AARRRR!!! Best pirate films, in honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Last year, I wrote a lengthy three-part survey of the pirate-film subgenre for Dscriber.com. I found that I had never posted it here, and since International Talk Like a Pirate Day arrives on Sunday . . . well, here you go!

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Hilarious Heroes: 10 Top Comedic Influences

To quote Jack Benny: "There will now be a slight pause while you say 'Who cares?'"

It's a list that sprang unbidden into my petite cranium as I was doing research into vaudeville. Until I started plowing through that information, I hadn't realized how much comedy heritage (and stolen material) has been passed down from one medium to the next medium through the last 200 years of American history. From showboat to minstrel show to stage to radio to film to television to the Web, a long line of performers, most of them forgotten, have preserved a unique set of American approaches to comic performance.

Each generation has its favorites. Most of time, the preceding generation finds the new comic constellation offensive and tasteless, and the succeeding generation finds the stars of yesterday corny, lame and hopelessly unfunny. My own choices pin me decisively to that period when TV was still a novel enterprise, and comics were just starting to write their own material, instead of buying it off the street.

These choices don't reflect my top 10 in terms of critical estimation. Richard Pryor will always be, for me, the greatest comic who ever lived; but until the mid-'70s, I didn't know who he was. I was (and am) a SQUARE Midwestern kid -- Rickles, Dangerfield, Bishop, Hackett and the like were part of an East Coast/Vegas axis I never got. Sahl and Gregory were way out of my league. The innovations of Bruce and Carlin, Firesign Theatre and Cheech & Chong didn't hit me, oddly enough, until I went to college and got high. Still later, I "found" Jonathan Winters, Robert Klein, Nichols & May, W.C. Fields, Spike Jones, Redd Foxx and the rest.

These are the shadows and voices I watched and listened to as a kid, gapemouthed in front of the stereo or the black-and-white TV set. I was just a bit too young for Sid Caesar, unfortunately. Everybody drank and smoked; on the screen, men wore tuxes and ladies wore evening gowns. These are people who first made me laugh -- the ones who astonished me but also made me feel as though I do do that, too. They made me say, "I'm going to do that when I grow up." And I did!

In no particular order:

Bill Cosby

In the beginning was the Cos; and he was good -- long before "The Cosby Show," or "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids," or even "I Spy." The first album I ever heard was his first album, and it killed me. I knew he was making a crowd laugh, and it was heavenly. He knows just how to tell a story, and gets all the laughs that are there, and more.


Bob Newhart

The second album I ever heard? "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." Some claim that he ripped his one-sided conversation routine concept from Shelley Berman -- but then, Berman stole it from George Jessel. And Bob is funnier -- somehow, he plays straight man to a world of imagined voices. A master of timing who also, like Jack Benny, was happy to be the butt of the humor. His TV shows cemented his reputation.

Danny Kaye

His childlike persona was perhaps disingenuous. His starring role as Hans Christian Andersen, and his rapport with kids, gave him an iconic place in our hearts. Later, we learned about his manic energy, his incredibly flexible voice and face, and his unsurpassed ability to rush pell-mell through the most dauntingly complex, hilarious songs. He wanted so much for us to love him, and we did.


Jackie Gleason

He was so relaxed. "The Great One" created a handful of brilliantly conceived personas, could tell jokes, sing, dance, you name it. His variety show was a constant in our lives (and who can forget the June Taylor Dancers?) As the excerpts from "The Honeymooners" below prove, he was a genius of gesture, grimace, groan and growl. He was Everyman.


Red Skelton

He did everything -- stage, radio, movies, TV. His pantomimic skills were incredible -- as was his nerve. Watching him work live and alone onstage, charming an audience -- quite a lesson. Another performer with a clutch of characters to pull from -- especially Klem Kaddidlehopper and the Mean Widdle Kid.


The Smothers Brothers

Their stage routines and records we sat down and memorized. Their first TV show was tremendously funny -- and had something to say, too. The interplay was breathtaking. Tommy got all the laughs, but Dick's relentless and intensely serious straight-man persona has been routinely undervalued.


Zero Mostel

Absolutely, gloriously out of his mind. "The Producers," "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," "Fiddler on the Roof," Rhinoceros," "Waiting for Godot." That's all? That's all he ever needed to do. One of the few people who could send you into hysterics just by sitting -- perfectly -- still.


Carol Burnett

Alive! So damn alive. A great singer, a great heart. And she knows just how to push an expression a hair's breadth over the edge into comic insanity. What's more, her work contains an undercurrent of vulnerability that's deeply touching. She is smart enough to surround herself with writing and performing talent, and shares the spotlight generously. Absolutely nothing got between our family and her show.


Laurel and Hardy

Nobody can touch them. Their dynamic spanned silent and sound film -- the deliberate, measured pace of their inevitable demise in each adventure gave their predicaments, self-caused or not, a profundity that's unsurpassed. They are gentle spirits in an indifferent world. "If anything happened to me, who would explain you to people?" Hardy says to Laurel in one movie. Exactly.


The Marx Brothers

C'mon, if you don't get this one, you're dead. When all is dust, their efforts alone should survive. Don't you think?
 

Abbondanza! CSF's 'Taming of the Shrew'

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 Augustus Truhn and Karyn Casi in  the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's production of "The Taming of the Shrew." [Photo by Casey A. Cass/Courtesy CU Communications]

Eeeeeeey! Se volere ridi spesso? You want some laughs, paisan? Whaddayou, pazzi? The Festival, she got “Taming of the Shrew” for you, di niente! With a heaping side of prosciutto!

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production of “The Taming of the Shrew” dives into the shtick headfirst, unashamed to go for all the laughs they can in a rollicking, fast-paced outing that’s embroidered with improvisations and gags that routinely break the fourth wall. The result is a lot of fun.

Stephanie Shine’s direction resembles the work of an animal trainer in the circus – she prods the cavorting beasts about, and mainly lets them alone. This is not a bad choice to make with “Shrew” – it’s an old plot, and was even back in Shakespeare’s time. It begs to be riffed on and expanded by the inventions of the players.

The bare-bones design is well-suited to the commedia del arte approach – people whisk themselves off and on, pausing only to turn to the audience for comments, and occasionally hit them up for hugs, food, and money. The soundtrack is a mélange of hits from “Goodfellas”/Guido tradition – lots of Louis Prima, Rosemary Clooney, “Santa Lucia” and other such tunes familiar to habitués of restaurants lit by candles stuck in Chianti bottles.

The entire cast has a ball and communicates same to the audience. Augustus Truhn is a rough and ready Petruchio, and Karyn Casi makes a sufficiently bitchy Kate. The politically incorrect plot of the man who subdues rather than woos an upstart woman has been handled in myriad ways in production history. Some have indicted the misogynistic premise by showing Petruchio brutalizing his bride Kate; others have twisted the narrative around so that Kate pities her bullying swain.

Here all is excused under the spell of love at first sight, even if both parties deny it until the end. When Kate, driven by sleeplessness and hunger, finally agrees to gainsay whatever her husband says, it’s delivered as though she finally consents to pretend to be in on the joke of male dominance. It works.

Standouts in the ensemble include Geoffrey Kent’s cunning servant Grumio, who nearly steals the show. (Karen Slack’s performance of the Widow, written as a miniscule part, is parlayed by her performance into a large and integral part of the goings-on.) Jamie Ann Romero makes a madcap Curtis, Bob Buckley is perfectly pantaloonish as Baptista, and Beethovan Oden’s Tranio is rubber-faced and audacious.

Of special note is the work of CSF Producing Artistic Director Philip Sneed, who plays the sour suitor Gremio with whiny flair. It’s a pleasure to see the Festival boss add so much to a show! Plus, those white leather pants . . . oh my goodness. Truly, Sneed isn’t afraid to portray middle-aged crazy for the sake of the team.

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival's production of "The Taming of the Shrew" continues through Aug. 6 in the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theater on the CU-Boulder campus. For tickets and information, please call 303-492-0554 or visit www.coloradoshakes.org.

Domestic disturbance: CSF’s ‘King Lear’

John Hutton as Lear and Jamie Ann Romero as Cordelia in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's production of "King Lear." (Photo by Casey A. Cass/Courtesy CU Communications)

Oh, those crazy Lears. The cops have been out to their place five times this week. When are these people going to stop being reality-show fodder?

Evidently, not until they and their friends, in-laws, and employees have been locked out of the house, tied up like parcel post, blinded, driven insane, stabbed, hung, poisoned, prevented from attempted suicide and/or suffered hypothermia.

In “King Lear,” this onslaught of mayhem represents the end of a world – when the bonds between parents and children, siblings, husbands and wives, all dissolve and the brute drive for dominance takes over. Unfortunately, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s new production doesn’t take that big but necessary step of uniting macrocosm and microcosm. The result is not profoundly moving tragedy, but the mere spectacle of one family’s melodrama.

As such, it works just fine, and as is par for the CSF course, you can get a good solid introduction to the work by sitting there and watching it go by. You just can’t get moved by it, or gain insight from it.

You can’t lay this larger lack on the actors – they do their best. Technically, too, the lighting and sound design, scenic and costume elements all support a clear, cohesive concept. It’s not a matter of scale, either. You don’t need troops of extras to give “Lear” an epic sense – you just need an epic sensibility.

Setting it at the end of the period of America’s Old West seems arbitrary, though. It’s a nice change from the usual royal drag, but at times I had the uneasy feeling I was watching an old episode of “Bonanza.” (Lear as a Western has been tackled, to a degree, in Anthony Mann’s great 1955 movie “The Man from Laramie,” and more explicitly in the 2002 made-for-cable film “King of Texas,” and utilizes the same blinding-with-a-branding-iron for Gloucester.)

The actors, by and large, keep their heads above water. John Hutton, a brilliant actor and long-time company member at the Denver Center Theatre Company, tackles the central role with gusto and insight. His work just keeps getting better and better, and here he plays Lear as only he could play it – with intensity instead of bluster and vulnerability instead of pathos. Other familiar and welcome faces from past CSF productions include Karen Slack as Regan, Jamie Ann Romero as Cordelia and Bob Buckley as Gloucester.

CSF vet Stephen Weitz makes for an admirable Fool, even though he is put through some off-putting paces – including hanging himself in full view of the audience at some random point in the interminable second half of the show. I’m sure he’s just fine personally, but on stage at least he’s simply not well-hung.

Geoffrey Kent brings his genial affability to the role of the usurping Edmund: in fact, he’s so personable that I really didn’t mind that he outlawed his goody-two-shoes brother, betrayed his father, and boinked all the ladies. His incredibly good fight-direction skills help things considerably as well.

So, go to see Hutton and the rest fight to fill the empty space. Hutton is too honest an actor to play Lear as a scenery-chewing coot, and as the run continues perhaps he and his castmates can imbue the show with the sense of urgency and momentousness that it needs.

“King Lear” is presented by the Colorado Shakespeare Festival through Aug. 8 at the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theater on the CU-Boulder campus. For tickets and complete information, please call the box office at 303-492-0554 or visit www.coloradoshakes.org.

Buntport’s ‘Rabbit’ musical a dream awake

 Magical Marla (Hannah Duggan), Alec the Amazing and All-Powerful (Evan Weissman) and Snowball (Erik Edborg) in Buntport's original musical, "Jugged Rabbit Stew."

We have moved into full-on hallucinatory territory.

Buntport’s final production of its 10^th season is “Jugged Rabbit Stew,” an original musical that is fascinating, entertaining and thought-provoking in the Buntport tradition.

Except that there is no tradition. Every time it seems that the collaborative is about to lapse into a house style, the group subverts itself, turns its approach inside out, pies itself in the face. In a culture where art and entertainment is churned out with assembly-line predictability, Buntport keeps things fresh and alive.

Just as Buntport is a theater in the existential sense that it’s a group of people that explores the human condition live onstage, “Stew” is a musical in that it contains songs. Everything else is up for grabs. The plot is marginal, the characters are, literally, fragmented, tangential speculations abound, and in the end the whole contraption just kind of drives off the edge of a cliff.

It’s great!

The central figure is a giant magical rabbit, played by Erik Edborg, clad in ears, paws and anger, chugging booze from a hutch’s water dispenser. He is the deus ex machina – ruling the others on stage like a sociopathic Harvey, or the furry, fanged Frank from “Donnie Darko.”

His victims/cohabitants in his newspaper-lined rectangle of a room are his magician, Alec the Amazing and All-Powerful (Evan Weissman), magician’s assistant Mystical Marla (Hannah Duggan), Erin Rollman as a Woman suspended in space, along with a handful of props, above the stage for the length of the show, and Brian Colonna as Alec’s missing right arm.

Yep.

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Erin Rollman as Woman and Brian Colonna as Arm in Buntport's "Jugged Rabbit Stew."

The score is by Adam Stone, who previously collaborated with Buntport last year on another original musical, “Seal. Stamp. Send. Bang.” He’s a facile composer who’s conversant in the modern musical style – flowing, pop-catchy, swooping ballads – as well as genre pieces (for instance, a gentle country/Western ode, “Hand in Hand”).

More importantly, you can tell from his writing and arrangements that his skills are extremely broad and deep: his work simultaneously reinforces the form’s traditions and asks pointed questions of it – for instance, how do you make rhymed couplets out of the chaotic premise, and singable ones at that?

Yet, Stone and Buntport do so – like Cole Porter on acid. Buntport’s members can sing, too, which is a more complicated task than the layperson might think. Besides staying tuneful and in key, a musical performer has to sell the number, stay in character, move through choreography . . . and breathe. Daunting, but they do it. And numbers such as “When Love is There to Blind You,” “Take Me, Break Me, Make Me Something More,” and “That Special Hare” are stand-alone good.

(Um, confession – I have been playing the cast album in the car and singing along . . . loudly. That’s an endorsement – CDs are available for purchase in the lobby!)

There’s no plot to summarize. Every character suffers from incompleteness. Everyone wants to be something else -- as one lyric states, "To be the version of myself/That I want the world to see." Amazing Alec’s right arm states, “I don’t have a pocket – that’s my tragic flaw,” and most of the others mull over the tragic-hero state and the fate implied for such a figure during the show. Death, fate and love are the themes here, and they are covered from a multitude of angles as the show careens forward.

Mystical Marla sports the bottom half of a car mechanic, thanks to Snowball’s magical wrath. Ditto for Alec, who can’t do much prestidigitation without his missing limb. Meanwhile, Arm (Colonna somehow performs covered in black, save for his brightly clad appendage) falls in love with Woman; everyone is at odds with each other, and all clamor for love and resolution from Snowball, who can only perceive himself as prey.

The abrupt and brutal and artfully staged conclusion still has me wondering what the hell happened. In honor of it, I won’t offer the usual sweeping statement or grandiose deduction or satisfying summation that form the final-paragraph-ending "kicker" of a review; "Stew" is a good, thought-provoking show and you should go and experience it.

Excuse me, I need to go drive around and sing now.

“Jugged Rabbit Stew” is presented by Buntport Theater, 717.5 Lipan St., Denver, through June 19. Performances are Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; a 3 p.m. matinee takes place on Sunday, June 13. For tickets and information, please call 720-946-1388 or visit buntport.com/reservations.

Heart, head and harmony: Lisa Bell’s new album delightful

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Lisa Bell

“Dancing on the Moon”

Hapi Skratch Records

www.lisabellmusic.com

Most popular music likes to get your attention with a punch in the face. In today’s exploded, panic-strewn soundscape, what fills auditoriums and sells downloads are variations and repackagings of the same-old, same-old – alienation, misanthropy, the drive for power, lust denied and satisfied. Turned up really loud. Ah, youth.

In this atmosphere, it takes guts and wisdom to follow your own inclinations. Boulder-born Lisa Bell began her solo career as an interpreter of the Great American Songbook. In that capacity, her liquid voice and magnetic personality were top-notch.

But she wanted more. She began to write her own songs, and blur genre as well, trying unique arrangements and instrumentation to get the songs across. The results are there in her last two albums – 2005’s “It’s All About Love” and her current release, “Dancing on the Moon.”

These beautifully written and performed gems are not punches, but embraces – lyrical summonses to her thoughts on life, faith, love and hope. She’s not afraid to plumb complex emotional depths, and she brings a warm and shining burnish to her artfully conceived compositions.

“Dancing on the Moon” has a smooth, solid pop feel. Bell’s voice is more adept than ever at conveying meaning with grace and balance. Her lyrics deal with issues without preaching or self-pity, moving nimbly along as in “Change Is Free”:

“Can’t pay the mortgage and the bills are due/I just keep waiting for the other shoe/And I know, this too shall pass”

She’s aided in her efforts on this outing by co-writers Mark Oblinger and Bob Story, and Oblinger’s arrangements are pitch-perfect.

(Speaking of pitch, much is made of tunings in this work, from the arbitrary 440-cycles-per-second measure to the more “natural” 424. I have heard this alternate tuning before, in a concert involving Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello – and indeed it does appear do deliver a deeper, more grounded sound. Go to www.lisabellmusic.com for a very cogent explanation of this approach, along with surprising and illuminative sound bites that show the difference.)

I can’t commend her musical collaborators enough, either: Oblinger, Story, percussionist Christian Teele, bassist Chris Engleman, keyboardist Eric Moon, singers Robert Johnson and Linda Lawson, and Steve Conn with the loveliest accordion fills on two cuts.

For me, the proof of the pudding is not in the tuning but in the listening. This album should bear the sticker “For mature listeners only” – not because of objectionable content, but because it’s heady stuff from a grown-up artist who’s not afraid to confront herself in her work, to grow and change, to be vulnerable and share the wisdom she’s accumulated along the way.

“Dancing on the Moon” gives pleasure, and rewards thoughtful fans, all at once.

Healthy, hearty, happy, high Boulder – help!

(Note: This commissioned humor piece was judged to be just a little too negative for publication. Let me know what you think.)

Q: How many Boulderites does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None – all our citizens know that the true source of light comes from within!

Ah, Boulder. Latte-sipping, granola-munching, Lycra-clad, high-minded Boulder. A recent Gallup poll ranked Boulder No. 1 out of 162 large and medium-sized cities in America for overall well-being.

Bleah.

Our town’s status as a soy milk-slurping, solar-powered Shangri-La is undisputed. Whether you call it the People’s Republic of Boulder, “25 square miles surrounded by reality,” or other such names, our city’s reputation is the same. We are thought of as a bunch of insufferable kooks.

Well, we earned it. Since the 1960’s, our area has served as a magnet for the counterculture. It’s still a home for the counterculture. The institutionalized, affluent counterculture, that is. (Hey, I’m sorry, but if you own more than one car, you’re a Republican.)

Boulder is rife with contradictions. Our prairie-dog population has more legal protections than our homeless humans do. A vast array of regulations confounds anyone here seeking to develop a business or add on to their home. We can’t run around naked on Halloween or bicycle in the buff, but we can take our clothes off at a city council meeting. Our countless absurd resolutions mandating change in the outside world do little to affect change, but add much to our sense of sanctimonious self-satisfaction.

Our hazy, marijuana-scented macramé-and-hot-tub attitudes of yore have hardened into a narcissistic, gluten-free self-righteousness that grates on my contrarian soul. As a friend of mine once memorably said, “I’m sure we would tolerate diversity -- if there was any of it around here.”

With our high standard of living comes a high cost of living, which means that most of those who work here can’t afford to live here. It’s much easier to be happy, and have everyone on the same mental page, when your median family income is $85,807 per year.

Boulder is home for a stilted, studied informality. In few other municipalities is so much money spent on being natural. We go gaga for anything with the labels “green” and “organic” on it, justified or not. Every day, I see people riding bicycles that cost more than I have ever made in a year. And did you know that there are xeriscaping consultants here? That means people pay someone big bucks to tell them to stop watering their lawn.

And the health thing. Folks, not all of us are triathletes, or rock-climb, or mountain bike, or ski, or paraglide. We don’t all shop at the prohibitively expensive health-food supermarkets. We don’t all do tofu. Some of us even, instead of recycling or composting, throw things away -- in the dead of night, so we don’t end up forced to embroider a scarlet “T” on our fair-trade hemp yoga wear.

Are we out of touch with reality? Not if you think that pet acupuncture is a great idea. Not if you have a labyrinth in your basement, or fall for every new therapy that comes down the pike. With high-mindedness comes arrogance, and a loss of touch with common sense.

Even I have to admit an upside, though. For me, self-consciousness is better than no consciousness. Boulder’s aspirations to transcend the mundane, to implement positive change, and to treasure the natural world around it are admirable.

That the problems we have are mostly of our own making stand in sharp contrast to the very real and harrowing problems most of the rest of the world faces every day. We ARE sheltered; we are lucky.

And we are surrounded by beauty. Even after four decades here, I still utter daily gratitude for the nearby mountains I love so much. The winters are pleasant, the summers gorgeous.

There is still an essential undercurrent of kindliness and fair-mindedness at work here, too. I traveled the country in my youth. I saw every place I might be likely to live in – and I came back here. I am raising my children here. That’s an endorsement in itself.

And of course, there’s all the comic fodder a humorist could desire.

Now, the only thing I think we’re missing, really, is the ocean. And the city council’s crafting a resolution about that, I’m told. Namaste, dude.