Access Atlanta > Arts > Our Reviews > Archives > 2005 > September
September 2005
‘Pooh Corner’ at puppet center
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “The House at Pooh Corner.” Through Dec. 11.
Our waddly hero has a sweet tooth. But he keeps telling himself it’s fine if he doesn’t get any fatter, and he doesn’t think he is. (Cue to rub himself on the tummy and look all sweet and clueless.)
His new friend, who sports a striped fur coat and makes a boing sound when he bounces, doesn’t like honey, but he likes everything else. Well, “everything but honey, acorns and thistles.” (Could this be the original finicky cat?)
As Owl tells us at the top of the Center for Puppetry Arts’ “The House at Pooh Corner,” this duo is so famous they need no introduction. Since the 1920s, A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger have been among the most treasured creations in children’s literature. (And plenty of adults we know have been Pooh-heads since before they lost their baby teeth.)
It’s a testament to director Bobby Box’s delightful show that these characters have the hug appeal of plush animals and the comedic assurance of seasoned vaudevillians.
Chaplin might have learned something from the way straight man Pooh (Dina Shadwell) cocks his head when he first hears Tigger’s approach. And Tigger’s tablecloth tussle is the kind of idiot rampage that’s informed several generations’ worth of Hollywood slapstick and Saturday-morning cartoons. (Big cheer for puppeteer Michael Haverty for investing Tigger with such cockalorum.)
But the subtlest puppeteering comes from Caroline Masclet and Julie Dansby. At first, Masclet’s Piglet sounds as nervously squeaky as Butterfly McQueen, but eventually this pint-size ball of pinkness will come to wrinkle her noise dismissively at Tigger’s over-adrenalized tomfoolery. (Paging the Ritalin-relief squad.)
Dansby, for her part, turns sad-sack Eeyore into a world-weary donkey-philosophizer, whose domestic conundrum becomes the major plot point. “It’s getting cooooold and the wind is starting to bloooow,” says Eeyore with a languorous sigh that’s part bray, part yawn.
So, as Kenny Loggins once wrote, “Back to the days of Christopher Robin, back to the ways of Pooh.” “The House at Pooh Corner” is a sure-fire giggle-inducer for kids, a honey-oozing diversion for adults and a shoo-in for the cutest show in town.
THE 411: 10 and 11:30 a.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; 11 a.m., 1 and 3 p.m. Saturdays; 1 and 3 p.m. Sundays. Through Dec. 11. $14. Center for Puppetry Arts, 1404 Spring St., Atlanta. 404-873-3391, www.puppet.org.
The verdict: Sweeter than hunny.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Theater
The Decemberists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sept. 29 at the Tabernacle
Shortly after drummer/asylum escapee John Moen abandoned his drum kit to do a hopping, twirling dance at the front of the stage, lead singer Colin Meloy launched into “We Both Go Down Together,� a song about a suicide pact between two lovers that rhymes “tattooed tramp� with “labor camp.� An evening with the Decemberists is not another night of Bic-flicking arena rock ‘n’ roll.
A joyful amalgam of rock, folk, performance art, guerilla theater, power chords and tableaux vivant, the Decemberists’ show at the Tabernacle, their second in Atlanta this year, was an endless delight, a piñata of surprises and pieces of bliss. Their geek-chic camp followers were the type to get delirious when they realized Meloy was going to close the show with “The Mariner’s Revenge,� a nine-minute song about whaling that ended in perfectly executed chaos. This was the kind of crowd that when Meloy introduced Moen as a narcoleptic, they knew what it meant.
Other rockers might have taken the occasion of pausing between tunes to shout, “Atlanta! How ya doin’ tonight?� Meloy, in Rivers Cuomo glasses and too-short necktie, instead told the crowd at the mid-point, rather calmly, “I don’t feel like I’ve appropriately bonded with you yet. We’re all standing in this big room together and we hardly know each other.�
Know this: The Decemberists are a quintet (who drag extra musicians on tour, like the marvelous Petra Haden) from Portland, Oregon, who are three CDs into a popularity that’s small-scale by mass-market standards, but surprisingly large considering their songs are about gay hustlers, ghosts, spies, royal children and injuries at youth soccer camp. As well-constructed as their songs are on CD, the band really pushes them to the next level in concert. Plus they get to wear porkpie hats and play bird calls.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Pop Music
Marin Alsop conducts the ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. www.atlantasymphony.org.
The world seems to be falling in line for Marin Alsop, who led the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in a terrific concert Thursday in Symphony Hall.
The New York-born conductor made national news in July when the Baltimore Symphony named her music director — the first woman appointed to lead a major American orchestra.
It was an important shattered glass ceiling for classical music, although many of the Baltimore musicians where in open rebellion, citing their exclusion from the selection process. One could guess that the grumpy musicians had a less subtle message to send: Alsop isn’t likely to be as satisfying as their outgoing music director, Yuri Temirkanov, the chronically poetic Russian maestro adored by musicians and listeners alike.
Nevermind. For Alsop, 48, the gig is hers; like a new boss in any workplace, she’ll sink or swim by her own abilities. A MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, awarded in September, and an ongoing series of CDs with the Naxos label confirms Alsop as a distinguished member among American conductors.
Along with the ASO’s Robert Spano — another fast-track maestro from that increasingly elite club — Alsop built up street cred by championing contemporary music while delivering thoughtful, efficient performances of the classics. Gradually, to keep the career on track, “thoughtful” must be replaced by words like “soulful” or “deep.”
With the ASO Thursday, she offered a bright and powerful intrepretation of Brahms Symphony No. 1 that was her own. The opening movement was a study in classical architecture, all white columns and precise geometry.
She loosened up for the middle movements, aided by poignant passages from ASO principals, especially concertmaster Cecylia Arzewski. The allegretto third movement danced playfully, a joy. The weighty finale, too, held its own. At its best, Alsop dug into the score and revealed a few of its secrets.
Alsop showed the other side of her talent when she spoke to introduce Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade,” a sort of violin concerto inspired by Plato’s “Symposium.” Alsop, trained as a violinist, studied conducting with Lenny; the work clearly brings together many of her interests and experiences.
Affable and humorous, Alsop took us through the major themes, with musical examples from the orchestra. She had the audience laughing with the hiccupping Aristophanes and at the rowdy party music at the end. Alsop is very good at this sort of podium-audience interaction — you feel she’s just regular folks, a woman who happens to conduct — and its a sign of a thoroughly modern American conductor. There’s no aristocratic air in her delivery.
Violin soloist Tai Murray, still a student at New York’s Juilliard School, offered many lovely phrases, but her small, feathery tone and quiet persona meant that this narrator’s voice was too reserved to be heard. Here, too, the orchestra delivered splendidly.
The evening opened with Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” from 1895. Although Disney (delightfully) appropriated the music for “Fantasia,” the tone poem carries an anti-war metaphor. Think not of magical brooms ceaselessly fetching buckets of water but of cannon fire mowing down wave after wave of soldiers. Tick tock, tick tock, they’re all dead.
Here the orchestra wasn’t entirely warmed up or unified, and Alsop’s approach was neither comical and cartoonish nor menacing and lamenting. Let’s hope that everyone gets together in the coming performances.
Permalink | | Categories: Classical Music
Coldplay at Philips Arena
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In 2000, British quartet Coldplay played the Tabernacle in the interval between album No. 1 “Parachutes� and album No. 2 “A Rush of Blood to the Head.� It was a little dull.
The problem? Coldplay’s expansive rock is arena-sized, and it needs a space as big as the band’s soaring choruses. Problem solved.
At Philips Arena Wednesday night, the group’s massive wall of sound washed over a packed house in a textbook display of arena-rock perfection.
The younger Coldplay of five years ago was perfectly competent musically, but had a tentative feel and little charisma. This time around, frontman Chris Martin was a dynamo, rocking back and forth on his piano stool like a man possessed, skipping giddily across the stage, crouching tiger-like atop cabinets at either side of the stage, running through the audience. He was as eager and appreciative as a rambunctious puppy – and just as irresistible.
With Martin’s evolution into Hollywood husband (of Gwyneth Paltrow) and tabloid fodder, his bandmates are seen – if they’re seen at all – as a faceless backing band. There’s no doubt that Martin was the star of the show, his keening voice and enthusiasm the engine that kept it running. But his cohorts demonstrated that Coldplay is a band, not Martin’s sidemen. “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face� was pumped up to epic proportions by Jonny Buckland’s piercing guitar, and the rhythm section of bassist Guy Berry man and drummer Will Champion pounded like a jackhammer on “Politik� (which included lyrical shout-outs to R.E.M. and OutKast). They were both awesome displays, in a show chock full of goosebump-inducing moments.
There was the unexpected but lovely tribute to Johnny Cash, with the band all gathered at the front of the stage. There were powerful takes on fan favorites like “Yellow� (as yellow, confetti-filled balloons fell from the ceiling), “In My Place� and recent radio hit “Speed of Sound.�
There were endearing imperfections, too, like Martin’s false start and self-deprecating apology on “The Scientist� or the hole, probably exertion-induced, in the singer’s shirt.
Martin professed the band’s love for Atlanta again and again, taking pains to assure the audience that it wasn’t something he’s been saying to every city on the tour. It speaks volumes about his charm that you couldn’t help but believe him. And you can bet that not every city on the tour got an encore that included Martin playing piano as Michael Stipe sang his band’s haunting beauty, “Nightswimming.�
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Pop Music
John Mayer Trio
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sept. 27 at the Tabernacle
By Phil Kloer pkloer@ajc.com
John Mayer’s true fans – more than just the ones who sing along to “Daughters� when it comes on the car radio – know that his hero has always been Hendrix. His love for blues and blues-rock guitar was established long before he parlayed his talent for breathy soft-rock into a huge career. So good for Mayer for having the guts to follow his bliss, re-invent himself and step down the ladder of commercial success from mega-selling, Grammy-wining lite-FM balladeer to fledgling bluesman.
The John Mayer Trio has only been out on the road for three weeks, and when they pulled into the Tabernacle for the first of two nights, the former Atlantan actually thanked the crowd for not walking out on his experiment in re-definition. Actually, most of the crowd seemed to just dig how much Mayer was digging his new musical self, the sheer joy he brought to his guitar licks and vocal tics.
The true blues can be a tough sell when you’re a good-looking, famous, rich guy. “Nobody loves me!� he lamented in the set opener, the standard “Every Day I Have the Blues,� which was shortly after the crowd had shrieked with open-throated ecstasy for his mere appearance onstage. But particularly when Mayer caressed his guitars, coaxing fluid runs and funky solos from them, you could tell he was, as he put it, “home in a lot of ways.�
The trio includes Pino Palladino on bass and Steve Jordan on drums, who serve nobly as pillars to support Mayer. The band covers a fair bit of both originals and standards, but only has two songs out (on iTunes): “Come When I Call� and “Who Did You Think I Was?� The latter, Mayer’s manifesto of image-switching, has a fat groove that wouldn’t be out of place coming from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And nobody walks out on the Peppers, either.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Pop Music
‘Affluenza’ at Jewish Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATRE REVIEW. “Affluenza.” Jewish Theatre of the South. Through Oct. 2.
The Jewish Theatre of the South’s virtuoso comic ensemble tosses around the rhymed couplets of James Sherman’s farce about American materialism as if they were multicolored balls in an intricate game.
The story, about a group jockeying to inherit an older man’s wealth, updates Moliere’s themes of greed, culpability and self-deception in plays like “Tartuffe” and “The Misanthrope” to our feel-good, consume-now society. Sherman’s vital Americanese displays all of the lightness, gaiety and poetic skill of the French satirist’s classic French.
Establishing herself as one of Atlanta’s best young comic actresses, Megan Hayes portrays the manipulative gold-digger Dawn with vitality and verbal dexterity. And David Marshall Silverman’s Jerome exudes the grandiose ego and Internet-numbed inertia of many young American men.
The action takes place in a Chicago penthouse, and allusions to the Windy City’s hustling, boisterous personality energize the rhythmic language. As the conflict between the higher and lower instincts of human nature unfolds, you can almost see Chicago’s exuberant chronicler Saul Bellow standing in the corner wearing a lascivious grin and a cocked fedora, a trench coat tossed over one shoulder.
Another presence inhabits the comedy. “Affluenza” begins with a jazzy version of Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale,” and the world-weary master would have loved Sherman’s wit and jaded outlook, transformed finally by human kindness.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 2. $18-$28. Jewish Theatre of the South, Marcus Jewish Community Center, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. 770-395-2654. www.jplay.org.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
‘The Seagull’ at PushPush
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “The Seagull.” PushPush Theater. Through Oct. 1
Masha snorts coke and sports a nose ring. She’s bored with Medvedenko and can’t conquer the brooding Konstantin. No wonder poor Konstantin keeps crawling under the stage like a frightened turtle. Everyone, including his mother Irina, mocks his performance art.
Sounds like PushPush Theater has decided to update “The Seagull.” But you don’t have to be a Chekhov maven to appreciate how the Decatur ensemble uses its collaborative method to sharpen the sting of this dark comedy of vanity, shattered dreams and suicide.
Guided by PushPush artistic director Tim Habeger, this adaptation turns the somber Russian chamber piece into the equivalent of a garage band with a droning tendency. While Jacob Gentry’s film sequences are stylish and beautifully crafted, the play sometimes feels inert and self-consciously talky. The production can be clunky, too, as when the actors announce their entrances by opening doors that jar the senses with daylight and noise.
But Shelby Hofer (Masha) and Randy Havens (Medvedenko) —- two of the city’s more quirky and under-appreciated character actors —- really shine here. And Carol Mitchell-Leon invests her Irina with an attitude of insufferability and imperiousness that will make children of bad parents feel painfully at home.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 5 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 1. $12-$16. PushPush Theater. 121 New St., Decatur. 404-377-6332, www.pushpushtheater.com.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
Tenor Ian Bostridge opens Spivey Hall season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Julius Drake. Sunday at Spivey Hall, in Morrow. www.spiveyhall.org.
Spivey Hall opened its 15th season with a couple of English guys dressed as undertakers, performing songs written by a kid in his 20s.
A song called “Abendbilder” (“Nocturne”) is about how the approaching evening stirs thoughts of mortality. The music is lovely but also a bit morbid. The gentle vocal line is backed by ripples evoking the breeze through trees. In a section about ravens and nightingales, the song reaches a sort of desperate ecstasy. It was the first time I’d ever heard the song, and before it was over realized I might never ever again hear such tenderly affecting music making.
That once-in-a-lifetime reaction has become typical when tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Julius Drake take the stage. On Sunday afternoon they offered 20 songs by Franz Schubert, who died at 31 and left an unmatched catalog of some 600 songs.
Bostridge and Drake — they operate as a symbiotic pair — grouped the songs to create their own themes. These included paradoxical or intertwined ideas on love, self-doubt, the changing seasons and man’s tiny role in the cosmos. Many songs were about the uncorrupted nature of fish or the fisherman’s troubled thoughts as he waits for a tug on his line.
“Der liebliche Stern” (“The Lovely Star”) touches on the echt-Romantic notion that only death can release you from the torment of lost love. An intense performer, Bostridge’s concentration was complete. At times I’d glance up from the translated texts in the program to see his fists clenched and neck muscles bulging — not melodramatic acting but an ego-less sense that he’d been possessed by the narrator’s spirit.
Bostridge’s interpretations have always been insightful, personal. The voice has grown darker and more mature in recent years. It’s beautiful in an unconventional way, a bit raw, or rather unvarnished and “green” like a slender tree branch striped of its bark.
For encores, they offered first “Heidenroslein” (“Wild Rose”), among the more poppish songs in Schubert’s catalogue, and then “Wie Ulfru fischt,” another tale of a sad and probably love-lorn fisherman who envies the safety of his prey’s watery domain.
Permalink | | Categories: Classical Music
ASO plays Finnish Masters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
8 tonight and Saturday. $10-$53.
Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E. 404-733-5000, www.atlantasymphony.org
We’re only two weeks into the new Atlanta Symphony Orchestra season and already we might have heard the performance of the year.
Thursday in Symphony Hall, principal flutist Christina Smith hummed, whirred, spat, recited French Symbolist poetry, and not least, played a hauntingly gorgeous flute in Kaija Saariaho’s “Aile du songe,” a 2001 flute concerto by one of Finland’s most esteemed composers. This is the first time the ASO has programmed Saariaho’s music.
The “Wing of the Dream” comes in two parts, “Aerial” and “Terrestrial.” The imagery is drawn from a collection of poems, “Oiseaux,” by Saint-Jean Perse. The music, like the poems, contemplates the mystery of birds in flight rather than chirping birdsong.
Musically, the first section evokes the American desert Southwest. The flute opens with languid upward scales across two octaves, which is a typical Saariaho launching point. It suggests we’re slipping into dream time. The harp rolls out dreamy fog, punctuated by the rattlesnake sound of crotales, a percussion instrument. At one point the cellos and basses provide the rumble of faraway thunder. Yet the music is almost still, which made Smith’s clipped phrases and long, breathy trills seem as if our protagonist, dressed in a shoulderless red gown, was on a peyote trip, and loving it, under the starry Arizona sky.
The solo flute and orchestra interact much more in the second section, and the mood grows jittery. In an ear-catching effect, the score asks the flutist to vocalize words as she blows the notes. First it’s pips and whoops and then, near the end, snatches of poetry.
Despite Smith’s bravura performance and the earthy sensations of the music, Thursday’s audience didn’t warm to it. I’m not sure they were meant to, in the same way that Tennyson described nature as “red in tooth and claw.” Saariaho’s cool modernist aesthetic can hold some listeners at arm’s length —- it’s never coddling, but neither is it unfriendly. Like the natural world, it simply exists apart from our expectations.
One Finn followed another with the Sibelius Symphony No. 3, which seemed like comfort food after the aloof Saariaho. The symphony is the sort of polished gemstone that reminds us what vast riches lie scattered around the classical music terrain —- an El Dorado of sound.
Under ASO Music Director Robert Spano, the symphony’s opening movement came off cleanest, with plump, well-tuned brass chords and burnished string tone. The performance was never more touching than when the bassoon, clarinet and oboe sang a sad little song. We felt for the lost little trio, surrounded by the great swirling chatter of the orchestra. And it was at moments like this, a combination of personal thoughts and natural habitats, that the link between Sibelius’ 1907 symphony and his countrywoman Saariaho was most acute.
Spano kept the symphony lively and forward-rolling. A few smudged passages and a slight slackening of the tension in the finale are the drawbacks likely to be fixed in subsequent shows.
After intermission came Elmar Oliveira and the Brahms Violin Concerto. Most of the details were in place and the architecture was solid, yet Oliveira and the orchestra never quite connected emotionally, with each other or the audience. Still, people came to hear the glorious Brahms, and everyone’s effort was warmly applauded.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Classical Music
Dad’s Garage & ‘Rocky Horror’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “The Rocky Horror Show.” Dad’s Garage. Through Oct. 22.
The very prospect of Dad’s Garage staging “The Rocky Horror Show” is frightening in itself: Experimental, over-the-edge theater troupe mounts wacky, bisexual, horror-show musical parody.
Frightening and completely rational.
Dad’s and “Rocky” —- each has its own cult following, the former a local one since its founding 11 years ago, the latter an international one since its first London staging in 1973 and subsequent movie version starring Tim Curry. The two cults have a lot in common: a whacked-out sense of humor, a fondness for Grade D horror flicks and the dorky 1950s, and the comfort and courage derived from sitting in a roomful of like-minded individuals who dare to be different, though not from each other.
Only two audience members stuck out in the colorful and wildly enthusiastic opening-night crowd for “Rocky” —- a sweet-looking twosome, unhip to a fault, attired as if for a 1950s sock hop. The young man’s coat and tie were particularly noticeable, as the 140-seat room wasn’t air-conditioned. Just looking at him made me sweat.
The pair turned out to be Brad and Janet, the show’s two innocents who, once situated onstage, set out in search of their old science professor, Dr. Scott. Along the way, they encounter the castle of Dr. Frank- N-Furter (Geoffrey Brown), the mad transvestite scientist from the planet Transexual in the galaxy of Transylvania.
While Frank is in the lab creating Rocky for his own sexual fulfillment, Brad and Janet (Clark Kent look-alike Joey Ellington, perky and pony-tailed Jessie Dean) are entertained and undressed by Frank’s oddball assortment of partners and co-habitors: his spooky servant Riff Raff (E. Cooper Seay), Magenta the high-heeled chamber maid (Steve Emmanuelson) and mindless groupie Columbia (Katy Carkuff).
Directed with rudimentary (read garage) naturalness by Kate Warner, what follows is the hard-won metamorphosis of Brad and Janet from pure innocents to unapologetic decadents.
The movie version of this musical by Richard O’Brien, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” is usually interactive, with audience members singing along and yelling out their own creative responses to some of the lines. Dad’s cast deserves a great deal of credit for maintaining concentration on opening night, despite the continued, sexually explicit interruptions of one vociferous and only sometimes funny individual.
Kudos in particular to Doyle Reynolds as the Narrator, a smooth and pretentiously faux-British presence throughout, and to Brown, whose sweetly coifed and long-legged Frank commanded the stage with grace. Chris Skinner’s Rocky was fittingly (in this production) flinty, and Travis Sharp showed good comedic sense as Eddie/Dr. Scott. Seay served as the lead guitarist in the assembled four-person band and managed to pull off Riff Raff’s riffs without missing a beat.
THE VERDICT: It’s a cultural thing.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. Also, 5 p.m. Oct. 2; 8 p.m. Oct. 3. Through Oct. 22. $9-$23. Dad’s Garage, 280 Elizabeth St., Atlanta. 404-523-3141. www.dadsgarage.com.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Theater
‘Bug’ at Actor’s Express
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “Bug.” At Actor’s Express. Through Oct. 29.
If you suffer from such easily transferable conditions as yawning, hunger or scratching, beware the new play at Actor’s Express. Or at least pack some “Bug” spray and a little lotion to soothe your itchy skin.
Watching Tracy Letts’ play “Bug” is like being in a confessional with a really friendly mosquito. You hardly notice it at first. Then you panic.
You feel the claustrophobia. The slow panic and real-time pacing. The paranoia and lunatic logic that engulf war veteran Peter and down-and-out waitress Agnes.
Even if you liked Letts’ deliciously lurid “Killer Joe,” which opened the Express’ 2004-2005 season, that’s not sufficient prep for the sick business that plays out in the lost couple’s pathetic Oklahoma City motel room.
Letts, a member of Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre, is the bad-boy playwright of the moment in the way that Quentin Tarantino was the enfant terrible of the movie world back in the day. The Oklahoma-born Letts is fascinated by the grotesque, by redneck humor, by terrorism, by mental illness, by illicit drug use, by nudity —- all of which he uses to depict his specimens of what the Powers That Be might dismiss as society’s Lowest Common Denominators.
Probably the only reason Letts gets away with his twisted little vision is that it’s so monstrously funny. He gives his women characters names like R.C. and Lavoice and Sharla. He sprinkles his dialogue with one-liners that are so pithy and disgusting, so infectiously silly, that even the sickest moments are delightful because you know you shouldn’t be laughing. That you wouldn’t be if your mother were around.
He also has a gift for nailing his characters in just a few words. It’s ironic that the first thing we hear from Peter (Daniel May) is “I’m not an ax murderer.” And that he speaks it in the voice of a little boy who’s been banished to a corner.
Like Hitchcock, Letts plants warning signals —- and shockers that we don’t see coming. (Don’t open the door. Oh, wait, what’s on the pizza?)
Agnes (Sherman Fracher) is the verbal engine that drives this compulsively talky talker over the top. The unspeakable sadness of Agnes’ back story makes her unhealthy behavior and intense loneliness seem absolutely truthful. What Fracher does so magnificently is amplify her character’s gullibility and naivete, her tics and spastic behavior, her constant jonesing for alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine, to the stuff of high comedy.
For those who haven’t heard, we should probably say right now that Agnes and Peter become convinced that their accidental affair, and the subsequent arrival of what they believe are millions of microscopic visitors, are part of a government plot.
You should also know that Agnes’ riffraff ex-husband, Goss (Jeff Feldman), preys on them like a badly mustachioed mantis. And that a strange intruder named Dr. Sweet (David Skoke) drops in at one point to add an aura of “X-Files” mystery to the whole mess.
And so as not to reveal too many secrets, we’ll just leave it at that.
Fracher gives one of the best performances I’ve seen all year. As R.C., newcomer Kara Cantrell cuts a buxom and appropriately dyke-ish figure. Feldman looks like he’s just crawled out of a bad biker bar (and uses his character’s meanness to great comic effect). May, never an actor to hold back, for once does just that.
Jasson Minadakis (“Killer Joe,” “The Goat”) directs. Kat Conley contributes the seedy motel set, and when the characters wear clothes, they pull on the nondescript thrift-store garb of designer Jim Alford.
I’m a nut for Tracy Letts’ plays. But that doesn’t mean that I think he’s a heavyweight writer. If you want to believe “Bug” is a brilliant piece about the flaws of the military, the seeds of terrorism or the Sodom slouch of America, go right ahead.
I’m just thrilled that somebody has the nerve to put such disturbing material in the unforgiving light of the theater.
Splat. What the *#&$? Geesh, does anyone know where I put the insect spray?
THE VERDICT: Show with the biggest buzz.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. Call for Sunday times. Through Oct. 29. $10.75-$26.75. Actor’s Express, King Plow Arts Center, 887 W. Marietta St., Atlanta. 404-607-7469. www.actors-express.com.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Theater
Synchronicity’s ‘Women and War’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Women and War.” By Synchronicity Performance Group. Through Oct. 9 at 7 Stages.
The infomercial sounds so perky and cheerful that we can only guess what it’s trying to sell. A cubic zirconia ring as big as the Pentagon? A gadget for making a blooming onion? A self-help video for the sexually frustrated?
Turns out that Karen, the operator standing by to take our order, represents Combex, manufacturer of curiously strong combat boots, which are in great demand because nobody wants “the government-issued” variety. But when Karen begins to think about the faceless people who wear the product, the tone of Synchronicity Performance Group’s “Women and War” shifts from absurdity to poignancy. Consider the boots that are returned unused because the soldier never got a chance to wear them.
This is how the shoe drops in Synchronicity’s occasionally funny, often chilling and forever insightful look into the psychology of war in all its guises. The product of nearly 50 interviews with Atlanta-area women whose lives have been touched by the social scourge, the world premiere succeeds at the nearly impossible task of making a dreaded subject come to life as a provocative entertainment that gently touches the soul with compassion and generosity.
Though the show is largely fact-based, it resists the temptation to exist as a mere collection of testimonials, instead transforming the material into a multimedia hybrid for nine performers that uses visual imagery, dance, song and text to evince a remarkably effective theatrical experience.
At two hours, 20 minutes, “Women and War” is several scenes too long and probably would work better as an intermissionless one-act. But as a series of oral histories that have been thoughtfully dramatized and unified with beautifully crafted choreography, the show is a significant meditation on the topic of war.
What director Rachel May’s “Women and War” does best is reveal humankind’s capacity for suffering and the genetic predisposition to recover —- but never forget.
It would be nearly impossible not to be moved by the story of a Vietnamese woman who bursts into tears when she remembers her long-lost village, the Atlanta journalist who’s haunted by the suffering and famine of the Sudan or the young protester who was smashed by an Israeli bulldozer in Palestine. (In a variety of roles, actors Crystal A. Dickinson, Suehyla El-Attar, Kristi Casey, Joanna Daniel and Danielle Mindess give standout performances.)
Choreographer Celeste Miller uses a clear, purposeful dance vocabulary to make conversations around the situations suggested by the text, which draws on the Civil War diary of 10-year-old Atlantan Carrie Berry and the recollections of present-day spies, missionaries, suicide bombers, Marietta peace protesters and, yes, even employees of a Georgia boot factory.
One of the most striking things about “Women and War” is its constant movement. The actors rarely sit still. And how can they, when there is so much symbolic laundry to fold, suitcases to pack and unpack, evil spirits that need to be swept away?
Sometimes it’s hard to tell where the facts leave off and the fiction begins, and the accumulated technical bells and whistles can be overwrought (although considering that 24 artists collaborated on the project over 17 months, the noise and clutter could be worse). Ultimately, “Women and War” validates the work that went into it and reaffirms the promise of Synchronicity as one of Atlanta’s most exciting ensembles.
Political art can be hit-or-miss. And I’m the first to cry foul when the agenda jumps out and tries to strangle me. But for “Women and War,” I am grateful. Finally, a cultural experience that puts a human face on the barrage of contradictions we read about in the daily news. Now that’s good theater.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. 7 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 9. $15-$20. Synchronicity Performance Group, 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave., Little Five Points. 404-325-5168. www.synchrotheatre.com.
Verdict: Profound but not suffocating.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
Theatre Gael: ‘Plough and the Stars’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Plough and the Stars.” Through Oct. 16.
Sean O’Casey’s “The Plough and the Stars” —- a bleak comedy about the shelling of Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916 —- is a noble meditation on the emotional costs of patriotism, as paid by those on the battlefield and those left behind.
Awash in a sea of terror that will consume her community and destroy her husband, Nora Clitheroe is a keening heroine cut from the cloth of Medea and Ophelia. Thankfully, O’Casey tempers his tragedy with a chorus of Irish poets, clowns and vagabonds whose salty poetry cushions the despair with laughter and humanity.
In this classic, Theatre Gael artistic director John Stephens hears an echo of our time. But instead of using his season opener as a shrill commentary on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he introduces a few devices that let theatergoers draw their own conclusions about the repetitive nature of history. Like the theater’s “A Man of No Importance” last year, the production turns a sprawling canvas into a clearly focused ensemble piece that radiates like a miniature gem.
That said, some of the best performances are the smaller ones, delivered by actors who render O’Casey’s vivid personalities with comic brio.
Peter Flynn (the hysterical Larry Davis) is a combination of fussy old maid and queer uncle, particularly when taunted by the Young Covey (John Chatham). Bessie Burgess (Lynne Ashe) is a hissing old biddy with her chin in her cups who sides with the cause of the crown. (Witness the scene in which she pops her head out of a cuckoo-clock-style window to croak “Rule, Britannia.”) The lovely Katie Merritt portrays Rosie Redmond as a sweetly vulnerable canary-of-the-night whose signature song is Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose.”
Wait a minute. Piaf didn’t write that until the mid-’40s, and O’Casey’s play appeared in 1926. What’s going on here?
This is one of Stephens’ anachronistic touches, ironic winks that supply the 79-year-old drama with contemporaneity and resonance. During the evening, he introduces TV newscasts and a remote control, Huggies diapers and a Macintosh computer (in the looting sequence) and a graffiti wall featuring a mug of leftist du jour Che Guevara (1928-1967). The British attackers also speak in accents more reminiscent of Fort Bragg and Fort Benning than Bristol and Manchester.
As solid as Bessie and Fluther Good (the blustery Winslow Thomas) are, I found myself wishing the actors would bare more of the sharp edges they displayed so cannily in “Dancing at Lughnasa” and “Man of No Importance,” respectively. And while Marcie Millard is a fine character actor, she’s perhaps too physically mature to play Nora, the young wife of the doomed hero Jack (who’s quietly and handsomely detailed by Mark Russ). Still, theirs is a touching, if slightly mismatched, romance.
In a season brimming with onstage commentaries about war, “The Plough and the Stars” finds vitality in an old text. With a few masterful strokes, Stephens revivifies the play without mangling it. Given the climate of crisis both at home and abroad, his timely choice is sadly rewarding.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 16. $16-$22. Theatre Gael, 14th Street Playhouse, 173 14th St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-4750. www.theatregael.com
Verdict: Fresh take on Irish war classic.
Â
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
‘Moonlight’ over Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “Moonlight and Magnolias.” Alliance Theatre. Through Oct. 9
He’s already filmed the burning of Atlanta, but the birthing of Melanie’s baby will have to wait.
Halfway into the making of “Gone With the Wind,� producer David O. Selznick has fired his director and doesn’t have a workable script for Margaret Mitchell’s rhapsodically celebrated, 1,037-page epic, “Gone With the Wind.� Uh-oh. Time for a rewrite.
This is the premise of “Moonlight and Magnolias,� Ron Hutchinson’s loosely factual account of Selznick’s frenetic battle to get the tale of Scarlett and Rhett sealed in celluloid. And where better to deliver this delirious backstage romp than the Alliance Theatre, in the city where The Movie premiered and just a few blocks from the Peachtree Street apartment where Mitchell wrote The Novel.
If you are a Hollywood trivia buff or a lover of “GWTW� lore, the behind-the-scenes send-up of the dictatorial Selznick (Thomas Sadoski), cynical script doctor Ben Hecht (David Pittu), newly appointed director Victor Fleming (Kevin O’Rourke) and dutiful secretary Miss Poppenghul (Tess Malis Kincaid) is a play after your own heart.
But for a riff on the troubles of script-writing, Hutchinson’s play has its own set of issues, including a split personality to rival any honey-dripping Southern harlot.
For the record, it also has some rather delicious gossip.
Any story that hints at Clarke Gable’s indiscretions with George Cukor (the movie’s original director) and has a little fun with Margaret Mitchell’s control issues (square pillars for Tara, or else!) is more than likely to get a few laughs in the town that spawned the hoopskirt hoopla.
It’s true that Selznick turned to Hecht out of desperation. As the story goes, the producer went through a reputed 17 writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald (“He gave me two lines I could use!� Selznick snorts in the play) and Sidney Howard, who gets official credit. It’s true that he snagged Fleming from “The Wizard of Oz� after firing Cukor — and that he held Fleming and Hecht under a kind of house-arrest, force-feeding them peanuts and bananas, until they gagged up a screenplay.
Hutchinson fills in the gaps with adrenaline-stoked dialogue, Marx Brothers slapstick, jokes about Vivien Leigh and Judy Garland, and diversions about Selznick’s insecurities. Son-in-law of film mogul Louis B. Mayer, Selznick was obsessed with making a hit, but also haunted by his producer father’s failure. He was caught between satisfying mainstream taste and remaining true to the lustrous standards of Golden Age Hollywood.
Sounds like more than enough tension to drive a screwball comedy.
But Hutchinson seems bent on making political statements, too. So while Selznick imitates Scarlett, and Fleming pretends to be both Melanie and Prissy (which is quite funny in the baby-birthing fracas), Selznick has to fend off the PC goadings of Hecht as well. No doubt Hecht was a card-carrying liberal who cared about the treatment of blacks and Jews. But the Jewish self-loathing routine confuses the tone and nearly derails the show’s comedic engine.
This is no fault of the actors.
Sadoski captures the vast charm, and the megalomania, of the forever-conflicted Selznick. Pittu makes Hecht, who’d never read the book, into a wiry pit bull and Hollywood poet. (In real life, Hecht wrote “The Front Page� and co-authored “Twentieth Century,� which is now playing at Georgia Ensemble Theatre.) And O’Rourke invests Fleming with the cuddly gruffness of a large Teddy bear.
But in the much smaller role of the secretary, Kincaid misses an opportunity to quirk it up and toy around with her signature line, “Yes, Mr. Selznick.� That’s a device that’s designed for serious clowning — think of how Carol Channing or Margo Skinner, the late actress who originated the part, might have played it.
Santo Loquasto’s wood-paneled, wall-papered set is pretty, but the script seems to call more for Deco glamour than Victorian fussiness. Mitchell, however, would have appreciated Jane Greenwood’s sartorial correctness. (Now that I think about it, there’s something Mitchell-like about Poppenghul’s unerring devotion to decorum.)
Ultimately, there’s no harm done by this crowd-pleasing production, which the Alliance imported from Manhattan Theatre Club with an all-new cast. But there’s not much difference in the way Selznick consciously put the mediocre “GWTW� over on the hungry public, and the way the Alliance wants to cash in on our endless fascination with all things Scarlett.
Fiddle-dee-dee. If, to paraphrase Miss O’Hara, you’ve never gotten so tired of any four words in your life than “Gone With the Wind,� you can always go in the house and shut the door. For tomorrow is another play. THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays; 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 9. $15-$45. Alliance Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000; alliancetheatre.org.
Verdict: “GWTW� farce has its moments.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
Paul McCartney
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This reviewer is not an especially big Beatles fan. He knows, he knows, he knows — it’s a terrible sin for a music critic to feel ambivalence toward this band, and he will be punished severely in the afterlife. But lying about it would only make matters worse.
And so it was with some trepidation Tuesday night that he trudged into a sold-out Philips Arena, notebook in hand, thinking he might have to write something unpleasant about Paul McCartney’s concert, in the interest of telling the truth.
He is happy to report, however, that the show was a tour-de-force. The career-spanning 160-minute performance not only testified to McCartney’s artistic stamina, it reanimated a catalog of songs so overexposed that they’ve been systematically bled of their life force.
Against the odds, Sir Paul made them matter again. His voice, while not much worse than in his prime, is certainly not better. And his concert arrangements were generally straightforward, leaving the Beatles’ vintage studio work untouched. But he didn’t need a perfect voice, or a revisionist approach. He just needed to be himself, a 63-year-old boy.
McCartney came out wearing a goofy mismatched outfit and a bad haircut, and throughout the night he tugged at his jeans as though they were sliding down his Underoos. Along with all of that, however, came an infectious innocence, the innocence of someone still dazzled by his own powers of creation, someone who can’t dance but can write a pretty love song, someone who wants to hold your hand.
McCartney played a few tunes from his new album, “Chaos And Creation In The Backyard,� then joked about plugging the record, as though he were self-conscious about it, as though the billionaire singer-songwriter for the world’s most famous band has anything to be self-conscious about ever again.
He introduced “Too Many People� by exclaiming “This is for the Wings fans!� with no discernable irony. He dealt as gracefully as he could with the audience members who insisted on talking — and in some cases screaming — while he was trying to communicate. (Incidentally, the crowd’s behavior almost spoiled this reviewer’s mood. He found himself wondering how fans could spend $252 on a ticket, then gab through the show. And he wondered why the fans’ innermost thoughts couldn’t wait to be revealed at a time when they weren’t in the same room with a Beatle.)
In any case, McCartney carried on, playing his songs as though they were written yesterday. The parade of Beatles songs was enough to make ticketless fans stuck at home weep: “Eleanor Rigby,â€? “Penny Lane,â€? “Fixing A Hole,â€? “Please Please Me,â€? “Magical Mystery Tour,â€? “Yesterdayâ€? and a batch from “The White Albumâ€? including a noisy “Helter Skelter,â€? a sweet “I Willâ€? and a gorgeous “Blackbird.â€? Late in the main set came “Hey Jude,â€? a singular experience. McCartney has a special gift for making “na na na naâ€? sound profound. For this song the audience stopped talking and joined in a colossal chorus of na’s.
Around this time, Sir Paul noticed a fan hoisting up a baby. The kid looked too young to feed himself, much less sing along. But one got the feeling that he’d grow up to learn the words, and that he’d be reminded, emphatically, that one day long ago Paul McCartney came to town, and that he was there.
McCartney’s two encores were loaded with Beatles songs, and the most powerful came near the very end when McCartney, seated at an upright piano, played and sang “Let It Be.� Ever the master of the simple gesture, he provided ambiance by lighting a solitary candle. “When I find myself in times of trouble,� he sang, “Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.�
At a moment in history when humankind is at war not only with itself, but also with nature, it’s plain that we have found ourselves in times of trouble. We have too few voices of universal reassurance, too few words of wisdom, too much pain to let anything be.
“And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,� Paul McCartney sang, “There will be an answer. Let it be.�
This reviewer is not too proud to confess that, as the song unfolded, he felt a single tear slide down his cheek.
Permalink | Comments (27) | Categories: Pop Music
‘Big Bang’ at Horizon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“The Big Bang. ” Horizon Theatre. Open-ended.
When the actors wear the scenery, who should get the credit for creative costuming? The set designer? Costumer? Stage director? My guess is all three, at least in the bracingly funny production of “The Big Bang” at Horizon Theatre.
Among the foxiest mini-musicals to migrate from off-Broadway in recent years, this fairly outrageous spoof evokes chuckles from its very outrageous premise: Set in the borrowed Manhattan penthouse of proctologist Dr. Sidney Lipbalm, the show is a backers’ audition for an $83.5 million Broadway musical about the history of the world.
Since producers George and Dolph (George Contini and Dolph Amick) cannot afford actors, they personally (and hysterically) work their way through the entire opus, “improvising” the requisite props and costumes from the household surroundings to portray Adam and Eve, Attila the Hun, Socrates, Abraham Lincoln, Queen Nefertiti and Cher— to name a few of the 318 cast members.
Contini and Amick are a delicious duo, the former exploring an especially wide range of queens (his forte) and kings, the latter serving mostly as straight man, although sometimes in women’s garb. Clint Thornton directs with bracing wit; Bryan Mercer provides the music. Dueling set and costume designers are Kelly Allison and Nyrobi Moss.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 8:30 p.m. Saturdays; 3 p.m. Oct. 8; 5 p.m. Sundays. Open run. $20-$30. Horizon Theatre, 1083 Austin Avenue, Atlanta. 404-584-7450; www.horizontheatre.com.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
Mahler Resurrection Symphony opens ASO season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
8 tonight and Saturday. $10-$53 Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St. NE. 404-733-5000
Although Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus turned their opening night concert —- the ASO’s 61st, Spano’s fourth as music director —- into a memorial for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the mood Thursday in Symphony Hall was brimming with celebration.
Some of it was eerily familiar. As in 2001, when Spano took charge of the ASO just days after the September 11 attacks, the Red Cross was on hand collecting donations. And again the program dwelled on emotionally turbulent and substantive music —- on this night it was Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, which the composer subtitled “Resurrection.”
The evening started, as opening nights do, with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” performed as a sing-along in the plump, Mahlerian-sounding version by Walter Damrosch. A man at the back of the hall then yelled, “Bravo Spano!” and many members of the chorus applauded —- an acknowledgment of substantial artistic gains made in the past few years, both for the conductor and the 300 or so musicians on stage.
Spano gave his vociferous fans a dignified brush-off, of course, instead describing to the audience how the message of Mahler’s music is “fundamentally one of hope, even in the face of death.” With those words in mind, the gritty cello and bass funeral march that opens the symphony sounded especially savage and raw. When musicians have a powerful story to tell, it doesn’t matter so much when the orchestra sounds woolly and inexact, which is the legacy of summers spent in the artistic doldrums of Chastain Park.
Spano invigorated the music, but the symphony felt a few degrees short of the boiling point. My own take is that Spano hasn’t yet thrown his interpretive weight where, for him, it inevitably needs to go.
It’s a simplification, but two basic schools of Mahler interpretation have evolved over the past century. One is cool objectivity, typified by conductors from Pierre Boulez to Yoel Levi. The other, over-the-top extreme came from Lenny Bernstein’s put-me-out-of-my-misery/I’m-in-love approach. In this Mahler 2, Spano threaded between the poles, never quite opening up moments he’d set up to be confessional or even revelatory.
In the opening movement’s descent to the Molto Pesante, where a conductor hangs the full orchestra from the tip of his baton, Spano never shook it enough to yield a head-spinning, goose bump moment.
Elsewhere the playing did give chills —- as in the folk dances of the second and third movements. Properly macabre, the music here made a listener think of those New Orleans bars where patrons continued to guzzle $1 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon even as they stood in a foot of fetid water: Party on till Judgment Day. That was precisely the effect Mahler was after —- and the orchestra caught it.
In the final section, the ASO Chorus entered with perfectly hushed, perfectly anguished singing —- as ever, the best symphonic chorus in the land. The two vocal soloists, mezzo Nancy Maultsby and soprano Twyla Robinson, sang with warmth and clarity in their brief solos.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Classical Music
Musical about Soho Boho a no-go
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “tick, tick … boom!” Alliance Theatre, Hertz Stage, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-3000. www.alliancetheate.org. Through Oct. 2.
Verdict: Might make you watch the clock.
“tick, tick … boom!” the wafer-thin rock musical that quietly opened the Alliance Theatre’s season Wednesday night, probably wouldn’t have been discovered if it weren’t for its famous author.
It’s the posthumously produced autobiographical tale of “Rent” writer-composer Jonathan Larson, who died, at 35 of a sudden aneurysm, before he could be enshrined as the patron saint of the East Village in the time of AIDS. “tick, tick” takes us back to Soho when it was still Boho enough for a guy like Jonathan - a frustrated musical theater writer and brunch waiter whose career is a no-go.
Jon’s greatest fear is that he’ll turn 30 before he can write the Next Great American Musical. His girlfriend, Susan, wants him to move to Cape Cod; his Faustian best friend, Michael, wants him to pursue a high-paid marketing job - with its promise of BMWs and Gucci accessories. For the Sondheim-influenced author of a little show called “Superbia,” it’s produce, or perish.
As sung by leading man Raul Esparza in the 2001 off-Broadway world premiere, “tick, tick” was a sweet bit of juvenilia about the disappointments of youth. Even if it were a story well-trod - Sondheim’s Bobby dealt with the same conflict in the fuller, richer “Company” - Larson’s oh-no, three-O gem had such sparkling ditties as the “Sunday in the Park” valentine, “Sunday,” and the twangy “I’m Not Getting Married” riff, “Therapy.”
Alas, I’m sorry to say that director Kent Gash’s oddly cast Alliance production has traded “tick, tick“‘s inspiration for a lot of perspiration and precious little soul. This is a prodigiously talented trio, but no matter how much they shout it from the rooftops (literally, thanks to Emily Jean Beck’s set), they never muster a persuasive emotional arc or garner our sympathy.
Matthew Scott (Jon) is a terrific actor and singer who sweats profusely but never finds the Elvis Costello-like urgency that the material requires. “Why?” - in which Jon reflects on his friendship with HIV-infected Michael (Dwayne Clark) - is chilling, particularly as delivered by Scott in tones of heartbreaking tenderness.
But Clark can’t convince us for a minute that his character is gay, and the chemistry between Susan (Soara-Joye Ross) and Jon is virtually non-existent. While the original cast perkily glossed over Larson’s rough patches and repetition, this over-stretched ensemble lets the flaws of the three-person musical oddity shine through.
“tick, tick” has a lot more going for it than a creator whose incandescent flame was all too brief. But this production, which hardly feels like the kind of essential theater that we expect from an Alliance opener, doesn’t go deep enough.
And yet, beecause “tick, tick” never picks you up, it never really lets you down, either. All tick and no boom, it’s too technically assured to be dismissed. It will not, however, light your candle.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Theater
Sigur Ros
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Icelandic quartet Sigur Ros requires an unusual amount of patience. For starters, there’s a language barrier — the band’s lead vocalist, Jonsi Birgisson, has built his reputation singing in a piercing voice and delivering his lyrics in Icelandic or a made-up language called Hopelandic. Then there are the songs themselves, sweeping affairs designed to move glacially toward transcendent beauty.
They don’t always get there. But when they do, when Sigur Ros’ songs finally peak, the sound is unlike anything else in contemporary pop music — it’s a swelling shriek that turns drones, plinks and crashes into something magnificent.
Tuesday night’s sold-out concert at Symphony Hall forced fans to wait long stretches between episodes of magnificence, but the episodes did eventually come, and they were enough to peel a person’s scalp.
The show began with the band performing behind a screen, an effect that threw the musicians’ bodies into silhouette. The curtain eventually raised, but the band remained emotionally partitioned from its audience. Fans were rarely acknowledged and, in fact, were occasionally abused — from time to time, the band blasted light into the crowd, making the performance literally painful to watch. In any case, the fans remained extremely well-behaved throughout the night, staying as quiet as mice until the songs’ conclusions, then ripping into applause.
The band sold out the 1,750 seats available at this show, the first of a national tour, in less than a week, a fact that’s all the more impressive considering that the group won’t release its potent new album, “Takk,� until Sept. 12. But you don’t go to a Sigur Ros show to hear the latest catchy single. You go to let the band’s sound wash over you.
And so it did. With a string quartet providing backup, the band explored the outer reaches of rock. They played the electric guitar with a bow and the bass guitar with a drumstick. Singing approximated feline mewling. Drumming broke tension with cymbal attacks. Songs went on and on, sometimes sounding like bad Pink Floyd and other times (especially toward the end, with an encore from the beloved album “Agaetis Bryjun�) elevating the music to that rarefied zone where noise becomes art.
Permalink | | Categories: Pop Music
The ‘Phantom’ that won’t go away
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Phantom of the Opera.” 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2 p.m. Saturdays. 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. Sundays. $17-$62. Broadway in Atlanta, Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-817-8700. www.foxtheatre.org; broadwayacrossamerica.com THE VERDICT: “Why, why?”
The only thing more preposterous than a disfigured man seizing control of the Paris Opera is the idea of the chandelier as flying saucer.
In the opening scene of “The Phantom of the Opera,” the ’80s mega-musical based on Gaston Leroux’s tingly horror tale of 1910, the monumental light fixture sputters and blinks like a crystal spaceship from the Victorian Age. Possessed by some strange demonic force — actually it’s just an expensive hydraulic lift — it hovers ominously over the audience, then glides into the rafters like a proper chandelier, waiting for its big number.
And what a calamitous trick it is.
Barring divine intervention, the 17-year-old Cameron Mackintosh spectacle with music by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber will become Broadway’s longest-running show in January, surpassing “Cats.” Meanwhile, the U.S. tour makes its fifth stop at the Fox Theatre through Sept. 25, and whatever you think of its moldy Gothic plot or insipid songs, you’ll have to concur that its opulent swags and gilded cherubs look swell in the historic movie palace.
When the Phantom (Gary Mauer) and Christine (Marie Danvers) float into his shimmering underground chamber, when the opera scenes irreverently mock the elephantine trappings of the genre, you see why patrons are willing to shell out $20 bills for a penny dreadful.
Fringed and tasseled to within an inch of its life, Maria Bjornson’s production design remains astonishingly beautiful. And even today, director Harold Prince’s opening sequence feels revolutionary. There’s no music, no overture, but instead a kind of quiet prelude: As a pile of old operahouse relics are auctioned off, the organ starts its gush of heart-fluttering somersaults, and the legend of the phantom begins to unfold in flashback form.
As a send-up of the backstabbing tactics of the stage world, “Phantom” has some genuinely funny moments of backstage farce. Kim Stengel makes a wonderful fur-flinging diva as Christine’s archrival Carlotta Guidicelli, and John Whitney is good as Carlotta’s portly leading man, Ubaldo Piangi.
With her gorgeous soprano voice and Lillian Gish hair and posture, Danvers makes a lovely Christine, even if her paramour Raoul (Michael Shawn Lewis) has all the sex appeal of a stocky Conan O’Brien.
But Mauer’s account of the Phantom goes beyond pathos, at times, to resemble the wimpering of a wounded animal. In his neediest moments, the Phantom comes across as unnecessarily grotesque, and what we feel is more like revulsion than sympathy.
Nor does it help that he has to utter lyrics like “I am your angel of music; come to the angel of music.” Or that the Phantom and Christine are stuck with a title duet about the heinous creature who resides inside her mind. “The Music of the Night,” “The Point of No Return”: it’s all repetitive, synthesizer-driven drek.
A dark love story that echoes “The Beauty and the Beast” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Phantom” tries to masquerade as a Freudian web of bondage, desire and deliverance. Instead, it’s a festering agglomeration of false emotion and excessive sentimentality that comes off as laughable.
Why “The Phantom of the Opera” has slowly, gently, not-so-secretly possessed its public all these years remains a mystery to many. Maybe one day that flying saucer-chandelier will levitate to the point of no return.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Theater
‘True West’ at new Theatre Lab
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “True West� 8 tonight-Saturday. $10. Atlanta Theatre Laboratory, Conant Performing Arts Center, Oglethorpe University, 4484 Peachtree Road, Atlanta. 404-731-5871. www.atlaboratory.com. THE VERDICT: Uneven first effort.
Atlanta theater offers perennial encouragement in the form of new ensembles, which crop up unexpectedly and regularly � like shoots from a mother plant that constantly delivers buds.
The latest group to emerge from this hothouse environment is the upstart Atlanta Theatre Laboratory, which has planted Sam Shepard’s brutal black comedy “True West� virtually in the middle of the Conant Performing Arts Center’s expansive stage.
Director/set designer Chadwick Yarborough’s intimate seating � folding chairs on a plywood platform � is a smart way of situating the audience so that it gets maximum exposure to the spiritual lawn mowing that happens when sibling warriors Austin and Lee get cranked up in their mother’s suburban kitchen.
But “True West� ultimately proves too daunting for this cast, which treats Shepard’s vivisection of the remains of the American family like an acting exercise for graduate students. Scruffy Nick Rhoton (“Killer Joe�) is an obvious choice for the part of Lee, the beer-swilling petty thief whose sole purpose in life appears to be terrorizing his buttoned-up screenwriter brother, Austin (Matthew Myers).
Rhoton’s playful instincts � he’s a slowly ticking time bomb who’ll eventually exact his revenge on a typewriter, telephone and a small army of toasters � are all but wasted on Myers (“Take Me Out�), whose approach to this two-headed role is surprisingly leaden and one-dimensional. (Particularly for an actor who’s built a reputation on nervous energy and boyish excitability.) During the first act, Myers does little more than run his lines; during the second, he doesn’t make a persuasive drunk or bully.
Bob Unger’s approximation of unctuous Hollywood producer Saul Kimmer rings true; he’s got the washed-out tan, the flashy white suit (check out those super-wide trouser cuffs), the smarmy disposition. In the tiny role of the mother, Jackie Prucha brings an appropriate mixture of exasperation and calmness.
“True West� is one of the most influential plays of the past quarter-century. In a single bitter pill, Shepard packs the vitriol of Strindberg, the talky poetry of Beckett, the violent impulse of Albee. His language anticipates the twin demons of Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog,� and his Old West existentialism sets up Jose Rivera’s “References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot.�
But being a modern classic is a lot to live up to. Audiences bring certain expectations to the iconic roles of Austin and Lee. So while we applaud Atlanta Theatre Laboratory’s fearlessness, we regret that its inaugural effort feels so naive.
