Renfield

I thought the trailer for Renfield looked like a lot of fun so I spontaneously decided to see it yesterday afternoon.  It is definitely enjoyable but there are a lot of flaws that keep it from being great.  Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage), along with his familiar R.M. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), relocates to New Orleans so that he can recuperate from a close call with some vampire hunters.  When Renfield is out searching for victims for Dracula to feed on, he runs afoul of the Lobo crime family, led by Bellafrancesca Lobo (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and her ne'er-do-well son Teddy (Ben Schwartz), and comes in contact with Rebecca Quincy, a police officer with a grudge against the Lobos.  Renfield decides to help Rebecca with her investigation and tries to free himself from Dracula's clutches with the help of a support group but mayhem ensues when the Lobos join forces with Dracula!  Cage is completely unhinged, in the best possible way, as Dracula and seems to be channeling the ghost of Bela Lugosi!  He is the best part of the movie and I wish that he was in it more!  I also enjoyed Hoult as an awkward and sniveling fop, especially whenever he interacts with Cage's Dracula.  The over the top action set pieces are incredibly gory, with decapitations and amputations that spew more blood than could possibly be found in a human body, but they are really campy and made me laugh out loud several times.  The references to vampire mythology, such as needing to be invited in and an aversion to sunlight, are also highly amusing.  However, my biggest problem is the inconsistent tone because this could have been so much better if it had fully committed to the comedy.  Instead, there is an unnecessarily dramatic subplot about a corrupt police force in league with the crime family that killed Quincy's father, himself a police officer, and her attempts to get justice for him.  Awkwafina's Quincy is, essentially, the straight man which is such a waste because she is a great comedic actress.  Awkwafina and Hoult have very little chemistry and their scenes together are surprisingly bland.  This is entertaining but it doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be so a lot of its potential is squandered.  I would recommend waiting to watch this when it is available to stream.

Muse at the Vivint Arena

I am a huge fan of the band Muse and every time I've seen them live the show has been a sound and light extravaganza.  Last night's concert at the Vivint Arena, my first of 2023, was no exception and I had so much fun!  They began with "Will of the People" and played quite a few more songs from their latest album of the same name, including "Compliance," which is my favorite from the album, "Verona," "We Are F***ing F***ed," "Won't Stand Down," and "You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween."  They also played the hits and some more obscure tracks, such as "Hysteria," "Interlude," "Time Is Running Out," a really sultry rendition of "Madness," "Plug In Baby," an instrumental version of "The Dark Side," "Thought Contagion," "Resistance," a rocking performance of "Uprising" that got everyone in Vivint Arena up and dancing, "Psycho," and "Supermassive Black Hole."  They ended their main set, as they often do, with "Starlight," which is my favorite Muse song, and I loved it!  For the encore they played "Kill or Be Killed," from the new album, and an epic version of "Knights of Cydonia" with a really cool harmonica intro.  Songs were accompanied by incredibly theatrical lights, lasers, visuals, pyrotechnics, streamers, confetti, and large animatronic figures looming over the stage.  The stage itself was made of clear panels with colored lights shining from below with a runway extending into the crowd and a smaller stage at the end of it.  It was really cool.  Matt Bellamy was a bit more subdued with his attire than usual (although an LED light-up jacket did make an appearance late in the proceedings) but definitely not with all of his antics.  He spent most of his time running and jumping around the stage and shredding on the runway!  Like every other Muse show I've seen this was a complete spectacle and I loved every minute of it (I think I will be on a high from it for days).

Note:  The opening acts were Highly Suspect and Evanescence.  I was not familiar with Highly Suspect but I was beyond excited for Evanescence because I love them and had never seen them before.  They played for over an hour and I especially loved "Going Under," "Call Me When You're Sober," "Imaginary," "My Immortal," and "Bring Me to Life."

What the Constitution Means to Me at PTC

Last night I went to see What The Constitution Means to Me at PTC and it is one of the most thought-provoking pieces that I have seen in a long time. It is a play written by Heidi Schreck, who performed the lead role during its run on Broadway, about her experiences as a 15-year-old student participating in an American Legion Oratorical Contest about the Constitution as a way to earn scholarship money for college. In this production the role of Heidi is played by Laura Jordan and the first part of the performance is the recreation of the speech that Heidi gave as a 15-year-old in the competition with a Legionnaire (Ben Cherry) acting as the moderator.  In her speech she specifically discusses the Ninth Amendment, which pertains to unenumerated rights such as the right to travel, the right to vote, the right to keep personal matters private, and the right to make important decisions about one's health care or body, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which pertains to equal protection under the law.  During the second part of the performance Heidi continues as her present self and relates anecdotes drawn from her own experiences, and those of the women in her family, relating to abortion, sexual assault, domestic violence, and immigration while Cherry portrays a character named Mike, based on one of Heidi's friends, who speaks about his sexuality. The point they both make, with several relevant Supreme Court cases, is that the Constitution does not protect the rights of women, racial minorities, immigrants, or those who are LGTBQ.  They argue that it wasn't designed to do so because the writers of the Constitution were mostly concerned with negative rights, or those which would not limit the freedoms of white male landowners. I found this discussion to be fascinating and I was completely riveted! The third and final part of the performance involves a parliamentary debate between Jordan (as herself) and a local student (last night's student was Naomi Cova) about whether or not the Constitution should be abolished. This debate is unique to each performance (last night Jordan argued that the Constitution should be abolished and Cova argued that it should be kept) and audience participation is encouraged. As someone who participated in debate all through high school I absolutely loved this! When Jordan had everyone in the audience who was not a straight white cisgendered male raise their hands (it was the majority), it was incredibly powerful to see how many of us are not protected and it really swayed my opinion.  However, I also found many of the arguments put forward by Cova, namely that more people need to participate in government to make changes from within, to be noteworthy as well. A member of the audience was selected at random to declare a winner and she voted to abolish. I was really impressed with Jordan because, even though these are not her stories, her delivery is spontaneous and authentic as if she is having a conversation with each member of the audience and the simple production design (sets, costumes, and lighting) keeps the focus on that dialogue. I do concede that one's enjoyment of this play will probably be directly related to the degree to which one agrees with Schreck's thesis but I also believe seeing it is a worthwhile experience that is ultimately very hopeful.  It runs at PTC through April 22 (go here for tickets).

Note:  As I previously mentioned I was on my high school debate team and I actually participated in an American Legion Oratorical Contest my senior year. I won at my school level (and received a huge trophy) but didn't move on past the state level.

Tori and Lokita

Yesterday afternoon I decided to see Tori and Lokita at the Broadway.  It is an incredibly powerful and heartbreaking look at the immigrant experience in Europe that left me absolutely shattered.  Lokita (Joely Mbundu) is a young teenage girl who emigrated illegally to Belgium from Benin.  She bonded with a ten-year-old boy from Cameroon named Tori (Pablo Schils) while on the journey and they now claim to be siblings in order to stay together.  She feels tremendous pressure from her mother back in Benin to send money home to support her family and is harassed by Firmin (Marc Zinga), the leader of the gang who smuggled them into Belgium, for payment of the exorbitant fee for his services but the only job she can get is as a drug courier for Betim (Alban Ukaj), a restaurateur who also frequently requests sexual favors from her.  She grows desperate when she is denied a work visa and accepts a dangerous job offered by Betim in return for fake papers but this takes her away from Tori and causes her tremendous anxiety about his welfare.  Tori, in return, does everything he can to rescue Lokita from her untenable situation.  I fell in love with both of these characters because they are so smart and resourceful and their relationship with each other is incredibly tender.  The two lead performances, by unknown actors, are exceptional and so sympathetic that the final resolution left me feeling both sad and angry at a corrupt system designed to exploit desperate people at every turn.  The gritty hand-held cinematography and the fast pace enhance the sense of urgency and at no time did I doubt the dangers that these characters faced.  This was difficult to watch but I loved the message about the power of friendship in a hostile world and I highly recommend it.

The Play That Goes Wrong at the SCERA Center for the Performing Arts

I have seen several different productions of The Play That Goes Wrong (PTC, HCT, and CPT) and it has become one of my favorite shows because it is absolutely hilarious! I had the chance to see SCERA's version last night and I don't think I stopped laughing from the first missed cue to the crash of the chandelier at the end! The play-within-a-play is the Cornley University Drama Society's production of The Murder at Haversham Manor by Susie H. K. Bridewell. The cast includes Max (Scott Hendrickson) as Cecil Haversham/ Arthur the Gardener, Chris (Dylan Burningham) as Inspector Carter, Jonathan (David Peterson) as Charles Haversham, Robert (Bryson Smellie) as Thomas Colleymore, Dennis (Samuel Wright) as Perkins the Butler, and Sandra (Eden Bostrom) as Florence Colleymore. The show is directed by Chris with Annie (Shannon Follette) as the Stage Manager and Trevor (Ethan Devey) as the Sound and Lighting Director. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong with this show, including a set that is slowly falling apart, props that either malfunction or go missing, a sound designer who accidentally plays Harry Styles instead of the sound cues, an actor who cannot stay still while playing the murder victim, an actor who cannot remember his lines, an actor who uses flamboyant gestures and then breaks the fourth wall to milk the audience for applause every time he does it, and a leading lady who is injured halfway through the show and must be replaced with two different understudies (with scripts in hand), but the show must go on with hysterical results. The physical comedy in this show is brilliant and my favorite moments were when Thomas must repeatedly drink paint thinner when whiskey cannot be found, when Cecil and Florence have an incredibly awkward kiss, when Cecil and Thomas have to answer the phone while holding the set together, when Cecil and Thomas break the swords they are using during a duel and then pretend to use light sabers (complete with sound effects), when Perkins must finish the show handcuffed to the chaise longue because the prop keys are misplaced, and when Sandra and Annie have a long and drawn out fight over who gets to play Florence. The entire cast is fantastic but the standouts for me are Smellie because he is so completely overwrought and Hendrickson because everything he does made me laugh (particularly whenever he would flash his megawatt smile at the audience). The set is simply amazing because not only does it fall apart spectacularly but it does so on cue (the technical aspects of this show are also quite impressive). The collapse of the second floor study is ingenious! I cannot recommend this show enough because it is so much fun (I was definitely not the only one laughing out loud). It runs through May 6 and tickets may be purchased here.