Alexis Scheer’s Breaking the Story opens with a literal bang, jolting not only the audience but also Marina, a seasoned foreign correspondent who’s been covering troubled regions for decades. Marina and Bear, her colleague, photographer and fiancé, are presumed dead after the explosion; when the dust settles, she and Bear are in a quiet place in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where Marina grew up and where she has bought a large house with a lot of property. She muses aloud whether to retire after this weekend, when she’s getting a lifetime achievement award for her work.

 

Also present are Marina’s daughter Cruz, an aspiring singer thinking of forgoing college to Marina’s consternation (Cruz’s songs, cowritten by Scheer, punctuate the action); Gummy, Marina’s sardonic mother; Sonia, Cruz’s godmother; Fed, TV news anchor, Marina’s ex and Cruz’s dad; and Nikki, a young, ambitious war journalist who’s in town to give Marina her award. 

 

Marina and Bear plan to get married in these bucolic surroundings, but Marina’s PTSD intrudes, fragments of her war exploits haunting her—as she wonders whether she was a good enough mother to Cruz while dodging bullets in faraway lands. Marina’s also worried that a long-held secret might damage her reputation: She wasn’t fully truthful in her reporting at her first war-zone catastrophe years earlier. 

 

Although 80 minutes are not enough to create a properly complex portrait, Scheer and always resourceful director Jo Bonney intrepidly probe Marina’s scarred and battered psyche with a series of quick snapshots that alternate black humor with seriousness, even if the more surreal moments (like a funny but odd cake tasting sequence) are too fleeting to truly hit the mark. 

 

Still, it leads to a well-executed Twilight Zone-esque twist ending, as the final moments return to the very beginning. There are bits in the dialogue that hint at where Scheer is going with her story, and it effectively visualizes the gulf between Marina’s exciting foreign exploits and her relatively dull civilian existence.

 

Julie Halston is her usual boisterous self as Gummy, while Geneva Carr is an effulgent Sonia, Gabrielle Policano a winning Cruz, Tala Ashe a lively Nikki, Louis Ozawa an endearing Bear and Matthew Salvidar an efficient Fed. At the center stands Maggie Siff, whose Marina is marvelously shaded; as usual, Siff elevates Scheer’s writing with her compelling presence. Now that Billions is over, maybe we’ll get more of Siff onstage.

Photo by Jennifer Taylor.

At Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, on the nights of Tuesday and Friday, June 11th and 14th, I had the immense privilege to attend two superb concerts presented by the sterling MET Orchestra, brilliantly led by its extraordinary Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

The first program began auspiciously with a laudable realization of Jessie Montgomery’s engaging, beautifully scored Hymn for Everyone from 2021. She has commented that it “is based on a hymn that I wrote in the spring of 2021 that was a reflection on personal and collective challenges happening at the time. I had resisted composing ‘response pieces’ to the pandemic and social-political upheaval and had been experiencing an intense writer’s block. But one day, after a long hike, this hymn just came to me—a rare occurrence.” She added:

I also found that my mom had written a poem called ‘Poem for Everyone.’ I didn’t know she had written it. When I made that discovery, I thought I had to lean into this a little bit more. I’d expand the hymn and make it into sort of a musical tribute. It was a bit of catharsis for me.

And further:

The melody traverses through different orchestral ‘choirs’ and is accompanied by the rest of the ensemble. It is a kind of meditation for orchestra, exploring various washes of color and timbre through each repetition of the melody.

The outstanding soprano Lisette Oropesa then entered the stage to wonderfully perform two excellent works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 

The first was the gorgeous “Vado, ma dove?,” K. 583, a substitute aria written for the 1789 revival of the opera Il burbero di buon cuore written by Spanish composer Vicente Martín y Soler and set to a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. About the second piece, “A Berenice … Sol nascente,” K. 70., annotator Harry Haskell explains:

Mozart was just 13 years old when he composed this charming and highly accomplished recitative and aria for the birthday of his well-liked employer, Archbishop Sigismund von Schrattenbach, in Salzburg. (The celebratory music may have been encored in 1772 at the installation of the archbishop’s successor, Hieronymus Colloredo, with whom Mozart would have a more problematic relationship.) “Sol nascente” is what is known as a “licenza,” a laudatory aria appended as a postscript to an existing work—in this case Vologeso, a long-forgotten opera seria by Giuseppe Sarti. 

The second half of the event was possibly even more remarkable, consisting of an exceptionally strong reading of Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68, notably described upon its premiere by the eminent critic Eduard Hanslick as “one of the most individual and magnificent works of the symphonic literature.” 

The initial movement has a fraught introduction—marked Un poco sostenuto—in which the influence of Ludwig Van Beethoven is unmistakable, while its more dynamic, main body—an Allegro—has a greater intensity although with some more subdued, less agonized passages and concludes quietly. The succeeding Andante sostenuto is gentler in spirit, almost Mozartean at times, contains some of the piece’s loveliest music, and closes softly. The third movement—with a tempo of Un poco allegretto e grazioso—is sunnier in outlook for much of its length, but is not without some urgency, and has a dance-like quality at moments. The finale has another solemn introduction; it leads to an exultant, almost celestial section—alluding to the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9–that builds to a somewhat turbulent and rousing ending.

The second evening was even more extraordinary, beginning with an exhilarating account of Richard Wagner’s glorious Overture to his first important opera, The Flying Dutchman. In a useful note for the program, Jay Goodwin provides some background:

When Wagner began work on Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)—the first of his operas to show significant signs of the genius to come—in Paris in 1840, his circumstances left much to be desired. Having fled Riga to escape his many creditors, Wagner and his wife took illegal passage on a ship to London. Storms blew the ship off course, and it temporarily took refuge in the Norwegian fjords. When they finally reached London, the Wagners hastily moved on to Paris, where Richard hoped to arrange a production of his previous opera, Rienzi. The Opéra declined the piece, however, and Wagner scraped by on charity and occasional employment as a copyist and music critic.

Inspired by his tempestuous journey at sea and determined to have an opera produced, Wagner started in on Der fliegende Holländer, based on the legend of a captain doomed to sail the seas for eternity, coming ashore only once every seven years, as punishment for blasphemy. In Wagner’s version, the captain can win redemption only through obtaining the selfless and faithful love of a woman. Though the Opéra also wanted nothing to do with this new work, Wagner was eventually able to have both Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer performed in Dresden. The earlier opera was quite well received, but Holländer garnered little acclaim. Today, however, it is considered markedly superior to Rienzi and is generally thought to represent the beginning of Wagner’s mature oeuvre.

Equally impressive was a marvelous performance of Erich Leinsdorf’s admirable arrangement of a Suite of amazing music from Claude Debussy’s only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, adapted from a famous play by the Symbolist dramatist, Maurice Maeterlinck, described by the outstanding literary critic Martin Seymour-Smith as “one of the most oppressive plays ever written.” About the opera, the composer said, “I do not pretend to have discovered everything in Pelléas, but I have tried to trace a path that others may follow, broadening it with individual discoveries which will, perhaps, free dramatic music from the heavy yoke under which it has existed for so long.”

The concert finished astonishingly with a stellar rendition of Béla Bartók’s powerful opera, Bluebeard’s Castle—which has affinities with the music of Debussy and Igor Stravinsky—set to a striking libretto by Béla Balázs—a significant Hungarian intellectual most celebrated today as a major film theorist—and featuring the fine bass-baritone, Christian Van Horn, and the incredible mezzo-soprano, Elina Garanča, who was clothed in a fabulous gown. 

The artists were deservedly applauded enthusiastically on both nights.

 

In-Theater Release of the Week

Israeli writer-director Savi Gabizon remade his own touchingly offbeat 2017 feature, setting it in Canada and starring Richard Gere as a hotshot NYC executive who, after discovering he fathered a child with a long-ago ex two decades earlier, tries to make amends for being ignorant of his son’s existence.

 

 

Virtually nothing about this character study is plausible or rendered sympathetically—except for Gere, who gives a persuasively mournful performance under the circumstances—and several other good performers are wasted, particularly poor Diane Kruger, who has little to do as the teacher his son was infatuated with and who disappears midway through. The rest is taken up with narrative twists of tortured dramatic irony that fail miserably. 

 

 

 

 

 

4K/UHD Release of the Week

The latest chapter of this monsterverse mashup finds Kong finding more of his own species in the Hollow Earth as Godzilla irradiates himself to prepare for an upcoming battle royale—while Dr. Andrews (Rebecca Hall) and her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle) go on an expedition to Hollow Earth where they discover a tribe of Iwi (it was thought that Jia was the last member of the tribe).

 

 

Director Adam Wingard has the sense to let the creatures take over (much of the dialogue is embarrassingly self-conscious or unfunnily glib), and if that means CGI dominating the movie, so be it. Of course, Godzilla curling up and sleeping it off inside the Roman Colosseum is an admittedly memorable image. The film looks pristine if too antiseptic in UHD; extras include several making-of featurettes and Wingard’s commentary.

 

 

 

Streaming Release of the Week 

This six-episode history of the punk band the Sex Pistols according to hyperactive director Danny Boy is an entertainingly relentless attack of loud, careening but at times very funny interactions on the level of Boyle’s earliest films like Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. 

 

 

Boyle’s over-the-top attack is appropriate to this material, unlike such abominations as Slumdog Millionaire and The Beach, and the acting follows suit: there are vivid portrayals by Toby Wallace as Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, who’s the focus of the story, and Sydney Chandler as Chrissie Hynde, Jones’ sometime girlfriend who went to found the Pretenders.

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

In Chinese director Wuershan’s alternately engrossing and hokey epic fantasy—the first part of a trilogy based on a 16th-century novel—the gods must intervene after an evil monarch connives with a demon to consolidate unlimited power. To try and save the world, the gods enlist a mere mortal to serve as their brave hero…but will he be up to the task?

 

 

The capable actors are secondary to the often enticing visuals, especially watching the massive armies that include horse-mounted soldiers in battle. There’s an impressive Blu-ray transfer; lone extra is a making-of featurette.

 

 

 

Into the Blue 

John Stockwell’s 2005 underwater adventure is as soggy as they come, with a script that does little more than get the supremely attractive cast—led by Paul Walker, Ashley Scott, Josh Brolin and Jessica Alba—into their swimsuits and under the sea for some frolicking.

 

 

Of course, villains on land and sharks in the water provide the melodrama, but it’s all inert, glistening bodies notwithstanding. There’s a fine hi-def transfer; extras are Stockwell’s informative commentary, deleted scenes with more Stockwell commentary, a making-of featurette and screen tests.

 

 

 

French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was known for music of great elegance, even in such full-length works as his gorgeous (and only completed) opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, a gossamer work of infinite subtlety.

 

 

An anomaly in the composer’s career, Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien is Debussy’s incidental music for Italian author Gabriele D'Annunzio's five-act play, a large-scale score that features an orchestra, a chorus, a narrator, and vocal soloists. It’s loaded with sumptuous music, as this topnotch 2005 recording, led by conductor Sylvain Cambreling and featuring singers Heidi Grant Murphy, Nathalie Stutzmann, and Dagmar Peckova; narrator Dorte Lyssewski; the SWR Symphony Orchestra; and Collegie Vocale Gent chorus, demonstrates.