Downton Abbey: A New Era

My sisters and I haven't been able to do anything together for over two years because one of us was always taking care of our parents so it was really fun (and a little bittersweet) for the three of us to be able to go to an early access screening of Downton Abbey: A New Era last night.  We are huge fans of the PBS series (we even saw the first movie together) so it was great to catch up with the Crawley family once again.  Violet (Maggie Smith) calls the family together to inform them that she is altering her will.  It seems that she has inherited a villa in the south of France and intends to bequeath it to her great-granddaughter, Sybbie.  Robert (Hugh Bonneville) and Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), Edith (Laura Carmichael) and Bertie (Harry Hadden-Paton), Tom (Allen Leech) and Lucy (Tuppence Middleton), and Lady Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton) all decide to travel to France to meet the current owners of the villa to unravel the mystery of Violet's past.  Meanwhile, Mary (Michelle Dockery) stays behind because a director (Hugh Dancy) wants to use Downton Abbey as the location for a film starring Guy Dexter (Dominic West) and Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock).  Chaos ensues when the movie suddenly becomes a "talkie" and when the downstairs staff, including Barrow (Robert James-Collier), Mrs. Carson (Phyllis Logan), Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol), Molesley (Kevin Doyle), Baxter (Raquel Cassidy), Daisy (Sophie McShera), Andy (Michael Fox), and Anna (Joanne Froggat), are roped into being extras.  Everything about this movie is simply delightful and fans of the series are sure to love it.  The locations and costumes are stunning and, even though there are a lot of characters to keep track of, the story is really engaging.  I particularly enjoyed the character arcs for Barrow, Molesley and Baxter, and Violet.  I laughed out loud many times and I had a tear in my eye at the resolution (series creator Julian Fellowes has stated that he is happy with the resolution if this is the last movie and so am I but I hope there is another one).  My sisters enjoyed it as much as I did (we were the last people out of the theater because we had to discuss it at length immediately afterwards).  I recommend this installment to people who love the series as much as my sisters and I do!

Note:  I think the next movie should be a prequel featuring the exploits of a young Violet.

Hello, Dolly! at PTC

Pioneer Theatre Company is ending the 2021-2022 season with a wonderful production of Hello, Dolly! starring Broadway star and TV personality Paige Davis.  I saw it last night and I loved it!  At the turn of the century, the irascible Horace Vandergelder (Kris Coleman) wants to get married again so he will have someone to do all of the chores at his Hay & Feed store in Yonkers, New York.  His niece Ermengarde (Hannah Balagot) wants to marry an artist named Ambrose Kemper (Myles Tracy Woolstenhume) but her uncle objects because he doesn't have a steady income.  His clerk Cornelius Hackl (Alexander Mendoza) is longing for an adventure in New York City so he convinces his fellow clerk Barnaby Tucker (Michael J. Rios) to come along with him and they vow not to return to Yonkers until they have both kissed a girl.  They soon meet Irene Molloy (Kelly McCormick), who owns a millinery shop in NYC but wants a rich husband to take her away because she hates hats, and her assistant Minnie Fay (Dori Waymer).  A recently widowed matchmaker named Dolly Levi (Davis) is hired to find a wife for Vandergelder but she decides that she wants to marry him herself.  She just needs to convince him!  She eventually arranges for all of the couples to meet for a memorable evening at the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant in NYC and merriment ensues!  This is a big old-fashioned musical and I loved all of the exuberant song and dance numbers, especially "Put on Your Sunday Clothes," "Dancing," and "Hello, Dolly!" because they feature dynamic choreography with a large ensemble.  I also really enjoyed the songs "Before the Parade Passes By" and "It Only Takes a Moment" because they both have poignant messages about life and love.  The sets are fantastic, particularly Vandergelder's Hay & Feed store and the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant, and I loved the elaborate period costumes, especially the lavish gown worn by Dolly at the Harmonia Gardens.  Davis is incredibly charismatic in the role of Dolly and I was really impressed with her singing and dancing!  The rest of the main cast is also really strong with Mendoza and McCormick as standouts.  I was absolutely delighted by this production and I highly recommend getting a ticket (go here) before the parade passes by.

Note:  The role of the judge is being performed by various notable people from local government and the media.  Last night it was the former state epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn and she was great!

Happening

Another highly acclaimed film that I was unable to see at Sundance this year was Happening but it is now playing at the Broadway so I had the opportunity last night.  It is incredibly timely, given what is happening with Roe v. Wade in this country right now, and very powerful.  Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) is a bright and talented university student in France in the early 1960s.  Her parents are working class owners of a cafe who have sacrificed much to enable her to go to school and they are justifiably proud of her accomplishments.  When she learns that she is unexpectedly pregnant, she sees her promising future slipping away.  However, she doesn't have many options because abortion is illegal.  She tries to persuade several people, including two different doctors, to help her get one but they all fear the possibility of prison and refuse to even speak about it.  Exams are looming and she becomes more and more desperate so, despite the pain, she attempts to terminate the pregnancy herself with a knitting needle but is unsuccessful.  Eventually, she finds someone willing to perform an abortion in secret but is forced to sell most of her possessions to pay for it and suffers devastating consequences.  The fact that Anne is not able to get a safe abortion is appalling, in my opinion, but I also found the shaming that she endures from the other girls in her dormitory for being sexually active to be just as deplorable.  There is a very poignant scene where one of Anne's friends confesses that she had a relationship over the summer and the only reason she didn't get pregnant is because she is luckier than Anne.  Vartolomei gives an affecting central performance in which Anne's despair is palpable.  The scenes involving Anne's two attempts at an abortion are quite visceral and very difficult to watch but there is another scene where she cries silently that is absolutely gut-wrenching.  This film is set in the 1960s but it may as well be today, which is a terrifying thought, and for that reason it should be seen by everyone.

Memoria

I finally had the chance to see Memoria last night at the Broadway (it seems like I have been waiting forever for it to get a wide release) and, while I sometimes found it to be incomprehensible, I was absolutely mesmerized.  Jessica (Tilda Swinton), a Scottish orchid farmer living in Colombia, is awakened one night by a mysterious booming sound that only she can hear.  She continues to be plagued by the sound, which prevents her from sleeping, as she wanders aimlessly from place to place interacting with strangers.  She seems to be an outsider everywhere she goes but she absorbs the energy of every place and ultimately has a strange connection to the memories of others as she tries to find the source of the sound.  There is an explanation, of sorts, but it is almost unimportant because the real discovery is the connection between everyone and everything.  Not a lot happens and I sometimes found the lack of a narrative structure to be frustrating, especially with the long takes of particular images and with the lack of a score, but whenever I stopped trying to figure out what was happening on the screen and just let myself get lost in what Jessica was experiencing I found it to be very haunting and profound.  Swinton gives a captivating performance because, even though you don't know much about her character, she is still able to create a lot of sympathy for Jessica.  Not everyone will enjoy this film (a group was discussing it in the lobby and one thought it was a masterpiece and the rest thought it was the most boring thing they had ever seen) but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it!

Breathless

My May Book of the Month selection was Breathless by Amy McCulloch (the other options were Yerba Buena by Amy LaCour, The Hacienda by Isabel Canas, Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez, and Darling Girl by Liz Michalski). I was hooked by this atmospheric and exciting thriller from the very first chapter and I read well into the early morning hours in order to finish it. Cecily Wong has just landed the interview of a lifetime with world-renowned alpinist Charles McVeigh as he attempts to climb Mt. Manaslu, the last in his quest to summit all fourteen peaks above 26,000 feet in one year. Even though she has limited climbing experience, McVeigh insists that she be a part of his expedition as a condition for granting the interview. Summiting at such a high elevations is extremely dangerous, even for experienced climbers, because of the freezing temperatures, harsh terrain, and lack of oxygen but it becomes even more menacing when two climbers die under mysterious circumstances. Cecily must not only face the elements, and her doubts about her abilities, but also a killer lurking on the mountain and it seems that everyone on her team is a potential suspect. I really enjoy murder mysteries with a closed circle of suspects and this novel takes that concept to new heights (pun intended) because everyone is trapped on the mountain due to the extreme conditions. The tension escalates the higher they climb and I was completely riveted. Cecily is an interesting narrator because she is a novice in the world of high altitude climbing and she is somewhat unreliable when she begins experiencing the effects of hypoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain). I actually started to question if the deaths were merely accidents or more sinister in nature myself which made the narrative even more suspenseful. It was also fascinating to learn about what it takes to summit a peak that high in elevation, particularly the need for acclimatization and how to scale sheer faces of rock and ice, and McCulloch's vivid descriptions (she actually summited Mt. Manaslu herself) made me feel like I was right there on the mountain with the characters. I even felt a little bit short of breath during several key moments. My only complaint is that the ending is a bit abrupt but, other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed Breathless and I recommend it to fans of thrillers.

Note:  Fans of this novel might also enjoy One By One by Ruth Ware. It has a similar vibe because it is a murder mystery that takes place at a Swiss chalet that is cut off from civilization after an avalanche.