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THEATER REVIEW: ‘Wicked’ at the Fox Theatre
"Wicked." Grade: B +. Through Nov. 2. $31-$70. Presented by Broadway Across America-Atlanta and the Atlanta Broadway Series. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-817-8700, ticketmaster.com. Bottom line: We couldn't be happier.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My fellow Ozians: These are times when the world could use an infusion of green. These are times when our spirits are gravity-laden. These are times when the soul needs escapism. These are times for Broadway’s “Wicked.”
Ding-dong, Glinda and Elphaba are back.
Back at the Fox Theatre with their gossamer gowns and bubbles, their flying monkeys and love troubles, their witchy wars and munchkin struggles. Based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, this tale of a green-skinned boarding school outcast and her not-so-wonderful wizard has always struck me as a Harry Potter for girls and a Disney entertainment for grown-ups, and I mean this as a compliment.
Adapted by “Godspell” composer Stephen Schwartz, directed by Joe Mantello and featuring an eye-popping overload of grandiose design and nifty technical tricks, the 2003 Broadway musical made stars of Kristin Chenoweth (Glinda) and Idina Menzel (Elphaba) — reaffirming the sheer giddy pleasure of razzle-dazzle entertainment and outsize spectacle.
Broadway loves big, and “Wicked” delivered.
Yet when it first appeared, many critics (including yours truly) were so busy nit-picking the music and naysaying the glitz that we forgot to sit back and let the magic wash over us. After five years and several viewings, I’m delighted to say that “Wicked” has won me over.
I never fail to see new things in the story. The score may be a tad overwrought and the book sugared with cheap one-liners and easy laughs. But the education of Elphaba and Glinda — who redefine notions of beauty while remaining true to themselves — is an emotionally transporting experience.
And not just for girls.
In this Broadway Across America-Atlanta/Atlanta Broadway Series production (which continues through Nov. 2, so no excuses), Carmen Cusack is simply the best Elphaba I’ve ever seen. It’s too easy to play Elphaba as hot-headed and shrill, but Cusack summons her character’s stealthy powers from a sense of calm resolve. (She’s a glorious singer to boot.)
On the other side of the rainbow, Katie Rose Clarke’s Glinda is all bright colors and excess. She could stand to take the comedic mannerisms down just a hair, but her shimmering soprano voice is exquisite, and her character’s journey is genuine and moving. Being “Popular” isn’t always enough, and happiness comes at a cost. Glinda loses Fiyero (Cliffton Hall), but in the end, she forgives.
In the big dance scene (check out Susan Hilferty’s fabulous black-and-white ball costumes), Hall moves like a slick disco dandy in tights and doesn’t seem quite right for the part. But without relying on some preconceived, cookie-cutter approach, he transforms himself form a “silly rich boy” into a credible love interest, and that’s due as much to the rich grainy texture of his voice as his physicality.
Lenny Wolpe brings years of experience to bear on his Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Like Myra Lucretia Taylor (Madame Morrible), he’s a pro. And considering that she spends most of her time in a wheelchair, Deedee Magno Hall (as Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose) gives a nice performance, too.
Overall, it’s almost impossible not to see this show through a prism of history and politics. Creatures are rounded up and shunted away for being different. A man is changed into a scarecrow and strung up in a field in image that recalls Matthew Shephard and Jesus Christ. A powerless old geezer seeks out the aid of a strong young woman with long black hair and glasses in a desperate attempt at victory (nudge, nudge).
Working on numerous levels at once, “Wicked” is dark and delicious meditation on the nature of love, jealousy, revenge, power and beauty. It refutes the claim that “No One Mourns the Wicked.” We don’t just mourn Elphaba, we desperately want her to succeed.
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Any recommendations for economic self-help books?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I just looked on Amazon’s best-seller list, and was a little surprised there were hardly any books there that might help people — or even purport to help them — with the current economic crisis.
The only thing I found was “Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse” by Peter D. Schiff and John Downes, which was of course written before this collapse, but seems pretty nuts and bolts advice-driven.
There were a couple of books I think folks may be buying because of general anxiety, including “The Snowball,” a biography of Warren Buffett, and “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression” by Amity Shlaes, but I don’t think those are going to be of any real assistance.
I’m thinking maybe books are not our best resource for figuring out what, if anything, to do as we watch our 401(k)s crater, but maybe I’m wrong. Can anyone recommend a good book that helps readers with this mess?
Here’s additional information on coping with the financial crisis
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Judge Sentences Rap Fan to Beethoven
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
From a News of the Pathetic dispatch, it seems a judge tried to tap classical music’s medicinal properties. That doesn’t work with kids (when the parent don’t already listen to classical music), and it doesn’t work for a paying audience in the concert hall (when they expect traditional classics and get something else), so why would it reform a convicted ne’re-do-well?
Here’s the AP story that just moved on the wires:
Judge sentences rap music fan to Bach, Beethoven By Associated Press Thursday, October 09, 2008
URBANA, Ohio — A defendant had a hard time facing the music. Andrew Vactor was facing a $150 fine for playing rap music too loudly on his car stereo in July. But a judge offered to reduce that to $35 if Vactor spent 20 hours listening to classical music by the likes of Bach, Beethoven and Chopin.
Vactor, 24, lasted only about 15 minutes, a probation officer said.
It wasn’t the music, Vactor said, he just needed to be at practice with the rest of the Urbana University basketball team.
“I didn’t have the time to deal with that,” he said. “I just decided to pay the fine.”
Champaign County Municipal Court Judge Susan Fornof-Lippencott says the idea was to force Vactor to listen to something he might not prefer, just as other people had no choice but to listen to his loud rap music.
“I think a lot of people don’t like to be forced to listen to music,” she said.
She’s also taped TV shows for defendants in other cases to watch on topics such as financial responsibility. As she sees it, they get the chance to have their fine reduced “and at the same time broaden their horizons.”
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“Genius & Heroin:” A new book to die for
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Not everyone enjoys a good trek through a cemetery, but Michael Largo and I bonded immediately when we met in Oakland Cemetery, and talked about other graveyards we have loved.
Largo, who just moved to Atlanta, is the author of the new book “Genius and Heroin: The Illustrated Catalogue of Creativity, Obsession and Reckless Abandon Through the Ages,” which he will discuss and sign at 7 tonight at Opal Gallery, next door to A Cappella Books, 484 Moreland Ave. in Little 5 Points.
“Genius” is about the reckless, addictive, obsessive lifestyles of a slew of great aritsts, and how those lives contributed to their sometimes spectacular deaths. His previous books include “Final Exits” and “The Portable Obituary.”
But he’s not the least bit morbid. He’s a fun guy, who wanted me to show him Margaret Mitchell’s tombstone. I knew where it was and showed him, and then we went to lunch at Six Feet Under, the restraurant across the street from Oakland, and talked about death.
I asked him out of all the deathbed stories he has written about, whose deathbed would he have liked to witness personally? Kurt Cobain and Edgar Allen Poe, he answered.
So I put it to you: Whose deathbed would you have liked to have seen personally?
I’ll kick it off with mine: Jesus Christ.
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Atlanta Opera’s High Concept ‘Madama Butterfly’
OPERA REVIEW Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" Atlanta Opera. Saturday at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. Repeats Oct. 7, 10 and 12. 404-881-8885, www.atlantaopera.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It lasted just a moment, but oh what promise.
Cio-Cio-San made her entrance, rapturously, down a long curved ramp at the back of the stage. Her family entourage, dressed in colorful, modern-styled kimonos, formed a long hedge with umbrellas twirling. Circular rings painted on the floor evoked ripples in a Japanese garden pond. The brilliant twilight sky bled from fuchsias to deep reds.
Then Polish soprano Joanna Kozlowska, the tragic heroine of “Madama Butterfly,” sang of her impending marriage — a step in the joyous cycles of life and death — in gleaming tones at once steely, creamy and opulent, piercing through the orchestra, filling the room.
Opening Atlanta Opera’s 29th season Saturday at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Kozlowska was the soprano to carry Puccini’s most fail-safe opera, with set and costume designs by Jun Kaneko, a celebrated Japanese-American sculptor and painter.
Kaneko’s production premiered in 2006 at Opera Omaha, in the sculptor’s adopted hometown, and has already been rented by several regional opera companies.
It’s the latest in a distinguished history of collaborations, where the most cross-pollinated of performing arts receives an injection of fresh insights or hip attitudes from comprehensive artists. Opera designs by Picasso (for Stravinsky) and David Hockney (for Mozart), for example, are still revived in the theater and are masterpieces in the realm of aesthetics-meets-function. (Kaneko’s designs for “Butterfly” are now on display at a SCAD-Atlanta gallery.)
Yet after the initial, giddy radiance of both Kozlowska’s voice and Kaneko’s visuals, neither offered enough to keep this “Butterfly” afloat.
In both cases, in fact, neither seemed to know what “Butterfly” was about. Primed to dominate the evening, they were at best uneven in appeal and substance.
Kozlowska has sung mostly at the major opera houses in Europe and reportedly hasn’t sung in the U.S. in a decade. Saturday night she blew her top-tier pipes but displayed paltry communication skills and static acting ability — either in physicality or, more crucially, in acting the role with her voice.
Puccini’s fragile Butterfly, the retired geisha, is all of 15 and marries for love B.F. Pinkerton, an American sailor. He’s in the arrangement for carnal purposes. She’s one of the composer’s few female creations whose character and maturity develops as the plot progresses.
Yet Kozlowska, a severe introvert on stage, never opened up, never gave us reason to sympathize. For “Un bel di” — singing of a hopeful tomorrow after three years abandoned — she rushed ahead of the orchestra and clipped her phrases and seemed to have no idea how to wring the juice from the opera’s greatest-hit aria.
There was much to admire in Kaneko’s designs, which played off traditional Japanese culture — including “shadow men” drawn from Bunraku theater — while effectively offering one artist’s unique vision. Too often, though, instead of complementing and augmenting the music and drama, his scenic elements distracted badly from the singing.
What was the message of the wavy red and blue computer graphics projected at the end of act one, during the big love duet? Pinkerton’s growing ardor? If so, it was too distracting, too obvious, a gimmick for showing us something that the music had already made palpable.
Thus strongest contributions came from the veterans.
Tenor Richard Leech, a leading Pinkerton in years past at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and also making his Atlanta Opera debut, sang with blocky phrasing and a pleasing, appropriately gruff “bite” in his tone that’s part of a warm embrace of a voice.
Conductor Joseph Rescigno didn’t so much impose an interpretation on the performance as step out of the way of the singers, breathing with them and keeping the orchestra tight.
The smaller roles were generally well cast. Weston Hurt was a vocally handsome Sharpless, the American consul. Jennifer Hines as a meek Suzuki, Butterfly’s servant. Joel Sorensen played a memorable Goro, the comic marriage broker, who seemed to have stepped out of some other, more stimulating production.
Sorensen’s sharp character acting revealed that Bernard Uzan, the stage director, didn’t ask for, or get, much from his cast — perhaps swamped, like the rest of us, by Kaneko’s concept.
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Latest comments
I just saw the Oct. 10th performance. I am 36 years old and this was my fourth opera performance. My first was Madame Butterfly in the Civic Center. It was far better than this one. The folks with more opera experience than I can lay out the details but... read the full comment by Seth Pajak | Comment on Atlanta Opera's High Concept 'Madama Butterfly' Read Atlanta Opera's High Concept 'Madama Butterfly'
I agree with My Two Cents regarding the all Tchaikovsky program performed by the ASO. There is a reason this pieces are popular. I felt that the ASO performed admirably. If I a modest quibble, it is that Robert Spano seemed to be pushing the tempo... read the full comment by Mark Owens | Comment on Judge Sentences Rap Fan to Beethoven Read Judge Sentences Rap Fan to Beethoven
Friday’s performance of Butterfly was on balance an exquisite evening when most of the elements fell into place in grand style. The singing and orchestra teamed up to elevate the production above two very distractions. Kozlowska’s acting simply... read the full comment by Scholar | Comment on Atlanta Opera's High Concept 'Madama Butterfly' Read Atlanta Opera's High Concept 'Madama Butterfly'
Can’t wait until next Saturday, the 18th. First row, C-Orch…may be a little too close. Never have sat in the first row at the Fox. But, I’m psyched…I love the show (4th time). I hope to see Carmen and Katie but it’s a matinee... read the full comment by DT | Comment on THEATER REVIEW: 'Wicked' at the Fox Theatre Read THEATER REVIEW: 'Wicked' at the Fox Theatre