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Friday, October 14, 2005
Theatre in the Square: ‘Fully Committed’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Apparently Theatre in the Square audiences wanted second helpings of the Becky Mode farce “Fully Committed,” a one-man workout that whips the pretense of the food world into a many-layered trifle that’s technically complicated but low on emotional sustenance.
Bill Murphey, who starred in the theater’s 2001 production, is back as an out-of-work actor who takes reservations at what appears to be Manhattan’s trendiest restaurant.
I thought the show was dated the first time I saw it. Now the Naomi Campbell references seem about as of the moment as micro-sprouts and tomato foam. Oh, someone has added a “Desperate Housewives” reference here and an Angelina Jolie comment there. But it’s jarring to hear society matron Bunny Vandiver try to weasel a table for her guest Philip Johnson. (The famous architect died in January.)
I admire Murphey’s quicksilver transformations into dozens of characters and the way he seems to channel the voices of Harvey Fierstein and Jessica Tandy in the process. But after a while, some of his people start to talk the same way, and the one-joke, ring-a-ling format gets stale. The P.C. police could also take umbrage with the ethnic stereotyping.
If you’re still trying to get into Nobu or Jean-Georges, Seeger’s or Joel, “Fully Committed” might seem fresh to you. Personally, I’ve lost all patience with the celebrity-chef nonsense. When it comes to sticking a thumb in the social merengue that makes the food and fashion business such fluff to begin with, reality TV is better than this.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays. Also 2:30 p.m. Nov. 9. No 7 p.m. show Nov. 13. $22-$33. Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369. www.theatreinthesquare.com.
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Theater Emory: ‘Alcestis’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Even in his translations of Greek drama, Ted Hughes seems haunted by the ghost of his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963. Take, for instance, Hughes’ adaptation of Euripides’ “Alcestis,” which is about a Greek queen who dies so that her husband can be spared.
Scholars attending the Ted Hughes Conference last week at Emory University, where the late poet’s papers are housed, must have been struck by the parallels. In Theater Emory’s production of Hughes’ “Alcestis,” Maia Knispel plays the fragile titular figure, who leaves her husband and children behind in an act of tragic ambivalence.
Remorseful King Admetos (Dave Quay) can’t persuade his disabled, asthmatic father, Pheres (Vincent Murphy), to trade places with the mother of his grandchildren. Pheres hisses malignantly to his son that after his wife dies, he’ll “go crawl to some woman.” In a rare stage appearance, Murphy, the theater’s producing artistic director, stamps this character with a brand of grotesqueness that’s as mesmerizing as it is repugnant.
Hughes’ language is strewn with gorgeous imagery and anachronistic references (nuclear holocaust, morphine, asbestos) that make Euripides’ 2,400-year-old text feel at home in the modern world. Directed by Ariel de Man, the show borrows its architectural and fashion sense from Bollywood. Think monumental arches, palm-swept garden nooks and luxurious saris. (Sets are by H. Bart McGeehon, costumes by English Toole.)
“Alcestis” is also a showcase for the Out of Hand director’s trademark physicality and humor. Apollo (Adam Fristoe) enters by leaping off a balcony, and the rippled, bound body of Prometheus (Fristoe, again) writhes on an aerial perch under sensual lighting. Death (Justin Welborn) has rotten teeth and a dirty mind. And Heracles (Patrick Wood) is a rotund, spandex-clad degenerate who arrives with an entourage and immediately hijacks the palace disco.
This operatic staging is a weirdly rewarding diversion from the status quo. Though it would be tacky to give away the ending, we can say that Shakespeare probably had “Alcestis” on the brain when he wrote “The Winter’s Tale.”
THE 411: 7 tonight at Mary Gray Munroe Theatre, Dobbs University Center, 605 Asbury Circle, Emory University. 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Emerson Concert Hall, Schwartz Center, 1700 N. Decatur Road, Emory University. $6-$15. 404-727-5050. arts.emory.edu.
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Atlanta Opera’s ‘La Traviata’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OPERA REVIEW
Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” Atlanta Opera. Thursday at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center. Repeat performances Saturday and Sunday. www.atlantaopera.org.
The Atlanta Opera opened its new season Thursday at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center, its first under the artistic control of General Director Dennis Hanthorn.
For Verdi’s “La Traviata,” in the first of three performances, everything — everything — was an improvement from what the 26-year-old company delivered in past years.
For opera fans, the most significant achievement of the evening was the company’s new-found emphasis on singing and its paramount place in opera. Everything else, from Arthur Fagen’s taut and supple conducting to Rhoda Levine’s smart, believable stage direction, supported the singers and the music. In a single show, the company has made a leap in quality that, just a couple of years ago, seemed impossible to achieve.
And “La Traviata” was an ideal vehicle to make a new case. The melodrama concerns the beautifully amoral Violetta, a courtesan in the demi-monde of 19th century Paris, who finds mature love with the callow Alfredo — until his father, and then death, intervenes. The plot is linear and tamper-proof; the vocal lines sit center stage.
As Verdi created the role, the heroine needs three voice types, from sparkling at the start to emotionally dark at the end. Atlanta resident Jan Grissom’s girlish soprano — bright, light and flexible — served her well for the act one climax “Sempre libera,” all roulades and fast ascents up to a shattering high E-flat.
Grissom’s Italian diction wasn’t always idiomatic, she gulped air and took rhythmic liberties along the way. But she floated on that high E-flat effortlessly, sensationally. For the rest of the opera, she electrified the air whenever she walked on stage.
She made a likable pair with Mexican tenor Raul Hernandez, as Alfredo, and their voices blended sweetly. His voice is attractive, with a “ping” in his tone, though some of his most demanding lines lacked power and personality.
That left Guido LeBron, a Puerto Rican lyric baritone, as the evening’s most thoroughly satisfying singer. He was stiff in manner — the authoritarian father figure everyone fears — yet sang tenderly, gorgeously for the aria about his homeland, “Di Provenza il mar.”
But a few vocal quibbles aside, the opera’s overall advance in music making was remarkable.
Conductor Fagen, based in Germany and a utility conductor at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, gets much of the credit. His understanding of Verdi’s early style was sensitive, dramatically coherent and exquisitely balanced. He breathed with the singers. He drew from the orchestra — quite properly for an opera premiered in 1853 — sounds that were stylistically closer to Rossini’s lean classicism than to Puccini’s voluptuous romanticism. Not an off-the-rack maestro, Fagen seemed like an undiscovered treasure. I hope he’s invited to conduct again.
Earlier I said that everything, everything here was an improvement and that’s true. Even Walter Huff’s chorus, typically the best thing about the Atlanta Opera, was energized with power, nuance and the clearest diction on stage. Singers in smaller roles — Kitt Reuter-Foss, Susan Nicely, Matthew Lau, Jeff Morrissey — reinforced the impression of an all-around capable cast.
Even the drab and cavernous Civic Center looked a little spiffier than before, with working fountains and an elegant, tent-covered bar on the plaza.
At 4,500 seats, the center is simply too big for the human voice. That’s a given. So along with pushing the opera to make solid artistic gains with each production, General Director Hanthorn’s other priority must be to find (or renovate, or build) a suitable new opera house. With so much to look forward to, for the first time in many years, there is now genuine excitement surrounding the Atlanta Opera.
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