July 30 2023
July 30, 2023
# 1617
Francesca McDonnell Capossela is a queer writer and Irish American dual citizen. She grew up in Brooklyn and holds an MA in creative writing from Trinity College Dublin. Her writing can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point magazine, Banshee, The Cormorant broadsheet, Columbia Journal, Guesthouse, and the anthologies Dark Matter Presents Human Monsters and Teaching Nabokov’s Lolita in the #MeToo Era. Francesca lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with her dog Lyra. For more information, visit www.francescamcdonnell.com.
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COVER:
From Northern Ireland to Southern California and back—a mother and daughter confront the violence of the past in an enthralling novel about the possibility of love and redemption during the most transforming and unsettled times.
It’s the final years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and Bríd and her sister, Ina, try to maintain a stable life in a divided country. Pushed by her mother’s fanaticism and a family tragedy, Bríd joins the IRA and makes a devastating choice. Frightened and guilt ridden, she flees, leaving behind Ireland and her family for America.
Years later, her guilt and tragic history still buried, Bríd is an overprotective mother raising her sensitive daughter, Bernie, in Southern California. Growing up amid a different kind of social unrest, Bernie’s need for independence and her exploration of her sexuality drive a wedge into their already-fragile relationship. When mother and daughter are forced to return to Northern Ireland, they both must confront the past, the present, and the women they’ve become.
As they navigate their troubled legacies, mother and daughter untangle the threads of love, violence, and secrets that formed them—and that will stubbornly, beautifully, bind them forever.
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Commentary
The new Chris Christie television ad is strong: it’s a head-on, pull-no-punches attack on Trump the candidate and man. While all the other candidates kneel at the idol and then pathetically try to distinguish themselves from Trump, Christie slams him. Gov. Sununu has promised to support a candidate who takes on Trump. A Sununu endorsement would help Christie’s New Hampshire showing which might give him a much-needed boost in the polls.
Intends to attack Trump onstage and
if Trump doesn’t show up he’s a coward
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Kat’s Gen Z Corner
Summer in New York
Picture Time
Tomato selection at Sunday’s farmer’s market
A Mary Oliver relevant
Will and Uma sharing their new apartment
My new Central Park picnic spot
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Brayden’s Gen Z Corner
Theatre in New York City
Last week, I found myself with two days in a row off work, and I eagerly drove myself down to New York City to see some theatre (as I often do when these opportunities arise). NYC, as we all know, is the home of Broadway— the greatest of American theatre! However, I’ve found myself disappointed with Broadway’s latest season.
Currently on Broadway, there are 6 jukebox musicals (where a musical’s soundtrack consists only of existing songs from popular music artists— i.e. MJ the Musical, The Neil Diamond Musical, The Brittany Spears Musical, etc.)
8 of the current Broadway musicals are revivals & adaptations (musicals that have previously run on Broadway, or musicals based on movies/books/etc.)
And the stuff on Broadway that is completely original is frankly… not very good.
My view of Shucked at the Nederlander Theatre.
I saw Shucked a few weeks ago, which as their genius marketing team has coined, is “the musical about corn”. This musical seemed like a hilarious romp, and seemed like it was going to be risk-taking, original, and fresh. There’s been nothing else like it, and their marketing team did a great job creating mystery and allure around this campy new show with very few details about the plot given away (other than the fact that it’s about corn!)
I unfortunately dropped about $80 on a ticket to see it (and I sat in the literal last row in the back of the theater), and I found the show to actually be very unoriginal. It followed the traditional formula of classic musical theatre so strongly, that it felt like I was watching a mix of several shows I had seen before. It particularly resembled The Music Man in its plot structure, and in fact the writers had admitted to taking inspiration from that show in their writing.
The jokes were very cheap and predictable, and had no connection to the plot or characters. It felt like the actors were practically reading jokes from a joke book. I prefer comedy that is interwoven into the plot and the character’s situations.
The music was completely forgettable— I didn’t walk out of the theater humming any of the tunes! That’s like Musical-Writing 101!
Overall, the one show I thought was doing something new and exciting turned out to be a major disappointment.
Production photo from Lizard Boy at Theatre Row.
That same week, I saw a new original show Off-Broadway called Lizard Boy, by Seattle composer Justin Huertas. This show was different than anything I’d seen before. It featured three talented actors who also played dozens of instruments throughout the show — they were their own band! The music was beautiful, and seamlessly incorporated into a very funny and very original plot. It kept me on the edge of my seat, made me laugh, made me cry, and made my heart soar listening to beautiful harmonies and catchy songs.
This further emphasized something I already knew: Broadway isn’t everything. Broadway is very commercial, and sometimes you’ll find the most exciting and interesting new theatre outside of Broadway. Broadway doesn’t take a lot of risks— those shows are hand-picked because they are safe and they know they’ll sell tickets. Of course people will go see a musical featuring the music of Brittany Spears, no matter how much the storyline sucks. They know they love Brittany— she’s familiar! A show about a boy who looks like a lizard? That’s weird and people aren’t sure if they’ll like that. The purchaser of the ticket takes more risk there (even though, if they gave it a chance, they’d love it!)
There is one show playing on Broadway right now that I think is doing it right. It’s a show that I think everyone in the world needs to see. Seeing this show felt like a transformative, life-changing experience in the theatre. It reminded me of how theatre can make you feel.
I’m a little bit late to this, as this musical won the Tony for Best Musical in 2019… but the musical I’m referring to is Hadestown.
My view of Hadestown at the Walter Kerr Theatre. I was fortunate to be able to see Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada from the Original Broadway Cast!
I saw Hadestown last Wednesday during my short trip to New York, and it was by far one of the best things I’ve ever seen on stage.
Hadestown takes the Greek Mythology story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and spins it into a beautiful contemporary story with a post-apocalyptic New Orleans French Quarter folk-music twist! I know — describing it on paper doesn’t totally sell it. It honestly didn’t sell it for me at first either. I tend to hate modern adaptations of Greek tragedies or Shakespeare plays. But this one did it right.
While every element of this production powerfully worked in harmony to tell a beautiful and important story, I think at it’s heart is a genius composer and a genius director. Yes, the actors were amazing, and the set design was super cool, but Anaïs Mitchell struck gold writing her first ever musical, and director Rachel Chavkin took Mitchell’s vision to the next level by creating a visually stunning, heartfelt world that truly transports the audience. I could feel that every audience member’s heartbeats were syncing up while witnessing this theatrical moment in time.
I think that good theatre is still out there, and more good theatre is coming. We’re just at a weird place in our culture where commercialism seems to be taking over. Maybe these Broadway theatres are choosing safe shows because there’s still some post-pandemic recovery happening. Or maybe there are darker reasons relating to a cultural shift in how we value art. But I’m hopeful that we’re on the brink of a resurgence of new, original, risky theatre. And I’m going to be a part of it.
Me touring The Theater Center (50th & Broadway, Times Square) where my original musical made its Off-Broadway debut in January 2023.
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Tucker’s Corner
Despite an arduous move from one apartment to another I made sure to make time to see Christopher Nolan’s newest film. I’m fascinated by The Manhattan Project and the shear power humanity willed into existence by harnessing the world’s greatest minds. The unfortunate truth is the result of all that brainpower may be one of the single worst things humanity has ever achieved. My favorite band, Rush, put it best in their song:
Imagine a time when it all began
In the dying days of a war
A weapon that would settle the score
Whoever found it first
Would be sure to do their worst
They always had before
I hope if youre interested you get a chance to see this one in a theater. It’s something special. This is Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer - Directed by Christopher Nolan
Nearly every minute of Oppenheimer’s three-hour runtime is full of conversation. Much of that conversation is heady back and forth between theoretical physicists while they scribble equations on chalkboards. There’s heated talk between American politicians and military leaders about what will happen to the US if the Nazis win the war. There’s also plenty of loaded exchanges at congressional hearings about those physicists’ loyalty to the United States. Despite how much runtime is dedicated to dialogue as opposed to action, Christopher Nolan, the film’s writer and director, rarely slows down to let J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) think. When he does, we’re treated to the inner workings of one of the world's finest minds through the visuals of neutrons colliding as if the very nature of the man’s work is built upon how his brain operates.
The visual is mesmerizing but also impossible to fully understand – much like the power uncovered during the creation of the first nuclear weapons. Nolan’s film covers far more than the Manhattan Project. Adapting the doorstop-size biography American Prometheus is no easy feat but Nolan accomplishes the task by moving through the story at breakneck speed. We see Oppenheimer’s beginnings as a student as well as his postwar battles with the government over his Communist past. All of this adds up to a talky biopic that pulses with the intensity of an action film. The ad campaign for this film was sort of hilarious in how it advertised to viewers that they’d be sitting through the most intense movie of their lives when anyone who knows the story knows most of what they’re going to see if meetings in offices an bunkers. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Nolan manages to meet the expectations set by those trailers. The screenplay also ingeniously never loses sight of the fact that all these meetings concerned bringing the Earth to the brink of apocalypse. Though the scale is much smaller than nearly all of Nolan’s output Oppenheimer may be his most ambitious film to date.
I found Oppenheimer to be a interesting companion piece to Nolan’s other film based on real events: 2017’s Dunkirk. That film, which depicts the Allied evacuation from the titular city during World War 2 was light on dialogue and heavy on complex action set pieces. It bombarded viewers visually and sonically to achieve the feeling of being in a war zone. It succeeded. Much of Oppenheimer is set during the same war but it focuses on behind the scenes figures who sought to end the conflict without firing a bullet. Though the cast is enormous the film focuses mainly on the Oppenheimer himself whom Murphy plays as a paradoxical, polarizing man. He’s cold at times and completely charming at others. He’s completely sympathetic to leftist causes but changes his tune completely as he begins to head up the Manhattan Project.
The first hour of the movie zips through Oppenheimer’s student years and his early days as a physicist in Europe. There he crosses paths with legends in the field like Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett) and Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighofer). The discussions about quantum mechanics that these men have are pretty tough to follow but as the film moved along I realized that was the point. Even the greatest minds of their generation were grasping at something they didn’t fully understand. Knowing the outcome of the Manhattan Project in 2023 it’s staggering to watch these men charge forward with a near total lack of awareness. The excitement and desperation to beat the Nazis to discovery is completely understandable but incredibly frightening.
Nolan jumps back and forth in time throughout this story very much like he’s done in his previous films. He painstakingly depicts the 1954 hearings that stripped Oppenheimer of his security clearance and dredged up both his past associations with Communists and his active love life. A terrific element to the film is a black and white segment that follows former Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis Strauss (a tremendous Robert Downey Jr.) as he undergoes a confirmation hearing, digging through his tense relationship with Oppenheimer. These sequences move more slowly. They’re hostile and obsessed with the past, a good representation of the conservative paranoia that grew around the US once atomic power had been discovered and utilized for war. These sequences are a great juxtaposition to the film’s main storyline (shown in color) that brim with energy and the possibility of discovery.
Nolan’s ambition really comes out in how he features multiple biological storylines as well as historical context of the period. There’s the mad race to create nuclear weapons which plays as a thrilling mad dash with a known but well executed conclusion: the Trinity bomb test that proved this power could be harnessed. There’s the larger moral conflict that emerged during the Manhattan Project but also after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as scientists started begging governments to back away from the deadly arms race that politicians like Strauss were pushing for. Finally, Nolan never loses sight of Oppenheimer himself, a man who pleaded for peace years after the bombings but has never publicly held himself accountable for all the human lives laid at the altar of his creation. Nolan and Murphy both do their part to show Oppenheimer as a man wracked with guilt as the film nears its conclusion, a necessity when your audience knows the horrific result of this story.
Christopher Nolan’s films (The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, to name a few) are known for spectacle and indeed IMAX theaters the world over are nearly sold out while Oppenheimer has residency but what’s really impressive here is how this director has made a personal narrative feel like an epic. Not just in visual scale but in dramatic sweep. Nolan presents a story from the past that feels knotted to so many present anxieties about nuclear annihilation. After racing blindly toward scientific achievement, Oppenheimer (and each of us) is left with a world forever changed. The film opens with a brief telling of the story of Prometheus the being that stole fire from the gods, gave it to humanity, and was subject to eternal torment for his transgression. The difference here Nolan posits, is that our own American Prometheus, J. Robert Oppenheimer isn’t the only one to suffer for his actions. We are all victims of his discovery.
Thinking about my poetry
Dylan’s Comments
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Picco Revisit w Lauren
Lauren and I had dinner at Picco’s: a salad, a pepperoni pizza, and a Spaghetti Pesto. Topped with a chocolate ice cream. All delicious.
Dining outdoors is sweet
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Restaurant: Picco
Random thoughts.
This from Howard D:
So glad to see you made it to Picco and that it made such a favorable impression.
For what it’s worth, I too prefer grated mozzarella overall so it blends more readily with the tomato sauce. But we’re in sync on the dough.
I remember going there, practically from the day it opened, regularly with Linda K. We both loved the pizza, and, if possible, the ice cream even more. As usual I wanted to reality check my memory, so I continued my experimentation with Bard, Google’s answer to Microsoft Edge AI search.
Here’s what I was told:
The restaurant [Picco] was originally opened in 2005 by chef-owner Rick Katz. In 2015, Katz sold the restaurant to Anthony Lawrence and Rachel Cando, who are the current owners.
Here is some additional information about the previous ownership of Picco:
Rick Katz is a well-known chef in Boston who has owned and operated several successful restaurants, including Trattoria Il Panino and Contessa.
Picco was Katz's first pizzeria, and he was known for his innovative use of fresh, seasonal ingredients.
The restaurant was a popular destination for both locals and tourists, and it was frequently featured in local media outlets.
In 2015, Katz decided to sell Picco to Anthony Lawrence and Rachel Cando. Lawrence and Cando are both experienced restaurant professionals who have worked at some of Boston's most popular restaurants.
Since taking over ownership of Picco, Lawrence and Cando have made some changes to the menu, but they have largely kept the same concept and atmosphere that Katz created.
It’s not often I learn I’ve beaten you to the punch on new places to eat in Boston/Cambridge. You by far have the lead, you lucky boy, in that tally. I have a lot of catching up to do, and that’s hard to do from Philadelphia.
ciao
H
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Writing
The test copy of the book is back from the printer. Up to now, I’ve referred to it as a manuscript, but since it’s now bound, will soon be available to a broader audience, and is formatted for the printer, now, I feel confident enough to call it a book. (Oh! And it’s got a cover. A great cover thanks to my friend, Howard.)
Anyway, we’ll be working on typos, additional content, etc., for a week or two.
If we’re lucky and we work hard, we may be ready for a return trip to the printer in a couple of weeks.
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Travel
Enoteca Pinchiorri is Florence’s only three-star Guide Michelin restaurant and I sorely wanted to eat there on our upcoming trip. Dining room reservations are made available on a daily basis, about 45 days out. For a week I have been logging on to their website twice a day to be sure I would be an early bird. Yesterday I was rewarded. The date became available and I got the reservation.
As the book glides into its end game, the trip looms a bit closer, a bit larger in my consciousness.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
"Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die,
your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck."
George Carlin
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Six Word Stories
One of Ernest Hemingway’s great works, presented in its entirety:
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Hemingway working on his book For Whom the Bell Tolls at the Sun Valley Lodge, Idaho, in 1939
*The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily on Wikipedia and ChatGPT to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Community Pictures with Captions are sent in by our followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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