Category Archives: Must See

“Someone left the cake out in the rain.” Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Every day in America.

4 August 2019

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh, no – “MacArthur Park” (Jimmy Webb)

We live in uneasy times. I am beginning to suspect we always have. Maybe it comes with getting older, or maybe it’s the all-consuming nature of modern media, but I now question the golden hue surrounding historical violence for noble causes which we all once read about in our history classes. I fear waking up every morning for what the headlines may bring with my breakfast cereal.

Friday night, my parents and I saw Quentin Tarantino‘s latest auteur epic Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Saturday, we woke up to news that another in an apparently endless series of twenty-something, white male gunmen had taken it upon himself to drive from Dallas to El Paso to enact a hate-filled, murderous killing spree. Sunday, we woke up to news that a seemingly similar individual decided to do the same thing in Dayton, Ohio. Both men arguably were informed by a steady diet of anger and violence, entitlement and disenfranchisement: all-reaching toxic masculinity. Now, we find ourselves in another mind-numbing news cycle of finger-pointing and empty talking points, American flag lapel pins and “thoughts and prayers,” which will all be quickly forgotten days from now when a royal family member has a baby or a sitting president stirs his simmering pot of Twitter-fied bile.

The sobering theme throughout is that all those deserving blame abdicate any and all responsibility. Hollywood and video game makers say art doesn’t influence people, but merely reflects our present reality. Gun manufacturers say guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Politicians say it is a “complicated” issue and they are looking into it, often blaming a nonexistent mental health safety net they effectively dismantled years ago (through de-funding) and turning a blind eye to the campaign donations they’ve greedily accepted from pro-gun lobbyists and voters. Motivating it all? Myopic self-preservation and a willful desire to keep the gravy train of capitalism rolling along.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

In essence, it is this blood-sticky mess that Tarantino seems to be directly addressing with his film. Tarantino’s own relationship with cinematic violence has seemingly transitioned from sophomoric glee about how low he could go to a genuine conflict over entertainment’s role in fueling our revenge fantasy culture.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is an elegiac picaresque tale of a California that may only exist in the mind’s eye: 1969, when Hollywood, and by extension America, was at odds with itself, some of us still clinging to the antiseptic safety of Eisenhower dreams against a countervailing influence of angry young people dissatisfied with a military/industrial complex that generates nothing but hardware and heartache.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

A wonderfully world-weary Leonardo DiCaprio as failing TV Western star Rick Dalton finds himself increasingly marginalized, relegated to guest star villainous turns on turgid nightly dramas. The active rejection of the Western as metaphor for American moxie was ramping up, replaced by crime dramas and superhero shows, equally as violent and just as superficial.

At Rick’s side is his stunt double Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt, oh-so-charming and oh-so-casually malevolent – a beach bum Marlboro man with a secret history of true-life violence ever percolating under his gleaming exterior as he saunters through the chintzy, cardboard back lots of Tinseltown.  “More than a brother, just short of a wife,” Kurt Russell’s omniscient narrator observes about the duo, characters based in part on the legendary real-life bromance of Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham.

The pair move together in tandem in uncertain waters, a couple of aging sharks whose hollow, posturing machismo is perhaps going out of fashion. The film industry is beginning to embrace a new kind of shallow, in fact: talking a good game about “method acting,” as represented in a crucial scene between DiCaprio and a wise-beyond-her years eight-year-old female actor (“NOT actress … that is a ridiculous term,” she observes) – a scene-stealing performance by Julia Butters. Next door to Rick’s groovy Hollywood Hills home resides a couple symbolic with this sea change, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, the latter played with angelic puckishness by Margot Robbie. (I admit Quentin’s filmic attitude toward women remains a bit of a problematic cipher for me, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, for now, in great part due to Kill Bill.)

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Anyone who hid a copy of Helter Skelter behind their eighth grade history textbooks to avoid lectures about the great violence that begat this country, only to marinate in the prurient details of the Manson Family, may guess what happens next. The La Cielo Drive home and Sharon Tate herself are synonymous with the sickening nexus of celebrity and serial murder, Hollywood and true crime. Tate is remembered not for her film work, but the gruesome way her life met its untimely end. Well, you may think you know what is going to happen, but Tarantino, in his inimitable fashion as filmdom’s resident juvenile delinquent, is going to toy with your expectations, all the while commenting mercilessly, if somehow also affectionately, on the utter superficiality of men playing cowboy in the backyard.

As always, Tarantino’s cinematography and overall framing is perfection, the movie a loving homage to buddy comedies of the late 60s and 70s, yet with a very dark undercurrent. No detail is left unturned, and it is the kind of movie which film geeks could watch forty times and still miss layers of winking commentary buried in a radio ad or billboard or prop in the background. This may be the director’s most carefully curated film ever. I particularly took note of how the soundtrack is peppered with popular ditties of the era but covered by out-of-fashion pop performers trying to stay relevant in a hippie dippy age (e.g. Robert Goulet doing his best Richard Harris on “MacArthur Park”).

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Even in casting, Tarantino is commenting on the ephemeral nature of the entertainment enterprise (beautiful Brad Pitt as reasonably attractive Leonardo DiCaprio‘s stunt double?!) as well as the ever elusive desire by performers to leave a legacy.  Andie MacDowell’s daughter Margaret Qualley plays a free-spirited ragdoll of a Manson family member. Bruce Dern, a counterculture figure in and of himself, pops up in a pivotal scene as the notorious Spahn Movie Ranch’s decrepit owner, unknowingly housing an army of leering Manson acolytes whose sole desire is to take down the very establishment once central to the ranch’s Western film output. Al Pacino, another actor associated with the dramatic transformation in cinema in the 1970s, plays a maneuvering and cynical agent who lays bare the ugly truths of commerce driving the money-mad, fame-seeking inhumanity in Hollywood. Everyone is pretty damn terrific, and whether they are in on the joke or not is uncertain.

As self-serious as my analysis appears to be, the movie is a hell of a lot of fun. It is meandering, episodic, sometimes maddening to follow, Tarantino continuing to tell stories as a nesting series of parentheticals. It is both nostalgic and critical, transporting you to another era, well aware of the insidious influence that that time continues to have on us all. Tarantino’s Hollywood is populated with lost souls – TV actors on the decline, movie stars on the ascent, and serial killers on the prowl – for whom celebrity-seeking and name-making is job one, regardless what that task does to themselves, their souls, or anyone surrounding them.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

I can’t reveal a thing about the ending, without spoiling a twist that is both telegraphed and unexpected. Let me say that the fairy tale allusion in the title as well as its direct reference to Sergio Leone’s blood-soaked epic Once Upon a Time in America are intentional. The film offers us a happy ending of sorts, while graphically depicting the reality of the cartoon violence Rick Dalton and his contemporaries once promulgated via black-and-white television sets. This film is both Tarantino‘s least violent film and his most. The film’s ambling pace lulls the audience into complacency, so the carnage when it comes – fast, furious, and brutal – is that much more disarming.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is at once a love letter to another time and a cautionary tale, with a chillingly implied postscript that history does indeed repeat itself. And that all of us are too vain to ever really do anything to stop it.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Everybody knows the damn truth
Our nation lied, we lost respect
When we wake up, what can we do?
Get the kids ready, take them to school
Everybody knows they don’t have a chance
To get a decent job, to have a normal life
When they talk reforms, it makes me laugh
They pretend to help, it makes me laugh
I think I understand why people get a gun
I think I understand why we all give up
Every day they have a kind of victory
Blood of innocence, spread everywhere
They say that we need love
But we need more than this – “God Control” (Madonna)

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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“Christopher Columbus!” One Off Productions’ Little Women the Musical

25 July 2019

4 Comments

Christopher Columbus! Can you hear that beautiful noise coming from the eastern edge of Washtenaw County? Listen carefully. Something really magical is happening in a small jewel box of a theater on the campus of Washtenaw Community College. One Off Productions – I love that name! – is presenting Little Women, the Broadway musical none of us remember but all of us should.

I had heard of the show; I knew Sutton Foster and Maureen McGovern, of all people, were in the original run; and I believe I had heard a song or two. Obviously, the forward-thinking novel by Louisa May Alcott, depicting the inner and outer lives of the four plucky March sisters – adventuresome Jo, fiery Amy, stately Meg, and dear-hearted Beth – and their noble mother Marmee as they survive and thrive in New England in the midst of the Civil War is emblazoned in our collective cultural subconscious. However, I had never had a chance to see this musical, originally produced in New York in 2005. And that’s a shame. Grateful, however, that One Off has brought this beautiful, sophisticated score and delicately nuanced adaptation for the enjoyment of Southeastern Michigan audiences.

Lieto and Mills

As iconic Jo, Sarah Mills, wearing many other production hats including director and producer, affects a thoughtful and poised narrative arc from earnest kid to battle-tested author, never maudlin, always heartfelt, and at times delightfully comedic. I attended last night’s final dress rehearsal (which as expected had its share of 11th hour technical distractions), so it would be interesting to see how she settles into the role, adding nuance as the run proceeds.

Mills is also a gifted vocalist, as is the entirety of this remarkable cast. Her act one closer “Astonishing” is exactly that. Hearing such strong, classically trained voices in such a small and intimate space, delivering what is, in essence, a light operatic score is a treat.

Gagnon, Case, and Mitchell

Wendy Cave is spot on in the role of Amy, by turns heartbreaking and maddening in her character’s impulses but always compelling. As Meg, Morgan Gagnon is lovely and gracious with just the right touch of playfulness to offset the show’s heavier moments. In the pivotal role of Beth, upon whom hangs the story’s tragic narrative impetus, Mills’ real-life sister Rebecca Timmons is a quiet storm. She is at her strongest one on one with the other characters in the show and her final interactions with Mills are appropriately devastating. She also is a gifted comedic actor, and her timid, bewildered, and bemused take on the rather odd number “Off to Massachusetts” is a hoot.

Elizabeth Mitchell as the sum and center of the March family universe – Marmee – offers a poignant but refreshingly lighthearted take on the role. She has a remarkable and distinctive singing voice, with the acting chops to accentuate that innate talent. Her solo moments of reflection on stage as a mother trying to keep the fraying threads of her family woven together are a gut punch. And as the toxic id to Marmee’s earth mother superego, Julia Fertel is haughty fun as snooty Aunt March.

As for the men – Jon-Luke Martin, Michael Cuschieri, Bradley Lieto, and J. Michael Morgan – all have great fun in their dual roles as boyfriends and husbands and neighbors … and the occasional pirate or river troll. (Note: there are a few fantasy sequences where aspiring writer Jo’s inner fantasy life takes center stage.) All of the men seem to be having the time of their lives on stage, Lieto most especially (and what a voice!) as overeager neighbor boy Laurie. It is clear that this is an ensemble that appreciates, respects, and enjoys one another, which translates beautifully onstage.

Lieto and Mills

The musical accompaniment is divine, leaning into chamber music, with just a piano, viola, and cello. What conductor/pianist/music director Rebecca Biber is able to accomplish in the small space with her talented team (Elizabeth Marsh, Robin Bloomberg, Phoebe Gelzer-Govatos, Meghan Rhoades – performing on different nights) is remarkable. It is a lush and orchestral sound, yet simultaneously intimate and haunting

Orchestra

The set design by Wilm Pierson is simple yet sophisticated and quite impressive. Lighting cues differentiate the scenes, all of which take place in the backdrop of the family attic. Items that would normally be found in an attic double as scene props (by Jamie Sonderman, prop master) – a trunk here a toy piano or rag doll there – and the actors make great use of the space overall. It is a testament to the design and the direction as the set seems much more extensive than it really is. Costumes by Emily Betz are period-perfect, and long-time sound designer Kelvin Elvidge makes effective use of mics in the small space. Seasoned theatre vet Rebecca Winder rallies the team as the production’s stage manager.

Ensemble

You may feel like you have seen Little Women far too many times in your life: classic movie, film remakes, television productions, or stage plays. One Off’s production of Little Women is truly special, however, as it is clearly a labor of love for all involved with a clear message of inclusion, compassion, and empowerment. Do not miss it.

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Produced nationally and internationally, Little Women has been praised by critics for its ambition in adapting such a well-known story for the stage. This timeless, captivating story is brought to life in this glorious musical filled with personal discovery, heartache, hope and everlasting love.

Ensemble

Based on Louisa May Alcott’s life, Little Women follows the adventures of sisters, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy March. Jo is trying to sell her stories for publication, but the publishers are not interested – her friend, Professor Bhaer, tells her that she has to do better and write more from herself. Begrudgingly taking this advice, Jo weaves the story of herself and her sisters and their experience growing up in Civil War America.

Little Women embodies the complete theatrical experience, guaranteeing a night filled with laughter, tears and a lifting of the spirit. The powerful score soars with the sounds of personal discovery, heartache and hope – the sounds of a young America finding its voice.

8pm Shows July 25th-27th & August 1st-3rd

2pm Shows on July 28th & August 4th

Tickets here: https://www.oneofftheatre.com/

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Ensemble

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“It’s not the circle of life … it’s the meaningless line of indifference.” Disney’s The Lion King (2019)

21 July 2019

9 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

People, namely but not exclusively critics, are all of a dither because The Lion King, as directed by Jon Favreau (The Jungle Book) – the latest in Disney’s unyielding march of “live action” remakes and re-imaginings of their own animated classics – is not original enough. People! Didn’t you know the “D” is Disney stands for “derivative”? That’s the Mouse House’s stock-in-trade.

Whereas once upon a box office, Disney strip-mined the works of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, J.M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, P.L. Travers, Carlo Collodi, and A.A. Milne for their cinematic output (which was in itself then repurposed across theme parks, television series, video releases, toy stores, straight-to-home animated sequels, and so on), NOW CEO Robert Iger and team have turned to modern-day folklorists like George Lucas, Stan Lee, and Walt Disney himself to source and resource their intellectual property. Lazy? Maybe. Smart capitalism? Indubitably. All-American? You bet your a$$.

And like all good mythology, these stories bear repeating, whether around the campfire or the eerie glow of an iPhone. Hell, Shakespeare was just as guilty of the practice as any contemporary entertainment conglomerate. There’s a sucker born every minute. We lemmings have been ever guilty of plunking our hard-earned money at the ticket counter to re-view the shopworn and redundant.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Speaking of Shakespeare, The Lion King has often been described as “Hamlet in the jungle,” with its story of a young prince (Simba) who suffers from the machinations of a despicable uncle (Scar) and who grapples with the uneasy responsibilities of royal leadership after the untimely death of his father (Mufasa). It’s just that in The Lion King, every character happens to be a four-legged denizen of the African pride land who occasionally breaks into an Elton John/Tim Rice-penned show tune. The original animated film was a box office behemoth in its day, yielding in turn a Julie Taymor-directed puppet extravaganza that collected every Tony on earth and continues to mint money. Tell me again, why Disney shouldn’t bring The Lion King back in yet another guise to multiplexes? Ka-ching.

As I’ve often said to fellow critics, reviewing their umpteenth community production of Oklahoma! or The Putnam County Spelling Bee, we aren’t critiquing the script or the music at this point, nor even the very choice to do one of these damn shows again (much as we might like to), but rather the intention and the execution.

That said, the 2019 Lion King is pretty darn flawless and sticks its landing, even if some are scratching their heads if it was needed at all. This film is a technological wonder, marrying the heart and horror of the animated film with a hyper-reality that makes all of the stakes disconcertingly real. It’s one thing to watch a James Earl Jones-voiced Mufasa trampled by a multi-colored two-dimensional stampede of wildebeest; it’s something else altogether to watch a photorealistic James Earl Jones-voiced Mufasa in the same harrowing circumstance.

I’m not sure how kids are going to sit through this thing, what with all of the National Geographic-style eat-what-you-kill royal court intrigue of Scar (a menacing Chiwetel Ejiofor, rejecting any of predecessor Jeremy Irons’ fey mannerisms in the role) and his grotesque hyena henchmen (a slithering trio voiced by Florence Kasumba, Keegan-Michael Key, and Eric Andre, offering very little of the comic relief previously offered by Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, and Jim Cummings in the original). Shudder.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

As the adult Simba and his best friend (soon-to-be paramour) Nala, Donald Glover (Solo) and Beyonce, respectively, are as luminous vocally as you would imagine, notably on the ubiquitous anthem “Can You Feel The Love Tonight?”  In fact, the film truly roars to life (pun intended) at the mid-way mark after Simba befriends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern stand-ins Timon and Pumbaa (a meerkat and a warthog naturally) who teach him the finer points of not giving a sh*t (“Hakuna Matata”), and a gobsmacked Nala (think Ophelia without the manic suicidal tendencies) urges Simba to get woke and return home as Scar has made a big ol’ scorched earth mess of the kingdom.

(NOTE: one of the best and most original elements of this new Lion King roll-out is Beyonce’s spin-off album The Gift, not unlike how Madonna’s Dick Tracy-inspired I’m Breathless album had arguably more zip than the film that inspired it.)

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Billy Eichner as Timon to Seth Rogen’s Pumbaa is a revelation. Who knew Eichner had such a divine singing voice? And the best lines in the flick are his. At one point, he dismisses the narrative’s overworked philosophy that everything (including becoming a lion’s dinner entree) happens for a divine and glorious purpose with a stinging, “It’s not the circle of life … it’s the meaningless line of indifference.”

I admit as comfortable as I am with Disney’s master plan to take over the world with reworked, utterly unnecessary versions of old movies still readily available at our Netflix’d fingertips, even I would have liked more Eichner-style anarchy and less safe familiarity in the 2019 Lion King. As brainwashed as audiences have become, marching steadfastly from one box office event picture to the next, mindlessly apathetic toward the tragic state of the real world, Eichner’s “meaningless line of indifference” is an apt and sobering description of us all.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“I shall ensconce myself on the … lanai.” Slipstream Theatre’s Merry Wives of Windsor … er …Miami

13 July 2019

4 Comments

Originally published by Encore Michigan here.

[Image Courtesy Slipstream]

“Thank you for bein’ a frieeeee-eeeeehnd” goes the familiar refrain from the theme song to the ever increasingly ubiquitous Golden Girls. If you had told my 8th grade self, watching these grande dames of stage and (small) screen – who, back in the mid-1980s, were enjoying a third, nay fourth, act career resurgence – that they would be as relevant and beloved 30 years later with reruns airing around the clock, their own action figures, an empire of nostalgic collectibles, and even a LEGO set, I would have scoffed. Scoffed, I sayeth!

NOW, if further you had told my pretentious, Shakespeare-loving college self that one day a sharp and irreverent Metro Detroit theatre collective would leverage Falstaff-focused comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor as a vehicle to celebrate all things Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, Sophia, Stanley, and, well, cheesecake, I would have been dumbfounded (and mildly intrigued).

Picture it. Columbus. 1997.

(In all transparency, I played jealous hubby Master Ford in a production of Merry Wives at Ohio State in 1997 that was inspired by P.G. Wodehouse. Like I said: pretentious. I know no one asked, but I volunteered that info anyway.)

Picture it. Ferndale. 2019. Director (and founder) Bailey Boudreau has delivered a light summer soufflé with just the right pinch of zeitgeist in Slipstream’s newest production Merry Wives of Windsor Miami. If you want to escape the summer heat with a blessedly breezy 70 (!) minute lark that is as much arch sitcom as pithy Bard, don’t miss this show.

People can be far too reverential where Shakespeare is concerned; we don’t need three hours, carefully curating every side character and extraneous subplot. Shakespeare was the Netflix of his day – populist entertainment – and Boudreau and his company wisely realize that playing fast and loose with the material, while miraculously preserving the language and major plot points with only the most minor (and witty) of winking contemporary adds, wins the day.

The only downside to Boudreau’s approach is that the very structure of Merry Wives prevents the audience from witnessing the Wives/Girls all assembled for a skosh too long. As the play opens, there are more than a few intertwining subplots:

  • Young suitors pursuing Ms. Anne Page (a pitch perfect Luna Alexander expertly channeling Rue McClanahan as Southern-fried Blanche Devereaux)
  • A money hungry intermediary Mistress Quickly (Linda Rabin Hammell having the time of her life as Estelle Getty as impish Sophia Petrillo)
  • A pair of identical letters written to happily married Mistress Ford (a happy-go-lucky Mandy Logsdon as Betty White as daffy Rose Nylynd) and Mistress Page (ever-poised Jan Cartwright as Bea Arthur as queen bee Dorothy Zbornak) by lecherous Sir John Falstaff (a spot on Patrick O’Lear with a lovely zest of nuanced camp as Herb Edelman as oafish Stanley Zbornak). BTW, Falstaff was a character so popular in Shakespeare’s history plays that he got his own “spinoff” in Merry Wives … you can’t get more “sitcom” than that!
  • An obsessively jealous husband Master Ford (a house-afire Ryan Ernst) who thinks it would be a wise idea to disguise himself as a rich old codger to trick his wife into cheating on him … with himself … to prove how unfaithful she is. Paging Darrin Stevens (from a different show altogether).

Photo collage by yours truly

Given all of that set up, eating up the first 20 minutes or so, the production takes a while to sort the conceit of Golden Girls-homage from the fussy Shakespearean business. It all aligns in due course, so just be patient with yourself, whether you are familiar with the original play, with The Golden Girls, with both, or with neither. Boudreau adds a clever framing device wherein the “studio audience” is hustled from Slipstream’s cozy lobby to the back performance space by a harried, headset wearing production assistant, doubling as the narrative-device character Simple (an eager and energetic Grace Trivax). It sets just the right tone for what is to unfold.

I might also add that, intentional or no, Merry Wives and the very nature of the piece couldn’t be timelier: empowering women to upend toxic masculinity (controlling husbands, manipulative suitors, philanderers, and sexual predators) through wit and wisdom, collaboration, and a good dose of shaming. There’s a nice bit of #MeToo underpinning the enterprise. That also aligns with the very progressive nature of The Golden Girls. It was a show ahead of its time, on its surface a simple bit of comic escape, but underneath a fairly biting critique of misogyny, ageism, homophobia, and classism.

We even had Ms. Frances Sternhagen take in our production of Merry Wives

Transitional music cues are lifted directly from the original show (which is a sweet touch), and costuming from Tiaja Sabrie is as 80s as it gets. Of particular note, the styling (hair, makeup, clothes) for Blanche/Anne, Dorothy/Mistress Page, and Stanley/Falstaff is broadcast-ready, immersing those characters (and the audience) in the look and feel of our beloved TV icons.

Merry Wives of Windsor Miami is a summer garden party, messy at times, riotous at others, completely unforgettable, and well worth your attendance. I suspect the cast will settle into a wonderful rhythm as the run proceeds, not unlike the finest situation comedy casts of yore. In addition to the principals, Jake B. Rydell, Tiaja Sabrie, and Alex “Cookie” Isenberg all bring heart and light to their supporting roles.

Shout out to the marketing materials on this show, as well, which cleverly set the tone for what you are about to witness. Jan Cartwright’s photography and the design by Esbee Creative are the right mix of Reaganomic-era kitsch and South Florida joie de vivre, lovingly mimicking the look and style of TV ads for the original series.

Yes, this is in our home

I would be remiss if I didn’t highlight the performances of Luna Alexander and Patrick O’Lear. It is a delicate tightrope to walk to make Shakespearean language understandable to an impatient modern ear, to imitate famed sitcom characters imprinted on our collective consciousness without devolving into caricature, and to keep the narrative moving apace so the audience doesn’t know what hit ‘em. Alexander and O’Lear both pull off that hat trick with aplomb.

For myself, I could watch Alexander read the phone book (do they still print those?) as McClanahan, all gummy smile, wild eyes, throaty voice, elongated vowels, and mincing walk. She even stays gloriously in character from the wings where Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia all watch the action unfold from directors’ chairs. It’s a high-flying act, and she nails it. Tens across the board.

See you at the Rusty Anchor!

Slipstream Theatre Initiative offers The Merry Wives of Miami July 12 through August 4,  Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm, Sundays at 7 pm. Tickets can be purchased at www.slipstreamti.com, by emailing Slipstreamti@Slipstreamti.com, or calling (313) 986-9156. Read more about the production here.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“Do you still need the cape?” Spider-Man: Far From Home

3 July 2019

4 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Spider-Man: Far From Home is a worthy follow-up to Spider-Man: Homecoming. The first act is cutesy, cloying, and underwritten, but the sparkling, believable kids in the cast (who actually seem like, you know, KIDS) keep things zipping along.

Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Zendaya as his friend/crush/equal MJ are lighter than air, and Jake Gyllenhaal is great, popeyed, hunky fun as too-good-to-be-true Mysterio. Once the narrative takes a crafty u-turn at the midway mark, the film becomes a frisky, unpredictable, cinematic tilt-a-whirl.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The film follows directly onto the events of Avengers: Endgame (making it really hard to review without spoiling anything of the previous film still in theatres). Let’s just say, Peter is haunted by a great loss, tries futilely to fill his former mentor’s very large (iron) boots (and groovalicious aviator shades), and somehow still ends up saving the day, amidst a heaping helping of adorkable teen angst. Holland is arguably the most darling Spider-Man to ever grace the screen, and Zendaya more than holds her own. (Between these films and The Greatest Showman, I can’t wait to see where her career ends up. The sky’s the limit.)

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The movie does explain how the kids in Peter’s high school were impacted when five whole years were lost (not to mention half of all life on the planet Earth) after that purple, hulking malevolence named Thanos jazz-snapped his Infinity Gauntlet’d fingers. Blessedly, the sturm und drang of the previous Avengers films is shed for sitcom-lite cheekiness about the absurdity of it all in Far From Home.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Just as the entire enterprise seems in peril of spinning off into a Saved By the Bell-esque goof as Peter and his buddies enjoy a pratfall-filled European senior trip, in saunters Gyllenhaal as the prototypical alpha hero, a gleaming surface that belies the cracked-pot interior of a toxic male raging against an invisible machine. Gyllenhaal is pretty underrated across the board, and it is due to performances like this: he makes it look easy to play a Ken doll gone very astray. It isn’t.

In some respects, Far From Home is both a by-the-numbers, assembly line Marvel blockbuster and a sly send-up of all the very movies that preceded it. Issues of identity and fame and pride and the very illusory nature of heroism in this modern Trumpian age of hyperbolic pettiness are rife throughout the film, including the two end credits scenes, both of which (for once) are actually worth sticking around to see.

One of Mysterio’s associates, his browbeaten dresser, harangues him repeatedly,”Do you still need the cape?” to which he responds every time with an exasperated “Yesssss!” The Incredibles, another Disney-corporate product, was the first to opine in a postmodern way about the idiocy of capes and the inherent strangulation danger of flying around with a piece of billowing cloth around one’s neck. The Incredibles‘ Edith Head-inspired superhero fashion designer Edna Mode declared, “NO. MORE. CAPES!” Yet, as Marvel Studios’ copious cinematic output over the past decade has proved as salve and welcome distraction during our stormy IRL times, sadly, yes, we all do still need the cape(s).

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

#HughJackman in #Detroit at Little Caesars Arena: The Man. The Music. The Show.

25 June 2019

7 Comments

Hugh Jackman is nothing but pure joy. That is all.‬ A more extensive review is likely forthcoming when (and if) I ever recover from being utterly awestruck… in the meantime, enjoy these clips and photos.

In sum, know this about The Man. The Music. The Show.: Hugh is living his best inner 8-year-old’s Golden Age-musical-loving life onstage in arenas this summer. And we are all the better for it. His thesis seems to be “reconciliation through culture,” and a more kindhearted and inclusive affair (a loving throwback to sunny variety shows of our youth) you’d be hard pressed to find. Lord knows we all need some vintage TLC these days.

Part autobiography, part greatest hits, part retrospective, part therapy session, this show is all heart. Don’t miss it.

Full photo album here. Tonight’s set list here.

#hughjackman #littlecaesars #detroit

“Some kids play rougher than others.” Toy Story 4

24 June 2019

4 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

“Some kids play rougher than others,” intones a battle-worn Bo Peep (Annie Potts) to Woody (Tom Hanks), explaining that not every toy has a safe, beloved spot in a child’s play room.

I know someone is going to give me crap for this, but Toy Story 4 is the franchise installment Trump’s America deserves: darker, looser, even more pointedly existential than ever. The series has always had a sadistic tendency to torture audiences with one scene after another of cute, lovable toys in peril (darting through traffic, avoiding incineration, evading plaything-mutilating bullies, escaping the clutches of nerdy collectors), but Toy Story 4, while offering plenty of hair-raising slapstick sequences, has the temerity to ask the most haunting question of all: why are any of us alive?

The tool (no pun intended) whereby our plucky Pixar filmmakers hang the tale is a garbage pail-bound spork whom the film’s young human Bonnie (introduced at the heartwrenching end of Toy Story 3 inheriting Buzz and Woody and the gang from Andy) fishes from the trash to create, with the aid of putty, pipe-cleaners, and craft-store googly eyes, a Kindergarten companion dubbed “Forky.” As voiced with a Dostoyevsky-esque quaver by Tony Hale, Forky is torn between a destiny of disposability and the fact that this little girl has brought him to life as an adored plaything through childlike whimsy and a touch of Dr. Frankenstein hubris.

This is just weird (and welcomed) territory for the series.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

In the midst of Forky’s arrival, it becomes apparent to Woody that his days as a top draw in the play room have come to an end and that his primary mission at this point is to save Bonnie’s heart by keeping Forky from Forky’s more self-destructive impulses. Forky frequently yells “trash” with the longing of a drug addict, hurling himself headlong into any garbage heap he can find. It’s funny. And it’s not.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Along the way, Bonnie’s family rents an RV for a rustic road trip, and Woody and Forky find themselves lost (repeatedly), eventually landing in an antique shop, haunted by a 50s-era “talking baby doll” named Gabby Gabby (a delightfully chilling Christina Hendricks) whose voice box has long ago gone kaput. Her dream, like that of all the characters we’ve met over these four films and multiple spin-off shorts, is to simply have one child to truly love her. She may be the villain of Toy Story 4 but is utterly relatable and darn impossible to loathe.

To the rescue rides Bo Peep and her army of misfit lost toys. Long ago, Bo Peep (voiced brilliantly by Annie Potts, on quite the career renaissance between this and her genius turn as Young Sheldon‘s free-spirited granny) had been given away from the home Woody and Buzz originally inhabited. Sadly, they had all lost track of one another. Bo Peep, in counterpoint to Gabby Gabby, however, finds an owner-less life quite liberating, manning an “underground railroad” of sorts for all of the world’s lost toys, including a charming turn by Keanu Reeves’ as a failed Canadian Evel Knieval knock-off Duke Kaboom.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Toy Story 4 is an odd film and, as a result, may, with time, become my favorite in the series. Yes, there is warmth and nostalgia and a handful of feel-good tears, as expected, but there is also a pronounced, ominous quality, reflective of the free-floating anxiety I think most of us in the world feel these days. When the present is bleak and the future is smoggy, don’t we all just want someone to love us, write their first name on the bottom of our shoe, and believe the sun rises and sets upon us? We sure do. And Toy Story 4 posits that sometimes even that isn’t enough.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“You gotta kill the person you were born to be to become the person you want to be.” Rocketman

1 June 2019

6 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

It’s like Elton John said to Bohemian Rhapsody, “Hey, hold my (now non-alcoholic) beer. Let me show you how a biopic of a 1970s/1980s, transcendent, groundbreaking, gay (but sorta conflicted and closeted-ish) rock god should be done.”

Rocketman is transporting, joyous, heartbreaking, bonkers, and damn brilliant.

And if you love Elton John’s music but occasionally have found Elton John himself a smidge unpleasant (as I have), Taron Egerton’s bravura reinvention/translation of Elton John’s essence in the title role will give you reason to love the man again. It’s an Oscar-worthy performance that captures the sense memory of Elton at the peak of his powers while providing a very empathetic yet theatrical glimpse into the insecurity and heartbreak that fueled his greatest work.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

As directed by Dexter Fletcher (ironically, the helmer who came to the rescue of Bohemian Rhapsody when the embattled Bryan Singer walked off the set … too little, too late alas), Rocketman is simultaneously escapist and sobering, a beautifully constructed real-life fairy tale warning us of the false promise of celebrity excess and the corrosive power of self-denial. Oh, and it’s a full-blown g-damned musical with zero f*cks given – no apology, no shame – as a movie about Elton John’s life, depicted in broad operatic strokes, should be.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The best songs from the storied output of Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin (here delicately underplayed by a loving and sensitive Jamie Bell) basically form the blueprint for a Broadway musical anyway. Consequently, re-purposing ubiquitous story-songs like “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road,” “Saturday Night’s Alright,” “Your Song,” or “Benny and the Jets” outside a concert context as integrated narrative commentary becomes a rather effortless exercise. That said, Lee Hall’s script is a thoughtful biographical kaleidoscope, loose on facts and timeline, but laser-focused on allegory and atmosphere, incorporating Elton John’s greatest hits as if they were always meant to populate and propel the arc of the singer-songwriter’s life.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Of course, the costumes are divine and period-specific. I haven’t seen this many marabou feathers, platform heels, and sequins since the heyday of The Match Game. Yet, the film never devolves into camp. This isn’t a movie marginalizing nor ridiculing the extremes of Elton John’s life. This is a film expertly designed to handhold all of its viewers toward greater empathy.

When Elton fearfully confesses his sexual identity to his mother (Bryce Dallas Howard, perfectly fine, but apparently now typecast as cruel, self-absorbed hard-asses until the end of time), she responds, “I know. I’ve always known.” Yet, unlike films with lesser sensitivity toward this particular subject matter, the line is not delivered as a salve to Elton’s broken heart. Rather, it is the ultimate slight, as if she’s saying, “You’ve always been broken.” People may think they mean well with such a statement. Let me tell you, it’s not helpful.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Admittedly, the filmmakers lay on a bit thick how toxic Elton John’s parents might have been. In addition to Howard’s blowsy dragon matriarch, Elton has a frosty, jazz-loving father (Steven Mackintosh) who abandons the family after Elton discovers his mother canoodling with a neighbor man in a sedan parked street-side. Gemma Jones does balance things out a bit as Elton’s sympathetic grandmother, but, at times, the family dynamic in Rocketman seems like cutting room footage from the Harry Potter films of that dreadful, sweaty, sour tribe who foster young Mr. Potter.

Similarly, Richard Madden as Elton’s manager/lover John Reid devolves quickly into Snidely Whiplash mustache-twirling territory in the film’s second act. Thank goodness, Madden has such buoyant gravitas, keeping his portrayal watchable, even as the cliches mount up.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Fortunately, Egerton (Kingsman, Sing) is a savvy enough actor to avoid portraying Elton as a shame-free martyr, embracing the character’s petulant, rage-filled, myopic dark side … and somehow emerging ever more likable in the process. Oh, and he does all of his own singing here, acquitting himself quite nicely with the challenging material

The film is framed by Elton John’s rehab stint in the late 80s/early 90s, and Egerton does a masterful job avoiding the maudlin pitfalls such a set-up could present. Early in the film, a Motown singer for whom Elton is playing keyboards cautions him, “You gotta kill the person you were born to be to become the person you want to be.” I suspect all of us struggle with this existential conundrum in the tricky tension between our personal and professional lives, but none so dramatically nor devastatingly as Elton John. Rocketman walks the tightrope beautifully between reality and parable, leveraging the pinball wizardry of Elton John’s life as a cautionary tale for us all.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“The measure of a person, of a hero is how well they succeed at being who they are.” Avengers: Endgame

28 April 2019

5 Comments

  • [Image Source: Wikipedia]

    “The measure of a person, of a hero is how well they succeed at being who they are.” – Queen Frigga (Rene Russo) to son Thor (Chris Hemsworth)
  • “No amount of money every bought a second of time.” – Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) to father Howard Stark (John Slattery)
  • “You look like melted ice cream.” – Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) to Thor (Hemsworth again) who has discovered a physique-obliterating love of beer, junk food, video games, and sweatpants

Marvel’s Avengers movies are, yes, about superheroes and, by extension, merchandise, theme park attractions, and an infinitely extendable money-minting film franchise. But they are about something else … and always have been: family. Finding one’s family in the most unlikeliest of places and forging new bonds (Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor), rediscovering and healing one’s fragmentation with the past (Black Panther, Iron Man, Captain America), or redefining one’s destiny and defying the limitations others’ have unfairly or unintentionally imposed (Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Ant-Man) are all themes that have defined this groundbreaking film series.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

I would suggest that is why last year’s Infinity War with its (one-year-later spoiler alert!) decimation of nearly half the beloved team struck such a chord (and blow) with the general movie-going public. We comic nerds (and anyone who paid half a millisecond of attention to box office returns or awards season nominations) realized there was no earthly way a character like Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) was going to remain “dead.” Nonetheless, we were gutted to see newly arrived fan favorites like Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) or Spider-Man (Tom Holland) erode as pillars of collapsing ash, Sodom and Gomorrah-style, after “Mad Titan” Thanos (beautifully glowering Josh Brolin) snapped his fingers (literally), worked his “Infinity Gauntlet” mojo, and made 50% of all living creatures disappear from the universe. You see, Thanos has an unusual solution for chaos theory and overpopulation: get rid of half of us, re-instituting balance in a world run amuck. I suppose there are worse ideas.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Last year, we viewers were left with the mother of all cliffhangers, and, while Marvel Studios’ unyielding production schedule pretty much spoiled the surprise that the surviving Avengers would find a means to bring their missing brethren back, we didn’t know how and, perhaps more importantly, we didn’t know what this dissolution would do to the Marvel family.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

I won’t reveal the plot of this year’s $1.2 billion (and counting) juggernaut Endgame. To be honest, even if I wanted to detail the 3-hour narrative here, I’m not sure I could unravel the plateful of spaghetti that relies as much on the 21 (!) movies that precede it as it does some rudimentary knowledge of quantum mechanics, bad time travel flicks, and somberly-crafted peanut butter sandwiches.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

And, in the end, it doesn’t much matter. The movie is a marvel (pun intended) because directors the Russo Brothers (no relation to Rene … that I’m aware) are smart enough to pepper the proceedings with brilliant action sequences yet ground the entirety in humanity, heart, and deft character development.

The running time of Endgame never feels gratuitous (other entries in the Marvel franchise have felt overlong and indulgent occasionally). This much airtime is in fact essential to re-engage with our core heroes: Iron Man (Downey, Jr. who started it all with his character’s eponymous debut), Captain America (Chris Evans, long the heart and soul of the series), Thor (Hemsworth who has evolved from pretty dull to pretty comic dynamite), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, by far the best actor in the bunch who always makes every other performer just that much better in their scenes with him), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson, who, like Hemsworth, found much surer footing as the series proceeded), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner, more often than not a cipher who truly comes into his own in this latest installment).

No one is given short-shrift here, with emotionally weighty, at times devastatingly heartfelt, denouement(s) that honor all that has come before and set the entire franchise on an exciting and uncharted path. It’s not all doom and gloom as there is plenty of self-referential/self-deprecating wit, with Captain America himself setting off some of the best zingers in the bunch. The whole enterprise is sweet-natured, entertaining-as-heck, genuinely humorous, and damn moving. Trust me, you will be sniffling throughout the last 20 minutes and downright sobbing at the very final scene.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Possibly for the first time ever, it feels like we can expect nothing but the unexpected from Marvel films going forward. It’s a genius move. For over a decade, Marvel Studios president and executive producer Kevin Feige has teased us with his “phased” master plan, all leading up to these final films. All of Hollywood became covetous of Marvel’s “shared cinematic universe” (less artistic envy, I suspect, than material greed … but c’est la vie). (See: DC Extended Universe, Universal’s Monsters Universe … no, better yet, don’t.) We are at Endgame, and, effectively, Feige and Marvel have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, sun-setting beloved canon while simultaneously thumbing their nose at it. The sky’s the limit, so empty your wallets, moviegoers: who knows what’s next?

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

 

“I’d rather be divisive than indecisive.” #Hamilton National Tour in Detroit

22 April 2019

4 Comments

I’m ornery. Sometimes. Ask my family.

When the entire universe seems to loooooooove some performer or movie or show or play. And I mean in that show-offy, fawning, “you MUST see … you mean you HAVEN’T seen?!,” clutch the pearls kind of way? I make up my mind that I’m 110% certain I WON’T like it. And I won’t try it. Nope. Not never.

It’s a pretty stupid and annoying personality trait for me to have, TBH.

Thank heavens we have friends like Rob Zannini and Aaron Latham to kick me in the pants (and buy tickets) when I’m being a stubborn idiot.

This brings us to Hamilton, the national tour of which ended its month-long residency in Detroit yesterday (Easter Sunday) at the Fisher Theatre.

You certainly don’t need my validation to tell you the show is well worth the hype. Just ask the American Theatre Wing. Or the Grammy organization. Or the Pulitzer committee. Or that bragging neighbor/coworker/friend who saw it in New York four years ago (and has seen it six more times already).

Sigh. They are ALL spot on.

The show is a brilliant, clever, pointed, sassy, dare I say, frothy overview of the life of spiky, complex, groundbreaking Founding Father Alexander Hamilton (!). And nary a dancing cat or crashing chandelier in sight. “I’d rather be divisive than indecisive,” Hamilton observes at one point. Amen, brother. And, damn, do we need some of that informed moxie in our politicians now (more than ever).

Based on the 2004 biography that turned our collective view of America’s birth on its head, Hamilton gives us a warts-and-all review of the “young, scrappy, and hungry” Hamilton and colleagues like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Burr. Classic musical 1776 also has great fun with the challenges (and infighting) at the beginning of our nation’s great democratic experiment. But Hamilton is less decorous and revels in the raw and ugly street fighting at play. And makes it all seem fun.

Imagine the Revolutionary War staged by West Side Story-era Jerome Robbins, but with the technical wizardry (and turntable) of Cameron Mackintosh’s Les Miserables and a musical score by Stephen Sondheim, Eminem, Kander & Ebb, the Brill Building songwriters, Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Oh, why not throw in a touch of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar for good measure. Creator/wunderkind Lin Manuel Miranda wears his influences proudly on his sleeve, openly referencing Broadway’s vibrant history lyrically, musically, visually.

It doesn’t get much more American than that.

Add in color-blind casting and a steampunk approach to costuming and set design, not to mention evocative, lithe choreography (nary a gymnastic tumble to be seen … thank God), and you have a three hour spectacle that never bores for a second and zips by in a flash.

(I would recommend scanning the show’s Wikipedia entry before viewing, if, like me, your memory of American history from your high school coursework is far away in the rear view mirror.)

The first act takes us through the Battle of Yorktown; the second addresses the much messier work of building a new nation, and the spiraling life of a man (Hamilton) who gave far too much to his work and far too little to those who loved him.

Our cast (below) included understudies Tre Frazier and Wonza Johnson in the pivotal Jesus/Judas roles of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr respectively. They were phenomenal, bringing nuance, empathy, heart, and fire to their depictions.

Other standouts were the commanding and wry Paul Oakley Stovall as George Washington (we had the pleasure to meet this gracious actor and his lovely family after the show – learn more about him here); luminous Stephanie Umoh as Angelica Schuyler; impish and adorable Bryson Bruce as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson; riotous and effete Peter Matthew Smith as the Elton John-esque King George; and heartbreaking Hannah Cruz as Hamilton’s long-suffering yet stoic wife Eliza. Cruz brings down the house with her turn in the second act, wronged repeatedly by Hamilton’s high-minded, myopic ways. If you aren’t a puddle when she “removes herself from his narrative,” you ain’t human.

Hamilton repeatedly asks the audience to consider “who tells YOUR story?” All I can say is that if someone decides to do a show about my life (cue laughter now), I sure as hell hope Lin Manuel Miranda is still around to write it.

P.S. We ended our day with an astounding dinner at Lady of the House, a Beard Award-nominated restaurant in Detroit’s historic Corktown district. OMG. I’m no “foodie” (reference the sentiments of my opening paragraph above), but this place (veg friendly BTW) is to die for. Our server eventually became accustomed to (possibly amused by?) my plebeian ways. She wanted to “sequence” our “courses” of innumerable shared plates. I wanted a grilled cheese.

Perhaps inspired by the political wrangling in Hamilton, we found our common ground (though I never got that grilled cheese). Nonetheless everything we consumed was out of this world, with locally sourced flavor combinations to knock your socks off. Run don’t walk to this fab, shabby chic establishment. And be prepared to pay a pretty penny. It ain’t cheap, but like the pricey Hamilton, well worth the outlay.

Thank you, Rob and Aaron and our pal Rachel Green for an incredible, enriching Easter in Detroit!

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.