Albee’s Fantastic Day at the Beach

Theatre Review: Seascape

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By Perry Tannenbaum

Citizens of the Universe hasn’t announced the full details of its farewell season, but it has begun handsomely at “The Shell,” COTU founder James Cartee’s name for the suite on 2424 N. Davidson St. that CAST occupied in its latter days. The theater spaces where CAST often staged two productions at the same time have both been obliterated, stripped down to the original floors and walls, but the residue proves unexpectedly appropriate as a vast, bleak setting for Edward Albee’s Seascape, directed by S. Wilson Lee.

For awhile, the drama seems to revolve around Nancy and Charlie, a mid-life couple who bicker somewhat lethargically – compared with the titanic battles Albee staged between George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – about what they should do now and in the future. The weak grip this opening had on my attention was further weakened by Kylene T. Edson as Nancy, indistinctly audible when projecting her gripes over across the beach to her husband diagonally downstage. Lee would be advised to either energize Edson during these opening moments or bring her downstage more often.

Luckily, these difficulties evaporate when two ginormous lizards crawl ashore, frightening the humans as they scope them out. Since the sea is upstage, fright not only raises Edson’s energy level, it also drives her naturally toward us where she can be easily heard. Wariness is well-advised, but the lizards, Leslie and Sarah, aren’t foraging for food so much as they are reconnoitering the possibilities of life on land.

Amazingly, Leslie and Sarah speak English, if only the rudimentary kind you would expect from high school freshmen matriculating in Lancaster or Cabarrus County. There’s a lot for Nancy and Charlie to catch the reptiles up on, including the origin of the universe, the primordial soup, evolution, mammals, and the whole concept of emotions, beginning and ending with love. Shuttling between the urge to educate and the impulse to flee in terror, Nancy and Charlie might identify more with teachers in urban school districts.

The spark for this intriguing production comes largely from the extraordinary work Lee elicits from Emmanuel Barbe as Leslie, abetted by the phosphorescent glow of Kenya Davis’s makeup design. I’ve often struggled to penetrate through Barbee’s French accent when he battled against the Bard’s blank verse in Shakespeare Carolina productions. But here he is admirably slowed down by Lee – and often formidably booming. The physicality of him can be menacing enough as he advances toward you, but you really don’t want to broach the possibility that his species might lose their mighty tails during the next billion or so years of evolution. He’s attached to that tail.

By comparison, Brianna Merkel is a cute counterpart for Barbe as Sarah, as adorably clueless when she doesn’t understand concepts – matrimony, pregnancy, the list goes on – as Leslie is frustrated and antagonistic. We see a certain bond forming between Sarah and Nancy, peacemakers trying to calm their mates’ warrior instincts, and it’s here that Edson’s performance begins to blossom.

Brian Amidai is more consistently reliable as Charlie, very adept at the inertia of a husband who doesn’t wish to travel or repeat past adventures. He’s on a beach and just wants to relax, dammit, maybe get lost in a book. But Amidai’s transition between this beach potato and an instinctual protector rings viscerally true, and there’s a faint layer of comedy in the moments when he thinks he’s gone insane or died. Obliquely, I found him cuing my own reactions as this wild, mysterious fantasy unfolded.

Dahl’s “Matilda”: Don’t Mess With Mr. In-Between

By Perry Tannenbaum

We expect a fabulist like Roald Dahl to exaggerate and push reality to extremes, and so it is in Matilda the Musical, Dennis Kelly’s adaptation of Dahl’s book for second-graders-and-up with music by Tim Minchin. Parents either adore their offspring to the point of absurdity, creating a universe where all children are exceptional, or they’re like Matilda’s Mom and Dad, Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, disdainful toward all her prodigious gifts.

Pity is, Dahl’s book was written in 1988, when middle-of-the-roaders ruled the political scene and moderation was a virtue. Dahl was outré back then. But now in a country besotted by the ideas that government can accomplish what is mathematically impossible and that government is an evil that should do nothing whatsoever, Dahl’s exaggerations nearly pale into realism. Adults really are that crazy.

Children who are this bright, luminous, and innocent have walked through such harrowing worlds before. Oliver Twist and Little Orphan Annie may be considered as Matilda’s true ancestors in literature, pop culture, and hit Broadway musicals. Amid the Fagins, the Miss Hannigans, and the Bill Sikeses, there’s always a kindly Nancy or a Grace Farrell to shine rays of hope and sunshine into the gloom. Here it’s Matilda’s first-grade teacher, Miss Honey, who lives under the thumb of the school’s horrific headmistress, Miss Trunchbull.

With the aid of outlandish costumes, the elder Wormwoods will still seem outré to the small fry in the audience, even in 2016. For the rest of us, their disdain for books and their faith in TV as an educational tool are sufficient markers. Dahl hasn’t pushed far enough, however, until he has Dad – a supreme creation of moronic conceit – insisting that Matilda is a boy from the moment she’s born, despite the evidence of her genitalia.

Nor does Dahl mess with nuance when it comes to Trunchbull. The headmistress is a former Olympic medalist in the indelicate sport of the hammer throw, and she revels so much in cruelly punishing unruly students she has designed a torture chamber expressly for that demented purpose. The preternaturally sized harridan is portrayed by the fiercely outsized David Abeles, and even he is augmented by mammaries that runneth over any cups in the county.

The frightfulness of Trunchbull and the blithe disregard of her used-car-salesman dad won’t faze any of the kids who have been baptized in Lemony Snicket, but that really isn’t the worst of this touring production’s baggage. Even on the second night of the run at Belk Theater, most of the kids were unintelligible. You’ll hear them, but what they’re saying is only fitfully comprehensible. The Observer’s review points out that printed copies of the lyrics are available in the street-level lobby, a less practical solution than supertitles when you’re sitting there in the dimly lit theater.

I caught up with the lyrics in the booklet that accompanies the Broadway cast album, which helped me to further appreciate the clever recitation of the alphabet when we reached the “School Song,” circling back to Matilda’s first day at Crunchem Hall Primary School. Even the first part of this song worked for me on a visceral level when I saw the unintelligible elder students scaling the gate to the school like caged animals and snarling at the newcomers about to enter. Yeah, that first day can be scary.

I’m assuming that the Broadway success of Matilda gives the lie to my contention that the show takes too much time to accomplish too little. Compared to the new School of Rock, which we’d seen nearly nine weeks earlier, my wife Sue and I found the kids onstage here less talented – and less molded into a genuine class by evening’s end. Three of Matilda’s classmates briefly pop into the spotlight at various moments, but there’s little rapport developing in the group, let alone camaraderie.

Sitting in the cozier 1460-seat Shubert Theatre in New York, I’d imagine we would have heard the darling children more easily. The lighting is also presumably better up yonder. I could hardly make out a word on Miss Honey’s blackboard in Act 1, which ultimately diminishes the impact of the denouement after intermission.

Three young actresses play the title role, compared with the four who share that responsibility on Broadway, but for some yet-to-be-explained reason Savannah Grace Elmer took over for Sarah McKinley Austin when the curtain rose Tuesday evening on Act 2. Both brought the requisite precocity to the table with a certain amount of British starchiness, just the thing for protagonists trapped in gray primary school uniforms.

So the grownups outshine the kids, cartoonish as most of the important ones are. Looming like an epic soldier from the Trojan War, Abeles is discombobulated enough by little Matilda’s defiance to make “The Trunchbull” a tasty villain. Cassie Silva and Quinn Mattfield as the Wormwoods have even less rapport with each other than Matilda’s classmates, bickering at those rare moments when they even acknowledge one another. Both are loudly colorful in Rob Howell’s costume designs and compete spiritedly for the edge in comical cluelessness.

It’s hard to say whether Stephen Diaz added more to Mom’s stupidity credentials or Dad’s as the mega-sleazy Rudolpho, Mrs. W’s competitive dance partner. Dad seems perfectly oblivious to their sensual tango rehearsals while Mom must miss a competition because a hospital physician informs her that she’s nine months pregnant.

The consoling women in Matilda’s life don’t offer the poor waif much in the way of guidance and wisdom. Obviously, the teacher is sweet: Miss Honey quietly defies The Trunchbull’s disciplinarian philosophy in her classroom, and Jennifer Blood strikes the right balance of timidity and righteousness when she meekly stands up to Trunchbull, advocating on behalf of her own humane pedagogy and Matilda’s special gifts. Ora Jones as Mrs. Phelps, the library lady, is a warm Gypsy-like sounding board for Matilda and a refuge from her absurdly broken home.

Phelps encourages Matilda to spin the story that will ultimately be her salvation. That’s what I like most about Matilda, for Dahl’s story-within-the-story turns out to be a miracle of rare device.

Lady Bracknell Weathers Three Storms

Reviews of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Jon Ecklund (John Worthing) and Lance Beilstein (Algernon Moncrieff) in The Importance of Being Earnest.

They were planning to open The Importance of Being Earnest on January 22 at Theatre Charlotte, where Oscar Wilde’s “Trivial Comedy for Serious People” hadn’t played since 2002. But the snow and sleet that were icing the roads hadn’t begun to melt away on the following evening, so opening night was transformed into an opening Sunday matinee. Even if I had been able to scale my icebound driveway, I was already booked for the opera at Belk Theater.

After all the reshuffling on my iCal, my wife Sue and I were finally able to catch up with Wilde’s menagerie of smart alecks at the second Sunday matinee, nine days after the originally scheduled opening. With so many other reshufflers in the crowd, the Queens Road barn was close to capacity. An extra performance has been slated for 2:30 this Saturday to help out other migrants.

The airy sophistication of Joshua Webb’s set design boded well for the blizzard of bon mots to come, but who were these Ernests opening up the action, Lance Beilstein as the roguish Algernon Moncrieff and Jon Ecklund as the deceitful John Worthing? Beilstein had briefly blipped on my radar last year when he was cast in a stage adaptation of Casablanca that didn’t happen. and Ecklund had never performed on a Charlotte stage before nailing his audition as Wilde’s protagonist.

Yet they instantly established a fine rapport, hinting early on that Algy and Ernest — as John calls himself in London — were not only great friends but kindred spirits.

There was a problem, however, even before the divine ladies arrived. Though their chemistry was sparkling, Beilstein’s cue pickup was razor sharp while Ecklund’s was erratic. Not a symptom you would expect from your lead at the end of your second week.

Ecklund’s symptoms became more serious during the scene change between Acts 2 and 3. In fact, he was taken to the hospital, reportedly suffering from dizziness, and didn’t reappear.

Johnny Hohenstein, who plays John’s butler at his country home, bravely substituted for Ecklund during the final 19 minutes, script in hand. That forced the imperious Lady Bracknell to announce herself when she triumphantly reappeared.

The waters were already troubled in Act 1 when Jill Bloede, amply bustled in a floor-length dress, first floated in like a majestic tugboat as Her Ladyship. It was she and she alone who must approve of Ernest as the prospective husband of Algy’s cousin, Miss Gwendolen Fairfax — a grim prospect, since her wicked nephew has already devoured all the cucumber sandwiches.

Lady B attempts to be judicious. Ernest’s income of seven to eight thousand pounds, the equivalent of $1 million annually according to the Norton Edition of the text, actually counts in his favor.

It’s Ernest’s lineage that is an insuperable stumbling block, for he cannot trace his family any further back than a leather handbag! My, how Bloede huffs when she repeats that fatal word, nearly adding an extra syllable to it each time she lingers on the first letter.

Lady Bracknell’s contempt was so hilariously absolute that when she exited, leaving Ernest and Gwendolen’s hopes of marital bliss in shambles, the audience erupted in lusty applause.

By the sort of insane coincidence that Wilde uses to resolve Ernest’s difficulties, Bloede’s name rhymes with Lady. So, after her current triumph, Jill is no more: she will no doubt have to suffer being called Bloede Bracknell for the rest of her days. You may revise my headline accordingly.

Needless to say, Bloede’s arrival calmed any worries that this production, directed by Tonya Bludsworth, would be anything less than a delight. Eleven years after starring in NC Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Gretchen McGinty’s professionalism still gleams with vitality and caprice as Gwendolen, irresistible despite her perverse silliness. She accepts Ernest, but only for the shallowest of reasons — she’s the perfect antithesis of Juliet.

Caprice continues to rule when we arrive at John’s country home for Act 2, where we meet his lovely ward, Cicely Cardew. Her requirements for a prospective husband are not merely similar to Gwen’s.

They are exactly the same, obliging both John and Algy to make christening appointments with the Rev. Canon Chasuble. Under the watchful eyes of Cicely’s governess, Miss Prism, Algernon has snuck into John’s home, pretending to be his fictitious brother Ernest, and swept Miss Cardew off her feet. That’s partly because Miss Prism’s eyes are devotedly affixed to the Reverend.

As we’ll learn in the denouement, it’s not the first time Miss Prism’s attention has wandered.

Further complicating John and Algy’s attempts to live double lives, Gwen follows her would-be fiancé into the country — with her mother barking at her heels. The running joke of Act 2, amid all the confusion of who’s really betrothed to Ernest, is the radical shifts of sisterly love and murderous hatred between Gwen and Cicely.

Mixed in with devout cynicism and decadence, punctiliousness and pomposity squandered over trivialities are the key ingredients of Wilde’s satire, and Bludsworth has her entire cast embracing it with the proper élan.

Emily Klingman is hormone-driven innocence in a lemon chiffon dress as Cicely, assiduously transcribing Algy’s marriage proposal into her teen diary, and Hank West bumbles quite sanctimoniously as Rev. Chasuble when he manages to recall where he is. Scrunched up like a squirrel, Stephanie DiPaolo is the essence of fretful and incompetent spinsterhood as Miss Prism.

Bludsworth also differentiates nicely between the servants. Ron Turek is urbane and dignified as Algy’s man, Lane; while Hohenstein, tasked to distraction by his temperamental superiors, is more apt to let his resentments play over his face as John’s butler, Merriman. Or he was until he was obliged to pick up Ecklund’s script and stand up to Bloede Bracknell.

Edward Tulane(C)Donna Bise 6686

Photo by Donna Bise

Not at all plagued by postponements, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane opened at ImaginOn last weekend in as polished a production as you’ll ever see from Children’s Theatre. It’s a gem that will no doubt remind longtime subscribers of The Velveteen Rabbit, since the title character is a rabbit doll. Ah, but Edward is fashioned entirely of porcelain, except for his furry ears and tail (he prefers not to think about the origin of his whiskers).

Adapted by Dwayne Hartford from the novel by Kate DiCamillio, Edward’s story begins when he is given to 10-year-old Abilene Tulane on Egypt Street by her mysterious grandmother Pellegrina, the only human who knows his heart.

Unlike the Velveteen, Edward does not aspire to be real or human, but he is frustrated when Abilene doesn’t set him in a place where he can see the outdoors and the stars through her window.

Even before he is severely broken many years later in Memphis, Pellegrina perceives his flaws, and the inference is that he must suffer for them. But Edward’s sufferings and adventures will be epic ­— beyond human, to tell the truth.

Our protagonist remains the three-foot doll the DiCamillio created, but Mark Sutton is always close by to articulate his thoughts, shouldering and picking a banjo as Edward morphs into Susannahr, Malone, Clyde, and Jangles during his odyssey on land and under the sea.

Margaret Dalton figures most prominently as the bereft Abilene, but she resurfaces on numerous occasions during Edward’s journey, most notably as a frisky dog. Beginning as the semi-exotic Pellegrina, Allison Rhinehart ranges across multiple roles and genders, last seen as Lucius Clark, the sagely doll mender. Devin Clark rounds out the cast, shapeshifting from fisherman to hobo to handyman when he isn’t slyly inserting sound effects. Pure enchantment for 81 minutes.

Up Close and Versatile: Michael Collins Plays Mozart, Stravinsky, Adams, and Bruch

Michael Collins | University of London Symphony Orchestra

By Perry Tannenbaum

February 1, 2016, Charlotte, NC – Michael Collins will no doubt bring pleasure to thousands later this week when he plays Mozart’s great concerto for basset clarinet with the Charlotte Symphony on consecutive nights at Belk Theater. Yet it would probably be exaggerating to say that hundreds were in attendance when the esteemed virtuoso performed another pair of concerts earlier in the week on the fourth floor of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art – one for a lunchtime crowd and another after work. Poetic justice would have decreed that at least an equal number should bear witness when Collins, toting two other clarinets, headlined a program that not only included a complete Mozart clarinet trio but also a solo Stravinsky suite and generous samplings of works by John Adams and Max Bruch. Joining Collins were pianist Bruce Murray, who pinch-hit personably on most of the hosting, and violist Rosemary Furniss. There were a couple of links between the two pairs of concerts: Collins is playing both programs and Christopher Warren-Green, the Charlotte Symphony’s musical director conductor, is united in holy matrimony to the woman who wielded the viola.

Furniss’s hand was certainly perceptible in the choice of repertoire, since she collaborated on Mozart’s “Kegelstatt” Trio and a selection of Bruch’s 8 Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano at a Davidson College concert in September 2013. These sweet trios framed the two more raucous works that Furniss sat out. All three trio members had their moments to shine from the opening Andante of Mozart’s E-flat gem. Furniss introduced the first subject at the beginning and its return at the end of the movement, answered by Murray, who laid the groundwork for Collins’ first entrance and then beamed with joy as soon as he heard the clarinetist’s first notes. With good reason. The waltzing 3/4 sway of the ensuing Menuet was instantly evident, especially since Collins himself swayed a bit with the melody while Furniss sawed an agitated countermelody. Nor was Murray idle here, at times playing two strands of accompaniment at the same time. Collins dreamily led into the concluding Rondeaux, hitting the high notes effortlessly, and Murray’s responses from the keyboard grew more elaborate. Interplay was quite delightful as Murray and Furniss led off successive rounds. At a certain point, Collins’ answers gave way to an outright takeover, with delicious filigree that dipped into the lower range of the instrument. Staccato passages near the end, when the trio chimed in together, were brimming with charm.

The first of Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo was actually a mellow, brooding thing, ideally suited for showing how much better-suited the clarinet is to the Bechtler space than a grand piano. Following this Molto tranquillo, the second piece was quick, raucous and squawking. Collins himself called attention to the hall midway through, pausing for a moment and waiting until the echo almost died away before flinging himself into that latter half. The third piece was no less fleet and raucous, but it had more of a circular, chasing feel rather than jumping around helter skelter, ending with an emphatic tweet that Collins clearly relished.

It was Collins who premiered Adams’ Gnarly Buttons in 1996, and he chose the middle movement of the piece, the shortest yet most signature of the three. “Hoe-down (Mad Cow)” would normally be associated with horses, according to the composer’s album notes, but it takes on its altered perspective as a nod to his “British friends who gave the first performance during a time of quarantine.” Recorded with the London Sinfonietta, the album cover features a wide-eyed animal that could serve as the perfect poster child for the infamous mad cow disease. It’s the most challenging of the three movements, but as Collins pointed out in his intro, in distilling the 11-piece accompaniment to the piano, the arranger had probably shifted the burden of difficulty to Murray. Indeed, Murray poured forth fistfuls of notes during this merry frolic. Interspersed with his hoe-down romping, Collins had the most minimalistic figures, which occasionally sounded like a boogie-woogie bass pattern. Clearly enjoying himself and Murray’s trials, Collins had time to point out the most important ingredient that this reduced version had to sacrifice – the sound of the lowing cow from the orchestral version. He mouthed the moo when it came around.

Scored for viola or cello (Furniss split her part with cellist Alan Black in her previous go-round), Bruch’s 8 Pieces are mostly dark and melancholy, so the four movements selected were altered from their intended sequence, leaving out the final Moderato and ending instead with the penultimate Allegro vivace, the only segment of the suite in a major key. The overtones of Murray’s introduction to the “Nachtgesang” actually emulated a clarinet’s sound, but there was no mistaking Collins’ true entry, floating in on high and dipping into darkness. Furniss’s nocturnal viola intertwined with the clarinet, before and after an exquisite Collins monologue, forming an ethereal frame. Launching the brief Allegro con moto, the viola came in darkly before before Collins echoed it from above, but the most characteristic of the Bruch pieces was “Rumänische Melodie,” with Furniss achingly setting the tone, at times reminiscent of Sarasate’s firelit Gypsy ruminations and the keening of Jewish cantorial music. Collins and Murray were at the forefront of the Allegro vivace, but Furniss was very expressive in the accompaniment, fomenting the augmented intensity when frolicsome passages veered suddenly into turbulence. Throughout the concert, I had an up-close view, less than 10 feet from Collins when he took his final bows. Nor were my seats reserved: any one of the thousands who may marvel at Collins’ musicianship this Friday and Saturday night could have snatched up the same opportunity on Tuesday, at a fraction of the ticket price.

Copyright © 2016 CVNC

Production Values Continue to Evolve at Charlotte Ballet’s Innovative Works

Innovative Works_Yamato_Dancer Ryo Suzuki

By Perry Tannenbaum

January 29, 2016, Charlotte, NC – Ever since the event was created in 2003, when Charlotte Ballet was known as North Carolina Dance Theatre, Innovative Works has been a special event in the company’s season, performed at a special venue that further set it apart. The size of these venues, the length of the pieces on the program, and the number of dancers in each work were all smaller than the big ensemble pieces staged at Belk Theater and, more recently, at Knight Theater. Charlotte Ballet artistic director Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux was not only providing a platform for edgier, lapidary pieces, he was also establishing an incubator for new choreographers, usually dancers or former dancers in the company, to expand their creativity and pave a pathway to their afterlives when they were no longer onstage.

Works first seen at Innovative have not only enriched the repertoire of Charlotte’s pre-eminent performing arts group, they have served as springboards for further choreographic creations and for the formation of new companies outside Charlotte established by the former fledglings. This year’s collection of miniatures, running at the Patricia McBride and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance through February 20, presents the brainchildren of current and former troupe members wedged among works by the company’s resident choreographers. Included on the bill are pieces by Dwight Rhoden, Mark Diamond, Sasha Janes, David Ingram, Sarah Hayes Harkins, David Morse, Gregory Taylor, and Josh Hall.

That’s a bunch, to be sure, but three of the works choreographed by current dancers – the “Dancer Spotlight” – are presented in rolling rep, so each evening consists of six pieces. The first two, Rhoden’s “Ballad Unto” and Ingram’s “Omologia,” are staples in every performance of the run. Taken together, they exemplify how Innovative has evolved. Intimacy and chamber size are no longer requisites of new choreography unveiled at the McBride. Both of these pieces were long enough to present on the Knight Theater mainstage, and by the time they were done, we had seen 18 dancers perform, including three up-and-comers from the satellite Charlotte Ballet II company.

Although scenery is still outlawed in this studio setting, lighting has become very sophisticated. In fact, the hard-edge lighting designs by Jennifer Propst are very much at the forefront of both experiences. Further blurring the difference between Knight and McBride presentations, the previously filmed “Behind the Dance” segments, where the choreographers talk about either their aesthetic or the genesis of the piece we’re about to see, are now as much a part of Innovative as they were last October in Fall Works at the Knight.

Innovative Works_Dwight Rhoden_Ballad Unto

Photos by Peter Zay

Rhoden’s “Ballad Unto” sets Bach’s famed Chaconne, prerecorded on violin, upon five couples, yet this destination is preceded by a setting to assorted sounds, textures, and rhythms that seemed equally long and substantial. Jamie Dee Clifton and Josh Hall were the couple that grabbed my attention most dynamically, but Ben Ingel and Raven Barkley were also charismatic standouts. All ten of the performers delighted in both the high-speed handwork and the footwork that Rhoden challenged them with, consistently accenting the beat with precision. Rhoden himself had fresher, livelier ideas than you might expect from him this deep into his career responding to Bach. Propst had a fairly a fairly stunning reaction to the choreography, setting five squares on the floor in an M formation for the five couples, occasionally replacing them with – or superimposing them on – an inverted V.

Interaction between the dancers and Propst’s lighting design was even more salient in Ingram’s “Omologia.” As the eight dancers advanced toward us at the outset of the piece, set to Corelli’s “La Follia,” a bright illuminated line across the stage seemed to daunt their progress. Once the dancers took possession of the stage, we discovered that there would be two more lines of lights connected to the first – and that each of the three lines was actually comprised of three adjacent squares. So while the dancers danced in close sync with the music, the nine pre-programmed squares, blinking on and off, were similarly wed to the movements and the shifting tableaus of the dancers. Numerous permutations of the nine squares flashed before us, including U shapes formed by seven of the squares that opened out at various moments to all four points on the compass.

From these lengthy baroque abstractions, we suddenly transitioned to a very real subject with Harkins’ “#Hatehurts,” the sort of high-concept piece that has typified Innovative in the past. Diagonally across the stage from each other when the lights came up, Sarah Lapointe in the foreground and Ingel upstage sat in front of laptop computers, reacting to online bullying and its fatal consequences. Of the six dances, this was the only one that didn’t come to us paired with a filmed introduction. Sure, it was the piece that least required explanation, but it was also so short that a prelude may only have drawn further attention to the piece’s brevity. Perhaps if the seated opening tableau didn’t seem to be such a substantial portion of the piece, the effect would have been more powerful, for the dance seemed to end as it was just getting started once the couple converged at the middle of the stage. The ratio between the prerecorded bullying and suffering we heard about and the anguish we saw live from the dancers ultimately struck me as too message-rich, an effective presentation for middle schoolers, perhaps, but artistically too thin for me.

John Adams’ “Short Ride in a Fast Machine” served as both title and soundtrack for David Morse’s piece, brilliantly danced by Harkins and Hall. In costuming, lighting, and choreography, Morse divides his work in two. The dancers come on in dim light, Hall in a waistcoat and Harkins in a long flowing blouse. Turning up their intensity, the dancers shed these upper garments as the lights come up fully. This moment of liberation is amplified by the ensuing choreography, which utilizes the entire stage. Morse’s piece returns to the rotation during the evenings of the final weekend of the run, February 18-20. Next weekend, Morse’s spot is taken by Gregory Taylor’s “Requiem of a Meaning,” and Hall shows off his “Social Butterfly” on the third weekend.

Hall will be borrowing rookie dancer Ryo Suzuki for his solo piece. Meanwhile, he is featured in “Yamato, earth/nature/drum,” a three-part celebration of Japan by Diamond, demonstrating that he’s no less eager to pursue new directions than Rhoden. The 12 people in this piece form a spherical mass as Propst’s shimmering lighting comes up, with Suzuki slapped across it horizontally. Then the ball explodes in big-bang fashion to an original score arranged by Rocky Iwashima, heavy with taiko pounding. Ultimately, the group regathers downstage in a tableau that is analogous to the spherical beginning but with Suzuki in an uplifted, triumphal posture. Inside of this effective framing, Suzuki and Addul Manzano are the dominant presences, although Barkley is hard to ignore whenever she’s involved.

Charlotte Ballet Innovative Works by Christopher Record

Photo by Christopher Record

For his new work, “Sketches from Grace,” Janes veered from his intent to create settings for works by Leonard Cohen, opting instead for a four-piece suite of settings to cuts by Jeff Buckley – including his cover of Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which became a posthumous #1 hit for Buckley in 2008. The work showcases a punkish set of costumes by Katherine Zywczyk with faint, silvery highlights, beginning with Buckley’s most distinctive original, “You and I,” a brooding, floating, dreamy song that would seem to defy choreography. Yet Chelsea Dumas and James Kopecky fully conveyed the smoldering energy lurking in the lyric. Once covered by Nina Simone, “Lilac Wine” took the tempo up to a bluesy dirge, given an aching elegance by Ingel partnering with Alessandra Ball James. Bringing the tempo further up to a lethargic shuffle, “Hallelujah” was undoubtedly the climax of the suite, danced with such heartbreaking perfection by Hayes and Hall that the audience applauded as if it were the finale, although Janes’s video intro had promised us that all three couples had a concluding segment together. That closing ensemble was a more driven Buckley original, “Lover You Should Have Come Over,” very appropriate for the hubbub of three couples strutting their stuff simultaneously. Those last pushes in tempo, spectacle, and animation gave the audience one more reason to cheer.

Opera Carolina’s “Roméo et Juliette” Conquers Adversity and Inhibition

The final duet.
 

By Perry Tannenbaum

January 28, 2016, Charlotte, NC – It’s obvious that James Meena has a special fondness for Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, since no other Opera Carolina maestro had ever presented the work before – and now Meena has brought the tragic Shakespeare adaptation back eight seasons later. Both productions have been somewhat star-crossed. When Meena introduced the opera in 2007, the soprano couldn’t quite scale the heights of the stave in Juliette’s arias and the tenor who adored her couldn’t take his eyes off Meena’s baton when he sang, a rather wooden Roméo. This time around, weather and illness have been the adversities that Opera Carolina has been forced to conquer.

Days ahead of the Sunday afternoon opening, forecasts of the superstorm that would cripple the city caused Opera Carolina to offer special discounts for intrepid ticket buyers willing to brave the elements. My driveway was still so encased in ice at curtain time that my wife Sue and I couldn’t reach the street at the top of the hill where we had parked our car. After rescheduling for Thursday, we had barely settled into our seats at Belk Theater when we learned from Meena that the soprano slated for the title role, Marie-Eve Munger, had come down with bronchitis, sounding less like Juliette than Friar Laurence when the conductor had spoken to her earlier in the day.

There was a positive twist to this adversity. Although I had missed Munger’s debut, I would catching the first performance by Sarah Joy Miller with the company. Slated to perform as Juliette when this co-production moves on to Grand Rapids in April and Baltimore in May, Miller not only appeared to be acclimated to the role and Bernard Uzan’s stage direction, she also appeared comfy in the clinches with Jonathan Boyd, who will be paired with Miller in those upcoming productions.

In contrast with the 2006 Spoleto Festival USA, which remodeled the two ancient warring Montagues and Capulets into families in the Godfather mold, both of the Opera Carolina productions have been refreshingly traditional. You might even say radically traditional, since the supertitles of the current production revert to the original Shakespeare whenever possible, even at the cost of mistranslating the French of librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. Production design by Uzan and Michael Baumgarten is nearly as traditional, evoking Verona very much the way old-school Shakespearean productions do. Three sets of Romanesque arches, rearranged and dressed between scenes, serve admirably for the Capulet palace, Juliette’s balcony, Juliette’s bedroom, Friar Laurence’s chapel, and that gloomy vault where Roméo finds the sleeping Juliette on her tomb. Baumgarten’s lighting and his superb projection designs also help to differentiate the scenes.

While Gounod and his librettists will bring down the curtain when the two lovers perish, Uzan contrives to stage the aftermath – the grim reconciliation of the feuding families – as this production’s prologue, where Shakespeare originally had his chorus. While this necessitates an extra scene change, whisking away the tomb where the dead lovers lie and bringing the lights back up on the festive night when they first met, the alteration plays as if that’s what Gounod always intended, particularly since he wrote enough gorgeous music to cover the subterfuge and the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra plays it so lustily under Meena’s baton. Nor is it much of a stretch for the Opera Carolina Chorus to sound funereal in the hushed opening passages.

An adequately majestic staircase is placed centerstage at the Capulet palace for Juliette’s entrance, and the dazzling dress that Miller gets to wear throughout this giddy evening for her birthday party makes it count. Miller herself was not quite so dazzling when she soon reached Juliette’s signature “Je veux vivre dans ce rêve” aria, straining to reach the high notes, getting there but not comfortably. She began to settle down in the iconic first encounter with Roméo: the “Ange adorable” duet, staged chastely with Boyd in a pleasing palm-to-palm style as the lovebirds circled one another.

Boyd sang beautifully and securely all evening long, but the most transporting moment came when he sang Roméo’s great “Ah! lève-toi, soleil” to launch the balcony scene. Juliette’s nightgown is no less bright than her party dress, dramatically lit by Baumgarten as she makes her way into the moonlight, so there can be no mistaking what Shakespeare meant when he wrote, “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” It hits with seismic force here, and the “Ah, ne fuis pas encore!” duet that closes the scene is even more enchanting than the lovers’ first meeting.

There’s considerably more chemistry between Boyd and Miller in this production than there was when Gaston Rivero and Sari Gruber sang the title roles in 2007, and Uzan pushes it in the bedroom scene, where the lovers’ awakening is nearly as sensual as the opening scene of Sondheim’s Passion. For anyone who thinks that opera is pathologically stiff and glum, this Opera Carolina effort will be an eye-opener. Miller caught fire when we needed it most, carrying us over the climactic aria where Juliette chooses between stabbing herself and drinking Friar Laurence’s sleep potion.

Supporting roles are wonderfully cast and sung, mostly by newcomers. Imposing enough to be Shakespeare’s Capulet, Ashraf Sewailam was the most impressive of the baritones, expansive in his geniality as party host yet more than sufficiently authoritative as the family patriarch. Efrain Solis obtained maximum mileage from Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” ballad, more effective as a satirical cut-up than he was subsequently as a tragic calumniating victim.

Remember Romeo’s page, Stephano? Of course not. Gounod added her – it’s a soprano pants role – to spark the strife between Tybalt and Mercutio before the fatally pacific Roméo arrives and intervenes. Kim Sagioka makes a startling debut in this odd cameo. Among the old hands, bass Kevin Langan has all the dignity and warmth we want in the helpful Friar, and tenor Brian Arreola is perfectly pugnacious as Tybalt – actually so dashing in his wig and costume that I wished that the Capulets and the Montagues had switched uniforms so that Roméo could look more cavalier.

There’s a whole mini-ballet in Gounod’s score, 18 minutes long on the EMI Classics recording, that nearly all companies skip, but to me, cutting the next two scenes is a bit like tossing away the baby with the bathwater. After justifiably axing the choreography expense and the dancer payroll, I’d love to see the wedding scene where Juliette drops dead just as Paris is putting the ring on her finger. Soap opera and grand opera unite!

We save on having a Friar John in the cast (if the Duke of Verona doesn’t double) when we omit the next scene where Friar Laurence learns that Roméo never got the sleep potion memo, but why not leave it in for the few folks who may be coming to the story for the first time? Eric Loftin would certainly approve of restoring the wedding, since the tenor gets too little opportunity to show his mettle in his Opera Carolina debut as Paris.

Quibbles aside, this is one outstanding production that has it all: merriment, chaste romance, spectacle, sensual passion, a touch of comedy, and the ultimate tragedy. All the members of this sterling cast and chorus were as much into the drama as they were into the music, and the singers and musicians were constantly feeding off one another. As a result, the three hours joyously flew by.

Copyright © 2016 CVNC

Goings and Bearden Double-Team Black History in The Children of Children Keep Coming

Theatre

Adapter-director Quentin Talley (top center) stands with his fine cast for “The Children of Children Keep Coming.”

By Perry Tannenbaum

January 27, 2016, Charlotte, NC – Suffering, persistence, and indomitable creativity are the threads that Russell L. Goings has used to weave The Children of Children Keep Coming, an incantatory and poetic account of the Afro-American journey. Quentin Talley, the artistic director of On Q Productions, has adapted and directed Goings’ “Epic GriotSong” for the stage, adding chants, work songs, blues, jazz, gospel, dance, hand clapping, foot stomping, ceremonial movement, and a cast of characters who all moonlight as members of a Greek-style chorus. The drawings that appear in the hardcover book by Romare Bearden are incorporated into Jeremy Cartee’s video design, losing a little of their impact in the transition from the page to the Duke Energy stage at Spirit Square, but quotes from Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Adam Clayton Powell, and Martin Luther King are sprinkled into the script to take up the slack. With varying degrees of success in the singing impersonations, we also had cameos from Ma Rainey, Marian Anderson, Mahalia Jackson, and Sarah Vaughan.

Theatrical history isn’t littered with successful adaptations of epic poetry, so the task that Talley has undertaken would be difficult even if Goings’ poem came equipped with affecting character development and a graceful narrative arc. Aside from a generic Grandmother and Grandfather, none of the characters actually converse, and after we’ve been immersed in the slavery experience, the road – or train – to freedom is more of a cyclonic swirl than a straight or winding path. We go back and forth to various historical landmarks. Reaching Rosa Parks is no guarantee that won’t be doubling back abruptly to revisit the roots of jazz or even the Civil War – or that we won’t return to Rosa afterwards, still refusing to move to the back of the bus.

Talley gives a remarkable, evangelistic performance as our Narrator, but his work directing his fellow actors – and extra chorus members from the West Mecklenburg High School Drama – struck me as his most astonishing feat. Every one of the actors has numerous quick lines that don’t really respond to the line just spoken. Most of the lines throughout 110-minute show simply follow a cue line. Unless we see an actor moving toward a spot on the stage – or an actress making an onstage costume change while the Narrator is speaking about her character – we usually don’t know who will speak next. That means we need to amp up our concentration level as The Children of Children careens unpredictably from one speaker to another and fromone historical subject to another. The core cast of eight performers face an even more daunting task, keeping the ping-pong of the choreopoem format moving along briskly while executing the intricate patterns of the ensemble’s physical movement.

Even when you’re delivering your line on cue, one further level of concentration often comes into play. From his spot upstage, Talley might be saying the same line slightly ahead or after you. Or the chorus may be saying something else in unison altogether. Remarkably, this rapid-fire choral presentation only sputtered occasionally – and then only slightly – as this unique show sustained its impressive momentum. Helping to maintain order, Talley has strewn three mobile reading stands across the upstage. These stands not only help him to overlap without memorizing all those additional lines and cues, it helps with the daunting multitasking he must pull off as star and director of a fairly massive production.

We can also view this setup as an intermediate stage in the development of this On Q property. When the company unveiled the new script, first at Johnson C. Smith University in 2012 and in 2013 at Duke Energy Theater, it was as a reading stage production. Now with the entire chorus virtually off-book – and one glaring technical shortcoming – we can categorize the 2016 edition as a workshop production. Talley may have been partially aware of the technical gap still remaining in this project, since the program booklet still doesn’t list a lighting designer. Amid all of his multitasking (and the absence of an assistant director to be his eyes when he’s onstage), Talley has missed how sorely a lighting designer is needed. Time after time when he was declaiming from his spot behind the central reading stand, a thick, disconcerting bar of shadow covered him from head to toe, separating him from the light surrounding him.

Yet the energy continued to pour out from him, largely because the pace and the gusto of his cast bounced the energy right back to him. All of the major singing voices are new to this remount. Shar Marlin has become On Q’s go-to vocalist over the past two years, portraying Bessie Smith on multiple occasions, so it figures that she would get the nod when it came time to trot out Ma Rainey, Mahalia, and Lawdy Miss Clawdy. Andrea Michele, on the other hand, has only appeared on my radar previously as the tomboyish lead in Pauline Cleage’s Flyin’ West when Davidson Community Players produced it nearly two years ago. Michele’s singing voice as Evalina turns out to be very fine. Kenya Templeton is even more impressive in the more central role of Calli of the Valley, and she sang purely and sweetly as Marian Anderson, though she missed the famed contralto’s distinctive timbre by a wide margin. Most memorable is how Templeton’s scat singing Ella-vates the bebop segment and makes it a celebratory highlight.

The familiarity of the recorded legacy put Omar El-Amin on shaky ground when we reached MLK, but the efforts at elongating his syllables did not obliterate the goodwill El-Amin had built up in his evocations of Douglass, all of those seeming to come from the heights of Sinai or Rushmore. Few members of most audiences are familiar with the barking Caribbean patois of Marcus Garvey, Jr., so Shiduan Campbell wasn’t saddled with the objective of duplicating the notorious revolutionary in his Charlotte debut. There was also some promising versatility in his more genial stints as Grandfather and Banjo Pete, though the latter role didn’t come equipped with either an instrument or a vocal solo. Playing opposite Campbell as Grandmother, Soumayah Consuela Nanji also didn’t have a vocal solo in her debut, and she frankly mystifyied me a little. She was a fine Grandma and Rosa Parks at first blush, but between her two stints as Rosa, she was nearly inaudible when called upon to address us from the upstage platform. The ensuing rendezvous with Rosa was equally underpowered, as if she had lost her voice in the middle of the performance.

Yet Nanji’s vitality was undimmed when she danced with Campbell each time the grandfolk grew frisky. I wouldn’t be surprised if Talley had his eye on her for choreographic chores in future On Q presentations, including the full production of The Children of Children. Other things to think about as this project enters its next step, besides establishing a more linear scenario, is being more informative about the cavalcade of notables mentioned during the course of the evening. They enrich the experience for the initiated, but they’re likely to be nothing more than dropped names for youngsters or people who may be dipping into the sea of Afro American culture for the first time. The hardcover edition of Goings’ epic is followed by a 38-page glossary, a useful tool if you’ve never heard of Ben Webster, Claude McKay, or James Meredith before. I’m hopeful that Talley’s stage version, so rich in the music and the essence of the Afro-American experience, will evolve into something more than a handsome gateway to the book on sale in the lobby. Already the living performance is showing the potential of transcending the poem.

Copyright © 2016 CVNC

Jazz: The Best CDs of 2015

Jazz

New Releases

Terell-Stafford-BrotherLee-Love

  1. Terell Stafford – Brotherlee Love (Capri)
  2. Harold Mabern – Afro Blue (Smoke Sessions)
  3. The Gary McFarland Legacy Ensemble – Circulation: The Music of Gary McFarland (Planet Arts)
  4. Matt Mitchell Quintet – Vista Accumulation (Pi)
  5. Arturo O’Farrill – Cuba: The Conversation Continues (Motéma)
  6. Cécile McLorin Salvant – For One to Love (Mack Avenue)
  7. Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis – Live in Cuba (Blue Engine)
  8. Charles Lloyd – Wild Dance (Blue Note)
  9. Maria Schneider Orchestra – The Thompson Fields (ArtistShare)
  10. Kurt Elling – Passion World (Concord Jazz)
  11. Jack DeJohnette – Made in Chicago (ECM)
  12. Dave Stryker – Messin’ With Mister T (Strikezone)
  13. Rudresh Mahanthappa – Bird Calls (ACT)
  14. Scott Hamilton – Hamilton & Hamilton Live in Bern (Capri)
  15. Alexis Cole & Bucky Pizzarelli – A Beautiful Friendship (Pony Canyon)
  16. Joe Locke – Love Is A Pendulum (Motéma)
  17. London, Meader, Pramuk & Ross – The Royal Bopsters Project (Motéma)
  18. Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project – Lines of Color: Live at Jazz Standard (ArtistShare)
  19. Snarky Puppy – Sylva (Impulse)
  20. Chris Potter Underground Orchestra – Imaginary Cities (ECM)
  21. Karrin Allyson – Many A New Day (Motéma)
  22. Harris Eisenstadt – Canada Day IV (Songlines)
  23. Richard Nelson Aardvark Jazz Orchestra – Deep River (Heliotrope)
  24. Dee Dee Bridgewater – Dee Dee’s Feathers (OKeh)
  25. David Chesky /Jazz In The New Harmonic – Primal Scream (Chesky)
  26. Dafnis Prieto Sextet – Triangles and Circles (Dafnison Music)
  27. John Fedchock Quartet – Fluidity (Summit)
  28. Vincent Herring – Night and Day (Smoke Sessions)
  29. Chico Freeman & Heiri Känzig – The Arrival (Intakt)
  30. William Parker – Great Spirit (Aum Fidelity)
  31. Hayden Chisholm – Breve (Pirouet)
  32. Heads Of State – Search for Peace (Smoke Sessions)
  33. Pablo Held Trio – Recondita Armonia (Pirouet)
  34. Amina Figarova – Blue Whisper (In+Out)
  35. Kamasi Washington – The Epic (Brainfeeder)
  36. Myra Melford – Snowy Egret (Enja)
  37. Mathias Eick – Midwest (ECM)
  38. Anat Cohen – Luminosa (Anzic)
  39. John Scofield – Past Present (Impulse)
  40. Marta Sánchez Quintet – Partenika (Fresh Sound New Talent)
  41. Hadar Noiberg – From the Ground Up (Dot Time)
  42. Charles McPherson – The Journey (Capri)
  43. Marcus Miller – Afrodeezia (Blue Note)
  44. Joshua Redman – The Bad Plus Joshua Redman (Nonesuch)
  45. Joey Alexander – My Favorite Things (Motéma)
  46. Oded Tzur – Like a Great River (Enja)
  47. Carol Saboya/Antonio Adolfo/Hendrik Meurkens – copaVILLAGE (AAM)
  48. Charenee Wade – Offering: The Music of Gil Scott-Heron (Motéma)
  49. Mostly Other People Do The Killing – Mauch Chunk (Hot Cup)
  50. Branford Marsalis Quartet – Coltrane’s A Love Supreme Live in Amsterdam (Sony Masterworks)

 

Best of the Rest, Alphabetically

Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet – 10 (Zoho)

Peter & Will Anderson – Déjà vu (Gut String)

Don Braden – Luminosity (Creative Perspective)

Joshua Breakstone – 2nd Avenue (Capri)

Ron Carter – My Personal Songbook (In+Out)

Alex Conde – Descarga for Monk (Zoho)

Matt Criscuolo – Headin’ Out (Jazzeria)

Steve Davis – Say When (Smoke Sessions)

Aaron Diehl – Space, Time, Continuum (Mack Avenue)

Duo Doyna – Sammy’s Frejlach: Modern Klezmer (Pool Music)

Yelena Eckemoff – Everblue (L & H)

Sinne Eeg – Eeg-Fonnesbæk (Stunt)

Essiet Okon Essiet – Shona (Space Time)

Oran Etkin – What’s New? Reimagining Benny Goodman (Motéma)

Expansions: The Dave Liebman Group – The Puzzle (Whaling City)

John Fedchock New York Big Band – Like It Is (Mama)

Nick Finzer – The Chase (Origin)

George Freeman/Chico Freeman – All in the Family (Southport)

Charlie Haden & Gonzalo Rubalcaba – Tokyo Adagio (Impulse)

Eddie Henderson – Collective Portrait (Smoke Sessions)

Fred Hersch – Solo (Palmetto)

Jon Irabagon – Behind the Sky (Irrabagast)

The Chuck Israels Jazz Orchestra – Joyful Noise: The Music of Horace Silver (SoulPatch)

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis – Big Band Holidays (Blue Engine)

Jacques Lesure – Camaraderie (Wj3)

Allegra Levy – Lonely City (SteepleChase)

Mack Avenue SuperBand – Live from the Detroit Jazz Festival (Mack Avenue)

Nilson Matta – East Side Rio Drive (Krian)

Josh Maxey – Celebration of Soul (Miles High)

Christian McBride Trio – Live at the Village Vanguard (Mack Avenue)

Paul Motian – Standards Plus One (1201 Music)

Christian Muthspiel/Steve Swallow – Simple Songs (In+Out)

William Parker – For Those Who Are, Still (Aum Fidelity)

Gary Peacock Trio – Now This (ECM)

Lucas Pino – No Net Nonet (Origin)

Powerhouse – In An Ambient Way (Chesky)

Prism Quartet – Heritage / Evolution, Vol. 1 (Innova)

Aki Rissanen – Aki Rissanen // Jussi Lehtonen Quartet With Dave Liebman (Ozella)

The Rodriguez Brothers – Impromptu (Criss Cross)

Adam Rogers – R&B / Rogers & Binney (Criss Cross)

Emiliano Sampaio / Mega Mereneu Project – Tourists (Sessionwork)

Antonio Sanchez – Three Times Three (Camjazz)

Christian Scott – Stretch Music: Introducing Elena Pinderhughes (Ropeadope)

Matthew Shipp Trio – The Conduct of Jazz (Thirsty Ear)

John Stowell – Live Beauty (Origin)

Symphonic Jazz Orchestra – Looking Forward, Looking Back (Mack Avenue)

Steve Turre – Spiritman (Smoke Sessions)

Michael Waldrop Big Band – Time Within Itself (Origin)

Johannes Wallmann – The Town Musicians (Fresh Sound New Talent)

Steve Wilson & Wilsonian’s Grain – Live in New York: The Vanguard Sessions (Random Act)

John Wojciechowski – Focus (Origin)

Kemasi Washington_The_Epic

Best Debut Recording

Kamasi Washington – The Epic (Brainfeeder)

Best Vocal Recording

Cécile McLorin Salvant – For One to Love (Mack Avenue)

Best Latin Recording

Arturo O’Farrill – Cuba: The Conversation Continues (Motéma)

 

Reissues or Historical Recordings

  1. Thelonious Monk – The Complete Columbia Live Albums Collection (Columbia)
  2. Red Garland – The Quota (MPS)
  3. Erroll Garner – The Complete Concert by the Sea (Columbia/Legacy)
  4. Thelonious Monk – The Complete Riverside Recordings (Riverside/Concord)
  5. Horace Silver Quintet – June 1977 – Livelove Series, Vol. 2 (Promising/ HGBS)
  6. Art Pepper – Neon Art: Volume One (Omnivore)
  7. Sam Most – From the Attic of My Mind (Elemental)
  8. Miles Davis – Miles Davis at Newport: 1955-1975: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4 (Columbia/Legacy)
  9. Barry Harris – Barry Harris Plays Tadd Dameron (Elemental)
  10. Keith Jarrett / Charlie Haden / Paul Motian – Hamburg ’72 (ECM)
  11. Jimmy Heath – Picture Of Heath (Elemental)
  12. Cassandra Wilson – Introducing M-Base (1201 Music)
  13. Various Artists – Detroit Jazz City (Blue Note)
  14. John Abercrombie – The First Quartet (ECM)
  15. Buddy Rich – Birdland (Lightyear)

 

Lincoln Center Does the Holidays

By Perry Tannenbaum

The three square blocks where the Metropolitan Opera House presides is actually the hub of Lincoln Center, with five different indoor performance venues, a film center, and a handy park that hosts open-air concerts in summertime and tented events in winter. So while parts of the place are turned over to holiday events when December rolls in, other parts can go on with culture as usual. Across West 65th Street, there are frequent concerts at Alice Tully Hall, and down at 59th Street, overlooking Columbus Circle, there’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, another hub of activity at multiple venues.

The four musical presentations in this year’s roundup represent less than half of what was available around the main plaza during our 16-day stay. Four other operas were in rep at the Met, one other Philharmonic program, the Big Apple Circus pitched its tent in the park, the acclaimed King and I revival continued its run at the Vivian Beaumont, and the New York City Ballet presented something called The Nutcracker at the David H. Koch Theater. Ample choices whether or not you wished to revel in the holiday spirit.

Here’s what we saw:

Photo by Ken Howard

Lulu (***3/4 out of 4) – Germanic expressionism, Parisian wantonness, and London squalor all take their turns in fleshing out the decadence of Alban Berg’s last unfinished opera, based on two Frank Wedekind plays. With the soon-to-close revival of Spring Awakening drawing accolades on Broadway, musical adaptations of Wedekind works written more than a century ago are making the playwright newly notorious in New York.

Both pieces are preoccupied with sex. While the tragic teens in Spring Awakening are the consequences of 19th Century sexual repression, the title vamp of Lulu is a poster girl for calculated promiscuity, though the Animal Tamer of Berg’s prologue wants us to think of her worldliness in far more ferocious, elemental, and bestial ways. By the end of Act 2, the body count – and husband count – of men smitten by Lulu is three.

Yet Lulu is not a cold-blooded murderess at all. Her first husband, The Physician, has a heart attack when he discovers his wife being ravished by The Painter doing her portrait. The Painter, after swooping in and marrying Lulu, partly for the fortune that has fallen into her hands via The Physician, slits his own throat upon learning the truth of Lulu’s past, delivered by the man Lulu would really like to marry, newspaper publisher Dr. Schön.

And what is a girl to do when husband #3, Schön, who knows you for what you are, grows maniacally jealous and demands that you kill yourself with his gun on account of your infidelities? Sure enough, Lulu takes advantage of a distraction and pumps five slugs into her tormentor’s back.

Even after Lulu is convicted of murder, men are still standing in line for her favors when she escapes from imprisonment – and so is a lesbian countess. The line only comes to an end in London when Lulu, in her first night out on the streets as a prostitute, has the misfortune of picking up Jack the Ripper.

Lulu and her men seem to always be playing with dynamite in this new Met production. There’s a cluttered, disheveled look to each of Sabine Theunissen’s set designs, but the restlessness of William Kentridge’s production concept is compounded by Catherine Meyburgh’s projection designs. Woodcuts, lithographs, animated front pages of newspapers are frequently creeping across the upstage walls, sinister and dim, sometimes surreal. The nervous edge of what see is magnified by what we hear: 12-tone composition that goes crazy when it isn’t merely neurotic.

Marlis Peterson brings delicacy and vivacity to Lulu, often belying the harshness of what she sings. Just as often the softer elements of Peterson’s personality fuse with the edgy music to become a desperate angst imbued with beautiful melancholy. Adding luster to Lulu are the men who love her. Aside from her husbands, there’s a prince, an acrobat, and Schön’s son, Alwa, who is a composer and poet. Schön plucked Lulu off the street years ago when she was peddling flowers, and the broken-down Schigolch, who is either her father or her first benefactor, repeatedly drops by for handouts. So Lulu is ultimately a woman of mystery – tawdry mystery.

All of the husbands take on new roles in Act 3, parading in as her clientele on the night of her ultimate demise. Especially good are tenor Paul Groves as The Painter, though he’s not as credulous and vulnerable as I’d like, and bass-baritone Johan Reuer as Dr. Schön, whose gruffness is the essence of Berg – I’d love to see him as Wozzeck. Susan Graham was sweetly underpowered as The Merry Widow when I last saw her at the Met in 2003, and the hall swallowed her up again as Countess Gerschwitz this time around. More to my liking was tenor Daniel Breena in his Met debut as Alwa, in some ways, Lulu’s most ardent lover. It would be interesting if Breena and Groves swapped roles.

Left unfinished when Berg died in 1935 and completed by Friedrich Cerha in 1977, Lulu sounds as edgy, angry, and anguished as Spring Awakening did when I first heard it on Broadway over nine years ago. All in all, Lulu has been performed 44 times at the Met, eight of them this season, with Peterson retiring the title role at the performance we attended. Before then, the music and imagery sizzled on a Live in HD performance beamed to local cinemas. Surely it will sizzle again on Blu-Ray and in rebroadcasts.

Free Lulu for the masses? I fear it’s too hot for ETV to handle.

New York Philharmonic
Photo by Chris Lee

Messiah (***1/2) – Maybe it was nostalgia for my alma mater, Queens College, where I was first enchanted by Handel’s masterpiece. Or maybe it was the prospect of scoring an off-season fix of Charleston’s Spoleto Festival USA, where I’m annually uplifted by the voices of the Westminster Choir directed by Joe Miller. Could have been both, because as I drove toward Manhattan and my rendezvous with the New York Philharmonic, I had a glimpse of the QC campus and Colden Auditorium, where I saw multiple Messiahs, from the westbound lanes of the Long Island Expressway.

David Geffen Hall is slated for a massive overhaul in the coming years, a just verdict on its acoustics for symphonic concerts, but they do Messiah with all strings until they bring on a modest trumpet corps – and timpani – after intermission. Even the strings seemed thinned-out compared with the all-Nielsen concert I reviewed last January, so the sound of the hall was never a problem.

The hall also disabused me of the notion that the purity of the Westminster sound had something to do with always hearing the choir’s concerts in church settings. Now I realize that the richer, less pure sound of the Charlotte Symphony Choir (I still want to call them the Oratorio Singers) has to do with diversity of its membership compared with the Westminsters, who are all college-aged or in that neighborhood. Sounding more like a community, our choir strikes me as more human. The Westminster College voices (from Rider University in Princeton, NJ) are uncannily uniform, more angelic.

That communal sound of collective humanity has been very persuasive in “For unto us a child is born,” “All we like sheep,” and the celebratory “Hallelujah!” chorus. But in the early prophetic choruses, “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed” and the ensuing “He shall purify the sons of Levi,” that angelic sound was revelatory.

Guest conductor Jane Glover, in her New York Phil debut, elicited crisp and alert work from the orchestra. The lithe precision of her approach allowed for gently accelerated tempos. The freshened “All we like sheep” sounded sheepish rather than puerile, but there was no lack of punch – or magnificence – moments earlier when the chorus gravely followed a countertenor air with “Surely, He hath borne our griefs.”

Trumpets and timpani fortified the climactic “Hallelujah!” Although a sidebar in the program booklet dissected the standing tradition, nearly all of the audience stood up – perhaps not for religious reasons, since they applauded lustily afterwards before sitting down. Thanks to baritone Roderick Williams and the solo trumpeter, we did not have to endure an anticlimax afterwards in Part 3.

It’s always interesting to see how the solo chores are doled out. Tenor Paul Appleby, countertenor Tim Mead, and soprano Heidi Stober were in the lineup with Williams – and each had at least one shining moment. Stober’s came when she warbled the “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion” and when she brought a creamier texture to “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Mead seemed a little jittery in his “Who may abide the day of His coming,” but he rivaled Stober in vitality singing “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion” and in suppleness when he reached the “He was despised and rejected” lament, adorning it with trills.

Early and late, Appleby was sleekly impressive. He was beautifully mellow and controlled in the first of so many snatches from the prophet Isaiah, “Comfort ye, my people,” and he truly did make the rough places plain in “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted.” Yet there was anger and steel near the end of Part 2 in his “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron.”

Nobody was going to upstage Williams, whose “I will shake” recitative was easily as striking as Appleby’s “Comfort ye.” The richness of his baritone didn’t quite match Bryn Terfel’s in the “Why do the nations so furiously rage” air, where the bite from the orchestra came to Williams’ aid, but the comparative lightness of his voice became a winning asset at the end of the evening in his “Behold, I tell you a mystery” recitative.

Fortified by the bravura of the solo trumpet, Williams’ “The trumpet shall sound” was mighty and thrilling. And who was that intrepid trumpeter? None other than Karin Bliznik, former principal of the Charlotte Symphony, whom I’d last seen in Messiah five Decembers earlier at Belk Theater. There was enough glory and jubilation in the Williams-Bliznik volleying for the Westminsters’ “Amen” to sound, if not peaceful, like a satisfying ceasefire.

Photo by Marty Sohl

La Donna del Lago (***1/4) – After watching this production in a Live in HD broadcast last March, I was eager to see soprano Joyce DiDonato repeat her stupendous performance at closer range. Even if she didn’t sing quite as well, the sound of her voice would be more rousing coming from her throat at the Met rather than from an array of loudspeakers at the Stonecrest 22 multiplex.

There was at least one factor I hadn’t counted on, because of the deftness of the Met’s video production – and because I didn’t pay close attention to the credits. What we have here is a co-production with the Santa Fe Opera, where DiDonato has been a mainstay for over 20 years. Among regional companies, a co-production usually promises a pooling of resources and a more opulent product than any of the participants can budget individually.

At the Met, it simply means that the production directed by Paul Curran and designed by Driscoll Otto at Santa Fe during the summer of 2013 was co-opted for presentation at Lincoln Center the following winter. Or you can look at it another way: the limitations of the Santa Fe’s glorious outdoor stage impose some limits upon what a co-production can have in common.

Scenery is very spare and compromised. A projection at the Met fills in for a New Mexico sunset in the opening lakeside scene, where King James V of Scotland, disguised as a huntsman, meets the captivating Lady of the Lake, Elena. Scenes at Elena’s cottage and the king’s throne room are not sorely compromised, though they can’t be confused with more lavish Met efforts such as La Bohème or Lucia di Lammermoor.

But the intervening scenes are stupefyingly spare and unvarying, as if the entire military conflict between James and the Scottish rebels occurs on the same grassy slope where Elena and James first met. The opening scenes of Act 2, which are supposed to unfold in a thick wood near the mouth of a cave and then in the cave, are on the same slope that we left when the Act 1 curtain came down.

A few members of the chorus differentiated the setting by impaling a row of spears up the slope and removing them at the end of the scene. If you’ve never seen a production at the Met with a community theatre tang, this was your chance.

There are similarities between this story, adapted by Rossini from a Walter Scott poem, and Lucia, adapted by Donizetti from a Scott novel. Multiple men love both heroines, and the man who has captured each of their hearts is not Daddy’s choice. But while the title roles are both famed for their vocal challenges, the peak moments are very different indeed. Lucia’s mad scene in the final act is deranged despair, while Elena’s is unbridled happiness, coming on the unexpected heels of her rebellious dad’s redemption and the family’s reconciliation with the king, who also yields up his beloved so she can marry hers.

If there was anything anticlimactic for me in DiDonato’s performance the second time around, it was probably because the elements of shock and surprise had vanished, not because the mezzo-soprano’s excellence had dimmed. There was a palpable diminution, however, in the grandeur of Giacomo V with tenor Lawrence Brownlee replacing Juan Diego Flórez on the throne. Brownlee is more than adequate as a romantic lead, imbuing his pleadings and his arias with admirable verve, reaching the high notes with only minimal signs of strain. Flórez was simply more dashing, confident, and regal, and his voice is arguably the best and most recognizable of this era.

Listening to a slightly lesser king inevitably makes Elena’s favorite more appealing, a favor to the lumbering mezzo-soprano Daniela Barcellona, who returned from last season’s cast. Here the absence of shock and surprise were helpful whenever Barcellona swaggered in from the wings, eternally outcast and resentful until the denouement, for she sings beautifully.

A couple of crusty voices rounded out the cast, bass Oren Gradus as Elena’s noble father and tenor John Osborn as Rodrigo (Roderick), the conceited Highland chieftain she’s been promised to. I wouldn’t want either one to sound any different.

Photo by Karen Almond

The Barber of Seville (**3/4) – In past seasons, the confectioner’s sugar served up during the holidays ranged from Hansel and Gretel to celebrate Christmas and Die Fledermaus for Auld Lang Syne. Met general manager Peter Gelb has shaken things up since he took over, mounting new productions of the old standbys and adding a fantastical Magic Flute to the rotation in a family-friendly version that gets trimmed for the holiday season and upsized to run just for the adults.

By subjecting The Barber to a similar trim, the Met can offer a conveniently sized sampling of one of opera’s most tuneful creations, suitable for parents who would like to introduce their kids to the art form as a holiday treat. Running it concurrently with La Donna del Lago might also serve as a pathway to more Rossini for young adults and professionals making their first encounters with opera. Or it could serve as a bridge to and from Die Fledermaus, a dazzling production that is being reprised after its triumph last season.

The Bartlett Sher Barber was first trimmed in 2012, six years after he originally directed, so it’s appropriate to give credit to Kathleen Smith Belcher as the stage director of this speedy effervescence. All the familiar tunes are here, but they play second fiddle to the double-layered comedy. While the pert Rosina is hoodwinking her aging – and lecherous – guardian, Dr. Bartolo, the young and handsome student she loves is deceiving her. That student is actually Count Almaviva. The wily Figaro helps the aristocrat in gaining opportunities to woo Rosina and in eluding the increasingly watchful, jealous, and domineering Bartolo.

Originally crafted by Beaumarchais in 1775 (minus a few provocative speeches that he eventually snuck into The Marriage of Figaro), the Barber plot doesn’t lend itself easily to the fast-forward button, particularly in the helter-skelter that ends Act 1. Yet Belcher gets fine comedy performances from the entire cast, beginning with mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, who has done Rosina in this Sher version before, and Elliot Madore and David Portillo as her dashing conspirators, both newcomers.

For these three confidantes, it helps that the 200-year-old libretto is freshly translated by J.D. McClatchy into English, their native tongue. First-timers in the audience can get a lot of Leonard’s sauciness as Rosina without the aid of supertitles, along with Portillo’s noble ardor as Almaviva and Madore’s hearty worldliness as Figaro – and there are still supertitles to help in grasping the rest. Those already familiar with The Barber have a rough go of it in certain spots, beyond the compressed overture and arias. Figaro, usually such a déclassé rascal, is something of an action hero in Sher’s concept, almost as dashing as the Count and more roguish.

Michael Yeargan’s set design is winsome, circling the orchestra and bringing the action nearer to the audience. Costumes by Catherine Zuber aim straight for the funny bone, from Figaro’s striped pantaloons in his famed “Largo al factotum” entrance near the top of Act 1 to Almaviva’s absurd disguise in Act 2 impersonating a music tutor.

Most laughable are the old farts who think they can outflank the young blades. Valeriano Lanchas, in an auspicious debut, brings a supreme Charles Laughton ugliness to Bartolo, giving rise to laughter as soon as we consider the prospect of his marrying Rosina, and Robert Pomakov as his disloyal best friend – and Rosina’s music tutor – adds a scruffy sleaziness to the household that entitles us to think that Almaviva is rescuing rather than stealing the unfortunate orphan.

El Niño Mellows the Great White Way: The Lullaby of Broadway

While Charlotte theatre companies generally go into hibernation during the last two weekends of the year, finishing off extended Yuletide runs rather than opening anything new, Broadway is invariably having their top two box office weeks. Families enjoying their winter vacations swell Times Square and the surrounding theatre district to such a degree that they’ve now taken a good chunk of it and repurposed it exclusively for pedestrian traffic, sightseeing, and – hooray! – pure loafing.

During the seven full weeks when our major local companies have no mainstage premieres, Blumenthal Performing Arts has jumped into the void, opening Kinky Boots, Wicked and The Hip Hop Nutcracker. It’s a great time to scoot off to the Big Apple without any great disloyalty to Theatre Charlotte, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, Actor’s Theatre or CPCC Theatre.

You should go. Some topnotch Broadway musicals, like The Light in the Piazza or the acclaimed revivals of Company and South Pacific, never reach us in touring versions. Have you ever seen a Sondheim musical tour Charlotte? Other shows, like Les Miz or Ragtime, only reach us when the bloom has long vanished from the rose.

Of course, there are still other shows, chiefly those built around a big-name box office draw, that are never intended for a second life on the road. Even the most acclaimed and influential off-Broadway show is no more likely to hit the road for a national tour than a show we see premiered at Actor’s Theatre or ImaginOn — unless it transfers to Broadway first.

Seeing an original Broadway production that does eventually hit Charlotte has its own rewards. You get the big names, the Tony winners and all the bells and whistles to gush about — first when you’ve see the show there and later when the tour arrives here without the same big names and big budgets. While you’ve already paid enough to reserve the privilege of nitpicking the tour, you can also quietly admire how well a truly fine piece holds up in the hinterlands without all the wowee-wow-wow technical blandishments or the megawatt glitz of a superstar lead. Cases in point: the touring versions of Wicked and The Producers.

We started going up to the Great White Way during the cusp of fall and winter many seasons ago while my wife, Sue, was still a special ed teacher taking her well-deserved holiday breaks. In recent years, hoping for smaller crowds and greater selection for our annual roundup of reviews, we’ve put off our pilgrimage till as late as February. But in 2015, after our family’s Thanksgiving revels in Baltimore, we kept heading northward, staying in New York past Chanukah.

We lucked out on both available shows and, thanks to the mellowing agent known as El Niño, the weather. Of the 15 shows we saw, seven were Broadway, four were off-Broadway, three were at the Metropolitan Opera and one was with the New York Philharmonic. Allowing for the more decadent New York state of mind, we can also claim to have seen two holiday shows. A first taste of what we saw appears here, with an ample overflow completing my roundup online:

Broadway

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (**** out of 4) — An autistic 15-year-old English boy is propelled toward adulthood at heart-pounding speed when he’s seized by police for a grisly crime: murdering his neighbor’s dog with a pitchfork. Not having read the best-selling novel by Mark Haddon, I can’t say which Tony Award winner is more brilliant, playwright Simon Stephens in his stage adaptation, or director Marianne Elliott (of well-deserved War Horse fame) with her high-concept production.

Like a hit TV procedural, the crime scene is right there in the middle of the stage as the action begins — and so are young Christopher Boone’s vulnerabilities as he grieves over the slain Wellington’s body. He thinks and understands things very literally, does not take easily to strangers, and plunges instantly into panic mode if he is touched. So the interview with the police bobby who arrives on the scene does not go well. But the twin traumas of the evening forge a resolve in Christopher that will painfully liberate him from some of his afflictions.

He will solve the mystery of who killed Wellington. It’s a project that’s encouraged by his special ed teacher Siobhan, who asks Christopher to keep a journal of his investigations. But Chris’s probe is discouraged, even forbidden, by his lunch-pail father Ed, a Billy Elliot-type dad, slow to grasp his own son’s unique gifts.

What will likely be surprising — and comforting — to those who haven’t read the book is that the solution of the mystery isn’t the end of the story. No, there is much more for Christopher to discover about his parents, the neighbors, and himself. The sum of it all is life-changing while that journal blossoms into the play we watch.

Except for the actress who portrays Chris’s mother, replaced by capable understudy Stephanie Roth Haberle on the night we attended, all the leads of the original September 2014 production have departed. It was hard for me to imagine that Tony winner Alex Sharpe was any more compelling — or moving — than Tyler Lea as Christopher, a performance that was free of the slightest taint of Dustin Hoffman. Rosie Benton is an empathetic teacher as Siobhan and a likably amazed narrator when she shares Chris’s journal. Andrew Long’s work as Ed is arguably the most profound, each new layer illuminating those we thought we knew.

Changing costumes and characters, the remaining ensemble swirls around Christopher as if he’s afloat in a dream. The entire grid-like set design by Bunny Christie, combined with Finn Ross’s video artistry, occasionally casts the action into an abstract realm akin to outer space. That galactic effect is especially telling when Christopher audaciously decides to travel on his own to London or when he speaks so eloquently about the stars. It even resonates when Chris plunges into the deep psychological chasm that yawns open when he discovers that his parents are not merely imperfect but deeply flawed.

 

Fun Home (***3/4) — Lisa Kron has turned Alison Bechdel’s gay autobiographical novel into an anguished-yet-luminous memory play worthy not only of a Tony Award for best musical but also a Pulitzer Prize nom for best drama. Kron’s alchemy with composer Jeanine Tesori is no less magical, yielding a score that tingles with natural monologues and dialogues and shimmers with soaring, sometimes jubilant melody. The twin poles of fascination here are Alison, played by three different actresses as she reaches her current age of 43, and her domineering, charismatic father.

Aside from being a closeted gay man, Bruce is an ardent, unforgettable English teacher at the local high school in rural Pennsylvania and the ultra-fastidious owner — and restorer — of Bechdel’s Funeral Home.

“Fun Home” is the slick nickname Alison and her two siblings come up with when they ponder how they might advertise the family biz on TV. The fun lasts well into Alison’s college years at Oberlin, where she discovers she is a lesbian and finds her first love. Bechdel’s novel cannot make lesbian love as wholesome, youthful, natural, and joyous as Emily Skeggs singing “I’m changing my major to sex with Joan.”

But the fun abruptly ends when Dad spirals downward and commits suicide. Alison is left to pick up the pieces, rummage through them for clues, and construct a narrative that makes sense of it all – frame by frame on her sketchpad. For that reason, Beth Malone, observing her younger selves pad-in-hand as our narrator, has a far less engaging role as fully-mature Alison than Skeggs has as Medium Alison. The tomboyish collegian awakens to her true sexuality through the ministrations of the smart, confidently seductive Joan, given a spot-on activist cool by Roberta Colindrez.

None of the Alisons, not even Gabriella Pizzolo as the adorable Small Alison, is nearly as compelling as Michael Cerveris as the enigmatic Bruce. That’s how it should be, because Bechdel’s novel concentrates on the many facets of her father from its opening panel. It’s a breathtaking range, including cruelty and perversion, and as commanding as I found Cerveris in 2010 as the sexist physician in Sarah Ruhl’s notorious Vibrator Play, he surpasses himself here: gentler and more human than the Bruce that Bechdel’s novel introduces us to, yet still as deeply self-loathing.

With Sam Gold’s stage direction, abetted by Ben Stanton’s lighting, I found myself well-acquainted with the Bechdel family after the 99 intermissionless minutes I spent with them, especially in the intimate confines of the Circle in the Square theater. My only quibble was with how much there was to absorb so quickly. For that reason, I’d recommend streaming the cast album after you’ve seen the musical. It not only gives you a second chance to savor Tesori’s tunes and Kron’s deft lyrics, it also preserves generous chunks of the spoken dialogue.

 

An American in Paris (***3/4) — You may need to adore ballet and modern dance as much as I do to be fully swept away by director/choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s bold homage to the famed Gene Kelly-Leslie Caron movie. Taking the characters of Alan Jay Lerner’s 1951 screenplay as a jumping-off point, Craig Lucas also steers the book more emphatically toward a post-war celebration of dance. Most of the melody remains the same, if you consider that the title ballet was a 17-minute extravaganza on celluloid, but the music and lyrics of the Gershwin brothers have been reshuffled and refortified.

There’s more variety to the music and choreography now – and more meat to the story. Jerry Mulligan remains an aspiring painter and illustrator who lingers in Paris after V-Day, but Lise, the girl he pursues all around the city, is no longer a mere shopgirl. She’s a mesmerizing ballerina with prodigious talent. A prestigious ballet company director wants to hire her after a brief audition, Jerry’s composer friend Adam wants to write a ballet for her, and her longtime protector Henri is working up the courage to ask for her hand in marriage.

Basically, the same obstacles are strewn in Jerry’s path to bliss that were in the film. Lise feels beholden to Henri because she and her Jewish family were sheltered by his family during the Nazi Occupation. At the same time, Jerry must resist the temptations offered by the predatory Milo, a poised and sophisticated patroness bent on seducing Jerry. But here Milo’s philanthropy throws a wider net than simply offering to bankroll an exhibition of Jerry’s work. Here she proposes to commission a new ballet; fostering the ambitions of Adam, who will compose it, Jerry, who will design it; and of course, Lise – the whole piece will be built around this new étoile.

An artsy bunch, all in all, considering that Henri longs to break free from his parents’ sway and become a cabaret singer. But while it’s engaging to watch the romantic complications sort themselves out, the show really gets its kick from Wheedon’s audacious ensemble dances – and takes flight on the wings of the two lovebirds, Robert Fairchild as Jerry and Leanne Cope as Lise. On Wednesdays, you have to choose one or the other, depending on whether you book the matinee or evening performance. The press rep (a woman, I might note) steered me toward the matinee, when Fairchild performs.

A principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, Fairchild has a more classic style than either Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire – and he doesn’t have to flash his moves to attract the fair sex. Singing the Gershwins’ “Liza” and “I’ve Got Beginner’s Luck,” Fairchild’s voice tops off his triple-threat credentials, evoking the velvety sound of Michael Feinstein. Subbing for Cope, Sarah Esty seemed to be the ideal partner for Fairchild, slim and delicate with a Leslie Caron allure lurking in her modesty. She’s no slouch as a ballerina, with a Princess Grace Award on her résumé.

My only disappointment, after hearing Max von Essen on the cast album, was to find Nathan Madden bringing Henri’s French accent to “I’ve Got Rhythm” – and prodding Adam to pep up the tempo. Brandon Uranowitz, another original cast member, delivers Adam’s bohemian pessimism with a Woody Allen twinkle, and Jill Paice is purest porcelain as Milo, just what you’d expect 65 years after Nina Foch originated the role.

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School of Rock (***1/2) — There’s very little that I can say in defense of Dewey. He’s loud and obnoxious, deceitful and undependable, slovenly and insensitive, and there’s no way this broke, borrowing loser can get a respectable job unless he steals his best friend’s name and résumé to do it. Or let me put it another way: Dewey is the raging, rambunctious soul of rock ‘n’ roll!

Who would have predicted that His Lordship, Andrew Lloyd Webber, would have added such a shambling misfit to a musical pantheon that includes Evita, Norma Desmond, and The Phantom of Opera – not to mention the biblical Jesus, Joseph, and Deuteronomy!? Musically, Lloyd Weber has tossed dignity to the winds in crafting his adaptation of the popular 2003 Jack Black film. Working with lyricist Glenn Slater, Lord Lloyd produces songs that are loudly arrogant like “I’m Too Hot for You,” loudly anti-establishment like “Stick It to the Man,” loudly defiant like “If Only You Would Listen,” and just loudly stupid like “When I Climb to the Top of Mount Rock.”

As we witness the culture clash that happens when Dewey signs on as a substitute teacher at a straight-laced prep school, the occasional excursions away from hard rock are dictated by the action. Students and faculty sing the school alma mater, the too-tightly-wound principal ascends to the throne of “Queen of the Night” (yes, from Mozart’s The Magic Flute) at choir practice, and when the shy black girl finally breaks her silence in Act 2, she sings an amazing “Amazing Grace.”

Amid the basic chords of Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, and the wild jungle of heavy metal, there are no American Idol power ballads here. On the contrary, His Lordship hints that he himself might be tired of hearing “Memory” from Cats.

Like Dewey, the composer has had to become perversely devout. Molding his middle-schoolers into an ensemble worthy of competing for the prize money in a battle of the bands contest, Dewey finds that he must treat and respect his students as people – something their teachers and parents haven’t done. Being the man for once instead of always flouting him, Dewey grows up a little. The rascally con man may have even become vulnerable to love by the time the jig is up.

Four nights after School of Rock officially opened, the Winter Garden was filled to capacity and audience enthusiasm was sometimes louder than the band. It was lit by Alex Brightman’s incendiary performance as Dewey, leonine in its energy and fury – and teddy bear-like in its clumsy attempts at humanity. Sierra Boggess, ranging from stiff Mozart to loosey-goosey boogie while principal Rosalie gradually lets her hair down, is also a treat.

But the pre-recorded announcement that the boys and girls onstage will actually be playing their instruments proved to be necessary almost as soon as they showed off their chops. Under the keen direction of Laurence Connor, Brightman is more than willing to let the precocious kids shine. Letting them have a good time performing for a packed house seems to lift Brightman’s spirits as the evening progresses – and they’re coke-high to begin with.

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King Charles III (***1/2) — Not so long ago, Queen Elizabeth II became the longest serving monarch in the history of the British Crown. With bard-like presumption, playwright Mike Bartlett peeps into the future and divines what will happen when the longest-tenured heir apparent to the throne finally gets his hands around that precious circle of gold.

Bartlett models his drama on the tragedies and histories of Shakespeare, so we haven’t had to swallow this much blank verse in a contemporary Broadway play since the heyday of Maxwell Anderson. Except for the fact that he’s getting a crown in his declining years rather than yielding it, Tim Pigott-Smith as Charles III is often very Lear-like in his quixotic dealings with his family and Parliament. Somehow in his dotage, Charles has latched onto the notion that being the King of England and assorted remnants of the British Empire ought to count for something in determining how his nation is ruled.

Crowned and presented with a bill that would curb the intrusions of the press into his own royal family, Charles refuses to sign, urging the MPs to reconsider before he does. Such regal arrogance does not go down well with Mr. Evans, the sitting Prime Minister, and we suspect that the support Charles gets from Mr. Stevens, the leader of the opposition, is based less on principle than on political opportunism.

And of course, the cantankerous King is beset by thankless children – and haunted by the ghost of Diana. Yes, there is a conspicuous falling off between the saintly Diana (Sally Scott) who seraphically haunts Buckingham Palace by night and the frumpy Camilla (Margot Leicester), particularly since Charles’s second wife has been afforded the luxury of aging.

Things grow royally trashy when we cut away to the kids. Egged on by the former Kate Middleton, Prince William is quite capable of taking advantage of the growing constitutional crisis and snatching the crown for himself. Echoes of Lady Macbeth are unmistakable in the slim, sleek Lydia Wilson’s portrayal of Kate. With better makeup, a more fashionable wardrobe, she’s a cover girl even in her mourning dress.

William’s resistance to Kate’s rapacious hunger for power is rooted in his keen understanding of the innocuousness demanded of a modern monarch. If he is to prevail, it will be through sheer charm and vapid glamor. Oliver Chris wields all these scepters as if he’s born to it. We just don’t hear this urbane scoundrel very clearly because, like Adam James as the PM, he’s too intent on making Bartlett’s verse sound like everyday chitchat. Sadly, they succeed.

There’s a touch of Hamlet in Charles’s vacillations and in his haunting by Diana, but much the same can be said about little brother Richard Goulding as Harry, who thinks about chucking the whole royal scene for the real world. Goaded in that direction by Tafline Steen as Jess, Harry’s latest flame, the family screw-up gets a taste of an anti-Kate. Goulding offers us the Prince Hal aspects of Harry’s peccadillos, striking me as a younger version of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, while Steen is deliciously instinctive, principled, and rough around the edges.

Plagued by a toxic Congress, we may be more sympathetic to this steely Charles III than his countrymen might be. Make no mistake, in Bartlett’s prognostications for the future, he is very much dissecting and eviscerating the present. Doing it in Shakespearean style just underscores how far we’ve fallen. (Through January 31)

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Allegiance (***1/4) — With xenophobia running amuck across our republic, perhaps even deciding the upcoming presidential election, there could hardly be a more opportune moment for exploring the shameful time in our history when we herded Japanese Americans into concentration camps in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. We haven’t reacted to 9/11 with quite the same fevered paranoia, but after the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, there were ominous echoes in Donald Trump’s stump speeches – and tweets! – when this new musical opened in November.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen recently when Birds of a Feather opened at Spirit Square, each time playwright Marc Acito touches a hot topic or issue, his script devoutly avoids stirring up emotions with advocacy. In the aftermath of the widespread censorship of And Tango Makes Three, Acito’s Birds managed to so thoroughly dilute the story of Roy and Silo, two gay Central Park penguins who inspired that banned children’s book, that both birds were satirically neutered.

Acito is collaborating on this timely project with Jay Kuo, who also wrote the score, and Lorenzo Thione. But it actually began in 2008, when Kuo and Thione met with George Takei, who stars as our reminiscing narrator, Sam Kimura. Best-known – and loved – for his role as Mr. Sulu in Star Trek, Takei and his family were among 120,000 Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in the camps during WW2, forcefully evacuated from his home in LA and sent to a relocation center in Arkansas.

Those events are replicated in retrospect, with Telly Leung sidling in as the young Sammy, opera singer Christòpheren Nomura providing substantial backbone as his father, and Lea Salonga – a Broadway star since opening night of Miss Saigon in 1991 – providing an interesting counterweight to the other Kimuras as Sammy’s older sister.

So instead of focusing on the wave of paranoia and bigotry, by Americans and their government, that robbed citizens like Takei of their liberty through most of their childhood, we lock in on the conflicting ways that the Kimuras chose to personify gaman, the Japanese concept of “endurance with dignity.” Tatsuo, Sammy’s father, stands up for his principles by refusing to capitulate to the loyalty questionnaire our government distributed to internees – demanding their pledge of allegiance in writing.

Sammy took the opposite path, not only filling out his questionnaire with the answers Uncle Sam expected but also enlisting in a special Army unit. Sammy is bent on demonstrating his willingness – and his people’s – to go into battle for America and to accept the most hazardous duty Uncle Sam can devise. The resulting family rift can never be healed.

Amid the semi-fictional Kimuras, I found myself intrigued by the one true-life character in Allegiance, Mike Masaoka, the national spokesman for the Japanese American Citizens League. From the safety of Washington, DC, he urged all Japanese Americans to cooperate with the government’s actions – and accept pennies-on-the-dollar offers for their property – rather than question the constitutionality of this Nazi-like roundup.

By the end of the evening, all the Kimuras despised Masaoka. Thanks to the scripted, pampered sleaziness by Greg Watanabe, I also grew to hate Masaoka more than anyone else I saw onstage. With all the unjust indignities heaped upon innocent Japanese citizens, I would rather that my outrage had been channeled toward some of the white bastards who were truly responsible. With the same obliquity of its title, Allegiance denounces their unconscionable actions by showing us the humanity, fortitude, and character of their victims. (Through February 14)

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Sylvia (***) — A.R. Gurney’s frisky comedy has been mounted so many times in Charlotte that it can be considered a modern classic. Yet until last October, it hadn’t been done on Broadway. The original 1995 production, starring Sarah Jessica Parker in the title role, ran less than five months, and by the time I caught up with it, the late Jan Hooks of SNL fame had taken settled into the doggie leash.

So it’s quite possible that Parker’s husband, Matthew Broderick, logged more performances in Sylvia during the limited three-month engagement (including previews) that ended less than two weeks ago. Undoubtedly, more people saw Broderick as Greg, the disgruntled commodities trader who spirals into a midlife crisis after indulging and adulating a stray pooch that he picks up in Central Park. The Cort Theatre, where this revival was staged, has more than three times the capacity of the site where the Manhattan Theatre Club first birthed Gurney’s bedraggled part-poodle.

I can’t say that the upsizing does Gurney any favors – aside from allowing him to charmingly record the pre-show cautions about candy wrappers and cell phones. The larger stage allows David Rockwell the opportunity to create a set design encompassing a large swath of the park with imposing luxury hotels in the background. It’s also cool to see Greg’s apartment drop out of the flyloft while the bosky cityscape remains visible through its windows.

But I like Greg better in a small theater where I feel like I’m intruding on his space. On the Broadway stage, Greg is in our larger space – diminished because Broderick is too much the artist to upsize him into theatricality. Annaleigh Ashford takes fierce hold of that job as the mouthy, doggie lead. She can only have gained in stature and confidence since she first won my heart during the summer of 2013 in Kinky Boots. Last season, she snagged a Tony for her role in the You Can’t Take It With You revival.

Under Daniel Sullivan’s direction, Ashford seemed to be straining at times to carry the comedy on her haunches. On the other hand, Julie White as Greg’s increasingly stressed – and jealous – wife Kate seemed exactly the right size, striking a wonderful tone that discarded the shrewishness I’ve seen from other actresses in favor of a very literate exasperation. The lady quotes Shakespeare, after all.

Robert Sella took on the three juicy cameos, but only one of them scored well. Working as Ashford’s foil, Sella was hilarious as Kate’s friend Phyllis, increasingly alarmed by Sylvia’s physical attentions to the point where her visit ended abruptly in panic. Encounters with Tom, the manly owner of the dog who deflowers Sylvia, failed to detonate as well as any of the Charlotte productions I’ve seen. Late in Act 2, both Sullivan and Sella seemed to miss the point of Leslie, the neurotic therapist of indeterminate gender who presumes to offer counseling to Greg and Kate – even though she’s clearly more unstable than either of them.

It was toward the end, when the action became dramatic, that the rapport between the three leads jelled most effectively. The aftershow was also charming, with pictures of audience members’ pets projected on the upstage wall, submitted via social media.