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So I just got a good night's sleep for the first time in . . . well, a while.
And then I got an email from John Issendorf telling me that the Times review was up for NECROPOLIS 1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed, and congratulating me on it. Yeah, Jonathan Kalb came to see the show on opening night . . . our VERY rocky (technically), but okay, opening night. Originally, I had been told he might only be able to stay for the first half, as he had to catch a plane to India, and he would be noting in his review he had only watched World Gone Wrong, but he wound up staying for the whole show, which I took as a good sign (he also asked Ivanna, who was working the box office, how long The Hobo Got Too High was and when it would start, and if it had been shorter and started earlier he would have stuck around), so I wasn't terribly worried about the review.
And, well, it's an okay review. It reads better than it is -- that is, you get the sense of a good review from it, but when you look at the details, it's really, really mixed . . . maybe even a bit more negative. The almost exact opposite of the 2005 Time Out New York review of the show which was pretty close to a rave, but read like a pan -- I've received two congratulatory emails on the Times review already and when the TONY review came out two years ago I got nothing but sympathy emails, though the review was primarily full of phrases like "breathtaking effect," "stunning style," and "tour-de-force text."
So reading the Times review was like:
"Hmmmn. Okay, okay. Good. Great! Neat. This will be good for the show. Well, that was . . . wait a minute, he didn't like it very much, did he?"
And the TONY one was:
"Oh. Oooh. Oh, dear. Shit. Oh, this isn't good. Dammit. She didn't get it did she? Oh, well, maybe next ti-- wait a minute, did she just spend half the column space saying the show was brilliant?"
Tone may be more important than actual content in reviews . . .
At least in getting butts in the seats, which I think this review will actually do.
Have to go out shortly and get the actual print paper to see it there, and see what the photo of Stacia and I looks like in print (assuming it's used there).
Hmmmn. Well, I'm a little unhappy with some of Kalb's criticisms, but not much. I've heard it before about WGW/WGW and other pieces of mine, especially the two-part ones, which, to me, are usually about theme (part one) and variations (part two), with the variants sometimes being a bit minor and subtle.
I think of the original pieces that way, musically -- WGW/WGW is a big sprawling symphony for a Wagnerian-sized orchestra; Succubus is a string quartet; Slumberland is a piece for small chamber orchestra.
And just as often, scupturally -- you look at the work in space from one side, you think you "get" it, then it is turned 45 degrees and you suddenly get a whole new understanding of the materials, the structure, the way it moves and displaces air, how light falls on it differently, what it means . . . but only if you look closely enough to see the subtle change the different perspective has made.
During the final stages of these shows, as I've been wandering around The Brick, crazed, doing whatever I could to be "ready," I've been muttering a paraphrase of Kurt Schwitters to myself: "I am a theatre artist, and I nail my plays together."
So, now I have to go do some more nailing -- the sound for WGW/WGW needs to be fixed a bit, then Berit and I will go over to the space early to fix all the light and projection issues. I'm looking forward to tonight's show. It's going to be beautiful.
UPDATE: Nope, no photo in the print edition, dammit (I think it would be a lot more eye-catching). Looks pretty good on the Times website, though . . .
