Jay Gabler

One of the reasons he chose to adapt Ivan Turgenev’s 1859 novel Home of the Gentry, playwright Crispin Whittell says in a program note, was that the story has “all these wonderful parts for women.” Such as? The part of the shallow and pretentious mother who wants to marry her daughter into high society! The part of the wisecracking single Woman of a Certain Age who’s not afraid to get real! The part of the sex-crazed maid! The part of the vain and manipulative married woman who can’t keep her hands on her own husband! And then of course, the part of the virginal and (natch) “intelligent” young girl who can’t marry the sketchy-but-philosophical older man she loves instead of the cocky young ass her mother would prefer!

Here’s the rest of my Vita.mn review.

“Previewing the return to Minneapolis of the 2006 Broadway adaptation of Disney’s Mary Poppins, Rohan Preston of the Star Tribune wrote a feature about the enduring myth of the British Supernanny.

“That’s only one of the cultural tropes on display through April 28 at the Orpheum Theatre. Others include the Happy Poor, the Burdened Rich and the Abused Toys. There’s some Sigmund Freud (Mr. Banks was symbolically castrated by his overbearing nanny), some Adam Smith (Mr. Banks holds firmly to the labor theory of value) and some Michel Foucault (I’ll let you conduct your own post-colonial analysis of the Caribbean immigrant who sells - literally sells - the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious to Mary and her charges).

“With all that theory to chew on, adapter Julian Fellowes seems to have concluded that leaving feminism in the mix would be a bit much. In contrast to the 1964 Disney film, in which Mrs. Banks was a spunky suffragette, this Mrs. Banks spends the entire show trying to convince her distant husband that she’s worthy of his attention. By the end, she decides to abandon her acting career because, she declares without a whiff of irony, she’s found her favorite role: Mrs. Banks. I guess Fellowes decided the Friedan-era movie was just too progressive for a story centered on a magical woman who solves everyone’s problems and refuses any pay.”

my review in Vita.mn

In other news, the Walker Art Center will be spotlighting art and the Minnesota Ballet is expected to largely focus on dance.

You’d think that dropping a bucket of water on a hot babe in a lace leotard would be something impossible to screw up. Surprise!

No wait at the merch table for Flashdance the Musical.

I talked with the very polite Book of Mormon star Mark Evans for this week’s Vita.mn cover story.

Kicking it old-school today—as in, actually my old school. Per usual, I was given the biggest non-singing role, in this case Colonel Pickering. Every one of my lines was some variant on, “I say, Higgins! You’re being too hard on the girl!”

This design was godawful even in 1993.

My brother Joe and me, in character as Talcott Parsons and C. Wright Mills for Ivory Tower Burning. The play opens at the Minnesota Fringe Festival on August 4.

Promotional image for Ivory Tower Burning, the play I’ll be presenting at the Minnesota Fringe Festival.

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