Daily Archives: November 26, 2023

Blow Out the Candles, Bobbie!

Review: Company at Belk Theater

By Perry Tannenbaum

Fifty years can begin to date and dismantle the most meticulously crafted Broadway musical, let alone one originally stitched together from five unrelated sketches by George Furth in 1970. The gilded thread that made COMPANY shine – enough for Furth to win the 1971 Tony Award – was to be found in Stephen Sondheim’s gorgeous music, wedded to his preternaturally insightful lyrics.

Over and over, the cavalcade of wondrous Sondheim’s songs to be found in the opening act alone – including “Sorry-Grateful,” “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” “Have I Got a Gal for You,” “Another Hundred People,” and “Getting Married Today,” – have been covered by three generations of the best singers in the business. As for the end of Act 2, the one-two punch of “The Ladies Who Lunch” and “Being Alive,” two sharply contrasted gems, is arguably the best eleventh-hour combo ever seen on a Broadway stage. Affirmation upstages disillusionment – if it can. No extravagant staging required.

But the book of COMPANY has been a perennial liability. On the one hand, it circles modernistically around a single point in time, Bobby’s 35th birthday, and becomes a study of marriage as he seeks to determine whether he wishes to take the plunge or if he’s ready for it. Trouble is, Furth’s story is superficial. Sitcom deep. We get to the end of Bobby’s spiritual journey without any time having elapsed, without any scene impacting profoundly, and without being sure any scene ever really happened outside of Bobby’s head, dreaming or drunk.

Maybe the best way to treat this problem was the 2006 revival starring Raúl Esparza, which nearly dropped the pretenses of scenery and ordinary storytelling completely as the entire cast played multiple instruments throughout the evening. That production of COMPANY, directed by John Doyle, was more about the performers and the music. Yet the communal togetherness of Bobby’s circle and their marital intimacies were somehow deeply enhanced by their playing as well as singing together.

Directing the newest Broadway revival, now on tour at Belk Theater, Marianne Elliott took a bold new tack: diversifying Bobby’s circle, switching genders, and even remaking one of the couples as gay. Bobbie, nee Robert/Bobby, is now emphatically female, portrayed by Britney Coleman – a peripheral cast member in the Broadway production who also understudied Katrina Lenk in the lead role. Opposite the legendary Patti LuPone.

It all plays rather well, though the superficiality of Furth’s book is probably enhanced rather than diminished. The couples that entertain Bobbie are three notches zanier now in Elliott’s hands, so her friends are no longer drole or slightly poignant. They’re more energetic and eccentric. While Bobbie is wondering whether to plunge into the kinds of couplings her friends are modeling, you might be wondering why Bobbie doesn’t shed the whole bunch. Then ditch the boyfriends. None of the three “Have I Got a Guy for You” admirers stands out as a shining knight who might joyously sweep her away.

Coleman’s role, thin enough for a hero to start with, seems to retain her as an observer, but with the zaniness and eccentricity around her amplified, she also comes off as a bit of a level-headed intruder. Less connected to her more diverse circle. Observing the shenanigans, I guiltily felt more distanced as well. Elliott’s update can be a little off-putting.

Most awkward for Coleman are the two scenes that should be the climaxes in her drama. The showstopping “Marry Me a Little” was added by Sondheim at the end of Act 1 to help us see an arc in Furth’s story, as Bobby sang to a woman who had chickened out of marriage on her wedding day – a partial proposal offered as consolation to the would-be bride that becomes a little epiphany for our hero. Coleman belts it now to a balking gay man, a proposal that can’t even be taken as partial.

The situation is even worse when Bobbie confronts Joanne, in the climactic “Ladies Who Lunch” scene. There was some suspense for me on opening night as that scene approached. How would Elliott restage Joanne’s offer? Sadly, the original had more sting.

So what Elliott does best is freshening the 53-year-old musical, making this Sondheim masterwork seem more like a portrait of life today in New York. In a jolly fashion, Bunny Christie’s scenic design literally belittles the Big Apple’s pretensions, cramping Bobbie into a living room so small that there’s barely enough room for her to squeeze around the wee dinner table. Crouched down with their assorted gifts, waiting to spring their surprise birthday greetings as Bobbie enters, the cheery circle of friends is like a molten mass with barely enough room to breathe.

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Other apartments we see are similarly drab and confined. On the first of Bobbie’s excursions, she visits Kathryn Allison as Sarah, on a strict regimen of exercise and dieting, and James Earl Jones II as her husband Harry, nervously on the wagon. As the couple’s verbal jabs at their mate’s failures at abstinence hit home, escalating into physical martial arts combat, the mid-lifers have nowhere to safely collapse when they’re exhausted other than their couch – on top of their hapless guest.

The scene is a fertile launching pad for “The Little Things You Do Together,” triggered by Judy McLane as Joanne before other couples incongruously intrude – from multiple doors, including Bobby’s little apartment, attached to her hosts’ like adjoining hotel rooms. Of course, Jones II has a marvelous voice as he triggers “Sorry-Grateful,” incongruously joined by two other husbands as the scene fade-dissolves, but his range is higher and his timbre mellower that you might expect. Allison is a very zestful and complementary comedienne onstage, likely unapologetically anti-diet in the real world.

Despite the somewhat clunky aftermath – and Coleman’s inability to be on hand anymore as the couple’s best man – Matt Rodin as Jamie (nee Amy) and Ali Louis Bourzgui as Paul, still on the precipice of marriage, are the most charming and hilarious of all the couples. It doesn’t hurt that Christie’s scenic design reaches one of its zeniths with the couple’s cheery kitchen. Christie’s most radiant Act 1 costume design is reserved for Emma Stratton as The Priest, making her most surreal entrances into “Getting Married Today” through the French doors of the fridge.

A faulty electrical cord sabotaged opening night at Belk Theater, pausing the action twice before intermission so that circuits could be checked and restored. Blumenthal Performing Arts prez Tom Gabbard not only apologized to the crowd but staged an impromptu Q&A with two of the stars, McLane and Tyler Hardwick, who played PJ, the grungiest of Bobby’s frustrated admirers. Soon to excel in “Another Hundred People,” Hardwick charmingly refused to disclose his favorite moment in the show.

Thankfully, everything was shipshape for Act 2. This Charlotte audience stayed with it.

McLane acknowledged that she was following in the footsteps of megastars as Joanne, including the likes of Elaine Stritch, Lynn Redgrave, and LuPone. She wasn’t at all self-effacing as she answered, and she grandly met the challenge of her biggest moment, delivering “The Ladies Who Lunch” with a lounging crescendo of decadence. Draped in another smashing, glittering getup from Christie, McLane personified New York vogue in all its Fifth Avenue complacency. That in turn laid down the gauntlet to Coleman, who belted “Being Alive” out of the park.

Then, on her fourth or fifth attempt, she finally blew out Bobbie’s birthday candles.

“Cavalleria Rusticana” Returns After a Long Absence With a Gently Rebuked “Pagliacci”

Review: Pagliacci With Cavalleria Rusticana @ Opera Carolina

By Perry Tannenbaum

October 28, 2023, Charlotte, NC – Long coupled in double bills around the world, Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci parted ways at Opera Carolina nearly 30 years ago, immediately after the two were finally wed in Charlotte. Until then, the operas had appeared separately or in successive engagements during the seasons of 1957-58, 1969-70, 1974-75, and 1986-87.

The transcendent popularity of Canio’s climactic aria in Pagliacci, “Vesti la giubba,”has given that opera a stronger grip in the repertoire, which accounts for Opera Carolina programming its most recent presentations of the work in 2006 and 2015 in tandem with two other one-acts. Yet the coupling with Cavalleria is very natural, since Leoncavallo wrote his opera in response to seeing Mascagni’s, and the two premieres were almost exactly two years apart.

Natural and convenient, for the current Opera Carolina production, conducted by James Meena and directed by Garnett Bruce, demonstrates how seamlessly two distinctively different works can be fused together – in their casting and design – after thousands of precedents spanning more than a century. We’ve seen greater scenic alterations in most opera productions at Belk Theater than we saw here from designers John Farrell and Michael Baumgarten for this twin-bill.

On stage right, the church façade remained the same, and across on stage left, a boxcar café was discreetly modified at intermission to become a boxcar theater. Between these, projections by Baumgarten could recycle the centerstage backdrop in the blink of an eye. More radical were the costume changes provided by Allison Collins, who reveled in bringing us the harlequin costumes of the Pagliacci clown troupe, and brought a more urban World War 2 flavor to the garb of the townspeople and visiting soldiers on leave.

Although billed on the OpCarolina website as “Pagliacci With Cavalleria Rusticana,”the two operas are presented in chronological order – the right choice if you’re building to a climax at the end of the evening. With extended instrumental sections at the start, Cavalleria isn’t as instantly impactful as Pagliacci, which begins with a member of Leoncavallo’s commedia troupe directly addressing the audience. For a one-act, the exposition of Cavalleria proceeds at a surprisingly glacial pace, all the more reason to be pleased with how beautifully Meena and the Charlotte Symphony perform the bountiful orchestral episodes.

 

We didn’t have to wait until the famous “Vesti la giubba” for the vocal splendor of this production to become manifest. Soprano Barbara Frittoli was already a rising star, soon to debut at the Metropolitan Opera, the last time Cavalleria Rusticana was performed in Charlotte, and now she’s the leading lady in both Cav as Santuzza and Pagliacci as Nedda in her Opera Carolina debut – though Yunah Lee will give her a breather in the Sunday matinee performance of the curtain raiser. Nearly as auspicious, baritone Leo An made his debut as the malevolent Alfio in Cavalleria and reappeared almost immediately as Tonio, the odious clown who greets us after intermission.

These are two marvelous singers, normally filling the quota of marvels we have heard in past years at Belk Theater. But we seemed to be entering a new golden age as the curtain rose on Pagliacci, for those two notables were joined onstage by baritone Nmon Ford as Silvio, Nedda’s secret lover, and Carl Tanner’s long-awaited return to the Belk as Canio, after his 2010 triumphs in Carmen and Otello. Nor did resident company member Jonathan Kaufman sound at all outclassed in the tenor role of Turiddu, the soldier who heartlessly yet helplessly abandons Santuzza for Alfio’s wife, Lola. Likewise, mezzo Julia Woodward held her own as Lola, not at all hindered by a flaming red dress.

Everything is beautifully sung, but it was fascinating to note how Bruce navigates the inevitable changes in attitudes and social norms that have occurred since 1890, when Cavalleria Rusticana premiered. Audiences in 2023 may wonder why Santuzza, seduced by Turiddu, feels unworthy of entering a church on Easter Sunday after the adulterers betrayed her. Bruce inserts some silent business between Frittoli and a stranger that might be interpreted as solicitation, but otherwise, he ignores the question, leaving us to assume that Santuzza’s sin is not getting a marriage proposal before sleeping with Turiddu. On the other hand, Bruce and Tanner must confront the reality that Tonio is not a pitiful cuckold we can empathize with anymore when he cold-bloodedly plots to murder his wife and her lover.

Tanner was a volatile volcano of jealousy almost instantly as Canio, and he didn’t sob the final notes of his signature aria to milk our sympathies. Distancing us further, Bruce took the final words of the evening from Canio and gave them to the sardonic and vengeful Tonio. Even here, political correctness reigns, for our host is no longer hunchbacked or deformed, though the ugliness of Tonio is retained from Leoncavallo’s libretto. Opera Carolina’s Pagliacci is thus cleansed while it is so magnificently sung, no longer asking us to empathize with Canio’s vendetta or assuming that we will connect Tonio’s warped morality with his appearance. Most amazing, perhaps, were the Frittoli-Ford duets, still youthful and sensual. Great music can rejuvenate us all.