XL weekend reviews

'Cats,' 'Voices Underwater,' Fiery Furnaces, Dr. Dog

Monday, October 29, 2007

Theater: 'Cats'

"Cats" is an ambitious project for the Georgetown Palace Theatre, but our neighbors to the north are pulling through — and selling out almost as quickly as they can extend their run.

With help from a wide range of new faces for the community theater, including a healthy draw from the local high school pool, the medium-sized stage gets packed full of 20-odd cats for a new production of one of the longest-running musicals in modern theater. But Clifford Butler's direction takes a situation that could be reduced to crowd control and makes it into an enjoyable reproduction.

Some of the full-chorus dance numbers make it seem like the cats could use more elbow room, but they serve to highlight what Butler can do when smaller numbers take the stage. Sam Kokajko and Sara Burke's acrobatic Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer seem to fill up as much space as the rest of the cast, while Richard Dodwell's take on Gus, the ancient theater cat, is sweetly localized and engaging without a crowd. And, of course, Cathie Sheridan's Grizabella controls the stage on her own for her downtrodden story and final, powerful "Memory."

Artistic director Mary Ellen Butler says that this is the beginning of a change for the Palace. If so, that long drive is starting to look a lot more appealing.

"Cats" continues at 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 18 at the Georgetown Palace Theatre, 810 S. Austin Ave., 78626. $8-$20. (512) 869-7469, thegeorgetownpalace.org.

— Joey Seiler

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Theater: 'Voices Underwater'

Salvage Vanguard Theater's "Voices Underwater" is a sublime mix of the physical, mental and emotional.

Abi Basch's new play tells the story of two ghosts and a mixed-race couple trapped in an Alabama plantation home during one rainy night. It's full of esoteric discussions about humanity and history, but also incredible bursts of passion. Hannah Kenah and Sean Tate play the living couple, inheritors of the home and victims of local police aggression. Supposedly Tate's character is the emotionless one, but both speak so objectively and coldly that the final climax holds double strength.

Its direction, from Jenny Larson, has a vocabulary of stilted, repetitive movements, but also athletic, poetic poses. As the long-dead daughter of a Ku Klux Klan leader, Meg Sullivan haunts the gutted attic space designed by Conner Hopkins (who also provides a set of surprising puppets), hanging from rafters and climbing up posts, half-oblivious of the home's current occupants. Robin Grace Thompson, as a wounded Union soldier, is mostly confined to a wheelchair, moving only with Beckettian precision while narrating a series of alliterative epistles. But her final pose, held for what seems like an eternity, evokes in its silence an elegy richer than any of the soldier's letters.

At some points the stilted dialogue and movement feel oblique for modern obliqueness' sake, but there's meaning and emotion underneath, just waiting for the powerful moment to come out.

"Voices Underwater" continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays at Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road. $12-$35, 474-7886, salvagevanguard.org.

— Joey Seiler

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Music: Fiery Furnaces

"Widow City," the Fiery Furnaces' fifth album in as many years, is getting raked over the coals by critics who think Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger's cleverness has run its course, that the brother-and-sister act has become too obsessed with process and not enough with product. A casual spin of the new one might yield as much — the Furnaces' claim that it was conceived with the aid of a Ouija board certainly doesn't help — but on Friday, the first of a two-night stand at Emo's, there was no denying they razzle-dazzled the crowd with the album's idiosyncratic songs.

This was especially apparent on "The Philadelphia Grand Jury," seven-plus minutes of wild and crazy tempo changes that (intentionally) debilitated the song to the point where it would have fallen apart were it not for the crack rhythm section of drummer Bob D'Amico and bassist Jason Loewenstein (formerly of Sebadoh), whose anticipation kick-started it again and again. Their ability to play both with virtuosity and reckless abandon added unfounded dimensions to Matthew's Chamberlin keyboard, from which he summoned a mélange of string, woodwind and brass samples.

But it was Eleanor, the one whose instrument was her voice, who was most compelling. As she unfurled the album's narrative with speed-read versions of "My Egyptian Grammar," "Duplexes of the Dead" and "Ex-Guru," it was important to remember that she's usually wielding a guitar. Without that security blanket on stage, she was vulnerable singing her brother's kooky, novelistic verse about Navajo basketball coaches, a white-haired half Samoan girl from Darwin and an imaginary map of the Manifestations of Murder-Making. Yet despite "Meatballs" staring back at her from the big screen behind the bar, she managed to keep a straight face through all her forced rhymes and nonsequiturs. And if that doesn't show those critics what's what, then Billy Murray's not funny.

— Michael Hoinski

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Music: Dr. Dog

There are plenty of bands around that emulate one or two aspects of the Fab Four well enough to earn the august adjective "Beatlesque." But it's hard to think of many that summon not just John Lennon's thorny melodicism or Paul McCartney's pop splendor, but also the music-hall jollity of Ringo Starr at his most engaging.

At the Parish on Thursday night, Dr. Dog also recalled, at various junctures of varying durations, the Band, the Beach Boys, Squeeze, XTC, Cheap Trick, the Flamin' Groovies and at least a half-dozen other classic pop-rock groups, with a touch of gritty R&B thrown in. The Philadelphia quintet's influences are obvious, but so multifarious, and whisked together with such exuberant abandon, that the result is entirely distinctive.

Dr. Dog generated even brighter energy at the Parish than in its sterling Austin City Limits festival set last month. Fans squashed eagerly together close to the stage, even though the weeknight attendance left room to spread out. The two lead vocalists, bassist Toby Leaman and guitarist Scott McMicken, and guitarist Frank McElroy stomped and sprang around like kids in a birthday-party spacewalk. Keyboardist Zach Miller's face mostly maintained the stoic concentration of a concert pianist, but the whole band radiated loose fun while executing hairpin dynamic turns and tricky syncopation with effortless panache.

McMicken has the purer pop voice, easy and supple, while Leaman's gravelly baritone has a bluesy heft. Leaman's tone was a little frayed around the edges by the end of the night, but he continued to power through even the highest notes with full-throated zest.

Dr. Dog layered its lush, multipart vocal harmonies on songs laden with pop hooks, not just in the singalong choruses but also embedded in the arrangements. Exhilarated fans may have left humming the woozily spiraling guitar riff in "The Pretender," the sparkly keyboard figure in "Old Ways" or the skittering guitar riff in "Worst Trip" just as easily as the tunes themselves.

— Parry Gettelman