Theater: Parade; Maybe Happy Ending

from Atlanta to Seoul

By happenstance, I saw two theatrical productions in three days, Parade and  Many Happy Ending.

In February 2024, Proctors Theatre in Schenectady held an event to announce the 2024-25 Broadway schedule for Proctors and Cap Rep in Albany.

When they discussed the musical Parade, which would start its tour at Proctors, an older gentleman on a screen said essentially that it was a sad and depressing story, but it was good. That could not be the “sell” the Proctors’ folks wanted to hear.

The musical won the 2023 Tony Award®  for Best Revival of a Musical and was nominated for a Grammy Award® for Best Musical Theater Album.

Katherine Kiessling of the Times Union wrote, “The heart of the show is assigned to Leo and his wife Lucille, played by Max Chernin and Talia Suskauer. The pair is charged with embracing the Franks’ rough edges—his aloofness and her initial desires to cling to her privileged life and flee the hardships of her husband’s trial—and eliciting empathy.”

They are a Jewish couple in the nineteen-teens Atlanta. He’s from Brooklyn, but she’s a native of Georgia. He runs a pencil-making factory. A young female employee is killed, and Leo is suspected.

Variety asked about the 2023 revival: “Will audiences take to a disturbing but captivating musical that deals with racism, antisemitism, and injustice?” Newspapers superimposed on the stage area ensure the audience knows the outcome before the production begins.

It’s very well done and important. While having a downer of an arc, it’s not all depressing, and it was worthwhile. My wife and I attended the January 11 program. It will be touring throughout the country through September 7. 

Made in Korea

Two days later, my daughter and I were in Manhattan working on a project. We contacted one of my nieces and her Significant Other. They secured four rush tickets for Maybe Happy Endings at the Belasco Theatre for January 13. The show opened on November 12.

“Inside a one-room apartment in the heart of Seoul, Oliver (Darren Criss, probably best known from Glee) lives a happily quiet life, listening to jazz records and caring for his favorite plant…

“When his fellow Helper-Bot neighbor Claire (Helen J. Shen) asks to borrow his charger, what starts as an awkward encounter leads to a unique friendship, a surprising adventure, and maybe even…love?”

The Will Aronson and Hue Park musical reminds us that “love is never obsolete.” It was delightful, not just because of the storyline, dialogue (“She’s a 5” was particularly funny), songs, and performances, which included lounge singer Gil Brentley (Dez Duron) and James and others (Marcus Choi).

Maybe Happy Ending uses specially made video projections, plus a fantastic physical space. “The musical exists in the relatively constrained spaces of the Helperbot retirement home, but there are also a series of flashbacks to Oliver’s time working with James in his house and Claire’s time working for her owner. Then, when the two robots eventually leave their apartments, there’s an entirely new landscape and horizon to contend with. And all of this takes place in a single unbroken act…”
Technology
Laffrey’s solution was to create a “machine that moved us through this world.” He used a “giant mechanism that encompasses the whole stage and fills it with moving pieces. For most of the show, the audience’s view is comprised of one or two boxes, one for each of the robot’s rooms—those boxes can slide horizontally, meaning there’s occasionally a single room and, more often, two side-by-side. The stage also has a central turntable, upon which some sets (James’ house, for instance) rotate.

“Simultaneously, Laffrey designed four huge black panels trimmed with neon. These panels, which are positioned in front of the stage where a curtain would be, slide up and down and side-to-side in order to act like a camera lens’s iris, opening wide to show the whole stage or narrowing to focus on a single piece of action. It’s a tool that occasionally makes the musical feel more like cinema than theater—the audience is seemingly viewing the play through a giant lens.”

A Korean-language version of Maybe Happy Ending opened in Seoul in 2016, and its English-language premiere was in Atlanta the following year. The show was very enjoyable, though sitting in the fourth row of the balcony, I had difficulty seeing some limited action in front of the stage.

Diversity washing

DEI

Here is a story about how far we have come in America, from January 2025, also featuring an earlier piece about diversity washing: 

These 12 major companies caved to the far right and stopped DEI programs

“Companies scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion programs have started a trend.

“Right-wingers have been railing against DEI for a while now, and one of the loudest is Robby Starbuck, a failed filmmaker and failed congressional candidate. He objects to companies sponsoring Pride events, supporting transgender employees, taking action against climate change, and more. Oh, and he thinks toxic chemicals turn people queer and that the COVID-19 vaccine is what killed Matthew Perry.”

Climate change advocates are DEI killjoys?

“But the anti-DEI movement is bigger than just Starbuck. ‘Business experts have told CNN that Starbuck’s activism alone does not fully explain these decisions, and some companies’ commitments to diversity and inclusion were thin to start.” 

“Diversity washing” is the new greenwashing (2023)

“What’s that? According to this paper authored by academics from several institutions, including Chicago Booth and the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford, there are a number of companies that actively promote their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion in their public communications, but in actuality, their hiring practices, well, don’t quite measure up. 

“The authors label companies with significant discrepancies—companies that discuss diversity more than their actual employee gender and racial diversity warrants—as ‘diversity washers.’ What’s more, the authors found, companies that engaged in diversity washing received better ratings from ESG rating firms and were often financed by ESG-focused funds, even though these companies were ‘more likely to incur discrimination violations and pay larger fines for these actions.'”

Everything is the fault of DEI.

From what I’ve seen in right-wing media, DEI hires caused the fires in Southern California to expand, even as the Los Angeles fire chief has two decades of fire fighting experience.  

 Strangely enough, DEI seems to have nothing to do with all the annual hurricane damage in locations like Texas, Florida, and Speaker Mike Johnson’s Louisiana. That’s why we need “standards.” Before we give money to those blue-state people, they’ll have to fix whatever systems they broke. But those folks on the Gulf of Mexico should receive help immediately.

FOTUS instantly blamed DEI and Biden for the mid-air collision over the Potomac River on January 29, saying that standards for air traffic controllers had been too lax, including the FAA hiring people with “severe intellectual” and “psychiatric” disabilities. However, he cites no evidence because he likes saying stuff.

The clear message is that if the person in charge is black or a woman or gay, and they falter, they must have only gotten the job because of “reverse discrimination.” When you are a competent person, this tension can be exhausting, but this is nothing new. Read the description of the 1969 novel The Spook Who Sat By The Door by  Sam Greenlee. 

Nasty (and not in a good way)

Kelly hit on something. “They aren’t looking to reverse progressive policy because they disagree with it. They are looking to pass as much harmful policy as possible because they are angry with America for ever having passed it in the first place, and they want to punish Americans for it.”

There are SO many examples. I’ll pick one from MedPage Today about the CDC removing certain pages:

“In addition, tools to estimate and reduce the risk of HIV were also down at the time of writing, as was a page on CDC’s efforts to address racism as a driver of health disparities.”

So, as I understand it, DEI is the problem, even though it wasn’t applied as rigorously as some people seem to think. We should be selecting competent folks like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Hah! Jonathan Chait wrote in the Atlantic [paywall] that FOTUS “is promising a return to meritocracy—while staffing his government with underqualified loyalists.”

The Britannica definition notes, “Perhaps the most formidable criticism of meritocracy is that, far from bridging social divisions, it engenders a new ‘performance’ elite whose initially earned advantages serve to sustain their dominance.”

I will posit that not being in favor of DEI isn’t inherently racist/sexist/homophobic, though I could make a case for its value. Conversely, blaming everything that goes wrong on DEI is precisely racist, sexist, and homophobic.

DEI is

From a post on Facebook, which I pared down somewhat: What DEI Is :

-ramps and sidewalk curb cuts
-subtitles & captions (TV & phone)
-family restrooms
-pay equity & transparency
-parental leave (time & pay)
-not having to just accept workplace harassment
-work accommodations for a variety of disabilities
-flexible work arrangements
-various food options for vegetarians/vegans/kosher/gluten-free/etc at medical facilities
-non smoking areas/end of smoking indoors
-large print materials
-materials in different languages
Some of What DEI isn’t:
-hiring an underqualified person for a job just because they’re a person of color
-hiring based on race just to meet diversity goals (this is illegal)
 -a  new fad or buzzword. DEI work has been going on for many, many years, under different names

Now that DEI has driven from parts of corporate America and the federal government, inequality has been quashed! Yeah, right.

All in graphics

A friend of mine needed a new computer monitor. I went to a store, bought a 27″ LG, and took it to their house. I opened the box at their place and looked at the instructions; they were all in graphics! No words of direction whatsoever. I stared at them for 10 minutes and realized I had no idea how to set it up, much to my friend’s disappointment.

But then I contacted someone I knew who was amazing at absorbing this sort of thing. They came to my friend’s place to set up the computer monitor in about 15 minutes.

This is another reminder to me of how we absorb information differently. The New York Times Connections puzzle generally “groups words that share a common thread,” four groups of four words. But recently, instead of finding words, they had 16 graphics. People had a dreadful time on this one. This was five out of five in difficulty. Are they mice or rats? My wife and I did get the puzzle with no errors, but it was not obvious. Hank Green worked on this particular puzzle and produced a video here.

Increasingly, I’ve noticed that when I have to get ahold of people, I have to remember which way is the best for that particular individual. Some people only do e-mail. There’s a small minority who require a telephone call.  Others are like that character in the Weird Al Yankovic video: “Don’t they know how to text?”

Moi

I tend not to use my phone, particularly when I’m home. It becomes too tempting to doomscroll on Facebook. When on my laptop, I tend to stay on task, working on tasks such as blogging or reading/responding to emails.

If people text me while I am home, I probably won’t see it until I go out, which irritates some people greatly.  But when I’m on the road, even in town, I usually have my phone available, although I turn it off during church, theatrical performances, and the like. 

Email is probably the best way to reach me because I check it regularly. I do notice items on my Facebook Messenger because something pops up on my screen.

When your mother dies on Groundhog Day

the shock and grief section

Trudy and Roger Green

When your mother dies on Groundhog Day…

1

When your mother dies on Groundhog Day, her passing is always associated with Punxsutawney.

2

When your mother dies on Groundhog Day, her passing is always associated with Punxsutawney.

You don’t relive the day, not exactly, but it has similar beats.

3

You don’t relive the day, not exactly, but it has similar beats.

In the hospital, you think that she is in great distress, so you ring for help, and a troop of nurses run in before they notice that she has a DNR.

4

In the hospital, you think that she is in great distress, so you ring for help, and a troop of nurses run in before they notice that she has a DNR.

One nurse scolds me, “She has a DNR.” I knew that but didn’t know what somebody sounded like before they died.

5

One nurse scolds me, “She has a DNR.” I knew that but didn’t know what somebody sounded like before they died.

She’s not in great distress; it’s merely the death rattle. Sorry, nurse, this is my first time seeing someone die.

6

She’s not in great distress; it’s merely the death rattle. Sorry, nurse, this is my first time seeing someone die.

Mom passes.

7

Mom passes.

There’s no point in calling your sisters, who are already en route. One of your sisters says, “Oh, she’s sleeping,” and you say, “Umm, no, she passed.”

8

There’s no point in calling your sisters, who are already en route. One of your sisters says, “Oh, she’s sleeping,” and you say, “Umm, no, she passed.”

You have to make decisions about the “disposition of the body,” and you’re annoyed because you’re still in the shock and grief section of the process.

9

You have to make decisions about the “disposition of the body,” and you’re annoyed because you’re still in the shock and grief section of the process.

You all leave the hospital, and you don’t rush to worry about what the plan is for the funeral. We already know what the plan is going to be.

10

You all leave the hospital, and you don’t rush to worry about what the plan is for the funeral. We already know what the plan is going to be.

She’s going to be cremated and buried next to her husband of 50 years in a North Carolina military cemetery.

11

She’s going to be cremated and buried next to her husband of 50 years in a North Carolina military cemetery.

We tell Trudy stories.

12

We tell Trudy stories, well-worn tales about her making a meal, which we have always described as tasting like the green bleaching crystals of the laundry detergent called Oxydol. It was awful.

13

…well-worn tales about her making a meal, which we have always described as tasting like the green bleaching crystals of the laundry detergent called Oxydol. It was awful.

Then we remembered how much she loved Nat King Cole, not just his voice but his looks, and it made us happy that she had this crush on the man who wasn’t our father, oddly enough.

14

When your mother dies on Groundhog Day, her passing is always associated with Punxsutawney.

You don’t relive the day, not exactly, but it has similar beats.

In the hospital, you think that she is in great distress, so you ring for help, and a troop of nurses run in before they notice that she has a DNR.

One nurse scolds me, “She has a DNR.” I knew that but didn’t know what somebody sounded like before they died.

She’s not in great distress; it’s merely the death rattle. Sorry, nurse, this is my first time seeing someone die.

Mom passes.

There’s no point in calling your sisters, who are already en route. One of your sisters says, “Oh, she’s sleeping,” and you say, “Umm, no, she passed.”

You have to make decisions about the “disposition of the body,” and you’re annoyed because you’re still in the shock and grief section of the process.

You all leave the hospital, and you don’t rush to worry about what the plan is for the funeral. We already know what the plan is going to be.

She’s going to be cremated and buried next to her husband of 50 years in a North Carolina military cemetery.

We tell Trudy stories, well-worn tales about her making a meal, which we have always described as tasting like the green bleaching crystals of the laundry detergent called Oxydol. It was awful.

Then we remembered how much she loved Nat King Cole, not just his voice but his looks, and it made us happy that she had this crush on the man who wasn’t our father, oddly enough.

Gertrude Elizabeth (Williams) Green, known as Trudy, was born November 17th, 1927, and died February 2nd, 2011.

1915 #1 hits

anti-war song adopted by the pacifist movement

Before getting into the 1915 #1 hits, I should note how the charts were compiled per Joel Whitburn’s A Century of Pop Music. Talking Machine World published monthly lists of the best-selling records as provided by the major record companies from 1914 to 1921. Billboard offered a weekly list of the most popular songs in vaudeville from 1913 to 1918. ASCAP published a selected list of the most popular songs in its history.

Other information about top sheet music was from record company publications, led by Victor, Columbia, and Edison, plus other lists by Roger Kinkle, Jim Walsh, and Murrells.

It’s A Long, Long Way To Tipperary – John McCormick (Victor), eight weeks at #1. It was also a #1 hit for the American Quartet for seven weeks in 1914.

They Didn’t Believe Me – Harry McDonald and Alice Green (Victor), seven weeks at #1. A Herbert Reynolds/Jerome Kern song from the musical The Girl From Utah.

Hello, Frisco! (I Called You Up To Say “Hello!”) – Alice Green and Edward Hamilton, orchestra conducted by Walter B. Rogers (Victor), six weeks at #1, from the Ziegfeld production “The Follies of 1915.” The singers were also known as Olive Kline and Reinald Werrenrath

A Little Bit of Heaven (Shure, They Call It Ireland) -George McFarlane (Victor), five weeks at #1. I could not find it on YouTube, only via the   Discography of American Historical Recordings.

The FBI! 

Carry Me Back To Old Virginny  (Plantation Melody)- Alma Gluck (Victor), five weeks at #1, gold record. Written by James Bland. The singer was “born Reba Feinsohn in Romania and moved at an early age to the U.S. The opera and concert soprano was married (2nd husband) to violinist-composer-conductor Efrem Zimbalist and was the mother of actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr.”

I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier – Peerless Quartet (Columbia), four weeks at #1. “Popular anti-war song adopted by the pacifist movement prior to the U.S. entry into WWI. Henry Burr (lead), Albert Campbell, Arthur Collins, and John H. Meyer were probably the Peerless personnel at the time of this recording.”

My Bird of Paradise – Peerless Quartet (Victor), four weeks at #1

I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier – Morton Harvey (Victor), three weeks at #1

Close To My Heart – Henry Burr and Albert Campbell (Columbia), two weeks at #1 [not a great recording]

My Little Dream Girl – James F. Harrison and James Reed (Victor), two weeks at #1. Their real names were Reed Miller & Frederick J. Wheeler

Chinatown, My Chinatown – American Quartet (Victor), two weeks at #1. Unsurprisingly, it’s a dollop of racialized ick.

Home, Sweet Home – Alice Nielsen (Columbia), two weeks at #1. There are a lot of versions of this song, but I can’t find this recording. Here’s a version from 1913 by Elsie Baker. 

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