Sexy Naked Time at the Sinatra Club

I am not a dancer.  I know that this is shocking information, especially since once you see me in all my five foot, clumsy glory, you will wonder what in the world has prevented me from dominating the dance floor.  But even with this handicap, I love dance shows.  I love watching graceful and coordinated (Important in dance I have found) individuals tell a story though dance.

Combine this with the songs of Frank Sinatra and I am a happy girl.  I like Sinatra’s songs and think they could lend themselves to a fun show.  So I happily went to see Come Fly Away at the San Diego Civic Theater.

Being the epitome of a non dancer I took my friend along with me who is a dancer, for more technical feedback.  Curiously her feedback was “less crotch shots of the female dancers”, which is not a bad note.

The dancing is really really good.  It is a mix of jazz, modern and ballet.  The dancers were fluid and their lines were beautiful.  Especially the gentleman who played a “Chanos” the drunk (his spins were beautiful) and the young waiter,” Marty”, who was adorable in his enthusiasm and high energy.  The dances don’t so much end and begin as they blend into each other and one couple might fade away as others become more prominent.  There are a tremendous amount of lifts in this show (many which feature the woman in a full split facing the audience – hence the crotch shot comment).  There are so many lifts that it was almost like whenever someone wondered “what shall the next step be?” the answer was always “A lift!”

All this combined makes for a continuously moving stage and characters that are in the background and always moving.  And their movements are not always things that help define the story.  A girl randomly moves chairs and wanders around.   One guy is dumped by the hot blond and so naturally he proceeds to find another girl and have sex with her against the proscenium.  Meanwhile the mood spread and it seems for a moment that an orgy breaks out.

The characters were also asked to do some very strange things which I cannot begin to comprehend:

• ·         One character was always crawling over the stage, even across the front of the stage during another couples dance.  Bonus for some - she was mostly not dressed while doing this.The same character was passed around between the men in the company for the first half of the show, finally settling on one guy.  I think she was supposedly to be the “Vamp” character, but really I couldn’t think of her as anything but “tiger crawl” girl.
• ·         One character was choreographed to deliberately pull gum out of his pocket, unwrap it, put it in his mouth and throw the wrapper o the floor.  WTF?  How does this add anything to anything?  Plus I was always worried that he was going to choke as he chewed and danced.  (but he does get bonus points for being able to dance and chew gum at the same time)
• ·         Inexplicably take of your clothes…….at some point all the men took off their shirts and the waiter his pants.  Why?  No. Idea.  (but it sounds very unhygienic for a supper club)  I have no idea why they took off their clothes and danced around, and then some of the girls ended up in the underwear and negligees.  Why?  Why in a supper club?  At this point my friend deemed it “sexy naked time at the Sinatra Club”.

But here is the main problem; I was trying to make sense of it.  This was a bad plan.  The plot is so thin you could read a book in the dark through it.  The “characters” are so loosely created that they barely meet the stereotypical archetypes.    There are the young couple in throes of first love, there’s the couple that fights (the vamp and her …rebellious whatever he is), the drunk (which I didn’t get from viewing, it was only after dancer referred to his character as that after the show did I get a label for him.  Before this he was referred to as the guy with the mustache).

It has been referred to as Tharp’s homage to Sinatra, which I would have loved to seen, but this not it.  The dances don’t seem to take any cue from Sinatra in either dance styles or costumes.  The men are in nice suits and ties but the women are in shiny short dresses that defy any time period other tacky 70’s.  The dancing is strong no doubt; it just makes no sense at times.

An unexpected bonus was the awesomeness of the band.  They have the unenviable task of playing along with vocal tracks of Frank Sinatra singing in different venues and with different bands and make it sound cohesive.  The band does this and more.  They blend with the vocals so well I almost expected Old Blue eyes to walk out at some point.  The band has some moments to highlight their drummer and some horns, including the saxophone player, which are stellar.  Its good music that makes the audience forget that they’re there to see a dance show.

Upon inquiry it was discovered that the band plays to a series of “click tracks”.  So the original vocals are taken and the music is removed, but they have a background “click track” that helps the band keep track of the beat and where they should be.  Like a giant metronome, I suppose.  This is the most simplified version of how they do this possible, I’m sure that it is much more complicated in actuality.  No matter how it’s done, it was a fantastic performance from the band.

Have you see this show?  What were your thoughts?  I need someone to discuss this with so comment!

Oh Mamma....

Mamma Mia – here we go again? I know that I am late to the Mamma Mia party; it’s been an international hit for years and somehow I am just now getting around to seeing it. I have nothing against ABBA and I love jukebox musicals, so this should be something that I really enjoy.

(Before I get started, if you want to read my official review click here)

And yet…there was something missing. What was it……?

Oh yes, a plot and dialogue.

Are those important?

The plot is this: Sophie is getting married and wants her Dad to walk her down the aisle. Except, according to her Mom’s diary from the year before she was born, that could be one of three men. So Sophie invites all three of them to the wedding because she will just “know” when she meets her Dad. Throw in two old band mates of her Mom’s, who naturally when they get together, put on their old costumes and sing their old songs (I can’t find too much fault in this as I can’t imagine this being a huge stretch for me and my friends, and we weren’t even in a band).

The dialogue consists of things such as this:
''I'm old enough to be your mother.''
''You can call me Oedipus.''
Cue song

Every line seems to be a cue for another song. Some of which, are distressingly out of context. As the person I went to the show with said afterwards,” If you are gong to use pop culture in a show then you must acknowledge that the audience knows the context of the song. So having her sing what is a love song to one of her potential Dad’s is a bit off putting”.

Agreed – You could argue that the song works in the context of the show, but if you listen to the words and realize it s a love song then it’s back to being creepy. And since there is so little meaningful dialogue (see above) the audience has no choice but to listen to the words of the song. It’s a vicious circle.

The choreography is, I suppose, designed to look like anyone from the audience could run up on stage and join in. To help show that each number is really a spontaneous expression of the characters about what is happening in the moment. Except, some of it I can do and no one is going to pay to see me dance. These people on stage are professional dancers, please; lets give them something interesting to do (and watch).

Then, there are the scuba themed dance numbers. Yes, I said numbers, as in plural.

I’ll wait while that sinks in

WTF?? Really? Someone thought that what the world needed was not one, but two scuba themed dance numbers? Accented in bright neon colors?

There’s a story that Kevin Smith the filmmaker tells about how he joined a movie to write the script and all the director could talk about is having the main character fight a giant mechanical spider. While Smith argued that it made no sense and couldn’t figure out how to add it in a coherent manner, and as things spiraled out of control, the director steadfastly demanded his mechanical spider. Eventually the film wasn’t made, but in the very next film this director made there was a giant mechanical spider. I feel like this can be the only plausible explanation for these scuba themed dance numbers. They had to be the dream of someone, who, come hell or high water, wanted two scuba themed dance numbers damnit!

Notice that I am not talking about the performances, that’s because they were very entertaining and talented. They made this crazy show more than the sum of its parts.

In the end, I did like the overall message of the show (albeit it didn’t arrive until the second to last line of the show) that there are “all kinds of families”.

While I loved the music (at over 20 songs, there was a lot of music), the performances and even the very small side plots, overall I think I’m not going there again.

In the Next Room or the vibrator play

As much progress society has made in the last century, one question still looms large “what do women want?”


In the Next Room or the vibrator play is at heart, a play about how men and women relate to each other. Dr. Givings is a gynecologist who treats women for “hysteria” in his operating room located just off his living room. His young wife, Catherine (desperately wants to be acknowledged and loved, by him and by her new baby, who she is having trouble producing enough milk to feed. Troubled by the fact that her baby needs a wet nurse and having her husband infatuated with his new science and love of electricity, she is alone and in need of any kind of stimulation.


Mrs. Daldry is brought to see the Doctor by her husband Mr. Daldry who is fed up with her nervousness, sensitivity to light and more importantly, to his touch. As he explains to the Doctor, “There is very little sympathy between us”. Dr. Giving’s assures Mr. Daldry that he and his assistant Annie have been very successful at curing women of their hysteria by inducing a “paroxysm” in them and that soon Mrs. Daldry will be acting like she once was before.

As Dr. Giving’s, Gercke is amusing in his portrayal of an educated man that has no clue what is going on. For a scientist who is interested in observation and figuring out the answers to puzzling questions he completely misses the fact that his wife is slowly withering of loneliness and envy from lack of attention from him. It becomes apparent that even though they have a child, the good doctor has never thought to truly look at and see his wife. At the end of the play, you sense their awkwardness with each other as they truly have a chance to truly look at each other for the first time. He is equally clueless with his patients as he recites stories about Thomas Edison and electrocuting elephants while in the middle of a treatment on a patient.

Personally, I loved this character. Here is an educated man who hasn’t figured out that he knows nothing about what counts, which is mainly everything in his life, including his wife. He is a gynecologist who doesn’t understand women, asking the husband of his patient what is wrong with his wife instead of her. Grated, some of this is the time in which it is set, but the other is that he is a man who observes but doesn’t really seem to see the people around him.

Catherine, who hires a wet nurse for her baby named Elizabeth (finds herself at loose ends with both her baby and her husband occupied. She befriends her husband’s patients as they come and go through her living room and overhears the interesting sounds coming from the next room, and finally succumbs to her curiosity of just what her husband is doing in there. As Catherine, she is funny and energetic in direct contrast to her husbands somber detached scientific approach. Her character is someone the audience can relate too, even with the period setting and societal rules. Who hasn’t wanted to feel loved and involved in their partners life?

As for what’s going on in the next room? The machine that lies at the center of this play looks like a giant cumbersome box on wheels that has a tendency to short out the electricity in the rest of the house. It is more fascinating as the technological advance that it is for the time, alongside the light bulb and the light switch than it is for the “miraculous properties” it might bestow upon the patients.

While the play does not provide all the answers to the infamous question of what women want, it makes it clear that something that would help is that same old answer of “love and attention”, but also shows that a paroxysm or two couldn’t hurt along the way.

This play does have some nudity and adult situations, so it’s probably best to leave the kids (or the more immature) at home.