Houston Press Review: Loving 'Love Loves a Pornographer'

Thanks, DL!!!

Loving Love Loves a Pornographer
Nova Arts Project surprises with a wicked Victorian comedy-of-manners parody

By D.L. Groover
Published: April 17, 2008

Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex
2201 Preston, 713-623-4033

Details:
Through April 26. $15-$30.

It takes a few minutes to become acclimated to Nova Arts Project's immaculate staging of Love Loves a Pornographer, Jeff Goode's wicked parody of a late Victorian comedy of manners. This isn't because the satire is odd and edgy — it's downright classical, if truth be told — but because we don't expect something quite like this from the avant-garde troupe, certainly not after its surreal tempOdyssey, wacky, CSI: Denmark-inspired Hamlet or crazy-quilt Oedipus3. Goode's beguiling sex comedy begins with an obsequious butler, a fine old English country house and fine English landed gentry, who seem to have crash-landed from an unknown play by Pinero, Shaw and, most assuredly, Wilde. Epigrams, waistcoats, dueling pistols — this is not typical Nova territory. But once we shake our head clear of expectations, allow the radiant cast to work its definite magic and relax into Goode's extremely funny play, we're bathed in first-class entertainment all the way. Love is the cleverest play on either side of the bayou this month.

A prolific playwright, Goode has unbridled humor, an ink-blot view of the world and an absolute love of words — qualities that serve him perfectly in Love, his loving, anachronistic tribute to, and parody of, Oscar Wilde. It's difficult to spoof Wilde, since his arch style pricked his own society and class. Of course, Wilde's shallowness and pretense hid great depth, but he wasn't about to say so. Goode takes Wilde's basic tenets — superficial characters, witty dialogue, mistaken/misplaced identities, sublimated sex, tony language – and flicks them with his own brand of body English. Love never falters or loses momentum, it just moves faster and more furiously, making the plot funnier as it becomes more convoluted and improbable. This is a neat trick for any writer, and Goode pulls it off brilliantly. Wilde is definitely smiling.

Love is no slavish imitator, though, and pulls some neat tricks all its own. Fennimore, the Butler, sits offstage at a table loaded with props and reads a newspaper when not "on." Daughter Emily wears proper Victorian garb, yet sports sneakers and striped socks. Earl, Emily's American fiancé, wears 21st-century casual. A child's crayon drawing is talked about as if it were a Gainsborough, and Fennimore uses a TV clicker to announce the act titles. These delectable postmodern deconstructions cheekily add to the fun. The play almost pops in 3-D.

Any detailed description threatens to deflate this finely crafted confection by revealing its numerous twists and surprises, but here are some basics — believe it or not, they're interconnected. Lord Cyril Loveworthy (Seán Patrick Judge) supplements his income by writing pornography under a pseudonym. His nemesis, Reverend Miles Monger (Timothy Evers), the influential literary critic of the Times of London and a sanctimonious prig, might be on intimate terms with Lady Lillian, Cyril's wife (Jenni Rebecca Stephenson). Out of jealousy, might Cyril be dallying with Millicent, Monger's lovely but frustrated wife (Melissa Davis)? Daughter Emily (Katrina Ellsworth) has returned from travels in America not with a genuine earl, as was expected, but with Earl (Bobby Haworth), a questionable mountain man who sells unsavory literature in Flagstaff, Arizona. Mrs. Monger may have committed suicide in the garden, but the guests spend time arguing over who has the proper social standing to investigate. Fennimore (Wayne Barnhill) is chastised for swooning when he should leave that to his betters.

Of course, in plays like this, no one is ever who they seem, and reversals and surprises are a matter of course. Goode keeps us guessing — and listening. Timed to perfection, the words, barbed and dangerous, or flighty and shallow as the clueless characters spouting them, swirl like clouds. Love is intricately structured to allow the witty Wilde-like throwaways their deserved position front and center, such as Lady Lillian's wonderful "No married woman should be left alone with a firearm. The temptation is simply too great." Or Monger's: "Money should never be earned, when it can be inherited."

Under Rob Kimbro's faceted direction, the cast of seven is a dream. Judge is particularly effective in relaying Lord Loveworthy's commanding tone and haughty sense of entitlement. But it is Evers, as the smug Monger, who steals the show with his marvelously twitchy performance. Encased in costumer Kiza Moore's straitlaced greatcoat, with hair combed straight down, glasses nailed to the very tip of his nose, and those long bony fingers constantly on the prowl over his watch chain, he's a George Cruikshank illustration come to life. Self-righteous and proud of it, his dirty little secret drives the play, and Evers takes the wheel with glee.

Amazingly smart and very funny, Love Loves a Pornographer has class, style and wit. The comedy, whose world premiere was only five months ago, proves that new, fresh theater doesn't have to be dumbed down to work like gangbusters. It just has to be good — or better, Goode.

Houston Chronicle review for 'Love Loves a Pornographer'

Ingenious wordplay drives Pornographer

By EVERETT EVANS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Sometimes you can pinpoint the exact moment when a play irrevocably pulls you into its corner.

With Jeff Goode's Love Loves a Pornographer, getting a nifty Houston premiere courtesy of Nova Arts Project, it's this inspired bit of verbal lunacy:

"Your latest creation elicits illicit elations."

Goode's playful homage to drawing room comedy has already rhapsodized about "savage enravagements" and tossed off wry epigrams such as "A man should take pride in his livelihood, however shameful." Not to mention the priggish antagonist who, described as "rakish," defends himself with this choice retort: "In my entire life, I have never been rakish with so much as a leaf-strewn lawn."

Yet for me, it was that "illicit elations" line that put the play over the top. Despite a few lulls here and there and a sense of winding down near the close, Pornographer can be recommended for the sheer merriment of its ingenious wordplay and the fun this cast generates delivering it. It's the heightened language that's supposed to sound like stage talk, not everyday talk.

Premiered in December by Los Angeles' Circle X Theatre Company, Pornographer starts out as a tribute to, or spoof of, Victorian drawing room comedy as epitomized by Oscar Wilde. Yet midway, it acquires a more modernist bent — as if a play by John Guare or Christopher Durang or Paul Rudnick had wandered in and mingled with the earlier model.

Famed novelist Lord Cyril Loveworthy and his wife, Lady Lillian, entertain the Rev. Miles Monger, who also happens to be the Times of London's lead literary critic, and his wife, Millicent. Lord Loveworthy, whose writing is respected but not sufficiently lucrative, tries to blackmail Rev. Monger into a favorable review of his next book. Lord Loveworthy needs the boost so that he can finance the wedding of his daughter, Emily.

Emily arrives with the man she plans to marry — not "an earl" as her parents had misunderstood, but Earl, a scruffy bookseller Emily met in Flagstaff, Arizona. While the other characters are steadfastly British and Victorian in speech and attire, Earl is thoroughly contemporary and American. Before long, other anachronisms creep into the scene. One character leafs through an issue of Vanity Fair. Another sips not from a teacup but a can of soft drink.

The thunderbolt is the revelation that Earl's bookstore specializes in erotica. "Earl is a pornographer" Emily announces, the punchline just before intermission (at which the butler faints dead away.) The second half is (as the butler announces) "a series of shocking revelations." All pertain to which of the other characters are secret readers of the star author whose work Earl sells, or have secretly written those books, or even secretly inspired the whole series through real-life experiences recounted in a diary.

Was every Victorian a secret hedonist? As one character observes, "You make this licentiousness sound almost medicinal."

An exercise in theatrical style, Pornographer marks a change of pace for the young Nova Arts group. Director Rob Kimbro generally keeps things crisp, brisk and light of touch. Apart from a few hesitant moments (and remember, many of these lines are a mouthful), this team gives the play a capable rendition.

Sean Patrick Judge makes Lord Loveworthy sly, condescending and morally slippery. Given many of the script's most potentially tongue-tangling lines, he handles them with authority. Timothy Evers makes an amusing foil as the stuffy, stodgy Miles Monger — prim, prudish and sourly disapproving.s

Jenni Rebecca Stephenson brings haughty confidence to Lady Loveworthy. Melissa N. Davis' Millicent Monger is particularly appealing, indefatigably cheery with an unabashedly saucy streak.

Bobby Haworth's laid-back Earl Kant seems to have wandered in from another play, continent and century, which is exactly the point. Katrina Ellsworth shows daughter Emily's increasing iconclasm and rebelliousness.

As the butler, Wayne Barnhill, formerly of Infernal Bridegroom, has a droll way of being unflappably obliging to his "betters" yet at the same time mocking them.

You might say that while Love Loves a Pornographer is not quite Wilde, it's certainly very Goode.

LOVE LOVES A PORNOGRAPHER

• When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, through April 26
• Where: Nova Arts Project, at Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex, 2201 Preston

• Tickets: $15-$30; 713-623-4033

http://www.novaartsproject.com/

houston arts: damn straight

Arts have $600M effect on Houston

Houston Business Journal - by Christine Hall Reporter

Cultural arts may not bring in as much money as the oil and gas industry, but a report released Monday shows the sector is a valuable part of the Houston economy.

"The Business of the Arts: A Look into The Economic Impact of the Arts on the Houston Region" showed that in 2004, the nonprofit arts in Houston brought in $626.3 million, supported 14,115 full-time jobs and generated $69.5 million in local and state government revenue.

Mayor Bill White, at a luncheon, said Houston is one of the up-and-coming venues in the arts world. "We want people 50 years or 100 years from now to talk about the explosion in Houston arts," he said.

The study also found that the 9.2 million people who said they attended an arts and cultural event in 2004 was twice the number of people attending events related to Houston's three major league professional sports teams in 2005.

The 1.6 million visitors to Houston who attended cultural events in 2004 spent $132 million in addition to the cost of their tickets, the survey found.

"Houston is not just a good places for the arts, it is one of the best," said Larry Faulkner, president of Houston Endowment Inc., a philanthropic institution founded in 1937 by Jesse and Mary Gibbs Jones.

"The arts are a powerful business asset and one we need to have for Houston to remain a leading city in the future and to keep its extraordinary economic vitality," he said.
Volunteerism was also a big factor in Houston's cultural events, according to the study. More than 34,000 individuals volunteered for arts and cultural organizations in 2004, contributing more than 650,000 hours worth more than $11.2 million.

Funding for the project, consulted by St. Louis-based AMS Planning & Research, was provided by The Brown Foundation, Houston Endowment and The Wortham Foundation.

art on wheels

so, i attended yesterday's art car parade with some pals. thanks to michael, the arts initiative, and the cart-bar! much, much fun!




were many fantastic cars, but the one that made me the happiest was this one, the sashimi tabernacle choir car:

brilliant! simply brilliant! kudos to the team that brought us a crustaceous beethoven's 9th!
250 fish and lobsters singing and moving in unison. priceless.

frida, taymor, and goldenthal...

so, i am sitting here at my house...wine glass in hand (with a decent cabernet), script in hand (working on a cutting for an upcoming project), listening to elliot goldenthal's soundtrack for frida as i work...an unbelievable movie. a movie directed by one of my heroes...julie taymor...who i fully intend to be when i grow up.which reminds me of the movie...i grew up hearing all about friday kahlo from my mother, who worked with several people associated with the menil and other private collectors around town. every time i would hear the artist's name spoken, it was almost with a hint of jest...the self-deprecating artist whose self-portraits defied our notions of beauty, of self, of identity... i remember, when my mother brought home a book on kahlo's work, looking through it with a degree of horror. granted, i was only a child, but i found the images haunting, disturbing...


i had little reason to re-examine her work, so for years, my conception of frida kahlo was a negative one. but how thrilling was it to see taymor's movie and her brilliant imagery...to finally have some insight into kahlo's state of mind when she painted those pieces, the pieces ingrained in my mind as a child as the stuff of horror films...




and how funny that my absolute favorite place in mexico city was the area in which she lived... coyoacan.



thank you, frida kahlo, for being the visionary you were...and julie taymor, for being the woman capable of illuminating her...i no longer look at these works with disgust, but rather, appreciation for their honesty and rawness.

divine humor

ah....the byzantine chapel. the one at the menil. if you haven't seen it, you must make plans to do so. immediately. simply beautiful. the frescos are lovely, but the place itself is magical. in my opinion, much more so than the rothko. i walked in and the only light in the room was that coming from the two candles flanking the pews....excepting that on the frescos themselves. the rest of the altar was simply glowing...an other-wordly translucent white halo against the stark black of the walls. i walked in and sat in the back pew and just stared. and stared. i felt almost paralyzed. i couldn't take my eyes from the fresco just above the altar. from where i was sitting, you only saw the image of an angel...an angel staring back at me with a face of sublime peace and gentleness. did i feel like the angel was looking at me? yes, i did. which is why i sat there silently for what must have been a half-hour. and in that time i felt so calm and satisfied.

how can one deny the existence of the divine? it was in the air...in the birds singing outside the chapel...the water dripping off the leaves in the trees outside...the glow of the altar...even in the squeak of the shoes worn by the people walking by my pew. i don't know exactly what that means...but i feel it is true with every inch of my being. i sat there and stared and couldn't help but cry...just a little. but not tears of sadness, but those of joy. of appreciation. i thought of my family...of my friends...of my life...and i just felt so very grateful and blessed. and content. with all of life's trials, could it be any sweeter than this?

and then, someone's cell phone rang. one of those generic nokia rings. and the woman, embarassed, rushed outside...rifling through her purse to grab and silence the offending device. and it put the biggest smile on my face. and instead of being annoyed, it made me laugh. here i am, having this intense moment when someone's cell phone rings....breaking the mood. but not really. isn't that what life is? isn't it the little surprises and problematic occurrences that make it that much more fun? i think so.

after watching the woman rush out of the room, i looked back at the angel looming above in the fresco....and i couldn't help but notice a hint of a smirk on her face.