MOVIES: "Amazing" Aretha

AMAZING GRACE **** out of ****
FILM FORUM

Ok, in general I want audiences to behave themselves. We're here to watch the movie, not you! No cell phones, no texting, no chatting. But that's not really true. Movie-watching is a communal experience and when the movie's a comedy, an audience laughing along makes it that much funnier. At a tense moment in a thriller, we hold our breath. And sometimes, at a concert film, we...react. We clap or we let loose some sound of appreciation; we are present. The very first film I ever saw at a screening for critics was Stop Making Sense. I was in an empty theater in Gainesville, Florida and it was so damn good I practically clapped along even though I was alone and had never (yet) listened to a single Talking Heads album. When I saw a restored print of The Last Waltz at the late, lamented Ziegfeld Theatre (w Martin Scorsese in attendance), the audience cheered each number as if they were at an actual live concert. Who could blame them, with performances that good? When I saw Jazz On A Summer's Day at Lincoln Center, the hep cats snapped their fingers and burst into cheers at the end of Anita O'Day's legendary "Tea For Two."

So while I was thoroughly transported, agog and beside myself when (finally!) watching Amazing Grace -- the documentary film capturing Aretha Franklin's live recording of her legendary gospel album -- it was not exactly an ideal audience. A dozen sleepy critics on a weekday morning and not an "Amen" from one of them. No thank you. I want to see Amazing Grace again with a paying audience that is ready to take part, to applaud, to uh-huh, to laugh and be swept up in one of the best concert films in history. Quiet contemplation is not on the agenda.

I've waited decades to see this film, which was filmed way back in 1972 and then bedeviled by technical issues and then rights issues for 46 years. I bought Franklin's legendary gospel album when it came out on compact disc and the liner notes from that original 1972 release were maddeningly enigmatic. Apparently, a young Sydney Pollack had captured the two nights of recording on film -- the liner notes said so! Just as clearly, the film had never surfaced. What the heck happened? Years of mystery followed until details leaked out: Pollack had failed to sync image and sound with clapboards and it was literally impossible to match them. When technology finally caught up, Pollack handed the whole mess over to Alan Elliott who struggled and labored over the project for ages until he and editor Jeff Buchanan finally delivered a finished film. Now finally, it is making an Oscar qualifying run at Film Forum. The movie will have stiff, stiff competition but it is unquestionably worthy of winning Documentary and if Buchanan isn't at least nominated for Best Editing, Pollack should roll over in his grave.

How could it possibly match decades of anticipation? Heck, Orson Welles couldn't do it when his long-lost film The Other Side of The Wind finally surfaced. Well it does. Amazing Grace is exactly what I was hoping for, even if I didn't know it. It captures two nights of performance, showing a somewhat nervous and tense Franklin who nonetheless delivers from the first note of the first song on the first night and never looks back. (On night two she is notably more relaxed, if still wholly focused on singing and ignoring the countless distractions whirling around her.

Pollack is everywhere, as are a seeming army of people wielding 16mm cameras. He urges one to capture a wide shot, points others to good angles, discusses segueing from a rehearsal of a song into the actual performance (which is exactly what the film does) and so on. It's gorgeously shot but not in the strikingly beautiful way of say a performance piece like Stop Making Sense. It's more like cinema verité, raw and beautiful, with the cameras finding the right point of view and sticking with i and the lighting capturing Franklin and the mostly black choir, musicians and audience in every glorious shade under the sun. (No easy trick, especially without the lighting ever seeming harsh.) And what a talented bunch to film. Gospel great Rev. James Cleveland is a treat, whether introducing Franklin, schooling the audience on how to behave around the cameras, playing the piano or singing along. Just as magnetic is the Southern California Community Choir, led by a young man named Alexander Hamilton (!), who has so much personality as he leads them and interacts with Aretha that it's a joy to watch. Individual choir singers stick in your memory like friends, along with audience members (who dance in the aisles when the spirit moves them) or the celebrities in attendance like Aretha's father (who makes his presence known) or gospel great Clara Ward (who whoops in appreciation at various points on night two).

Every detail feels right, even the bizarre fact that the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, California wasn't filled to the rafters with people. (Apparently, they failed to get the word out? Though you'd think even a whisper that Aretha was singing would be enough to line folk up around the block.) So it's frustrating to think my six year old self might have wandered in, slipped into a seat in a back pew (near Mick Jagger) and been taken to a higher ground. But it's also kind of beautiful that the church isn't full, that this isn't an "event" choreographed down to its every detail, but a gathering of people creating a beautiful noise and above all worshipping.

The clothes, the attitude, the raw human feel of the 16mm film stock -- it all just works. And of course there's Aretha. I can imagine singers studying certain moments of this film just to see how she's doing what she does, the way her mouth and tongue and breathing are so beautifully controlled in building up a moment and then bringing it back down and then building it back up again.

It's a thrill from start to finish but a climax comes at the end of night one when Aretha tackles that old warhorse "Amazing Grace." Yes, there's a reason the album is titled after it. Aretha dives in and her performance is so moving, so meaningful, so completely the opposite of a diva showing off and instead the sound of someone moved to rapture while exploring with her artistry exactly what she can do with this melody at this moment in time with this choir and this audience and it just...flies. The choir has been seated throughout the evening. But you know why a choir is seated, don't you? They're seated so that when they STAND UP, you will feel it as a momentous event. They don't actually stand up as a group, on cue. Here, they simply begin to rise up out of their seats one by one in appreciation, roaring their approval as Aretha soars above them. They leap and laugh and raise their hands and sit back down again to wipe away tears. Rev. Cleveland himself steps away from the piano and takes a seat on the side, covering his head with a handkerchief, seemingly overwhelmed with emotion. The choir director Hamilton takes over on piano and after composing himself Cleveland takes over directing the choir as Aretha's masterful, transcendent performance comes to a close. I've heard this classic performance many times on disc but seeing the high drama, the intense joy, the sheer spectacle of it all as it was happening all those many years ago was breathtaking.

Don't get me wrong. Cleveland is a performer. Maybe he gets so moved during every service he must step aside and compose himself. I've never seen him in concert -- or in church -- before. But if that's a performance, he's a method actor because he was feeling it. And with Aretha singing her heart -- or should I say her soul -- out, who can doubt it? Can I get an amen?

NOTE: An introductory text sets up the film for us and how it came about. However, it unintentionally also misleads. It describes Franklin's remarkable popular success but then claims -- wrongly -- that she had enjoyed 11 consecutive #1 hits on the pop and r and b charts, from "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You) to "Spanish Harlem." She had indeed scored 11 #1 hits on one or both of those charts, but they weren't consecutive. After three #1 hits in a row on the r and b charts (with "Respect" also hitting #1 on the pop charts), Franklin's fourth single for Atlantic was "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," which peaked at #8 on the pop charts and #2 on the r and b charts. Later, "The House That Jack Built" also peaked at #2, "See Saw" peaked at #9 and so on. Franklin released twenty singles from her Atlantic debut through January of 1972 when she recording the gospel album Amazing Grace. And yes, eleven of them hit #1 on the r and b charts. (She would enjoy ten more #1 hits in the US, including a duet with George Michael that was her only song to hit #1 on the pop charts but not do the same in r and b.) In the 1990s, she also had three #1 hits on the US dance charts. That's an amazing record and needs no exaggerating.


Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.

THEATER: Time For Stoppard To Stop?; A "Prom" To Forget

THE HARD PROBLEM ** out of ****
MITZI E. NEWHOUSE AT LINCOLN CENTER

Most artists have a creative peak of 10 or so years, assuming they have any peak at all. Everything before and after that all-too-brief period when they have Something To Say or at least A New Way To Say It is just more of the same. It's the necessary work leading up to that breakthrough and the downslope where they repeat themselves, as one will. Stoppard is one of the many greats that disprove this rule, since he was dependably brilliant from at least 1967 through 2002 (or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead through The Coast of Utopia). For all I know, his radio play Darkside and the TV miniseries Parade's End would extend the streak another decade. I've yet to  catch either.)

So it's partially protectiveness and stupidity that makes me wonder after 15 or so years of unsatisfying stage work whether Stoppard should stop. The answer -- obviously -- is no, he should not. Not writing would perhaps be like not breathing for him. I would enjoy a memoir if he's the sort that might deliver a good one (some people are too circumspect for such an effort). And I'm not ready to give up the thrill of a new play by Tom Stoppard, the way friends ask in a rush if I knew he had a new play at Lincoln Center and why hadn't they heard of this and dear god it's already sold out and can I help them buy tickets somewhere, someway, somehow?

So the hard problem is not figuring out whether the new Tom Stoppard play is good or not. It's not. The hard problem is not figuring out when it goes off the rails. The play never really coheres but it falls apart precisely at the moment where a hard-charging American of finance chews out an underling and said underling collapses to the ground in a farce-like manner and you wonder for a second if you've wandered into a different play. The hard problem is figuring out exactly why it doesn't work. Since Stoppard has been grappling with this play for at least three years (it was first staged in London at the National in 2015), I imagine he's been grappling with this same question.

One thing is certain: The Hard Problem is unquestionably Stoppardian. It involves very clever characters discussing weighty and complex ideas, batting them about like tennis balls -- playfully or more often aggressively, to score a point. Two college students are sparring with one another on their way to what we assume will be an enjoyable shag. Hilary (Adelaide Clemens) takes the side of ethics and morality while her Teaching Assistant superior Spike (Chris O'Shea) mocks the very idea of morality and sees everything -- even altruism -- as a form of self-interest. Spike is mildly insufferable, until he takes his shirt off and one objectifies him quite rudely and is willing to let the smugness slide. The only moment of true surprise in all this is when Spike is showering and Hilary kneels primly on the floor and says her prayers.

Everything here feels slightly off, from the way Hilary prays (rather sheepishly, which makes the eight year old pretense of kneeling a little hard to swallow) down to their somehow unconvincing names. Spike? Hilary? I spent the entire play trying and failing to remember their names. He's not a bad sort and does offer helpful advice. Before you know it, Hilary is interviewing at a nonprofit called the Brain Institute. Most of its work is rigorously empirical and Hilary expects to lose out to the numbers guy Amal (Eshan Bapjay). Instead Amal is shunted into the world of hedge funds and Hilary gets to tackle the hard problem of defining consciousness. It all leads to an experiment led by Hilary and her whip-smart new assistant Bo (Karoline Xu) that goes smashingly, headline making, mainstream magazine reportably well. Sort of.

The problem is none of it convinces. One of the great marvels of Stoppard's career is how the clever-clever showing off of early plays like Travesties and Jumpers deepened into the rich, glorious humanity of his mature masterpieces Arcadia, The Invention of Love and The Coast Of Utopia. From start to finish, Stoppard tackled big themes. But he created a body of work where those ideas were embodied in and illustrated by characters we cared about, living and breathing people who brought those ideas to life. You don't have to give a toss about the gardening philosophy of England's past to be moved by Arcadia or follow the cross-currents of the Russian Revolution to root for the people in Coast  of Utopia. Stoppard made both the ideas and the people thrillingly real and important.

Not so here. The play trots along -- deceivingly enough -- nicely elevated by the performance of Clemens and O'Shea and Robert Petkoff, who makes Hilary's boss Leo interesting through sheer talent alone. You never quite buy it but it's watchable. Then it disintegrates. That bizarre pratfall of a scene where Amal faints during an atypical tirade by the institute's founder Jerry seems from another planet. Hilary at times breaks down over the memory of the daughter she had to give up in her youth, though she does so in a manner that is strange and unconvincing, to say the least. (No points for making a connection -- at least emotional -- between this long lost child and the similarly named adopted daughter of the Brain Institute's founder.) Then Spike behaves in a viciously rude manner that has no link to his earlier behavior; Spike was sometimes boorish but never mean. Toss in not one but TWO unrequited loves that we'd never know existed if it wasn't suddenly spelled out, not to mention a drawn-out ending that ties everything up too neatly and you've got a mess of a play that at least knew enough not to bother with an interval.

Jack O'Brien directs smoothly but can't make emotional sense of this hash. It is presented in the intimate Mitzi E. Newhouse as well as can be expected. If the staging comes from the play, it too is confusing. A group of observers dubbed the ensemble watches the play from the wings and gracefully moves in and out with props and the like. They and the cast very modestly interact -- smiling at or acknowledging each other and the audience in a mysterious, if friendly way -- but to what purpose I can't imagine.

For me, the play barreled past one decent ending, the moment when one character looks up to heaven and says simply, "Thank you." It was a graceful nod to the inexplicable, the ineffable, the desire to knock on wood and be grateful when things go right for a bloody change. But it didn't stop there, sad to say.

The hard problem the title refers to, the question of where and how and really IF consciousness arises is a challenging one. I imagine you can tell when a play you are writing gains consciousness, that is, becomes its own living breathing thing. Characters start saying things that surprise the playwright. Those lines are unexpected, "wrong," but so very right. Events start to insist on happening even when careful plotting was supposed to go that way instead of this. Even a playwright as great as Stoppard might not know how such a thing happens. But he's seen it time and time again. And I'm willing to bet he'd admit it never really happened with The Hard Problem. Ah well, there's always next time.


THE PROM ** out of ****
LONGACRE THEATRE

Ok, I never cared about my high school prom. You asked a date, you wore a tux, you danced, so what? Maybe it was self-defense for an (unwittingly) closeted gay kid who was too nerdy/dorky to snag the head cheerleader (or football quarterback) of cinematic dreams even if he wanted them. I was above it all, I guess, or wanted to be, though not so superior I refused to go or anything like that. I wasn't a rebel. I just didn't take it seriously or expect this was the night I'd lose my virginity or remember as a romantic highpoint of my young life. I also never thought high school (or college or middle age) was supposed to be the best time of my life. Call me Buddhist but I stay in the moment. I enjoyed high school. I enjoyed college. And I'm enjoying now.

But, you know, I get it. Prom. Prom!! I've seen enough movies to know it matters or is supposed to matter to others. So I'm perfectly willing to go along with The Prom, the benign new musical about a teen girl in the heartland who just wants to take her girlfriend to the prom. (In London, the musical Everybody's Talking About Jamie! is about a boy who just wants to wear a dress to prom.) Actually, it's not really about that lonely lesbian standing up for herself.

It's really about some self-centered Broadway stars trying to recover from their flop new musical about Eleanor Roosevelt. It gets such poisonous reviews they know they must do something to rehabilitate their images. Sure, "self-centered" and "Broadway star" is redundant but Dee Dee Allen (Beth Leavel) and Barry Glickman (Brooks Ashmanskas) are really self-centered, even by the standards of the Great White Way. They need a cause, something to prove they care, damnit! Then they can get some good publicity and move on to their next shown with a nice little boost in their Q ratings. Lo and behold, they stumble across the story of a poor little teen in nowheresville who can't bring her girlfriend to the prom. Before you know it, they and their friends (and the cast of a non-Equity production of Godspell) have descended on that small town to raise some holy hell.

You can plot out the rest. The stars get a little humbled and realize to boot that the hicks in hicksville aren't such hicks after all. Said hicks learn not all sodomites are sad and big city folk aren't so bad once you get to know them. Everyone sings a little, dances a little, lessons are learned and if you don't know whether that lovelorn teen Emma (Caitlin Kinnunen) gets to go to prom with her gal, well then you've never seen a Broadway musical comedy OR the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!

What's surprising is how often The Prom fails to match even those modest standards. The book is by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin, the lyrics by Beguelin and the music by Matthew Sklar. And between them in various configurations they've been involved with shows like The Drowsy Chaperone (Martin's triumph), The Wedding Singer, Elf and Aladdin (a terrific show and a triumph for Beguelin). Toss in Casey Nicholaw of The Book of Mormon (and Mean Girls and Something Rotten and the new London Dreamgirls) and you've got a lot of talent that should know better.

Among the many problems? The big city know-it-alls never really learn a lesson. Not one. In act one Dee Dee Allen does deign to go to Applebee's with school principal Mr. Hawkins. But he's played by the charming Michael Potts and the principal is a super fan who can recount her every role. His idea of romance is telling Dee Dee how important her work is to regular folk ("We Look To You"). Any celeb might be willing to spend an hour to hear that, especially when it's so sincere. In act two, the celebs learn that when you fail at something you never really cared about, you can always buy some goodwill by breaking out the credit card.

Barry Glickman tries to be besties with Emma, the teen who really didn't want her life turned into a Cause, thank you very much. How does he do this? Well, when the prom seems to be happening, he asks Emma what she's going to wear and then scoffs at her desire for a tux and some high tops. Nope, he insists she glam and fem it up. Really? Really! In this post-Ellen, #MeToo world he simply ignores what Emma really wants and insists she conform to his cisgender, straight, John Hughes idea of what a girl SHOULD wear to the prom (as any self-respecting Broadway queer at a rally might loudly protest). You might well expect this is a set-up for Barry to learn a lesson! But no...she just goes along with it and wears what he wants and looks nice, as far as he's concerned. It's almost bizarre how tone deaf the show is on this key issue. And if you think it's a minor matter...well, IT'S PROM and what you wear matters! They even do a whole number about it, for Pete's sake. And if you don't care what you wear, well that should be respected too.

It gets worse. In act two, fellow actor Trent Oliver (a deadpan Christopher Sieber) points out that the PTA and the Broadway stars and the media are all arguing about the prom...but no one is talking to the kids! So he goes to talk to the kids. Of course, all he really does is put on a backwards baseball cap, hang out at the 7-Eleven and when the kids finally recognize him (he was in a hit sitcom way back when), well, HE does all the talking. And that's one of the good numbers!

The kids are clueless Christians who are supposed to be dumbfounded by the idea that passages of the Bible forbid tattoos and divorce and the like. (In the real world, Trent, they'd be quoting Scripture and dismantling his banal take on Scripture faster than you can say "Vacation Bible School!" Oh they'd be wrong when they say it's love to tell a lesbian she needs to change her ways, but they'd hardly be surprised by what he preaches.) In other words, small town folk aren't so isolated and clueless as the show thinks and lots of Broadway stars come from small towns and love small towns, even if they don't love its politics. You don't really expect a light Broadway musical comedy to be wildly nuanced but the stereotypes of 60 years ago don't work today. A show can be silly but it still needs to be smart. And surely one of the dozens of producers should have noticed that the thankless role of the agent/publicist played by Josh Lamon had about ten lines, none of them necessary and could be easily cut.

What does work is the talent on display, doing their best with very modest material. Act one is thoroughly forgettable, but act two starts out strong. It begins with "Zazz," a song where actress Angie (Angie Schworer -- and I could have schworn she is a kid sister to Jane Krakowski) shares a little showbiz stiff upper lip advice to Emma. It at least feels rooted in the real world, with a Broadway hoofer offering up what she knows best: jazz hands. That's followed by "The Lady's Improving," in which Dee Dee apologizes to the principal by reenacting the breakthrough number from her first big show. It has the benefit of ignoring the musical at hand and offering up a parody/tribute to showstoppers of the past, a la The Drowsy Chaperone. And even Trent's "Love Thy Neighbor" perks things up. That's three in a row of not-bad stuff, but that's about it.

Still, Leavel and Potts as the Broadway diva and the principal bring some actual humanity to their scenes together. Ashmanskas is too cheerful to dismiss entirely even in these flimsy surroundings, while Sieber has the best line of the night, thanks to his dry delivery. They all have moments, including Kinnunen as the teen Emma. It's easy to forget about her, just like the celebs do. But she is pretty winning, with an easy, open presence that makes you care for her even when the show can't be bothered.

THEATER OF 2018

Homelife/The Zoo Story (at Signature) *** out of ****
Escape To Margaritaville **
Broadway By The Year: 1947 and 1966 ***
Lobby Hero ***
Frozen **
Rocktopia *
Angels in America ** 1/2
Mean Girls ** 1/2
The Sting **
Mlima's Tale ** 1/2
Children Of A Lesser God ** 1/2
Sancho: An Act Of Remembrance ** 1/2
The Metromaniacs ***
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical *
The Seafarer **
Henry V (Public Mobile Unit w Zenzi Williams) * 1/2
Saint Joan **
Travesties *** 1/2
Summer and Smoke ** 1/2
My Fair Lady ** 1/2
Broadway By The Year: 1956 and 1975 ** 1/2
Bernhard/Hamlet * 1/2
On Beckett ***
What The Constitution Means To Me **
The Winning Side *
Oklahoma **
Mother Of The Maid *
Love's Labour's Lost ** 1/2
The Lifespan of a Fact **
India Pale Ale *
Thunderbodies ***
The Ferryman *** 1/2

Eve's Song *

King Kong *

American Son * 1/2
The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui ***

Mike Birbiglia's The New One ***
The Hard Problem **  
The Prom **

Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.

THEATER: Mike Birbiglia's "New" Baby

MIKE BIRBIGLIA'S "THE NEW ONE" *** out of ****
CORT THEATRE

I want to know as little about a show as possible before I see it. This would be true even if I wasn't a critic. Ever since that Canadian kid visiting South Florida for the summer blurted out to me that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father BEFORE I saw The Empire Strikes Back, I've been horrified by spoilers. ("Why? Why did you tell me?") Despite all this, I'm not a fanatic. On revivals, I'll perk up when hearing details about their approach to a show, like the recent Oklahoma at St. Ann's that included corn bread and chili during the interval and a general picnic-vibe. Cool!

So I've seen Mike Birbiglia before, I knew his new show was about becoming a father (the new one is a baby) and I heard...murmurings. Comments. By and large, his stand-up persona is to self-deprecate; most of Birbiglia's jokes are at his own expense, especially when detailing the myriad medical issues that have bedeviled him. So it seemed out of character for such an everyman, relatable guy, but I kept hearing he came across as a jerk. He crossed some line and risked people...well, it wasn't that they wouldn't like him. They would hate him. What a terrible person! Don't be that honest, Mike! WTF? What could he have possibly said?

Well, it's not a spoiler, so I won't feel bad in telling you that during his new show about being a new parent, Birbiglia confesses that being a parent is...really hard. Oh, he goes farther, but that's the gist of it. In fact, Birbiglia confesses it's so hard that -- and here he drops to that conspiratorial whisper where you imagine he's speaking to you and you alone -- that he understands why some men leave. (I'll admit, a small ripple of astonishment spread through the audience at the performance I attended.) Yeah, he gets it. Birbiglia immediately follows that "confession" with a reassurance. He doesn't mind telling us this because he knows: HE'LL NEVER LEAVE. Not a chance.

Well, if that's bold, someone should have told the classic original sitcom Roseanne or a thousand other TV shows where the parents cheerfully joked about dumping the kids and heading for the hills. Heck, even moms can feel sometimes it's a hell of a lot of work and they've considered tossing in the towel. (Of course, women abandoning their kids is somehow even more difficult for people to accept, much as they understand it intellectually.) Now remember, we're not talking about adults leaving their kids on the side of the road. We're talking about parents overwhelmed by the responsibility and admitting to themselves and each other, "Wow. This is hard."

I never would have thought this was Lenny Bruce territory, deeply confessional truth-telling that risked alienating an audience. And it wasn't. The show I saw was warmly embraced and ended on just the sort of awww emotional moment you saw coming a mile away but still sort of bought since we're all suckers when it comes to the emotional bond of parent and child.

[Here's Birbiglia on Jimmy Kimmel talking about his show.]

That's how the show ends. But it begins with a couch. In a nifty throughline, Birbiglia charts his maturity through his couch, which started with a beast he "rescued" off the street (his roommates gave him an "awesome" and a thumbs up) and then progressed to deciding he was going to go full adult and buy a new couch only to experience sticker shock and finally discovering his beloved favorite couch (the place he would collapse after weeks on the road doing standup) had been commandeered by "the new one." And God help him if he thought this was temporary.

Maturity becomes him, that's for certain. Birbiglia has a sad sack, Ray Romano sort of vibe (he must have turned down sitcoms by now) with his own sneaky delivery. He keeps calling his wife by the wrong name (a hilarious distillation of male indifference; "oh, it's our anniversary?"), bemoans any change, laughably thinks the fact that his wife saying she didn't want kids when they got married meant she would NEVER wants kids and generally rolls with the punches.

From frighteningly intrusive medical exams to discovering his sperm don't swim to realizing he is NOT the most important person in the room when the new one arrives, Birbiglia is in fine form. It's a story -- not stand-up -- and he is ably supported by the sneakily simple set of Beowulf Boritt, the lighting of Aaron Copp, the sound of Leon Rothenberg (nicely invisible but crucial) and director Seth Barrish to build the story and use his distinctive delivery (an offhand comment here, a mumbled punchline there) to share it rather than as a crutch. You're never waiting for the jokes, which makes the jokes all the more satisfying.

It's Mike Birbiglia's most satisfying show yet, which bodes well for his next piece, The Terrible Twos. 


THEATER OF 2018

Homelife/The Zoo Story (at Signature) *** out of ****
Escape To Margaritaville **
Broadway By The Year: 1947 and 1966 ***
Lobby Hero ***
Frozen **
Rocktopia *
Angels in America ** 1/2
Mean Girls ** 1/2
The Sting **
Mlima's Tale ** 1/2
Children Of A Lesser God ** 1/2
Sancho: An Act Of Remembrance ** 1/2
The Metromaniacs ***
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical *
The Seafarer **
Henry V (Public Mobile Unit w Zenzi Williams) * 1/2
Saint Joan **
Travesties *** 1/2
Summer and Smoke ** 1/2
My Fair Lady ** 1/2
Broadway By The Year: 1956 and 1975 ** 1/2
Bernhard/Hamlet * 1/2
On Beckett ***
What The Constitution Means To Me **
The Winning Side *
Oklahoma **
Mother Of The Maid *
Love's Labour's Lost ** 1/2
The Lifespan of a Fact **
India Pale Ale *
Thunderbodies ***
The Ferryman *** 1/2

Eve's Song *

King Kong *

American Son * 1/2
The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui ***

Mike Birbiglia's The New One ***

Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.

THEATER: The Irresistible Raul Esparza in "Arturo Ui"

THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI *** out of ****
CLASSIC STAGE COMPANY

I've never seen this Bertolt Brecht play before and it's easy to see why. I can readily imagine it as an earnest, tiresomely obvious lecture on the rise of Adolf Hitler, a production that would scare one off this play and Brecht in general for years to come. This dire warning was essentially ready to be performed in 1941. But American theater companies weren't ready to stage such a provocative show when the US was still officially neutral in World War II. So it sat in a drawer until after Brecht died. Finally in 1958 it made its debut and has proven catnip ever since for lead actors like Christopher Plummer, Simon Callow, Al Pacino, Antony Sher and many others.

Who can resist the idea of playing a two-bit hood from Brooklyn that muscles into the cauliflower trade in Chicago, viciously betraying any friend and crushing any enemy that gets in his way? Not star Raúl Esparza, in an electrifying, satisfying performance that reminds us how good this actor can be. Arturo Ui is intended to be a flashy, larger than life role and you can't go too big when transforming from a punk into a world class dictator.

And yet Esparza never does go big, except when the finale absolutely demands it. He has an intriguing emotional reserve on stage; you feel Esparza is always holding something back, something that remains his own even when he's in the spotlight demanding your attention. That works a charm here since no one ever really knows Arturo Ui, the soulless, pitiless golem that cannot betray anyone since he never pretended anyone else matters. Arturo demands loyalty but he never, ever offers it.

Photo by Joan Marcus (c) 2018

In John Doyle's brisk direction, this brutally funny work embraces the didactic nature of the text with glee. The audience is seated on three sides and the cast is held behind a metal fence, rattling off the introduction that spells out the action soon to take place. They enter the bare stage via a gate that clangs shut like the door of a prison or the perimeter of a concentration camp. In case you miss the point, the real life incidents that served as raw material for Brecht are spelled out year by year, scene by scene, sometimes punctuated with the sound of adoring crowds cheering on the Führer. 

Functional folding tables -- the kind you'll find in any community center -- are constantly being set up or taken down. Actors move into position with military briskness, firing off lines like bullets. And then a table is rotated, two chairs appear and another scene begins with a negotiation or a plea or a plan. Back and forth, again and again, with Arturo just an annoying pest on the margins at the start. Then he proves maybe a little useful and is allowed in the door. And then he's speaking up a little more forcefully and then he has a seat at the table and before you know it he's at the head of the table. The front man he used to garner the support of the public is pushed aside and how the hell did that happen anyway? Is this schmuck in charge? Really?

Photo by Joan Marcus (c) 2018

This is agitprop, not realistic drama and it might prove more medicinal than the bracing tonic we want. Happily, it's fun! The cast delivers their lines with rat-a-tat glee, like the announcer in a Movietone News reel. Arturo Ui has come to Chicago! The cauliflower racket is feeling the pressure! The town of Cicero may be next! The terrific George Abud as a head of the syndicate Arturo wants to take over is especially good at offering up his dialogue with verve and a wicked, desperate gleam in his eyes. But it's not all hijinks and end-of-the-world desperation. As the widow of a man who tried to bend to Arturo (but didn't bend readily enough), Omozé Idehenre offers an essential glimpse into the heartrending toll of this tragedy. That makes her eventual acquiescence, her public embrace of this killer and her oh-so-subtly reluctant applause all the more painful. (She's also wonderful as a cynical official overseeing an investigation with diligence but inevitably sidelined by the syndicate.)

Yes, Brecht has changed Hitler's domination of German politics into the deflating "dream" of conquering the vegetable trade. The invasion of Austria becomes the invasion of Cicero. The Reichstag fire is transformed into a warehouse fire used to intimidate anyone foolish enough to stand up to Arturo's reign. It's silly and mocking -- wonderfully so. Brecht doesn't deflate or diminish what Hitler did; he just gives it a smaller scale so you can begin to grasp the horror of it all. The death of eight million is beyond us; the death of eight might be within our ken. 

                                       

Photo by Joan Marcus (c) 2018

                                          

It's a strong cast, with Abud (The Band's Visit) in particular proving yet again why it's always a good sign to see his name in the credits of a show. Others like Eddie Cooper and Christopher Gurr keep the satire stinging but hold onto a core humanity that makes this more than allegory. When hearts aren't breaking, satire can be pretty toothless. 

The space of the Classic Stage Company has some magic that brings out the best in scenic designers. Here that holds true, mostly, though a upper level set behind the fence is distracting. Stairs lead up to it and one can't help wondering when this space will be used. When it is finally -- and briefly -- employed, the effect hardly seems worth the bother. Doyle's instinct to pare down failed him here, but it's only a minor distraction. Otherwise, the tech elements are a plus, from the costumes of Ann Hould-Ward (casually revealing character) to the lighting of Jane Cox and Teresa James (never attention-grabbing but always focusing our attention where it needs to be) to the sound design of Matt Stine (flashier than sound design usually proves, but necessarily so in this context).

Doyle uses every inch of the space, fluidly so, and it all climaxes for me at the end of act one. Arturo knows he must speak in public and command more respect, so he turns to a classically trained actor for pointers. She coaches him in how to walk, how to stand, how to sit and above all how to speak. Esperza has some fun holding his hands over his crotch the way she suggests, but for the rest of the play these mannerisms become more and more natural in nicely timed stages. Act one ends with him reciting the famous Marc Antony speech from Julius Caesar as practice and Esparza transforms from a simple man of Brooklyn into a more and more commanding speaker until you're simultaneously magnetized and horrified. At the end of the scene, he's sitting in a chair with casual authority, spotlit and glowering -- not like a two-bit Mussolini, but like Il Duce himself.

That's it, I thought. I think I've just experienced everything this play has to offer. Indeed, act two was in many ways just more of the same: it takes the message of act one and underlines it and then adds a few exclamation points for good measure, nothing more.

But Doyle allows it to slow down and even slip back a bit in pacing, so we see again Arturo overwhelm the opposition, such as it is. Yes, we'd already seen this but it felt fresh or at least like a new stage in his malignant growth. I still believe everything was there in one act; Brecht's work was done. Yet act two had its own pull, with Idenhenre getting her chance to shine emotionally. At the very end, Esparza goes full Adolph during a final ranting speech. While I preferred the silent menace of his glowering visage of the end of act one, it was shiver-inducing.

Recent productions have reportedly underlined comparisons to President Trump and the rise of fascism around the world. I'd call Brecht prescient except one can always safely predict ugliness and hate will appear in hard times and need to be confronted. The play concludes by saying yes, this villain Hitler was faced down by the world. Just don't take too much comfort in that. As Brecht promises in delphic fashion at the very end, "The bitch that bore him is in heat again."

In a final modest misstep, the audio mix crescendoes with cries of "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" and then segues to "Lock her up! Lock her up!" No need for that, people; Brecht was blunt enough. We got the message loud and clear.


THEATER OF 2018

Homelife/The Zoo Story (at Signature) *** out of ****
Escape To Margaritaville **
Broadway By The Year: 1947 and 1966 ***
Lobby Hero ***
Frozen **
Rocktopia *
Angels in America ** 1/2
Mean Girls ** 1/2
The Sting **
Mlima's Tale ** 1/2
Children Of A Lesser God ** 1/2
Sancho: An Act Of Remembrance ** 1/2
The Metromaniacs ***
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical *
The Seafarer **
Henry V (Public Mobile Unit w Zenzi Williams) * 1/2
Saint Joan **
Travesties *** 1/2
Summer and Smoke ** 1/2
My Fair Lady ** 1/2
Broadway By The Year: 1956 and 1975 ** 1/2
Bernhard/Hamlet * 1/2
On Beckett ***
What The Constitution Means To Me **
The Winning Side *
Oklahoma **
Mother Of The Maid *
Love's Labour's Lost ** 1/2
The Lifespan of a Fact **
India Pale Ale *
Thunderbodies ***
The Ferryman *** 1/2

Eve's Song *

King Kong *

American Son * 1/2
The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui ***

Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.

THEATER: A Musical "King Kong?" Bananas! "American Son" Bores

KING KONG * out of ****
BROADWAY THEATRE 

Yes, they did a great job with the giant ape.

No, the spectacle of King Kong the technical achievement does not make the show worth a peek. Sure, maybe you were happy to sit through Titanic to watch the boat sink or endured the absurd story of Avatar to savor the cutting edge 3-D effects. But much as I love puppetry, that spectacle for its own sake argument does not hold true here.

And no, kids would be bored out of their minds.

Unless you or someone you love is really, really nuts about puppetry (which I am) or is so into Kong they can happily discuss the 1976 version as compared to the 2005 version or wax eloquent over King Kong Vs. Godzilla, then...no. I mean, if they're even aware of the Rankin/Bass TV series The King Kong Show (three seasons!) and the sequel to the classic original that came out literally MONTHS later way back in 1933 (The Son Of Kong), well, then they already have their tickets and didn't wait and can properly lower their expectations.

Other than that...no.

Now back to the good news. They really did a terrific, ground-breaking job with the character of King Kong, a combination of on-stage puppeteers, remote controlled manipulators and backstage actors voicing the creatures grunts and bellows. As with The Lion King, you soon ignore the artists making it happen (except when it's really fun to do so) and just watch the character. It's no diss on the other actors to say Kong gives the best performance of the show -- you feel actual empathy for the creature and every all-too-brief moment when he is center stage and interacting with others finds the audience pin-drop quiet and engaged. Let me emphasize again, it's not so magical that this makes a trip to King Kong worth the visit, but it's a genuine achievement nonetheless.

Of such things are special Tony Awards created and Kong would be a worthy recipient. Plus, who would want to tell Kong he LOST an award? Best to make it a sure thing and announce the award far in advance. Beyond that, it would be wise for the highly competitive theme park impresarios to check this out. Their theme parks often employ giant mechanized creatures and the approach taken here probably isn't any cheaper but it sure as heck is far more satisfying creatively and emotionally. The Kong of theme parks is just a stunt; this Kong lets you MEET the beast and sense his emotions, his intelligence, his fearsomeness. If there's one electric moment in King Kong, it's the scene where Kong has broken free of his chains on Broadway and then lumbers out to the edge of the stage, finally acknowledging us the audience and looming over the front rows, eying the orchestra seat members like a tasty snack. A ripple of amused tension spreads throughout the crowd as Kong breaks the fourth wall. I doubt there's anything as convincing in any theme park anywhere.

The tortured history of this punchline of a show waiting to happen (King Kong? The MUSICAL?) is well-documented. Still, what has arrived on Broadway directed and choreographed by Drew McOnie made some smart choices. It kept the Depression America setting to capture the desperation of a two-bit film director/impresario named Carl Denham (Eric William Morris). He has a cockamamie idea to head to an uncharted spit of land dubbed Skull Island, drag along a leading lady and capture...something with his footage. He stumbles across would-be actress Ann Darrow (Christiani Pitts), likes her spunk and they roll the dice. Of course, when they find King Kong, Denham decides instead of capturing something on film he'd rather capture the beast itself, bring it back to New York and get rich a la P.T. Barnum. Things go wrong.

In this version, the natives looking to sacrifice a blond beauty to their god Kong are well forgotten. Instead, Ann Darrow is black, which immediately erases -- or at least minimizes  -- all sorts of racial stereotypes embedded in the original scenario. Further, this Ann Darrow is no Fay Wray shrinking violet known only for her screams. She's more likely to save herself, thank you very much and her scream is more of a roar that Kong himself might identify with. (In one of the show's many misbegotten technical choices, Ann's roar is a pre-taped bit of nonsense that takes you out of the show every time they employ it.)

That's all well and good, but the show goes way too far. Ann isn't just a competent gal, she's a striver who becomes self-actualized by her bonding with Kong. Towards the end of the play, she's actually telling the big fella he's made her a better person; God bless Pitts for delivering such tripe without rolling her eyes at the same time.

And MILD SPOILER ALERT, she actually encourages Kong to break free in New York (because what could go wrong?), jumps on his back and they ride off together to Central Park. One can easily imagine Ann feeling sympathy for the creature and suffering guilt for seeing him chained up and miserable. But actually getting within arms reach, much less climbing on his back as a willing partner in crime? We actually believe in the creature too much to buy such nonsense. Kong could have easily grabbed Ann of his own volition and taken her to the top of the Empire State Building without undercutting Ann's agency, thank you very much. END OF SPOILER ALERT

Finally, the show was right to understand the spectacle of Kong needed a full orchestra and a genuine score (Marius de Vries) to make it work. What the show most definitely didn't need, however, were songs by Eddie Perfect or anyone frankly. Since none of them work -- at all -- and the only decent scenes are the dramatic ones, it's a shame after scrapping two complete versions they didn't just say to hell with the tunes.

Much else does not work. The digital backdrops employed throughout the show do fine when trying to give a sense of excitement as Kong races through the jungle or the streets of New York. Otherwise, they're murky and kind of ugly, somehow, as if the Depression setting meant the visuals had to be dark and depressing and murky too. The transformation from the streets of New York to the bow of the ship is so clumsily handled by director McOnie it made me appreciate how smoothly such things are often achieved by others. (I kept thinking, Why are the two leads standing on a box and being pushed around the stage or Why are the sailors surrounding the two leads with a bunch of ropes, rather than simply enjoying as one should as one image flowed into another and the boat magically appeared.) The jungle is goofily unconvincing (green lasers certainly don't help), though Kong's lair (or rather, penthouse with a great view) works fine.

While Kong is impressive, clearly every penny went to him. A battle with a giant serpent is deeply disappointing for two reasons. One, the giant serpent isn't terribly convincing. Two, as they face off, Kong and the serpent sort of wander off stage for their climactic showdown because it was too difficult or expensive to stage the fight in front of the audience who dearly would have enjoyed seeing it. This isn't just a cost-saving; it cheats the audience out of the necessary sight of Kong's fearsome power and it happens at a few key moments. Most of the big action happens offstage, though the planes shooting at Kong above the Empire State Building is a nice image. The result is that he's a lot less fearsome than he might have been.

The book by Jack Thorne is weak and does a poor job of making up its mind about that impresario Carl Denham. Is he the villain? Does he turn bad or make the wrong choice at certain impulsive moments? The show has no idea and so neither do we and a chance for a genuine hiss-able foil (or at minimum a flesh and blood character) is lost. It's so clumsy in dealing with the two leads that the only notable (but brief) moments of actual drama involve Lumpy. Who you might well ask is Lumpy? Lumpy (Erik Lochtefeld) is Denham's assistant, a sad sack fellow who has perhaps the only substantial speeches of the show -- in one he gives Ann the spine to stand up to Denham and in another he quits his job. They almost sort of work, leaving you with the feeling that if they'd dumped the godawful songs and actually had some more scenes that this nonsense might have sorted itself out a little. No such luck.

AMERICAN SON * 1/2
BOOTH THEATRE

This drama by Christopher Demos-Brown is the second work on Broadway that feels like a throw-back to the good ole days. Like Lifespan Of A Fact, it's a topical entertainment with some big stars and something on its mind. In this case, it's the sadly perennial topic of racism in America, the dangers young black men face on a daily basis and the constant hum of tension felt by their parents at all hours of the day and night but especially at night and especially at 4 am when their son hasn't come home yet and they can't reach them on the phone.

That's the nerve-fraying situation of Kendra (Kerry Washington) when the play opens. It's 4 am, it's raining and she's pacing around an anonymous waiting area of a Miami Florida police station where a new but clueless cop (Jeremy Jordan) tries to placate Kendra despite his inability to tell her much of anything about her son. They know the car he was driving was involved in an incident, but other than that he knows just as little as she does and Kendra is just going to have to calm down until the public affairs officer shows up and can give her more help. Uh-huh.

When Kendra's estranged husband Scott shows up (Steven Pasquale) and we discover he's a white FBI agent, you can easily map out the rest of the action in this tepid, ripped from the headlines work. Sadly, nothing surprises in the least, right down to the unsurprising surprise ending. American Son is earnest, well-intentioned and inert, even with four strong actors ready to give it their all. It's not enough, just as it wasn't enough for the similarly bland Lifespan Of A Fact, which desperately tried to add a little timeliness to its tale of fact-checking by making allusions to our supposed post-truth era.

Do such plays simply not work on Broadway? Is TV where they belong? I'd say, no, not really. They just need to be done well. And with TV tackling such stories with a hell of a lot of integrity and smarts, the bar has raised. A show like American Son might have been the only game in town in 1950. Today, it just feels played out. All director Kenny Leon and his sterling cast could really have done in the situation was take a pass or demanded more.

The first problem is that American Son takes place in real time. In the old days, that might have created some tension. Instead, it creates an artificial aura around the entire show. Plus, audiences are too savvy. We know in real life how even an incompetent police station in Miami would have handled the situation we always assume is playing out and it isn't by having a distraught mom handled in bungling fashion by a newbie who doesn't know the first thing about preventing a bad situation from getting worse. Further, when the drama takes place in real time, it makes it all the harder to accept that Kendra and Scott -- who are separated and likely never to reunite -- would be desperately worried about their son and yet take time to share anecdotes about the first time they met, hash over old memories and the like. It's the sort of artificiality drama used to traffic in without thinking but is much harder to pull off now.

Among the many other problems is the core relationship between the two adults. Scott has left Kendra, is sleeping with another woman and if they'r not already divorced, they surely will be. (The timing of when he left the marriage was a little murky for me as I watched the show.) As the clunky text brings up everything from baggy pants and corn rows on young black men to the dangers men of color face every single day of their life, the idea that Kendra and Scott were married for 15+ years becomes increasingly difficult to believe.

If their nightmare of a situation (her son is missing) was taking place on a date these two people were on, I'd believe it. But instead they were in love and Scott has been married to Kendra and raised their son with love and affection and presumably at least a modicum of intelligence? Not buying it. Scott has to be lectured to about what can happen to his son? You mean, this FBI agent has never had the "talk" with his son, the one where he must acknowledge his son literally can't casually run down a street for any reason without endangering his life? Scott can't even bring himself to call his own son by the name they chose, Jamal? Scott is so focused on having Jamal -- or "J" as he would say -- getting into West Point and having every "advantage" that he hasn't clued himself in to the need for his son to celebrate and appreciate and accept the color of his own skin? Scott uses the word "uppity" and he's not even being ironic to make a point? And college professor Kendra married him? I don't even think they would have made it to the third date. It is impossible to believe the relationship at the heart of this play and thus it's hard to believe anything else either.

Nonetheless, the set by Derek McLane is a solid, unprepossessing work that does what it must and then gets out of the way. Washington and Pasquale do what they can with their roles, just as Jeremy Jordan does with a cop who of course makes a casually racist comment the moment Kendra is out of the room and is so dumb he confuses Emily Dickinson with Charles Dickens and so sexist he tells this highly educated college professor he believes she is wrong when she corrects him.

Then Eugene Lee walks in. When a stodgy play like American Son begins by saying someone is going to show up later, you just know they're going to show up later and set off some fireworks, upending the dynamics of everything that has gone on before. That's precisely what happens Lt. John Stokes (Lee) walks in and asserts his authority. The marvelous Lee (a mainstay of August Wilson productions, the legendary original cast of A Soldier's Play in 1982 and the TV show Homicide: Life On The Streets among many others) strolls in, pickpockets all the attention and never let's it go.

It's a pity to report that the godawful final scene is wholly unbelievable, tiresomely predictable, rests on Lee's shoulders...and he flubbed a key line. It was momentary and nothing really and even the performance of a lifetime wouldn't have made the scene good, but it happened. It's poorly staged by Leon (why is the character standing and addressing the audience with his back to the other characters) and even more poorly written by Demos-Brown (we are all too aware that the level of detail offered in the scene simply wouldn't be available at that stage). Even a talent like Lee can be tripped up by a flimsy piece and that's precisely what American Son remains from start to finish.


THEATER OF 2018

Homelife/The Zoo Story (at Signature) *** out of ****
Escape To Margaritaville **
Broadway By The Year: 1947 and 1966 ***
Lobby Hero ***
Frozen **
Rocktopia *
Angels in America ** 1/2
Mean Girls ** 1/2
The Sting **
Mlima's Tale ** 1/2
Children Of A Lesser God ** 1/2
Sancho: An Act Of Remembrance ** 1/2
The Metromaniacs ***
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical *
The Seafarer **
Henry V (Public Mobile Unit w Zenzi Williams) * 1/2
Saint Joan **
Travesties *** 1/2
Summer and Smoke ** 1/2
My Fair Lady ** 1/2
Broadway By The Year: 1956 and 1975 ** 1/2
Bernhard/Hamlet * 1/2
On Beckett ***
What The Constitution Means To Me **
The Winning Side *
Oklahoma **
Mother Of The Maid *
Love's Labour's Lost ** 1/2
The Lifespan of a Fact **
India Pale Ale *
Thunderbodies ***
The Ferryman *** 1/2

Eve's Song *

King Kong *

American Son * 1/2

Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.