I’ve never been sure why it takes a full day to catch up when you’re only out of town for 36 hours, but it does.
Wednesday morning I flew to Atlanta. Had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to make a 7:00 flight. I scheduled it early so that I wouldn’t have to fret about any delays. Of course, everything was on schedule and I was in Atlanta by 10 a.m. The MARTA system is a great way to get from the airport into town and you can’t beat the price: $2.50 vs. $35-40 by taxi, and you don’t have to worry about traffic problems. It takes 30 minutes or so from the baggage claim area. Extremely convenient. The station was only two blocks from my hotel. Of course, since I was so early I couldn’t check in. I met up with Rocky Wood in the lobby and had a chat with him, then went to lunch with Ms. Mod from Stephen King’s office. She showed me where the after-party was going to be. En route, we passed T. Bone Burnett, who looks every bit as cool in person as in photographs.
After I checked in, I had time to kill so I went to the exhibit at the museum across the street: From Picasso to Warhol. It featured works from about 16 artists, including the bookends and Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock. The Picassos were interesting because there were a few pre-cubist works that showed he knew how to draw realistic people before he went off in another direction.
The whole gang (there must have been 20 of us) met up in the hotel lobby and went over to the Alliance Theater en masse. Dave Hinchburger from the Overlook Connection was there with his wife, youngest son and a couple of others. A few people from King’s office, plus Russ Dorr, who does research for King (as far back as The Stand and as recently as 11/22/63 — I met him in Dallas last fall). Some people I know from on-line. We had most of a row at the front of the mezzanine, which was a great place to sit.
This was the red carpet premiere of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, which had been running in previews for a week. The first thing to strike me was the elaborate stage. The centerpiece is the interior of a rural Mississippi cabin, but it had other components, too, including a lover’s leap, a bar (which was on an upper level) and a section where a convertible car could be pushed out onto the set. Before the show started, ghosts were projected across the set and a handful of actors took up spots in the wings. At first we thought they were dummies, especially the guy on the bench next to the bus stop. He didn’t move an inch.
The show opened with the appearance of The Shape, an imp/jester character who served as the Greek chorus and also flitted among the actors, impelling them to do unwise things. Whispering in their ears. He really set the tone of the show with his jaunty, saucy opening number wherein he takes responsibility for all the bad things people do. He emerged out of a trap door and flitted and pranced around. Great stuff.
The contemporary story is about a man who brings his two adult sons together (along with his wife) to try to get them to stop fighting with each other. One is a writer who has just sold his first novel for $500,000 and is seeing his brother’s ex-girlfriend. The other brother is an aspiring musician who rarely succeeds at anything and works at a dead-end job that will probably consume him. Their rivalry has had its violent moments: the musician recently broke the writer’s arm, but the writer wasn’t blameless in that altercation.
When the father was 10 years old, his two old brothers had a similar rivalry that led to a tragedy that killed them and the girl who floated back and forth between them. The father wants to tell that story to his sons to avoid something similar happening again. The ghosts of the past are eager for some resolution, too. They wander through the set, visible to each other and the audience but not to the family. There’s lots of bouncing back and forth in time to show some of the things that happened when the ghosts were alive and conflicts between the man’s two sons. It takes a while for the father to get to the point. There are parts of the tale he’s reluctant to tell.
The songs are used to develop character and theme, but not usually plot. The action stops for songs, as a rule. The stage is quite versatile, with things rising out of the two panels in the floor, elements being pushed on from the wings, and creative lighting changing the tone and appearance of the set. The lighting was something that most people commented on afterward.
The band was behind a screen at the very top of the stage, almost up in the rafters. The music was lively, peppy, moody, infectious and dramatic. The vocal performances were uniformly strong, though I would pick up the Shape and Jenna (the female ghost) as the best soloists. When the four ghosts sang together, their harmonies were outstanding, and when the entire ensemble sang, it was like Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar. Powerful stuff.
There was a lot going on on the stage. When someone looked at a photograph, a copy of it would be projected on a wall. The occasional sentence appeared on a board. The passage or skipping of time was indicated by numbers rolling from the past to the present or vice versa. Definitely a professional production that was well conceived and executed.
Without giving too much away, the story is about trying to get people to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, and King’s perspective on this kind of story (remember the Butterfingers episode of Kingdom Hospital?) will seem familiar to many.
The performers received a standing ovation the minute the show finished and throughout the entire curtain call. King, Mellencamp and Burnett were dragged onstage at the end and took their bows, too.
Afterward, we were invited to the cast party, which was in a ballroom at the Four Seasons. None of us knew how big a shindig it was going to be. There were hundreds of people. The finger food mostly had a southern theme, in keeping with the play. The line at the bar was long, but the drinks were mixed so strong that I didn’t go back after the first time! King came in for a while and was swamped by people. He never did make it to his table. He smiled and stood for photographs, but it had to be overwhelming. I got to meet John Mellencamp, but he was a little distant, as if he felt out of his element in such a big party, and Meg Ryan, who is his girlfriend. T. Bone Burnett, who has been producing albums and movie music for over 40 years, was terrific. He seemed genuinely happy to be there and appreciative of anyone who came over to congratulate him on the show. He said the performers were all hitting doubles and triples and knocking the ball out of the park, so I guess he’s a baseball fan! (He produced the music for O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Elton John’s recent album with Leon Russell, to name just a couple of things he’s done.) Charles Barkley, the former basketball player, was in attendance, though I almost didn’t recognize him out of context. We think there was another basketball player there, too, but no one could come up with his name.
The DJ music was loud. Some people danced. The rest of us socialized, shouting to make ourselves heard over the music. The party went on until about 1:00 a.m. By the time we headed back to the hotel, the temperature had dropped into the thirties, which was enough to wake anyone up! All in all, a terrific day. I’m very glad I had the chance to go and see the show and meet up with old friends and new. I’ll write up a review for FEARNet, perhaps this weekend.
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I watched Survivor this morning. A much more entertaining episode than last week. Lots of back-and-forth, though I don’t think there was ever much doubt that it would be one of the guys going home. I still think Kat has a shot. She’s a fairly strong player, and I think she’s being underestimated. Leif is almost a non-entity. They show the occasional reaction shot but the rest of the time it’s like he’s AWOL. I can’t see anything keeping at least five of the women from cleaning house at this point.
Criminal Minds has been sort of meh lately, but this week’s episode featured one of my favorite scenes in a while: the one where Emily and JJ interrogated the slave master. The scene paid off at the end when he tried to get away and JJ got the drop on him. You could tell she enjoyed every minute of that confrontation.
I managed to avoid spoilers from the Justified finale until I watched the episode. There were some huge surprises. I always figured that Quarles’s gun was going to jam. There was so much attention on it. Early in the season he was shown lubricating it to keep it in good shape, and at least one character asked him if it ever jammed. But it never did, and the way he was parted from it was, to say the least, totally unexpected. Disarmed indeed. A nice showdown between an irate Raylan and a terrified Wynn Duffy. I hope he’s back next season. The fact that it was Johnny who squealed about Devil was a surprise, and no one knows about that yet, so it could come back into play. And what can you say about Arlo? When push came to shove and it looked like a choice between Boyd and Raylan (though it wasn’t that at all), Arlo chose Boyd, which was the biggest punch in the guts of the season, I thought. It took a moment for Winona to realize what it meant and by the time she did, Raylan was gone.
Funniest line of the episode: “Oh shit. It’s a piggy bank!” I’m gonna miss Quarles and his irreverent randomness. After him and Ma Bennett, the writers are going to have a job coming up with someone as vivid and unique.
