"Johanna Faustus" at The Hypocrites

Seldom do I urge the playwright and director to make a production longer, but this time I wrote to Sean Graney, director and co-author, suggesting that he slow it down.  The production was crammed into an hour.  Lines spoken so fast, they were unintelligible.  Funny bits lost because the actors stepped on lines and did not allow the audience to absorb the jokes.  

And, the plot was rendered unintelligible as well.  Was it really Marlowe's Dr. Faustus or just parts of the plot woven into a new take on the validity of religion?  Overall, it felt like we were being exposed to the first version of a new work with many changes to come - at least I hope they come before they perform it again.  Graney is known for his new takes on old plays.  Ed and I have been twice to enjoy the 10 hour "All Our Tragic", based on the remaining 18 Greek plays.  Loved it both times.  Score:  Toad

P.S. - Sean replied, "I hated the production".

Scary Fairy Tales with a Russian Twist

There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby:  Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (Penguin, 2009)

Why couldn’t I put this book down?  Same reason Grimm’s Fairy Tales still captivate us – how awful can it become for these victims?  I must continue to read to see the macabre outcome.  

To add spice, these tales come from Russia, so are tinged with Slavic pessimism, deep, dark woods, snow covered steppes and hangovers of Soviet deprivation and nihilism.  Yum.  These are not scary fairy tales for children.  These are adult to their anguished soul.  Read one a night and enjoy Petrushenskaya’s craftsmanship.  

"Guards at the Taj" wins Obie - hands down.

On a delightful trip to Los Angeles in November, 2015 - Friday the 13th to be exact, we saw Rajiv Joseph's latest play, "Guards at the Taj" at the Geffen Theater in Westwood.  We love his previous plays, especially "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo".  "Guards" carried a warning not to reveal the ending.  That's because few would want to experience the end of this play. Likely I did not review it because I was still stunned.  

Featured are two guards who must stand rigid at the entrance to the soon to be completed Taj Mahal.  A wall separates them from the glorious mosque.  No one is allowed to see the work inside.  Life is boring and routine - the first act like a "Bob and Ray" radio comedy.  But slyly, the plot reveals itself as the  character of Shah Jahan, commissioner of the Taj Mahal, and the nature of life in an absolutist political system, is revealed in the guards' exchanges.  

Seems the architect, Ustad Isa, asked the Shah if the 20,000 workers could tour their completed masterpiece.  Rather than responding with benevolence, the Shah demands that the hands of the 20,000 workers and the architect be cut off so that nothing as beautiful as the Taj could ever be constructed again.  (Note to reader:  this is fiction, not fact.)  

Act II opens with the stage, now a pool several inches deep of blood and the two guards, who have been put in charge of the hand-ectomies, nearly out of their minds at the horror of their work.  Ultimately, one guard must cut off the hands of the other - and you see this (actually very well staged) in gory detail.  

So now you know "the rest of the story".  We left the theater feeling like we had been sucker-punched.  But it was good theater.  And it does deserve the Obie. 

Score:  Bloody Prince

"The Secretaries" and "The Few" - Toad Kissing in Chicago

We're toad-kissing again in Chicago. There is so much live theater produced in Chicago, it’s like diving into a chocolate sundae.  But, though worthy, not all of these plays are princes, and DBH and I will spend lots of time kissing toads throughout the summer.  I’ll keep you apprised of our adventures.

First up, The Few at Steep Theater. These are the folks who produce edgy, small plays that make you think.  Sort of like Steppenwolf Theater before they because such a money machine. Written by Samuel D. Hunter, directed by Brad Akin, starring Peter Moore, Dana Black (looking and acting like former Steppenwolf star, Laurie Metcalf, just a bit more zaftig) and Travis Coe.  
Synopsis from the website: “Four years ago, Bryan walked away from his life, his lover, and his labor of love: a newspaper for long haul truck drivers. Now he’s back, without any answers and looking to finish what he couldn’t on the road. In the middle of nowhere, at the edge of the millennium, The Few pulls together the pieces of lives filled with loss.”

A newspaper for long haul truck drivers…really?  Yup, Bryan was a driver who saw and experienced the loneliness of the long-distance trucker and wrote about it.  Without him for four years, the paper has become pages of “seeking” ads, placed by truckers and for truckers. These play from the phone answering machine at poignant moments throughout the play. There are lots of small sub-plots artfully woven into the 90 minutes.  Overall a well-crafted, well-performed production.  Hunter won a MacArthur Fellows Genius Grant in 2014.  Good investment of their money – ours too.  Score:  Prince

Today, we grabbed last minute tickets to see The Secretaries produced by About Face Theater, a LGBTQA group.  Description from their website, “The Secretaries chronicles the initiation of Patty Johnson as she lands the job of her dreams at the Cooney Lumber Mill in Big Bone, Oregon. But those dreams turn into bloody nightmares when she discovers that her coworkers are chainsaw-wielding lumberjack killers!  Amidst the campy carnage, this feminist satire skewers female stereotypes of the 80s and 90s while hilariously subverting sexist ideas of femininity. And while it was written more than two decades ago, The Secretaries remains startlingly fresh with regard to how little has changed in the last 20 years.”

The Secretaries reminded me a bit of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom which Ed and I saw in a dicey area of New York City about 1985.  Today, we went to the Sunday matinee – you need to be slightly more than high to really enjoy The Secretaries.  But it did have its moments, including the tyrannical office manager, Kelli Simpkins, who is a ringer for Tilda Swinton, the ingénue, played by Erin Barlow, one of our favorites at The Hippocrates Theater ensemble. Best of all, it brought back floods of memories of my first job in the Trust Department of Lake Shore Bank, 601 N Michigan Avenue.  Where are they now:  The office manager, Evelyn Nerdowitz, the vault teller, Bonita Dufik, the secretary to the EVP of the Trust Department, Susan Schultz, the bookkeeper, Josie Mancuso?  These women formed me in ways no college ever did.  But, score for the play:  Toad.  

And They All Fall Down – The Rogue Theatre knocks it out of the park in Tucson

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder is a U.S. literary classic, read by most of us in high school. It’s a simple book about five Peruvians falling to their deaths when a rope bridge across a chasm breaks in 1714.  

Pepita, Doña Maria, Esteban, Uncle Pio and Don Jamie - at the brink of death

But it not so simple when you examine the beautiful details of their intertwined lives in Colonial Peru.  The five victim are Don Jamie, child of the Perichole, an actress with dreams of gentility; Uncle Pio, mentor of the Perichole and now assuming that role with her child; Marquessa Dona Maria, heartbroken mother and nascent literary genius with her companion, Pepita; and Esteban, bereft survivor of his identical twin, lost to gangrene.  A local Franciscan, Brother Juniper, seeks to prove that these five died because God deemed them valueless sinners.  His research, the premise of the book, illustrates the value of all who died and therefore the capriciousness of God.  Brother Juniper and his book are burned by the Church.

This production, adapted from the book by Rogue Managing and Artistic Director Cynthia Meier and directed by Joseph McGrath, Artistic Director, is a tour de force.  Like most book adaptations for the stage, it is long on narrative.  The spoken dialogue and much of the narrative are taken directly from the book.  But it is in the staging that this production shines.  The ensemble is large, 11 cast members, two playing dual roles.  Most are on the stage simultaneously, with lighting directing the action flow.  The stage is stark, focused on the broken arc of the bridge at center stage.  For me, the most memorable scenes are those of the “soon to be dead” as they complete their stories and mount the bridge until all five are there.  Dramatic staging at its best.

All actors were special in their roles.  Kathryn Kellner Brown as the Marquesa Doña Maria was stunning.

Gabriella De Brequet as Pepita and Kathryn Kellner Brown as the Marquesa Doña Maria

This adaptation is the first sanctioned by the estate of Thornton Wilder.  It will likely become a classic of community and school theater like “Our Town”.  Kudos to The Rogue and may they bask in ongoing royalty revenue.

Fall Theater Season in Tucson 2015

Winding Road Theater Company
Saint Joan, by George Bernard Shaw, adapted by Toni Press-Coffman
directed by Susan Arnold, featuring MAC-Award Winner Lucille Petty
Our first Saint Joan, and admirably performed by Winding Road, especially Lucille Petty, who seemed the embodiment of a slight, middle-class French girl.  Shaw’s plays are usually long, so Press-Coffman’s shortened adaptation was appreciated.

All Hamlet, All the Time.

This Fall, The Rogue produced Hamlet and Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead in rep.  And, the National Theater broadcast live a performance of Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

National Theater:  Saw this production first – most lasting impressions:

• Cumberbatch, lithe as a cat, gliding from floor to tabletop, rooftop to street.  That man moved like a ballet professional.  
• Always impressive, the NT’s staging of the final scenes included the destroyed castle of Elsinore, complete with tons of dirt.  What a job to clean that up after each performance.
• Polonius, always one of my favorites, played by David Calder, seemed shrunken in the role.

That National Theater Live is a great gift to the world from the U.K.

The Rogue

Hamlet by Wm. Shakespeare and Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, playing in rep. 

Oh, theatrical joy!  Matt Bowdren played Hamlet.  No, he became Hamlet.  Again, in a micro-theater, you heard Shakespeare’s most quoted lines up close and personal.  The Tucson production was considerably shortened from the NT Live production (almost four hours).  But this was easily the best Shakespeare production by The Rogue – we have seen about five over the years.  

And, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead – pure magic.  Tom Stoppard brought the lunacy of Beckett to the stage existence of minor characters, whose only purpose is to appear several times in Hamlet, and like everyone else, to die.  The pair create word games, bet on coin flips and doze to pass the time between appearances.  When they are “on stage”, you experience that exact scene, with the same actors, that you saw in the performance of Hamlet.  How wonderful to see the plays in tandem.  Patty Gallagher is the more dim-witted Rosencrantz; Ryan Parker Knox is Guildenstern.  They inhabited the roles.  This was the best exploitation of Gallagher’s outstanding physical theater skills ever.  

University of Arizona Repertory Theater
Ooops, we did it again.  Cabaret, starring the U of A theater students.  They nailed it!  Excellent Master of Ceremonies and a Sally who gave her all.  The band appeared to be composed of profs – and they reveled in the swinging music.  

Reckless by Craig Lucas – Interesting, but not great, play with a dark Christmas theme.  Most memorable for split second scene changes.  All parts well-acted, but the ending was a let-down that wrapped things up a bit too neatly.  

How Could Anyone Forget "Moby Dick"? More summer theater in Chicago

Well, I did!  We "experienced" the full Moby at Lookingglass Theater on June 17th.  Lookingglass has become known for productions that combine drama with circus-type athleticism, imaginative staging and solid acting.  But reduce Moby Dick to two and a half hours?  Presenting a book as a drama is difficult enough, but MD is a novel inside of a natural history text.  And they did it very well.  

For me, hearing and seeing the beginning line, "Call me Ishmael", was like meeting an old friend in person.  The coffin was the central icon from the beginning.  The staging included stripping whale blubber off the hoop skirts of "whale ladies", men climbing and swinging from the rigging over 2/3 of the theater, a Greek chorus of New Bedford widows - there was hardly a factor in the plot that went usused.  Thankfully, they did not "waste" hours informing us about the different kinds of whales, my least favorite section of the book.  

Lookingglass is located at the old Water Tower at Pearson and Michigan, so a prime tourist area. Their productions combine the excellence and edginess of the Chicago theater scene with enough "tourist wow" to keep the crowds attending.  Their current production, which we will miss by one day, is Treasure Island, adapted by Mary Zimmerman.  If you plan to be in Chicago, don't miss it.  

Savoring Theater in Chicago, Summer 2015

DBH, his sister, Norah and I gorged on luscious theater this summer in Chicago.  Here’s a rundown on our outings. 

The Drowning Girls 

May 31st – The Drowning Girls at Signal Theater Ensemble.  Turn of the 20th century, three women, all murdered by George Joseph Smith, all in the bathtub.  Water, water everywhere in this innovatively staged one act play.

June 12 – The Birds – Dramatization of Daphne du Maurier’s short story.  Could have been truly frightening, but lacked sustained suspense.

June 26 – Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike at The Goodman.  Based somewhat on The Cherry Orchard, the play featured excellent actors working an often banal script.  

June 28 – Bad Jews produced by Theater Wit.  7/8 of this play was tight, funny and featured outstanding performances.  The ending was maudlin and disappointing.  

All Our Tragic

July 4th – All Our Tragic – We celebrated the 4th by seeing for the 2nd time the 12 hour extravaganza produced by The Hypocrites.  Perhaps even better than the first time, we thrilled at revisiting the surviving 32 Greek plays smashed into a slam bang tale of lust, greed, death, spells and laughter.  Significant improvements made to the production, but the ending still a bit shallow. 

A Little Business at the Big Top

July 12 – Physical Theater Festival – Saw a Spanish duo present Popal is Gone and a solo performance by David Gaines of A Little Business at the Big Top.  Amazing theater.  Put this festival on your list for next year.  The performances were first rate and I think we paid $15 for tickets.  

July 26 – Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw – Ok, this is cheat.  I saw this fabulous production courtesy of the National Theater Live, broadcast to the Music Box Theater.  Ralph Fiennes was amazing.  Indira Varma was luscious and smart.  The production was amazing.  Thank you National Theater for bringing exceptional productions to such a large audience.  

August 15 – Brilliant Adventures at the Steep Theater.  Much like we discovered the Hypocrites in 2014, this year our discovery is Steep Theater.  They specialize in new, edgy plays, mostly from the UK.  The ensemble members are "steeped" in the Steppenwolf tradition of trauma in drama, which we love.  Brilliant Adventures is an interesting play about time travel – not great, but the acting was exceptional.  

American Idiot

August 30 – American Idiot produced by The Hypocrites.  A rock musical featuring the songs of Green Day, performed at the Den Theater on Milwaukee Avenue.  It looked like the locals took over the stage, as Milwaukee Avenue is a mash-up of homeless, helpless, hot spots.  Lots of rocking by amazing cast, but the effort lacked a soul.  I have never even heard of Green Day, much less their music.

Sideshow

Sept. 13 – Sideshow – musical at Porchlight Theater.  Story of Siamese twins, Daisy and Violet Hilton who try to make it in show business.  First act like a Disney musical.  Second act like a Sondheim musical.  We love Porchlight, but the first act needs work.

Sept. 27 – Disgraced at The Goodman – Pulitzer Prize winner by Ayad Akhtar.  Everyone has the opportunity to play the race or religion card in this play.  Supposed to be a great conversation starter for theater goers, but we agreed that there is no escaping race as a part of our national gestalt.  What matters is how you behave.

Lucio Silla

Sept. 30 – Chicago Opera Theater – Mozart’s first opera, Lucio Silla.  You can’t beat the Chicago Opera Theater for dramatic, economical staging.  About 20 members of the Apollo Chorus appeared on stage in what can only be described as, “Wear whatever’s comfortable, so long as it’s pants, long sleeved shirt, black, and casual.”  But it fit in with the sparse staging that used lighting to make the drama work.  Four sopranos, two in trouser roles and one tenor.  All magnificent voices.  Glad they are spending money on the right things.  Well, it was early Mozart, cut from six hours to two and a half.  Lots of trilling and repetition.  I enjoyed it as a “period piece”, but was ever so pleased that we did not have to witness all six hours. 

The Cheats

October 2nd – Steep Theater world premiere of Hamish Linklater’s The Cheats.  Intense and unsettling from the first words.  Moral of the play: be careful what you choose to share about your personal dark side.  This ensemble is definitely “Son of Steppenwolf” – complete with a fistfight.  We love it.  Excellent acting and a well-crafted play.  

We're ready to dive into the Tucson theater scene - yes, there really is one.  First up, Saint Joan by Shaw.  

Orgy at the end

DBH and I leave for Tucson in a week – so we decided to go out in a blaze of Chicago theatrical glory.  Three very different experiences: Macbeth, All Our Tragic and The Whaleship Essex.

Nmon Ford

Macbeth, the opera version by Ernest Bloch, and staged by Chicago Opera Theater, is a rather lugubrious 1904 version of the Scots tragedy, totally saved by Sean T. Cawelti, the Video Designer.   Not that there were not great moments of opera:  Nmon Ford as Macbeth was both eye and ear candy.  We will see more of him in larger opera venues.  The few minutes of chorus time were splendid.  98% of the score was quasi-modern atonal, but the chorus was robust and alive with late 19th century tonality and lots of major and minor chords.  

Table with video above

Sean T. Cawelti transformed the huge box of the Harris Theater into a stage framed with integrated video action.  The three witches (here zaftig, young women) aimed video camera at their faces and bodies, producing huge close-up projected videos over the stage, which often featured other action.  (The viewing challenge was not unlike attending an NBA game and finding yourself focusing on the video screens rather than the live action.) The only furnishings on the stage were a 25 x 6 table on which most of the action centered – and a few plain gray chairs.  Video directly over the table doubled the action.  Video at the corners transported the featured singer into swirls of mirror images, almost seeming to reveal the inner mind.  How does Mr. Cawelti do it?  Who knows, but he is magical.  In our previous Chicago Opera Theater production, he designed the shadow puppets and video elements.  Again, a significant enhancement to the theatrical experience.  www.seancawelti.com

Survivors in their "whalers"

The Whaleship Essex, produced by Shattered Globe Theatre, and written by ensemble member, Joe Forbrich, is based on the book, The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex.  This book was originally published in 1821 and written by First Mate Owen Chase just months after he returned home to Nantucket. It is the basis for Hermann Melville Moby Dick.  The theater version includes 15 crew members that move from naïve land-lubbers to seasoned crew to dying survivors after a whale rams and sinks their ship.  Survivors travel 2000 miles in three whalers.  Most died and were eaten by the rest.  No rainbows and unicorns in this story.  Overall, well done, well-staged.  I particularly enjoyed the sea chanties and spirituals that tied the story together.

Helen of Troy and her daughter, Hermione

Then there is All Our Tragic – 12 hours in the theater.  Yes, you read right, 12 hours.  We arrived about 10:30 A.M. to be there when the doors opened to obtain prime seats.  And we really didn’t leave the theater until 11:15 in the evening.  The event combines the 22 surviving Greek tragedies (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) into a single 12-hour epic.  We loved it.  This is “balls out”, “think no small thoughts” theater.  What you expect in Chicago.  14 actors each played three roles and it seemed that many were in all the episodes, but that would be impossible.  Still the pages of lines memorized and characters inhabited are staggering.  Several things noted:
* 90% of the attendees were under 40 – Chicago is a young theater town.
* The producing company, The Hypocrites, gets it.  Everything was perfectly handled from comfortable chairs, to restrooms cleaned, to lots of food, to a totally engaged and accommodating staff.  We were left with nothing to complain about…
* We don’t know nearly enough about the Greek tragedies.  Yes, we will reread them and enjoy them more than ever.

So we depart Chicago infused with the great cultural life and look forward to Tucson where the thoughts are not so large nor the productions so daring.  But we anticipate fun at the local theater and frequent visits to the cinema for the Metropolitan Opera Live broadcasts.  

Peru Diary - Day 23, Sept. 18, 2013 - Manu Wildlife Center Lodge

Click here to read Day 23  Manu Wildlife Center Lodge.

Even when the fat man sings, it’s not over for me

La Rondine

Three hits in two weeks:  La Rondine by Puccini, Othello by Verdi and Lucrezia Borgia by Donizetti.  And we are not at the Santa Fe Opera.  These are re-broadcasts of previously live performances at our local theater.  I guarantee that if you like opera at all, you will love the whole new medium of broadcast opera.  No, it is not the same as being in the opera hall; for me it is better.  First of all the investment is $12 for the rebroadcasts.  Live broadcasts during the season run around $30.  Compare that to the $150 to $250 a ticket we pay for really good seats at the opera hall.  We get to see operas we would never see, with first class performers.  I get to eat an apple during the performance (if I want).  One time, a friend and I brought a picnic for the interval and ate at the tables outside of the theater.  To find where this is happening near you, Google Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, or Royal Opera broadcasts.  They also broadcast ballet and theater from the National in London.  

La Rondine was so wonderful that I purchased the disks to listen again and again.  This is a “lost” Puccini, swallowed by the start of WWI.  It is beautiful and a relatively easy opera to stage – it should be performed more often.  Many don’t consider it “serious” enough as Puccini originally designed it to be an operetta, but changed his mind.  I rather enjoyed the lighter nature of the plot.   This production from 2009 starred the soprano Angela Gheorghiu and the tenor Roberto Alagna.

Othello - a serious love mismatach

Othello starred Johan Botha and Renée Fleming.  But the real star was the bass-baritone Falk Struckmann’s forceful yet subtle Iago.  Solemn, malignant and unassuming,  Struckmann conveyed chillingly how Iago manages to wreak such havoc while eluding suspicion.  This 2013 production was panned by the NYT because there was no chemistry between Botha and Fleming.  Ok, she’s about 5’5” and weighs about 150 and he’s over 6’ and weighs 400+.  Give us a break.  This Othello did not need to play the race card to account for his problems.  Also Botha’s emotions range from A – B.  His one facial expression is a scow - but who cares with his voice!  We loved it.  It’s Verdi - so lush, lyrical and grand.  I’m a big fan of duets, trios, quartets, etc.  Verdi uses these devices to show different thoughts going on inside the minds of the characters.  So, even though they are involved in a duet, they are not really communicating.  Lovely, but strange.

Renee Fleming in Barbarella costume

And then there is The San Francisco Opera's Lucrezia Borgia, starring Renée Fleming as Lucrezia and Michael Fabiano as her long-lost son.  This is a Donizetti opera, so lots of bel canto vocal flourishes and ensemble singing.  Fleming sort of “swanned” through the role, but Fabiano as Gennaro, breathed life into the role's improbable conflicts and sang with both graceful lyricism and full-throated ardor.  The fact that he is rock star sexy only enhanced his appeal.  As his boon companion, Maffio Orsini, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong, in a trouser role, was excellent and their duets were spell-binding.  The real star was bass-baritone Vitalij Kowaljow, who gave a thrillingly robust and commanding account of the all-too-brief role of Duke Alfonso, Lucrezia's jealous husband.  However, it has hard not to laugh when the director toyed with the affections of Maffio and Fabiano, adding bits of feigned homo-erotic lust and nose-rubbing.  Really?  They saved the best till last when Renée appeared in a Barbarbella costume for the third act.  With a butch haircut.  Really?  Based on my little review, you may think I did not like this production, but it was wonderful.  The minor imperfections only made it more appealing.  

The Yummy Gennero

The 2014 - 2015 Met season begins in October.  Here's the link. 

A Night at the Opera - in Chicago

DBH and I love to see “new to us” operas.  Chicago Opera Theater  presented two German operas in English, Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis and Carl Orff’s The Clever One.  The location was DePaul University’s Merle Reskin Theater, formerly the Blackstone Theater.

I have two vivid memories of the Blackstone, which is located directly north of the huge Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue.  The first is attending a play with my fiancé on August 28, 1968.  Totally unbeknownst to us, the Chicago Democratic Convention riots started during the production and we walked out into a mob of police, bloody young men and women and news cameras.  We hoofed our way out of there fast.  The second is taking my two nieces, Megan and Tracy, to see Joseph and His Technicolor Dreamcoat.  To this day, they can still sing the songs.  

The Harlequin and Death in The Emperor of Atlantis

The operas we saw were homage to German composers working during WWII.  Ullmann is best remembered for his copious output while confined by the Nazis to the Theresienstadt ghetto.  He later died at Auschwitz.  The Emperor of Atlantis is written in the modern, atonal manner; you don’t go home humming the tunes.  It’s a about death going on strike, much to the Emperor’s chagrin.  He’s fighting a war and wants the enemies to die.  In true politician fashion, the Emperor then declares that he has freed the country from death…and so it goes.  Interesting, but not enjoyable.  Notable was the center stage set which consisted of two bunk beds that imitated those seen in the horrible photos inside the concentration camp barracks.

The King, the Clever One and the shadow puppets behind paper panels.

Carl Orff’s survival during WWII may have resulted from collaboration with the Nazis.  It’s the old tale of “he said, she said”, but he lived rather well under the Third Reich.  Orff is best remembered for Carmina Burana, written in 1937.  The Clever One reflects the primitive rhythm expressed by voices and percussion, combined with lyrical voices and orchestra, that characterizes Carmina.  It’s the story of a clever woman who outwits the king in a most kind and loving way.  It was the hit of the evening for us – because we love Carl Orff and because it was a fun and charming production.

Featured in both productions were outstanding singers; notably Emily Birsan, Soprano, David Govertsen, Bass-baritone, and Bernard Holcomb, Tenor.  These are young talents that we will hear more from as they mature.

But for me, the greatest talent was the Video and Puppet Designer, Sean Cawelti.  The Clever One was staged with three paper rolling screens behind the singers.  These were used for drawing, video projection, cutting apart for entrances and exits, and for shadow puppets.  The interaction of the set with the singers was dynamic and engaging.  Hard to describe, but so effective.  

Emotional void…

DBH and I saw three plays recently – and none of them resonated with us.  Yet most received sterling reviews.  What’s wrong with us - especially after our delight with How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying?

The White Snake

First, we saw The White Snake, produced and directed by Mary Zimmerman.  This woman can create.  She’s a former MacArthur Fellow and now creative director at both The Goodman and Lookingglass Theaters in Chicago.  She usually provides a thrill ride for her audience.  Several years ago, her production of Metamorphosis at Lookingglass brought me to tears as I stood to applaud at the end, it was so stunning.  But White Snake, produced at Goodman (where I feel the stage was too large for such a small production) was flat.  There isn’t much of a story – a Chinese tale about a demon white snake who longs to be human and experience love, and the man who loves her.  Same old, same old.  Lots of Zimmerman stagecraft and panache, but no real heart.  

Cabaret

Then onto to Cabaret, produced by The Citadel Theater Group in Lake Forest.  We love Cabaret, and this is the fourth time we have seen it in two years.  Are we Cabaret-ed out?  No, this play always grabs my heartstrings.  And per usual, the romance between Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz, who have the most lyrical songs and the best voices, did play beautifully.  But Sally Bowles?  Cassie Johnson played her with such an affected accent and no singing voice at all.  Granted Sally is supposed to be a hard case cabaret floozy, but she does have a lot of great song and dance numbers and Cassie didn’t hit the mark with us.  Dominic Rescigno’s Emcee was nuanced, but small.  The Kit Kat girls and boys were suitably sleazy and Citadel did a good job of staging a large production in a very small space.

I wanted the Cabaret production to be mind-blowing.  My two nieces, ages 16 and 13 were with us - their first really adult musical theater.  They both had just studied the Holocaust, so it was appropriate that they see how theater can treat such a tragic subject with music, laughter, respect and awe.  

Exit Strategy

Lastly, we raced to see Exit Strategy, a new play by Ike Holter produced by Jackalope Theater in the depths of the old Armory on North Broadway.  The reviews were stunning.  Focusing on the closing of a Chicago public high school, the characters are five teachers, a vice-principal and a student.  The audience was studded with teachers who laughed and cried throughout the performance.  Maybe you had to be a teacher to love it.  But, neither DBH nor I felt emotionally involved.  That’s the fault of the playwright, who actually used the ghost of a character who kills herself in the first scene to pull the plot development along 2/3 of the way through.  A ghost?  Does this author think he is Shakespeare?  On the other hand, the actors were wonderful.  Unlike a lot of newer plays, Exit Strategy actually makes the actors sustain long scenes of intense emotion and they nailed it.  But the play did not come together into a cohesive emotional build.  In fact the ending (when the bulldozers come) was flat as a pancake for us. 

5900 North Broadway

On a higher note, we discovered a great new restaurant, Broadway Cellars, directly across from the Armory.  DBH had the biggest plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes ever (BP claims to be a comfort food restaurant) and I enjoyed Salad Nicoise with excellent rare tuna.  I snitched a few bites of the mashed potatoes with gravy and they were yummy.  We will return.  

Mad Men - the musical...

DBH and I caught the preview of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at the Porchlight Music Theater in Chicago.  We'd both seen the original production in the early '60s with Robert Morse, Rudy Vallee and Charles Nelson Riley.  And we still enjoy rewatching the movie with Robert Morse and Rudy Vallee. 

Mr. Biggley and J. Pierpont Finch

Porchlight's production was fun, exuberant and malicious.  Just as you would expect if Mad Men was made into a musical comedy.  Everything is played over the top, with songs that had the audience standing and singing along as The Brotherhood of Man wrapped up the performance.  If you follow this blog, you know that musical theater, especially produced in small venues is a favorite of mine.  How to Succeed was produced in a theater seating at most 150, with a thrust stage, so we were wrapped around the actors. 

Rosemary and Finchy

My only nagging comment concerns miking the performers.  The horns and woodwinds, which were also miked, were consistently above the singers.  And to fix the problem, it appeared that the sound designed just made both louder...This is a very small theater.  I would love to hear the production with no mikes, or with sound designed by a technician who understands that louder is usually not better.  

Yummmmmm, this fall Porchlight is mounting Sweeney Todd.  Can't wait to see the bodies fall into the basement and the pies go into the oven while Mrs. Lovett and Toby sing God, That's Good.

A good read for everyone: "The Horse Lover: A Cowboy's Quest to Save the Wild Mustangs" by H. Alan Day

I wasn't prepared to love this book.  OK, horses are beautiful, even the nags that run at Rillito Park here in Tucson.  And, I was raised with a horse (that delighted in biting me) at my grandparents' home in the Ozarks.  But, anyone who loves animals will fall in love with Alan Day and his horses. 

After a few chapters, I thought the book was incorrectly titled.  It should have been "The Mustang Lover", but no, this book is about every horse that Alan Day loved, most of whom he lost.  Day was a big time, successful rancher in Arizona, Nebraska and South Dakota.  Think Sandra Day O'Connor, but she figures not at all in this tale. 

Woven into the horse tales are words of wisdom, strength, endurance and optimism and a more than a few curse words for the Bureau of Land Management.  The ranch hands say, "Cowboy up!" when they face hardship in life and on the trail.  Alan epitomizes that.  His attitudes and actions will be uniquely meaningful to each reader.  Treat yourself to a good read.  Oh, and the book is just the right length, 243 pages.  I could not put it down, so finished it in three sessions.

A Little Gypsy in My Soul

Ethel Merman as Rose

It’s December, 1961.  I’m with my friends, $5 standing room at the back of the American Theater in St. Louis, waiting to see Gypsy.  Right on the aisle and as I glance to my immediate left and there is Ethel Merman waiting for her cue to enter down the aisle.  It doesn’t get much better than this.  

I have delicious early memories of the theater:  Rapunzel at a children’s theater in Kirkwood; then One Touch of Venus with my Mobile aunties to see Ethel Merman and then the next year Call Me Madam with Ethel Merman – both at the magnificent St. Louis Muny Opera.  The aunties were great Ethel fans.  Nothing subtle about their taste in theater.  

We were not a musical family.  Daddy sang, always off key.  Mommy sang, but never more than along with the hymns or the radio.  As the youngest with two brothers, I was raised with America’s Top 40, then Johnny Mathis, the Kingston Trio.  But somewhere along the line, I grew to love musical theater, opera and classical music.  And, through my DBH, to enjoy blues, Portuguese fado, reggae, and lots of great Brazilian music.  

Louise Pitre as Rose

So, even though Saturday morning was spent with stomach flu, I snagged a half-price ticket to the Chicago Shakespeare’s Gypsy, starring Louise Pitre as Rose. What a magnificent show.  It’s a small theater, and I sat in the first row left, singers and dancers almost in my lap.  Was it the flu or the catchy music of Jule Styne and the great lyrics of Sondheim that brought tears to my eyes?  This musical just has one hit after another.   

Moral of the story – take young people to the live theater.  One of my joys is hearing my nieces enthuse about the plays we enjoyed when they were young:  Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, Master Harold and the Boys – but no Ethel Merman…

If you read only two books in 2014…

Rarely have two books had such an influence on my understanding of the New World prior to 1492 and my understanding of the world post 1492. OK, I’m a history geek, but these two books, 1491 and 1493, both written by Charles C. Mann, a journalist, not a historian, are readable, captivating and will expand the boundaries of how you think about many “assumed truths”.

 Here are the complete titles:

1491: New Revelations of the America before Columbus

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

 Don’t purchase or read these books on an electronic reader. They are heavily annotated, have maps and photos, none of which do well on an electronic reader. You need to be able to flip around in the books at will.  1491 has a revised paperback edition published by Vintage in 2006.  This is the one to read as Mann was able to make corrections and add newer research to this edition. 

 Ed and I were fortunate to travel to Peru in 2013. I knew virtually nothing about Peru’s history except Incas, Pizarro, guano, pisco and rape of the jungle.  Oh, does 1491 fill in the gaps of the Indian civilizations.  Not just in Peru, but Cahokia, IL, the eastern seaboard of North America, and, most amazingly the many thriving civilization in MesoAmerica, the lower part of Mexico.  The images that we have from our history books are of Indian cultures that were initially passive, static, easily enslaved or just pushed out of the way.  By going back in archeological history, long before we were taught there were settlements in North and South America, Mann constructs portraits of highly civilized, vibrant cultures with huge cities (Teotihuacan, aka Mexico City, may have been the largest city in the world at its height of power.)  He reconstructs the agriculture necessary to feed the citizens and the agricultural acumen necessary to develop maize, the most influential crop in the world.  The skills needed to develop strains of potatoes and grain that would grow in high and low altitudes, etc. etc. 

 And what decimated the Indian cultures was a combination of wars among various groups, climate changes that led to drought and starvation and ultimately the diseases brought by the Europeans. But, the Indians as a whole were in a severe population decline before the advent of Columbus. 

 1493 illustrates the impact of Columbus’ landing and introduction of New World crops to Europe and beyond as the seminal event in the redevelopment of the Old World and the East. Moreover, the looting of Indian wealth brought to Europe untold riches that enabled them to prosper beyond their wildest imaginations – and with practically no investment of labor or capital. I could go on and on, but read for yourself and enjoy a much more comprehensive understanding of the impact of Christopher Columbus on the world.

Ooop, we did it again - back at the Kit Kat Klub

Our new favorite Tucson theater group, Winding Road, mounted Cabaret - with 12 performers, 6 in the orchestra, on a 30 by 15 foot stage in a theater that seats 100.  They did a great job.  The only props on the stage were two chairs, a typewriter table and a typewriter.  There wasn't room for anything else, and the chairs had to disappear during most of the musical numbers.  This summer we saw The Chicago Light Opera Works do a bang up job of Cabaret in a medium sized theater with a splendid cast.  But intimate theater is it's own reward - no mikes, no place to hide.  As we felt with the Chicago production, the performers who carried the show were Fraulein Schneider, Susan Arnold and Herr Schultz, David Johnson.  Not only are they superb actors, but their voices blended magically.  The ensemble showed the only weaknesses, as two of the females just weren't slutty enough.  The Kit Kat girls are decadent - that's where most of the fun comes from in the production.  Christopher Johnson as the Master of Ceremonies was strong throughout and gave a seminal role his own interpretation.  Please see this show if you are in Tucson. 

Peru Diary - Day 28 - Sept. 23, 2013 - Home at last

Click here to read Day 28.

Peru Diary - Day 27 - Sept. 22, 2013 - Traveling and MORE traveling

Click here to read Day 27.