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Thursday, March 17, 2005
ASO’s ‘The Damnation of Faust’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. www.atlantasymphony.org
If it wasn’t the supreme achievement of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s 61-year history, it sure came awfully close.
For Hector Berlioz’s “La Damnation de Faust,” Thursday evening in Symphony Hall, the ASO assembled all the right pieces. Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit, who led Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” in 2002 — the most musical and inspired I’ve ever heard the ASO — was back for “La Damnation.” It’s one of his specialty works. He led lustrous, top-tier vocal soloists and the always splendid ASO Chorus. It’s that special, and that good.
This despite the fact that the wonderfully irregular music of Berlioz isn’t easily mastered. A maverick by nature, he wrote a lot of gorgeous and emotionally fraught music intended, seemingly, to please only himself. His sense of theater and dramatic pacing is his own. Self-taught, he never learned what an orchestra cannot do. His imagination and flights of creative fancy thus dominate everything he wrote.
Berlioz called “La Damnation,” from 1846, “an opera without decor or costumes.” He had invented a form of concert opera, in other words, in which the singers tell the story and the orchestral music paints the scenery.
Fired by the French composer’s own emotional turmoil, it’s based on the pessimistic and philosophical first book of Goethe’s “Faust,” where the pasty anti-hero plunges into deep isolation and emptiness.
Mephistopheles, as a dashing incarnation of Faust’s most destructive instincts, becomes the enabler of his ruin. Berlioz understood the inherent sexiness of bad guys and the romantic virtues of depression, two very 19th-century ideals. (“La Damnation” holds more brilliance and complexity than his more famous “Symphonie Fantastique,” but the neuroses-set-to-music floorplan is similar.)
Dutoit’s exciting and erudite success comes from tight control of rhythm and orchestral texture. He gets the orchestra to speak in long, eloquent, unbroken paragraphs — the ASO at its best.
He propelled the pops hit “Hungarian March,” which comes early in the opera, to be as loud as possible while keeping each detail clear and in focus. Later, in the “Ballet of the Sylphs,” he brought up the low pedal tone, adding menacing undertones to a lullaby. Dutoit made the grotesque “Ride to the Abyss,” where Faust is driven to hell on crazed horses, about the most scary and exhilarating thing I’ve heard in a concert hall. (Unbelieveably, the audience Thursday didn’t applaud the March, nor any of the vocal arias. And in turnout, the audience was depressingly small for such a grand event; perhaps the ASO’s regular crowd was instead bar hopping for St. Patrick’s Day.)
Dutoit’s singers, making their ASO debuts, contributed much. Mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer, as the naive lover Marguerite, sang with darkly luminous tones, delivering a rapturous “Romance” song — perhaps foremost among the evening’s highlights. With a bright, high, nasal voice and a boyish manner, tenor Gregory Kunde sang an endearing Doctor Faust — not a gnarly old man but as a wayward young depressive. (Kunde is proving his mettle as a Berlioz specialist. He stars on a new CD of the opera “Benvenuto Cellini,” on the Virgin Classics label.)
Sir Willard White, already an operatic legend, acted and danced and purred as Mephistopheles, his bass-baritone ringing, powerful and corky, with a firm bounce in his voice. Baritone Christopher Feigum did well in the small role of the Brander, offering a properly snarky “Song of the Rat.”
The ASO Chorus, too, were at their best. Prepared by Norman Mackenzie, they sang clearly, warmly or fiercely (as required) in three languages: French, Latin and Berlioz’s invented Infernal tongue. And with such a strong, unified performance, for once the chorus couldn’t boast that they were unmatched on stage.
Permalink | | Categories: Classical Music
Boston Marriage at 7 Stages
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
”Boston Marriage.” Through April 3. The verdict: A wickedly wordy drawing-room comedy.
Forget the bouquets. “Boston Marriage” is said to be a Victorian-era euphemism describing a monogamous, and uncelebrated, relationship between two women of certain means and sexual preference.
In David Mamet’s funny, exhilaratingly verbose play of the same name — now receiving a seductive and spirited production at 7 Stages — the title arrangement between the two main characters is rocked at the outset by a pair of developments: Anna (imperiously hilarious Shelly McCook) has taken up with a male “protector” for financial reasons, while Claire (tempting second fiddle Mary Emily O’Bradovich) has fallen for a pretty young lady. Adding to the indignity, Claire wishes to conduct her wooing in the “respectable” refuge of Anna’s home.
Set in turn-of-the-20th century Boston, it all sounds so very — how should we say it? — unMamet-like.
After all, the playwright is famous for his corrosive, rat-a-tat portraits of modern-male desperation (“American Buffalo,” “Glengarry Glen Ross”). So what is he doing raising his pinky and cavorting with Beacon Hill’s tea-and-strumpet circle in the days when the city was a hotbed of women’s suffrage?
Just having some fun, it turns out, lifting the fig leaf of propriety.
“Boston Marriage,” which made its world premiere in 1999, may be set in the fragile, decorous milieu of Henry James, rich with elegant airs, Biblical references, Basque proverbs and dense vocabulary. Yet underneath you can sense Mamet dancing on the cushions in delight as he constructs his house of parlor games and punctures a world of stifling gender stereotypes, class animosity and ethnic prejudice.
It’s not all done through high-flown language, either. His characters talk candidly of sensual matters and he throws in some four-letter words, too, lest you forget whose work you’re watching. And for a few minutes, you might. At least until he begins with the comic sexual allusions to a certain item of winter outerwear. (You figure it out.)
Initially, the heavy wordplay threatens to turn this chamber comedy — three characters, 90 minutes, no intermission — into a chilly exercise in intellectual showmanship; some theaters have included a glossary in the program notes. But the 7 Stages production, a regional premiere handsomely directed by Joe Gfaller, does not take long to warm up to. If all the drawing-room philosophizing smacks of self-indulgence and lacks emotional depth, the play keeps its message in clear context.
Suspense (and laughs) are built through an O. Henry-ish plot twist involving an emerald necklace; a goofy seance idea that seems headed for Woody Allen country; and the mysterious question of who’s playing whom, and for not unsentimental reasons.
Ultimately, though, it’s the tart-tongued McCook who makes this “Boston Marriage” worth the RSVP. With her upswept hair, high-necked collar and studied virulence, Anna not only embodies the perpetually insulted look of faded beauty, she’s an erupting volcano of vitriol. “Can you not conceive of a world above your waist?,” she demands of the smitten Claire.
Her nastiest remarks, however, are reserved for the servant stripe, in the person of her maid (Katie Merritt), a poor put-upon lass from Scotland. Or maybe it’s Ireland. “All is confusion at the water hole,” Anna deadpans.
In the end, of course, this threesome occupies more similar circumstances than they may care to admit. “Men live to be deceived,” Anna says. “They would rather be deceived than sated. We shall prevail.”
At 7 Stages, at least, there’s little question about that.
8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 5 p.m. Sunday; 10 a.m. March 24 and 31; 2 p.m. Saturday; 5:30 p.m. March 23 and 30. Through April 3. 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave., Atlanta. 404-523-7647, www.7stages.org.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
Private Lives at PushPush Theater
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Private Lives.” Through April 2. The verdict: A sophisticated drawing-room comedy, minus the sophistication.
Imagine arriving at a seaside hotel for your second honeymoon only to find your ex-spouse honeymooning in the suite next door.
Such is the sticky wicket British playwright Noel Coward created for his most famous couple, the can’t-live-together-can’t-live-apart Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne, in his wicked and witty 1930 play “Private Lives.”
When the pair fail to convince their new partners to flee and find themselves alone together, their dangerous yet irresistible chemistry resurfaces. Faster than you can down a glass of champagne, they abandon poor Sybil and Victor and make for a Parisian love nest.
In PushPush Theatre’s stripped-down production of “Lives,” that love nest is nothing more than a lumpy love seat on a bare stage.
Not only has director Tim Habeger done away with the usual well-dressed set, he’s made the characters American rather than British and moved the setting from 1930 to the present day. This approach, he says in his program notes, is designed to help audiences feel that the play’s essence still resonates.
Well, the story and characters do hold up — and hold our attention. (In fact, the couples may remind you a bit of the unhappy foursome in the recent play-turned-movie “Closer.”) The problem is that Habeger’s take on the play’s essence — that it’s a battle between personal freedom and moral restraint — is perhaps a little nobler than what Coward had in mind.
Amanda and Elyot are selfish, shallow people: They couldn’t give a fig what others say as long as they’re happy. Their predicament, as Amanda points out, is that they can’t stay happy — together or apart.
The real essence of Coward’s play lies in the vagaries of romantic attraction and the notion that none of us really knows what goes on behind our neighbors’ doors.
Setting “Private Lives” present-day also results in some credulity-straining moments: Would a man who listens to Wilco really be shocked to hear that his ex-wife has taken up with other men during their five years apart?
And while we might see the humor in a man of 1930 proclaiming that “some women should be struck regularly, like gongs,” we’re less inclined to forgive that from a man of 2005.
Then, too, Coward’s language belies Push Push’s modern music and costumes. No one in this century uses words like “shilly-shallying” or marvels at the technological might of the radio.
Though Habeger’s vision of the story may be cloudy, his vision of the stage is spot-on. He makes the absolute most of his tiny piece of real estate, and he isn’t afraid to turn his actors’ backs to the audience to serve the feeling of realness he’s attempting to create.
He commits a brilliant bit of staging midway through Act 2. The script calls for Amanda and Elyot to dance blissfully at an imaginary party, but Habeger has instead choreographed it as a wicked pas de deux. As they come together, arms raised to clasp one another, Elyot instead whacks her on the behind. On their next move, Amanda returns the favor. It’s a perfect illustration of the violence that lurks beneath even their most loving moments.
Habeger also does well as an actor in his role as the frumpy, serious Victor. He displays a tremendous sense of moral correctness and seems truly to love the headstrong Amanda.
Heather Heath as Amanda, Robin Bloodworth as Elyot and Shelby Hofer as Sybil also deliver solid performances. To her credit, Hofer has found a way to tone down the often-shrill Sybil, though she sometimes takes her delivery so far she throws away lines altogether. Heath and Bloodworth in the lead roles possess excellent comic timing but are more convincing fighters than lovers.
Again, that probably stems from the director’s vision: A man can’t cut much of a romantic figure while making silly voices and wearing a shabby bathrobe. By modernizing the play, Habeger has also stripped away some of the essence of all Coward characters: sophistication. Without their gowns and grand pianos, Elyot and Amanda aren’t nearly as much fun to watch.
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 7 p.m. Sundays. $16 Fridays and Saturdays; $10 Thursdays; $12 Sundays. Through April 2. PushPush Theater, 121 New St., Decatur. 404-377-6332, www.pushpushtheater.com.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
The Exonerated
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
”The Exonerated.” Through March 29.
The verdict: A harrowing, eventually human-affirming look at six people wrongly sent to death row.
The magnanimous spirit of Sunny Jacobs, a woman who unjustly spent much of her life on death row, illuminates “The Exonerated.”
Strikingly portrayed by Parks Stamper as a vital, affirming free spirit, she stands in triumph at the climax of the documentary play based on the true stories of six innocent people sent to death row.
“I’m planting my seed everywhere,” Sunny says, in celebrating her “joyous” moment of long-delayed freedom. Both defiant and sweetly forgiving, she tosses her head as if taking in great gulps of air.
Falsely convicted of murder along with her husband, Jesse, who was brutally killed in a malfunctioning electric chair, she says that her “living memorial” will be that “she didn’t get crushed.” Still, recalling the productive years wasted in prison, she’s suddenly shaken by a sob.
Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s anti-death-penalty play, performed last year at Georgia Tech’s Ferst Theater with Lynn Redgrave in the Sunny Jacobs role, exposes legal incompetence, inequities of class and race and justice-system violence. It will come as no surprise that the South once again stands accused for its legalized inhumanity.
A work based mostly on characters’ spoken recollections rather than action risks inertia, but the production largely overcomes this problem with fast intercutting of character appearances and effective dramatic enactments of their words.
Still, the sameness of the stories makes the production drag at times. Each character relates a tale of false arrest, a grossly unfair trial, horrible imprisonment, agonizingly complicated release and a struggle to re-emerge in society.
Providing another strong emotional pole for the Jack in the Black Box Theatre performance, Tyrone P. Holt gives the role of Delbert Tibbs an energetic combination of rap cool and bookish eloquence. The black poet and philosopher serves as a sort of Greek chorus, defining themes and ennobling his own experience of condemnation and redemption with wonderfully street-smart yet transcendent language.
As Robert Earl Hayes, a black man freed with the aid of his own legal maneuvers, Dwayne Jackson oscillates between gentleness, rage and sorrow. Allen Hagler as Kerry Max Cook, James Sutton as Gary Gauger and Kevin Harry as David Keaton define well-etched personalties whose stories go far beyond case studies.
Douglas Curlin and Craig Glassco portray a series of cracker lawmen and incompetent lawyers, reinforcing well-worn, not-so-good-ol’-boy Southern stereotypes.
With much more complexity, Curlin delivers one of the production’s highlights, portraying Jacobs’ husband, also on death row but in a separate prison miles away. Reading a love letter to her, he conveys their enduring love and sexual passion, despite the distance between them. A humorous, tender moment arises when Sunny tells how she and Jesse wrote their intimate language in Japanese to evade the prison censors.
Such well-staged sequences allow a production that risks turning preachy and dogmatic to mostly succeed as theater.
“The Exonerated.” 8 p.m. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and March 27-29. 2:30 p.m. Sundays. $15.00. Horizon Theatre, 1083 Austin Ave., Atlanta. www.jackintheblackbox.org.
