"Tricky Dick" or Frosty-Lost(y)...

Today's blog is a jumble of things...Last night's episode of Lost; and my attendance at the Boston premiere of "Frost/Nixon" (the play).

First of all, last night's Lost was truly a home run. It combined two of the more mysterious characters on (and off) the island: Richard Alpert, the seemingly never-aging, yet ever present man-about-the-Island, and Charles Widmore, Penny's dad and (apparently) one-time cohort of Richard himself back in the 1950s. Add in a little touch of island intrigue -- just where did that H-bomb come from? -- and you've got yourself a recipe for TV deliciousness.

My prediction: this H-bomb, which was ensconced in an A-frame tower very similar to the one used in the John Adams/Peter Sellars opera Doctor Atomic, needs to be protected, right? Well, Daniel Farraday said that it was corroding and claimed that the Others (pre-Dharma) needed to enclose it in lead and concrete. My guess is that the Others, since there's most likely a shortage of concrete and lead on the Island, will take it to the Temple -- that hitherto unseen location on the Island where the Others (post-Dharma) went to hide from the Boatpeople.

Other thoughts:
1) Who was that Other guarding Farraday and why did she look familiar to him? Was it, perhaps, the girl that he supposedly rendered comatose in Oxford with his time-space continuum experiments? It was hard to tell from the photo that we saw, but all things are possible on Lost, aren't they?

2) I love Miles' ability to speak to dead people...his reading of 4 dead soldiers early in the episode helped Farraday to pinpoint the era (1950s) so that he was able to convince Alpert about the H-bomb.

3) We had another illusion to the uber-mysterious Jakob. Who is this guy/spirit/deity/mapmaker?

4) I just love the time travel...will we be informed about the other, older mysteries on the Island? I'm talking about the Black Rock -- that whaling/slave ship from the 1890s -- and the Adam-and-Eve skeletons back in the Cave? What about Rousseau's expedition?

5) I'm a little tired of the "Oceanic Six." We had a whole session devoted to their exploits back on the mainland, and frankly, I'm sick of them. Give me all Island, all the time...

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"Frost/Nixon"

Two nights ago I went to see "Frost/Nixon" -- not the movie, but the play. It opened here in Boston, on Tuesday, and starred Stacy Keach as Frank Langhella as Richard Nixon. Although his performance was satisfying, I couldn't stop comparing his rather stocky body to the guy presiding over the marriage in that (fantastic) movie, Beetlejuice.

But, back to the play: as you know, it is about a series of interviews the British talk-show host turned journalist David Frost obtained from Richard Nixon -- Nixon's first interviews after Watergate. Apparently the play takes a few liberties from the exact interviews, but it nonetheless creates a narrative that is intriguing. By the end of the play, the audience sees a detente between the two men that were prior combatants, and you can easily begin to understand the actions on both sides.

The set is dressed to remind you that the initial format was TV: a giant screen hangs atop the stage and shows a closed-circuit video feed of the actual stage production. This produces an effect where the audience is torn between watching the stage and watching the screen; a not-so-subtle reminder that TV is all powerful...Nixon obsesses about his appearance; after his disastrous "sweaty debate" debacle with Kennedy, Nixon continuously wipes his brow and lip, and asks many times to fix his collar.

The climax of the play centers on Frosts ability to get Nixon to apologize; and it's in this moment that the huge TV comes to life. Instead of staying on the full body shot, which they've used throughout the entire play, the camera closes in tight on Nixon's face as it's clear that he's agonizing about his role in Watergate. This creates, at least for me, a very sympathetic portrait of the ex-President.

My two quarrels with the play are technical...First, every actor/director knows that the first rule of stage direction is that you -- as an actor -- need to open up your body to the audience. Now, I was sitting in the center section -- my normal seats! -- and, half of the time, characters were talking upstage!! Perhaps they were just lazy, or it was their first night in a new theatre, but for whatever reason I spent a majority of the show watching people's backsides. The second half of the play is set around the TV/interview stage setting, which emphasizes just two chairs -- center -- so perhaps the actors are used to standing aside and watching the action, but it's no excuse.

My other complaint concerns the actual structure of the play. To make it cohesive, the playwright uses voice-overs as narration and I just think it's lazy. Frost hires a coterie of assistants to prep for his interviews, and one of these assistants is charged with connecting the dots, so to speak.

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My dissertation year fellowship is due on Monday. I've spent the past few days rounding up the necessary items: transcript; ABD certification; and letters of recommendation, or at least letter of recommendation. I'll spend the weekend polishing up my first chapter and the prospectus that I've created...I think it'll be a pretty good looking proposal -- once it's all done!

I can't go to Heaven or Hell or Asia...*

Ha...I love it. First there was this article about Yo-Yo Ma's carbon cello. "Why carbon, you ask?" Because he'll be playing in very cold temperatures, and a carbon cello will do just the trick. But today we come across this tasty little morsel:

"No one’s trying to fool anybody. This isn’t a matter of Milli Vanilli,” she [Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies] added, referring to the pop band, stripped of a 1989 Grammy because of its lip-synching, that became synonymous with the practice."

Really, no one's trying to fool anybody there Carole? I didn't watch this live, but I don't imagine they made some sort of announcement that the music was 'pre-recorded.' So it turns out that that fancy carbon cello was just for show. How many times do you think Milli Vanilli and Yo-Yo Ma get discussed in the same context? I LOVE IT!!!!

In other news, LOST premiered two nights ago. I was totally on fire (although not from a flaming arrow) in my predictions: 1) I called, almost down to the exact dialogue, that Daniel Farraday would that the camp wasn't gone, but that "it hadn't been built yet;" 2) I also called Ana-Lucia pulling Hugo over...totally called it! And I absolutely loved the woman in the cloak working on physics problems on a chalkboard with the pendulum swinging in the background.

I find that this show is completely engaging, and its more esoteric aspects really appeal to me. The fact that time travel is an integral aspect of the show now, which has been foreshadowed from the very first episode, is pretty good. Now that the flash forwards started to appear right at the mid-point of the show, I'm in awe of these writers -- they are fantastic.**

I'm going to see a Haydn opera tomorrow night (hand to God!), and then hopefully TW & I will be seeing the Underworld prequel on Saturday -- TW just loves a good vampire story...

*This was my favorite line from tonight's episode of Grey's Anatomy. The whole broken penis story line, coupled with the whole Izzy sleeping the Denny thing, has pretty much illustrated that Grey's Anatomy has jumped-the-shark, so to speak, or in modern parlance, moved-the-island.

**I'm a sucker for palindromes (See the Act III interludes music from Lulu!).