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November 17, 2008
Review: 'Ophelia' at Blue Theatre
Edgar Allan Poe wrote that “the death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” If that’s so, “Ophelia” gives us poetry five times over. The new work, written and directed by Dustin Wills for Tutto Theatre, gives us five different aspects of Ophelia, makes the audience come to sympathize with or even share Hamlet’s love with each, and then kills her off.
Poe continued that “equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.” That’s certainly true in the original “Hamlet,” where the prince himself hauntingly wails her death in the graveyard, but here the bereaved is Ophelia herself.
That’s both a strength and a weakness. At its lowest, “Ophelia” can seem overly introspective, insidery, and academic, all of which goes with the territory. It’s easy to lose the sense of real relationships and emotions unfolding in the, admittedly clever, allusions to, echoes of, and twists on “Hamlet,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Macbeth,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and more.
At its best it’s just as easy to forget all that and simply watch a young girl, or five, slowly descend into madness on her own.
The play opens ominously. The five Ophelias sit on a starkly white, wooden framed stage, designed by Lisa Laratta , under the boughs of a weeping willow made of tangled ropes and swings that grows, of course, aslant a brook. They dangle their feet, splash each other, and laze about until, sharply, they join in song and spoken word to recite Queen Gertrude’s description of Ophelia’s drowning.
From there the story follows Ophelia as she falls deeper in love with Hamlet, is warned away by her father, and devises a plan to trick him into madness. The plan, though I never could figure out why, is meant to both appease her father and win Hamlet’s heart — letting Ophelia please all the men in her life at the cost of herself.
While the plan itself may not make much sense, though it’s certainly no less confusing than Hamlet’s original device of feigned madness, the presentation is touching. Wills, a stronger director than writer, has an eye for beautiful and poignant scenes, bringing strong performances out of his entire cast.
Sofia Ruiz, as Ophelia in Love, opens the play with charming naivetĂ© and innocence. Each subsequent Ophelia teeters closer to the line between madness and reason, adding conflict to her aspect of the psyche as saner, balancing aspects are removed, until finally all that’s left is Kim Adams’ Ophelia, undone, and a moving rendition of madness set to violin by Emily Tindall as Ophelia, in water.
Gabriel Luna, as both Hamlet and Polonius, offers the male side. While he’s occasionally childish and jokey as Hamlet, Luna retains sincerity and power, particularly in Will’s unique twist on the classic “Get thee to a nunnery.”
Separating most of the Ophelia’s time on stage are dreams of lyrical dances, choreographed by the ensemble. Coming after a scene of high hope and love or one of despair and anger, they offer moments of quiet reflection that set the tone for “Ophelia” as much as any of her conversations.
“Ophelia” as a play may occasionally be more academic than human in its exploration of Ophelia outside of the male-dominated “Hamlet.” As a production, though, it manages, as its lead character struggles to, to balance the head and the heart.
(Joey Seiler is a freelance theater writer and critic.)
(“Ophelia” continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through Nov. 23 at the Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Rd. $12-$15. 927-1118, tuttotheatre.org.)
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Review: 'The Nina Variations' at Dougherty Arts Center
“The Nina Variations” is a sort of quantum Chekhov. It takes one of the most emotionally charged, and unfulfilling, moments of “The Seagull” and proceeds to unpack it, twist it, and turn it around in every way possible. From a literary perspective, it’s enlightening and entertaining. From a human perspective, it’s simply moving.
In “The Seagull,” a diverse group gathers at a lakeside estate, squabbles, and, in various forms, falls in love. Nina, a young actress, is pursued by the brash, young writer Treplev, but follows an older rival, Trigorin, to Moscow. In one of the final scenes, she returns briefly to visit Treplev, they say almost nothing clearly, and she leaves before he shoots himself.
Playwright Steven Dietz now gives the pair some 40-odd variations to try and find the words that Chekhov didn’t give them or, in some instances, explain those that he did.
If you’re not familiar with “The Seagull,” it’s all right. “Nina” provides a brief summary of the relevant highlights complete with charming illustrations. If, like me, you’re not a fan of Chekhov, that’s also fine. Dietz certainly riffs on the Russian’s style at various points, but the wit and emotion is his own.
As the semi-Sisyphean pair Rachel McGinnis and Aaron Hallaway are vibrant. Both are mercurial, to say the least, shifting through variations of emotion and action that seem almost exhaustive. At his heart, though, Hallaway’s Treplev seems nervous, nebbishly intelligent, sad, and a little hopeful. Nina is more bittersweet, alternately laughing and solemnly reminiscing.
However, and it’s a credit to both actors that it works, the characters become both figuratively and, occasionally, literally interchangeable. That’s the spectrum that Dietz provides while plumbing the possibilities of where Chekhov’s scene could have gone, and the pair makes every alternative, whether charming or frightening, seem plausible.
That comes across in the more human moments of the play, where Nina and Treplev seem most real — screaming at, laughing with, and loving each other — more often than in the moments where Dietz breaks the fourth wall. Those can offer witty commentary, including some humorous banter about critics, but they’re less affecting.
The exception is, for me, the most powerful moment of the play. Nina and Treplev dissect Chekhov’s lines, he reading them with only a hint of emotion on top of what’s obviously contained inside and she offering an exegesis of what that Nina might have meant. The simple, blunt, feeling interpretation could make for a successful essay. It would also likely move at least one reader to tears.
Each transition is highlighted by a number projected on the back wall. While at first it seems like some changes come on haphazardly, often silently switching moods mid-conversation, they later serve as punctuation. Director Will Hollis Snider and Dietz flow from long, discursive dialogs where changes may go unnoticed to short scenes made up of only “I love you,” a pause, and a flash of changing numbers that cut off any possibility of a response.
Of course the question left at the end of “The Nina Variations” is whether other scenes might return that possibility or simply come back to the inevitability of a gunshot.
(Joey Seiler is a freelance theater writer and critic.)
(“The Nina Variations” continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Nov. 22 at the Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road. $12-$15. 708-1893, gobotrick.org)
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November 12, 2008
Review: Met Opera's "Damnation of Faust"
NEW YORK — Berlioz’s “Damnation of Faust” vexes as a most dramatic choral and symphonic works that rarely makes it successfully to the opera stage. But the current technology-infused production at the Metropolitan Opera, which had its second show here on Monday night, made innovative opera of it nonetheless.
Working with interactive video designer Holger Forterer, director Robert Lepage, in his Met debut, created an uncanny dreamlike world in which scenic images morph and ripple across screens, the action triggered by the movements of the chorus, orchestra and cast.
A four-tiered scaffold wall subdivided into 24 cubicles by industrial-looking trusses fills the entire stage and serves as the playing field for all the action. Scrims roll over the cubicles to create a larger surface when needed. Projections cast from behind and onto the front.
The effect is a liquid-like visual environment, hallucinatory in feel and cinematic in its pacing. The theatrical effect? There are now bridges between the narrative gaps in Berlioz’s episodic re-telling of Goethe’s “Faust.”
Those bridges drive a live performance that is theatrically wholly engaging. And most of the time, they don’t overwhelm Berlioz’s romantic and complex mix of fantastical flights of fancy and a refined melancholy.
Stained glass cathedral windows kaleidescope gently in and out of different patterns. Soldiers fall gracefully down a grassy embankment only to march perpendicularly up in slow motion again and again, the blades of grass shimmering with every footstep. A lonely library of solitary scholars morphs into a rousing tavern. Méphistophélès, the bass-baritone John Relyea, rows Faust, (tenor Marcello Giordani) across a glassy moonlit lake, only to capsize the boat sending Faust underwater into a surreal acrobatic pas-de-deux with a nymph.
If at times the soaring actors on wires reminded a little too much of Cirque du Soleil, there’s a reason: Lepage is the director of Cirque’s Las Vegas show “Ka.” (Lepage’s Quebec-based multidisciplinary production company, Ex Machina, has a long list of noted theater and film credits as well.) And if at times those acrobatic stylings overwhelmed, there’s also a reason: A little of the artistic conceit of this “Faust” goes a long way.
Still, Lepage’s vision adds just enough to make this “Faust” have the feel of an opera and the look of cinema-inspired performance art.
Conductor James Levine drew a superbly clear and refined sound from the orchestra, keeping things sublime even in the wilder moments, when odd harmonies and blaring moments rattle. Indeed this “Faust” had a beguiling ethereal and cool sound.
As Faust Giordani, while not always vocally even, nevertheless gave an impassioned performance. Sure and commanding Relyea as Méphistophélès projected a successful blend of cunning, romantic charm and power. As Marguerite, Graham brought a restrained richness and soft lyricism to the role.
Under the direction of Donald Palumbo, who rightly garnered ‘bravos’ from the audience, the chorus also exuded a sure, sophisticated and rich sound that deftly made the most Berlioz’s many musical moods.
Critics have often described Berlioz’s creative musical tale as more cinematic than operatic. Perhaps Lepage’s high tech spin has now realized the things Berlioz imagined in his music.
“The Damnation of Faust” will be presented live in HD on Nov. 22 at 12 noon at four Austin area movie theaters: Metropolitan 14, Southpark Meadows, Tinseltown USA Pflugerville, Cinemark Cedar Park and Cinemark Hill Country Galleria . For more information, click here.
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November 10, 2008
Review: 'Fantasmaville' at the Long Center
“Fantasmaville” is a play about ghosts. Unfortunately for a play that can otherwise be charming, funny, and topical, it has a few of its own as well.
“Fantasmaville,” a new project from playwright Raul Garza and Teatro Vivo, focuses on an East Austin neighborhood undergoing gentrification, from a new mixed-race family moving in to defend the traditions to the city pushing a dog park on an empty lot. For the families involved, its less a referendum on economic statuses than cultural and personal histories — at least it’s meant to be.
Tensions run high between Flor, filled with sass and sweetness by Patricia Arredondo, and her mildly estranged daughter Celeste. While Celeste and her gringo husband, Martin, played by Karinna Perez and Chase Wooldridge, epitomize bleeding heart yuppiness, bordering on cliché, other locals like Gustavo and Freddy, laconically drawled out by Donato Rodriguez III and Rupert Reyes, are content to sit in a re-imagined Scoot Inn drinking the day away.
The first half of the play introduces the whole cast of characters, switching mostly easily among them. Stylized animations projected on the back of the stage, loosely connected conversations and monologues, and, of course, an Austin focus give the progression a “Slackers” feel. With some that feel more rambling than ambling, though, that brings the good and bad side of Richard Linklater.
Overall they remain largely enjoyable through the first act, and Garza balances well, switching between domestic conflict, sitcom laughs, bilingual cursing, and simply pleasant vignettes. As the neighborhood begins to clash over the proposed dog park and undercurrents of racism, though, the conversations have a tendency to sound more like formal debates or Socratic dialogs than parts of the building story.
The second half, with its literal ghosts and fixation on the past, exacerbates the situation. “Fantasmaville” becomes more about what has happened than what is happening. The transition gives David Blackwell, as a bigoted white resident of the neighborhood, a chance to shine as he recalls better times, evoking humanity under his bitterness. Sadly, the narrative twist involved in the revisionist reminiscing undercuts the moment.
It’s perhaps appropriate that a story about a community with so many different approaches to life, politics, and culture has so many ups and downs. Fortunately, the warm jokes and conflicted neighborhood still make it worthwhile. And, oh yes, the preachy, life-size racoon spirit guide doesn’t hurt either.
(Joey Seiler is a freelance theater writer in Austin.)
(“Fantasmaville” continues at 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 16 at the Long Center Rollins Studio Theatre, 701 W. Riverside Drive. $14-$18. 474-5664, thelongcenter.org.)
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Review: Dame Edna at the Paramount Theatre
“How do I know, possums, that this theater is so lovely? Because they tried to tear it down.”
Just one of Dame Edna Everage’s many kernels of truth proffered by the self-described giga-star (mega-star seems so plebian). Like nearly everything else articulated by the Melbourne housewife-turned-celebrity in her Austin debut, it was delivered sardonically, ironically or satirically.
And what better pairing than storied performer Barry Humphries (the mensch behind Edna) with the equally storied Paramount Theatre? Humphries performance — the first stop on Dame’s “My First Last Tour” — enacted many of the same dynamics that the theater, built in 1915 as the Majestic, featured during its days as a vaudeville house.
The two-act, two-hourish show presented songs, improv, costume changes, multi-media displays, a talk show, political commentary, floral distribution, ribald humor, a wedding and audience digs. Drawing from today’s headlines, Humphries’ artistic tour de force also referenced life in Austin (Carole Keeton Strayhorn and John Kelso got skewered).
Edna quipped that she recently obtained an African infant “from the same place Madonna shops for hers.” The good Dame also said she sent Sarah Palin an atlas, only to be contacted later by the Alaskan governor because, in looking at the index, she couldn’t find “overseas.”
Humphries debuted another character from his palette of personalities, Sir Les Patterson. The self-described “Australian Ambassador to the U.S.” strode on stage, cocktail in hand, in a mysteriously stained powder blue suit, with some strategically placed padding that would make Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls blush. The would-be love child of Winston Churchill and Lenny Bruce, Patterson’s jokes were decidedly naughty, easily offending the bluenoses and Mrs. Grundys in the packed venue.
In the end, those acquainted with Dame Edna & Company were undoubtedly rewarded. Barry Humphries is a master at his craft. Let’s just pray that Dame Edna stops in Austin for “My Next Last Tour.”
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Review: Austin Lyric Opera's 'Cinderella'
Austin Lyric Opera’s production of Gioacchino Rossini’s La Cenerentola (his treatment of the Cinderella story - cenere is Italian for ashes or cinders) doesn’t have many illogical moments.
Considering that the work being performed in Dell Hall at the Long Center is an Italian opera buffa first performed in 1817 and re-set in early-1930s Hollywood, you should understand the first sentence as a compliment. But you might want to know in advance that Rossini has no pumpkins, nor a clock striking midnight.
This re-set opera is carefully worked out. The sung Italian is conveniently mistranslated in a number of the projected English captions. Ramiro is a movie director, originally a prince, who wants a new actress who is beautiful and sincere to star in his next film. The movie studio, “Palace Pictures,” was originally the prince’s palace. Magnifico, the nasty yet comical stepfather, lives with the stepdaughters in a run-down vaudeville theater. That’s odd. Dandini, Ramiro’s cameriere (originally his manservant), is now his chauffeur.
The staged overture is intelligent, with events and gestures plotted carefully to the shape and rhythm of the music. The captions during the Overture made it feel more like a silent film from Hollywood of the 1920s-which was not the date in the program, but that’s OK.
The entire production was first presented at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City in 2004. Most of the time, the sets, costumes and lighting look marvelous. Only little details bothered, such as Cenerentola’s dress for her audition that looked like a business suit and lacked the pizazz that her gown for the last scene had in spades. Garnett Bruce’s direction got a little busy later in Act I, but the rest was tasteful and well motivated.
The cast is consistently excellent, with voices suited to the style. Sandra Piques Eddy as Cenerentola is a mezzo-soprano with an apparently endless range, warm in the middle and lower registers, yet well-focused at the top. As Ramiro, Michele Angelini’s light tenor was agile, princely, and expressive. John Boehr’s chauffeur was brilliantly sung, and his character had sly fun spoofing his boss while they traded identities. Also top-notch were Kristopher Irmiter as Alidoro, a producer, and Steven Condy as Magnifico. Thanks to conductor Robert Tweten’s lightning pace, you’ll hear where Gilbert and Sullivan got the idea for patter.
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November 3, 2008
Review: KDH Dance Company
Dancers can do a lot of pirouettes in 10 years. KDH Dance Company showed off a decade of dancing wares Saturday at CafĂ© Dance. The performance begins a month-long celebration of the company’s 10th anniversary, which includes CafĂ© Dance shows for the next two Saturdays at 6 and 8 pm.
The evening traced KDH’s repertory from 1999 to the present, an intriguing time travel through the company and director Kathy Dunn Hamrick’s shifting aesthetics. “So Close,” the first work Hamrick ever made for the company, was more aggressive than more recent pieces, which tend to be softer, more gentle.
Part of KDH’s ongoing success derives from dedication to hiring dancers and providing classes for them. Saturday’s entire cast displayed the ability that makes KDH performances so consistently lovely and loving: dancers use their entire bodies — every fingertip dances. Shari Brown had a standout evening Saturday. In “So Close” she was strong, but quick, inflecting the piece with a sense of danger. In evening opener “Co-Conspirator,” Brown found angles in the looping circles of a solo choreographed by KDH associate director Kate Warren, the only piece on the program not choreographed by Hamrick.
Much KDH work has more mood than story, but “The Bystander” suggests a loose narrative. Five dancers sometimes care for, other times dismiss, and sometimes actually step on Roxanne Gage, who is finally left standing alone, arm outstretched. The gesture resonates with the memory of the other dancers, who repeatedly entered with one arm similarly stretched out, but with the other arm wrapped over it, holding back help.
(KDH Dance Company performs dances from its first 10 years at 6 and 8 p.m. Saturday and Nov. 15. Café Dance, 3307 Hancock Drive. $10. www.kdhdance.com; 934-1082)
(Clare Croft is a freelance critic who reviews dance for the American-Statesman.)
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October 27, 2008
Review: Round Rock Symphony Orchestra
If it wasn’t exactly auspicious, the debut of the new Round Rock Symphony Saturday night at First United Methodist Church was at least a commendable effort that resulted in an able though not perfect production.
About 300 turned out to hear the new non-profit 40-member professional orchestra — Round Rock’s first — give a concert of lush, pretty Romantic-era symphonic pieces.
Led by music director Silas Nathaniel Huff (also one of the organization’s founders), the orchestra started Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides with a certain timidity, the horns entering the first few times with a nervous wobble in pitch. Eventually, the ensemble got its footing, but still never seemed to quite settle into the piece with full confidence and conviction.
The violins struggled with the quieter sections of Wagner’s gentle Siegfried Idyll, not always staying on pitch. A relatively intimate piece compared to the rest of Wagner’s oeuvre, the Idyll is a spaciously romantic musical poem of sorts, Waqner’s symphonic birthday greeting to his wife. But — perhaps in an effort to entertain? — the Round Rock Symphony’s presentation was accompanied by a slide show featuring the work of wedding photographer, Roy Allen Stagg, an orchestra donor. Rather than add artistically to the understanding and experience of Wagner’s music, the slide show proved a bad distraction and just an advertisement for Stagg.
The orchestra re-couped its dignity with Schubert’s Italian Overture giving it a lively if not fully spirited rendition, though its hard to say if that was because of timidity or a certain directorial passivity.
After intermission, the orchestra was joined by the Round Rock Rock Community Choir, pianist Brett Bachus and six vocal soloists for Beethoven’s sweeping Choral Fantasy. Bachus brought on an invigorating flare, the first real fire of the evening, as did the vocal soloists (sopranos Elizabeth Schwab-Fike and Amy Mathews-Muttwill, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Petillot, tenor Scott Blackshire, baritone Bryan Bolzenthal and bass C. Houston Hill) who performed with confidence and clarity. And that energy made for a finale that had some flourish and flare.
While certainly commodious, the First United Methodist Church has perfectly decent though not super sharp and dynamic acoustics. The result — at times, the orchestra sounded ever so slightly muffled.
It’s admirable that those behind the Round Rock Symphony have the desire to start a new professional orchestra. Certainly, it bodes well for the entire greater metropolitan area that new professional arts groups find the means — or at least the interest — to launch.
The next step? Amping up the gusto and finesse.
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Review: 'Hansel and Gretel'
Composer Engelbert Humperdinck (not the pop star Engelbert Humperdinck) and his librettist explicitly designed their opera ‘Hansel and Gretel’ for an audience with children. Like a brand clearly carved into all the gates of a ranch, a musical proverb is sung near the start and at the very end of the piece like an inscription: When we’re in trouble, God helps us.
It’s one thing to be in the forest at night and afraid of the dark. Hansel and Gretel are helped through the night by 14 guardian angels, a sandman, and a dew fairy (I admit, it’s a curious mixture of Christian and pagan beings, but they’re all on our side). In the morning light the children face real evil, a witch who bakes children into gingerbread. Now it’s their wits that save them.
So what happens when Richard M. Isackes, director and designer of the production in performance by the University of Texas’ Butler Opera Center, systematically inverts the entire moral order of the world in which this piece takes place? The various ministering spirits become bag ladies, complete with a pair of grocery carts, and the same bag ladies return in the last scene as the gingerbread children. Economic, yet illogical. The witch is visible overseeing the action at the opening and — explain this, please — at the end, AFTER she has been baked in her own oven. (That means that evil wins in the end, doesn’t it?)
As a visual experience, this forest is some sort of dystopia, a collection of objects, a few of which can be seen to serve a purpose in the story. But light and dark are really important in this story, and nightfall comes only AFTER the sandman has put the children to sleep.
Unlike other elements of this production, the musical elements are quite good. Let the record show that the Witch was portrayed by a mezzo-soprano, obeying the composer and contrary to the vile American habit of using a tenor. George Garrett Keast, conducting his third production at UT and a kind of principal guest conductor, draws a rich, full tone from the orchestra. Particularly on Friday evening, he was able to pull back into line players and singers who fell victim to opening night jitters.
David Mead is a classical music freelance critic for the American-Statesman.
‘Hansel and Gretel’ continues at 8 p.m Oct. 31 and 7 p.m. Nov. 2 at McCullough Theatre, 23rd St. and Robert Dedman Dr., UT campus. $20 general public; $17 UT faculty/staff and seniors; $10 students. www.utpac.org
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Review: Ballet Austin and 'Episodes'
Ballet Austin has a knack for choosing good bedfellows. Working with Washington company the Suzanne Farrell Ballet elevated the company’s dancers and brought a rarely seen, but important dance work to Austin audiences. The company’s season opener Friday at the Long Center featured George Balanchine’s 1959 ballet “Episodes,” reconstructed in partnership with Farrell and her company. The dancing, like the ballet, was clean, clear, and smart. (The season opening program also included Artistic Director Stephen Mills’ premiere “Liminal Glam” and Twyla Tharp’s “Nine Sinatra Songs.”)
Balanchine built “Episodes” from intelligent couplings, too. Originally the ballet had two sections: the former choreographed by modern dance matriarch Martha Graham and the latter by Balanchine.
Musically Balanchine paired the sparse dissonance of Anton Webern with the lush baroque of Bach, arranged by Webern, and played this weekend by the Austin Symphony. Graham’s portions of “Episodes” lasted only two years, but what remained — Balanchine plus Webern and Bach — feels like a revelation, a palate cleanser of ballet.
“Episodes” featured dancers from Ballet Austin and Farrell. Ballet Austin’s Ashley Lynn and Paul Michael Bloodgood were excellent in the ballet’s first section, “Symphony,” which turns an investigative eye to the body’s joints, exploring how limbs move. The leads, accompanied by a corps that included Austin’s Orlando Canova and Christopher Swaim, suddenly break their legs at the knee or the ankle. Then Lynn and Bloodgood move on to the hips; he holds her as she swings her legs in ever-widening circles. Individual bodies break into pieces and then reform into coherent wholes as Webern’s equally segmented “Symphony Op. 21” spits notes into the air. Knees bend. A triangle tinkles. They connect.
If “Symphony” assembled the body, “Episodes” second movement assembled a couple. Austin’s Allisyn Paino and Farrell’s Momchil Mladenov play with moving together, rarely to graceful effect. Paino has had so many comedic roles in various Ballet Austin programs, and she is funny here, too. But it is not a character that makes her funny, but rather the placement of her body against Mladenov. The dancers take full advantage of the choreography’s intended awkwardness, coming together like the pieces of an old jigsaw puzzle. They fit together, but not so cleanly that the lines between them disappear. “Episodes” final sections, “Concerto” and “Ricercata,” feature Farrell dancers as the leads, though some of the most beautiful work comes from “Ricercata’s” corps, which included many Ballet Austin dancers.
Six women stand frozen for the ballet’s beginning, then start a series of arm and leg movements, visually and kinetically layered over the rest of the corps, who are on their knees, extending and circling their arms and legs. Bach’s music buoys Balanchine’s simplicity, and “Episodes” threatens a pleasurable overflow. All the pieces of Webern and Balanchine get added together, the precision of arms and legs in unison or in canon suddenly offer emotional sustenance.
Clare Croft is a dance freelance critic for the American-Statesman.
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October 13, 2008
BAM Festival review: 'Viva La Diva'
Pro Arts Collective spread its reach far with this year’s Black Arts Movement Festival. And Sunday’s “Viva La Diva” concert at Huston Tillotson University proved that. The impressive recital by three up-and-coming opera singers broadened BAM Festival’s reach into the classical fine arts.
Mezzo-soprano Lori Brown-Mirabal, soprano Othalie Graham and contralto Judith Skinner drew progressively more rousing shouts of ‘bravo’ from the audience Sunday as they presented a very tight and polished program of well-known arias and songs.
The trio started the program together with a lovely interpretation of the traditional gospel hymn “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” before rotating through their individual repertoire.
Skinner stood out, making a sure-fire first impression with the dramatic “Re dell Abisso” from Verdi’s “Ballo in maschera,” her voice rich and mellifluous. She later returned for a sensitive rendition of “The Feeling We Once Had” from the 1970s musical “The Wiz” only to later finish the first half of the program with stirring and almost fierce-sounding a capella version of the hymn “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?”
In the program’s second half, Skinner again demonstrated her ample artistic range with another Verdi aria (“Stride la Vampa” from “Il Travatore”) followed later by an utterly scintillating presentation of “Afraid, Am I Afraid” from Menotti’s histrionic 1946 opera “The Medium.”
Brown-Mirabal garnered the first of the afternoon’s calls of “bravo” with her graceful yet spirited handling of the “Habanera” from Bizet’s “Carmen.” Later, Brown-Mirabal impressed again with a nuanced “My Man’s Gone” from “Porgy and Bess,” deftly handling the song’s jazzy dramatics.
Graham impressed with her sheer volume, if not always the control of tone, especially on “Dich tuere halle” Wagner’s “Tannhauser” and again on ‘in Questa Reggia” from Puccini’s “Turandot.”
As they began, the trio finished together, this time with a heartfelt and humorous version of “Scandalize My Name” that even allowed accompanist Eldon Little to get on the spirited call-and-response.
The audience demanded an encore from the singers. But unfortunately it seems planning didn’t permit for that. Still, it was clear sign that Pro Arts inclusion of opera and classical music struck a high note with their audience.
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Review: 'Casket of Passing Fancy'
You know you’re in for something different when you’re handed a legal release form along with your program, and Rubber Repertory’s “The Casket of Passing Fancy” is definitely that.
As you walk into the Blue Theatre, you’re funneled into a tight, closed space. Set designer Anne Marie Gordon has turned a small fraction of the theater into a parlor that, with its arm chairs, tables and board games, would feel homey if you hadn’t just promised not to hold your hosts responsible for physical or emotional damages. The back walls, filled with files and plastic tubs of props, holds out the promise for even more variety.
The premise of the event is that the Duchess, played by Jennifer Underwood, will offer the audience a series of opportunities, drawn as cards from her casket. Each audience member will choose one. Once you’ve chosen your offer, it’s fulfilled, and you leave the theater. The offer will never be made again. Not only is each performance guaranteed to be different, each viewer’s experience is as well.
The tone is set consistently, though, by an opening song from the Duchess’ servants, rotating through an open window with blankly cheerful faces, and a monologue from Underwood herself on the nature of pleasure. “I do everything in my power to make them happy,” she says of those she meets, “and yet…. And yet.”
That seems to be the underlying theme of “Casket.” A buffet of choices await you, each offering a chance at happiness or at least passing fancy, but you choose only once. And your choice may not always live up to expectations — of course sometimes it exceeds them.
A notion of fleeting fancy carries a bittersweet tone, and Underwood exemplifies it. When the offer to become her fourth husband — or first wife — came and went with no one jumping at the chance, the Duchess merely sighed, lingered with her card in the air, and tossed it into the recycling pile. When a member of the audience chose to see indoor fireworks, an experience that was shared with the rest of us, Underwood beamed gleefulness.
The options carry on like that, ranging from mundane to spicy to the absurdly bizarre to the unavoidably poignant. The choice to watch a “daring display of love and invulnerability” gives off the sense that you’re living in a fairy tale told by Jonathan Safran Foer, all piquance and heartstrings. Others, like the option to “poop your pants,” which went unchosen, seem designed to either pluck at taboos or childish goofiness.
It’s an idea that’s beautiful in concept and in the descriptions from the troupe and the Duchess. In practice, there are moments of potential revelation and true joyfulness, but also shy awkwardness and a feeling that you should push yourself toward seizing delight. Regardless, it’s a truly unique experience, and that’s a fancy worth seizing on. But watch out, because “The Casket of Passing Fancy” is bit like life: the longer you wait, the fewer your options.
(Joey Seiler is a freelance theater reviewer and writer.)
(“The Casket of Passing Fancy” continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through Nov. 1 at the Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road. $15-$25.1-800-838-3006, rubberrep.org.)
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Review: 'So You Think You Can Dance'
More people may be watching dance today than have since the so-called 1970s “dance boom.” It’s just that all those dance fans aren’t necessarily making it to the theater. They get all the dance they want on television. This burgeoning dance audience left the living room’s safety Sunday for Austin’s Erwin Center to see the “So You Think You Can Dance” tour, the live version of the popular TV show featuring 13 dancers from season four.
The evening worked on a “best of” format, including snippets from the TV show, last season’s favorite dances, and spoken introductions from the dancers, who tried very hard to be funny.
Choreographically a few pieces stood out. Mia Michael gave season runner-up Twitch (Stephen Boss) intense duets built from sensitively phrased choreography. As Twitch and Kherington Payne slid down a tilted bed, Twitch’s bare chest sank and expanded, displaying emotion without too much melodrama. Mark Kanemura’s turn to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” had more musical dynamics than most. Kanemura understands how to use different parts of his body as the initiation for movement, drawing attention to something other than big tricks, the jumps, turns, and high kicks packed in elsewhere. Katee Shean, the season’s top female winner, also practices nuance in her choices.
Where the television show prizes versatility, on tour dancers can showcase specialties. In a solo and in Tabitha and Napoleon D’Umo’s duet to “Party People,” Comfort Fedoke displayed the fluidity and groundedness that makes good female hip-hop dancers captivating.
Despite performance and choreographic innovations, the touring show revolves around some painful clichĂ©s. The first time hip-hop was highlighted, the dancers, Boss and Payne, performed as escaped convicts. Dancers like Fedoke and winner Joshua Allen prove that hip-hop represents a much larger spectrum of culture than delinquency. And then there was Gev Manoukian, the Russian/Armenian b-boy from Utah. During a segment about the range of dances on the show, Gev continually appears in dresses to be mocked by his peers for his gender transgression. Gev ostensibly dons the dresses to woo dancer Courtney Galiano, so the cross-dressing, peer mocking, and girl chasing unfold in a familiar story: men should be masculine and women should be feminine. And don’t worry living room audience, he might be wearing a dress, but he’s chasing a girl — he’s not gay.
With such a diverse cast, artistically and culturally, the show could be so much more than another way to fill in familiar stereotypes.
(Clare Croft is a freelance dance and theater critic.)
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BAM Festival reviews: 'No Boundaries' and 'Delta Rhapsody'
Historically black women have had to fight for control over how their bodies and their lives get written into history. Two shows presented in Pro Arts Black Arts Movement Festival — Gesel Mason’s “No Boundaries” and Nadine Mozon’s “Delta Rhapsody” — helped bring black women and their bodies into view on their own terms.
The range of choreography in Mason’s show last week at AustinVentures Theater works to explode any easy categories of “black dance.” Two pieces, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s “Bent” and Reggie Wilson’s “Seeline ‘oman,” rewrite bits of history, but from different directions. In “Bent,” Mason first appears in silhouette, an Afro wig and bellbottoms rewind time.
Dancing a breakdown, Mason slouches, settles into her torso, then reaches out. Partnered with George Clinton’s “Maggot Brain,” “Bent” returns blackness to hippie counterculture, a historical moment too often literally whitewashed.
Wilson takes one of culture’s most frequent references to African American life, the spiritual, and places it in a broader context. There is no Alvin Ailey here. “Seeline” begins with Bessie Smith, but the Abyssinian Baptist Gospel Choir overtakes her. A female soloist’s voice burst upward; Mason walks, pushing a grocery cart or skimming a small wave — a series of arm dances. The voice hurls upward: Mason changes clothes, puts on make-up. Tiny dances of labor and life undo the fixation on the scream, the outburst, the ecstasy of the African American spiritual. Later, on a darker stage, Mason will do the space-eating movement the wail called for earlier, but in the dimness, the openness in the middle of a circle of candles resonates more. Still not everything can be seen.
David Rousseve’s “JumpBroom” deserves a review all its own, as it connects the lynching of a black woman after trying to marry her slave husband to a lesbian couple’s halted attempt to marry today. First Mason swings limp and twitching from an unseen rope, and then crawls across the stage, feet bound, reaching for another woman’s sleeping body. As the two stories are told by recorded voices, the impact of words on bodies, laws on bodies, creeps into the theater.
In “Delta Rhapsody” Saturday at the Off Center, Nadine Mozon, as the campy cabaret performer Delta, gives everything and more. Mozon, who wrote and performed the show (Madge Darlington directed), arrives in a flurry of white feathers — a white boa is Delta’s favorite prop. Mozon plays deftly with her words, her stage environment, and her audience. Delta’s monologues, half earnest self-help, half poetry, make theater through their attention to rhythm. Mozon knows when to let words flow and when to make them pitter-patter. As Delta grows increasingly drunk, Mozon’s body spreads out. She sprawls over a wooden stool, and then falls, giving her funniest line from the floor. Looking up through mussed hair, she says, “Well, since I’m here.” The audience laughed uproariously throughout the show, following Mozon on her trip through Delta, from knock-knock jokes to a mid-show reincarnation of a Katrina evacuee Delta met in Omaha. The woman’s story fit a bit oddly into the cabaret act, but Mozon’s portrayal had honesty and specificity in its storytelling.
Both Mozon and Mason shared programs with local performers. In Mason’s show, Houston’s Sandra Organ danced a solo that felt simple in its progress narrative of black life in Houston. Leigh Gaymon-Jones solo was a slow reveal beginning with a backwards walk, climaxing with a turn forward on the floor, limbs unfurling. Almost shy details — a heel drag, foot flexed in reticence — texture the story of a body expanding. The second half of Saturday’s Off Center show featured The Austin Project Performance Company’s “American: love out of context.” (Clare Croft is a freelance dance and theater critic.)
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October 8, 2008
Review: Conspirare's 'Home'
Conspirare scored a home run with “Home” the first concert of its season, performed at various locations last weekend.
Essentially a greatest hits offering from the Grammy-nominated choir led by Craig Hella Johnson, “Home” was also a chance for Conspirare to tighten the show they’ve developed for a PBS special. The show will be taped by Austin’s PBS affiliate KLRU Sunday night at the Long Center in front of a live audience. It’ll be broadcast nationally in March 2009 during PBA’s pledge drive.
So what to show the nation of Conspirare? Many things, but mostly how flexible Johnson and his singers are with such a wide range of musical styles, even though much of “Home” featured the choir’s popular and contemporary repertoire.
Most notably Johnson pulled out his signature technique — the collage effect in which he blends seemingly disparate songs from the classical, traditional and popular repertoires into seamless new musical montages.
Johnson and the Conspirare singers presented one such collage with unfailing perfection Sunday afternoon at the Northwest Hills Methodist Church to a full house. A Motown song, a selection from “Jesus Christ Superstar,” a traditional hymn and a Latin chant became one beautiful musical whole thanks to Johnson’s creative vision. And in a deft example of this ensemble’s considerable artistic range, the choir launched flawlessly from that collage to Samuel Barber’s “Agnus Dei,” the demanding vocal version of his Adagio in G, giving the oft-repeated piece a new delicacy and true emotional sincerity.
Outstanding in the program’s second half was Johnson’s arrangement of Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” — about as breathtakingly pure as song can be interpreted and sung — and “Each Shall Arise,” the third movement from a luminous new piece by Tarik O’Regan, from Conspirare latest CD “Threshold of Night.” Urgent and also joyous, the song captures the joy and tumult that comes from contemplating mortality.
Good news seems to stream endlessly from Conspirare of late. “Threshold of Night,” which features O’Regan’s music, made it to the Billboard’s top ten shortly after its September release and garnered rave reviews.
In June, the company will present a large scale oratorio piece from rising star composer Eric Whitacre — a piece specifically commissioned by Conspirare. After a couple of concerts at the Long Center, Conspirare will use the venue for a recording of Whitacre’s piece, likely the first ever professional recording to make in the Long Center. Talk about a score!
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October 6, 2008
Review: Chaddick Dance Theater
Chaddick Dance Theater has the right name. It is Austin’s newest dance company, but its dancers and choreographer, Cheryl Chaddick, have a flair for acting. Making their Austin debut Friday at Ballet Austin’s Austin Ventures Studio Theater, the Chaddick company got more than a few laughs from a welcoming audience.
The funniest acting and dancing occurred in “Flights from Reality,” as Chaddick and Jim Kelly sat downstage on a couch. A romance novel gave Chaddick sensual respite from boring domesticity: Jim Kelly sitting next to her, moving just enough to eat potato chips and fiddle with a TV remote.
As Chaddick read aloud, two couples, Angie Johnson with Danny Herman and April Mackey with Rocker Verastique, pummeled each other in a parody of bodice-ripping love. Just when it seemed every comic take on straddling and spanking had been found, the women jumped on the men’s backs. As the men spun the women spanked themselves. The choreography became more physical and extravagant, even as the passion in Chaddick’s story subsided. Playing with the distance between bodies and text kept the literal at bay.
The three women of “The Gambit” Mackey, Maia McCoy, and Kristen Studer made clever work of slapstick as they alternated between elegance and coming undone. Each made prissy “I’m putting myself together” gestures, and then battled the rest of their bodies. McCoy had the funniest turn: she took on her chair, winding up pushing her neck through it, and then wearing it like the pearl necklace her character might have preferred earlier in the piece.
Seven women composed the cast of “An Oval Braid,” which felt sensual and clear in its lines. Chika Aluka was an absolute standout. She took every step with full knowledge of how to use her entire body, from her fingertips to her eyes’ focus, in order to create complete, yet kinetic pictures.
The program also included Chaddick’s solo “Bridgeboard,” danced by Kate Warren, and Kathy Dunn Hamrick’s “Six Passing,” a guest appearance by KDH Dance Company.
Clare Croft is American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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Review: Eliot Fisk
Surely I was not the only member of the Austin Classical Guitar Society’s audience who sighed sadly this week upon learning that the advertised duo recital by Eliot Fisk and Angel Romero had become a solo recital by Fisk due to Romero’s temporary inability to travel. These two artists sharing the stage would surely have given us an engaging, exciting performance.
To be sure, a Fisk solo recital isn’t slumming in any sense. He brought his usual kind of program featuring newer compositions for the guitar, numerous of his transcriptions for guitar, and a substantial dessert course of four encores. He constantly stretches himself and his instrument technically, employing what look like painful fingerings on the fret board and exploring ways to sustain more voices and produce more sound — significantly expanding the instrument’s expressive possibilities.
And yet I had to notice, as in Fisk’s previous visit that I attended, wildly fast tempos that became unsteady and led to wrong or smudged notes. These plagued the four Scarlatti sonatas, originally for harpsichord but well-suited to guitar, possibly betraying rushed preparation. It was with George Rochberg’s “American Bouquet” that closed the first half that he really seemed to get the music in his hands and succeeded in bringing to life the suite mostly made up of arrangements of American popular songs, ending with a delightfully raucous blues.
The Spanish composers populating the announced second half (mostly Albéniz and Granados) received more of Fisk’s exuberant, highly colored treatment, with the occasional smudged note and—inexplicably—chords out of tune. HUNH?!
His one announced encore was a sonata movement by Torroba, and I recognized the Prelude from Bach’s Partita in E major for violin. To the end, I had difficulty weighing Fisk’s brilliant artistry against boo-boos that aren’t tolerated from anyone else.
David Mead is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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October 2, 2008
Review: 'Rammed Earth'
Tere O’Connor’s “Rammed Earth” asks lots of questions. What do bodies in motion pick up from the people who sit near them? From the particular building that holds dancing bodies in?
The particular building holding “Rammed Earth” Wednesday (shows continue through Saturday) was Manor’s Richland Hall, a community center over a century old, haunted by hundreds of past social dancers’ bodies, some of whom apparently needed to be warned to leave their spurs outside, one of the prohibitions listed on a sign that hangs on one wall.
“Rammed Earth” takes its name from an ancient building practice, recently returned to popularity by the sustainable architecture movement. Rammed earth construction involves piling and packing earth from the building site to create walls, floors, etc. (Think children building castles on the beach from sand, but with much more durable materials.) Rammed Earth was O’Connor’s experiment with how to make a dance from what’s in a room—a room with a very present audience.
What’s in this room? How am I a part of this dance? What rises into the space for me, as the dancers run by me, their bodies creating wind that chills my cheek? From my seat, one of many strewn throughout the space, I twist to watch, the angle of my seat directing my gaze toward other audience members as often as I see the dancers.
A nervous tingle pervades the space. Squeak, scuff go the dancer’s sneakers, pacing across the Hall’s wooden floor. I cannot see the sneaker-wearers behind me. We are a community where some run, prance, walk, and other stare quizzically, unable to see fully.
“You may move your chairs now,” the dancers tell us.
The dancers rub their hands along the wooden beams that separate the Hall into two dancing areas. Dimming light says, “Look over here.” The four dancers slink along the far wall, bodies seductive, faces blank. The two women tiptoe, hips leading, away from the men. One man beats the other against the wall; the women only notice the violence when the abuser throws himself against the wall with a loud thud. Later the foursome all stands on one leg; torsos slumped, like sleeping flamingos. One man waves his hand, wrist supple; a head five feet away responds. “You may move your chairs now,” the dancers tell us.
I face half the audience; dancers bisect us, starting to move before we finish our migration. In this section, sound feels more important. From speakers we hear something that seems a result of an opera singer becoming a train and then yelling at us. Later a taped monologue ends, asking, “Is a white bear worth seeing? Is it better than a black one?”
In a solo Christopher Williams jumps high, turns fast. (Some sigh in relief: this looks like “dance.”) Williams is beautiful: Nijinsky’s “Spectre de la Rose” in sneakers in a Texas German dance hall.
“You may move your chairs now.”
I am returned to my fellow audience members. Back together, the end is near. The dancers pause in hugs: not squeezing hugs, just a wrapping of the arms, and a tilting of the head. A lone light bulb fades.
Is “Rammed Earth” good? Is it good when dance makes people notice people and think?
‘Rammed Earth’ continues at 8 p.m. Thursday, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Friday, and 2 p.m. Saturday at the Richland Dance Hall, 18312 Cameron Road. Advance tickets are $12-$15. Tickets at the door are $15-$18. 450-0456, www.danceumbrella.com.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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October 1, 2008
Review: 'Always... Patsy Cline'
There’s really only one surprise to Tex-Arts’ current production of ‘Always… Patsy Cline.’ And that’s that such a tight and polished show is squeezed into the back of a storefront space in a nondescript strip mall in suburban Lakeway.
Of course that’s not really a surprise. After all, Tex-Arts is the non-profit organization that for the last three years has brought slick concert versions or fully-staged productions of classic Broadway musicals at the Paramount Theatre. But after not quite attracting the audiences in Austin they had hoped, Tex-Arts founders Todd Dellinger and Robin Lewis have hunkered down in their newly expanded Lakeway digs, home to their quickly growing performing arts youth academy. Now a 50-foot-by-50-foot dance studio and rehearsal hall does double duty as Tex-Arts’ 99-seat black-box theater.
Of course it’s not the venue for the kind of old-school Broadway song-and-dance musical extravaganzas Tex-Arts offered in the past. But ‘Always… Patsy Cline’ isn’t an extravaganza. It’s a sweet, song-filled tribute to the one of the most revered pop vocalists to come out of Nashville. (Created by Houston writer-director Ted Swindley, the show had a successful Off-Broadway run in l997.
The show is based on a true story about Cline’s friendship with a Houston fan and housewife named Louise Seger who befriended the star in a honky-tonk in l961 and continued a correspondence with Cline until the singer’s untimely death in a plane crash in 1963.
Seger (a bubbly Edie Elkjer) tells us her story while Cline (an impressive Selena Rosanbalm) wanders in and out, singing the songs that made her famous — ‘Crazy,’ ‘Walkin’ ‘After Midnight,’ and ‘I Fall To Pieces,’ among many others — or engages in moments of dialogue with Seger.
On a platform running against the back stage wall sits the six-piece Texas swing band, for this production dubbed ‘The Bodacious Bobcats.’
It’s the quality of the music that makes this show. With a band made up of some of the most seasoned and smart Texas swing musicians on the Austin scene, the little Tex-Arts venue rocks as good as any honky-tonk (musical direction is by Lyn Koening). And Rosanbalm does an impressive job of channeling Cline, capturing the singer’s full-throated huskiness and down-home yet feisty spirit throughout the vocally demanding two-hour show.
Tex-Arts’ ‘Always… Patsy Cline’ is a tight little show with a big voice deftly shoe-horned into the most un-theatrical of theater venues.
Selena Rosanbalm as Patsy Cline.
‘Always… Patsy Cline’ continues 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Oct. 12. Tex-Arts Keller Williams Studio, 2300 Lohmann’s Spur, Lakeway. $30-$40. www.tex-arts.org.