Argonautika

Caught Argounatika, Mary Zimmerman's latest effort, last night at Berkeley Rep. Definitely worth seeing.

I forget sometimes that it doesn't have to take really large corporate budgets to create interesting, inventive, intelligent theatre with imaginative staging that is clever and not expensive to produce.

It's a modern take (in terms of language and attitude anyway) on the Jason and the Argonauts myth story.

Zimmerman is always very inventive in her adaptations. Her genre is always along the lines of adapting myth stories or ancient stories for modern audiences, and she hits the mark again here. I previously have seen Ovid's Metamorphases, and The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at Berkeley Rep as well. Zimmerman always writes and directs her own productions and is very improvisational in her style of compiling a show - often writing much of the script, with the cast, during a 4 week rehearsal period (though after extensive research).

As stated, the most fun part for me was seeing how she brought to life things like sea monsters, dragons, a golden ram, big fleets of Greek ships, wind storms, mythological creatures in a way that was actually quite simple, but again, very inventive and imaginative, with an intelligent and funny script that always kept me interested in what was going on and what was coming next.

The acting was (mostly) very strong. The staging and lighting were perfect complements, and even though I did not have the best seat in the house (first row, extreme stage right, couldn't even see part of the stage right part of stage), I was into it the entire time - which is not often the case at theatre these days.

See it if you can.

Been a Long Time Coming (and a Long Time Gone)

Ok, ok, I know I promise to keep this blog more up to date, and there's really no excuse, despite being incredibly busy these last few months.

Part of it is that I'm overwhelmed by how much there is to comment on that I think I get too bogged down in the big issues and forget to just comment on the day I'm living.

So, let's see - I spent months ranting about how early we had to pay attention to the "race" for the presidency, but now the voting starts in a little over a month and even the primary in my state, California, so I guess I actually need to start paying attention now.

Well, that's slightly disingenuous - I've been paying attention, of course. I am a political junkie after all.

So, who am I for - still undecided. Actually, what I want is the passion and optimism of Obama, the experience of Biden and Dodd, the realism of Clinton and the libertarian streak of Ron Paul all rolled up into one person. Now there's someone I could get behind. But, it'll probably come down to February 5th, when I'm in the voting booth, before I really decide for sure. Then it might change for the general election depending who gets nominated (though there is no Republican running that I can conceive of voting for.)

So, what else to catch up on:

• Bush/incompetence - ongoing and pervasive and unending (can't wait for January 20, 2009)
• Global warming - still can't figure out why the political structure hasn't been able to figure out how to tax oil, sell it to the public as national security and stop paying countries that hate us.
• Iran - see above, not to mention why we could somehow figure out how to get a deal done with that crazy guy in North Korea, but can't get one done with that crazy guy in Tehran.
• Middle East in general - last desperate attempt by W/Condi to salvage anything positive out of their ruinous administration. Let's see how long it takes them to screw this one up too.
• Pakistan - another mess that Bushco seems to have not foreseen exactly what everyone else saw was going to happen (Musharaff unpopular, rising tide of extremism in a nuclear country; no concerted effort to find Bin Laden or root out the Taliban, etc.)

Well, those are just a few things. I really will do my best to start being more regular with postings.