La Bete

It's the good stuff. I was blown away by Mark Rylance's astonishing performance as the boorish Valere in the revival of La Bete. Who knows why it was a short-run flop on Broadway in 1991, but did you hear the roaring laughter inside the Music Box theatre today? Orchestra aisle 3 seat N 105, I plead guilty as the loudest.

The play is hysterically funny and brilliantly written. Rylance won the Best Actor Tony a few years back for his masterful performance in Boeing-Boeing.

La Bete - The Beast - is the story of a royal theatre company in 17th century France led by a refined court playwright named Elomire. The Princess who is the troupe's royal patroness decides its work has gotten boring and has ordered Elomire to take in Valere, a crude street performer who loves to hear himself talk. It would be similar to telling the Royal Shakespeare Company to find a part for Don Rickles.



David Hyde Pierce best known as Dr. Niles Crane in the TV sitcom Frasier is the aloof intellectual Elomire. He seethes with anger at having the boorish artist Valere forced on him. He would have none of the odd-couple collaboration the Princess is demanding.

La Bete is intended to be an homage to French playwright Moliere. The name of the male character Elomire is even an anagram of Moliere. The entire play is written in rhymed verse - iambic pentameter. That may sound rather impressive but it works extremely well adding immensely to the humor.

David Hyde Pierce may be the marquee name but the stage belonged to Rylance. He was brilliant as he delivered the famous introductory monologue - a mostly pointless ridiculous some 400 lines and 40 minutes of talkathon tormenting Elomire and his sidekick. He made an entrance with a mouthful of melon, spitting melon seeds across the stage doing slapstick nonsense like passing gas, belching, spitting, dropping his pants, going to the toilet, and on and on. It is hysterical.

Hyde Pierce acted his best as he blankly stares at the babbling beast with growing anger in his face which he does with excellence and suits his character well. The Princess, Joanna Lumley shouts many of her lines. She had a funny moment when she insistently repeats "savant" every time Elomire calls Valere an "idiot".

I also enjoyed Greta Lee's performance as the servant Dorine, who speaks only in monosyllabic words containing the diphthong "oo" (blue, new, shoe, true) and has to mime what she is trying to say with hilarious results.

It is a satire basically about conflict between street and intellectual art. The unsympathetic Elomire who vainly tries to uphold standards sums it up as: "Mediocrity is bound to thrive. Excellence must struggle to survive".

A play superbly written and a riveting performance by Mark Rylance.
Idiot savant!

The King's Speech

I'm done with snow days. Enough is enough. There's nothing pretty about the view from my window anymore, just petrified snow turned into rock outcrops some covered with mud, some with yellow stains. Yuck!

Unfortunately the big buzz in our neck of the woods is snow storm, more of the same. Another blizzard is brewing after the last one which prompted an outrage for a badly handled emergency by our mayor. But Mr Mayor, I can't be trapped, I need to get out of the house and right now!

One phone call and a few mouse clicks later, we've cooked up a plan to break out of our respective prisons. Chong, Ces and I agreed we can make it to the movies before the fast-moving storm hits town.

First we headed for that ubiquitous Vietnamese pho chain to join the mass of soup-slurping locals, or at least I did. Chong and Ces had the barbecued pork and chicken lettuce wrap. I had the kimchi all to myself thanks to my two friends whose tummies can't tolerate the spicy dish. The portions were uber-generous just the way I like it. Nothing beats a bowl of pho heaping with broth, noodles, paper-thin slices of flank steak with a generous amount of garnishes. After the hearty meal, we're good to go. Let's just hope the MSG-laden soup doesn't put me to sleep at the movies.

The year starts with an avalanche of Oscar contenders. A popular one is The King's Speech so let's find out why. Respected journalist Peggy Noonan's piece The Captain and The King in the WSJ has inspired me to see this movie. She wrote about how the circumstance of the King ironically parallels that of Captain Owen Honors, the highly decorated Commanding Officer of the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.

Both stories show us the pain and pressures of being in a lofty position. A leader is supposed to set standards for those who are below him. He isn't to project an image as if he's just one of them.

Captain Honors, because of his role in raunchy videos that were taped while he was still an executive officer, was removed from his command. He claimed those videos "were intended as humorous skits" and " morale booster for the crew". Was that appropriate for him to do? Was it cool for him to act like he's just one of the guys?

In The King's Speech, the duke of York with his debilitating stammer was forced to accept the job as the king when his brother abdicates the throne. He is now the king and must be an inspiration to his people during this time of trouble. This is England. Eloquence is expected from a royal heir. He cannot stutter.

He needed to manage his disability. He sought the help of an eccentric speech therapist, who employed unconventional techniques and later would be found as lacking the proper credentials. With complete disregard for royal protocol, the therapist warned the King that if he wanted results, he has to work with him as equals, a shuddering thought.

The great scene is during one of the private sessions when, prompted by his therapist the King was asked to scream every curse word he knows. He let an outburst of f---, f---, f---s and s---, s---, s---s and to his own surprise he didn't stutter. It was a success. Coached by his therapist, King George VI would later on deliver a convincingly flawless speech to the nation as the war with Germany was declared. And he would find himself worthy of the throne.

A master of truly great acting, Colin Firth is a bloody good king. Nothing short of first-rate is the performance of Geoffrey Rush as the therapist. Rush called his superb acting a revenge against the British, as he claims he and his wife were once ostracized for being Australians. It is a well-partnered cast with Claire Bloom as the forbidding mother, Queen Mary.

The King's Speech is full of drama and peppered with subtle humor. The audience, some less than a dozen of us who braved the snow-covered city streets, loved it. I'm sure like me, they all wanted to cheer; instead we sat through the final lines of the credits and enjoyed every bit of the last note of the fading sound track - one on the list is Beethoven's Emperor.

A king has to be a king, a captain, a captain.
King George VI found his voice but sadly Captain Owen Honors might have lost his dignity.