GOOD MANNERS AT THE ALLEY

By HOLLY BERETTO

Combining the parlor manners of a Jane Austin novel with the whiplash wit of Noel Coward, Jeffrey Hatcher’s Mrs. Mannerly is the story of a manners and etiquette class in 1967 Steubenville, Ohio. It is by turns raucous, bittersweet and an utterly real coming-of-age tale.           

In a time when people routinely show their age by asking where manners have gone, Mrs. Mannerly might be something of a throwback to a nostalgic time that never was, but it’s still a refreshing comedy that turns a keen eye on human behavior. The play tells the story of Mrs. Mannerly, who’s set up shop teaching the well-heeled and well-heeled wannabes for the past 36 years. Into her room at the local YMCA, she covers the windows with beautiful landscapes and the basketball floor with a rug. Hers is a world where all things can be cured if we only place the shrimp fork in the correct spot in the place setting. 

Enter into this Jeffrey, Hatcher’s fictionalized version of his young self (who really did take an etiquette class growing up in Steubenville). He admits he’s not much good at the things boys in the 1960s are supposed to be good at: sports, girls, getting into trouble. But he looks at his manners class as a place where he can excel, and he’s determined to be the first of Mrs. Mannerly’s students to score a perfect 100 on the final manners exam, held at an annual dinner for the Daughters of the American Revolution.           

Along the way in this likeable romp, Jeffrey learns manners and Mrs. Mannerly grows away from her stern spinster stereotype. James Black has a ball playing Jeffrey and the other four students in Mrs. Mannerly’s class, veering from character to character with hand gestures and voice changes. He steps from in the center of the action to narrating it without ever missing a beat and is a sheer joy to watch.

Josie de Guzman plays Mrs. Mannerly with buttoned-up bravado, her elegance and poise a careful veneer for a woman with some kind of past. If she sometimes strays into caricature of a certain kind of mannered woman, it’s equally likely that Mrs. Mannerly is exactly that kind of character. The production is directed with great precision and timing by John Rando, who also directed the Alley’s much-enjoyed The Man Who Came to Dinner last season.           

If manners are more about making another person feel comfortable than they are about the precise use of the phrase “Good day,” be sure you RSVP for this one – it’s a standout in one of the Alley’s best seasons yet.

Photos by Jann Whaley: (above) James Black, (below) Josie de Guzman in the Alley’s Mrs. Mannerly.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW – A Review

Houston Grand Opera, Performances Feb. 10 and 13 

By JOHN DeMERS 

In a long lifetime of near-constant reading, I remember only three stories that really scared the hell out of me. 

The winner and still champion was Relic, a thriller that launched what came to be known as the Pendergast Series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (who themselves came to be known as “Preston Child”). Of course, that book cheated: I read it as a rumpled paperback in a 12^th century French castle on a hot summer night with the unscreened windows wide open. Sometime after 2 a.m., as I inhaled a particularly intense underground chase scene, a loud cascade of gravel occurred just outside my window in the dark. I think my old room in that castle still has a dent high above the bed, where my head must have hit the ceiling. 

The other two stories that still send shivers across the years were Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Both were short – mere novellas, if that – and both were marked by a deep and seemingly life-endangering ambiguity. Don’t Look Now became an almost equally frightening movie starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, and Turn of the Screw became one heck of a chilling opera by Benjamin Britten. As the third Britten piece since Houston Grand Opera’s Anthony Freud promised us one a year, the current Australian production gets its chance to dazzle and, at the same time, disturb. 

In the story, yet another English governess comes to live at yet another spooky old English manor house, her task to care for two children but her only real instruction to never contact their guardian in London, no matter what she thinks or sees. That she does: thinks and sees – coming to think there’s something evil about the girl named Flora and especially about the younger boy named Miles, and coming to see two ghosts who are drawing ever closer to the children in her care. The ghosts, she learns, are the former housekeeper and another deceased employee, a frightening fellow named Quint. 

In the book, these ghosts say nothing – a less-than-perfect bit of opera that Britten fixes directly enough. But they also exist only in the Governess’ narration, inviting us to wonder if they’re figments of her imagination. The literary work’s greatest strength is the way it keeps us doubting her sanity and eventually our own, from first page to last. On the HGO stage, we in the audience see the two ghosts along with her, lessening their impact. Still, the opera has Britten’s scintillating score to fill in layers of psychology that the move from the page and our own imaginations has stripped away.   

The real hero of this production is not any character, good or evil – it’s the set, designed originally for Opera Australia by Stephen Curtis, with lighting by Nigel Levings. Built of towering wall sections with mirrors embedded, piece after piece is turned this way and that throughout the two acts to form shadowy interiors, murky exteriors, a midnight garden and even the shore of a darkened lake. With each turn, the mirrors reflect light in odd, smoky ways, reminding us of the subjectivity of all vision and the fear of what, at any moment, we might be forced to see. These striking visuals, paired with Britten’s eerie sounds from only 13 instruments under the Britten-savvy baton of HGO’s Patrick Summers, produce that thing seen least on any opera stage: breathless storytelling. 

As in the James novella, published in 1898 at the height of the séance and medium craze, there is little in the “action” to produce head-to-head conflict: no physical tussles with werewolves, no stake-through-the-vampire’s-undead-heart climaxes. Instead, Turn runs on tension, uncertainty, and on building the horror one layer at a time. As directed by Neil Armfield (who’s also brought the other two Britten operas to HGO), Amanda Roocroft carries the weight of this realization in her singing as well as her body language. The sweetness and light of first meeting oh-so-genteel Flora and Miles quickly becomes doubt. And when the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel begin appearing from dark shadows in this house called Bly, Roocroft  makes physical the knowledge that she has nowhere to run. 

Andrew Kennedy and Tamara Wilson are truly scary as the ghosts, the latter for her singing and clear unhappiness at being put on the roster marked “dead,” the former for looking like a red-haired escapee from a Tim Burton movie of the Beetlejuice period. In his body language, the backing out of rooms expected of proper English valets becomes something darker, a kind of involuntary being drawn back, after each brief appearance, into the bowels of hell. Joelle Harvey and Michael Kepler Meo are terrific as the not-so-innocent children, especially Meo’s singing as Miles. Both know their way around these roles, having sung them last season with Portland Opera.

Photos by Felix Sanchez: (above) Anthony Kennedy and Michael Kepler Meo, (below) Joelle Harvey, Meo, Amanda Roocroft and Judith Forst in HGO’S The Turn of the Screw.

ALMOST, MAINE – A Review

Brave Dog Players @ Stages through Feb. 21 

By JOHN DeMERS 

Thanks to the previously nonexistent Brave Dog Players, John Cariani’s “magical romantic comedy” isn’t just arriving in time for Valentine’s Day. It virtually is Valentine’s Day, our annual observance’s many facets divided into vignettes like parts of a diamond reflecting the light. Almost anyone will think this play is very funny. Most who see it will find it touching, or possibly “cute.” And still others will note the longing behind so many of its disconnected scenes, the wistfulness and the sense of loss. It’s all love, folks, and it’s all on this stage. 

Almost, Maine is a town – or rather, we’re told cryptically, it would be a town if its inhabitants had ever “gotten organized.” Even so, giving the title of a place to a collection of vignettes invites comparison to other works with similar titles or forms, from the more-somber evocations of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and James Joyce’s Dubliners to this play’s closer kin, Grover’s Corners of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town or the Lake Wobegon of Garrison Keillor’s many print, radio and movie iterations. Unlike those works, however, Cariani uses Almost, Maine less as a setting than a theme, not seeming to care about portraying the place. What he wants to portray is love. And for all the minimalism of his quick sketches, he shows love in pretty much all its available forms.

There is the love we find or fall into, the love we’re looking for or hoping for or, alternately, trying like hell to avoid. And there is the love we embrace, the love that dies quickly or slowly, the love we walked away from years earlier – thus, the love that’s stand-in for anything and everything we ever wanted but never was ours. As the song on that TV commercial says, love hurts. And only a person with his heart switched off would fail to notice the pained words and glances almost all characters in this play exchange, even when they are at their busiest making us laugh. 

There’s not much to the non-town of Almost, Maine – and as such, it resembles Lake Wobegon or some other end-of-the-road place of big accents and small mercies. But as the ongoing population of Almost makes clear, it’s full of people who are falling in love.  The need for many, many layers of clothing merely postpones the inevitable: love, like the Jeff Goldblum character says about life in Jurassic Park, will find a way. As directed by gifted actor Philip Lehl, one of the founders of Brave Dog Players, the people of Almost, Maine, are only slightly more layered versions of you and me. 

The small troupe gathered around Lehl makes up in mastery and enthusiasm what it lacks in numbers. In other words, they play many characters in the course of this satisfying evening, and take turns moving the simple bits of scenery around. Even that act takes on near-mythical proportions at times, though moving a bench might also be just moving a bench. 

Three of the four cast members – Kim Tobin (in real life, Lehl’s wife), Georgi Silverman and, in real life, her husband Rick – participated in a workshop of Almost, Maine in New York some years back, and their affection for the material lights the stage all by itself. The lone newcomer, Alley regular Chris Hutchison, pours on his best, oafish comic charm, nowhere more than early on playing a young man who can’t feel any pain. With dark echoes of the Garden of Eden, love enters this man’s life unexpectedly in his apartment laundry room – but at the same moment, so does pain. In John Cariani’s Almost, Maine, lovers aren’t the only things that go hand-in-hand.   

Photo by Gabriella Nissen: Chris Hutchison and Kim Tobin

LOOKING AHEAD TO ‘LA BAYADERE’

Beginning Feb. 25, Houston Ballet presents the highlight of its 40^th anniversary season, the world premiere of La Bayadère, a historic classic newly staged by Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch and set in royal India of the past.

La Bayadère is a dramatic ballet of eternal love, mystery, fate, vengeance and justice intertwined to tell the story of Nikiya, a temple dancer, her lover Solor, and the vengeance that keeps them apart, at least in this life. Houston Ballet will give seven performances of La Bayadère at Wortham Theater Center in downtown Houston. Tickets may be purchased by calling 713 227 2787 or by visiting www.houstonballet.org.

“We wanted a grand classical ballet as the centerpiece for the 40th anniversary season, and this will be a big Bollywood-like production. It’s a colorful story that’s sexy, provocative and very dramatic,” commented Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch.

The choreography for La Bayadère’s famous Kingdom of the Shades section will remain intact in Welch’s staging as the third act of the production. This world-renowned part of La Bayadère showcases 24 female dancers in white tutus, executing 38 synchronized and seamless arabesques while descending onto the stage, and is one of the purest forms of ballet-blanc, or white tutu ballet.

“The Kingdom of the Shades is a challenging segment because it requires such control and precision from the corps de ballet women,” says Welch. “There are few works in the classical repertoire that require more precision from the corps de ballet.” The Kingdom of the Shades is so popular it is often performed on its own.  Houston Ballet first performed The Kingdom of the Shades scene, staged by Ben Stevenson after Marius Petipa, in March 1994 and revived it in 1998.

La Bayadère is the second new staging of a 19^th century classic that Mr. Welch has created for Houston Ballet, after Swan Lake in 2006. He has choreographed a number of full-length story ballets for The Australian Ballet, including Madame Butterfly (1995), Cinderella (1997) and The Sleeping Beauty (2005); as well as two original evening-length works for Houston Ballet Tales of Texas (2004) and Marie (2009).

English designer Peter Farmer, who has a long and rich history with Houston Ballet, will create the spectacular scenery and costumes for La Bayadère. Mr. Farmer has created eight full-length productions for Houston Ballet since 1972 and is one of the few designers to have worked with three of the company’s directors:  Nina Popova, Ben Stevenson and Stanton Welch.

“It was such a pleasure working with Stanton on Madame Butterfly in 1995 for The Australian Ballet that I was so pleased when he asked me to design La Bayadère,” says Farmer.  “Stanton’s vision, as in all his works, is visually exciting and adventurous. I’ve always been an admirer of the great works of the 19^th century. And, I’ve always admired La Bayadère and have wanted to design it for some time. It’s a big challenge for me, and for the company, to have the chance to make the production new again.”

The focus of Farmer’s costume designs are brightly colored traditional Indian attire, such as harem pants and saris, for the first and second acts.  “Peter’s scenic design is not a realistic depiction of India.  It will be more like looking through an old picture book from western culture with a view of romanticized India,” comments Welch.  “The production will have a very painted look, almost reminiscent of Monet, that will give it dreaminess and romance.”   

Welch’s lavish new production will include 121 costumes, comprised of 568 items.  This also includes 26 new handmade white tutus for the Kingdom of the Shades scene.

The original production of La Bayadère was set to the music of Viennese composer Ludwig Minkus (1826-1917). The composer of over 20 ballets, Minkus was an excellent craftsman in the style of ballet music of his day and one of the most important composers in 19^th century Russian ballet. Born in Vienna in 1826, Minkus was a violinist, ballet conductor and composer.  From 1864-1871, he was the official ballet composer at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. In 1871, he was transferred to St. Petersburg, where he worked until 1891.

The only original score of La Bayadere exists in Russia, but has never been available in the west.  In 1980 former American Ballet Theatre prima ballerina Natalia Makarova commissioned John Lanchbery to reconstruct the original Minkus score for her staging of La Bayadère at American Ballet Theatre.  Acts I and II of the resulting score are based on Minkus, but Act III was composed by Lanchbery, adding a bit of Hollywood glamour.  Welch’s La Bayadère uses Minkus’s score as arranged by Lanchbery as a starting point.  Since February 2009, Houston Ballet Music Director Ermanno Florio and the late music librarian Robert Bridges tailored the score for Mr. Welch’s production.  

“Both Stanton’s version and Lanchbery’s original score are in three acts,” explains Florio, “But where there are three large scenes in Lanchbery’s Act I, Stanton’s version only uses the first two scenes of the original Act I as his new Act I.  The third scene of Act I stands alone as Stanton’s new Act II.  Stanton joins the original Act III and IV as his new Act III.”

A tragic soap opera set in an Indian royal court; La Bayadère blends exoticism, white tutus, venomous snakes and opium.  In his book, The World’s Great Ballets, critic John Gruen places La Bayadère in the following historical context: “The creators of Romantic ballet shared with other artists of the time a fascination with the spiritualism and exoticism of the Orient. The most notable early dance treatment of such themes was Filippo Taglioni’s opera-ballet Le Dieu et la Bayadère, based on a poem by Goethe. More than 40 years later, Marius Petipa conceived of the idea for his own Oriental ballet.  At its premiere on February 4, 1877, at the Bolshoi Theatre in St. Petersburg, La Bayadère was a triumph: it catered to the Russian taste for spectacular theatrics, exotic settings, and convoluted, melodramatic plot lines, yet also contained classical choreography of breath taking purity.”

Marius Petipa (1818-1910), the “father of classical ballet,” was born in Marseille, France in 1818, and produced over 60 full-evening pieces, including works that have become the foundation of the classical ballet repertoire such as The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake.   Swan Lake and La Bayadère share many similarities:  Both were premiered in 1877, and both made spectacular use of the corps de ballet in performance to symphonic scores.

Although La Bayadère remained in the repertory of many Russian companies throughout the 20^th century, it was little seen in the West until 1961, when The Kirov Ballet performed The Kingdom of the Shades scene at The Royal Opera House in London.  In 1963, Rudolph Nureyev staged a version of The Kingdom of the Shades for England’s The Royal Ballet.  In 1980, the great Russian ballerina Natalia Markova staged the first full-length production of La Bayadère in the West for American Ballet Theatre to critical acclaim.  In 1992, Nureyev also staged a full-length version for Paris Opera Ballet.

Although the exact origin of the story of La Bayadère is unknown, it is an example of 19^th century Romantic ballets set in an exotic location with a fascination with the Orient, spiritualism, triangular relationships, ethereal beings and melodramatic plot lines.  A number of operas and ballets were created about “bayadères” – Indian temple dancers – at that time.   Despite the ballet’s setting in ancient India, Ludwig Minkus’s music and Petipa’s choreography barely made any gesture to traditional forms of Indian dance and music, as the ballet was a vision of the Orient seen through 19^th century European eyes, particularly since it was produced during the height of the British Raj (Queen Victoria of England took the title Empress of India in 1877).

Petipa’s choreography contained various elements that reminded the spectator of the ballet’s setting, but he did not stray from the classical ballet canon. Petipa was not interested in ethnographic accuracy in any part of the ballet with regards to choreography. It was the fashion of the time, whether a ballet was set in China, India, or the Middle East. The ballet master rarely – if ever – considered including traditional native dance forms.

Photo by Pam Francis: Amy Fote in Houston Ballet’s La Bayadere

POP ART LEGENDS: THE NEXT GENERATION

Off the Wall Gallery in the Houston Galleria will offer for sale the works of world-famous pop artists Charles Fazzino and Michael Godard from Feb. 12- 21. An uncrating event and preview will be held Friday, Feb. 12 from 6 to 8 pm. 

Public openings and opportunity to meet the artists will take place on Saturday, Feb. 20 from 6 to 8 pm and the next day from 1 to 3 pm.  Fazzino and Godard will offer a personal dedication to each collector.  Nearly 100 pieces will be on view and available for purchase from the artists only for the above stated period.  

Charles Fazzino

Charles Fazzino is one of the most popular and highly-collected pop artists of all time. During his more-than-thirty years as a pop artist, he has inserted his unique, detailed, vibrant, and three-dimensional style of artwork into the very fabric of popular culture. Fazzino’s artworks are exhibited in more than 20 countries and 600 fine pop art galleries. He has received many private and important commissions and has been selected as the official artist for festivals and events all over the world, including eight Super Bowls, the Grammy Awards, Country Music Awards, Daytime Emmy Awards and the Beijing Olympic Games. 

Charles is often referred to as a pop culture historian because of the breadth of his work and the way it touches his collectors and captures the best parts of their contemporary lives. His legacy will mark him as part of the next generation of famous pop artists as he follows the paths originally forged by pop art pioneers like Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Red Grooms and Robert Rauschenberg. 

Fazzino’s 3-D pop artwork can be found in the private collections of Rosie O’Donnell, Michael Eisner, Hillary Clinton, Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Roger Clemens, Michael Jordan, Julia Roberts and many other internationally renowned figures and corporations. 

As the creator of limited edition fine art silkscreen serigraphs, Fazzino is best known for his obsession for bright colors and wonderful detail, the frenetic energy that infuses his artwork, and a unique hand assembled 3-D layering technique that brings his images to life. Viewers of Fazzino’s artwork are pulled, voluntarily or not, into the bright and often whimsical scenes, where they fully experience the hustle and bustle of the world around them. 

A graduate of the New York School of Visual Arts, Charles Fazzino’s popularity as a pop art artist has soared over the course of his thirty-year-career. He appears at more than 30 one-man art exhibitions and shows annually, treating thousands of fans to his one-of-a-kind signature drawings. In the midst of all the ambitious travels, charity promotional events, and media appearances, Fazzino finds the time to create twenty to thirty new editions of art each year. 

Michael Godard

Michael Godard, known as the “Rock Star of the Art World,” is currently the #1 best-selling artist in the United States.  Since childhood, Godard has had paint flowing thru his veins. He attended the University of Nevada in Las Vegas for Fine Arts and later attended The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. 

Godard has been featured on television in HBO’s Cat House, A&E’s Criss Angel’s Mind Freak, American Casino, Inked and a myriad of other media outlets. A documentary on Godard’s life was featured at independent film festivals, winning numerous awards. His Book, Don’t Drink and Draw, The Art and Life of Michael Godard, was awarded Art Book of the Year. 

Godard’s work is widely collected by movie stars, rock stars and private collectors, from young to old and from all walks of life.  Godard’s imaginative art is seen by millions of people each month on cruise lines, in stores, galleries, hotels and magazines, on countless merchandising kiosks and even on television.  His paintings also adorn the walls in the officer’s lounge at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. 

Godard’s world of art invites us into his lighthearted perspective of life that surrounds us, mirroring our lives through martinis with animated olives, drunken grapes and dancing strawberries.  Images include his own vices of gambling and the good life. Godard’s unique portrayal of fun is an exciting combination of imagination and subtle humor, which evoke and engage the creative side in “Olive” us.  His playful, irreverent and animated subjects have taken the conservative art world and turned it on its heel, redefining art as we know it…with a punch line. Today Michael Godard is considered one of the most prolific and influential artists of our time.

PERFORMING ARTISTS FOR HAITI

The Houston chapter of the United Nations Association, in collaboration with St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, presents an evening of performing arts benefiting relief efforts in Haiti on Saturday, February 13, 2010, at 7 PM. St. Stephen’s is located at 1805 W. Alabama St.

In a unique collaboration with performers from all over Houston — including artists who have appeared with Houston Grand Opera, Houston Symphony and Main Street Theater — the performance will span genres from jazz to opera to chamber music to musical theater.    Confirmed performers include:

Former Houston Grand Opera studio member Alicia Gianni and her jazz trio;

Vocalist Ross Chitwood (of Main Street Theater’s Light in the Piazza and Master Class)

Houston Symphony cellist Brinton Averil Smith;

Pianist and Shepherd School faculty member Grant Loehnig;

Pianist and Shepherd School doctoral student Kimi Kawashima;

Cellist and Da Camera of Houston Education Director Evan Leslie;

The United Nations Association International Choir and

Bass Da Camera of Houston Young Artist David Keck;     

Additional performers are to be announced.

Houston native and UN staffer in the office of logistics Michael Goble, who recently returned from Haiti, will offer his observations. Donations will be collected at the door and sent through the United Nations Association to contribute to UNICEF’s work in Haiti.

UN BALLO IN MASCHERA – A Review

By JOHN DeMERS

Someone might ask you someday: What, in terms of story, is the stupidest Verdi opera? And the answer might come to you: With the exception of a few, later, mostly Shakespearean adaptations, it’s whichever one you happen to be watching right now. 

Still, the even more important question is: How could this Italian composer take such clunky plot lines built on mistaken identity, betrayal, witchcraft and “fate” – and imbue them with some of the most magnificent music ever written? You may well find yourself pondering this question while enjoying the first-rate Opera in the Heights production of Un Ballo in Maschera, with remaining performances at intimate Lambert Hall this Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. 

Fact is, the plot is smoother (that is to say, less stupid) than many. Man Loves Woman, Woman is Married to Man’s Best Friend, Best Friend Finds Out and Kills Man, Everybody Still Alive Feels Real Bad About It. You could almost make a movie with such a plot – and surely, some people already have. You’d simply have to throw out most of what Verdi put in, starting with a young boy played by a woman who sings super-catchy but meaningless songs whenever he/she walks on stage. 

OK, enough. That’s Un Ballo in Maschera (often presented in English as A Masked Ball, but not at Opera in the Heights). And honestly, when it comes to the drama, director Matthew Ferrara does a fine job. As much as Verdi’s score lets him, he avoids having people just standing around signing (“park and bark,” he called it during an interview) and has actual relationships forming before our eyes. Verdi, apparently, lived and composed long before the storytelling dictate “Show me, don’t tell me” came into vogue. He tells, and tells, and then tells some more. Ferraro, himself a former ballet dancer with an intense understanding of things visual, worked with lighting designer Kevin Taylor and costume designer Dena Scheh to create one of the most atmospheric OH productions we’ve seen. At its best, this Ballo really does look like a movie – a great-to-look-at David Lean movie at that. 

Maestro William Weibel works his usual magic, filling Lambert Hall with wonderful sounds from his smallish orchestra. Every OH production burnishes his reputation a bit more, not only for making a lot out of a little but for conducting in an intelligent manner that helps even listeners who seldom do so appreciate the score. Many times throughout Ballo, intriguing and unexpected touches Verdi put in come out in ways that are satisfying. This is particularly true behind the major arias, when our tendency is simply to listen to the singing. Weibel and Lambert’s excellent acoustics conspire to let us settle for that no longer. 

OH is, by mission statement, mostly about singers. And in that sense, Ballo does not disappoint. As always, there are two casts, with different principals sharing duties over a total of six performances. The Emerald cast, which we caught Saturday night, featured the ringing high notes and passionate emoting of tenor Jonathan Hodel as Count Riccardo (we’re now sorry we missed him in 2009’s Pagliacci, just imagining his “Vesti la giubba”!) and the wonderful, long vocal lines of soprano Kirsten Hoiseth as his Amelia. She offers a convincing portrayal of this woman “torn between two lovers,” the other lover being the tormented and eventually murderous Renato as sung by Douglin Murray Schmidt. His rendition of the famous “Eri tu” is everything we could hope for. 

Soo-Ah Park shines as Oscar, that young boy character we wish would go away. Her singing is utterly delightful, however, as are her ever-expressive eyes behind Buddy Holly glasses and overall comic acting – even when comedy seems just about the least appropriate thing in the world.  And while the scary “witch” or “fortune-teller” Ulrica has the dramatic curse of appearing in Act I and then never turning up again, mezzo Kristin Patterson serves up singing so unforgettable we almost don’t notice that she’s gone for good. As always, the OH chorus is a treasure, benefiting in this instance (if hardly always in opera) from Ferraro giving them lots of believable things to do. 

Perhaps most strikingly, Ferraro and his design team deliver Un Ballo in Maschera from its confusing roots somewhere sometime in the vague past (Sweden, or even stranger, some silly Italian’s idea of Boston) to “a European country” in what appears to be the 1930s. Almost-modern dress, in other words, with some even more modern pieces of U.S. Marine uniforms on the soldiers. At the very least, not having to look at men in puffy striped bloomers lets Verdi’s brilliant music rescue the stupid story once again.

Photos: (above) Jonathan Hodel as Riccardo; (middle) Kristin Patterson as Ulrica with OH Chorus; (below) Kirsten Hoiseth as Amelia, in Opera in the Heights’ Un Ballo in Maschera.

THE DYNAMIC DUO: LUTHER & REBEKAH

By JOHN DeMERS 

The only bad thing I can think of to say about last night’s first cabaret-style performance of Luther Chakurian and Rebekah Dahl in LOVE (with themselves) is that tonight’s second and final performance is a sellout. And before any children of the ‘60s get upset, I mean “sellout” in the best possible way. 

Sure, there were quibbles, especially early on. The show is being given in a (barely) glorified meeting room at the Houston Club downtown, where some audience members arrive just in time to watch other audience members have their mostly empty dinner plates carted away. After the fully produced musicals these actors star in for Masquerade Theatre at the Hobby Center, the room is utterly lacking in magic. At first, in fact, the desire for some form of stage lighting was severe – something to focus attention away from the blah venue and the still-laboring service staff. By the end, however, I’d made my peace with the surroundings – and even gave the performers extra points. They were acting and singing in our own living room, and they truly had nothing up their sleeves. 

Fact is, Masquerade and founding artistic director Phillip Duggins have high hopes for these smaller, more intimate cabaret evenings. While the company went with its two biggest guns for this initial salvo – Chakurian and Dahl could hold their own in any theater company on earth – Duggins told the audience he’d like to put on several more such evenings next year. Surely, Masquerade has ample depth of theatrical talent. It remains to be seen whether its other stars can pile on the charisma mixed with self-deprecating humor mixed with genuine pathos that Chakurian and Dahl brought to opening night. 

One of the more impressive aspects of this show (unofficially dubbed “Two Diva Bitches You Can’t Live Without”) was the performers’ ease talking about themselves. Theater, in general, is a way to hide from yourself, to disappear into and behind a fictional character. Yet whether it was Chakurian’s nearly debilitating childhood shyness or Dahl’s ludicrous wild-child inappropriateness for one Christian theater company (“They prayed over me several times,” she recalled), they spoke with comfortable affection of their pasts, their victories and stumbles along the way, and most of all, each other. The two have starred side-by-side in some of the best shows Masquerade has done – Chakurian for 13 years, Dahl for 10. In this cabaret act, with Michael Ammons at the piano, they reprise some of their finest moments from Sweeney Todd, Jekyll & Hyde, Sunday in the Park with George, Songs for a New World, Chess and Guys and Dolls. 

Dahl got to revisit the two roles that made her a Houston stage celebrity, belting out showstoppers from Annie Get Your Gun and Gypsy. And just when you thought that was as intense as the evening could get, Chakurian shared his memories of his mother’s death to cancer before knocking her favorite song right out of the Houston Club, “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha. Dahl united with her friend in the next moment, dedicating her own passionate rendition of “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” from Evita to the mother of her stage Che. Applause became standing ovation for these two remarkable talents, and many eyes were less than dry. Especially their own.

NEW ‘DELICIOUS MISCHIEF’ IN AUSTIN

Delicious Mischief, the popular food and wine radio show that began in New Orleans more than 20 years ago and moved to Houston eight years ago, has a bright new sibling coming to Austin’s TalkRadio 1370 beginning Feb. 6. The program, hosted by veteran journalist John DeMers and showcasing Austin’s best chefs and restaurants along with winemakers and master distillers from every corner of the globe, will air Saturdays from 10-11 a.m. Like its older brother in Houston, this new Delicious Mischief is a presentation of Spec’s Wines, Spirits and Finer Foods, which now operates seven stores in the Austin area. 

The first Austin show features two important Austin chefs: Tyson Cole of Uchi, who has done so much to celebrate Japanese culinary influence deep in the heart of Texas, and Terry Conlan of Lake Austin Spa – who cooks delicious food that’s actually healthy. In between those bookends, there’s an extended Grape and Grain segment devoted to “winetales,” the hip new spin on cocktails that use wines where the booze used to be. Upcoming Austin broadcasts include behind-the-scenes visits to Lockhart, the officially legislated Barbecue Capital of Texas, as well as to the international chili cook-off way out in Terlingua, complete with an extended tasting of Austin-based Republic Tequila. Well, at least the company is based in Austin – the tequila, of course, is “based” in the state of Jalisco in Mexico.  

“Over the years I’ve been in Texas, more and more food stories take me to Austin more and more often,” John says. “In food and drink, as in the Texas blood sports of football, music and politics, Austin has a remarkable amount of fascinating stuff going on. Great drama, great personalities, great ambitions – oh, and did I mention great things for me to eat and drink? This new Austin show gives me the opportunity to say what I love about Austin, each and every Saturday morning.” 

John ate his way through 136 foreign countries before discovering he could get all the same food right here in Texas. A native of New Orleans, John grew up with parents who read cookbooks to each other after dinner while drinking cans of Dixie beer. They also cooked most meals together, a trick that John later learned from his own relationships is not the easiest thing in the world. After studying history at Boston University and earning his BA and MA in journalism at Louisiana State University, John embarked on the predictable career writing for newspapers. He had no idea how unpredictable a career writing for newspapers could be. 

Among his most formative experiences were eight years as a reporter and editor for United Press International, before being laid off as part of UPI’s regularly scheduled bankruptcies: covering plane crashes and Mafia trials, elections and oil rig explosions, Super Bowls and championship fights. And that was before he transferred to UPI’s overnight Foreign Desk in Washington or became UPI’s globetrotting food editor almost without knowing such a job existed. Asked (especially by his children) what he did at work, the best John could ever come up with was, “I go places to eat things.” 

Commerce raised its ugly head with increasing frequency. John ended up spending five years as Director of Promotions and Public Relations for the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans and then almost 15 years creating his own magazines New Orleans Hospitality, EasyFood, CoastFood and finally Texas Foodlover. Of that experience he invariably reports, “You go to bed at night an editor – and you wake up the next morning a salesman.” It was a return to newspapers, his first love, that brought John to Texas to follow the beloved Ann Criswell as food editor of the Houston Chronicle. By the time that job went away, his longtime New Orleans food and wine radio show Delicious Mischief had made it onto the airwaves here – and he saw no reason to let himself be run out of town. By then, in other words, Texas was his home. 

At present, John is the author of 40 published books, including “Follow the Smoke: 14,783 Miles of Great Texas Barbecue,” reflecting the total distance he drove to overeat in 119 different places in all corners of the Lone Star State. Upcoming books include his first mystery novel, “Marfa Shadows,” as well as “Lone Star Chefs” and “Energy Cuisine,” all from Bright Sky Press. He is a constant contributor to regional and national magazines. His article in Hemispheres about the heartbreak of seeing his hometown after Hurricane Katrina won that year’s Lowell Thomas Award for “cultural travel writing.” John insists he doesn’t know much about any other kind. 

As part of one mid-life crisis or another (or perhaps just hoping for a different way to put his four kids through various colleges and graduate schools), John rediscovered his inner musician. Decades after playing in a rock band as a teenager, John starting writing one-man shows for the stage (and even a one-woman show, for an African-American actress) and finally created two musicals about Texas. The first, a love story titled “Deep in the Heart,” enjoyed its world premiere at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts before touring Texas cities. The second, titled “Texas at Heart,” is a series of musical vignettes from 175 years of the state’s colorful history. It is currently awaiting production. Then again, asks John, isn’t almost everything?

NOT-SO-WONDERLAND – YET!

By JOHN DeMERS

Whenever a musical is so cleverly but shallowly cobbled together for today’s Broadway, it’s hard to concentrate on what we see on stage now, at the Alley Theatre in Houston. Indeed, in the lobby before, in-between and after this brand-new musical’s two acts, that was all anybody talked about: “Hey, you know this show is going to Broadway, right?’ “Did you hear we’re seeing it before Broadway?” And so on. 

Of course, savvy theater veterans know the darker truth, that any show not coming from Broadway is going to Broadway. Wanting to. Trying to. Angling to. Hoping to find the precise combination of acclaim and especially money (which flows from acclaim) to grab a seat at Broadway’s shrunken, star-addicted and Disney-controlled table. In that sense, Wonderland is probably as worthy as the next project. But the world-premiere edition that began in Tampa before moving straight to Houston still has a lot of lonesome highway ahead of it. 

In the beginning, this project sounded like a new version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, and perhaps that would have had legs enough. Frank Wildhorn has a decent track record as a tunesmith for the stage, but never more than (as in Jekyll & Hyde, which also launched with Alley assistance) working with a familiar story – a familiar brand. And if you look at other Wildhorn properties doing this or that, without benefit of Broadway, around the world, you realize the formula seems to work for him. The question, after seeing Wonderland during its first weekend in Houston, is: Does the formula work for us? 

Perhaps as a natural result of starting life as yet another Wildhorn “concept album,” Wonderland works far better as a live concert than as a play. As with a concert, there are a lot of songs. And as with a concert, some are great. Some of just songs. And some we wish would go away. But at the end, we can all say: Wow, what a great concert! And that’s the best we can say right now about Wonderland. As playfully derivative of music genres as Andrew Lloyd Webber at his best (or worst), Wildhorn’s Alice songbook serves up a sexy-steamy-funny brew of Top 40-style hits. Some approach memorability by being catchy, hummable, but almost none move the plot along or deepen our understanding of their character. And those are, we’re told, the two things a song in a stage show is supposed to do. 

The lyrics by regular Wildhorn collaborator Jack Murphy are prosaic beyond belief, the show’s “fun songs” (like the sultry R&B “Advice from a Caterpiller,” the hip-grinding South Beach Latino “Go with the Flow” and the crowd-pleasing boy-band crooner “One Knight”) all based on some ethnic, period or genre cliché. And the “serious” songs never rise above pseudo-motivational psychobabble. Be yourself. Find yourself. Love yourself. These are Homerically ancient themes, of course, but they work best if you have to slay a Cyclops or steer clear of some really sexy sirens on the rocks along the way. While the closing song “Finding Wonderland” seems assembly-line manufactured to be the show’s hit, a far better musical moment goes to someone appearing in a cameo as Lewis Carroll himself. “I Am My Own Invention” offers an insight intriguing enough that we actually care what it says, what it “teaches.” And it is sung by Lewis Carroll, after all. 

The cast of Wonderland is top-notch, sidestepping for all kinds of reasons the usual Alley resident company – who can do almost anything onstage except sing and dance. If anything, this show has too much of both. Janet Dacal shimmers as Alice Cornwinkle, the New York-based writer whose marriage is falling apart and whose daughter’s emotional escape to someplace way, way down her building’s elevator shaft gives what meager story there is its glue. One sidebar about this Wonderland has to be titled “A Star Is Born,” and that star is Janet Dacal.

Other casting highlights include Edward Staudenmayer doubling as the cellphone-obsessed Richard and the time-obsessed Rabbit, and Darren Ritchie as husband Jack, the White Knight and even as Lewis Carroll. Like a lot of things about this show, this style of Freud Lite archetypal casting (the way real people are reborn in an unreal place) feels more like “The Wizard of Oz” than any remembered version of “Alice in Wonderland.” Performing kudos should go to Nikki Snelson as the villainous Mad Hatter and Karen Mason as the ditsy but dangerous Queen of Hearts – except that these characters never make sense between moving from one allegedly show-stopping number to the next.

 The biggest challenge facing Wonderland, which seems destined to delight large audiences in Houston through Feb. 14, is to find a book that makes these songs fit together – and even more importantly, gives them some tension, conflict and forward motion. Some reason for being. The Alley’s Gregory Boyd (who also directs) worked with Murphy on the book, and in its present state, it merely keeps ‘em laughin’ with facile, TV sitcom-grade jokes. The usual mugging at the audience, wink wink, old tale with modern attitude, blah blah. The audience reaction is wild and impressive and may bode well for Broadway; but in this case, the bag you take away from any evening at the theater is empty when you open it at home.

Photo by Michal Daniel. (above) Janet Dacal as Alice in Wonderland; (below) Karen Mason and Nikki Snelson.