Access Atlanta > Arts > Our Reviews > Archives > 2004 > October > 29
Friday, October 29, 2004
South America comes to the Rialto
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Putumayo record label, known for its world music primer CDs, has brought its music to life through the Latinas: Women of Latin America tour, which Friday showcased three female vocalists at the Rialto. Two, Belo Velloso and Mariana Montalvo, had never before toured the States. The third, Toto La Momposina, is far from a household name here. So the show acted a bit like Putumayo’s records — it was a joyous and inclusive triple-header designed to spark further exploration.
Velloso (the playful Brazilian) and La Momposina (the feisty Colombian) both delivered their respective goods, drawing proudly from the traditions of their respective homelands. But it was Montalvo’s night. The regal Chilean singer, who has lived for 30 years in exile, sang with a penetrating intensity. She was tough and romantic, her voice coursing with dignity and grace. All three singers communicated ideas across language barriers. More than the others, though, Montalvo channeled human emotions into song and emerged with something devastating.
Permalink | | Categories: Pop Music
Pat Green
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pat Green looks like a guy who’s having a good time onstage. Even when he sings about heartache, he can’t quite repress a smile. That’s not a bad thing. Sure, this country star may never be able to break your heart, Johnny Cash-style, but he might just make you break into a shuffle. His loose, goofy charm and upbeat, rock-tinged tunes have made him a darling of a certain segment of the frat-guy set, who composed the majority of the smallish crowd who turned out for his one-hour show in Centennial Olympic Park Thursday night. Green and his seven-piece band ripped through old favorites — “Who’s to Say,” “Take Me Out to a Dancehall,” — and a couple of songs from his new album, including first single “Don’t Break My Heart Again,” before closing with what the crowd most wanted to hear: a sway-inducing version of his biggest hit, “Wave on Wave.”
Permalink | | Categories: Pop Music
Paul Thorn
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You won’t want to go to the bathroom in between songs at a Paul Thorn show. You’ll miss the best stuff. Don’t misunderstand: The rootsy rocker possesses a husky, soulful voice (think Marc Cohn meets Lyle Lovett) and writes witty, catchy tunes. But it’s the Tupelo, Miss., singers’s in-between stories — told in a halting, Delta-thickened style — that make him special.
Thorn is the son of a Pentecostal preacher, and he’s inherited his father’s way with words. His colorful tales paint vivid pictures of rural Southern life: of the Piggly Wiggly, of the blond, voluptuous ex-girlfriend who wore a purple thong and made him bacon sandwiches, of fireworks tents that resemble the revival tents of his youth.
Thorn is a character (he once boxed middleweight champion Roberto Duran on national TV!) and a born entertainer. Near the end of his set, he presented an autographed, 40-oz. bottle of Silver Thunder malt liquor to the biggest Paul Thorn fan in the small crowd. If there’s any justice, there’ll be more fans clamoring for that prize next time he’s in town.
Permalink | | Categories: Pop Music
Best Halloween show: ‘The Weird’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Weird.� Through Oct. 30.
It’s ghoul to the last drop
YOU HAVE TO LOVE a title like “Morning Becomes Olestra,â€? one of the six horror spoofs that make up Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s “The Weirdâ€? at Dad’s Garage. Directed with broad comedic strokes by Melissa Foulger and Anne Towns, these one-acts probably won’t creep you out, but they could make you die laughing.
This isn’t Aguirre-Sacasa in the edgy mode of “The Mystery Plays,â€? which got a classy production at New York’s Second Stage earlier this year. Here the author of “Say You Love Satanâ€? and “Weird Comic Book Fantasyâ€? dusts off what appears to be his juvenilia for Dad’s crack comedians. Winking at everything from “Rosemary’s Babyâ€? to “Tales From the Crypt,â€? the show is narrated by Scott Warren as a ghoul whose skin is so blemished that it appears to ooze.
If Wade Tilton is the subtlest actor in the bunch, Sloane Warren is the most outrageous. In the Tennessee Williams riff “Swamp Gothic,â€? she’s compulsive talker Abigail, who has a pet alligator and erotic fantasies about her brother’s love life. In trailer-trashy “Olestra,â€? she plays a wife who hires an assassin to get rid of her chubby hubby (Rene Dellefont in a very funny turn). Also good is Kathleen Wattis, who nails the part of the wacky New Yorker in “The Play about Rosemary’s Baby.â€?
If there’s anything remotely frightening about “The Weird,â€? it is bulldozed by this supremely silly ensemble. This intermissionless evening of one-acts goes down quick and dirty — and gets our vote for best Halloween show.
THE VERDICT: More silly than chilling.
$13; $6.50 students. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday (Oct. 30). Dad’s Garage Theatre, 280 Elizabeth St. N.E., Inman Park. 404-523-3141, www.dadsgarage.com.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
Synchronicity’s ‘Language of Angels’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Language of Angels.� Through Nov. 21.
I have known places so still that time seems to have stopped, rooms so thick with the past that you can feel the lingering presence of others. My grandmother's house was like that. Not haunted, but alive with memories.
Yet when I returned recently for my first visit in nearly 20 years, it felt entirely different. The owners had remodeled the place, flooded it with light and comfort, but oddly, what once seemed a rambling maze of dark nooks and crannies appeared smaller, as if all that pent-up time had disappeared, shrinking the house.
Had the voices I once knew been erased — or summoned forth?
In her murky ghost story “The Language of Angels,� Naomi Iizuka attempts to describe a similarly odd experience, or what she calls a “collapsing of time,� by introducing elements of Noh theater into the story of a group of working-class North Carolina youths. (Noh Carolina?) In this contemporary tale of a young woman who disappears in a cave, her friends come forward to tell their side of events, yet the pieces never add up.
What’s really happening here? Why do these people behave so strangely? Who’s alive, and who’s dead? Rachel May’s Synchronicity Performance Group staging has an intentional ambiguity of tone, a beveled edge that’s at once seductive and unsettling. What makes the play so alluring is that we never really know the facts.
In one scene, characters refer to a rapping on the door as rain. It's a discombobulating, comic moment that suggests mysterious phenomena don't just frequent haunted houses or abandoned cemeteries. Iizuka knows that a hint, a suggestion, of the supernatural is infinitely more upsetting than a scream.
As we wade through the characters’ recollections, we learn that the disappeared woman, Celie (Rachel Mewbron), was obsessed with angels, that her father spoke in tongues, that her mother later became a palm reader.
As her ex-boyfriend Seth (Joe Sykes) explains why people are drawn to explore the cave, his face widens with innocence and awe. Grinning like a mule eating briars, he explains the fun of getting high — and the torture of getting lost.
While Celie flits in and out, we meet the angry Billy (JC Long), his girlfriend Allison (Kate Donadio), the randy and reflective sheriff JB (Jeff Feldman), the quirky Kendra (Kristi Casey), the troubled Danielle (Rachel Roberts) and her newfound beau, Michael (Theroun Patterson), who looks a lot like her dead boyfriend, Tommy.
These interconnected relationships are fragmented and fraught.
Most of the characters aren't fully fleshed out, but the most intriguing ones are perhaps Billy (played with an incendiary quality by Long) and Danielle (whom Roberts depicts with a time-worn knowingness). One quibble: Patterson does nothing that he hasn't done elsewhere, and there's a vaguely befuddled quality to his style that makes you think he sometimes doesn't know where the story’s taking him.
Rochelle Barker has created an appropriately dark and portentous cave (complete with three enormous stalagmites), and Sabina Maja Angel’s blurry videos add to the story’s palimpsest-like quality.
Though Iizuka explores Noh, the Japanese influences are wisely subtle. May has a gut instinct that’s more effective than arcane references or overintellectualization.
Still, if you don’t quite grasp the language of “Language,â€? that’s not just OK — it’s completely natural. Iizuka’s play will grow on you. And it may conjure up floating remnants of your own past, places you’ve known, faces that are gone but … not … quite … forgotten.
THE VERDICT: Will you live to tell what happened?
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 7 p.m. Sundays. Oct. 22- Through Nov. 21. $15-$20; discounts for groups, students and senior citizens. Synchronicity Performance Group, 7 Stages Back Stage, 1105 Euclid Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-325-5168, www.synchrotheatre.com.
