Monthly Archives: December 2022

JazzArts Sweetens Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite With Jazzy Elzy Choreography

Review: Ellington’s Nutcracker at Booth Playhouse

By Perry Tannenbaum

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December 8, 2022, Charlotte, NC – While JFK was campaigning for the White House in 1960, Duke Ellington was out west, arguably having his sweetest year as a bandleader and composer, with an extended stay at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, a festival triumph at Monterey that yielded two albums, and three sweet suites that were released on additional Columbia albums. The Nutcracker Suite marked the first time Ellington and longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn had worked so extensively on adapting and arranging another composer’s music, and the pair did not wait for audience reaction to the Tchaikovsky foray before embarking on a similar project with Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suites No. 1 and 2.

Perhaps sweetest of all was the duo’s original suite, Suite Thursday, inspired by John Steinbeck’s novel, Sweet Thursday, which was set in Monterey. Ellington had played with these homonyms before, wittily naming his 1957 Shakespearean suite Such Sweet Thunder, but after the success of Nutcracker, the wordplay was over: Far East Suite, Latin American Suite, New Orleans Suite, and Togo Brava Suite were albums that announced themselves explicitly.

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Although Ellington’s embrace of classical music and form was obviously a commercial success, his Nutcracker never became the perennial evergreen that Peter Tchaikovsky’s ballet has – with helpful nudges from world-class choreographers and ballerinas. Yet it was still surprising to learn that the current run of Nutcracker Swing performances, presented at Booth Playhouse by JazzArts Charlotte, is an area premiere. One could only grow more puzzled by the delay when trumpeter and musical director Ashlin Parker began tearing into the Duke’s score with an able, self-assured 16-piece band. Very likely, JazzArts had also pondered the popularity gap between the ballet Nutcracker and the big band version, opting to fortify their version with jazzy choreography by the co-founder of the New Orleans Dance Theatre, Lula Elzy, delivered with flair by a sassy 12-member dance troupe.

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Even more lagniappe was added to the front end of this special JazzArts Holiday Edition, before intermission, with appearances by vocalist Dawn Anthony and a quartet of JazzArts All-Star Youth Ensemble musicians. Warm-up songs included a tasty mix of jazz standards, including Richard Rodgers’ “My Favorite Things” and Ellington’s “C Jam Blues,” and a bouquet of holiday fare: vocals on “Someday at Christmas” and “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” a big-band “Christmas Time Is Here,” and Youth Ensemble instrumentals on “O Tannenbaum” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Ensemble’s tenor saxophonist, Gustavo Cruz, and bandmate bassist Lois Majors were nearly as well-received as Anthony’s high-energy singing, and the first appearance of the evening by the dancers made the instrumental from Vince Guaraldi’s Charly Brown Christmas even more endearing.

Parker and his bandmates had already proven their mettle before we reached the Ellington-Strayhorn orchestrations. As soloists, tenor saxophonist Elijah Freeman, altoist David Lail, and Tim Gordon, doubling on alto sax and clarinet, had also excelled. Yet the band’s work on Nutcracker Suite still eclipsed my rising expectations, reminding me why Ellington, before and during the big band era, stuck with Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra as the name of his group.

Ellington always believed that he wrote primarily for orchestra, but he launched his career and his band during the Jazz Age, so he kept the phonograph and the concert hall in mind when he wrote. That’s why most of the earliest jewels in Duke’s crown clocked in at approximately three minutes. The nine segments of Ellington’s Nutcracker barely exceed a half hour, but it’s a hardy concentrate, allowing the aforementioned soloists – and numerous others on the Booth Playhouse stage – to shine and shine again. Hearing this merry music swung live onstage, at sound levels that rose above 90 dB, was astonishing.

The quality of the choreography and the athleticism of the dancers will make it difficult for you to keep track of who is responsible for the instrumental excellence behind them – even when Lail stands up in his red cap and wildly wails. Henry’s work on clarinet is nearly as sensational, and Freeman remains rock solid on tenor. Parker’s rhythm section shines brighter after intermission, earning kudos for pianist Lovell Bradford, bassist Shannon Hoover, and drummer Kobie Watkins, particularly on the sinuous “Chinoiserie.” Elzy’s choreography lifted the excitement even higher, with costume changes for the women between their appearances.

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For the “Toot Toot Tootie Tout (Dance of the Reed Pipes)” segment, appropriately graced by Henry’s clarinet, they entered in cool turquoise dresses glittering with snowflakes, and for “Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy),” they sashayed in from the wings in hot red. The guys, in casual wear before the break, stuck with white shirts and black bowties afterwards, competing with the gals by executing higher leaps and more jivy steps. After they had been challenged by the women in “Sugar Rum” and “Entracte,” the men responded with their finest moves on “The Volga Vouty (Russian Dance).”

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Changing the order from the sequence you can hear on Ellington’s Three Suites album, Parker and company followed with an epic performance of “Arabesque Cookie (Arabian Dance),” the last and longest track. Here the men remained onstage after their triumphant “Volga” stint, surrounding the alluring alpha female, back in flaming red, while Lail blew his most memorable solo of the night. Out of its usual sequence, “Chinoiserie (Chinese Dance)” brought the full company of dancers back to the Booth stage for a rather startling cooldown, but energy built dramatically for the new finale, “Dance of the Floreadores (Waltz of the Flowers),” – loud, flamboyant, and for my money, the most Ellingtonian chart of the evening. Sensory overload was so total that I lost track of all the fine instrumental solos behind the lively dancers.

It Takes Two to Tina

**Review: Tina – The Tina Turner Musical at the Blumenthal PAC**

By Perry Tannenbaum

Open your playbill at Belk Theater to the cast list of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and you’ll find that two women are starring in the title role, Naomi Rodgers and Zurin Villanueva. So the question instantly confronted me: what gives? Not having seen any clarification in the touring show’s signage on the way in, I was on the alert for a pre-show announcement. Sure enough, we heard that tonight we should ready ourselves for Villanueva.

Well before Villanueva made her final exit two hours and 50 minutes later, I could easily understand why Phyllida Lloyd, who also directed the Broadway production, had opted for double-casting. In fact, with all the energy and fire that Villanueva expended on Queen Tina – dancing, shouting, and belting – I was mildly in awe of the fact that Rodgers hadn’t been brought in as a relief singer on opening night. That would have been an acceptable way to preserve our headliner’s fire and energy for her next performance.

Tasked with stringing together two dozen songs with a coherent bio-musical book, playwright Katori Hall glides over the years, toughens Tina, and struggles to make sense of her hardships and her comeback. Compared to The Mountaintop, Hall’s acclaimed MLK drama, this script is hardly even a foothill. Lloyd’s frenetic pacing isn’t exactly helpful to the storytelling, but the wayward Belk sound system, not at all as ceaselessly overbearing as it was last month for Jagged Little Pill, still wasn’t tack sharp at a softer volume.

Maybe that was a blessing in disguise, considering how the garbled lyrics prevented us from scrutinizing the strange, sometimes weird connections between hits like “Private Dancer,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” and “River Deep – Mountain High” and their place in Hall’s storyline.

As Ike Turner, Garrett Turner (no relation) is called upon to intimidate and bully a force of nature. Just about everyone knows about the Queen of Rock and Roll’s humiliating marriage walking into the theater, yet I was still shocked by the explosions of dragon fire (or phlegm) that Turner breathed into Ike. And I marveled at how much dirtier he sounded when he sang Ike’s signature “Rocket 88,” regarded by many as the fountainhead of rock. The edge he brings to his predatory marriage proposal – and his subsequent confrontation with Tina’s lover – is chilling.

The other men who revolve around Tina are also Broadway caliber, including Geoffrey Kidwell as record producer Phil Spector, Zachary Freier-Harrison as manager Roger Davies, and Max Falls as German music exec – and future husband – Erwin Bach. Lael Van Keuren as Rhonda, the small-time road manager who graciously gives way to Roger, is also very fine. Since Bach and Turner are the executive producers here, we can assume that all historical inaccuracies and fabrications have earned their seal of approval.

Tina diehards could have been disappointed only by the rendition of her iconic “Proud Mary,” aborted midway by the singer because Ike had yanked her out of a maternity ward to perform it. The two guys sitting next to me outsmarted themselves by walking out during the curtain calls. They missed out on the reprises of “Nutbush City Limits” and the full “rough” half of “Proud Mary,” where Villanueva, emptying her tank, was even more electrifying than she had been during the show.

One last stunner.

“Sunlight and Solstice” Balances Seasons, Continents, and Testaments

Review: CP Dance Theatre’s Sunlight and Solstice

By Perry Tannenbaum

December 2, 2022, Charlotte, NC – Compared with Charlotte Youth Ballet’s annual production of Tchaikovsky’s beloved Nutcracker, Central Piedmont Dance Theatre’s fall presentation, Sunlight and Solstice, drew only a small fraction of the huge crowd that converged on the CP Community College campus for the second weekend of the 2022 holiday season. Yet the few of us who chose the less-ballyhooed event were rewarded with more new things to see, for Sunlight and Solstice delivered plenty of new choreography in its bouquet of seven dance pieces, and the program was staged at The New Theatre – in the spanking new Parr Center complex. Dance faculty members Clay Daniel and Tracie Chan each created three pieces for the auspicious event, working with their students to synchronize and refine their performances. 2022~Sunlight and Solstice-08

The program closed with a guest appearance from the Chris Thompson Cultural Ensemble, with live singing and drumming by their leader.

Sadly, the newness of the venue was underscored by the fewness of the audience. That increased my admiration for Daniel, who maintained his poise and geniality in handling his hosting chores. Without a printed program in our hands, you could say that Daniel’s intros were godsends, and as our host candidly disclosed, they also spread a convenient veil over the time needed backstage for costume changes between dances. Daniel was no less savvy in choosing his own 2014 settings for Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic to start us off, for they provided a satisfying variety of little nuggets from the 1985 recording while introducing us to a wide swath of CP’s dance corps. Among the ten different vignettes, a couple as brief as 18 or 19 seconds, my favorites were “Bear in There,” “Homework Machine,” and “Monsters I’ve Met,” but all of these were decisively upstaged by “Eight Balloons,” which featured a helium balloon (an unbeatable prop) and an engaging array of dancers and movement. 2022~Sunlight and Solstice-02

My first audition of the New Theatre’s sound system was a letdown after the brilliant impression made by the hall, the seats, and the sightlines. Silverstein’s poems should have been louder and clearer. Even more ominously, the backup music promised by Daniel was rarely audible. Replay at home on Spotify was necessary for me to confirm it was actually there. 2022~Sunlight and Solstice-04

Nor was there instant redemption or revelation when the soundbooth cued up Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre for “Cadence,” the first of two Chan pieces that followed. Impact of the music was tepid rather than electrifying. The men who launched the dance were freer to move around than the more balletic women who came afterward, so the best of the work’s three segments was the last, when both groups joined together and movements emphasized leaps more than en pointe work. “Hannah” was an even more delightful piece, though I refuse to believe that Chan chose the best recording of “Hard-Hearted Hannah” she could find. On the other hand, Chan did choose Aubrey Conrad, her best and most alluring dancer, to portray the Vamp of Savannah, GA. Costumer Emily McCurdy dressed her in a tight, eye-popping red outfit to make sure we noticed. Backups (aged 17-69 as Daniel pointed out) were in slacks, their black tops besprinkled with coppery spangles.

A couple of interestingly varied Daniel pieces ensued, with music by JS Bach and Mark O’Connor. Their titles, Art of the Fugue and Appalachian Waltz, were sufficient to distinguish who composed what. Once again, Daniel’s programming was on-the-money, following the splashy éclat of “Hannah” with a piece for three men – Carson Fullwood, Dawsyn Ransome, and Nicolas Hare – more quietly titled “Prelude.” This agreeable trio also provided Conrad with extra time for a breather as well as the costume change she needed to reappear as the soloist in “Moonlit,” the dreamiest piece of the night. 2022~Sunlight and Solstice-11

The perkiest piece of the night was undoubtedly Chan’s “Winter’s Frolic,” set to three choice cuts by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Or maybe two choice cuts would be more accurate, since the choreographer’s musical taste could be questioned once again when she chose Guaraldi’s take on Beethoven’s “Für Elise” as the middle piece in her three-piece suite – not wintry, not frolicsome, and not typically Guaraldi, with no redeeming Christmas or Halloween spirit. The icy skating motif established by the dancers in “Skating” was stopped cold, thankfully returning with Chan’s finale. Somehow, Conrad managed another costume change to slip in among the six dancers, but it was Rieonna Weldon and Carson Fullwood who were featured.

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Whether it was the African style of clothing Chris Thompson’s dancers wore or the lighting shift behind them from the rich violet of “Winter’s Frolic” to a peachy sunset hue, “Rivers of Babylon” brought on the most sunshine of the evening and reminded us that there are two solstices. With Thomson beating out rhythm on his drum, we could readily feel transported from winter to summer as his three dancers – Micheline Ruffin, Erika Guzman, and Briana Hubbard – moved gracefully onto the brightly-lit stage. Then it all came together as Thompson sang the reggae song: summer meshed with winter, one solstice followed another, and the words of an Old Testament song were sung in the season of the New Testament’s most joyous holiday.

For Alanis Fanatics, “Jagged Little Pill” Is Easy to Swallow

**Review: Jagged Little Pill at Blumenthal PAC**

By Perry Tannenbaum

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Overamped opening nights seem to be a tradition at Belk Theater when Broadway tours hit town, but this week’s JAGGED LITTLE PILL set a new standard, catapulting me out of my seat with the first words of the pre-show announcement – before the onstage band launched into the overture. Things quieted down mercifully after sound levels peaked at 103dB just before intermission, but despite an early lull, Act 2 peaked a couple of times at 104dB as the Alanis Morissette musical climaxed.

Diablo Cody’s stage adaptation of Morissette’s breakthrough Grammy Award album meshes well with those teen-anguished songs and the Belk’s high decibels. Sporting a fresh overload of angst and suffering unimagined by Morissette in 1995, Cody’s book shuttles between three plotlines and eight characters for most of the evening, ostensibly linked by the normal, successful, and well-adjusted Healy family, represented in each of the three stories – and not nearly as happy or well-adjusted as they appear. Heidi Blickenstaff and the North American Touring Company of JAGGED LITTLE PILL_ Photo by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade, 2022

The somewhat disjointed stories are neatly bookended by Christmas letters that sunny matriarch Mary Jane Healy reads to us from her living room. Her first letter, prior to the humility and honesty she will learn during the coming year, whitewashes the Healy family’s struggles, discomforts, and resentments for public consumption. Mary Jane is not truly healing from her car accident earlier in the year with the wholesome aid of herbal essences or natural medicines: she is hooked on prescription Oxycodone and will soon be seeking out the neighborhood drug dealer when her doctors and pharmacist cut off her supply.

Meanwhile, all is not bliss in the Healy marriage, because husband Steve is working 60 hours at an unfulfilling job, spurned by his pill-popping wife in bed, and turning to porn for solace. Chris Hoch and Heidi Blickenstaff in the North American Tour of JAGGED LITTLE PILL - photo by Matthew Murphy, Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade, 2022

MJ can be justifiably proud of her kids, whom Steve has done more to support than to father. Nick, the eldest, has just earned early admission into Harvard, a fabulous achievement he is not as excited about as his parents. Like his exemplary mom, he feels the pressure to be perfect – and remain the best thing she’s ever done.

Bisexual and African-American in a lily-white Connecticut town, young Frankie is obviously an adopted child, yet she remains the most normal of the Healys despite the dogged colorblindness of her parents, her brother, and her community. She already has a girlfriend that she’s keeping secret from her family, and just before Christmas break, Frankie attracts a new boyfriend in their creative writing class.

Frankie is an earnest rebel at first, in search of a cause. Her social consciousness leads her to spearhead a campaign to give out free tampons at her high school. The protest placards we see in Act 1 can be pretty droll. Jade McLeod and Lauren Chanel in the North American Tour of JAGGED LITTLE PILL - photo by Matthew Murphy, Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade, 2022

Amid this underwhelming welter of decadence and angst, it’s the jilted girlfriend, Jo, who has the best reasons to feel aggrieved, upstaging the Healys and torching some choice vocals. Condemned by her Evangelical mom for her sexuality, obliged to keep her relationship a secret from Frankie’s parents, and thrown over for this upstart Phoenix guy just because he defends her writing in class, Jo is the twitchiest and most upset in her set. Topping all that, Jo is dragged to a Christmas Eve service by her pious mom while Phoenix puts his moves on Frankie at the school party.

All of these indignities set Jo afire amid this otherwise humdrum scenario. What sets it all ablaze is the febrile stage direction of Diane Paulus and the trembling all-shook-up movement and choreography of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Every surreal sight and unmotivated tremor is further whipped to a frenzy by Morisette’s music and the overamped vocalists, often unintelligible in their cries and wails. Unless you’re moving furniture to the wings, no member of this cast makes an exit without a hugely melodramatic gesture of anger or frustration. (L to R) Heidi Blickenstaff, Allison Sheppard and Jena VanElslander in the North American Tour of JAGGED LITTLE PILL_ Photo by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade, 2022

For all the Morissette fanatics who filled the Belk to its topmost balcony, all this excess, performed with gusto and bravura, was nirvana. You would have thought, with a title like Jagged Little Pill and all the enthusiasm greeting it, that we were watching a devastating denunciation of adult hypocrisy, rampant drug culture, industrial greed, and the onset of environmental catastrophe rather than much ado about nothing.

Until the Christmas party. This is where Cody finds a dramatic core to her script and adds two key dramatis personae, a rapist and his victim. As a result, Nick proves to be very imperfect, disagreeing with both his sister and MJ in his initial reactions to the assault. After meeting with Bella, the rape victim, Frankie now has a substantial cause to crusade for. Nick must decide whether to break with his rich best friend, Andrew, who perpetrated the rape and snapped the humiliating photos that are being texted during the Christmas break. Allison Sheppard and the North American Touring Company of JAGGED LITTLE PILL_ Photo by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade, 2022

Wishing to protect her son’s future, MJ sides against Frankie, but her impregnable pill-fed armor begins to crack. She will begin some long overdue introspection and face up to her past. Poof, Cody’s chimerical soufflé of universal discontent will mostly deflate before MJ composes her next Christmas card.

Duke grad Heidi Blickenstaff shows us how – and why – she won the lead role of Mary Jane on Broadway after the COVID hiatus, bringing us an affecting mix of maternal warmth, diligence, cluelessness, and neurosis. Paired with Chris Hoch as a decidedly corporate-looking Steve, Blickenstaff as MJ struck me at times as somewhat surreal delving with her partner into the marrow of Morissette’s songbook.

Here the wildly enthusiastic audience was helpful in reminding me that the Healy parents, though clearly older than the 19-year-old or 20-something who wrote most of their lyrics, are younger than Morissette is now – like so many of us in the roaring crowd listening to their anguish. And it’s also helpful that they both yearn so earnestly to recapture and redeem their past. Lauren Chanel and the company of the North American Tour of JAGGED LITTLE PILL - photo by Matthew Murphy, Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade, 2022

Dillon Klena and Lauren Chanel are marvelously mismatched as the siblings, Chanel as Frankie making the abrupt voyage from Connecticut to Greenwich Village in an effortless manner hard to imagine for Klena as the preppy elder brother. Both of these sustained presences, especially Nick, are upstaged by the more seriously aggrieved teens, Jade McLeod as the raffish Jo and Allison Sheppard as the flirtatious Bella.

McLeod pours their renegade voltage into two of Jo’s prime cuts from Little Pill, “Hand in My Pocket” and “You Oughta Know,” as well as the subsequently revealed phantom cut from that album, “Your House,” when they reveal their nasty side. Underscoring the best craftsmanship that went into updating the Morissette playlist with fresh #MeToo flavoring, Sheppard draws two new songs. “Predator” was released by Alanis as a single in 2021, two years after the JAGGED LITTLE PILL cast album came out, and she has never recorded “No,” an overtly didactic song penned by Guy Sigsworth.

Sheppard makes both of these late additions fit seamlessly into the musical as she grabs much of the spotlight after intermission. But she’s also fine in Bella’s first interactions with Frankie and Jo, accepting her victimhood with a nicely calibrated reluctance.

My suspicion is that while Bella ascended in prominence as this musical’s creative team tinkered with their handiwork, Phoenix and Andrew lost ground. Jason Goldstein as Andrew hardly utters a word, let alone sings one, after giving our story so much impetus by raping and humiliating Bella. If only the evildoers in our politics could be so totally silenced and ignored! Lauren Chanel and Rishi Golani in the North American Tour of JAGGED LITTLE PILL_ Photo by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade, 2022

Perhaps Cody should be tossed from her scriptwriters’ union for neglecting her villain, but I felt we suffered more from the hasty dispatch of Rishi Golani as Phoenix. Golani shines in “Ironic,” his classroom duet with Chanel, and subsequently serves charmingly as the mellow edge of Frankie’s love triangle in “That Would Be Good,” sharply contrasting with the belligerent McLeod.

After fleeing from Frankie’s bedroom, we never really see Golani as the genial Phoenix again. Cody offers us a rather flimsy pretext for the cooldown in their relationship before Golani even gets a chance to weigh in on what happened to Bella. Surely, it’s the talk of the school – and the town, once Bella hits the police station.

So MJ’s valedictory Christmas letter gives us the illusion that all loose ends have been addressed, and Cody ultimately packages Morissette’s hits with the best giftwrap a jukebox musical has gotten since Mamma Mia. It’s more than enough to satisfy Alanis fandom, and it’s a forward-looking attempt that bodes well for a more woke future up on Broadway.