by George Patterson
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
Swing! Swings!
Swing!, a light-as-a-feather song and dance revue that recently cut a rug at the Saenger Theatre and continues on its merry way around the country, is a delicious entertainment that Lindy Hops, Jitter Bugs, Turkey Trots and bungee jumps its way into one's heart.
If this Broadway musical is bereft of book or dialogue, it is, nevertheless, studded with practically every big band number you can think of that hit the charts between the thirties and fifties. It also boasts a few original numbers and a constantly recurring wit that can only be attributed to its brilliant creator, the director/choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett (whose Tony-nominated work is here recreated by Kim Craven.)
Utilizing two female and two male singers, a company of 20 gorgeous, athletic dancers and an onstage eight piece brass band, the show begins with singer Chris Boyd strumming on a ukelele and tentatively singing "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)," which, of course, builds into the first of many huge production numbers that leads into musical and dance descriptions of "swing" from "Jersey Bounce," "Jumpin' At The Woodside" and "Bounce Me Brother (With A Solid Four)" to a lone Erin Davie, a luscious blonde singing in a high operatic soprano until she learns to syncopate the beat, and use her chest voice, on Ann Hampton Calloway's original "Two And Four" that slides into Ellington's "Hit Me With A Hot Note And Watch Me Bounce" - not only do we learn about the meter of this unique form of American music, but we chuckle while we learn.
Singer Charles Statham, the unhip one of the group - the "businessman" - also gets with the program on "Throw That Girl Around" and "Shout And Feel It." He then becomes a (literal) running sight gag as he races from one musical number to the next with his trusty briefcase, getting hipper with each number. At a restaurant, he meets singer Clarolyn Maier (a dead ringer for a young Sally Kellerman - and just as tall), and they do a "number" on the Duke Ellington scat song (with additional scat by Ms. Calloway, who was the show's Broadway star) "Bli-Blip" that is an entire scene without dialogue, only non-sensical "scat" sounds, that leads into the waitress' (singer Erin Davie) bringing the tempo down, down, with the beautiful Carmichael/Mercer "Skylark." Statham continues to play the straight man as part of a singing trio of men (with B.J. Toups and Aaron Hamilton) doing an uncampy version of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" which sets up the USO segment of the show that ends the first part.
But the most delicious sequence in the first act is between petite dancer Michelle Marmolejo (a Zizi Jeanmarie clone) and bassist Greg Fiellin in a beautiful "Harlem Nocturne" where the dancer seems to emerge from the bass itself - she becomes the bass as the bassist makes love to her, his instrument - pure magic.
The second act continues the format, raising the ante the highest with a bungee cord high flying "Bill's Bounce" (dancers Adealani Malia and Courtney Combs with turquoise bungee cords attached to the sides of their waists) that was as exhilarating to the audience as I'm sure it is to the dancers. Another clever duet occurs between singer Erin Davie doing a bluesy version of "Cry Me A River," while trombonist Marshall Gilkes, with his waa-waa mute, answers her laments with his own, turning the maudlin rendition into high comedy.
Before wrapping itself into a Lindy-hopping dither with a finale including "Swing, Brother, Swing"/"Sing, Sing, Sing" into "It Don't Mean A Thing" again, there is one more of the clever song settings from Ms. Taylor-Corbett - an Apache dance to end all Apache dances to the Arlen/Mercer classic "Blues In The Night," sung by Clarolyn Maie, and danced by Michelle Marmolejo and B.J. Toups.
Thomas Lynch's unit set evokes an early 20th century hotel ballroom with a few surprises while Kenneth Posner's lighting is pedestrian and uninspired, as are, uncharacteristically William Ivey Long's costumes.
Opera at its Grandest: Turandot
The New Orleans Opera Association thrilled its subscribers and opera lovers of all stripes with a smashing production of Puccini's sublime Turandot recently. If the scenery and costumes were pedestrian, the cast, the orchestra, the conductor and the director were obviously inspired, for the performance was simply transporting, which is what all good theatre is supposed to be.
Of course, no Turandot can be called successful unless its three leads have the chops for this achingly melodic and very dynamic score. In the title role of the Ice Princess who will not marry until one can answer her three riddles (and when one misses, one loses one's head), Russian Canadian Anna Shafajinskaya not only possesses the vocal power for such a demanding role, but she also looks the part and her acting is riveting: one could not take one's eyes off of her when she was commanding the stage.
Eduardo Villa, the barrel-chested bear of a tenor made his third appearance with New Orleans opera as Calaf, the prince who is determined to win the hand, and the heart, of Turandot. His "Nessun Dorma," the famous Act III aria, was perfection itself. He hit the aria's high C effortlessly.
Sally Dibblee, who sang the role of Liu, Calaf's father's slave girl attendant who carries a torch for Calaf and is tortured to death by the evil Turnadot in trying to learn Calaf's real name, was heard here in 2000 in Carmen. With Liu, she continued to charm with her prodigious soprano, especially in her Act I aria "Signore ascolta."
The comic relief guys, Ping, Pang and Pong, ministers in the Chinese court, were acted and sung with oriental brio. Led by Daniel Mobbs' deep baritone Ping were Samuel Cook's Pong and Mark James Meier's Pang, while Alton Brim played the Emperor Altoum from a floating turquoise cloud (way upstage, his was the faintest of voices), and bass-baritone Jay Baylon, hidden behind Linda and Don Guillot's grey wig and crepe hair beard, was a moving Timur, Calaf's father.
Conductor Robert Lyall coaxed gorgeous Puccini music from the wonderful Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra; Carol Rausch's chorus never sounded better, especially in their several pianissimo choruses, including the excellent children's chorus. David Morelock staged the opera as effectively as he could on a set designed by Peter Dean Beck for The Atlanta Opera that had Turandot's initial entrance so far stage right as to deprive much of the audience left of seeing anything of her but her nose.
But she could be heard; Ms. Shafajinskaya is another of those unique forces of nature. From pull-out-all-the-stops dynamic in the extreme to light-as-air pianissimo, this lady is first class all the way. Too bad the rented costumes were so Mardi Gras esque....
The New Orleans Opera Association will end its current season with George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, a New Orleans premiere, Thurs., Apr. 11 and Sat., Apr. 13.
Loyola Does Hip(pie) Moonchildren
Moonchildren, Michael Weller's seminal play about hippies circa 1966-67 that made its debut at Washington D.C.'s Arena Stage in 1971, was recently given a smashing, and very hip, production by Loyola University New Orleans' Department of Drama and Speech, directed with care, knowledge and a great deal of heart and humor by Patrick McNamara, who amassed a sterling cast of student actors who all, to a person, gave inspired ensemble performances.
Laced with Beatles tunes and set in a Berkeley apartment that is home for six college seniors, one grad student and one hanger-on, the play is as relevant as last night's news, in this new age of war and governmental deception, so that there is a wonderful feeling of deja vu for one of a certain age, while those students in the audience could easily empathize with the worries and angst these young people from another era experience, as one among them, the ultimate lead of the piece, music student Bob, played with great restraint by Michael Salinas (who renames himself "Job" with a short o, like a job instead of the Biblical pronunciation) receives his draft notice during the course of the play and experiences the cancer death of his mother, to say nothing of the casual treachery of girlfriend Kathy (Alejandra Cejudo), swapping him for the aptly named, and very blond, Dick (Justin Moore), who goes ballistic when someone eats his hamburgers. There is also Hillary Hinton's Cootie and Joseph Riley's Mike, two jokesters who don't know when to stop, Becky Johnson's absolutely charming Shelly, a spaced out flower child who likes to sit under tables and eventually becomes attached to Norman, Jason Picus' take on a bookworm nerd sans glasses, very slow on the uptake, who nevertheless feels so strongly about the Vietnam war that he takes a gun to a demonstration and later tries to immolate himself only to have Cootie and Mike (who have baited him into doing such a horrible thing) put water in the gasoline can! Jesse Terrebonne plays Ruth, the most grounded of the group - the mother hen of the commune.
And then there are the characters who make one appearance at this apartment made to look oh, so unpatriotic in its faded red, white and blue hand painted flag motif by scenic and lighting designer Joseph C. Harris: the kindly crippled superintendent Mr. Willis played empathetically by Chris Ingram, Carlos Rodriguez' nervous Uncle Murray who comes to tell Bob about his mother's imminent death, Jeremiah Adams' crazy Encyclopedia salesman wound up like a top by this cohort of hippies, a couple of cops (J.T. Smith and Daiva Olson) investigating a complaint about nudity on the premises, and an absolutely crazy neighbor played fascinatingly by J. T. Smith. The only thing this reviewer caught that dates this otherwise liberal, left-leaning play is its casual homophobia. But times haven't really changed. Read the following:
Delgado's SubUrbia is a Verismo Downer
Like an opera with too many lyrics, set to unrelenting punk rock, Eric Bogosian's SubUrbia, recently staged by Delgado Community College in a detailed production directed by Greg Stratton, is a verismo slice of life drama in which very little happens to its young twentysomethings a generation after those in Loyola's Moonchildren. These are children of the promiscuous 90's not so moony as bitter from utter boredom. They find solace in the bottle as opposed to mind-altering substances, and school is not an option.
On a set by Thomas Dawson (who also did the lighting) that looks for all the world like a corner of a real convenience store in Anywhere, USA, made of concrete blocks with a copper roof, the play happens in the store's parking lot, near its garbage dumpster, a place where its five slackers come to hang out. On this particular night they are there to see one of their own who has become a huge rock star. They were supposed to go to his concert on this night, but they had no bread.
They are led by Tim, an Air Force dropout and neophyte drunk who carries a very large chip on his shoulder. The group's conscience, however, is Jeff, the nerdy bespectacled one of the group whose girlfriend is Sooze, a smart chick with the ambition of going to New York to become a performance artist like Karen Finley or Laurie Anderson (or the playwright whose main claim to fame are several performance pieces including Talk Radio, Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll and Drinking in America). There is also a big galoot of a Baby Huey in the form of Buff, here portrayed with manic energy by Travis Resor. Buff is the most entertaining member of this motley crew, but also the most benignly threatening, while Becky H. T. Guillot's Bee Bee is the most pathetic, a mouse afraid of her own shadow who is seriously trying to kick an incipient drinking problem. There are also the Pakistani owners of the convenience store, Christina Maria Costello's Pakeeza and Corey Blossom's Norman, who are harassed during the course of the evening, mainly by the viciously racist Tim, until Pakeeza draws a gun on him at the end of the first act.
Finally Dane Faucheux's Pony, the successful rock star, arrives. While his friends envy his new status, he is miserable and wishes he could still live free like them; whereas, they're all worried about their futures and what's to become of them. He offers Sooze an opportunity to design his next record cover; he offers Buff the opportunity to do a video of his tour. He comes with his secretary, Angela Marie Richard's Erika, who has a brief fling with Buff (she's available because Pony's obviously Gay. Gays in '94 are not such easy butts of jokes as they were 20 years earlier) before driving off into the night. Tim draws a larger gun than the Pakistanis' have but nothing happens. Bee Bee goes up on the roof with a bottle of Jack Daniels which she uses to wash down a mouthful of pills. After two hours of constant ranting, she is found comatose; everyone scatters. The lights stay on. No one takes a bow. This reviewer got up and walked out; the play had no ending. It was a slice of (very stale) life.
A Less Than Stellar Sweet Bird of Youth
If it's March, it must be Tennessee Williams' time at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre, where the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is currently in residence and where, on the main stage, the theatre, in conjunction with the festival, is presenting Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth yet again. While this production may be better than the Dog and Pony one of several years past (the one that opened with a view of Chance Wayne's naked butt), it exhibits a similar revisionist crassness that's hard to swallow.
Directed by one Ryan Rillette from Detroit (there's no local director who could serve this material?), starring local actress Francine Segal and another Detroiter, Scott Screws, as Chance Wayne, the play is presented with such a heavy-handedness that its moral underpinnings have been severely trampled and its rich subtext virtually ignored in favor of cheap sexual innuendo and off-putting physical gestures: this production has no camp sensibility - it's dead serious, and that's its problem.
Ms. Segal's movie star Alexandra Del Lago finds herself on the Gulf Coast after fleeing Hollywood when, at a preview of her latest picture, the audience laughs at her and she (incorrectly) thinks she has bombed because she has aged. She's distraught and has picked up a young gigolo and movie star wannabe in the form of one Chance Wayne with whom she wishes to drown her sorrows in lovemaking - and maybe find her lost youth. Chance has brought them back to his small hometown on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where the natives are clamoring at his return since he had impregnated Heavenly, the daughter of the local bigoted politician, Boss Finley, with whom he is deeply, blindly in love, before he left town. Boss Finley will stop at nothing to avenge his daughter's lost innocence, and ultimately castrates Chance as Alexandra returns to Hollywood where her movie has become a big success.
These characters are archetypes and as such should come across as bigger than life. Unfortunately, as staged, Francine Segal's strange tightly fitting, knit, long line bra and long slip make her look more like Aldonza in Man of La Mancha ravenously on the make, and nothing like a pampered, Frederick's of Hollywood grand dame, or the Princess Kosmonopolos, her alias at the hotel. Her major asset is on constant display, even when she finally dresses in a black taffeta number. As for Mr. Screws, his skinny, hairy body totally negates an early Del Lago line delivered as she erotically strokes his naked, hairy chest, "I like mine hairless...." Has one never heard of either cutting the line or the hair? He also seems to be strung out on booze or drugs - his shaking hands and distracted, hollow-eyed gaze reminds one of a Pal Joey more than an 8" x 10" glossy who's madly in love with a young woman. As Boss Finley, George Sanchez has found a fabulous deep, rough, gravelly voice but the director has him hawking and spitting great oysters and clawing at his groin to the point of drawing audible comments from the appalled audience. Tennessee would be appalled too.
It is also admirable to cast against type as well as against race; however, for a play that takes place in the very bigoted South of the 40's-50's, the local political kingpin would NEVER have a black mistress (even a light skinned one like actress Troi Bechet) who is so notoriously known throughout the community. Ms. Bechet, to her credit, plays the role of Miss Lucy with grace and wit; in fact, her contribution is genuinely Williamseque.
Ashley Nolan as Heavenly is just a tad long in the tooth and very brown haired for one who is traditionally ethereal, young and very blond and has no role to speak of save that of an icon.
David Korins' set designs are, for the most part, serviceable; however, Boss Finley's front porch home looks like something out of an Eugene O'Neill play, especially with its strange, out of scale lighthouse - are there lighthouses on the Gulf Coast? Bill Liotta's lighting, on the other hand, is right on the money and does much to give the look of the play the glowing, lavender feel Tennessee Williams' plays demand. Janet Herrald's 50's costumes are also more than adequate, especially effective for so many men; unfortunately, her two choices for Ms. Segal were unflattering in the extreme and did nothing to delineate the character.
Those that stood out from the mob were Ben Clement's Scudder, Christopher Lee's Tom, Jr., Abby Lake's Aunt Nonnie and Kim Collin's Heckler.
An Enemy of the People
Tulane's Department of Theatre & Dance recently staged a student production of Ibsen's classic An Enemy of the People directed by Paul Schierhorn in which he took a play from 1900 about the conflict between two Norwegian brothers and changed that conflict to one between a wife and her brother-in-law which severely blunted the playwright's original concept and the play's main conflict.
A small Norwegian town depends on its local springs as a tourist attraction but Dr. Catherine Stockmann has discovered that a tannery works on the mountain (owned by her husband's father) is polluting the spa. Her husband's brother, the mayor, doesn't want this news to get out because of the severe financial problems it will create. He plots to have the Dr. proclaimed "an enemy of the people." When she tries to tell the general populace at a town meeting about the pollution, the mayor - in collusion with the local newspaper publisher who has decided against helping her - denies her a chance to speak; she loses her job; her daughter loses her job; her house is burned; but she is determined to stay at play's end.
Victoria Watson was a fine and determined Dr. Stockman as was her main adversary, Adam Haver's Peter Stockmann, but both suffered from over histrionics - they took their voices too high and too loud too soon before their long haranguing speeches' endings. Otherwise, they were both excellent, as were the three members of the press, Justin Zsebe as the Editor, Richard Moore as Billing, his Assistant, and especially Jim Warrenfeltz's concerned Aslaksen, the Publisher. Joshua Easton played Dr. Stockmann's husband, listed in the program confusingly as Tom Kiil, as an anachronistic house husband who dutifully did the dishes and watched the kids; while Tim Bedsworth's Morten Kiil, the Tanner, struck a dashing figure in his full mane of hair and flowing beard. Carol Cutshall did well by her costumes, recutting contemporary clothing into an acceptable 1900 cold North look. Darcy Jamison's lighting design boasted a starry sky and an aurora borealis display what was quite impressive; and, Troy McVey's scenic design, although serviceable, was not used very effectively by the director, especially in the final crowd scene where the smaller Catherine was unseen by many in the audience and the crucial scene deteriorated into a muddle.
