in Life's name and for Life's sake

Because Jacqueline insisted that I "lj the heck out of" this, I figure I have to. :)

So yesterday for Father's Day my family drove up to Westwood for lunch and to see the play Farragut North. It's a political drama set during the presidential primaries that focuses on the backroom politicking that goes on over the course of two or three days leading up to the Iowa caucuses. The central character is 25-year-old Stephen Bellamy, a superstar press secretary for the fictional Morris campaign; the play follows him through a series of bad decisions (at first innocently bad, culminating with menacingly bad) that change the shape of the campaign, or at least Stephen's involvement in it. To me, it felt like a more cynical version of The West Wing with much more swearing (amazing what you can say when you don't have to keep it clean for TV), and although I missed the general optimism-under-pressure of West Wing, this definitely painted a picture of what always could happen to the good guys (and sometimes does).

Of course, the highlight of the show was that aforementioned political wunderkind Stephen was played by Chris Pine (which is basically the main reason that we went to see the show -- well, the main reason my sister went, anyway; some of us were there for the politicking). Personally, I thought he did a great job with the role, and gave it the right kind of nuance. It would've been easy to play up certain character traits earlier in the play that would have made the ending less surprising, but it's supposed to be a surprise: the point isn't that everyone in politics is an angry bastard who, when it comes down to it, will sacrifice anything to save his own skin. The point is that even intelligent guys sometimes make bad decisions and get played. I definitely still had sympathy for Stephen at the end of the play, though not in the same way as I had when the play opened.

A word for sets and stage transitions: The stage was pretty bare but with alternating blue and white-blue almost-checkerboard squares projected onto it (each big enough for a person to stand in) and looked pretty awesome. But the awesomest part was the transitions between scenes. While the hardy props team was readying each new set, the same projector that (presumably) projected the chessboard motif was used to show faked news clips. You could still see all the people onstage, yes, but personally I was focusing on the news.

But back to Chris Pine. I should start this off by saying that my sister's much more of the star-shocked one than me -- I wouldn't say she chose UCLA as a school specifically so that she could be in the middle of all the entertainment world, but it was definitely a motivating factor. She's interested in being some part of the media circus, and definitely has her actor crushes. Sometimes I think they're a little silly. This time, I can't blame her. Chris Pine is actually a good actor and not just a pretty face (though oh my goodness is he ever a pretty face).

Anyway, the whole going to see the show thing was at first largely Corinne's idea. I'd seen ads for it in the paper but not really thought about going to see it, until I mentioned it to her and her brain took off like a rocketship. Sometimes she comes off a little too naive-fangirl for her tastes or mine, but I have to give her the credit for getting my family to go see this play, and for forcing me to stick around with her afterward until Chris Pine came out from backstage. I hadn't really thought I cared too much but I will only be slightly ashamed when I admit that when I saw him standing less than six feet away from me I got the stomach tingles. There were surprisingly few would-be stalkers present (though I will say that is the great thing about small theaters -- did I mention that the Geffen is not huge at all?), so after he greeted a couple of people he knew who'd come to watch the show, Corinne and I were first in line to get some autographs. Not that you can really tell from a two-minute slice of time, but he seems like a nice guy. I forgot to ask him who his favorite English professors were at Berkeley (he graduated from there with a degree in English) but I did get this beautiful picture. And I got to see a great play. All in all a pretty great day!