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Friday, September 30, 2005
‘Pooh Corner’ at puppet center
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “The House at Pooh Corner.” Through Dec. 11.
Our waddly hero has a sweet tooth. But he keeps telling himself it’s fine if he doesn’t get any fatter, and he doesn’t think he is. (Cue to rub himself on the tummy and look all sweet and clueless.)
His new friend, who sports a striped fur coat and makes a boing sound when he bounces, doesn’t like honey, but he likes everything else. Well, “everything but honey, acorns and thistles.” (Could this be the original finicky cat?)
As Owl tells us at the top of the Center for Puppetry Arts’ “The House at Pooh Corner,” this duo is so famous they need no introduction. Since the 1920s, A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger have been among the most treasured creations in children’s literature. (And plenty of adults we know have been Pooh-heads since before they lost their baby teeth.)
It’s a testament to director Bobby Box’s delightful show that these characters have the hug appeal of plush animals and the comedic assurance of seasoned vaudevillians.
Chaplin might have learned something from the way straight man Pooh (Dina Shadwell) cocks his head when he first hears Tigger’s approach. And Tigger’s tablecloth tussle is the kind of idiot rampage that’s informed several generations’ worth of Hollywood slapstick and Saturday-morning cartoons. (Big cheer for puppeteer Michael Haverty for investing Tigger with such cockalorum.)
But the subtlest puppeteering comes from Caroline Masclet and Julie Dansby. At first, Masclet’s Piglet sounds as nervously squeaky as Butterfly McQueen, but eventually this pint-size ball of pinkness will come to wrinkle her noise dismissively at Tigger’s over-adrenalized tomfoolery. (Paging the Ritalin-relief squad.)
Dansby, for her part, turns sad-sack Eeyore into a world-weary donkey-philosophizer, whose domestic conundrum becomes the major plot point. “It’s getting cooooold and the wind is starting to bloooow,” says Eeyore with a languorous sigh that’s part bray, part yawn.
So, as Kenny Loggins once wrote, “Back to the days of Christopher Robin, back to the ways of Pooh.” “The House at Pooh Corner” is a sure-fire giggle-inducer for kids, a honey-oozing diversion for adults and a shoo-in for the cutest show in town.
THE 411: 10 and 11:30 a.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; 11 a.m., 1 and 3 p.m. Saturdays; 1 and 3 p.m. Sundays. Through Dec. 11. $14. Center for Puppetry Arts, 1404 Spring St., Atlanta. 404-873-3391, www.puppet.org.
The verdict: Sweeter than hunny.
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The Decemberists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sept. 29 at the Tabernacle
Shortly after drummer/asylum escapee John Moen abandoned his drum kit to do a hopping, twirling dance at the front of the stage, lead singer Colin Meloy launched into “We Both Go Down Together,� a song about a suicide pact between two lovers that rhymes “tattooed tramp� with “labor camp.� An evening with the Decemberists is not another night of Bic-flicking arena rock ‘n’ roll.
A joyful amalgam of rock, folk, performance art, guerilla theater, power chords and tableaux vivant, the Decemberists’ show at the Tabernacle, their second in Atlanta this year, was an endless delight, a piñata of surprises and pieces of bliss. Their geek-chic camp followers were the type to get delirious when they realized Meloy was going to close the show with “The Mariner’s Revenge,� a nine-minute song about whaling that ended in perfectly executed chaos. This was the kind of crowd that when Meloy introduced Moen as a narcoleptic, they knew what it meant.
Other rockers might have taken the occasion of pausing between tunes to shout, “Atlanta! How ya doin’ tonight?� Meloy, in Rivers Cuomo glasses and too-short necktie, instead told the crowd at the mid-point, rather calmly, “I don’t feel like I’ve appropriately bonded with you yet. We’re all standing in this big room together and we hardly know each other.�
Know this: The Decemberists are a quintet (who drag extra musicians on tour, like the marvelous Petra Haden) from Portland, Oregon, who are three CDs into a popularity that’s small-scale by mass-market standards, but surprisingly large considering their songs are about gay hustlers, ghosts, spies, royal children and injuries at youth soccer camp. As well-constructed as their songs are on CD, the band really pushes them to the next level in concert. Plus they get to wear porkpie hats and play bird calls.
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Marin Alsop conducts the ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. www.atlantasymphony.org.
The world seems to be falling in line for Marin Alsop, who led the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in a terrific concert Thursday in Symphony Hall.
The New York-born conductor made national news in July when the Baltimore Symphony named her music director — the first woman appointed to lead a major American orchestra.
It was an important shattered glass ceiling for classical music, although many of the Baltimore musicians where in open rebellion, citing their exclusion from the selection process. One could guess that the grumpy musicians had a less subtle message to send: Alsop isn’t likely to be as satisfying as their outgoing music director, Yuri Temirkanov, the chronically poetic Russian maestro adored by musicians and listeners alike.
Nevermind. For Alsop, 48, the gig is hers; like a new boss in any workplace, she’ll sink or swim by her own abilities. A MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, awarded in September, and an ongoing series of CDs with the Naxos label confirms Alsop as a distinguished member among American conductors.
Along with the ASO’s Robert Spano — another fast-track maestro from that increasingly elite club — Alsop built up street cred by championing contemporary music while delivering thoughtful, efficient performances of the classics. Gradually, to keep the career on track, “thoughtful” must be replaced by words like “soulful” or “deep.”
With the ASO Thursday, she offered a bright and powerful intrepretation of Brahms Symphony No. 1 that was her own. The opening movement was a study in classical architecture, all white columns and precise geometry.
She loosened up for the middle movements, aided by poignant passages from ASO principals, especially concertmaster Cecylia Arzewski. The allegretto third movement danced playfully, a joy. The weighty finale, too, held its own. At its best, Alsop dug into the score and revealed a few of its secrets.
Alsop showed the other side of her talent when she spoke to introduce Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade,” a sort of violin concerto inspired by Plato’s “Symposium.” Alsop, trained as a violinist, studied conducting with Lenny; the work clearly brings together many of her interests and experiences.
Affable and humorous, Alsop took us through the major themes, with musical examples from the orchestra. She had the audience laughing with the hiccupping Aristophanes and at the rowdy party music at the end. Alsop is very good at this sort of podium-audience interaction — you feel she’s just regular folks, a woman who happens to conduct — and its a sign of a thoroughly modern American conductor. There’s no aristocratic air in her delivery.
Violin soloist Tai Murray, still a student at New York’s Juilliard School, offered many lovely phrases, but her small, feathery tone and quiet persona meant that this narrator’s voice was too reserved to be heard. Here, too, the orchestra delivered splendidly.
The evening opened with Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” from 1895. Although Disney (delightfully) appropriated the music for “Fantasia,” the tone poem carries an anti-war metaphor. Think not of magical brooms ceaselessly fetching buckets of water but of cannon fire mowing down wave after wave of soldiers. Tick tock, tick tock, they’re all dead.
Here the orchestra wasn’t entirely warmed up or unified, and Alsop’s approach was neither comical and cartoonish nor menacing and lamenting. Let’s hope that everyone gets together in the coming performances.
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