Jazz trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis has been commissioned to write a full scale, all-orchestral work by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, to be conducted by music director Robert Spano.

It’s been on the books for more than two years. The world premiere was originally scheduled for July 19, part of this summer’s National Black Arts Festival at Midtown’s Woodruff Arts Center, with repeat performances in November on the ASO’s main subscription series.

But in early June, Marsalis broke the news to the ASO: he wasn’t finished. The premiere was pushed back to November. The new work was be recorded by Telarc. It’s a co-commission by the ASO and Boston Symphony, with additional funding from the NBAF.

Not so fast.

This afternoon the ASO announced that the world premiere of Marsalis’ symphonic work has now been postponed until the 2009-10 season due to his delay in writing the work, and that a new date for the premiere will likely be part of the 2009-2010 season.

The new work is tentatively called “An American Symphony.” All along, Marsalis has been curiously silent about progress on what’s been billed as a 40-minute, six-movement symphony, where each movement evokes an indigenous American style of music, from ragtime to the blues to 4/4 swing. This will be his first score for purely orchestral forces, without Marsalis’ on-stage participation and with no jazz combo in the mix.

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‘Sherlock Holmes’ at Theatre in the Square

By Wendell Brock | Thursday, August 14, 2008, 01:17 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B-

Last year, Theatre in the Square began its season with a contemporary adaptation of Aeschylus’ tragedy “The Persians,” one of the oldest plays in the Western world.

On Wednesday night, it opened its 27th season with Steven Dietz’s “Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure,” adapted from the original 1899 play by William Gillette and Arthur Conan Doyle. Compared to the 2,500-year-old Aeschylus, the Victorian-era “Sherlock” is a toddler.

Directed by Jessica Phelps West, this updated “Sherlock” finds the world’s most famous detective (played by Martin Thompson) donning a mustache, cape and numerous other guises in an effort to save the King of Bohemia (Brik Berkes) from an embarrassing sex scandal.

As the screw turns, the Baker Street sleuth becomes embroiled in a tangled web of mystery, fake identities, hairpin revelations and unrequited love. He shoots up cocaine, battles the wicked criminal Moriarity (Barry Stoltze) and manipulates the action in a chivalrous quest to protect the famous opera singer Irene Adler (Elizabeth Wells Berkes).

But somehow the show never manages to whip up much in the way of suspense, and Holmes’ antics don’t seem nearly so clever and intricately imagined now as they must have 100 years ago.

Elementary, indeed.

To its credit, the ensemble gives it a go nonetheless. Thompson evinces an elegant and deliciously timed performance as Holmes, spouting one liners with acerbic flair. Charles Horton cuts a sweetly likeable figure as that ultimate straight man, Doctor Watson, who narrates the story as a series of flashbacks. And Elizabeth Wells Berkes is one of the few actresses I know who can exude fire and ice in the same breath. Her Adler may be the most intriguing chameleon in this whole charade.

Some of the best comedic moments come from the over-the-top antics of Scott Warren, who turns Moriarty’s sidekick Sid Prince into a galumphing bully — often at the expense of the pert James Larrabee (Christopher Ekholm), Adler’s dubious husband. Also hilarious is Brik Berkes, who makes the Slavic royal seem as thick as his pork-chop sideburns.

At the end of the day, this highly mannered parlor-room mystery might benefit from a bit more such Mel Brooks-style tomfoolery. Dietz never manages to make Sherlock’s shenanigans very vital or adventurous. Easy to digest, this trifle is seldom much of a gas.

The 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays. 2:30 p.m. Sept. 17. No 7 p.m. show Sept. 21. Through Sept. 21. $22-$33. Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369, theatreinthesquare.com

Bottom line: No tingles.

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‘Damn Yankees’ at Aurora

By Wendell Brock | Thursday, August 14, 2008, 12:45 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

THEATER REVIEW. Grade: C

There are no grand slams in Aurora Theatre’s season-opening production of “Damn Yankees,” which has its eye on the pennant but fails to score many points in the romantic-comedy ballpark.

The Faustian tale of an aging baseball aficionado who trades his wife for a Washington Senators jersey and gets a steamy romp with the leggy Lola as part of the bargain, the 1955 Broadway musical is a sweetly reassuring anthem on the power of love to withstand the siren song of fame, fortune, desire and lust.

But the story of Joe Boyd and his overlooked wife, Meg, has aged about as gracefully as a well-worn Little League baseball.

Though the songs of Richard Adler and Jerry Ross have their winning moments, George Abbott and Douglass Wallop’s book feels stitched together from the remnants of vaudeville. If its old-school schtick and creaky plot machinations are to satisfy the expectations of modern audiences, it requires nothing less than hard-hitting emotional investment from the company.

Alas, director Susan Reid’s production has the good-natured intentions and clumsy results of an ambitious community theater offering.

Wildly uneven and frequently wobbly, this “Damn Yankees” delivers a bland, creaky-voiced Joe Boyd (Bruce Taylor); a made-up-to-look-washed-out Meg (Jennifer Levison) and a perky comedienne miscast as the bombshell/she-devil Lola (Wendy Melkonian). Thank goodness for Justin Tanner (Joe Hardy), who sings handsomely and captures the yearning heart of an old romantic soul trapped in a young man’s body. And Spencer G. Stephens, as the exasperated Coach Van Buren, is good wiggly fun.

But you have to wonder what artistic director Anthony Rodriguez and musical director Ann-Carol Pence would think if they could actually see what’s happening onstage. (Rodriguez plays devil incarnate Fred Applegate to adequately smarmy effect, and Pence sits behind the chain-link fence of an onstage “dugout,” leading the band.)

There were some awkward, borderline embarrassing moments the night I caught the show. One actress took a tumble and landed on the floor; another nearly lost part of her costume. And because the band and the ensemble seemed intent on outblasting one another, the finale was a mess.

Also problematic: Taylor and Levison seemed to make no honest connections whatsoever. Melkonian’s requisite cutesy mannerisms were mostly obscured by her bad wig. And while Katie Arjona’s choreography brought out the energy and enthusiasm of this youthful ensemble, the overall design (sets by Bob Hoffman, costumes by Amanda Sutt) was fussier than necessary.

Aurora, which has produced a string of old-fashioned musicals including “Camelot” and “Annie Get Your Gun,” simply may not have the resources to match its enthusiasm.

“Damn Yankees,” at least, is a no-hitter.

THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Through Sept. 7. $16-$30. Aurora Theatre, 128 Pike St., Lawrenceville. 678-226-6222, auroratheatre.com

Bottom line: Strikes out.

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The new Bulwer-Lytton winners are in!

By Phil Kloer | Thursday, August 14, 2008, 08:20 AM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Surely you’ve heard of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a competition to create really, really bad writing that’s been going on for more than 25 years. It’s named for George Bulwer-Lytton, a Victorian novelist who penned the opening line “It was a dark and stormy night” before it was a cliche that everyone chuckled over.

The idea is to write a spectacularly bad opening sentence of a novel that’s so bad it’s wonderful in its badness. Here is the 2008 winner, from Garrison Spik of Washington, D.C.

“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.”

And I particularly liked this one, in the Detective category, from Robert B. Robeson of Lincoln, Neb.:

“Mike Hummer had been a private detective so long he could remember Preparation A, his hair reminded everyone of a rat who’d bitten into an electrical cord, but he could still run faster than greased owl snot when he was on a bad guy’s trail, and they said his friskings were a lot like getting a vasectomy at Sears.”

Full list of winners is here.

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