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January 2005
‘The Graduate’ doesn’t pass
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Graduate.” Through Sunday.
And here’s to you, Morgan Fairchild. We love you more than you will know. Wo, wo, wo. That’s because — hey, hey, hey — you make a mighty dishy Mrs. Robinson.
But in all honesty, the TV starlet with the hourglass bod and ash-blonde hair is about the only saving grace in the touring company of ”The Graduate,” which arrived at the Fox Theatre on a freezing cold Friday night for a weekend run.
Based on the looks of this production, turning Mike Nichols’ classic 1967 film into a stage play probably wasn’t such a good idea. All the irony of the bitter dark comedy starring Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson and Dustin Hoffman as the disillusioned young man she seduces is lost in director Terry Johnson’s flat-footed adaptation.
The 2002 Broadway version with Kathleen Turner was generally described as a disappointment, but it enjoyed a yearlong run largely because it allowed Turner’s considerable following to get a full glimpse of her anatomy. (It probably didn’t hurt that Turner played opposite ”American Pie” hottie Jason Biggs, as Benjamin Braddock.)
The national tour has been likewise marketed around Fairchild’s come-hither looks and her reputation as a glamorous star of TV soaps such as ”Dallas,” ”Falcon Crest” and ”Flamingo Road.” But to her credit, the 54-year-old Fairchild proves to be much more than a relic from the era of J.R. Ewing and Alexis Carrington.
Powdered to a farethewell and speaking in a knowing feline roar, Fairchild’s Mrs. Robinson nearly devours the boyish and naive Benjamin (Nathan Corddry). During intermission, there was some speculation in the room about the provenance of Fairchild’s voluptuous rack. “Plastics”?
Please, people. Don’t be so tacky.
Fairchild has a good time putting her own stamp on Mrs. Robinson’s chic mystique. She’s smug but not deadly and seems to know a lot about the kind of antiseptic beauty and anesthetized emotions that the story sends up. As Mr. Robinson, Dennis Parlato is appropriately slithery at first. When his character discovers his wife’s infidelity, he becomes sympathetic, his anger and rage authentic.
Alas, the rest of the cast treats the first part of the show as if they are in a low-brow comedy. Corddry is a technically proficient actor, but he portrays Benjamin like a clown, glossing over the moral conundrum of this emotionally complicated character. Most of the time, Benjamin’s so chipper that you don’t buy into his ambivalence or his nascent love for Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine (Winslow Corbett).
While the tone of the film was acerbic and ironic, here it’s all over the place. The upbeat beginning seems to have been dumbed down for mass consumption. So when the characters start to reap the consequences of their irresponsibility, the raw, authentic emotions confuse us.
To this day, Bancroft and Hoffman’s performances remain emblematic of the middle class malaise of the ’60s. Like John Updike’s ”Rabbit” novels and Edward Albee’s ”Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, ”The Graduate” scratches through the artificial perfection of suburban America to reveal a dark underside, the ennui beneath the swinging cocktail parties, sky-high hair and lunar landings.
Toward the end of the play, Mrs. Robinson tells her husband to leave Elaine and Benjamin alone. ”They’ll bore each other to death,” she quips.
After seeing this half-baked take on ”The Graduate,” we know the feeling.
THE 411: 2 and 8 p.m. Jan. 29 and Jan. 30. $30-$55. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-817-8700, www.foxtheatre.org.
The verdict: Fairchild gets an A, but the show flunks.
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Death, Gloom and Mozart at the ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Friday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Saturday. www.atlantasymphony.org.
Friday in Symphony Hall, Donald Runnicles presented a concert loaded with so many potent messages that it was unclear which, if any, were well served.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s principal guest conductor isn’t shy about linking music to political ideals. In remarks to the audience, he alluded to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and described the evening’s opening work, Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s 1934 “Miserae,” as “an artist’s response” to early reports of German concentration camps.
“Miserae” is a symphonic poem at turns mournful, martial and sarcastic. The ASO played it cleanly but without much invested emotion.
Follow Hartmann with Richard Strauss’ “Death and Transfiguration” and Mozart’s Requiem, however, and another historical theme is suggested. The hyper German nationalism of the 1930s led to widespread misery and genocide — and also severed the Austro-German musical tradition that stretched back several hundred years, to Mozart and before.
Hartmann and Strauss were the last in that elite lineage, killed off, culturally speaking, by their own leaders. A fraught program, to say the least. Yet Runnicles left unsaid its implications for a contemporary audience.
For the evening’s third and final work concerning death, Mozart’s unfinished Requiem, Runnicles elected to perform Robert D. Levin’s 1993 completion. This edition follows current notions of “early music” style — stripped of romantic varnish — and is rapidly becoming the standard edition of our time. There have already been several recordings of the Mozart/Levin Requiem; the ASO is recording it this weekend for Telarc.
Since there is no universally acceptable version of Mozart’s Requiem, it is fair that each generation takes a fresh look at what the master left us in order to create a new edition. It’s a fun process, filling in the gaps of a torso masterpiece. Alas, Levin’s handiwork is scrupulously Mozartean in style, so scrupulous as to be bland.
That Levin himself composed a brief “Amen” (placed after the “Lacrimosa” and based on a Mozart sketch) raises all sorts of authorship and identity issues. Art restoration is a messy, inexact process. But what’s the harm? Unlike a “scholarly” touch-up of a Leonardo painting or Michelangelo sculpture — where introduced chemicals might do more harm than good — a musical reworking does not mar the original fragments, at least not past a given performance.
In performance, Runnicles assembled a balanced, rich-voiced vocal quartet: soprano Christine Brewer, mezzo Ruxandra Donose, tenor John Tessier and bass Eric Owens.
He also drew exquisite sounds from the chamber-sized orchestra and chorus, although much of the music making was curiously bloodless, performed more with respect and correctness than heart and soul.
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‘8 1/2 x 11’ at Dad’s Garage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “8 1/2 x 11: Live and Uncensored”
You can’t assess the vision of new Dad’s Garage artistic director Kate Warner by looking at a single show. But based on “8 1/2 x 11: Live and Uncensored,” the evening’s worth of short plays curated by Warner, life after Sean Daniels will be smarter, edgier, more likely to surprise, less likely to make you laugh.
 This grab bag of world premieres boasts work by significant American playwrights (“Urinetown” writer Greg Kotis), emerging artists with distinctive voices (Caridad Svich, Alice Tuan) and Atlanta playwrights of considerable promise (Lauren Gunderson, Steve Yockey).
 Alternately boring and stimulating, the show can be wild, adventurous, perplexing —- a trip that defies explication and teases the brain.
I’m glad I went along for the ride, but looking back over this hodgepodge of material, I’ll be darned if I can garner much enthusiasm for any of it.
 Yockey’s “Swallow” —- a monologue by John Benzinger about a gay man who’s discovered the erotic pleasures of “choking” (as in tightening a rope around the neck) —- is fascinating in the way that an explicit Mapplethorpe photograph is. You may not want to watch this sex addict’s scary confession —- he’s having trouble covering his bruises and swallowing —- and you wonder what’s causing all his pain and self-loathing. And yet the imagery (“the droning of a dial tone under water”) is clear and precise.
Svich’s Sapphic choreopoem is embarrassing and pretentious gobbledygook, but you admire actors Alison Hastings and Katy Carkuff for being brave enough to go there.
Nonconformity and dysfunction are recurring themes.
In Rich Hutchman’s “Hurtz,” three tense businessmen ride a bus to and from their presentations —- and eventually go ballistic. You’ve heard of fashion police? In Kotis’ “Sandal Man,” a guy goes to jail for wearing skimpy shoes, even though he just wanted to “save on socks.” In Tuan’s “Jordy,” a young boy’s dinner turns out to be his pet pig. Naturally, he’s traumatized.
Heather Woodbury’s “Eos, Daughter of Dawn” —- a diatribe against the war in Iraq —- is as horrifying as Greek tragedy. Screaming “George Bush, you killed my son,” a mother (Hastings) is a ball of anger and anguish. How could this happen?
Because “the angels weren’t there,” she says. “The angels were vomiting in a corner in disgust.”
After she pines for her “honey dumpling boy,” you wonder what a burlesque led by Chuckie the Cheerful Chicken has to do with anything.
But then, does anyone really care?
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 8 p.m. Monday; 5 p.m. Feb. 6. $18-$23; students $9 Thursdays. Through Feb. 26. Dad’s Garage Theatre, 280 Elizabeth St. N.E., Suite C-101, Atlanta. 404-523-3141, www.dadsgarage.com.
The verdict: Dad’s Garage enters its painful adolescent stage.
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At the Alliance: ‘Day of the Kings’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Day of the Kings.”
Daphne Greaves’ “Day of the Kings,” winner of the Alliance Theatre’s first national Graduate Playwriting Competition, is an exquisitely crafted drama about human bondage, secret passions and the hysteria of social change on the hothouse island of Cuba in the early 1800s.
There’s nary a whiff of cigar smoke, gunfire or Communist manifesto in Greaves’ lush account of the upstairs-downstairs world of wealthy planters and slave laborers. But as the house of Hector Nunez starts to collapse and a woman doctor posing as a man is forced to shed her mask, you feel the winds of change blowing over the paradisal island. (And in a region where cotton was once king, the story’s resonance is unmistakable.)
 With its very title —- a reference to the Feast of the Epiphany, when Cuba’s slaves are allowed to enjoy one Mardi Gras-style day of freedom and celebration —- “Day of the Kings” hints of things to come: the slow crumble of the power play between Cuba and Spain, blacks and whites, women and men.
Greaves, a recent graduate of the Juilliard School’s playwriting program, uses gorgeous poetry and a structural device that allows us to peek into her dichotomous Havana milieu during the Day of Kings, circa 1817, 1819 and 1820. She keeps her sprawling canvas intimate by focusing on a triptych of tempestuous illicit affairs —- and one troubled marriage.
Dr. Faber (Katie Firth), a French doctor’s widow, has disguised herself as a man so that she can practice medicine legally. When her assistant, Diego (Sandro Isaack), realizes that this “pretty man” is really a woman, the two engage in a turbulent affair.
 Meanwhile, the fortune of Nunez (Triney Sandoval) is on the brink of collapse. His teenage daughter Blanca (Maria Parra) is in love with her slave Esteban (Theroun Patterson). And his mixed-race mistress Cecilia (Crystal Porter) is insisting that their illegitimate son be baptized as white so that he can enjoy the privileges of this socially rigid society. No wonder Hector is in constant gastric pain.
What elevates this sexy tale from the status of bodice-ripper is Greaves’ formal manipulation of irony and ideas. She insists on realism, even as the action has a hallucinogenic quality. She has the uncanny ability to balance as many as three plates at once, connecting simultaneous scenes with interlocking dialogue.
This is essentially Faber’s story, but the themes of mothers wanting better lives for their children and the tyranny of men are common threads. Esteban’s mother has arranged it so that he can work indoors instead of in the fields. When Blanca teaches him to write, she spells out his dying mother’s name: C-a-r-a. He bursts into tears, and later, armed with the words of famous philosophers, he incites slave revolts.
Like Lynn Nottage’s “Intimate Apparel,” “Kings” traces the emergence of the modern woman within a specific historical perspective. Like Nilo Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics,” “Kings” creates an erotically charged meditation on the marriage of literature and romance. (For Cruz, it was “Anna Karenina”; for Greaves, it’s Calderon de la Barca’s “Life Is a Dream,” which Blanca shares with Esteban.)
Scott Bradley’s re-creation of a gilded Havana villa and Mariann S. Verheyen’s wonderfully detailed costumes are stunning to the eye.
 A few quibbles: Some actors’ accents seem to come and go. The chemistry between Faber and Diego, and Blanca and Esteban, is not nearly as steamy as it ought to be. And because Faber, as the narrator, tells us about her dalliance with Diego before it actually happens, the story gets ahead of itself, and his realization of her true identity loses its punch.
Firth threatens to turn Faber into a kind of bland and sallow Katharine Hepburn, but once you get over her lugubrious physicality, you begin to appreciate the brilliance in her understatement. As the money-lending Don Alarico, Maurice Ralston is almost invisible; yet later, in a variety of comic roles, he’s terrific.
If the purpose of this competition is to identify the next generation of major dramatists, it’s well on track. Smartly directed by Susan V. Booth, “Day of the Kings” is a glorious testament to language and the triumph of the human spirit.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through Feb. 27. $30 Fridays-Saturdays; other days $25. Alliance Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, www.alliancetheatre.org.
The verdict: A magical balance of passion and politics.
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Rare Jewish Cantata by Emory Early Music
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Emory Early Music Ensemble. Thursday at Emory University’s Cannon Chapel. www.arts.emory.edu.
What’s not to love when serious scholarship meets spirited performance?
The Emory Early Music Ensemble devoted half its concert to an extreme rarity, a sacred Jewish cantata from 1733 called “Lift Up Your Voices, Sing and Rejoice.”
How rare? The manuscript had been buried in a Moscow library, rediscovered only in 1964.
Emory artist-in-residence Matthew Peaceman, an oboist who lives in Germany and who edited the score, knows of no previous American performances, although in modern times it’s been heard in Israel and Germany. (The run-through Wednesday night at The Temple, in Midtown, might have been the U.S. premiere.)
The 55-minute cantata was originally intended as part of a long night vigil on the eve of Hosha’na Rabbath, an extension of the Yom Kippur day of atonement. The venue was the synagogue in the Piedmont town of Casale Monferrato, in Northern Italy.
The cantata retains its mystery. The libretto, by S. H. Jarash, concerns Judgment Day. The music was likely cobbled together from various pre-existing sources; most of its composers remain unidentified.
In Peaceman’s introductory words to the large audience at Emory’s Cannon Chapel, he was a little too severe. He warned us that the music isn’t first-rate, and that it is audibly similar to contemporaries Bach, Handel and Telemann — the international Baroque style — and lacking unique character. Still, it’s a work from a culturally enlightened era, where Jews and gentiles could collaborate in open artistic exchange. And cultural politics aside, it’s another window into the perennially fascinating Baroque world, an indicator of the extent (and uses for) the common musical vocabulary.
The cantata, sung in Hebrew, is in 16 sections. Three vocal soloists — countertenor (here it was Khaemille Parham), tenor (Brent Runnels) and bass (Yosuke Normura) — sing recitatives, arias and duets. The numbers are connected by a spoken narration. A big chorus brings it to a close.
The Emory players — mostly students with a few local professionals, all led by Peaceman — were scrappy but kept the music moving. Who knows? It might have been a lot worse at the 1733 premiere.
The concert started with music by Antonio Vivaldi. For a G Major Sinfonia (RV 149), the student string ensemble deployed a mostly “historically informed” performance style, with lean bow strokes and no vibrato. That the style often sounded similar to the lean, edgy modernist ideals suggests it is impossible to go back in history and know how it sounded to Vivaldi’s audience.
For Vivaldi’s Concerto in C (RV 87), Peaceman was oboe soloist and Jody Miller played recorder. Backed by five musicians, they soared and glided through the saltatory solo lines, with energy and virtuosity in abundance.
Just before intermission, a student recorder quintet played four instrumental pieces by Salomon Rossi, who was born about 1570, almost a century before Vivaldi. These were exquisitely crafted, brightly appealing, and brief.
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‘Brass Birds Don’t Sing’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: ”Brass Birds Don’t Sing.”
What’s eating Janet and Anna Withers? The dysfunctional sisters at the center of Samm-Art Williams’ ”Brass Birds Don’t Sing” behave as if they are criminals in hiding. But as the play unspools, we discover that they are the victims.
They lost their parents in the Holocaust and were recruited for one of the more bizarre experiments of the Nazi regime. Nearly 20 years later in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, their attempt to pass as ”good old red-blooded American girls from Maryland” becomes a nightmare of false accusations, persecution and violence.
At its core, this world premiere co-production by Jewish Theatre of the South and True Colors Theatre is about the kind of ignorance and paranoia that fueled Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts. It’s set in 1964 —- that skittish time when the Cold War was at its height and the terror of JFK’s assassination was fresh.
Hounded by a washed-up, cigar-puffing reporter (Jon Kohler) who suspects them of collaborating with the Nazis, Anna (Mira Hirsch) and Janet (Courtney Patterson) are harassed and raped, burglarized and spied upon. Williams, a deft comic writer (”The Dance on Widow’s Row”) who was nominated for a Tony Award for his 1979 hit ”Home,” here appears to be writing under the influence of film noir and Tennessee Williams.
Frigid and fragile, yet nagging, Anna is combination of Laura and Amanda Wingfield, while loose and boozy Janet echoes Blanche and Maggie. There’s even a gentleman caller in the person of next-door neighbor Pete (Jeff Portell).
Aided by an excellent cast, directors Kenny Leon and Amy Feinberg make the most of this troubling, and troubled, drama. A suspenseful potboiler spiked with the kind of bitchy repartee that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford made famous, ”Brass Birds” feels like a sophomoric effort and often defies logic.
For instance; We are led to believe that Anna and Janet, in their desperate attempt to assimilate, have erased their Polish accents. That certainly makes things easier on the actors. But, come on, not a trace?
By contemporary standards, these sisters exist in a world where xenophobia was rampant, premarital sex was taboo and support groups were nonexistent. But in fabricating their identities and denying their past, their lives become much more complicated than necessary. New York, circa 1964, was a safe haven for refugees of all kinds, so you wonder why Anna and Janet don’t just tell the truth and seek out the sympathy they deserve.
Hirsch, founding artistic director of Jewish Theatre of the South, hasn’t performed publicly since 1996. Easily the best thing about this show, she finds great pathos in the damaged, heartbreakingly romantic Anna. We’d like to see her onstage more often.
Portell (who played the lead in Actor’s Express’ ”Killer Joe”) is a sweetly awkward Pete, taking grape sodas and chocolates to his love interest, exploding in rage when he learns he’s been deceived by his best friend, Lenny (Christopher Ekholm).
Flawed but fascinating, ”Brass Birds” never sings, but it does end on a note of tentative hope. In the end, Jewish Theatre of the South and True Colors deserve credit for turning a horrific Holocaust footnote into drama.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Through Feb. 13. $18-$26. ; discounts for students and senior citizens. Jewish Theatre of the South, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. 770-395-2654, www.atlantajcc.org.
The verdict: A fascinating failure.
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Aurora’s ‘Waving Goodbye’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: ”Waving Goodbye.”
Jamie Pachino’s ”Waving Goodbye” examines age-old questions about art’s permanence and life’s fragility, yet each moment crackles with originality.
The intimate, coming-of-age drama’s regional premiere at the Aurora Theatre in Duluth achieves rare theatrical elegance. Past and present commingle without a loss of clarity in the production directed by Freddie Ashley, literary associate at the Alliance Theatre.
First produced at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, ”Waving Goodbye” is a throwback to the classic American dramas of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. The characters define themselves in complex, well-developed language recalling that era. The play is funny —- especially when it skewers artists’ pretensions —- as well as heartbreaking.
Meredith Woolard, a recent Florida State University graduate, portrays 17-year-old emerging photographer Lily Blue with all of the aching, questioning, vulnerable tenderness of a sensitive child on the shore of adulthood. Lily is haunted by the ghost of her mountain-adventurer father, who has recently died in an accident, and vexed by the return of her mother, Amanda, a once-brilliant sculptor who abandoned her years earlier.
Lily loves the leaking, deteriorating New York loft that is her childhood home. But Amanda wants to sell the junk-cluttered place. In teen uniform of jeans and T-shirt, her lovely face flushed with emotion, Lily wails, ”Girl in the middle of a catastrophe, that’s who I’ll be, for always.”
As Amanda, Joan Croker shows the essence of the self-absorbed, irresponsible artist who’s turned against her work. Amanda’s unclear about what she wants and zigzags across the stage in what is her coming-of-age story as much as her daughter’s.
Lily enters into an awkward, tentative relationship with Boggy, another abandoned late adolescent. A brilliant, artistic sprite, Boggy copes by telling brilliant riddles, and Chris Moses invests him with maturity and sensitivity.
As the only adult character in the play who willingly accepts responsibility, Patricia French gives a rich, nuanced performance as the cynical, hard-bitten but inwardly vulnerable Perry, the owner of an art gallery.
Portraying the ghost of a man haunting his family, Allen Hagler defines father Jonathan as the modern male who never quite grows up.
Designed by Tommy Cox, the set brilliantly shapes ”Waving Goodbye’s” themes of loss, growth, love and regret. The need to frame art is a recurring motif, and two wooden pieces at the back of the stage resemble the familiar, grooved pieces of a picture frame. The structure also serves as the loft’s roof and, in Amanda’s imagination, a mountain.
Early in the play, Amanda exclaims, ”The way up is easy, it’s the way down that’s impossible.”’ ”Waving Goodbye” makes the return journey of healing just as thrilling.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Through Feb. 13. $18-$22 Aurora Theatre, 3087-B Main St., Duluth. 770-476-7926, www.auroratheatre.com.
The verdict: A sensitive coming-of-age drama full of theatrical power.
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The Arcade Fire plays Variety Playhouse
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The opening act Wednesday at Variety Playhouse was a good-natured singer/violinist who performed under the name Final Fantasy. Near the end of his set, he thanked the crowd for showing up in time to hear him since they had all really come to see headliners The Arcade Fire.
“We’re here for you,” someone in the audience shouted, in a showing of moral support.
“Well,” Mr. Fantasy said, “you guys are stupid or something. Have you heard The Arcade Fire? Are you aware of what they sound like?”
Oh yes. We were aware.
The Arcade Fire only has one full-length album, 2004’s wildly acclaimed “Funeral,” but the band’s momentum is serious enough that Wednesday’s show was sold-out well in advance.
It deserved to be. With seven people on stage, the Montreal post-punk collective summoned a jagged roar that sounded at once like a circus attraction and a symphony.
This was a band untroubled by ego or convention. The members swapped instruments and stage positions througout the night, trading lead vocalists, alternating between English and French lyrics, and occasionally yelling in a wonderfully ragged seven-part harmony.
It seemed childlike but not childish, the work of a young band that clearly still appreciates the thrill of creation.
One member, a reedy and bespectacled redhead named Richard Reed Parry, played so many instruments it was hard to keep track. The list included the electric bass, keyboard, accordion, a single drum and a tambourine. Late in the set, he used a drumstick to beat a motorcycle helmet.
The band’s material ranged from an ethereal ballad about riding in the backseat of a car to a knockout rocker about losing power in an ice storm.
After awhile, it became clear that The Arcade Fire’s biggest asset is its dimension. Some perfectly good bands — like, say, The Strokes — get by doing one thing well. But with its wild instrumentation, its distinct singers and its odd songforms, The Arcade Fire has the unusual capacity to surprise and stimulate the listener in a more complete way. This band tickles the entire ear.
Near the end of the show, during the ice storm song “Power Out,” the two onstage violinists (including Final Fantasy) made a sound like a jet engine taking off. The noise worked in context with the song’s surging melody, and it also seemed like an apt metaphor for the trajectory of this strange and wonderful new band.
Check out photos from The Arcade Fire sold out performance.
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Pianists Andsnes and Grimaud in recitals
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Recitals Review
LEIF OVE ANDSNES, Sunday at Spivey Hall. www.spiveyhall.org. HELENE GRIMAUD, Tuesday at Emory University’s Schwartz Center. www.arts.emory.edu.
Two roaring young lions of the piano, Leif Ove Andsnes, from Norway, and Helene Grimaud, born in France, are commonly mentioned together.
Yes, both performed in Atlanta this week. Both are in their early 30s and deliver a complete package of goods — intelligence, virtuosity, searching interpretations and that alchemic ingredient: movie-star charisma. Yet they have little in common.
They’re also both on a new CD of Bartok piano concertos (conducted by Pierre Boulez, on Deutsche Grammophon) but that’s really as far as it goes.
Their recitals made that plain.
Andsnes is an extrovert. His sound is broad and open, his tone a bit glossy. He opened his Spivey Hall recital with Schubert’s D major Sonata (D. 850). We often think of late Schubert as “poetic,” where the composer distills ideas and emotions into a concentrated, multi-faceted statement. Andsnes made it seem the opposite, like it was a tell-all novel, not poetry. Music was merely a language, and he elaborated and explained every episode in an almost conversational fashion.
Indeed, for long stretches, I forgot Andsnes was playing the piano. Wasn’t it a vivacious dialogue, up there on stage, between pianist and composer?
Before playing Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” — in one of the freshest, most theatrical performances of it I’ve ever heard — Andsnes played a new piece commissioned for him.
Danish composer Bent Sorensen’s 16-minute “The Shadows of Silence” fused watery Impressionism with angst-driven Expressionism as a depiction of light and darkness. Its colors were shimmering shades of gray, like fast-drifting storm clouds over the shore. It ended ambiguously, with Andsnes asked to hum a tune over noodling chords, followed by a sunny resolution, followed by a quiet retreat into the distance. It felt beguilingly Scandinavian.
In complete contrast to Andsnes, who is an unfussy “modern” player, Helene Grimaud is an introvert at the keyboard, a quietly brooding romantic.
When she sat down to play Chopin and Rachmaninoff, Tuesday at the Schwartz Center, she smiled at the audience then seemed to tune us out; we were then invited to listen to her private meditations.
For Chopin’s Berceuse, she skipped the whimsy and dropped the sentimentality, looking for something deeper. With a powerful left hand, she made the rocking lullaby motion percussive, creating an unexpected volley of contrasts. If it’s genius to make a well-worn work sound utterly original, Grimaud has it.
Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 showed flashes of willfulness, a steely determination to have it her own way. It paid off: she sewed the disparate-sounding movements together as a unified whole.
She painted on a large canvas for Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 2 (in the superior 1913 version), handling the keys like de Kooning handled paint — with thick, assertive brushstrokes and dazzling color.
If Grimaud used to have any detractors — I’m not sure there are any left — their argument was that her interpretations can be scattered or undisciplined.
What these literal-minded piano mavens miss is the larger picture: Grimaud isn’t playing notes, she’s grappling with ideas. Not the least bit populist, she’s a philosopher at the piano.
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Joyful ‘early music’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
MUSIC REVIEW: Atlanta Baroque Orchestra
‘Into the High Woods: the Song of the Oboe’
The ‘authentic performance practice’ revival that began in the 1960s — with some widely disseminated recordings by conductor Nicholas Harnoncourt and keyboardist Gustav Leonhardt, among others — reached its peak in the 1980s.
Vibrato-less playing, gut strings, reduced orchestral forces, and occasionally whiz-bang tempos were, if not exactly commonplace, certainly in vogue on international stages, as applied to works of the Baroque and early Classical Periods.
These days the movement has lost its cache among general audiences, but the hard-core soldier lives on. According to the Boston Early Music Group, there are over 1000 ‘early music’ ensembles in North American alone. The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, founded in 1997, has come late to the party, but is nonetheless well-qualified to join in the festive jousting.
Centering Saturday night’s program at Oglethorpe University (repeated Sunday afternoon at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church) was Germany-based oboist Matthew Peaceman, in the dual role of soloist and guest conductor of a program airily titled ‘Into the High Woods: the Song of the Oboe.’ (The word ‘oboe’ derives from the French ‘hautbois,’ meaning, literally, high wood.)
Peaceman, an American musician who has earned his reputation primarily abroad, showed himself the consummate craftsman, on both the baroque oboe and its slightly lower cousin, the oboe d’amore – both of which require exquisite breath control and solid technical facility.
Most notable were the long, sinuous curlicues he wrapped sweetly around Judith Overcash’s soprano in J. S. Bach’s ‘Wedding Cantata,’ and the tidy, crisp, well-tuned duets with fellow oboist George Riordan in Tommaso Albinoni’s ‘Concerto a Cinque.’
But it seemed that the evening lost momentum as it progressed. Tuning, so crucial on these highly temperamental instruments, seemed to slip, as did crispness of execution.
That said, there persisted an attractive esprit de corps among these 20 or so musicians, comprising strings, flutes, oboes, bassoon, harpsichord and percussion. Harmonic suspensions were stretched with heartfelt intensity; call-and-response dialog between sections was mutually, wonderfully sensitive. It’s unfortunate that only a tiny audience shared in what was clearly ABO’s own joy in intimate, Baroque music-making.
WHERE: Oglethorpe University, Conant Performing Arts Center, Saturday Jan. 22 at 8 p.m.
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A comic alchemy blends medieval and modern
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: ‘Incorruptible’
Times are bad at the monastery of Priseaux, France, in about 1250 A.D. The chapter house’s relics of St. Foy no longer produce miracles, and the revenue-generating pilgrims have stopped coming.
To compete against a rival church that suddenly emerges as the hot spot for saintly bones, the good brothers desperately turn to a one-eyed minstrel’s gruesome and fraudulent scheme that’s soon earning big bucks.
In Michael Hollinger’s farcical ‘Incorruptible,’ now playing at Marietta’s Theatre in the Square, the medieval Catholic world of miracles, veneration of saints and the selling of indulgences mixes with the contemporary ethics of the global economy. Enron-style morality and religious hucksterism draw laughs along with Catholic jokes that were likely threadbare 1,000 years ago. But their comic power remains.
Plays of this type depend on transportation of modern idiom to ancient times, and ‘Incorruptible’ handles this deftly. Some may find the play sacrilegious, but the satire in the end renders a few glancing blows rather than deep cuts.
Billed as a farce, the play, dirrected by August Staub, turns on a few humorous gags concerning the need for an ‘Incorruptible,’ the body of someone so holy that it doesn’t decay after death. Yet the play fails to achieve the full comic absurdity of classics of the genre.
The strongest element of the production is Hugh Adams’ antic performance as the one-eyed minstrel Jack. With his mobile, leering features and loony, slow-talking baritone, Adams cavorts across the stage grandly, then throttles down to quiet introspection, playing this Jack like the king of the tribe, the esteemed Mr. Nicholson.
The rest of the cast can’t match Adams’ range. As Brother Charles, the sad-sack head of the monastery, David Milford slouches around the stage in monk’s robes and worn sandals, but fails to register the full range of Charles’ journey from disillusion to renewed faith.
Portraying the Machivellian Brother Martin, Troy Willis displays the right mixture of creepiness and dogmatic correctness.
Jenn Duran as Marie, Jack’s love interest, radiates energy as the modern liberated woman cast back into that most unliberated of eras for women. Her slapstick routines with Adams display virtuoso timing, and she gets one of the evening’s best laughs with a joke about the rhythm method.
Karen Howell as the Mother Superior of the Priseau monastery’s rival order delivers a needed comic jolt in the last act. Resplendent and gorgeous in her old-fashioned sister’s getup, she with her display of total confidence and moral relativism takes her character beyond the well-worn stereotypical nun. She and Charles engage in an amusing exchange of Latin insults (scholars will understand their vulgarity), and she zings him with the observation “you should know by now that miracles make saints, not the other way around.â€?
Moving from a passive, almost mentally feeble character in the first act to a dominant one by the end, Bryan Mercer as Brother Felix lacks Adams’ versatility, but he exudes a quiet authority as the one character who remains true to his ideals.
After satirizing human venality and greed throughout the evening, the play ends in a rousing affirmation of human good more in the spirit of a Baptist hymn than medieval Catholicism. Adams, Milford and Willis reach their highest chemistry in making the transformation believable and moving, sending the audience home with a warm feeling that softens the comic bite.
Where: Theatre in the Square, Marietta, through Feb. 27
Times: 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays (no 7 p.m. show Feb. 27; a 2:30 p.m. matinee Feb. 24.)
Tickets: $18-$32
Verdict: A comic alchemy of medieval society and modern Enron ethics.
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‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ ’ inaugurates Outfit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: ”Ain’t Misbehavin’ â€?
The women came in furs and lavish full-length skirts. Master patron Bill Balzer wore a tux and top-hat. And the flashing marquee and klieg lights signified that a historic event was happening downtown.
It was the gala opening of Theatrical Outfit’s Balzer Theater at Herren’s, and by the end of Saturday’s knockout performance of ”Ain’t Misbehavin’,” it was clear that the champagne and lofty commentaries were justified.
The $5 million Balzer — a posh half-moon of a theater with 200 plush seats and plenty of leg room — is the city’s best small performance space, and director Freddie Hendricks’ jumping, jiving, jitterbugging take on the Fats Waller musical revue is the hottest ticket of a jam-packed January of openings.
”The theater is a gift to all of us,” said Tom Key, the Outfit’s executive artistic director, choking up as he spoke eloquently about the ”healing power” of his craft, and his hope that the Balzer will endure to bring laughter and tears to future generations.
”See what Brown can do,” said Balzer, referring to a UPS career that allowed him to give nearly $1.4 million to purchase the historic restaurant and start the campaign to rebuild it.
With that, the crowd perked up to the fascinating rhythms of a glorious musical stampede fashioned from some 30 songs either written or recorded by Thomas ”Fats” Waller (”Honeysuckle Rose,” ”Black and Blue,” ”The Joint Is Jumpin’ ”).
If Waller’s palpitating piano transformed the musical styles of Harlem and Tin Pan Alley from the ’20s to the ’40s, this Tony Award-winning 1978 Broadway hit demonstrated that a virtually bookless musical, created around a single historic figure and performed by a cast of five, can be an emotionally complex, wholly satisfying theatrical experience.
Gut-bustingly funny, unabashedly sexy and occasionally poignant, each tune is performed like a miniature play. Consider Broadway director Richard Maltby Jr.’s smokey lyrics to ”The Jitterbug Waltz”: ”The night is getting on, the band is getting slow, the crowd is almost gone, but here we are still dancing.” No wonder the show was an instant classic.
Thanks to the high-energy choreography of Dawn Axam, the seamless musical direction of S. Renee Clark and the cool, hep-cat imprint of Hendricks, the Outfit’s superb team of actors, singers and dancers exploits the comedic and dramatic colors of this tapestry to their fullest.
Atlanta musical regular Eric Moore’s ”Honeysuckle Rose” is the juiciest, honey-drippingest version I’ve ever heard.
D. Wood and Jahi Kearse are the ensemble’s fastest hoofers and prettiest couple. They strut, swing, spin, slide and glide — and yes, at one point, he really does jump over her. Whoa. (One of my few caveats is that Kearse’s otherwise princely performance is a little too pimplike in that ode to reefer, ”The Viper’s Drag.”)
A sublime actress and formidable belter, Denitra Isler gets to exercise her wide range in the sad ”Mean to Me,”â€? the silly ”Cash for Your Trash” and the bumping-and-grinding ”Find Out What They Like.”
But the lady who owns the night is Maia Nkenge Wilson. After cooing her way through ”Squeeze Me,” she turns ”When the Nylons Bloom Again” into a comic howler. In a massive silver cape and faux-European air, the pushy diva character almost suffocates back-up singers Wood and Isler.
While the five-piece band sits in front of a ruby-colored fanlight that evokes the Deco splendor of Harlem, Andre Allen’s sumptuous lighting soaks the room in evanescing autumnal shades. The only problem with Rochelle Barker’s set is that looks exactly like the one she did for Jomandi’s 2001 ”Ain’t Misbehavin’.” But then, Joanna Schmink’s fun, sparkly costumes are just the thing for ”Lounging at the Waldorf.â€?
”’Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” may not be the most adventurous way to open a theater. And yet it is a timeless, soul-nurturing tonic. The Balzer’s off to a boffo beginning, and Tom Key is holding a smash hit in his hot little hands.
THE 411: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Through Feb. 20. $16.20-$43.20. Theatrical Outfit, Balzer Theater at Herren’s, 84 Luckie St., Atlanta. 678-528-1500, www.theatricaloutfit.org. The verdict: Don’t hesitate. Syncopate â€â€? to the box office.
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Capitol City Opera in Mozart’s ‘Cosi fan tutte’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OPERA REVIEW
Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte.”
Capitol City Opera. Friday at 14th Street Playhouse. (Show repeats Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. Performances include alternate casts.) www.ccityopera.com
Mozart would have loved Malcolm Gladwell’s much-discussed new book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.”
Mozart’s comic opera “Cosi fan tutte” plays into (and against) Gladwell’s premise: People make intuitive, snap judgments that are often more insightful than judgments reached after long, thoughtful deliberation.
The Capitol City Opera, an energetic community-based troupe, opened “Cosi” Friday at the 14th Street Playhouse, the first of three performances, sung in English.
“Cosi,” with an uproariously clever libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, is a goofy tale of couple swapping and the illusions of “true love.” The opera takes place over a busy 24 hours. Two young men test their fiancees’ devotion by disguising themselves to seduce the other’s lover. The girls fail the test; the “wrong” couples elope. In a mind-warping denouement, the trickery is revealed. Everyone pretends that nothing has changed when, obviously, nothing can ever be the same.
Mozart’s moral: Love captured in the blink of first impressions is just as worthy (or useless) as a love hard-won. Put more cynically, humans are trivial creatures and — love at first sight or not — we’ll find a way to screw it up.
With committed singers and smart use of resources, Capitol City has a remarkable knack for elevating serviceable, low-budget productions into engrossing evenings in the theater. Eric Smithey deftly conducted a small orchestra of 19 players, which tipped the sonic balances heavily toward the woodwinds. The score was trimmed and the chorus was cut entirely.
Vocally, the men made stronger first impressions than the women, although by evening’s end they melded into a smooth-flowing ensemble.
As the dopey fellas, Benjamin Pruett (as Ferrando) and Joseph Szalay (Guglielmo) sang with firm tones and clear diction, playing the comic bits better than the romantic emotions. It was slapstick all the way.
John LaForge, as Don Alfonso, the old cynic who instigates the action, had the richest, most naturally operatic voice on stage. He made the others, in comparison, sound more flatly Broadway than lyrically opera house.
Kathleen Szalay sang the scheming maid Despina, her voice clear and bright as a tinkling little bell. The sisters were less convincing for their roles. Perri Montane produced plumy warm tones as Dorabella. She had more control of her delivery than sister Fiordiligi, Kimberly Rosquist, whose sound was muddy and who strained to reach her highs and lows.
Alertly directed by Michael Nutter, this “Cosi” had a stereotype-busting final twist. Amid the who-loves-whom confusion, the sisters skipped off, waving away their deceitful suitors. Could you blame the girls? They’d been burned by their own snap decisions.
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‘Searching for Eden’ in Roswell
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: ‘Searching for Eden: The Diaries of Adam & Eve’
And on the eighth day, the Lord said: “Let opposites attract.”
At least that’s the impression you get from Georgia Ensemble Theatre’s “Searching for Eden: The Diaries of Adam & Eve,” a romantic caper by American playwright James Still inspired by Mark Twain’s short stories.
The battle-of-the-sexes comedy follows Adam and Eve from their first meeting in Eden (no, it wasn’t love at first sight) through their fall from grace to their eventual return to Paradise.
Director Robert Farley infuses Twain’s wit with a modern-day sensibility and lets the sparks and barbs fly.
The whimsical set, dreamed up by scenic designer Jacob Ashworth, evokes the innocence of the Garden of Eden with candy-colored flowers, lush greenery and, of course, the apple tree. The softly lit moon and stars in the backdrop give the play a tranquil, bedtime-story feel.
 Innocence is personified by bubbly Eve (Rachel Sorsa), who takes delight in naming all of the creatures and babbling about everything she sees and feels. Bumbling Adam (David Marshall Silverman) doesn’t know what to make of this woman, or her whirlwind of emotions, and tries to flee from her clutch.
But the garden isn’t big enough for the two of them:
She wants to renovate everything, even the constellations in the sky.
He wouldn’t change a thing.
She is lonely.
He likes to be alone.
She says: “He never talks.”
He says: “She never stops.”
Sigh. Ain’t love grand?
The he-said-she-said humor a la “I Love Lucy” coasts with a familiar, comforting rhythm. And the actors have palpable chemistry. Sorsa plays Eve with a sly impishness. Though sometimes channeling an inner ditz that can be grating, she also reveals her character’s vulnerabilities with aplomb. Silverman shines as a simpleton, summoning an everyday guy who gets in touch with his sensitive side.
The second half of the show fast-forwards to the modern age.
With rolling luggage in tow, the couple returns to the garden, now a vacation resort named Eden Park. Sunglasses perched atop her perfectly coiffed head, studio executive Eve barks orders into her cellphone while middle-aged Adam, a couples therapist, dreams of rekindling their romance.
The two are eerily believable as the couple next door, warts and all. Eve whines about work; Adam tries desperately to distract her. Both have adapted remarkably well to modern living —- yet their core differences remain.
There are times when the pair’s nostalgia for Paradise feels forced, and periodic dips into sentimentality make you pray for more amusing repartee. And while some jokes hit their mark, others desperately lack originality. How much mileage can you get from the overplayed “Can you hear me now?”
Like Eve’s mood swings, the show hits highs and lows. It sings when the characters trade clever quips and sinks when the script searches for a greater purpose.
“Searching for Eden” throws out some lofty ideas, but does its best when it sticks to relationship banter.
One of the most piercing lines is Eve’s jab: “The things I loved about you in the beginning are the things that drive me crazy now.”
But from the start, this flawed couple drove each other nuts, and still they couldn’t escape fate: These two were made for each other.
THE 411: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Through Jan. 23. $16-$33. Georgia Ensemble Theatre, Roswell Cultural Arts Center, 950 Forrest St., Roswell. 770-641-1260, www.get.org.
The verdict: Romp through paradise will tickle your ribs, but won’t leave you gasping for air.
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‘Snoogle-Fleejer’ for all ages
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer.”
“Tell us about the Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer, Daddy.”
Jimmy Carter says those were the first words out of his sons’ mouths when he returned home from his submarine journeys in the 1940s. The Navy officer and future president had no time to buy souvenirs, so he invented a fantastical adventure series about a heroic monster’s friendship with a boy named Jeremy.
Now Alliance Children’s Theatre director Rosemary Newcott has brought one of Carter’s tales to the stage, using Ron Anderson’s 2003 Springer Opera House adaptation as a blueprint. Thanks to a skillful design team and a cast that finds the comedic gold beneath the fable’s simple contours, “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer” is a veritable treasure chest of puppetry magic, playful music, aquatic ballets and performances that sparkle and shine like seashells.
Anderson frames Carter’s original yarn, published in 1995 with illustrations by daughter Amy, as a story-within-a-story in which a seafaring dad returns home from the deep and wakes his son, Jer. The boy wants a baseball glove, but Anderson’s Carter-inspired father produces a bedside improvisation instead. As the realistic drama dissolves, the actor portraying the dad (Bart Hansard) becomes the Snoogle-Fleejer.
Hansard goes from a crisp white uniform to a costume that resembles an armored car with scales. (Or is it a float?) Hansard, a human jellyroll with a gift for cartoonish performance, makes quite a splash as the adorable Snoog, and when the character burrows his face under his shell like a skittish underwater creature, he’s poignant.
The part of Jer (who in the father’s made-up story doubles as the fatherless and disabled Jeremy) rotates between Scott Beale and Zachary Solomon (who was featured on opening night). No doubt Beale gives a fine performance. But Solomon is so comfortable and assured, his acting so natural and detailed, that the seventh-grader has “future film star” written all over him.
Doubling as Jeremy’s mom and the town’s befuddled lifeguard, Ellen McQueen brings smart and unexpected comic touches to both. Working in Don Knotts crisis mode, her bumbling lifeguard gets entangled in her whistle and her walkie-talkie as she summons the “shurf” (sheriff). And when Jeremy turns up with gold coins, McQueen’s unsuspecting mother is a riot.
As proverbial small-town bully Jimbo, Justin Welborn seems to be channeling Jughead on Red Bull —- clueless, but lightning fast. As Jimbo’s little brother, Hugo, Clifton Guterman is the quintessential nerd; Hugo goes so far as to unknowingly scrutinize Snoog under a magnifying glass. Eeeek! A sea monster! And Sharisa Q. Whatley’s Danielle makes a saucy accomplice for the boys.
“Snoogle-Fleejer” functions as a moral tale that instructs us on tolerance, understanding and friendship. Humans are scared of the harmless Snoog, and Jeremy’s playmates taunt him for being physically slow. When Snoog and Jeremy connect, perceived differences melt, and the entire community —- land- and ocean-lubbers alike —- celebrates.
Newcott layers the story’s machinations with delightfully dreamy underwater sketches in which sea turtles, stingrays and eels jive and high-five with Snoog and Jeremy. Unbelievably, oversize Snoog manages to maneuver his tall tail under a limbo pole. (Scenic and puppet design is by Kat Conley —- with Susan Mickey going solo on Snoog’s get-up.)
For young viewers, these frolicsome touches, set to music by Thom Jenkins, will charm like “The Little Mermaid.” More seasoned theater-heads will find a sophisticated sensibility that echoes Cirque du Soleil, Julie Taymor and Jon Ludwig.
As Snoog says when he’s happy, “Colossal!”
THE 411: 1 and 3:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays; 1 and 4:30 p.m. Jan. 29. Through Jan. 30. $12-$15. Alliance Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, www.alliancetheatre.org.
The verdict: Jimmy Carter’s children’s story gets a first-class Alliance production.
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Theatre Gael’s ‘Lughnasa’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Dancing at Lughnasa”
Theatre Gael chief John Stephens has assembled a young but effectively spirited cast for “Dancing at Lughnasa,” Brian Friel’s memory play based on the secluded world of his aunts —- five spinsterish sisters living in Donegal circa 1936.
So fresh-faced are the actresses playing the moribund Mundy siblings that Stephens, who directed, had to adjust the first-act line in which Agnes declares her age as 35. The actress playing Agnes (Jessie Dougherty) says she’s 30 instead.
What may be harder to believe is that anyone as pretty as Dougherty would be left sitting at home uncourted, reduced to knitting mittens to help fund her sisters’ meager soda-bread existence.
Nevertheless, youth ultimately prevails in this economy-size but resilient production at 14th Street Playhouse. “Lughnasa” —- pronounced LOO-na-sa —- succeeds as a poignant glimpse at the unlived lives and unspoken desires of a generation trapped by poverty and religious convention.
 It does so with a handful of sublimely etched performances —- especially Barbara Cole as Chris, the heartbreakingly hopeful youngest sister and unwed mother of narrator Michael (Nevin Miller); Marci Millard as the hilarious and moving Maggie; and the charismatic Joanna Daniel, as eldest sibling Kate, struggling as the family’s mother hen.
The staging also works without the benefit of theatrical gimmick. The play’s once-celebrated dance sequence —- triggered when a balky wireless spurts to life with an Irish reel, sending the five sisters into paroxysms of tribal release —- holds little transforming magic here. It’s executed with thumping, cloddish realism, just enough to establish the Mundys as creatures of the quotidian, momentarily inspired by spontaneity and the scandalous notion of attending the annual Celtic harvest dance.
The work’s spinal tension —- pagan ritual vs. Catholic devotion —- resonates in haunting fashion as two men disrupt the sisters’ radio days. The first is Father Jack (Larry Davis), their missionary priest brother, who has returned home after a career in Africa. The second is Gerry (Travis Young), the ne’er-do-well father of the narrator, whose unrepentant duplicity is seen as far more destructive than the celebrated polygamy practiced in Father Jack’s former flock.
As the old priest, Davis poses one of the show’s obvious problems, not so much because of his performance, which has an affectionately dotty quality, but because there seems to have been little effort made through costume or makeup to integrate him into the ensemble. The cut of his hair and clothes hardly instructs the audience that he’s a senile missionary put to pasture. He looks more like a bicycle messenger cutting through from Peachtree Street.
 Such details are important in the world of memory, where, as narrator Michael says, “atmosphere is more real than incident.” Still, for the most part, Theatre Gael captures that atmosphere, along with the nostalgic music of Friel’s language, which still reverberates with the echoes of missed opportunity.
THE 411: Through Feb. 20. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. $16-$22. 14th Street Playhouse, 173 14th St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-4750, www.theatregael.com.
The verdict: A sister act worth catching.
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‘Echoes of Another Man’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Echoes of Another Man.” Through Feb. 12.
More than halfway through Mia McCullough’s “Echoes of Another Man,” there’s a splendid scene in which the brain-transplant patient has a kind of convulsion of creativity. Frantically moving to a Satie score, the painter in the golfer’s body seems to wrestle with fragments of memory, as if by connecting the pieces of his sprawling canvas, he will resolve his cosmic conflict.
It’s oddly telling that the most moving scene of this Actor’s Express world premiere is a textless choreo-painting. No words are spoken, for what’s happening here is no less than a mortal battle for the hero’s splitting soul.
It’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” meets “Sunday in the Park With George,” if you will.
But such fleeting magic also signals that this philosophical debate on the horrors of modern medicine is still searching for its way. Despite McCullough’s prodigious storytelling gifts, keen ear for dialogue and earnest intentions, the play seems to be taking its cues from a Ouija board. Its message is portentous, its pace deliberate and slow.
On the one hand, you admire the Chicago playwright for taking a preposterous premise, then refusing to verge into “Twilight Zone” territory. On the other, the tone is so absurdly serious, the emotions so clinical, that you find yourself wishing the tale of the portable brain had a little more heart.
Not many people like a long hospital stay. So it’s probably not a good sign that half of the play’s two hours, 45 minutes (intermission included) are spent in designer Rochelle Barker’s pale-turquoise private room, with its beeping machines and clunky tray tables.
Orderlies run in and out, feeding the patient. The audience longs for a sip of levity. And director Jasson Minadakis’ uneven company loses the story’s pulse.
 As the man who goes into a coma as Steve and wakes up with the brain of Claude, Daniel May seems game but ill-equipped for the character’s schizoid journey. More compelling are supporting players Kate Donadio (as Steve’s sweetly vulnerable wife, Katie), Shannon Eubanks (as Claude’s pushy manager-lover, Raina) and Tracey Copeland (as the wise and earthy nurse, Iris). In a baffling casting decision and performance, Addae Moon (Dr. Park) makes his 21st-century Frankenstein more a preening peacock than an ambitious CNN-era researcher. It must be tough for an actor, channeling the mind of one character, the physicality of another —- and dealing with the lovers of both. The playwright sets up a veritable quadruple bypass of relationships. Steve-Claude appears repulsed by Raina and strangely attracted to Katie. But the play too often reads like a soap opera, with Dickensian twists and back stories that are never —- pardon the pun —- fleshed out.
Claude was a diabetic who obviously didn’t take good care of himself. Once he gets a replacement body from a virile young athlete, he suddenly has the will to revisit his roots. But exactly whose past is it?
“Echoes of Another Man” struggles with big questions, emotions and revelations. Where does the corporeal leave off, and the soul begin? Does memory linger in the psyche or the flesh? And where does love reside?
Alas, McCullough’s characters and symbols never shape themselves into a fully operational picture. Thanks to Amy Ferguson, who painted the scenery that represents Steve-Claude’s exploding psyche, this production has moments of hallucinogenic beauty.
But by insisting on realism and seldom exploiting its darkly comic potential, “Echoes of Another Man” has a comatose quality that ultimately flatlines.
THE VERDICT: Some plays have all the brains.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. 2 p.m. Sunday and Feb. 6. 5 p.m. Jan. 23 and Jan. 30. Also 8 p.m. Monday. $21.50-$26.75. Through Feb. 12. Actor’s Express, King Plow Arts Center, 887 W. Marietta St. N.W., Suite J-107, Atlanta. 404-607-7469, www.actors-express.com.
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ASO, Runnicles in Music from Home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. (Program repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.) www.atlantasymphony.org
Concert Review
Music of home — the place you come from — informed the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s concert Thursday evening. It was a theme constructed by Donald Runnicles, the orchestra’s principal guest conductor, who was making his first Atlanta appearance of the season.
Music is supposed to be the universal language. Too often, however, that’s merely a slogan for suppressing valuable differences. To learn German or Farsi requires a rewiring of one’s brain, just as a flutist thinks about music in subtle but significantly different ways from a pianist, or as an English composer accesses music differently from a Czech.
Runnicles, a Scotsman, opened the concert with “An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise,” written in 1984 by Peter Maxwell Davies, an Englishman, now 70, who decades ago settled in the rugged Orkney Islands off the Scottish coast.
Max, as he’s known, is a real character on the British music scene. A maverick composer, he’s also a shrewd self-promoter — see his Web site, music.maxopus.com — who never misses a chance for a “hook” to catch the audience’s ear and eye.
This 15-minute “Wedding” travels a narrow path between celebrating folk culture and sinking into nationalistic Scottish kitsch. Treading that line is part of the fun.
The music follows a rustic wedding ceremony, centered around a stiff-legged dance rhythm. Max’s scene painting is so deft that you can practically feel the soggy peat earth underfoot. The oboe and violin have declamatory solo passages, and we can imagine the village old-timers retelling stories everyone on the island has heard a thousand times before.
Soon the rhythm starts falling apart, and the wedding party passes out drunk. Then — surprise — a bagpiper in full kilt regalia (here played by Scott Long) marches into the concert hall to announce the dawn. Runnicles had the ASO play it earnestly. It hardly seemed like a novelty piece at all.
For Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, “home” is the rock-steady foundation laid by Haydn and Mozart — a base from which Beethoven could explore new ideas and new levels of intellectual energy.
The soloist, Swiss pianist Andreas Haefliger, is a musician of pleasing clarity and elegance. For his first notes, he entered with such classical rectitude that the Steinway almost sounded like an antique fortepiano.
Remarkably, Haefliger made Beethoven’s cadenzas sound like freshly composed music. In the long Largo movement, the pianist sang in limpid counterpoint with the orchestra, which throughout played with both lightness and gravity. The cantering Rondo finale had a strong breeze at its back. It was a joyous, in-the-moment romp.
Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony speaks the composer’s native Czech through a standard 19th-century Viennese symphonic model. The effect is as if the city dweller visited the countryside and wrote home, “The villagers here are so charming, so authentic!”
Like most virtuosic American orchestras, the ASO aims for uniform tonal polish — a far different sound from Dvorak’s ideals, where woodwinds are woodier and darker, the brass more rude, the strings have a warm, gritty core. Thus our orchestra, too, plays from the perspective of its own home, interpreting everything on the program with its own sonic vocabulary and innate sense of style.
Runnicles had a sure grasp of what is ultimately a cosmopolitan idiom, and his interpretation sang and stomped and seemed at once coarse and refined. Its best moments were exhilarating.
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A King Celebration Concert
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“A King Celebration Concert.” The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with the Glee Clubs of Morehouse and Spelman colleges. Thursday at Morehouse’s King International Chapel.
The concert will be broadcast on the King Holiday on WSJP-FM (88.1) at 9 a.m. and on WABE-FM (90.1) at 8 p.m.
Concert Review
The ASO’s “A King Celebration Concert,” a musical tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., is a unique event in America: a major orchestra playing serious African-American and civil rights-related repertoire in honor of the music-loving hero.
At Morehouse College’s King International Chapel, the ASO concert attracts a splendidly diverse audience — in terms of race, age, economics. Taped by National Public Radio and broadcast on the King Holiday, the show also typically provides the ASO with its largest listening audience all year.
Now in its 13th year, the event Thursday began, as these things must, with a slew of self-aggrandizing speeches. Leaders from the ASO, NPR, Morehouse and Spelman colleges, the Atlanta city council — I might have left a few out — all took a turn at the podium, lest anyone forget their contribution to this noble and selfless cause. Although these sorts of opening acts can smother the mood of a show before it starts, the audience was good-natured. We humored these people with polite applause.
Then affable NPR host Fred Child got the recorders rolling, introduced conductor Robert Spano, and the music started. First up was a rarity: the overture to Scott Joplin’s long-lost 1910 opera, “Treemonisha.”
Joplin embedded the New World sounds of ragtime and the tunes from old spirituals in a European framework. As orchestrated (in 1972) by T.J. Anderson, the music had the swooning character of a Liszt tone poem. Mysteriously, the music’s character seems to come with a ghostly air, like looking at a photograph so faded the forms are clear but the faces are barely recognizable.
Leonard Bernstein’s “Jeremiah” Symphony is an under-rated, youthful work from 1942. Here the composer borrows musical vocabulary from Shostakovich and the New Deal Americana of Copland. One suspects the music’s world-weariness is borrowed, too, although in Spano’s intense reading, the gravitas seemed genuine. Theresa Hamm-Smith, a light lyric soprano, delivered the Hebrew texts in the final movement.
William Grant Still’s “Afro-American Symphony,” of 1930, prefigures Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” — the saucy muted trumpet, the bluesy call-and-response, the snappy dance-rhythm melodies — all wrapped in tidy classical symphonic form. The zippy, I-got-rhythm scherzo is a treat. It’s all agreeable music in an American vernacular, without much emotion.
Next came the most weirdly interesting piece I’ve heard in a long time: Frederick C. Tillis’ “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit,” music that was commissioned in 1985 for the ASO and the Morehouse and Spelman glee clubs, who sang it again Thursday.
Radio host Child called it “a free set of variations.” The orchestra begins with edgy and angular sounds, then the chorus jumps in from the opposite direction, like they’re singing the spiritual as a perky campfire song. Then the orchestra goes alone again, darker and more Ivesian; then the happy-happy chorus, singing with a do-gooder’s sense of can-do. Creepy orchestra, ready to commit violence. Cheery chorus. Back and forth. A fugue breaks out to unify them, somewhat, and it streaks to the finish line. This was a piece that raised far more questions than it was prepared to answer.
For the concert’s grand finale, Coretta Scott King came on stage to read the text of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” She then slipped away and the orchestra and glee clubs took up the music directly. In Roland Carter’s arrangement, it sounded low-brass heavy, bombastic and Victorian, like choral music by Vaughan Williams. This one piece covered most of the bases of the concert — King in spirit and, via his wife, in body; diverse musical traditions; and a competitive desire to shout the loudest in honor of the King legacy.
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Essential Theatre’s ‘Miss Macbeth’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Miss Macbeth.” Through Jan. 23
Atlanta writer Karen Wurl delivers a doozy of a backstage farce in "Miss Macbeth," in which thespian motives and manners are ridiculed with comic brio.
As college professor Susan (Sarah Falkenburg) tells her class about her glory days in a German experimentalist production of "Macbeth," the play unspools as a sequence of flashbacks in which the unsuspecting young actress finds herself involved in a series of bloody mishaps.
Seems that Susan was originally cast as Lady Macduff in the famous Werner Hagen's legendary production --- until her perverted boyfriend Robert (Jeff Feldman) announces that he wants to sleep with the actress playing the vixenish and controlling Lady M.
Before Susan can say, "Out, out, damned spot," she's entrapped in a hysterical turn of events including intentional and unintentional stabbings, ghostly visitations and broadly comic "Noises Off"-style shenanigans.
Director David Crowe keeps the 12-member cast suspended in a state of ridiculousness throughout the hourlong one-act, the winner of Essential Theatre's annual playwriting award for a Georgia writer. And Wurl gets great comedic payoff in the persons of Werner (Michael Shikany) and his assistant Claudia (Johanna Linden).
Since Werner barely speaks English, Claudia, in black leather pants and quirky frames, must translate. When their "Macbeth" makes headlines, she handles the news photographer with the timing of a fashion model: click.
As always, Feldman is deliciously evil. And Falkenburg, who's rarely offstage, is terrific as the wonderfully rattled, poker-faced supporting-player-turned-star.
Peter Hardy's Essential Theatre, which pops up once a year to do a festival of new plays, is staging the Atlanta premiere of Sam Shepard's "The Late Henry Moss" and Lee Blessing's "Going to St. Ives" in repertory with "Miss Macbeth."
"Miss Macbeth" probably deserves a stronger supporting cast and a slight trim. But in the presence of such tall company as Shepard and Blessing, Wurl holds her own. With its delirious pace, campy shtick and fake blood, "Miss Macbeth" is a delightful laugh-bath.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and Wednesday; 3 p.m. Jan. 22; 7 p.m. Jan. 23. $15-$20. Part of 2005 Essential Theatre Festival, 7 Stages, Back Stage, 1105 Euclid Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-523-7647. Tickets: www.7stages.org. Info: www.essentialtheatre.com
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The Mandrake/The Cathedral
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Mandrake” and “The Cathedral.” Through Jan. 30
My, that Machiavelli was a randy fellow!
His 1518 one-act “The Mandrake” would fee right at home on 225 Fox TV.
Nobody can get enought sex, not even the friar.
And who knew that the philosopher who gave us the end-justifies-the-means also wrote a three-minute gag involving a giant beaker of urine?
Herewith, the plot: The young and handsome Callimaco desires the lovely and virtuous Lucrezia, who’s married to the old and foolish Nicia. So Callimaco hires the wily and wicked Ligurio to help him find a way into Lucrezia’s heart, or more accurately, her nether regions. Ligurio knows that Nicia badly wants a child. So he tells Nicia that he knows of a potion made from a mandrake root that is sure to get her pregnant. The only problem? It will kill the first man to sleep with her after she drinks it. So, he suggests, Nicia must capture a young man off the street and force him to have sex with his wife. And guess who that young man will be?
Pulling all this off, of course, requires bribery and disguises and involves an oversexed mother-in-law and an on-the-take friar.
This is broad, broad stuff. The Shakespeare Tavern cast never passes up a chance to hammer home a double-entendre — why settle for a wink when a pelvic thrust is at your disposal? And did we mention that beaker of urine?
“The Mandrake” is a show for those folks who still miss Benny Hill.
Oddly, the Tavern has paired this ancient, bawdy work with a modern, reverential piece by local author Bo Ketchin.
“The Cathedral” tells the story of a boy who can see music. As he ages, this ability disappears. But when, as a young man, he passes a bookstore window and catches a glimpse of a cover featuring an ancient cathedral, he realizes that the musical visions he saw as a child were cathedrals. Soon he sets out on a pilgrimage to see the holy edifice in Salisbury, England.
Despite some lovely language and the best efforts of actor Marc McPherson — dressed like a professor and alternately shouting and whispering like a preacher — the play still feels like the short story it originally was. And its simplicity and reverence make it an odd setup for the wacky chaos that follows. Better to have split “Mandrake” in two or to have found some equally ribald work to start the show. THE 411: $19.50-$24.50. Through Jan. 30. Shakespeare Tavern, 499 Peachtree St., downtown. 404-874.5299, www.shakespearetavern.com.
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Beauty and the Beast
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Beauty and the Beast.” Through Sunday, Jan. 16
With its refreshing twists on conventional fairy-tale wisdom, “Beauty and the Beast” returned to the Fox Saturday in a bare-boned but solidly executed and spunky production mounted by Theater of the Stars.
Hardly a down-on-her-luck Cinderella whose dreams come true thanks to a handsome prince, or a Sleeping Beauty transformed into a waking princess, also thanks to, three guesses, a handsome prince, this tale’s down-to-earth heroine is alive, well and thriving, even though — gasp — she’s single and reads books.
She’s considered something of a geek by her 18th-century (or thereabouts) French townsfolk, charming and musical as they may be, at least according to the Walt Disney 1991 animated film and ensuing Broadway show.
As she tells her ugly, furry co-star, Belle knows “how lonely it can be” to be different, in one of the more touching moments of this new production starring Christy Carlson Romano, who just left a 10-month run in the role on Broadway.
Also known for the voice of “Kim Possible” on the Disney Channel, Romano is joined here by a number of “B&B” veterans, both of the original Broadway production and of the national tour.
Based on Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s “La Belle et la Bête,” Disney’s version takes off when Belle’s eccentric father Maurice gets lost in the woods and ends up a prisoner in an enchanted castle, the master of which has been transformed into a rude, ugly beast for a past ugly deed.
His servants have also been transformed, comprising a veritable riot of talking objects from a stuck-up clock (Cogsworth), to a Maurice Chevalier-style candelabra (Lumiere), to a teapot and her teacup son (Mrs. Potts and Chip). Under the terms of the magic spell, all will remain stuck as objects until the Beast experiences mutual love.
Belle arrives on the scene and persuades the Beast to let her dad go, in exchange for her remaining at the castle. One thing leads to another and all kinds of magical metamorphoses ensue by story’s end.
If you’re looking for a Disney special-effects extravaganza, look elsewhere. This production is bare-boned, relying on Linda Woolverton’s clever book, Alan Menken’s richly melodic score, some clever staging and mostly high-quality performances.
Burke Moses has the Beast’s quirky head movements and burly bad manners down pat, his creamy rich baritone revealing the warm, vulnerable human beneath. Tony Lawson, also strong musically, is superb as the breast-beating egomaniac Gaston, and Rob Lorey’s Lumiere is comedic timing at its finest, as is Michael Fitzpatrick’s stuck-up, Brit-speaking Cogsworth.
Romano makes a highly believable, sympathetic young Belle, her fine acting compensating for vocalizing not always up to the level of her colleagues’.
As perhaps the first ever African-American Mrs. Potts, local star Bernardine Mitchell is an interesting casting choice for a part usually played with a British “spot-of-tea” accent.
Local fourth-grader Mark Gay as her son Chip smiles and quips sweetly and consistently. Additional cast standouts include Ray Demattis as Maurice, and Patrick Garrigan as the ever pratfalling and much abused Lefou, Gaston’s faithful servant.
Kudos to director Drew Scott Harris for the company’s infectious esprit de corps and to musical director Tom Griffin and his above-par pit band.
Sound levels are occasionally painful — bring earplugs; otherwise, an enchanting journey for all ages.
THE VERDICT: No need for frills when the core ingredients are so strong.
THE 411: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Through Jan. 16. $20-$52. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St., Atlanta. 404-817-8700; www.ticketmaster.com
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ASO’s Bumpy Ride for a Valkyrie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Thursday-Saturday, Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St., 404-733-5000, www.atlantasymphony.org.
In August, at the Seattle Opera, Robert Spano will conduct Richard Wagner’s 4-opera, 16-hour epic “The Ring of the Nibelung.” Although Spano has never led a complete Wagner opera, anticipation is already sky-high. The three-week run is completely sold out.
Thursday evening, Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra played about 100 minutes of Wagner’s music to a half-filled Symphony Hall.
For many listeners, aware of the monumental task awaiting Spano, Thursday could have been a first chance to hear the conductor’s comprehensive views on Wagner.
Due to circumstances within his control, however, it didn’t turn out that way. In fact, it was a cumbersome, unrelenting, ear-fatiguing evening.
Spano typically has a knack for smart programming, combining works in unexpected yet revealing ways. Here, the program was part of the problem.
Instead of a full act from a Wagner opera, or a complete scene, or neat juxtapositions with another composer — Wagner with Berlioz? Debussy? Philip Glass? — the ASO performed a pops array of Wagner’s orchestral hits, culled from several operas. It was never made clear why they were doing an all-Wagner evening in the first place, if not as a nod to Spano’s coming assignment. (Interesting comparison: the Los Angeles Philharmonic recently performed Wagner’s 5-hour “Tristan und Isolde” spread out over three nights. It was a critical and box-office triumph.)
The other, more nagging problem concerned the playing.
The evening opened with the overture and campy orgy music from “Tannhauser,” a coming-of-age tale where the title hero chooses goodness over debauchery, then has second thoughts. In the introduction, the often-excellent ASO horns were smooth and firm, and the rest of the orchestra played together, at least in spirit.
Yet Spano’s touch was hammered and clamped tight, lacking lyricism. As sometimes seems the case when Spano hasn’t fully thought-through and digested a score, he drives the interpretation with surface intensity. It’s initially thrilling to hear. But unremitting intensity quickly grows wearisome if it’s not backed by contrasting emotions and ideas.
The “Prelude and Liebestod” from “Tristan und Isolde” came next. The orchestra seemed stressed out, and not all the sounds coming from the stage were pretty, even in rapturously flowing passages. It would have been too much to ask that the opening notes — the famously ambiguous “Tristan” chords — reflected a sense of the opera’s sublime ending, where the world is timeless and constantly recycling back on itself. Not here.
Soprano Jane Eaglen was supposed to provide the evening’s high point. Although she’s internationally famous for her Wagner, her “Liebestod” was rather atrocious: she barked a few phrases, sang below pitch and sounded altogether distant.
After intermission the ASO played orchestral bits from “The Ring,” which received somewhat better treatment. “Ride of the Valkyries” was the power surge that it always is.
“Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” featured Brice Andrus’s off-stage horn calls, splendidly dispatched. This excerpt held moments of disarming beauty, but never felt like it was part of a larger canvas. It remained an orchestral showpiece.
“Siegfried’s Funeral Music” — these titles are all events from the “Ring” operas — was all about viseral intensity, lacking depth.
Admittedly, for a listener, knowing that Spano has been preparing a “Ring” cycle colors how the music is heard. I was eager for connections, for context, for a slice of opera in a concert format. A listener expecting merely a power rush might have left the hall very pleased. Expectations do matter.
For the Seattle “Ring”, soprano Eaglen will sing the role of the much-maligned Brunnhilde, perhaps the most complexly drawn and sympathetic female character in the theatrical world.
In a savvy and concise new book, “Decoding Wagner,” author Thomas May describes Brunnhilde’s “Immolation Scene” — the last 20 minutes of the 16-hour cycle — as a magnificent “encapsulation of her own evolution and multiple personae: she is lover, enlightened spirit, purveyor of forgiveness, social reformer, even madwoman.”
Get Eaglen a copy of that book. For her “Immolation Scene,” she was a woman with a big voice standing center stage, singing loudly. She sounded oblivious to everything — texts, music, nuances of language, her colleagues on stage.
It was a surreal stretch of time — all this beauty, all this talent, all this accumulated experience, and they were just spinning out the notes. Let’s hope Eaglen and Spano are more with it come August.
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Ensemble Sirius plays Stockhausen at Eyedrum
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Ensemble Sirius plays music of Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Monday at Eyedrum. Eyedrum.org.
It used to be trendy to love modern art — in music, painting, architecture, fashion, theater and other manifestations. So fresh. So clean. So new.
Nowadays it’s trendy to hate modern art, to think it’s disposable, that it’s junk.
Thus an international organization with a fun-sounding name, Docomomo, is dedicated to documenting and conserving architecture from the modern movement: Do-co-mo-mo. There’s even a chapter in Atlanta.
Something similar — in spirit, anyway — is practiced by the Ensemble Sirius, a duo that uses percussion, keyboards and electronics to bring classics of musical modernism to life.
Monday at Eyedrum, the duo played “Nachtmusik” (“Nightmusic”) by Karlheinz Stockhausen, a German composer who once led the Euro avant-garde. Stockhausen’s influence, like the movement itself, reached a peak in the late 1960s. (The Beatles dug Stockhausen enough to put him on the crowded cover of its “Sgt. Pepper’s” album.)
The score to “Nachtmusik,” from 1968, is less than you might expect. There’s no traditional notation, just a wavy-gravy set of koan-like instructions that begin, “Play a vibration in the rhythm of the universe. Play a vibration in the rhythm of dreaming.”
It’s entirely up to the performers to decide what this might sound like, which instruments to play and how long it lasts. The Sirius boys have it from the master’s knee Stuart Gerber is on the faculty of Georgia State University and is percussionist for the composer’s teaching sessions in Kuerten, Germany. Michael Fowler is a new-music pianist who lives in Australia. Together they’ve performed for Stockhausen and received the guru’s coaching.
They’ve made a specialty of the improvisatory “Nachtmusik” — and even played it twice at Monday’s concert, with each version, performed differently, lasting about 30 minutes.
First time through, they mixed weird electronic sounds with percussion, static-filled shortwave radio and audio clips of Stockhausen talking. Despite the instructions, it conjured neither dreams nor the universe. It sounded too human made. It didn’t come together organically.
Second run: same recipe, different ingredients. Here it was more aurally enticing, with snippets of old choral music forming the foundation for weird electronics and unusual percussion. But it also started awkwardly.
Then, about 20 minutes into it, they clicked. A sample of John Taverner’s dark chants came on the loop. Fowler added a steady swishing noise to thicken the atmosphere. Gerber picked up a contrabass bow and a Swiss cowbell and, dragging one across the other, made ethereal music — and suddenly this crazy cacophonous quilt was alive.
All at once, you could feel the energy and intensity dramatically rise in the room. Serene, cool, moody, at turns lovely and haunting, the music was indeed dreamily universal, where the modernist art made perfect sense.
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