Tag Archives: the color purple

“They are either working … or looking out their windows.” The Dio’s production of The Bridges of Madison County: The Musical

7 May 2017

7 Comments

Jon McHatton and Marlene Inman

There is something special happening in Pinckney, Michigan. In a downtown storefront, The Dio – Dining and Entertainment is steadily providing night after night of polished professional theatrical performance accompanied by exceptional dinner service, lovely ambiance, and a heartwarming sense of community.

The company’s latest production is The Bridges of Madison County, the 2014 Tony Award-winning musical by Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years, Honeymoon in Vegas, Parade) and Marsha Norman (‘night Mother, The Secret Garden, The Color Purple). This was our first foray to The Dio, and we will definitely be returning for future shows. Yes (in the spirit of transparency), we were there to support beloved theatre pals, but, with all the objectivity I can muster, The Dio’s Bridges is a music box marvel not to be missed. (We also absolutely adored the new friends we made: Kurt and Becky, our dinner companions at Table 4!)

I’ve not read the source novel by Robert James Waller (the three-hankie, tear-jerking book club mania that surrounded its release gave me the heebie jeebies … and I blame its runaway success for inflicting Nicholas Sparks upon modern literary best seller lists), and the film bored me silly with Meryl Streep doing her darndest to channel Anna Magnani up against the splintery balsa wood that is Clint Eastwood. The story, for those unfamiliar, details the whirlwind weekend affair between (wait for it) a National Geographic photographer visiting a small Iowa town to photograph covered bridges and an Italian woman trapped in a pleasant but unremarkable marriage to a farmer who has left her alone for the weekend as he heads off with their two children to attend a state fair in Indianapolis (which isn’t in Iowa). Whew.

Blessedly, Brown and Norman take the Harlequin Romance conceit of the source material and turn it on its head, crafting from its simplistic superstructure a sour/sweet souffle of American rural provincialism, xenophobia, and sexism. Bridges in their hands becomes allegorical operetta (a la The Most Happy Fella), a tragedy of missed opportunities and of failing to stoke the fiery spark of individuality in our dearest loved ones.

The Dio’s Bridges of Madison County ensemble

Directed with poignant nuance, arch wit, and clinical precision by Steve DeBruyne, The Dio’s cast rises to the challenge. Leads Marlene Inman and Jon McHatton as Francesca and Robert respectively, yes, capture the heady chemistry of sweeping escapist romance that audiences will desire, but they also layer in sparkling moments of humor and humanity and tragic loss that offer the narrative heartbreaking heft. Their vocals are breathtaking, simultaneously soaring and intimate – “Wondering” and “Falling Into You” being particular highlights. Inman gives a beautifully calibrated portrayal of an Italian woman whose intense creativity is hauntingly at odds with the workaday charms of farm/family life in mid-60s Iowa. McHatton is a gleaming presence throughout, a bolt of free-thinking masculine Id in stark relief against a conservative landscape. McHatton brings a welcome humility and forlorn longing to a role that in less capable hands could devolve into swaggering machismo.

The rest of the ensemble is a well-oiled machine, doing yeoman’s work in multiple roles and seamlessly shifting, moving, and reassembling the various components of Matthew Tomich’s ingenious cube-based set design from farmhouse kitchen to bustling Main Street to cathedral to, yes, covered bridge. Tomich uses projections and additional lighting techniques to bring a dreamlike wonder to the proceedings, using The Dio’s limited space to maximum effect. I could have watched those set changes all day. You never hear an audience member say that.

Carrie Jay Sayer as Gladys Kravitz-esque nosy neighbor Marge and Dan Morrison as her husband Charlie wring every bit of funny out of their broad character roles, sidestepping outright mugging and infusing a refreshing sense of empathy. I also must call out Madison Merlanti as Robert’s ex-wife Marian; her delivery of the hypnotic ode to what-might-have-been “Another Life” is a showstopper.

At one point Francesca explains to Robert that, while the houses in her small Iowa farm community may look desolate, they are quite a flurry of frantic inner life, that the people in them are “either working … or looking out their windows,” perhaps sitting in judgment of their neighbors or envious of the world that may be passing them by. The Dio’s production of The Bridges of Madison County (running two more weekends through May 21) takes us lovingly, critically inside those homes, reminding us that tragedies of the heart – small and large – happen in every living room, every day.

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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.

Talk of the Town features Reel Roy Reviews, Vol. 2

5 February 2015

2 Comments

Reel Roy Reviews, Volume 2

Reel Roy Reviews, Volume 2

Thanks to Jennifer Romano and Talk of the Town! Read here. Quote from yours truly: “As my blog rolls into another year of entertainment, rife with comic book adaptations, sequels, Oscar bait, arena shows, and theatrical productions big and small, sometimes I wonder if I am choking the life right from this hobby of mine. Can you imagine if every time you saw a film that your OCD tendencies forced you to rush home, throw some quippy hoo-ha on the internet, and wait eagerly for 3.5 comments to appear? Ah, well, it’s still too much fun to stop now—anticipate Volume THREE Roy’s Movie Migraine shortly.”

Roy and Susie waiting for the big show

Roy and Susie waiting for the big show

BONUS: Enjoy this fabulous new blog entry from my mom Susie Duncan Sexton – provocative and fun! Read “Got (almond) milk? Books, movies, politics, culture, and AGRIganda” by clicking here.

Excerpt: “Regarding BUT HAVE YOU READ THE BOOK jazz, my mother ALWAYS asked that question. Guess what? She very seldom had actually read the books herself; I preferred to write my book reports based on the more enjoyable movie versions!”

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Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews 2

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.

Day I read a book … The Freak Foundation Operative’s Report

2 February 2015

12 Comments

Freak Foundation Operatives ReportYou know what question I’m tired of hearing? “Did you read the book?”

I get asked this repeatedly when I see a movie based on a piece of literature (sometimes using that term very loosely), if I dare to have some issue with the film: its narrative structure, character choices, execution, blah, blah, blah. The questioner always seems to imply that my review is somehow thereby deficient, that I didn’t do my homework.

This scrutiny arose when I found the Twilight movies a tedious bore, when I thought Hunger Games was overrated nonsense, when I dubbed Mortal Instruments insipid idiocy, when I felt American Sniper was dangerous propaganda, and when I perceived Wild to be self-aggrandizing tell-all myth-making. I didn’t read any of these uber-popular tomes – I only saw the film treatments. And I’m not going to read the books. Stop asking me. Please.

(In my defense, I loved the films of Divergent and The Fault In Our Stars, without perusing the best-sellers on which they were based.)

Here’s the thing. I don’t want to have to read the book to understand and enjoy the movie. A good movie adaptation will anchor the narrative pulse points in a novel or biography and add visual flair to make the piece cinematic, comprehensible, and it’s own entity. Think Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Black Stallion, The Godfather, There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Foxcatcher. Hell, think Gone Girl.

If it’s that imperative to read the book and see the movie to get the complete entertainment value, well, I just won’t. To me, that’s lazy film-making, and that’s coming from someone too lazy to read the books. So there.

“Day I Read a Book” – Jimmy Durante

 

But, guess what? I read a book – my pal Tom Joyce’s engaging The Freak Foundation Operative’s Report … and I liked it! To paraphrase Super Bowl halftime superstar Katy Perry: “I read a book … and I liked it!”

If Kurt Vonnegut and Janet Evanovich had a baby whose doting uncles were Raymond Carver, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Mickey Spillane, that baby very well might be Tom Joyce. The Freak Foundation Operative’s Report relates the sordid and satirical tale of Batley, a small post-industrial town in Central Pennsylvania, a burg terrorized by a nasty group of thugs (“The Slain”) and populated with a carnival tent full of freaks and weirdos (and that’s just the City Council). The central mystery (and it’s a compelling one) is why this town has been targeted, who’s pulling the strings, and why.

I won’t spoil any of the surprises, but the book is a zippy page-turner with just the right balance of mirth and mayhem to engage the most jaded of readers (me).

Joyce employs a rotating cast of narrators, including a hard-boiled and hard-drinking gumshoe; a universally reviled local journalist (named, oddly enough, “Tom”); and assorted colorful characters, including, among others, a foul-mouthed little person who runs a road-side freak show, a confidence man who grows increasingly less confident in his choice of allies, and a huckster demonologist/psychologist with a heart of gold.

Joyce has a great pulpy literary voice, informed with a cheeky sensibility, a knowing cynicism about the uniquely American ability to wave the flag while we stab each other in the back, and a genuine flair for marrying creeping crud, visceral thrills, and rich Mayberry-quirk  characterization. This book is naturally cinematic in its execution, cable-ready for HBO or AMC or (likely) FX to develop a raw, ribald anthology series from the frothy material.

The novel is composed of a series of journal entries, letters, documents, and reports (via the various narrators delineated above) offering the cumulative effect that we, as readers, are suddenly privy to a hotbed of small-town intrigue as the mystery unfolds through hearsay, redirects, and anecdotes (see Carrie, The Color Purple, or even The Sound and the Fury for other examples of this technique). This, coupled with Joyce’s pragmatic, glib, and witty writing style, makes for an adventurous reading experience – Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew for adults.

Here’s looking forward to big screen (or small screen) adaptation, wherein I can finally ask others, “Did you read the book?”

You can order at Tom Joyce’s The Freak Foundation Operative’s Report by visiting his free-wheeling blog here.

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Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews 2

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.