XL WEEKEND REVIEW

Demetri Martin, 'Madame Butterfly,' 'The Souls of Our Feet,' '1984,' 'Black Sun: Green Flamingo'

Monday, November 20, 2006

COMEDY

DESPITE GLITCHES, DEADPAN COMIC GETS LIVELY RESPONSE

"This airs Jan. 14," Demetri Martin said at the Comedy Central taping of his concert at the Paramount Theatre Saturday night. "About five minutes of this show will be on it."

Indeed, the first of two shows smacked of a dress rehearsal, as the 32-year-old "Daily Show" correspondent muffed lines, stopped for stage directions and even tuned his guitar midshow. The concert started half an hour late after producers scrambled for a collar mike, which was never loud enough.

When Martin polled the audience about the volume level and heard, resoundingly, that they couldn't hear everything, the deadpan comic said, facing the wings, "That's a slight problem, don't you think? Could I also have a black hood over my head?" Meanwhile, a chair in the audience squeaked loudly whenever its sitter moved, which was whenever she laughed.

"Welcome to the worst comedy special of all time," Martin said at one point. But the youngish crowd — with as many women as men, like a Dane Cook show —adored the mopped-top mope and sprung to a standing ovation when the awkward hour onstage was over.

The hilariously oddball material pulled Martin through, especially when it was on the screen or a large sketch pad like the hipper, Net-savvy offspring of "The Far Side." A slouching slacker, Martin lacks a dynamic stage presence, so, like his predecessors in the wit biz Steven Wright and Mitch Hedberg, he relies on genius droll zingers, stuff you pay to hear because you could never think of it yourself. I mean, did you ever realize that the easier a state is to draw (Utah, Kansas), the harder it is to live there or that the best way to add insult to injury is to write mean things on a cast?

— Michael Corcoran

---

OPERA

'MADAME BUTTERFLY' GETS LIFT FROM SUPERB VOICES

Giacomo Puccini's three-hanky masterpiece "Madame Butterfly" might still be the best-known treatment of an oft-used plot, wherein a gallant but despicable U.S. Navy lieutenant marries a geisha, abandons her, then returns three years later with his American wife and takes the geisha's child to boot, leading the despairing geisha to kill herself. The opening Friday of Austin Lyric Opera's production at Bass Concert Hall was excellent, but it was a "Butterfly" without tears.

Friday's Cio-Cio-San (which, I'm told, is the Japanese word for "butterfly"), Shu-Ying Li, consistently filled the room with full-throttled sound, but not once did she sound or look like a 15- or 18-year-old girl. Derek Taylor's chiseled good looks made him a credible Pinkerton; too bad his strong voice produced basically one sound. Philip Cutlip projected humanity and mounting outrage as the American consul Sharpless. Kathryn Allyn was convincingly Japanese as Cio-Cio-San's devoted servant Suzuki.

Saturday's cast brought some improvement with Jee Hyun Lim in the title role. There was more flexibility in the voice, and she used her face and body to act like a geisha when the singing was less demanding. Pinkerton as portrayed by Eric Fennell was charming and rather thick-headed; his warmly expressive voice, sadly, was barely audible in Bass. David Malis looked and moved like a middle-aged diplomat, though real emotion came into his singing only in the last scene as the catastrophe approached. Tihana Herceg as Suzuki, despite fine singing, looked thoroughly Western.

While the chorus music in "Butterfly" isn't flashy, the ALO Chorus, prepared by Mark David Erck, sounded great; and the orchestra played this deceptively difficult score with excellence. Conductor Richard Buckley again simply made the piece work while providing valuable artistic support to the singers.

— David Mead

---

DANCE

DANCERS LIVE UP TO CHALLENGE OF 'SOULS'

For Tapestry Dance Company, history has as much to do with the present as the past. To honor tap's rich history, Tapestry performed "The Souls of Our Feet" on Friday at St. Stephen's Episcopal School; the show was a collection of demanding, well-danced numbers by tap masters such as the Nicholas Brothers, Charles "Honi" Coles and Cholly Atkins.

The homage took three forms: the return of 20-plus dances to the stage, appearances by tap matriarchs Sarah Petronio and Dianne Walker and, most fleeting but awfully fulfilling, moments where dancers seemed overwhelmed by the talent of their predecessors. When Jason Janas finished "On with the Dance" from the 1937 film "The Varsity Show," then stopped, chest up, and proudly watched John "Bubbles" Sublett and Ford "Buck" Lee dance on the screen at the back of the stage, Janas made the sincerest connection between Tapestry's today and all those tapping yesterdays.

With some dance forms, a wide gap exists between today's virtuosos and dancers from decades past. As Tapestry dancers fly through complicated patterns such as the popular "Fascinatin' Shim Sham" and traditional vaudeville choruses in total unison, the torrent of toes astounds. All the dancers had strong solos too. Katelyn Harris, who portrayed Ginger Rogers with a soft, but feisty air, is an excellent addition to the company.

Petronio's full-bodied jazz flair and Walker's elegance — her toes drop like raindrops— added to the performance. Both used their feet to have conversations with the live jazz trio (Eddy Hobizal, Michael Stevens and Kyle Thompson). The past was great, and the present's pretty good too.

— Clare Croft

---

THEATER

THIS '1984' IS YEARS AWAY FROM NOVEL

In George Orwell's "1984," the fictive government of Oceania regulates every aspect of its citizens' lives, from what they watch on television to what they think. The story, published in 1949, is a dusky warning about what can happen when governments begin to control rather than govern. In today's post-Patriot Act America, some of Orwell's more menacing plot points —governments spying on their citizens in the name of national security, for one — register as uncomfortably prescient. Unfortunately, little to none of the author's ample modern relevance has been conveyed clearly in the Actors' Gang's touring stage version of "1984," which (some might say mercifully) played a one-night engagement at the Paramount Theatre on Friday.

Directed by Tim Robbins (yes, that Tim Robbins) and adapted by Michael Gene Sullivan, the Actors' Gang's "1984" is to Orwell's novel what Django Walker is to his dad, Jerry Jeff: an unfocused, vaguely recognizable imitation of the real thing. Where Orwell's story aroused paranoia and fear, Robbins' production mustered merely the discomfort that comes from sitting in one place for too long. This staling effect resulted largely from the decision to use only one set and tell the story through flashbacks, which, if you hadn't read the book, could have been confusing. At the end of the second act, the noticeably languid audience needed to be prompted to applaud.

Compounding the directorial issues were several casting problems. One particular actor read his lines with the vibrancy of a whale that had been beached for days. Another, Brent Hinkley (as central character Winston), relayed his character's sorrow by truculently scrunching up his face. Someone should have told him that, unlike sponges, faces don't release moisture simply by squeezing them.

—Tommy O'Malley

---

INSTALLATION ART

'FLAMINGO' INSTALLATION FAILS TO TAKE FLIGHT

Cristián Silva's installation, "Black Sun: Green Flamingo," at the Blanton Museum of Art's WorkSpace, consists of two large circular paintings hung on opposite walls. The works mimic Christopher Cross' self-titled (1979) album art, although Silva reconfigures the original front and back covers. Not only does he trim the album's square format to form a round shape and enlarge both images to nearly 10-feet in diameter, but he also inverts several colors.

The mechanizations that power the message seem outdated. The front cover image depicts a teal-green flamingo at dusk rather than a pink one in daylight. In the same vein, the second image shows a black sun instead of a white moon, suggesting an idyllic landscape gone awry.

Sure, the bird represents migration. The dualistic way the paintings relate, like two sides of a coin, is somewhat provocative and together the paintings make a vague statement about crosscultural misconceptions. Yet a good degree of the impact relies on the artist's clever selection of images.

Appropriation can be problematic. If the artist creates something less than revolutionary with the re-used image, sometimes the work appears inauthentic or overly dependent on its visual source. In this "project" space, there are only two technically unexceptional paintings to bear the conceptual weight. Quirkily, the gallery's green lighted "EXIT" sign competes.

("Black Sun: Green Flamingo" continues 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays through Dec. 31. Blanton Museum of Art, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at Congress Avenue. 471-7324.)

— Erin Keever