BILL RODRIGUEZ

Nude vs. prude

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:51:13 GMT

Some Things at Trinity
Sally Mann doesn’t take photographs, she does Rorschach tests.

ARTISTIC LICENSE? Sally Mann is portrayed with gentle firmness and frequent bemusement by Anne Scurria.

Sally Mann doesn’t take photographs, she does Rorschach tests. That’s the case made by Some Things Are Private, the semi-docudrama, semi-fictional-confrontation that’s playing at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence through March 23.

The co-creators are Trinity playwright-in-residence Deborah Salem Smith and director Laura Kepley, who collaborated on the 2006 Boots on the Ground, which dramatized opinions of Rhode Islanders about the Iraq war. That effort gave minimal voice to opposition to the war, in part at least because there isn’t as much dramatic variation packed into a political stance as there is in personal experiences.

Some Things is more or less a fair fight. Those who feel that the photographer exploited her children by posing them nude will see variations on their objections expressed — one of the most compelling things about this play is its acknowledgment that some of Mann’s photographs just plain piss people off. Those who think that art and the First Amendment trump other concerns also get ammunition. And yes, that heart/mind divide seems intended by the creators of this 90-minute essay-in-action.

The focus is on the fuss over Mann’s 1992 collection Immediate Family, which included photographs of her three pre-adolescent children that could be said to sexualize them. The purported offensiveness varied in intensity. The Perfect Tomato, from her subsequent collection, shows daughter Jesse naked in a balletic pose on a picnic table with said fruit. Mann called it “the best damn photo I’ve ever taken.” But then there’s Rodney Plogger at 6:01, in which naked daughter Virginia is held by enormous hands between the legs of a possibly naked man.

Unlike Boots, this Trinity production doesn’t use its own interviews but rather those in the public record, from statements by Mann to letters to newspaper editors. Mann is portrayed with gentle firmness and frequent bemusement by Anne Scurria. Various other voices are dramatized by Janice Duclos, Rachael Warren and Richard Donelly.

Stephen Thorne modulates from perplexed to furiously strident as the invented Thomas Kramer, our surrogate interlocutor. The other characters decide he should be a lawyer, since he’s pushy enough to wrest an audio guide from a fellow museumgoer when he must hear, right then, what Mann has to say about these works. He had come expecting to see her landscapes, one of which his recently deceased wife had purchased. The scene segues into a confrontation with Mann. Kramer is especially upset with Popsicle Drips, which shows dried stains on the torso and genitals of her son.

When in Rome . . .

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 20:04:28 GMT

TBTS returns with A Funny Thing
Pretty soon the last four years might seem like just an unusually long winter break.
Read more

Venice Restaurant

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 03:06:41 GMT

A Westerly restaurant that's just like mama’s kitchen
Driving through a cold and rainy South County, we were summoned by a place that beckons like a campfire in the winter woods.

Venice was the right place at the right time. Not the city — which we were dining our way through at this time last year — but rather the Westerly restaurant. Driving through a cold and rainy South County, we were beckoned by a place that beckons like it was a campfire in the winter woods.

The semiformal atmosphere strikes an inviting balance between comfort and indulgence. The waitstaff wear ties and black aprons; a stuccoed partition next to our table was topped with plants; paintings were mostly picturesque scenes of Venice.

Despite the name, the restaurant doesn’t offer Venetian specialties — there isn’t even prosecco among the bubblies on the lengthy list of 80 or so wines, 17 by the glass. Menu offerings are as all over the map of Italy, just as the wine list is all over the globe. Under “Pesce e Crostaceo,” you can have tuna or swordfish prepared Sicilian style, the former with a kalamata olive, pine nut, and golden raisin caponata; the latter with a salmoriglio sauce, featuring olive oil and balsamic vinegar ($19 and $18). Northern Italian recipes are represented by such lighter preparations as veal or chicken piccata ($16-$18).

The heart of this kitchen is in the South, tipped off by the antipasto ($9) containing meatballs and the locally appreciated “soupy,” dried sausage. A recent six-course meal at Venice was billed as “A Tour of Southern Italy.” The only soup permanently on the menu is pasta e fagioli ($3-$4). It’s a sort of pan-Italian pasta-and-bean soup, with distinct variations in regions from Tuscany to Sicily, but is known in the US as pasta fazool, as it is called in Naples. This restaurant has a good recipe, sticking to tradition by using tubettini pasta but venturing to include great northerns instead of the similar cannelloni beans, an incremental flavor boost.

We’ve also had their mussels zuppa ($7), which were fat, fresh, and swimming in plenty of garlicky white wine sauce to dip bread into. But this time I tried their grilled portobello ($7) for an appetizer, a good choice. The saucer-size cap was topped with green peas, bits of the shrimp, spinach, and — odd choice — Swiss cheese, full of flavors. The presentation was elegant: surrounded by a confetti of vari-colored bell pepper bits and ground black pepper, in a pool of tasty pink brandy cream sauce. Johnnie was up for the Boston bibb salad ($7), which was chock full of crumbled Gorgonzola, candied walnuts, and sun-dried tomatoes, tossed with a not-too-tart balsamic vinaigrette that she loved.

View masters

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 23:28:52 GMT

An ‘odd collection’ at the Warwick Art Museum
“2006 Omnium Gatherum,” the photography show at the Warwick Art Museum, is an eclectic collection of work by 12 Rhode Islanders.

“2006 Omnium Gatherum,” the photography show at the Warwick Art Museum (through February 4), is an eclectic collection of work by 12 Rhode Islanders. Such a mixed bag fits the title of the exhibition, which is century-old side-show slang for “an odd collection.”

On display are images surreal to celebratory, abstract to observational. Curated by the Museum’s outgoing director, Damon A. Campagna, the exhibit is an interesting group portrait of contemporary imagination.

Imaginative technique as well as subject matter is on display. Regan Stacey Scheiber creates captivating visual metaphors by equating undergarments and other delicate articles of clothing with particular women. These are cyanotype photograms, made by exposing the sheer cloth on photosensitive paper to light for a long period. They are white on blue, like blueprints, and as luminous as x-rays. “Amelia — Strong, Brave, and Delicate, Her Finesse Defined Her,” for example, looks to be an infant’s lacy baptismal cap, and the comparison is equally graceful.

Some other treatments of people are direct. In Jack Lenk’s “America #2,” one young guy of a huddled trio smirks as he gives the camera the middle finger. This is a quiet little masterpiece that at first glance looks tossed off. Several things keep the composition from being simply a larky snapshot. Contrasting with the lighthearted expression, the face in the foreground is intense to the point of hostility, but teetering on that point rather than explicitly so, fascinatingly ambiguous. The warm-toned ultrachrome print accomplishes a classic chiaroscuro effect as the faces emerge out of framing shadows. As for the title, the crude gesture reveals its meaning when you notice that the gesturer has his other arm protectively around a younger man with Latino features.

Four photos by Jen Kodis are a lighthearted group. Two of them catch people in poses that are inexplicable until you read the titles. Then you see that the man suspended in an airplane position is demonstrating proper parachuting technique, and the two seated men twisting themselves like pretzels are in a back-care workshop.

Jill Palumbo creates some striking images in her false memory series, using blur to good effect. “False Memory #1: Fear” disorients us: a person at the top of the photo — we see only a hand — seems to be falling into a pit lined with steep stairs on one side. It takes a beat to notice that an oblique view of a stairway has been turned upside-down for the effect. Another photograph subtly deals with loss: a line of Polaroid images, most blackly underexposed, remind us of the fragility of memory.

Middle of Nowhere Diner

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 00:06:41 GMT

Bounty in the countryside
Lions, and tigers, and bears — oh no!

Lions, and tigers, and bears — oh no!

Just kidding. We are talking deepest, darkest Exeter, but you’re safe from wildlife at the Middle of Nowhere Diner, unless you snag yourself on an antler while sideling through the parking lot some brisk dawn in hunting season. Have no fear, dear Cranston or Warwick natives who consider a drive to Westerly as exotic, and unlikely, as a slow boat to Marseille.

This restaurant is one of those unassuming places that line blue highways up and down America. Outside, it’s a nondescript gray box with a red tiled roof. Inside, it has the requisite row of stools along a counter, per diner designation, plus several booths and two-person tables. The décor is straight out of grandma’s kitchen, with a strip of grapes-and-fruit wallpaper along the ceiling and a cuteness quotient summed up by a framed photo of a kid wearing fairy wings and sitting on a mushroom. The ashes of a Problem Customer rest in a corked jar on a top shelf, warning potential complainers.

You’re probably not in danger — unless you’re like the woman who groused how the enormous portions are wasteful, the only criticism that cook/proprietor Neil White says he’s received about quantities in a dozen years here. Well, that’s why the good Lord made doggie bags, ma’am. When my Exeter friend Gary spoke of the portion of corned beef and cabbage set before him one St. Patrick’s Day, his eyes misted over.

This diner should be called Good ’n’ Plenty, but that name’s taken. The four-egg omelets, for example, are served all day except, unaccountably, on Fridays. Gary claims the one described as “diced thick ham steak ’n’ cheese” ($5.45) contains chunks larger than the dice at Foxwoods. “Neil’s Favorite Omelet” ($6.95) is stuffed with 13 items, including every breakfast meat in the kitchen.

For lunch, the 10-page menu offers plenty of sandwiches and burgers, but it’s the big appetite dinner choices that really tempt. On the carnivore page, they range from a basic burger plate ($5.95) through liver and onions ($7.60), which should be required by law in every place calling itself a diner, to Steak a la Nowhere ($12.95), a 12-ounce ribeye “pressed with garlic,” smothered with sautéed mushrooms and onions, and interestingly “served over garlic bread,” alongside potatoes and vegetables. There are also pasta, chicken, and seafood pages, each with a half-dozen or more choices. Gary recommends the clam strips ($8.25), which the menu describes as an “oversized portion.” One can only imagine what would come with the fisherman’s platter ($14.95), described as “for the Hungriest of Appetites.”

Jack’s Family Restaurant

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 01:01:55 GMT

A Portuguese-inspired feast
If you liked the marinated smelts here when the place opened in 1972, the popular appetizer still tastes the same today.

Jack’s is a family restaurant in both senses. In addition to being inexpensive and amiably informal enough for families — candy canes and wreaths on the plastic tablecloths after Thanksgiving, for example — Jack’s is a family-run enterprise.

Jack Gomes started in the restaurant business in Bristol when he came from Portugal with his family in 1963. Nine years later, he was ready to open his own place next door in Warren, with him and his two sons cooking, and daughter Maria as hostess. Son Joseph is now head chef and general manager, with his brother, Victor, as his lieutenant in the kitchen, working religiously from their dad’s recipes. If you liked the marinated smelts here when the place opened in 1972, the popular appetizer still tastes the same today.

When I visited, the big dining area was decorated like a family rec room, with Christmas stockings, Nutcracker dolls and other tchotchkes festooning the red walls, with strings of lights twinkling above them. The bentwood chairs are padded and comfortable.

Having enjoyed meals here on more than one occasion, a friend and I met at Jack’s for lunch, intending to just snack and save our appetites for a real meal that evening. Fat chance.

My foodie friend Jerry hadn’t ever had shrimp Mozambique ($8.95), so I couldn’t in good conscience let that travesty go uncorrected. The version here included beer in the garlicky, spicy, and copious sauce that the eight tail-on medium shrimp were swimming in. The malty addition added heft to the sauce, which we sopped up with the provided garlic bread and auxiliary breadbasket.

The stuff in the basket, spongy and as lightly crusted as Wonder Bread — Jerry described it as “Chinese restaurant bread” — is actually a traditional Portuguese version. A carrier rather than a culinary delight, it was ideal not only for the Mozambique sauce, but also the one in the next dish. The Portuguese are big on sauces, and generous with them.

Though he was newly returned from Spain, my friend’s unfamiliarity with Western Iberian cuisine made me feel as responsible as Ignatius of Loyola with an un-baptized pagan. We both tried the Portuguese soup ($1.95/$3.25). That proved rather uneventful, with no chorizo and little shredded pork mixed in with the kale and potatoes. Like a conductor who drops his baton, I recovered and continued brightly on.