Out of Focus

“Casting By”: An underappreciated job and the woman who changed it and Hollywood

Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences made history when it elected Cheryl Boone Isaacs as its new president, making her the third woman and first African-American to lead the organization. But another monumental shift also occurred last week that may not have seemed so important to casual observers: After decades of requesting representation and recognition, casting directors will finally have their own branch, just as cinematographers, production designers and costume designers do; just as hair & makeup artists do and musicians do. Just as public relations executives do. And it's about time.

In seemingly cosmic synchronicity, Tom Donahue's fantastic documentary Casting By premieres tonight on HBO at 9 pm. (It will then, of course, be available whenever you want via HBO Go.) The film focuses on the development of the role of the casting director in film and television from what was once a simple administrative department during the studio era to the important creative position it is today as the key collaborator ensuring that the best possible – and often unknown – talent fills every role. Donahue shows this evolution primarily through the story of Marion Dougherty, the woman most responsible for the progression of this role.

One of my first jobs after college was at a boutique talent and literary agency in Beverly Hills called Susan Smith & Associates, where I spent over two years as the senior assistant to the agency's eponymous owner. During that prehistoric era of the mid-1990s, I spent a great deal of time reading Breakdowns (i.e., character lists and descriptions for upcoming films and TV series), collecting physical headshots and resumes, typing submission letters and packaging everything together into envelopes to messenger or overnight to casting directors in L.A. and New York.

During this period, Dougherty was the head of casting for Warner Bros., and I talked to her office on a regular basis. My boss Susan had opened her agency in New York in the 1970s and remained fiercely independent her entire career, even as the era of the mega-agency exploded in the 1980s with CAA, ICM and William Morris. She always had a great eye for talent, and she was responsible for launching the careers of many extraordinary actors and actresses. She had great relationships with many casting directors, but Dougherty had also become one of her closest friends.

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Studying The Brady Bunch finally pays off

Today Indiewire published a piece I wrote about the portrayal of kids coming-of-age on The Brady Bunch. It's the third in a series of five stories they're running this week to mark tomorrow night's launch of Participant Media's exciting new cable network pivot. As I think about all those afternoons trying to one-up my UCLA Daily Bruin colleagues in Brady trivia 20 years ago, I certainly never realized that one day my encyclopedic knowledge of most-things-Brady would actually come in handy.

I was a typical latch-key kid of the '70s and '80s, so my addiction to television should surprise no one. I had several afterschool television companions. Had you asked me when I was seven or eight to name my favorite show, I likely would have said channel 2's Captain Cosmic. But the show I ultimately absorbed and knew most intimately was absolutely The Brady Bunch, which aired its repeats on rival channel 44.

I'll admit it: I loved the Bradys. My parents divorced when I was four, and neither remarried until I was 13. I had no siblings, and even my two first cousins closest to my age lived out of the country until I was nine. I split time between each of my parents' San Francisco apartments: Mom in the Richmond, Dad bordering Golden Gate Park in the Sunset. The Brady Bunch presented a situation I could recognize and I suppose realistically long for even though it was pretty removed from my own.

I've never been someone who possesses instant recall of movies, television, theater or music. People will quote a song lyric or a line from a film and then be surprised — or even disappointed — that I can't identify it. I'm still that way. I tend to remember my feelings and reactions to the overall story more than the intricacies of plot or individual lines themselves.

However, that was never true with The Brady Bunch. By the time I arrived at UCLA in 1988, even though I had stopped regularly watching the Bradys years earlier, I realized that I could identify almost every episode within its first 10-15 seconds. The initial post-credits shot, background music and first few seconds of the first scene often were enough for me to know whether Marcia was about to get hit in the face with a football or Greg was about to "fit the suit" and turn into Johnny Bravo. When I became involved with the Daily Bruin, I met a few other people with Brady obsessions, and thus began the aforementioned trivia battles.

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Joseph Losey’s “The Servant” expert take on “class warfare”

More violent than any of the tentpole summer blockbusters at the local multiplex, Joseph Losey‘s 1963 film The Servant examines the diminished and disintegrating British class system of its era. This new restoration for the film’s 50th anniversary presents a stunningly claustrophobic and utterly engaging experience for audiences, and if you’ve never seen it before (as I hadn’t), rushing down to Film Forum before it ends its run on Thursday should be a top priority.

The story centers on a young but lazy member of Britain’s upper crust named Tony (James Fox) who upon returning to London from time abroad hires Barrett (Dirk Bogarde), a seemingly dutiful and professional live-in butler. The idea of a young bachelor living alone with a manservant was enough of a relic by the early ’60s that even Tony’s suitably positioned and wealthy girlfriend Susan (Wendy Craig) doesn’t understand or like Barrett’s presence. As the story unfolds and Barrett reveals his true motivations, the line between master and manservant blurs, and in more than one scene during the absolutely brilliant final third of the film, the two better resemble an old bickering married couple.

With excellent performances all around – including a near-perfect case study in sexy swinging sixties coquettishness from Sarah Miles, introduced to the story as Barrett’s sister Vera – the film truly rests on Bogarde’s shoulders. He somehow achieves a perfect blend of passive aggressive subservient mischievousness. The subtleties of Bogarde’s performance allow Barrett to slowly evolve and transform from soft-spoken and composed to aggressive and dominant.

The first of three collaborations between noted playwright Harold Pinter and Losey, The Servant plays like an Upstairs, Downstairs trip into an alternate reality where everything proper, expected and controlled has been flipped on its head. In fact, the entire film feels like an exploration of flowing duality, a steady and unceasing transference between Yin and Yang. Each character experiences both moments of total control and utter submission; the story itself focuses on the eventual reversal of roles; and even the structure of Losey’s storytelling complicates the nature of the protagonist/antagonist relationship.

These multiple realities present themselves in very concrete ways throughout the film. Although set primarily in a large townhouse, Losey shoots most of the action in tight-closeup or showing just a small part of a room with one character dominating the foreground. He repeatedly returns to the narrow foyer and stairwell or shoots through a doorframe from one room to another, further constricting the space and eliciting a tension-raising sense of claustrophobia.

Losey also regularly utilizes mirrors and their reflection (as shown in the film’s poster, above), and in one of my favorite sequences, he creates a magnificent separation between Tony’s old world represented by Susan and the developing one controlled by Barrett, from which he can’t escape. The scene occurs at what seems to be the moment Tony has regained the upper-hand, discovering Barrett’s duplicity, but Losey hints that something very different is actually happening. Keeping both images in focus, he divides the frame between a tight shot on the area immediately in front of the mirror and the action within the larger space in its reflection, providing an obvious but no less magnificent through-the-looking-glass moment that further moves Tony from one realm to the other.

In an era when some of a certain political persuasion use “class warfare” an unthinkable derogatory term despite its constant presence in society, The Servant remains ever-relevant and never feels too dated. That’s some achievement for a film that couldn’t be more rooted and specific to its time and place.

PAUSE FOR PODCASTS: An Introduction, and Goodbye to “It’s All Politics”

I once loved to drive. During my eight years living in Los Angeles, I regularly drove myself home to San Francisco to see my family. It didn’t take much longer than flying onec I accounted for getting to the airport early, the flight itself, and then the drive to my mom’s house in Marin County. I also consider driving way less stressful. In fact, I found it relaxing.

I sometimes enjoyed driving around L.A. too, but I hated having to drive. After spending my first four years carless, once I had the ability, I never considered not I felt driving anywhere more than a few blocks. While I wasn’t quite as bad, Steve Martin’s half-block journey by car in L.A. Story wasn’t too far from my reality, but that was in large part due to the atrocious transportation options available in early 1990s Los Angeles. My one saving grace of being in the car so often was the radio: Howard Stern, Jim Rome, and the early days of Loveline. (Hey, I was in my early 20s!)

After I moved to New York in 1996 and no longer drove with regularity, I rarely listened to the radio other than when I was in the shower or falling asleep. My portable CD player had a radio, which of course was useless in the subway. And so, I found myself listening to much more album-based music and significantly less talk.

Podcasts changed all of that. Suddenly, I could take NPR/PRI with me, and at first, my podcast rotation was limited to shows from those distributors. I wrote about This American Life and Radiolab in 2007, but my obsession with the medium has exploded especially over the last three years as I continued discovering phenomenal shows of all varieties. I have such a backlog of podcasts; I know I will never listen to them all, but when I’m riding the subway, walking around the city, doing dishes or cooking, I’m usually playing one.

I listen to some shows without fail on a weekly basis; others stare back at me from my iPhone and iTunes, wondering when I’ll visit, and periodically, I’ll have a little binge session. Still others – like the how-had-I-not-discovered-it-before Professor Blastoff — have become major addictions. I listen to new episodes each week while also working my way through the archives from the beginning so I may belatedly witness the show’s development. (To date, I’m up to episode 38.)

As part political-junkie, my weekly must-listens include a few political podcasts, and I was sad to learn that one will end its seven-year run this week. NPR’s It’s All Politics has been one of the most entertaining and informative political podcasts I’ve found, but the episode released later tonight – assuming it’s on schedule – will be its last.

NPR’s decision to cancel the long-running Talk of the Nation, announced a couple months ago, also produced the demise of this weekly conversation between Ron Elving and Ken Rudin as the latter is leaving the network. The show frequently utilized guests hosts when in Elving or Rudin’s absence, but it makes sense for them not to continue with a permanent replacement. Although the fill-ins were always engaging and informative, the bad-pun, Borscht Belt-like shtick and chemistry between Elving and Rudin is the primary ingredient that made this podcast such a blast.

Both hosts are seasoned political reporters, and their commentary included a level of thoughtful, usually non-partisan analysis frequently absent from some of the louder shouting matches among the media. Their discussions possessed a wonderful sense of glee allowing even their dumbest jokes – and wow, were some dumb! – to consistently elicit chuckles and even the occasional guffaw.

The most frequently recurring joke involved repeated references to “the listener,” as if the podcast’s audience totaled one. As the show regularly ranked among the top 30 political podcasts on iTunes – competing with podcast versions 60 Minutes, PBS Newshour and The Rachel Maddow Show among other mainstream TV and radio programs people choose to experience in podcast form during commutes or because they’ve otherwise cut the cable cord – I’m sure they had a relatively large listening audience, certainly allowing them to add an “s” to “listener.” However, if I ever was, in fact, the sole listener to NPR’s It’s All Politics podcast, I am very grateful to Ron and Ken for doing their show just for me. This listener will miss them and their banter a great deal.

Jumping back into the pool: Writing is hard — an “Uh-Huh” moment

Several years ago, I started having not-quite-epiphanies: Moments of realization in which something I already knew becomes consciously absorbed. I was not having giant light bulb moments; these weren’t sudden ideas that popped into my brain out of nowhere. Rather, I experienced flashes of clarity on subjects not foreign to me. I wasn’t exclaiming, “A-Ha! I get it now”. Instead, I experienced a huge, “Uh-Huh. Yup. I know, but wow, that makes much more sense now.”

I have repeatedly posted about my blogging comebacks, only to feel a sudden need to do so again months or even a year later due to my failure to stick around. I have trouble believing that I began this blog more than nine years ago, but when I travel back in the archives, I find my “Pilot Post” dated Feb. 26, 2004. It was an election year filled with Howard Dean’s screams and, eventually, George W. Bush’s earning “political capital.”

I was in such a different place back then, and the way I treated this blog showed that. For one thing, I not only took this blog’s name from my old column at the UCLA Daily Bruin – as described in post two on day two, Feb. 27, 2004 – but I unintentionally maintained my then 13-year-old writing habits. I described looking back at some of my old columns: “WOW, did they ever suck.” But what certainly remains in those posts from my most active period of this blog — its first two years — is an obvious and blatant carelessness.

I’m not the most patient person. I never have been. Writing takes patience, at least good writing does, and that goes for writing in all of its forms, even the quick-turnaround variety. The emergence of blogging and the immediacy of information sharing online via Twitter et al has certainly not helped those, like me, who prefer adding im- to their patience. It has also led to the emergence of a seemingly endless amount of writing lacking adequate rewriting, proofreading or copyediting. It has created a world in which “Breaking News” is both the rumor of a relatively minor piece of information and than just hours later the “official” word that said rumor was true.

With such tight deadlines and the necessity of being first with everything to ensure that people visit your site rather than a competitor’s for every piece of news or even opinion, it’s understandable how mistakes make it into the final product. With plenty of professional sites, copyediting in general is an afterthought at best if not actually an even-thought.

I don’t say this to critique other writers and publications out there. I’m talking about my own work and habits. Carelessness is prevalent even among many people who care a hell-of-a-lot. I never considered myself such a brilliant writer that in either my opinion pieces or my screenwriting and fiction I never made any mistakes or wrote the perfect final draft with my first draft. I just didn’t have the time (I told myself) or didn’t care enough (more likely). And suddenly, I do. I’ve drafted dozens of pieces the last few years that I’ve simply saved into irrelevancy on my computer but never published in this space and offered to any others. I didn’t like the initial results, and I simply procrastinated returning to finish them.

With my original UCLA column, I developed a simple pattern: Have idea, write it, quickly scan for typos (i.e., run my spellcheck and therefore miss all those correctly spelled but wrong words), and submit. If the piece was too long (this was for a physical, print paper, mind you!), I’d cut as rapidly as possible. That’s why my old columns “suck,” to quote myself.

Sure, I was also 19-20 years old and like most people that age, had a heightened sense of self and my opinions. Plus, I was still learning how to write. But I also took pride in the conversational tone of my writing, which was another way of saying that I didn’t really care that my columns were long-winded, possibly dull, and certainly not targeted to an actual “conversation” with a reader.

Don’t get me wrong: I find nothing improper about a conversational tone in print, and I believe I still use one. But doing so successfully actually takes a craft; one different than simply recording one’s stream-of-consciousness to the page.

When I looked at those early posts from nine years ago, I noticed the same carelessness. I wrote the same way – type, type, type, scan, publish – and I found multiple typos and several minor coding errors, i.e., forgetting a quotation mark at the end of a web link creating a completely incoherent sentence in a published post.

My last temporary comeback occurred at the end of last year. I didn’t want to make promises (even to myself) that I wasn’t going to keep, so when I found myself seeing a ton of theater while simultaneously searching for a way to satisfy the longing to do something creative, I wrote a few reviews before getting sidetracked again.

More importantly, I had spent the previous year-and-a-half (give-or-take) consumed with a job that kept me from my usual obsessions and joys – namely, film, TV, and theater. I thought my blog made the most sense as a place for me to start shouting back at culture and the world, even if nobody was paying attention. Hell, that was the whole purpose of Out of Focus in 2004, even if I spent those first weeks mentioning and linking and “trackbacking” to other more popular destinations in a frantic attempt to say, “Hey, look at me! I’m here now too.”

I parted ways with my most recent job in early April and decided it was time to refocus my attention on those things I’ve danced around and avoided for most of the past two decades: my own writing and other creative projects. It has been a slow process as I continue to try to develop a routine and not get in my own way. I continuously face the reality that writing is hard. That’s no epiphany, of course. That’s a continuous “Uh-huh.”

But with every new journey, there’s always a first step, even if it’s the hundredth or thousandth “first” step. So here I go…

Chaplin: The Musical All Falls Down Right from the Start

I will stipulate that compressing the life of one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th Century is no easy task. Satisfying all audiences is impossible. The creators of a big, meant-for-Broadway musical must omit fun, interesting and clever bits of story and information, and too, they must simplify and consolidate large swaths of time. Important events must be prioritized, and ultimately potentially upsetting choices will be made. To do all this, they must utilize creative license as they cut and even fictionalize small bits of the examined life. And yet with all those understood caveats, I can’t imagine a worse, more mundane effort than the musical take on the life of Charlie Chaplin, closing on Broadway this Sunday.

I’ve missed several shows this season that I’ve been dying to see. Most notably, I’m saddened that I won’t have the chance to see what I understand is an astounding production of Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy that will close days before I return from an out-of-this-hemisphere vacation. But when I heard Chaplin: The Musical had announced its closing last month, I made sure I didn’t miss it.

I love movies. I love theater. I love silent movies, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Chaplin’s films for years. I don’t consider myself an expert on Chaplin’s life and career, but I know enough to be baffled by many of the choices — both inclusions and omissions — made by librettist and composer Christopher Curtis who co-wrote the book with three-time Tony winner Thomas Meehan (The Producers, Hairspray and Annie). Meehan’s impressive credits can’t obscure the colossal storytelling mess that has inhabited the stage at the Ethel Barrymore Theater the past few months.

Broadway has long been home to weak shows featuring amazing talent, and Chaplin’s primary (and sole) strength fits neatly into this scenario. Rob McClure’s works hard to save this show with his central, titular performance. He captures the essence and spirit of Charlie Chaplin as thoroughly as Robert Downey Jr. did in Richard Attenborough’s 1992 biopic, but McClure has the added quality of looking remarkably like the man who was Hollywood’s biggest star and arguably one of the three or four most important filmmakers of the silent era.

Try as he might, and as impressive as his combined interpretation and mimicry often are, the rest of Chaplin provides a formulaic, inconsistent and often false storyline that shoots for the salacious at every turn. The show’s book lacks any subtext placing every bone in the plot’s skeleton front and center, with anvil-dropping obviousness, just in case the audience misses the point.

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Happy New Year! The “Evolving Traditions” Edition

On Aug. 12, 2012, I got married. That alone marks 2012 as a fantastic, fabulous, phenomenal, momentous year in The Life of Aaron. But otherwise, 2012 disappointed the hell out of me. It certainly was not as bad as 2009, and in certain ways, it improved upon both 2010 and 2011. Still, as I revisited and reflected upon some of the goals – realistic or otherwise – I had set for myself 366-plus days ago, I saw too many instances of not just incomplete ambitions, but also many I had not even started.

One major disappointment had nothing to do with any of my 2012 goals, but rather the shock and surprise resulting from the discovery that I had seen fewer movies in 2012 – and a relatively low number of 2012 releases in a year that saw over 800 of them – than I had during any year this century, and most likely, the final decade of the last one.

I watched friends, former colleagues and the critical world at large release their top 10 lists and realized two things: One, I had simply not seen enough 2012 releases to truly identify 10 films that I thought represented the best of the year. Sure, nobody sees everything and no list is comprehensive, but my sample size (still only at about 60, and I’ve watched roughly 25% of that number in just the past two weeks) still feels pitiful, especially since so many of titles making the top 50 of various media outlets’ critics polls remain unseen.

Second, and maybe more importantly, I have yet to see a 2012 release that made me want to exclaim, “That could be the best film of the year!” I don’t mean to imply that I didn’t see lots of 2012 movies that I really liked. One of my major annual annoyances involves those hyperbolic critics making the argument that we just witnessed a horrible year for film, worse than any other, especially the previous year when other critics (or maybe even themselves) made the same argument. These folks will state that they can’t even find 10 movies to list among the dreck, which is always absurd, but never more so than in a world with so many hundreds of new works to explore.

(I remember about 20 years ago, while I was still at the UCLA Daily Bruin, Kenneth Turan was so disappointed in the year’s films, he refused to name a top 10 and went only with nine. How clevezzzzzzzzzzzz ….)

Until about two years ago, I had developed a new practice that I had turned into a tradition: I would not allow myself to see any film in the new year (new or old; in the theater or on TV; movies only; series television did not count) until I had again watched my favorite film of the previous year. So, after considering the first (and in my opinion, still the best) of Christopher Nolan’s now-completed trilogy the best of 2005, shortly after midnight 2006, I popped in the DVD of Batman Begins. It took mr until Jan. 3, 2007 to revisit Pan’s Labyrinth at the AMC Empire 25, and I avoided movies until then. On Jan. 1, 2008, I ventured to the AMC Loew’s Lincoln Square to start my year with There Will Be Blood. Jan. 1, 2009, you could find me at the Landmark Sunshine for my second (or it may have been third, by then) helping of Synecdoche, New York.

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A Civil War Christmas: A fascinating, serious and fun pageant for the ages

The Playbill for Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas — which opened Tuesday at New York Theater Workshop – contains a “production history” timeline starting with the November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. The twelfth and final item dated “October-November 2012” notes the production’s rehearsal start, the arrival of Hurricane Sandy and NYTW’s loss of power, and the reelection of President Obama.

But the most important item on this timeline seems to be the fourth: “December 1987 – Paula Vogel promises to honor her dying brother Carl’s request to teach the children in the family about America’s history.” Fifteen years later, Vogel’s history lesson arrives in New York in utterly unexpected and spectacular fashion: akin to a jukebox musical featuring 19th century folk songs, hymns and Christmas carols, A Civil War Christmas plays with almost every theatrical convention imaginable. The end result is a fascinating and wonderful examination of our country’s history through the lens of multiple story-threads on one solitary night – the last Christmas to occur during the Civil War.

Vogel’s Christmas pageant does not attempt to teach the history of Civil War America through those iconic battles and events we learn about in elementary school. Rather, utilizing multiple interweaving and relatively simple storylines occurring in and around Washington D.C. as well as the war’s battlefields, Vogel attempts to give us a general sense of living in this time, in these places, during this turmoil. The 13-year-old southern boy who wants to go fight the Yankees is as vital to this story as President and Mrs. Lincoln.

The runaway slave and her young daughter, so spooked by the rumors of slave chasers, they separate thinking they’ll be safer but actually putting them on a path towards tragedy; or the dying Jewish soldier who just wants another visit from Walt Whitman and has never heard the song “Silent Night” before – Vogel uses stories like these and many others to piece together the experiences of a weary nation searching for peace and vengeance. The musical element enhances the drama and emotion, and even though the accompaniment rarely involves more than one or two instruments and there are certainly no big production numbers, Vogel’s use of – and, in some cases, alterations to – the chosen songs is the propellant that makes A Civil War Musical truly soar.

Vogel is clearly at play and having fun with this piece. She utilizes different narrative techniques throughout, sometimes with characters breaking the fourth wall, providing third person narration directly to the audience and creating the sensation of listening to someone read a fable; and just as quickly, the scene will shift, placing itself fully behind that proscenium separation with a more natural theatrical division between performers and audience. Characters break into song, but it never feels forced or awkward; she moves back-and-forth between light-hearted comedy and tense drama frequently and often when the audience may not expect it. And even as the overall number of stories told and frequent narrative shifts keep growing, she never complicates matters so much that the show becomes difficult to follow.

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Checkers: Nixon’s most likable moment played out less-favorably

I guess I just expected so much more. The story behind the story of Richard Nixon’s infamous “Checkers” speech; Terry Kinney in the director’s chair and the very talented Anthony LaPaglia and Kathryn Erbe doing the majority of the heavy lifting on stage; a script by the politically astute Douglas McGrath, who gained some satire chops while writing for SNL and received an Oscar nomination for co-writing Bullets Over Broadway with Woody Allen and has directed his own filmed adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and had the misfortune of bringing his (arguably better) Truman Capote movie to the screen second.

Missing from McGrath’s approved bio and credits in the program is theater, and his background with sketch comedy and multiple-short scenes edited together sticks out like a sore thumb throughout the entirety of Checkers, which closed today at the Vineyard Theater. McGrath and Kinney tell the story through one long flashback, framed by two scenes in 1966 focused on Nixon (LaPaglia) deciding to run for president in 1968, against the wishes of his wife Pat (Erbe).

The majority of the play occurs during the 1952 presidential campaign. Dwight Eisenhower chose Nixon as his running mate, however, his campaign was surprised by rumors of a secret (and potentially illegal) slush fund operated by Tricky Dick. McGrath doesn’t provide any real explanation for why Eisenhower ever chose Nixon, but he does make a point of establishing that Ike’s campaign managers and the majority of the Republican establishment is not too fond of the Quaker from California.

When this scandal erupts, Eisenhower must decide whether to drop his running mate from the ticket, and eventually, the campaign forces Nixon to make a 30 minute televised speech explaining the truth behind any fund (that it didn’t exist) and why he did nothing wrong. With that speech, Nixon saved himself and helped seal the deal for Eisenhower. The part most of the audience remembered most distinctly, however, was the few sentences describing the puppy a supporter had sent to him and that his daughter Julie had named Checkers. Suddenly, anyone accusing Nixon of doing something improper was trying to take a puppy away from a little girl, and over 99% of those who chose to call or send a telegram to the Republican National Committee supported the candidacy of the potential Veep On this night, television saved Nixon; ironic, considering how it betrayed him just eight years later running against JFK.

The Checkers speech was a seminal moment in modern American political history. To McGrath’s Nixon, it was his darkest hour. That is not my interpretation of the play, but rather the statement Nixon utters in order to throw the audience from the opening scene back in time 14 years. I would have been much more satisfied had Wayne and Garth simply walked onto the stage waving their arms back-and-forth and up-and-down while making that “do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do” sound.

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Sorry: The Apple Family has nothing to apologize for

In the program to his new play Sorry writer-director Richard Nelson writes, “It is my hope that these plays are about the need to talk, the need to listen, the need for theatre, and, I now add, the need to be in the same room together.”

The immediacy of theater sets it apart from the other storytelling- and performance-based arts like film and television. Every show is different, if only in minute ways. Every performance is ephemeral, specific to that moment in time and that audience. Once it’s over, it’s gone.

I have arrived late to the “Apple Family Plays.” Sorry (which The Public Theater has extended through this Sunday, Dec. 2) is the third of a fascinating four-play experiment-in-progress. Even without seeing the first two installments — That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad — (as I haven’t), I enthusiastically endorse catching this show before it actually closes. Each play presents a peak through a window into the lives of one family on a day of national significance. That important date matches the play’s official opening performance. In the case of Sorry, the audience spends just shy of two hours with the Apple siblings and their uncle Benjamin in the early morning of Election Day 2012, and therefore, the play opened on Nov. 6 as well.

I don’t know how true this was for the first two plays, but Nelson obviously continued changing the script of Sorry all the way up to opening night. At least a few audiences saw this PublicLab production in previews (although I believe it’s schedule was altered due to Hurricane Sandy), but the play just as obviously becomes frozen in time as of that opening night.

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