Lost Classics: DON JUAN DeMARCO

Searching for something to watch this last weekend, I stumbled upon a movie that loomed large in my mind as a kid while, when it premiered, it was pretty much derided by critics and audiences. It just so happens that the Spring of 1995 was when I was falling in love with both film and music. I had always loved movies, but I was developing a deeper appreciation of them, and I had contemporaneously been pulled into the world of Latin music. Then came Jeremy Leven’s Don Juan DeMarco, a shamelessly romantic comedy with a fabulous, Latin-tinged score by the late, underrated tunesmith Michael Kamen (who co-wrote Bryan Adams’ “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” for the film). Quite simply: I fell in love.

It’s okay to talk favorably about Johnny Depp now, isn’t it? Well, regardless, Depp is a serious craftsman despite his persona in popular culture today. While I’ve not been a fan of most of the films he’s done in the 21st century, his early collaborations with Tim Burton revealed to the world a serious and fine actor. The 1990s saw Depp acquiring his sea-legs in difficult parts that allowed him to still be a matinee idol while showing the rest of us, he did, in fact, know what he was doing. He had something of the great American film actors in him, including Marlon Brando who had to do nothing but listen to his fellow actors onscreen and yet, you were drawn to him—couldn’t take your eyes off him, in fact. There is still no finer American actor to hone his craft on film quite like Brando.

So, when Depp was offered Don Juan DeMarco, he accepted on the condition that Brando play the stymied, secretly romantic psychiatrist who treats a young man with suicidal tendencies who delusionally believes he is Don Juan (the character having been made famous in a play by Moliere, an epic poem by Lord Byron, and an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). The film begins with you believing this young man actually might be Don Juan except walking around in the wrong century. At a hotel (where Selena is singing!), Don Juan embarks on a final sexual conquest before swearing to end his life.

On top of the building where Depp is threatening his demise, Brando’s character is genie-lifted and plays into the delusion by introducing himself as Don Octavio de Silva, a Spanish nobleman who invites Don Juan to his villa (in fact a psychiatric hospital). It just so happens that Dr. Mickler retires in ten days and Don Juan is to be committed for ten days and be his final patient. He keeps the Casanova-in-training off medication while he soaks up the Don Juan mythology and tries to deal with the fact that, on the one hand, he believes the young man to be Don Juan and, on the other, it can’t possibly be the case.

Nevertheless, Brando’s turgid professional and love life are awakened to new scents and flavors as he hears the story of this Don Juan, who claims to be the child of an Italian American father and Mexican mother whose honor he avenged in a duel that leaves his father dead. He is accidentally sold into slavery (where he becomes the world’s most famous lover with a Sultan’s harem) and then falls in love with Dona Aña, the true object of his heart. Part of the hospital staff is partially carried away by the patient’s magnetism and the other half are having none of it. Additionally, Brando meets the boy’s grandmother who parries the story with a more realistic version and his mother, who seems to back the legend.

In the end, Brando’s character reconnects with his wife and find his romantic side again as Depp agrees to finally be medicated. When the judge comes to evaluate him, he tells a story along the lines his grandmother laid out: he is an impressionable young man, never good with women, who falls in love with a centerfold and dripped into delusion. Whether he is telling the truth as Don Juan or, in the penultimate scene with the judge, is left to the viewer though the clever, cheeky ending argues both the reality and the romantic story can exist in the same universe.

Anchoring the film is Faye Dunaway, a true professional, who plays Brando’s wife in a role that could easily be a throwaway part. Bob Dishy has some great scenes as the hospital administrator. But the stars are clearly Brando and Depp. I would argue it is Brando’s last great performance. Again, it is not just when he is acting, but when he is simply listening and soaking up the romance just like the audience, he is most terrific. Depp may have gone a little too method with the Castilian accent that makes some of the voice-over hard to hear, but otherwise, holds his own.

Nevertheless, when it premiered, DeMarco was hailed as either charming but pointless or a springtime zest that was sweet but could have been better. I found myself equally enamored of the film on Sunday as I was as a child. In fact, I understood it more and allowed the romance to wash over me all over again. What makes the whole thing work, even with its lapses in continuity, are the three central performances and a script that is witty and breezy. At one point, the film was performed as a musical with a book by Craig Lucas and though it never reached New York, one can see why it would make a good musical property.

So, if you are not a die-hard empiricist, and can enjoy a little romance and adventure, watch Don Juan DeMarco and enjoy three of America’s finest film actors wallowing in love, buoyancy, and joy.

THEATRE DOWNTOWN's PRELUDE TO A KISS: A Stage Review

Birmingham, Alabama is like many cities across the United States. There is an abundance of theatrical talent (most of it untapped and under-utilized). Decisions for what plays and musicals to perform are generally safe. Though there are local playwrights (myself included), the idea of a World Premiere probably wouldn’t interest most local theatre companies. Just as in New York, betting your money on a well-known stage work leads to a more attractive economic outlook for the company in question.

As with the rest of the country, community theatres are experiencing small houses and are struggling to limp along. So, to some of you, it may seem cruel to offer a critical review of any community theatre production. In my mind, observant criticism enhances everyone to do their respective jobs better. The fact that any company, full of volunteers who work full time during the day, get together and mount a show at night is a miracle of its own and I would never tread on such an endeavor except out of love and care for the art form.

Although it’s late in the game, I highly recommend you support local theatre and go see Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss at the Encore Theatre and Gallery in a production by the itinerant company Theatre Downtown (click here to donate so they can find a permanent home).

I first came across Lucas’ play in my early teens. I learned reading so many plays a semester would be required at the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and, in their small library, I came across a slim paperback with a picture of Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan in a “movie-tie-in” print of the play. I read Prelude and I fell in love. Who wouldn’t? With smart, punchy, stichomythic dialogue and an enchanting, romantic tale, I was spellbound. Many years later, my mentor David Henry Hwang introduced me to Lucas and I’m proud to own a signed copy.

Prelude premiered on the West Coast in the late ‘80s. On the surface, it is a “normal” (except for the fairy tale aspect) heterosexual love story. Beneath it, however, is an entirely different meaning that most critics picked up on, if not audiences. Lucas, a gay man, was watching an entire generation die of HIV/AIDS and Prelude was a commercial response to the epidemic. Peter, a yuppy from New York, finds that the soul of his beloved Rita has swapped into the body of an old man dying of cancer. In the early days of AIDS, it was, of course, a death sentence. Young men quickly got cancers that mostly affected the elderly and animals and aged/died with frightening alacrity.

As many people now live entire lives with the syndrome, Prelude is mostly seen as a breezy, facile comedy with funny dialogue. But, beneath all that, there is still a seriousness about the horror and beauty of living. When I first read it, I assumed it was to be played at the speed with which Theatre Downtown delivers it—a rollercoaster ride of riffing. That’s why, when I saw the film version, I was utterly devastated at its slow pace. Why was this breezy play turned into such a wooden movie?

As a young teenager, though, I didn’t understand the depth of the play—the way certain lines need to breathe and be savored by both the actor and the audience member. Theatre Downtown’s version was the version I had in my head as a kid, but, as an adult, I wanted it to breathe a little, allowing the story’s deeper meaning to wash over the audience. Suddenly, I wanted something in between the pace of the film and the pace of this production.

While it is perhaps wrong to criticize a production based on its locality, Encore Theatre and Gallery, at least on the night in question, had backed-up sewage in the restrooms, loud, whirring fans in the performance space, and such dim lighting in the lobby areas I was amazed no one in the audience fell. Those fans in particular made hearing the play almost impossible in certain instances. Working with a few actors miked and most not, one had to strain to hear lines I know so well I could probably quote them. Again, this is not the fault of the production. The staging, however, is.

Carron Clark is the director and the resulting work smacks of a trend I’m seeing more and more: directors are not using the performance space to its full potential. Oh, there’s a lot of movement in this Prelude, including actors walking around the audience and exiting through aisles, but when the action is back onstage, the blocking works against the material, obscuring some potentially beautiful moments. I sat in two different sections for each act and still found myself missing small moments which (again) went by so fast I might have missed them even if the stage space had more room.

While the script used is an updated acting edition from the playwright, Prelude is very much a play of its time and, perhaps, should remain a period piece of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. To have left the lines alone would have been best as the early political discussion between Peter and Rita no longer applies in the contemporary climate anyway. Why playwrights revisit their work after they are established classics, I'll never understand.

All photos courtesy of Steven Ross

Tim Seale plays Peter with an urgency and earnestness that is much admired. Sometimes, however, that urgency results in him speaking over other people’s lines. While the piece does call for overlapping dialogue, when Seale is miked and others are not, a lot of the scenes are lost or confused. Seale keeps the piece moving so hurriedly that some of Peter’s character trajectory (his confusion on the honeymoon) is not given its due course. So frenetic were his impulses that his great line at the end of the play (“Never to be squandered…the miracle of another human being”) became a directive for Rita to “never be squandered” the night I saw it.

Sara James’ Rita is fine when she is playing the real Rita, but when her soul is swapped with that of the Old Man (Jack Heidt), James comes off as much too abrasive. One could argue this is a good choice because the Old Man wants to continue inhabiting Rita’s body and Peter is getting in the way of his happiness, but changing tone alone is not enough to sell the part. I wonder what kind of performances we would have gotten from the leads if they were allowed to fall in love and learn about each other rather than race through Act One as if the theater was about to be leveled to the ground.

The supporting players are a lot of fun to watch, particularly Alex Williams in the small roles of Thom and the Jamaican waiter and Lesli Johnson as Peter’s friend Taylor. Rita’s parents are played by Bates Redwine and Penny Thomas, the latter of which I saw recently in a production of How I Learned to Drive. While she was miscast in that part, leaving the theatre, I found the scenes with the Boyles were perhaps the best realized and I walked away with a great respect for Thomas’ performance. Debbie Smith plays both Aunt Dorothy and Leah with tremendous utility and is a delight to watch, particularly in the wedding scene.

The principal problem with the show is its production design. While the props can and perhaps should be minimal (and they are), sound design is not used to its fullest extent. While the production has a great song-score (though, oddly enough, neglecting to include the song which inspired the play’s title—a classic from Duke Ellington), there is a great lost opportunity in not including the rumbling and the wind that Lucas requires in his script for the magical moments which would have elevated this production consequentially. Instead, when the soul-swapping occurs, we have a simple brief black out in silence. It’s a missed opportunity to conjure the kind of real magic the play exudes.

With all that said, one can have a nice night at theatre if not an enchanting one. The play deserves more than that and yet, it was nice to be in a place where people are keeping theatre alive. Support Theatre Downtown and its endeavors and all the other players in the Magic City.

Prelude to a Kiss has two final performances: Friday and Saturday, July 26-27 at 7:30

Prelude to a Kiss

by Craig Lucas

Directed by Carron Clark

Theatre Downtown

At Encore Theatre and Gallery

213 Gadsden Hwy; Suite 108

Life, Death, & Politics in 2024

NOTE: This author is neither a member of any form of political party nor does he endorse any political candidate. Some do not believe this, but there are apolitical people who don’t see politics in every element of life. We like to think for ourselves and are never collectivist. We are a rare, but proud breed.

It hadn’t been that long since I had re-read the libretto and listened to the score for the Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman musical Assassins. A revue-style work, its Off-Broadway premiere was cut short due to the Persian Gulf War and its Broadway premiere delayed due to the events on September 11th, 2001. At both junctures, it was thought the subject matter too transgressive, being about all the presidential assassins as well as some of those who made the attempt.

I first saw Assassins in a confused production at a local university (the Balladeer somehow became a preening Vegas lounge lizard in a pink suit) and walked away feeling, for the first time with a Sondheim musical, that I hadn’t gotten a real show—something with more substantive meat than just some well-written sketches and some mildly terrifying songs. Company makes me feel a little similar and both musicals leave me cold emotionally. They do not give you a pay-off like a show with a plot. 

Company is better than Assassins because the characters all seem to be rather fleshed out and you can see them having lives outside of the little vignettes. Assassins is written in a timeless vacuum where various historical figures interact with each other to very American styles of music and little of typical Sondheim except lyrical brilliance and, of course, perfect music for that kind of sketch show. Re-reading it, I was more deeply unsettled than ever before to the point where I probably would never want to see it onstage again since the guns are often pointed at the audience. Still, I think it should be performed—because it does say something. Something about the American dream promising a bit too much, something about people who are unable to connect to one another, something about how mental illness, not political aims, are the reasons for such would-be assassins more often than not.

I didn’t witness last weekend’s assassination attempt in real time. I don’t watch the news and many of you will think that a good reason not to write this piece, but I can’t control that. I know enough of politics to know to not let it make you apoplectic. But this news spread like wildfire. Frankly, I think most of us have expected something of this kind would happen to one or another of the candidates during this race—a race, no matter on which side you lean—being kind of a “civil war” in the sense that the election will be two completely different forms of societies fighting for their version of the future.

In this world of knee-jerk reactions, the first post on X I encountered was from a playwright. “If you’re going to do it, EXECUTE!” was the statement and I recoiled in horror. Then, with Instagram, came everything from ironic anecdotes about people reaping what they sow. When Biblical verses get misread by both the right and the left, you can tell madness is on the way. That is the true form of our society—madness.

I have believed the same things about politics my entire life, even as I’ve seen many presidents come and go. The right has always not exactly used their noggins to the fullest potential and the left routinely breaks your heart by promising what they cannot deliver. As it was in Ancient Rome, so it is now. Both sides make me furious. There is no place left for centrists. And the words “liberal” and “conservative have become curse words, for whatever reason. The news and politics and ideology do not have to be a part of my life. I don’t wish to engage in posting slacktivist comments, ripping people to shreds with hastily gathered statistics, and shaming people. I try to vote without talking about it. That’s actually how I think it should be with Americans and yet it never has been that way.

It is a given fact that the rhetoric used in 21st century American politics is tearing us apart. Somehow I knew in the back of my mind (because one doesn’t have to be psychic), progressives would use this opportunity to post tasteless jokes—inhuman, even—and the traditionalists would start thinking conspiratorially. Everything about this incident fits patterns that have been around for some time: a misfit in society who turned to weapons to either impress or make an impression.

What is a president? They are, generally, not people I admire. I think the job requires a certain ruthlessness and the best presidents have been ruthless, corrupt often, and criminals in some cases. When someone is actually a good or honorable person gets the job, like Jimmy Carter (a man I immensely admire) and Thomas Jefferson (who I admire with all his flaws), they are often ineffectual Commanders-in-Chief. I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would want that job, but the ones that are the best at it are geniuses at arm-bending back-room skullduggery (Lincoln, Roosevelt), being shrewd, over-confident, and prone to lying as if it were their damned jobs (Kennedy, Clinton), and any other number of very human tendencies. I’m not sure why to be a good president, you must lack some very basic aspects of humanity, but it just seems so.

I have been chastised for staying out of the madding fray and, thus, branded right-wing by people who don’t know me. I am nothing of the kind. But, when an assassination attempt occurs, I’m sympathetic. It is true people die under the watches of presidents, but the presidents are humans also.

I wonder how much negativity and screaming every four years I can take. I wonder it every time. People live to tear down people online. Some, like the attempted assassinator, take the matter further.

Like Alice, worried in Wonderland, I don’t want to go around mad people and, so, I stay out of politics. But I can say for certain I never wish for death on anyone. I was shocked to see so many friends of mine—gifted, intelligent—who would’ve gotten what they wanted if the man was killed and would have relished it.

A sick, sick time.

To better times!