Tartuffe (2020)

More free theatre streamed during the pandemic, but this time around, it’s not something that was already in the can and ready to air. This was something produced and shot now, social-distance-style. Earlier this spring, I saw a regional production along those veins, a mounting of The Diary of Anne Frank recorded over Zoom, but this is from Moliere in the Park, a remote English-language production of Tartuffe.

When Orgon meets Tartuffe, an allegedly-pious man fallen on hard times, he takes the fellow under his wing and into his home. While Tartuffe fills Orgon’s head with notions of piety and subtly influences his decisions, the trusting patriarch is easily fooled. Meanwhile, the rest of the household recognizes Tartuffe as bad news: a hypocritical, wanton swindler.

On the whole, this production is a disappointment to me. Obviously, producing art over Zoom isn’t an easy task, and we make allowances to the limits of the medium. But I feel like the whole thing would’ve looked better were it not for the digital background it threw up, placing everyone’s individual windows inside of it. Erasing everyone’s own backgrounds to fit into the digital one made everybody look fuzzy around the edges, and people’s hats would randomly disappear in technical glitches. I’m sure all the cast members had at least one blank wall they could’ve positioned themselves in front of, and that would’ve looked a lot cleaner.

This was my first experience with both Moliere and Moliere in the Park (albeit not in the park,) and I found it mostly just okay. All the dialogue is rhyming, and many of the cast members fall into a singsongy pattern with their lines, which can often pull some of the emotion/acting out of the dialogue. That said, things get more fun when Raúl Esparza’s Tartuffe enters the scene, having already been much talked of by the other characters. Esparza is one of the reasons I sought out this production when I heard about it, and his over-the-top performance, both pretending to be oh-so-pious and actually being an insatiable lech, is entertaining.

But really, the other reason I checked out this production is what ultimately makes it worthwhile, and that’s Samira Wiley as Orgon. I’ve loved Wiley since Orange is the New Black (Poussey!), and in this little Zoom production, she’s fantastic. First of all, I like that she’s playing a male character and it isn’t A Thing – she just is, and it very much works. Second, she’s much more consistent about delivering her lines for their content and not for their rhymes, which helps me connect more with Orgon as a character, naïve and misguided as he is. Amid a very unnatural acting environment, she makes it seem effortless, and even if I’m not overly impressed with this production as a whole, it handily reinforces my love for her talent and my desire to see her in whatever roles she wants to play.

Warnings

Implied sexual content (it’s all remote, obviously) and thematic elements.

The Book of Rannells: Welcome to the Wayne: Season 1, Episode 12 – “Wall-to-Wall Ping-Pong Ball” (2019)

Third unaired Welcome to the Wayne episode, third in a row to focus on Andrei, who’s quickly emerging as the most prominent character outside the central trio.  More hints about the underlying mystery surrounding Andrei, terrific animation, and a ton of great lines.

While trying to make a complete record of Andrei’s powers, the kids discover a book that may unlock some of the secrets of Andrei’s forgotten past.  They take a trip to the Stanza, the Wayne’s secret library staffed by flying squid-like creatures (just go with it,) but the answers they’re looking for are hard to get their hands on.  The librarian is nowhere to be found, the library itself seems out to get them, and there’s a ninja determined not to let Andrei leave.

This show is such a delight.  I love that it creates situations in which lines like, “We don’t negotiate with library ninjas!” are completely valid, and where else are you going to find a kick-line of menacing knights?  I’ve already gone back to check out the show’s non-Andrei episodes, but I may also need to see what else the creators have made, because this particular brand of imagination and sense of humor appeals to me all the way.

No surprise, Olly is a highlight.  Here, there’s a running gag that he hopes to go viral with the video he records of Andrei showing off his powers – I love the line, “If you don’t get a million views before you hit 11, what are you even doing with your life?” – and he and Ansi have a goofy back-and-forth re:  the menacing knights.  Meanwhile, Saraline gets to deliver the witheringly dry, “Not every book is about tattoos, Olly.”

And Andrei himself is great.  This is another heavily-serialized episode, and a lot of the stuff the kids get into, including the Stanza itself, are things Andrei hasn’t seen before, so his bewildered along-for-the-ride confusion is a lot of fun.  Like I said, we dig more into his unknown backstory – less about him specifically than about vampires in general, and some of what he learns worries him. 

Andrei also has some fantastic lines, made all the more entertaining by Andrew Rannells’s line readings, which are magic as usual.  My favorites are as follows:  “Whoa, this is a library?  I thought they were underfunded.”  “Just go, guys – I’ll be okay.  That’s what people say in movies, right?  Please don’t go!”  (I love scaredy-cat Andrei.)  And, of course, “You’re a ninja, I’m a vampire – let’s just celebrate how cool that is for a second!”

Relationship Spotlight: Kara Danvers & Lena Luthor (Supergirl)

This leisurely Supergirl rewatch is just giving me a chance to write all the posts. This past season was a hard one for Kara and Lena, but going back over the old episodes again reminds me how much I like these two (some Kara-Lena-related spoilers.)

To put it mildly, Kara and Lena is an unlikely friendship (or more, depending on your ship preferences.) There’s of course the fact that Lena is the sister of Superman’s nemesis and basically the only Luthor who’s not virulently anti-alien, but it goes a lot deeper than that. After all, Lena doesn’t even know that Kara is Supergirl until quite a ways into their friendship, so it’s less of a factor on her side. But beyond that, Lena is guarded while Kara is open, Lena cynical and Kara optimistic, and Lena trades in ambiguity while Kara tends to view things as very clear-cut. Theirs is a surprising opposites-attract connection, one that works seemingly against the odds.

It’s Kara’s very openness and optimism that allow her to make inroads into Lena’s regard in the first place. Being a Luthor is an understandably-touchy subject for Lena, and she’s used to being judged for her family name rather than her personal actions. And other characters are quick to assume shady actions or nefarious motivations on her part, but Kara believes Lena when she says she’s trying to get out from under her family’s bad name and be a force for good, giving Lena the grace of good-faith trust in her. Kara fights for Lena when no one else will, and even though she sometimes succumbs to worrying over Lena’s murkier-seeming actions (often when everyone else is insisting to her that Lena can’t be trusted,) she’s able to gradually break through the distance Lena frequently puts between herself and other people.

And so, over time, the two become very genuine friends. Kara has Lena’s back when her mother or brother show up to cause trouble, and Lena is in turn supportive of Kara. Many an episode finds them catching lunch together while they discuss this or that problem, decompressing about personal struggles, or just chatting over boyband nostalgia. Again, not all of Lena’s views are as cut-and-dried as Kara’s, but she can sometimes encourage Kara to exercise more discretion than she’s inclined to, while Kara sometimes gets Lena to recognize when her own views are a little too mercenary.

The ongoing arc of their friendship is complicated by the separate relationship Lena has with Supergirl. They frequently cross paths with one another as Supergirl saves Lena from various threats and Lena assists the DEO with STEM solutions to various crises, and they develop a pretty decent working relationship. However, Lena doesn’t know that her superpowered ally Supergirl is the same person as her close friend Kara, and when a dustup over Kryptonite occurs in season 3, Supergirl and Lena’s relationship takes a hard hit. To Lena, Supergirl is just one more person who assumes the worst of her and treats her like a villain, while Kara is pained at how her two relationships with Lena are diverging so starkly. It’s hard for her to get together with Lena as Kara and listen to her friend complain about Supergirl, and it kills her that she still feels like she has to keep her identity a secret for Lena’s protection. (Side note: whether or not you agree with that idea – Kara doesn’t seem to have too much of an issue revealing her secret identity to plenty of other people – Melissa Benoist’s performance sells you on the fact that she absolutely believes it.)

Naturally, everything comes to a head at the end of season 4 when Lex, magnificent bastard that he is, reveals to Lena that Kara is Supergirl and then rubs her face in the facts that 1) Kara “didn’t trust her enough” to tell her and 2) Lena “wasn’t smart enough” to figure it out on her own. This causes all of Lena’s issues to bubble over, and she takes this secret as a deep betrayal. It kicks off the dark Kara-Lena times of season 5, when these two are unfortunately at odds with one another. I hate seeing how Lena continues to pretend to be Kara’s friend in the early episodes, plotting retribution while Kara is none the wiser. Lena’s hurt causes a lot of damage to Kara, to herself, and to others as well, and Kara beats herself up for her part in the whole thing.

The end of the season brings us around to a very tentative alliance between the two. I like that Kara doesn’t offer instant hugs and forgiveness (Lena goes down some dark paths this season,) but she recognizes that the situation at hand is bigger than their falling-out and they need to put aside their differences and work together. Their relationship isn’t where it once was, and I’m not sure what it will look like as they go forward, but we’ve at least gotten a glimmer of hope where they’re concerned.