Upper Middlebrow

Nov 04 2024 73 ep. 66 mins 8
Upper Middlebrow Podcast artwork

A podcast in which we discuss high-craft works of popular culture

  Arts  Fiction  Comedy
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Episode 66: “Russia With Love (Nesting Dolls),” or Gary Shteyngart’s Our Country Friends Part I

Oct 31 2024 66 mins  
Gary Schteyngart’s 2021 pandemic novel is overtly Chekhovian, and the lads love it. A group of friends and family gather in the Hudson valley during the 2020 pandemic leading to betrayals, love triangles, secrets, lies, but also some joy and camaraderie. We discuss how Schteyngart’s precise portrayal of his characters’ inner lives, and marvel at moments of satirically brillia

Episode 65: “Our Play with Louis,” or Louis Malle’s Vanya on 42nd Street

Oct 21 2024 74 mins  
Bagg and Dukes watch Louis Malle's wild 1994 film that takes, as its subject, a rehearsal of Andre Gregory's..."performance" of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. If that sounds convoluted, it is. Gregory and an amazing cast (Julianne Moore, Wallace Shawn, Larry Pine and more) rehearsed the play in a dilapidated theater, inviting a few guests each night to watch what they were working on

Episode 64: “A Cloud on a String,” or Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya

Oct 07 2024 70 mins  
Anton Chekhov's 1897 play is in many ways even more minimalistic and sad than The Cherry Orchard. Dukes once again struggles to imagine the three dimensions of the story, while recognizing the almost documentary realism of the drama. Bagg finds the pathos of characters struggling for transcendence in the wrong direction heartbreakingly real.

Uncle Baggya Previews the Live Draft

Sep 30 2024 3 mins  
UMB Theater presents Dr. Dukesimov and his old friend Baggya, commiserating about dreary life, and looking forward to the Upper Middlebrow LIVE Draft. That's coming October 10th, at 5pm PDT, and there will be door prizes and a chance to vote on a new Upper Middlebrow series. Watch this space!

Episode 63: “Cherries, Anyone?” or The National Theatre’s Production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard

Sep 23 2024 77 mins  
The National Theatre production glimmers with an excellent cast, including Zoe Wanamaker and Conleth Hill. Dukes finds that the performances and the direction/translation choices help raise the stakes and steepen the conflict. He wonders if there’s a kind of “oral history” or collective theatrical knowledge of Chekhov that aids live productions, and Bagg suggests that Chekhov

Episode 62: “To Sell or Not to Sell…Is That Really the Question?” or Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Part I

Sep 09 2024 77 mins  
The UMBers sit down with a play that Bagg has read a million times and that Dukes is visiting for the first time. The lads discuss what this work is like for a first-timer and then put on their acting shoes to read some dialogue. Dukes wonders if this script is something that only works when the play is staged, and we get some help from a more contemporary pair of scriptwriters.

Episode 61: “Mathematical” Courage or Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner Part II

Sep 02 2024 79 mins  
After Dukes summarizes the plot of Beverly Hills Cop for Bagg, the UMBs get down to business. The second half of The Kite Runner fulfills its promises. Everything is excellent, but again, the lads feel that things are a bit too perfect, and still prefer the rare moments that upset the balance.

Episode 60: “Zero Sum Narrative,” or Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.

Aug 19 2024 72 mins  
Bagg and Dukes haven’t read this 2003 bestseller, and confess to a little snobbishness about a book that is ubiquitous at airport books stores. But…it's really good! Despite being impressed by the novel’s depiction of a childhood event that impacts our protagonist’s entire life, the UMBs wonder if the novel’s narrative physics are a bit TOO perfect.

Episode 59: “The Bathetic Fallacy,” or Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

Aug 05 2024 67 mins  
The UMBers tackle Ray Bradbury’s 1950s classic novella and are impressed by how much influence this book has had on other writers and the intellectual landscape. The lads rattle off at least five or six other works they’ve read that owe Fahrenheit an allusive debt. Both find the prose and dialogue somewhat clunky, but in a role-reversal it’s Dukes this time that thinks Bradbu

Episode 58: “The Deus is in the Details,” or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Part II

Jul 22 2024 81 mins  
The lads marvel at Margaret Atwood’s delicate prose and “lighter than air” narrative, in which sparse poetic writing conveys an alternative future vividly. But is the ending a bit of a deus ex machina, and if so, is that a problem? Or does that serve to reinforce the ideas at the heart of the book? Dukes and Bagg have a spirited but generally glowing read of Atwood’s 1985 m