Looking Forward:
You can often find Debra
Loewen’s Wild Space Dance Company scampering around an island or swinging
from a bridge. This weekend, her dancers will be indoors, but will still examine
a place in the community. Loewen’s Map of Memories focuses on the
Kashubian community that thrived on Jones Island in the 19th and
early 20th century. As usual, Loewen has a tremendously expansive
vision – she and her dancers have logged a lot of hours at the Historical
Society, and have worked with Polish folk dancers. But as always, the raw
material will be filtered through her own unique sensibility.
It’s been a rebuilding year for the Milwaukee Chamber
Orchestra. Now under the baton of Bel Canto Chorus director Richard Hynson,
it seems that the MCO is ready to make a go of it again. Their Players Showcase
concert will feature many of the city’s finest musicians in solo roles. Pianist
Stephanie Jacobs plays Ernst Bloch’s Concerto Grosso, a
20th-century spin on age-old musical traditions. Jeanyi Kim plays the
introspective Romance for Violin and Orchestra by Antonin Dvorak. And the
old favorite, Peter and the Wolf, features William Helmers, Judith Ormond
and Beth Giocobassi.
And don’t miss A New
Brain, the dazzling 1998 musical by William Finn, who for many has been
the great hope for the American Musical. Not afraid to tackle substantial
subjects, Finn has a gift for melody and for the darkly comic lyric that makes
him a truly original voice. How might you respond to a brain tumor diagnosis,
followed by months of treatment and the eventual revelation that the diagnosis
was wrong? Well Finn wrote a musical, which is why he’s one of the most
interesting theater folks around. Windfall Theatre’s production features Carol
Zippel and Larry Birkett.
Looking Back:
Love Is All You Need?
Helen loves war movies – Von Ryan’s
Express, The Guns of Navarone – but during a particularly sweet bit of
pillow talk in Fat Pig, she turns down the volume on the bedroom set so
she and her new beau, Tom, can have a heart-to-heart. When the talk is over and
lust again calls, she stops mid-kiss to reach over for the remote. The lights
fade on passionate kisses, and the sounds of rumbling Panzer tanks and exploding
Howitzers.
Love has always been a battlefield for Neil LaBute, but
here (sound effects aside), the most devastating moments hit you like the silent
knifework of a guerilla behind enemy lines.
Helen (Tanya Saracho) is the title character, a large woman who meets Tom
(Braden Moran) in the play’s first scene. He is awkward and unsure; she is
girlishly bold and charming, obviously comfortable in her size-14 skin, and he
is smitten with her unaffected warmth.
LaBute takes us through the trajectory of their romance, and follows Tom’s
struggles to tell his co-workers, one of whom is a former girlfriend, about his
new love. While the play has a lot to say about body image and America’s
obsession with muscle tone (LaBute wrote it after his own 60-pound diet
see-saw), its message isn’t nearly as one-dimensional or didactic.
Instead, LaBute’s subject is the fragility of the human spirit, the hopeful –
and often hopeless – ways we bolster our egos against a world of pain and
uncertainty. Tom’s attraction is obviously rooted in his own insecurity. He’s a
bit of a commitment-phobe, and vague about his place in the world. His bliss
with Helen is reserved for the time when that world disappears and they can be
“completely honest,” a phrase from the relationship lexicon that is never as
simple as it sounds.
The world that comes crashing in on Tom and Helen is a doozy. Embodied in his
office mates, Carter and Jeanne, it’s a maelstrom of personal complications and
social ugliness. On Sunday night, a “pay what you can” performance, the cruelty
drew both laughter and pause. One of the brilliant things about LaBute’s
dialogue is that he pushes comedy conventions to make you laugh one moment, and
then feel guilty about it the next. Director Susan Fete’s production finds the
space between those moments, and makes the experience profoundly unsettling.
Casting Wayne T. Carr as Carter is one of Fete’s bolder moves, and it pays
off. To hear an African-American character give LaBute’s most “edifying”
monologue adds an extra layer of irony. Tom’s romance is doomed, says Carter,
because it’s best to “stick to our own kind.” Whether or not you think
“weight-ism” is the new racism, the speech and the exchange that follows speaks
volumes about the complications of living in America.
It doesn’t hurt that Carr is spry and funny, and has a good partner in Leah
Dutchin’s Jeanne, who finds just the right balance of narcissism and
women-scorned frustration.
The final scene, of course, is at the beach, where we celebrate the body
beautiful. It’s here you expect the dramatic fireworks, confrontations worthy of
an MTV reality show. But LaBute deftly goes out with a whisper instead of a
bang. With one line – again an innocent and romantic cliché – you see a brave
and beautiful soul crumble. No screams or epithets. No blood, no thunder. No
tears.
Except, perhaps, your own.
Photo by Jean Bernstein: Braden Moran and Tanya Saracho.
Gwilt or Innocence
Speaking of battlefields. And blood and thunder. Let me introduce you to Miss
Lydia Gwilt, the anti-heroine of Armadale, the Milwaukee Repertory
Theater’s latest world premiere. Several years in the making (I offered my two
cents to the script process when I worked at the Rep), Jeffrey Hatcher’s
adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ longest novel is a remarkable bit of dramatic
storytelling, filled with some of the most diabolically entertaining characters
you’ll see this side of Sweeney Todd.
Charles Dickens’ dark side, Wilkie Collins was a leading proponent of the
“sensation novel,” a genre in which interest in reader “engagement” was taken to
new levels. Here, every pulse-quickening gasp or shudder is a literary
accomplishment. And while modern audiences may not react the way Collins’
Victorian readers did, there are still loads of guilty (or perhaps Gwilty?)
pleasures in this well-spun yarn. Murder, say. As well as malice, general
mayhem, and yes, monkeys.
It is story theater at its best, a style made famous by the Royal Shakespeare
Company’s groundbreaking Dickens marathon, The Adventures of Nicholas
Nickelby. Hatcher and the Rep actors have done a great job of painting in
the supporting characters with a few deft strokes. Peter Silbert, with rheumy
eyes and pallid skin, changes from the bombastically priggish Reverend Brock to
the simpering Bashwood with the flip of a scarf and the slapping on of a bad
toupee. Jim Pickering puffs his chest as Major Milroy, Armadale’s harrumphing
future father-in-law. Then caves it in, dangling his arms nervously about his
groin, to become Dr. Downward, the director of a shady and nefarious surgical
establishment. Rose Pickering flutters nervously as Mrs. Milroy, then pops a
cleavage-revealing button or two, and sneers her way into Mrs. Oldershaw,
Downward’s partner in crime.
Part of the pleasure of Armadale is watching these transformations,
and seeing the story unfold on Michael Ganio’s edifice of Victorian hardware and
bric-a-brac. Here, a curtain hides what goes on behind closed doors (quite a
lot, as it turns out), but also become a ship’s sail. Chairs become window
grates, and a center-stage fainting couch (an emblem of Victorian sensation if
there ever was), gets enough mileage to require several oil changes and a wheel
balance.
A ballad of good and evil that spans generations, Armadale gets all
the iniquity it needs from Gwilt (Deborah Staples). She is the actor’s actor,
transforming herself from charming governess to diabolical murderess with ease.
Ozias Midwinter, with shadowy eyes and a leather coat, looks like he could open
for Fall Out Boy, but Michael Gotch saturates him with the intense paranoia
suggested by his ramblings about fate and dark destiny. And Brian Vaughn,
dressed as a Victorian Sun King, exudes good feelings, embodying the naïve
goodness that always prevails in such stories.
Or does it?
My Favorite Flings
It’s hard to pick out a favorite moment from
last weekend’s Danceworks/Present Music collaboration at the Humphrey Scottish
Rite Center, so maybe I’ll just make a list.
Christal Wagner’s explosion of yellow started the concert by
defiantly proclaiming that spring had arrived, regardless of recent weather
patterns. Play, set to Michael Torke’s “The Yellow Pages,” was childlike
and celebratory, lead by the puckish energy of Melissa Anderson.
Sang Shen’s gorgeous playing of Kamran Ince’s sweet melody in What
Remains brought an extra level of depth to Kim Johnson-Rockafellow’s
meditative What Remains. Johnson-Rockafellow’s focus and intensity was as
passionate as Ince’s music. At one moment, she seemed to emerge from a dark
pool, arms thrown back and her shoulders and face registering the shock of sun
and air.
In Simone Ferro’s Blue Silence, set to music by Kevin Volans and Elena
Kats-Chernin, the dancers seemed a bit crowded on the square stage, but in the
last movement, the nonet erupted into a three-by-three canon, and moved with new
clarity into the final haunting image.
Dani Kuepper, using a rich vocabulary of taut duets and beautifully massed
conglomerations of dancers, created the best work of the evening, Lying,
Cheating, Stealing. She used the space impressively, dividing it into
discreet areas, each with its own style and tempo. David Lang’s music was raw
and clanging (it included hubcaps as instruments), and Kuepper caught its spirit
of anxiety and, eventually, release. It’s the finest piece of her work I’ve seen
to date. She also got to have a lot of fun with Where the Wild Things
Are, a retelling of Maurice Sendak’s story that’s a little bit Austin Powers
and a little bit Cirque du Soliel.
Jason Seed spins out long, searching melodies in Politiscapes, and
Kelly Anderson’s choreography matched his lines with explorations of mirror
images and other symmetries spun out across the floor.
Photo by Rory Kurtz: Melissa Anderson
Julie, Julie, Julie Do You Love Me?
Those who came to the
Florentine Opera last weekend expecting a familiar story were in for a surprise.
Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi is based on the
pre-Shakespeare stories that informed the Romeo & Juliet we know so
well. There’s no nurse, no balcony and when the opera begins, Mercutio is
already dead. In the first act, there’s a good deal of martial posturing as the
two families more toward war (here, it’s not just a Hatfield-McCoy-type squabble
– my friend Anne Reed called it Verona’s equivalent of “trash talk”). The second
act moves into more familiar territory – Juliet’s fake poisoning and the
entombed finale – and actually contains some moments with great dramatic
potential. A duel between Juliet’s bethrothed, Tebaldo, and Romeo is interrupted
by her funeral cortege passing through the woods. In Bellini’s story, Juliet
wakes after Romeo has taken the poison, but before he dies. So there’s time for
a tragic duet, most of which Romeo sings with his head hanging upside down over
the edge of the tomb’s marble futon.
Bellini’s opera is by no means
standard fare, and it’s rarely performed. Musically, it’s first-rate Bellini,
but its sense of story and drama is hopelessly old-fashioned. My guess is that
the Florentine Opera wanted to offer an example of Bel Canto, and also thought
that the familiar story (it was billed as Romeo and Juliet rather than its more
unfamiliar true title) would attract its own audience.
Those who showed up saw a pedestrian production (Bernard Uzan was the stage
director) peppered with moments of great singing. There’s some nice choral
writing, and here the singing was well-balanced and solid. Joseph Rescigno’s
orchestra played sprightly when required. And soloists Todd Levy (clarinet),
Scott Tisdale (cello), and William Barnewitz (horn) played some beautiful turns.
As for the singers, Romeo is a taxing role, and Marianna Kulikova wavered a
bit as she tried to fill every scene. On Sunday afternoon, the third performance
in three days, her voice was musky and deep in her chest, and occasionally had a
hard time rising above the orchestra. Georgia Jarman’s Juliet fared better. Her
first moment, the achingly beautiful solo, “Oh Quante Volte,” was a thrill,
particularly when her voice flew into the cascades that can make Bel Canto
singing so breathtaking. But her soprano, too, showed some strain in the high
register. The most dependable singing of the night came from Scott Piper, as
Tebaldo, whose confident tenor conveyed his character’s heroic bluster.
