at columbia are not familiar with my obsessive love for sondheim, or the theater at all really. after my acting days were abruptly cut off when i entered college, i sort of put those past interests to the side, only rehashing them when i was lucky enough to see a spectacular performance (and therefore spiralling back into hyperbolic admiration for said composer/playwright). well lucky me, here i am in london where the west end provides more opportunity for overwhelmed kate rather than sinking in seat kate. and getting chills at the theater is really just the best.

but back to this play. sunday in the park with george is a musical about georges seurat's painting "a sunday at la grande jatte", which hangs in the art institute in chicago. many of you may remember it from the venerable film "ferris beuller's day off" (cameron stares at the painting, and the camera cuts closer into the painting until you see each dot). anyway, the first act is seurat painting the picture, with characters standing in for each person in the picture. his lover (aptly named dot), the two young girls sitting on the lawn, the old lady, the soldiers, the dog, the servants. it is perfect. at the end of the first act everything comes together perfectly--"composition, order, design, harmony" are the four words seurat repeats throughout--as georges arranges each actor into their perfect place in the painting. this production was very bold in its creative use of digital technology, which helped to create a more complete realisation of this very complicated, but brilliant vision of transforming a piece of art into a piece of musical theater. there is really no purpose in trying to explain, but by the end of the first act, when everything came together in such harmony, i could do nothing but bawl. ends of first acts in sondheim usually do this to me, granted (i was a wreck in sweeeney todd as well), but god. i mean, simply breathless. i had to run out immediately to find the bathroom, so that dear old dad wouldn't have to look at me crying over people singing on a stage (actually, i think he expected me to be overly emotional, and that is probably why i bolted to the bathroom...he would smile in an i told you so sort of way and take away from my need to step back from all of it. so i reflected sitting on a toilet seat...very lovely, but very kate). the second act is about seurat's great-grandson trying to find his way as an artist in 1980s america. it is very good, but not as unbelievable as the rest of the play.

i do not cry when sad things happens in plays or movies. people die, and i blink. i cry when everything comes together miraculously, when i witness this perfection, when it is simply too much to bear. this production was far from perfect. the problem is of course that i adore mandy patinkin and bernadette peters as george and dot. they were the originals, and like any enthusiast i have basically memorized every detail and nuance of their performances from recordings and videos. perfect! this dot was really mediocre and then the poor georges--no one can do it like mandy (who was by the by, "my name is domingo montoyo, you kill my father, prepare to die"). but anyway, all the performances slightly lacking, probably because this is basically still in workshop--they will probably move to the west end in a few months, and then hopefully to new york (the production of sweeney started here too). but the flaws and the bumps did not matter--there were the essential moments of utter perfection. the set design and the innovative use of digital images really had a lot to do with it--which is a surprising thing for me to say (usually i think such fireworks are usually stupid)--but it comes down to sondheim. really the man makes me sob. more just in the theater than listening to the recording, but that is the magic of the stage translating the man's genius into a living reality.

but this is not something that only happens in theater. i am sure that others have explained this all too human feeling far better than i, this way in which one can sense something great before them. it is a purely personal experience, it is something that you do not want to share with others (here i am typing up about it), but really, i cannot come close to saying what i felt. oh whatever. i will stop my nonsense. i think i will never become a critic simply because i am too swayed by my emotions. especially sitting in a theater of any sort. about thirty minutes in, if the play is successful i have lost all my cynicism and i am ready for my mind to be molded by the artist. and then thirty minutes out and i am usually back to making criticisms, but so many times they are not even good because the memory is hazy from my frolicking in the world of wherever i just was.

on another note, maybe i was just emotional today, because before the show i burst into tears at pretty much the drop of a hat. it was a very crowded and tiny theater and i was sitting in the middle of the row, and naturally i had to get up to pee before the show started. Because i am kate and do not think to do things before i sit in the most inconvenient place imaginable. well, i am the least graceful person i know, and some snippy brits did not help at all, and i was pretty much falling over everyone around me--like, this was a scene out of Larry David. Almost falling on someone's lap, tripping over my knee. but the icing came with dear ms. british snotty whore. after managing to go through four very nasty people who refused to budge, i finally come to her. Any moron would notice someone is coming down the way, i assume she has moved her legs, FORGIVE ME. but no. so the least graceful trip comes, and the old hag says in the NASTIEST WAY "well you COULD wait until i uncrossed my legs." i should have said "well, you could take less time just standing up than uncrossing your legs for five minutes" but instead i tried to apologetic route "oh i am terribly sorry" to which she looked to the side like "well yes i should be apologized to". and that point i looked at her with pity because i always feel that is what would make me feel worst about being a whore to a stranger. and then while walking away i burst into tears because i feel so bucking frustrated with people like that. Looking back on it however, i think that i have a lot of untapped anger, and that i really wanted to start cursing and batching her out at the top of my lungs, and that i let this suppressed aggression out through tears. pathetic. i need to be ridiculous and more Larry David next time instead of cursing her, again, in the bathroom stall.

also, sometimes eating really good food can make me feel more emotional/human/alive (i haven't been eating very well...). my dad took me to nobu, a restaurant i have wanted to go to since, well birth, and yea. it was worth the wait. dear lord. my mouth was on cloud nine, it has not yet returned, it does not want to be sullied by the earthly food that is not from nobu. sadly i am not a duke and therefore my mouth will have to return to the seventh ring of hell. so sad.

but then again, even with the nobu lunch and the snippet British lady in mind, i do think that i was not alone in my reaction to the show. the play begins and ends with the words "white: a blank page or canvas. the challenge bring order to the whole through design, composition, tension, balance, light and harmony. so much possibility". the set is completely blank. it is remarkable. an elderly british man sitting next to me, who apparently came to this saturday matinee on his own, took my arm after the lights went down on the blank stage said to me "wasn't that just, brilliant." i could sense that he said it because he felt the tears already rushing to his eyes, and he felt compelled to find someone who felt exactly as he did at that moment. i did not know how to adequately respond to this stranger's heartfelt words, so i smiled back at him and nodded furiously, murmuring through my tears, "brilliant, brilliant".