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Hope Stone Dance attacks domestic captivity: A corporate drone & a dowdy housedress make a day of it

Jane Weiner and David Neumann in "A Day of It" from Hope Stone Dance's "AnEvening of Bread and Circus"
Photo by Simon Gentry
"Bread and Circus" rehearsal by Hope Stone
Photo by Simon Gentry
Promo for Hope Stone's "Bread and Circus"
Photo by Simon Gentry
Hope Stone artists rehearsing "Bread and Circus"
Photo by Simon Gentry

"Now what is it that keeps us together?" wonders the dour couple in Jane Weiner and David Neumann's, poignant duet, a day of It (2004), as part of Hope Stone Dance's "An Evening of Bread and Circus," at Barnevelder Movement Arts Complex. They trip through the rituals of domestic captivity like players in a deadpan dirge, re-enacting gestures of affection, some predictable, some curiously animalistic, which proves to be a compelling thread running through the dance.

Neumann, director of Advanced Beginner Group in New York, and Weiner have a long history in motion together and it shows in this delicately crafted dance.

The Mr., a once-dapper corporate drone, stumbles through his duties, while the Mrs., donning an epically dowdy house dress, scurries about the house, which just happens to appear thanks to a robotic white suited team of furniture movers. They hang their coats on an imaginary coat rack, undisturbed by the existence of gravity that lets their coats fall to the ground. A day of It plays with ideas of a post-dead marriage, a pair of sleepwalkers stuck in the parade of daily chores of living, like retrieving the mail like a pair of retrievers.

Little things excite them, offering momentary stirrings out of their somnambulistic trance. He loves forks, while she comes alive in a pre-dinner prayer. The two time Bessie-winning Neumann delivers a wonderfully nuanced performance, with such modulation of effort we almost hold out hope for him. Weiner, one of Houston's best actor/dancers, also shows us emotional shades of coming in and out of aliveness.

It may sound dreary, but it's as hilarious as it is tragic. Weiner and Neumann are experts in knowing how to pull back the reigns on the comedy, leaving the sting intact.

In the end though, they come apart. The Mr. crawls under a rug returning to a more primal state, while the Mrs. hides under the kitchen table. The cleaning crew arrives, stripping the stage/cage bare, including the white tape border, perhaps the only thing tethering them to their vacant lives.

Are they set free? Or maybe, there just won't be another day of it.

A day of It was sandwiched between two other works, which were remarkably similar in structure. Bloom where you are planted, created for the capable dancers of Houston Ballet II, took its time to get started. Like most of Weiner's work, a sense of community is established before the dancing begins. Bloom contained one really clunky prop, cinder blocks, that the dancers logged around a bit too long. Once the dancing gets going, Weiner shows off both the performance and technical skills of these young dancers.

Innocence, first love and trust, were some of the ideas tossed in the air by this promising troupe, which includes Guillaume Basso, Chunwai Chan, Francesca Forcella, Dylan James Lackey, Jacquelyn Long, Sareen Tchekmedyian, Kumiko Tsuji and Harper Watters.

Weiner's set — change is inevitable — was originally created for HB II. Like the previous work, the piece starts off with whimsical antics involving a fountain of pennies that end up in their pockets, the floor and flying across the stage. The pennies work considerably better than cinder blocks, creating cool rhythms and motion as they drop, spin and roll. Eventually, the piece bursts out into a thicket of full-throttle dancing, chock full of near miss partnering, and space gobbling ensemble work, all performed on a stage strewn with hundreds of pennies.

The company — JoDee Engle, Patrick Ferreri, Spencer Gavin Hering, Courtney Jones, Catalina Molnari, Joseph Modlin, Candace Rattliff and Brit Wallis — is showing more cohesion all the time.

Weiner, a fearless advocate of arts education, ended the evening with a plea to save the arts in the schools and a threat to redo the piece with quarters. The show continues Friday and Saturday night at Barnevelder.

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Movie review

Messy Frankenstein movie The Bride! stitches camp and confusion

Photo by Niko Tavernise

Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride!.

The story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is now over 200 years old, with Mary Shelley’s book having been adapted or referenced in close to 500 films. Less common is the character of The Bride of Frankenstein, which existed in the original text but has more often than not been excised in adaptations. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has tried to rectify that by giving the character a big showcase in her new film, The Bride!.

Gyllenhaal has reimagined the story as one in which a woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) becomes possessed by the spirit of Shelley (also Buckley). At the same time, the already-existing Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) approaches Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), who specializes in reanimation, with the request to make him a wife. When Ida falls to her death in an “accident” involving her boyfriend (John Magaro), the ideal corpse becomes available.

After Ida’s resurrection, she and the monster become restless being studied by Dr. Euphronius and decide to break out to experience the world. The world, naturally, is not exactly welcoming to them, and soon the couple are on the run for causing mayhem, including a few murders. In hot pursuit are detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), as well as other authorities.

It’s clear that Gyllenhaal wanted to merge the Frankenstein story with Bonnie & Clyde, especially since she sets the film in the mid-1930s. And that wouldn’t have been a bad idea if having the monster and The Bride going on a crime spree was truly the focus of the movie. But most of the time there’s less intentionality in their misdeeds and more confusion, leading to a muddled plot with no clear direction or end goal in mind.

One of the biggest problems is that Gyllenhaal starts the energy of the film at an 11, giving her and everyone else nowhere to go but down. She dabbles in multiple different tones, at times going the straight drama route and other times making what seems like full-on camp. At one point, she even has the monster and the Bride in a dance sequence set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which would be hilarious as an homage to Young Frankenstein if the film weren’t so disjointed.

Most baffling of all is what Gyllenhaal wants from The Bride character. She morphs multiple times over the course of the film, from close to unintelligible at the beginning to rough-and-tumble at the end. There are hints at the lack of control she has over her autonomy, including Shelley’s possession of her and the monster lying to her about her past, but any commentary that Gyllenhaal might be trying to make gets lost amid the oddity of the film as a whole.

Both Buckley and Bale are all-in for their performances, which definitely fall in the “love it or hate it” dichotomy. Each scene is pitched so high that there’s little nuance to either of them, and neither is on par with their previous Oscar-caliber roles. The high-powered supporting cast of Bening, Sarsgaard, Cruz, and Jake Gyllenhaal is watchable based on previous roles, but none of them elevate this particular movie.

Whatever intentions Maggie Gyllenhaal had in making The Bride! are only halfway legible in a film that can never find its tonal footing. There has rarely been subtlety in movies featuring Frankenstein’s monster and related characters, but this one makes all the others seem like stuffy dramas in comparison.

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The Bride! is now playing in theaters.

movies film maggie gyllenhaal annette bening christian bale jessie buckley peter sarsgaard penélope cruz movie review