Our Review of Catastrophic’s ‘Godot’

By JOHN DeMERS

Two men meet in nature as the sun edges lower, perhaps on a desolate plain after some kind of nuclear holocaust. They talk, they laugh, they argue – but most of all, they wait. For someone. For something. And when the person or thing they’re waiting for doesn’t show up, they return to the same spot the next afternoon, to wait again. They talk about giving up hope, but then they hope. They talk about leaving, but, in one of history’s most enticing final stage directions, “They do not move.”

And world theater is never the same.

It’s appropriate that Houston’s Catastrophic Theatre is serving up Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as its debut in its new venue, the former home of DiverseWorks, where Catastrophic had staged several shows in the past. Most of the works they’ve produced and/or created over two decades owe a huge debt to Beckett and, more than any other of his works, to Godot. There’s a strong feeling of coming home about the company’s realignment with its single most profound reason for being.

Beckett’s play is part suicide note, part lyric poetry and part vaudeville act, each style of entertainment grabbing our attention in quick succession until we start questioning which is which. What we don’t ever question is that we’re having a wonderful time in the theater, laughing harder and more often than we have in ages. As with most works of art, for the theater or elsewhere, there’s a barely concealed scream of protest at the core of Godot, crying from the heart – to what? to whom? – about the way the human condition simply is, even as we’re all having a ridiculous amount of fun recognizing our plight.

Within five minutes of the play’s opening lines, director Jason Nodler (who founded the company with Tamarie Cooper) makes it clear that he and his stellar cast are worthy of the work at hand. In a correctly stark set design – a barren tree, a rock, an occasionally projected full moon – everything falls on the actors’ navigation of Beckett’s remarkable, unexpected, soul-slaying language. The guy may have lived most of his life in Paris, but he was Irish, after all. In so many ways, what isn’t slapstick physical comedy (something Catastrophic always handles wonderfully) is lots and lots of talking.

Greg Dean and Charlie Scott are amazing as those two men. Anyone who hears about Godot’s subject or style and assumes the result must be dreary needs to watch these guys onstage. The characters known officially as Vladimir and Estragon act and react, grouse and cry out, laugh and kinda-sorta-maybe love, the latter in a way that evokes fellowship among the timeless tramps they most resemble. Their physical comedy is infectious, as though old-fashioned shtick had been called upon to deliver the worst news anybody ever heard.

Though (spoiler alert) the long-awaited Godot never shows his face, a few other people put in appearances on that shadowy stretch of  plain – and memorable appearances they are. Company regular Kyle Sturdivant shines, as he always does doing virtually anything with Catastrophic, along with Troy Schulze. They pull off a bizarre, wild and savagely endearing master-slave thing as Pozzo and Lucky, each at times more outlandish than the other. Sturdivant in particular brings an over-the-top musical-theater flair to his scenes as the guy holding the whip.

Is Waiting for Godot depressing? Now that’s a tough question, with one long, crazy, contradictory answer. Like all the Theatre of the Absurd “comedies” it helped define, the play’s notions of human life as cruel, meaningless and brief aren’t exactly the stuff of Little Mary Sunshine. Still, having emerged from World War II with much the same despair that marked the Lost Generation in Paris after World War I, Beckett and his contemporaries mined a remarkable amount of humor from the barren earth they chose to excavate. Waiting for Godot seems written with Catastrophic Theatre in mind.

Company Photo by Anthony Rathbun.

Our Review of the Film ‘Far Marfa’

By JOHN DeMERS

Ever since the early 1950s, Hollywood has been a’comin’ to Marfa. George Stevens filmed Giant in and around town, while the “around” definitely loomed large more recently to the directors of There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. Over the years, the artsy West Texas enclave has grown accustomed to the movies. Heck, in No Country, the president of Marfa National Bank was the first guy Javier Bardem got to kill.

Technology has come a long way since Giant. There are still folks around Marfa – like Mateo Quintana of Quintana’s Barber Shop – who remember going each evening to watch the “dailies” (which had been sent to LA for processing and back again), as well as to grab a glimpse of stars Elizabeth  Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean. The latest in this long line of “Marfa films” – a brand-new, quirky and entertaining comedy-drama titled Far Marfa – is coming to a computer near you. Or more accurately, it’s already there: for sale as a download at www.farmarfa.com.

As directed by Cory van Dyke, born in Galveston and raised in Conroe, Far Marfa is a strange and fascinating little film, more thought-provoking at times than satisfying. The production values – if you have qualms about indulging in an “independent film” that features amateurs alongside professional actors – are very high. And speaking of high: yes, there are smuggled drugs involved in the plot, and the vast skies of Far West Texas have never looked better, not even in real life. What weaknesses the film has come from the too-thoughtful, too-hipster-self-absorbed story about lost souls trying to find themselves in the middle of a mystery-crime yarn, not from the overall direction, cinematography or editing.

Van Dyke, who now lives in Marfa and wrote the Far Marfa screenplay after penning something called Surfer, Dude, seems a bit of a multi-tasker immersed in a labor of love. On the movie website imdb.com, he has credits as a director, a screenwriter and a cinematographer – real separate credits, not just some do-it-yourself film-school kind of thing. Having worked earlier with producer Ray Stark at Columbia Pictures and even with iconic B-movie king Roger Corman, Van Dyke seems to know his way around the process. And for all the click-here-to-download technology, he acquits himself thoroughly as a film professional.

The plot has appropriateness to the real Marfa today, on several levels. For one thing, it’s about a man with musical aspirations who’s trying to find himself long after people were traditionally supposed to find themselves and start doing something about it. Think: late 20s, but more likely early 30s. For another thing, it involves Marfa’s chief fetish, art: a lost painting by a now-dead legend that’s given to our hero Carter Frazier, only hours before the giver is either murdered or takes his own life. Then the painting turns up missing, and then the Presidio County gendarmes come for a little chat with Carter.

The main cast of Far Marfa takes its roles seriously. Johnny Sneed, a veteran of such TV shows as Parks and Recreation, The Mentalist and NCIS, makes us believe in Carter – even though we already knew the guy exists all over Marfa, Austin and similar places. He brings an openness and generosity to the role that’s refreshing, keeping the character’s over-the-top angsting about his dead-end life from ever rolling  into ridiculous. The same type of kudos go to Jolyn Janis as Carter’s near-miss love interest named Quarry – something you seek and work to dig for, get it? – though she also simply looks great walking along dirt roads and railroad tracks in jeans mini-skirts and cowboy boots. Other imported actors, like Jesse Bernstein and Julie Mintz, handle their roles with style, even though the film is really and mostly one extended panic attack on the part of Carter.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in the film, for those who know and love the real Marfa, is the number of locals who do just fine in significant speaking parts – not just Hollywood’s usual walk-on extras. Sure, Ty Mitchell (owner of Lost Horse Saloon) makes such a great-looking long-tall cowboy he’s played one in many movies, including the most recent rendition of True Grit. More eye-catching are the performances delivered, around the edges of the stars, by real folks like David Beebe, the Houston-born musician who opened Padres and now serves on the Marfa City Council; Adam Bork, the former Austin musician who operates Marfa’s legendary Food Shark food truck with his wife Krista; Boyd Elder, the artist based in nearby Valentine who in the ‘70s designed album covers for the The Eagles and other bands; and Steve Holzer, the Marfa-based artist who also helped craft the lovely Los Portales addition to the Gage Hotel in Marathon.

Sadly, the entire rest of the region’s desolation and beauty emerges in Far Marfa as a kind of Marfa suburb, instead of Marfa being one of several towns built along the rail lines in the late 1800s that cling to life in a much larger desert wilderness. It’s a fascinating corner of the world, this Far West Texas on the edge of the moonscapes of Big Bend National Park. If you love nothing else about Far Marfa – and there’s plenty else to love – you might get the message to go for a visit. And even while you’re out there, you might find yourself remembering the skies from the movie. Which might be one way, in the spirit of Carter Frazier, to find yourself.

Our Review of ‘Jersey Boys’ at Hobby Center

By HOLLY BERETTO

Before those denizens of Jersey Shore took over our TVs and made a mass-market splash for everything from self-tanners to scents (all apologies to my sweet second-cousin, DJ Pauly D), there was another Jersey bunch creating a storm in the rock and roll tea cup. And, in another in an endless stream of musicals that string together a bunch of hits (think Mama Mia, Rock of Ages, Movin’ Out et al) hinged on however thin a plot, Jersey Boys tells the story of The Four Seasons. They’re the ‘60s sensation that was never out of the Billboard Top 20 from 1962 through 1967 and charted three straight number-one hits, introducing us to Sherry and reminding us that big girls don’t cry and imploring guys everywhere to walk like a man.

The show bounced into the Hobby Center amid a swirl of candy-coated pop lyrics and fun, flirty melodies that predictably brought the audience to its feet. And a good time was had by all.

That’s the short version. The longer one, is that Jersey Boys makes for the musical equivalent of an E! True Hollywood Story, with less jump-cut editing and vastly more heart. Each member of the group, lead singer Frankie Valli, keyboardist /vocalist /lyricist Bob Gaudio, bass guitarist Nick Massi and lead guitarist Tommy DeVito takes a turn telling the tale of how this ragtag bunch of star-wannabes went from singing on Jersey street corners and seedy lounges to becoming a 1960s hit machine. Along the way, marriages crumble, gambling debts accrue, there are breakups and make ups; but through it all, there is the music – and a brotherly loyalty to each other that consumes nearly everything in its path.

Jersey Boys excels when it’s ebullient, tossing out chart-topper after chart-topper in rapid-fire succession, showcasing the four-part harmony of the cast, Brad Weinstock (Valli), Brandon Andrus (Nick Massi), Jason Kappus (Bob Gaudio) and Colby Foytik (Tommy DeVito). The arrangements here are darker than Baby Boomers will recall, lending a little heft to songs that danced along like so many puppy-lovelorn teenagers. Beneath that, where the demons lurk, the show is thinner, though it tries really hard to bring gravitas to counter all the levity.

Weinstock is a terrific Valli, his voice ringing in falsetto up above the rest of the team, and Kappus lends a stabilizing force – both in song and acting – to the storytelling as Bob Gaudio, especially up against the pugnaciousness that is Foytik’s Tommy DeVito. Watching the tension that swirls around the inevitable arguments over lyrics, structure – even the band’s name – turns out to be more captivating than you’d ever imagine.

Klara Zieglerova’s industrial scaffolding set acts as a blank canvas, easily evoking everything from Vegas hotel suites to recording studios, although the projected screen shots above it that occasionally resemble Roy Lichtenstein prints don’t add much. Jess Goldstein’s costumes perfectly capture the polish of The Four Seasons’ (and the mid-1960s) look, and Howell Binkley’s lighting occasionally steals the show, especially during “Dawn (Go Away),” where we go from backstage to rock concert with the flip of spotlights.

Make no mistake: the fun here is always going to outweigh the flaws. So what if “My Eyes Adored You,” Valli’s first solo hit that charted in 1975, is used entirely out of context and chronology? You get to hear Weinstock sing it with sweet sincerity. Sure, the vignettes of mobsters and messed-up teenage daughters seem dropped into the storyline just to have something in between songs. What does that matter when they’re spaced around “Sherry” and “Let’s Hang on to What We’ve Got?” It’s a ride you’re just happy to be along for. By the end of it all, as you’re walking out of the show, you will inevitably hear yourself saying, “Oh, what a night.”

 

Our Review of TUTS ‘Man of La Mancha’

By JOHN DeMERS

In the same way The Crucible funnels 1950s Cold War paranoia through the Salem Witch Trials, Man of La Mancha funnels what I’d have to call 1960s idealism through one of literature’s most enduring and endearing idealists, Don Quixote de la Mancha.  The result, which seems both brief and spare compared to today’s blockbuster musicals from the marketing and merchandizing departments at Disney, is a reminder of what a long way a “little” can actually go.

Man of La Mancha was either the first or second musical I ever saw on Broadway, in November 1970 – yes, that’s 40-plus years ago – and I’m convinced that Fiddler on the Roof was the other. With all the musicals from any era that have disappeared, it intrigues me that the first two I saw (or chose to see, more accurately) are still alive among us. Fiddler lives on as a great movie, of course, as well as the occasional stage revival. La Mancha became a movie too, though a less memorable one, and is now being revived by Theatre Under The Stars at the Hobby Center. Based on two historical periods no longer our own, the Spanish Inquisition and the 1960s, it seems more than current enough to merit our attention.

The original set design’s single bow to majesty was the heavy stairs that are raised or lowered into a dungeon by clanking chains, letting the powers-that-be in Spain (namely, the Inquisition) come and carry off prisoners for interrogation and probable torture. One of these prisoners, on the day we visit the dungeon, is the writer and actor Miguel de Cervantes, who has (we gather) been scribbling away at a thick stack of pages about a “knight errant” named Don Quixote. The  tough, angry and violent prisoners sharing the cell threaten to burn the manuscript that arrives in a trunk unless the “new kid” tells them a story in his defense. Thus, Man of La Mancha’s play-within-a-play is deftly and believably established.

The TUTS production captures perfectly the tragi-comic dynamic of the Don Quixote yarn. The old man is indeed a bit nuts, though today we’d surely have longer, more scientific names for his various dementias. He sees giants when there are only windmills, he pictures a world of honor, sacrifice and glory; and in this tale, most of all, he imagines a virginal model of womanhood where only a strumpet from the streets stands before him. No, you are not Aldonza, my lady. I know you in my heart, and you are… the fair Dulcinea. We, of course, enlightened realists that we are, see only Aldonza.

So, in this dungeon waiting to be interrogated, Cervantes the writer finds inspiration and courage to face his trials in the story of Don Quixote, his own knight errant. And we, who are privileged to watch him find those things, find them also within ourselves. Don Quixote remains one of the quirkiest heroes on one of the quirkiest hero’s journeys in all of Western culture.

Directed with spirit by TUTS artistic director Bruce Lumpkin, the current production hews close to its stark and dramatic forebears, with Cervantes and his fellow prisoners “building” the Quixote narrative from objects they find at hand and, naturally, portraying all the characters. Special kudos go to choreographer Michelle Gaudette, for finding so many ways and places to insert flamenco, since the intense dance style that came to Spain with the Arab conquest remains one of the most “Spanish” things we know this side of paella.

The book by Dale Wasserman – a true and fully realized play, not just a storyline to hang a bunch of songs on – places a huge burden on the actor playing Cervantes/Quixote, since for him it’s most of the way to being a one-man show. Broadway veteran Paul Schoeffler does a fine job with the acting, from middle-aged Cervantes to senile Quixote, and on to the timeless ideals both men come to embody. Schoeffler’s singing voice, however, is solidly placed in the pop repertoire, certainly lacking the heft of Richard Kiley in the original and especially the thunderous operatic bass-baritone of Brian Stokes Mitchell in the most recent big-budget revival.  Composer Mitch Leigh and lyricist Joe Darion gave their man one hell-of-a-song, “The Impossible Dream,” and it takes more than a dramatic bit of pop styling to impale our hearts upon its vision.

Michelle DeJean, an HSPVA grad who later taught at TUTS’ Humphreys School, is a wonderful Aldonza, banging out the strumpet’s sex-charged bookends “It’s All the Same” and “Aldonza” while slowly coming to realize that the pure Dulcinea of the old man’s dreams is indeed the truest self she carries within. Josh Lamon shines as Sancho Panza, Quixote’s comical squire and sometimes-reluctant enabler, as do Tom Alan Robbins as the Innkeeper/Governor , Michael Brian Dunn as the Barber and Laurent Giroux as the Padre. Longtime TUTS standout Michael Tapley makes a solid contribution to the ensemble, along with the cast’s other locals: Ceasar F. Barajas, Danny Dyer, Julia Krohn, Katelyn Johnson and Kristin Warren.

TUTS Photos by Bruce Bennett

Our Review of TUTS’ ‘Camelot’

By JOHN DeMERS

Each night that Robert Petkoff steps onto the Hobby Center stage to portray King Arthur in Camelot, he has some intimidating royal shoes to fill. After all, Richard Burton handled the role on Broadway early in his career and returned to it late in life, and honey-voiced Richard Harris looked sufficiently wounded to handle the close-ups in the big-budget movie version. Both men were exemplary British actors, and Harris sang compellingly enough to later enjoy his own Top 40 hit slipping and sliding through the notes of “MacArthur Park.”

In the new Theatre Under The Stars production, Petkoff shows himself unintimidated by (though apparently aware of) his predecessors. One of the tricks of staging a classic like Camelot, it seems, is being a little different from what came before but – under pain of death – never too different. Petkoff’s acting is convincing and likable (a big deal when you have to balance idealism with a personality that’s as likely to call for “Merlin!” as some scared, immature men might call out for “Mama!”) By the time Petkoff’s Arthur has created Camelot as an unprecedented kingdom of law and civility, and especially by the time he has loved and lost his queen to his favorite knight, he makes sure we care deeply about what happens to this guy.

Long before Broadway had “songbook” or “jukebox” musicals, Lerner and Loewe pretty much gave us one in Camelot. It’s just that they wrote all the songs. We already can hum most of them, from the title ditty that’s so well used at the start and again, so movingly, at the end to the lovely, often-overlooked “How to Handle a Woman.”  “C’est Moi,” a love poem by Lancelot to himself, reminds us just how smart and acerbic Alan Jay Lerner’s lyrics could be and how little new was needed to create Gaston in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Still, as though in penance for having too much fun at his expense, the creators give Lance “If Ever I Would Leave You,” which original knight Robert Goulet was probably still singing on his deathbed.

There are magnificent moments throughout this Camelot, directed and choreographed by Richard Stafford with a set and some costumes from the Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre, and many of the best happen when Arthur and his Guenevere are onstage together. From their endearing accidental meeting in the forest (yes, Arthur is hiding from his future bride while Guenevere is running away from her future husband!) through their almost-mutual creation of the kingdom to their almost-shared suffering as it all comes crashing down, Petkoff and Margaret Robinson are wonderful together. Her singing of the “Julie Andrews songs” like “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood,” “The Lusty Month of May” and especially “I Loved You Once in Silence,” is terrific as well.

As Lancelot, Sean MacLaughlin brings less physical heft to the role than some others but makes up for it with his rich, rounded baritone singing, while in Act II Adam Shonkwiler is Lance’s virtual evil twin as Arthur’s bastard son Mordred, who hates and sets out to destroy the lofty notions Camelot is built upon. Though all of the show features dashes of wry humor, two important roles run on the stuff: Merlin as played by local veteran Charles Krohn and old King Pellinore portrayed by Broadway’s Tony Sheldon. All in all, the humor is perfectly balanced with romance and tragedy in this production, and the whole thing moves along briskly. After all, you really never want “one brief shining moment” to feel like it goes on forever.

TUTS Photo by Bruce Bennett

Our Review of HGO’s New ‘Showboat’

By JOHN DeMERS

At first blush, Showboat seems one of those artifacts of the Old South that neither deserves nor is likely to be heard again – a Song of the South without benefit of cuddly animated animals. Yet as happens so often in opera and/or musical theater, great music and a loving heart lift it above dozens of similar works to give us a gift that glimpses the eternal.

Last night, at the opening of Houston Grand Opera’s dazzling new co-production, anybody with a brain and especially with a heart could step through the visions of “darkies” on the Mississippi to sense the same metaphors that always inspired Mark Twain – not to mention the work’s single grandest song, “Ol’ Man River.” The production turns a deft hand to all the best and worst impulses from our shared history, to inspire rather than offend. As the company that, in the late 20^th century, gave perfect pitch to both Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Joplin’s Treemonisha, HGO is the only opera company I want singin’ and dancin’ on the levee.

So rather than quibble, let’s simply state: Showboat was not written as an opera. Unlike either of those two other works, it was in no way a lofty aspiration to show the world (meaning Europe) that America could produce “grand opera.” It was written as a Broadway musical – even worse, a Broadway musical in an age that tossed out frothy stage shows (and also movies) that no one should ever stage or have to watch again. Yet with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II – before he found Richard Rodgers and changed the world – the entertainment product called Showboat was, and still is, as good as the genre can get.

What’s intriguing here, even after film versions in the 1930s and the 1950s, is what a full-on opera production brings to this tale. First and foremost, it brings a much larger orchestra than any Broadway show is likely to have, which in turn gives us shimmering rollercoasters of glorious sound. As conducted by HGO artistic and music director Patrick Summers, the orchestra never sounded better with Verdi, Mozart or Wagner than it does with Kern. On many numbers, filled with hip-swaying, jazz-tinged, almost-New Orleans rhythms, Summers looks like he’s having the time of his life.

And then there are those “opera voices.” While not always a fan of the “Birgit Nilsson Sings Harry Nilsson” style of crossover album (and yes, I made that one up), I admit that many of Kern’s best numbers in Showboat take on new dimensions when baptized with opera.  The love duets “Make Believe” and “You Are Love” achieve a ringing intensity seldom heard, since love duets are one of the things opera does best. The torch-song anthems “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” and “Bill” keep their breathy splendor while reaching musically toward something a bit more highbrow. And yes, of course… “Ol’ Man River” allows very bass Morris Robinson as the typically first-name-only “Joe” to bring down the house whenever nobody else is singing something.

The cast assembled by HGO (mostly opera singers, except for one guy with Dr. Frank’N’Furter in The Rocky Horror Show among his credits) is first-rate. Soprano Melody Moore is terrific as Julie, the tragic mixed-blooded figure who disappears oddly in Act II but leaves a huge impression of sadness whenever she’s around, as is mezzo Sasha Cooke as the young woman named Magnolia. Early on, in fact, I found Cooke’s full, mature voice inappropriate to what seemed an ingénue, but as many years pass during the show’s narrative, you might say the character grows into the voice. Tenor Joseph Kaiser shines as bounder-with-a-heart-of-gold-and-ridiculous-name Gaylord Ravenal, and so does Lara Teeter in the lovably high-energy comic role of Cap’n Andy, Magnolia’s father and master of the Cotton Blossom.

Every aspect of this production is as lovely to look at as it is to hear: the sets by Peter J. Davison, the decades’ worth of historical costumes by Paul Tazewell, the luminous lighting (more along the Mississippi in Act I than in Chicago in Act II) by Mark McCullough and the deliciously folk-inspired choreography by Michele Lynch. For once with an HGO production, dancing is one of the highlights, borrowing moves from all sorts of African and African-American traditions. As director, Francesca Zambello does a marvelous job of keeping things moving – indeed capturing the intimacy over great chasms that blacks and whites often experienced in the Old South. She understands deeply the interplay of light and dark, the shifting emotions of love and loss, that mark our time here set against the river’s timelessness.

HGO Photo by Felix Sanchez

‘Show Boat’ Sails onto HGO Stage

By HOLLY BERETTO

When Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat premiered on Broadway in 1927, it ushered in an entirely new era for American musical theater. Prior to Show Boat’s realistic displays of racism in America and the fallout faced from loving the wrong man, theatergoers were treated to the fun frivolity of operetta and a parade of musical revues.

Based on Edna Ferber’s novel of the same name, Show Boat changed everything.

So, if you’re looking to see one of the touchpoints for the American musical, you’re in luck. Houston Grand Opera mounts a new production of the show, opening this Friday. And if you’re thinking, “What’s an opera company doing presenting a musical?” HGO Artistic Director and Music Director Patrick Summers offers a primer:

“Show Boat is a unique hybrid work for the musical stage, that sits directly between what became the great era of American musical theater, and the grander European operettas that proceeded it,” says Summers, who is conducting the production. “Show Boat is best revealed today in an opera company with a great orchestra that is the same size that Kern would have encountered in his career, and great singers with radiant and beautiful voices which were the style of singer in that era, and a production that is on the scale of any grand opera.”

It’s an epic piece following the lives of those living and working on and for the Cotton Blossom, a riverboat that sails along the Mississippi. The action follows nearly 40 years, from the opening scenes in the Gilded Age of the lat 1880s to the pre-Depression in 1927. The musical that gave rise to the classic “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” Show Boat tackles American themes in a distinctly American voice. Summers says audiences will have no trouble connecting with the show’s messages.

“It tells the story of a single mother who chose the wrong partner, but yet had a very passionate relationship for a time with that partner, and that is an ongoing story of human kind.”

He says, too, that it offers a window on a world that’s lost to us today. “Now we bridge rivers and they are just encumbrances for us to get to the other side, but in the era of the great show boat, rivers were the source of everything, and Show Boat tells that story in a remarkable way, and this is a work in which the music tells the story to a far greater extent than one encounters in most musicals.”

A co-production with Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera and Washington National Opera, Show Boat is directed by Francesca Zambello, who made her American directing debut at HGO in 1984 with Fidelio, and is renowned for her work in both opera and theater. The cast features several singers making their debuts on the HGO stage, including Sasha Cooke, Joseph Kaiser, Lara Teeter, Melody Moore and Morris Robinson.

Its very hybrid nature should appeal both to opera lovers who enjoy the richness of opera singing, as well as those who may never have been to an opera but are familiar with Broadway musicals.

“Our production of Show Boat will display voices that naturally radiate and fill a large space with minimal assistance from amplification, quite unlike the experience of many musicals of the current age, which are amplified like rock concerts,” Summers says. “Show Boat is everything from the grandest of opera singer to musical theater ingénue warbling to vaudeville and of course dance music in the style of the wonderful 1930s musicals that Kern wrote for RKO’s films for Astaire and Rodgers.  So what you have in Show Boat is an extra wide range of musical and performance style, and an opera company can really deliver that.”

Photo: Houston Grand Opera

Review of ‘Love Goes to Press’ at Main Street

By JOHN DeMERS

Remember when men were men and women were spunky? Martha Gellhorn, reduced in her lifetime to fame as the third of four Mrs. Ernest Hemingways, not only remembers it. She was it.

Over three foreign wars in quick succession, while winning Hemingway away from his second wife Pauline and then losing him to his fourth, another war correspondent named Mary, Gellhorn chalked up an impressive series of journalism firsts, bests and exclusives that earned her the professional and personal jealousy of her troubled writer husband. She also, from one assignment to another, struck up a gal-pal friendship with another reporter named Virginia Cowles. The two would eventually craft a stage comedy based on their experiences covering wars together; and whatever minor success the play achieved during their lifetimes, those catching the current production of Love Goes to Press at Main Street Theater will think it deserves a good deal more.

These two resolutely spunky heroines come across as both ahead of their time and profoundly within it. They lack any and all awareness of a political movement known as women’s liberation, yet they almost thoughtlessly embody its major principals. Their very careers, achieved against both odds and male opposition, are a sotto voce call to the barricades. All the same, they want mostly very traditional things for their lives:  to meet a terrific guy, go home and get married, get a house and have babies. They are, we would say now, deeply conflicted over what they want out of life. Then again, who (male or female) isn’t?

As played with high spirits by Crystal O’Brien and Elissa Levitt, Jane and Annabelle are the distaff side of a Hollywood “buddy picture,” though happily more like Hope and Crosby in the “Road” series than like Gibson and Glover in “Lethal Weapon.” They talk about guys, put on or take off clothing, put on or take off makeup, and talk about guys some more, all mixed with occasional funny-cynical zingers about life in day-to-day journalism. Considering that Jane and Annabelle are Gellhorn and Cowles in fun disguise, it’s no shock that the narrative falls on them.

Intriguingly, two recognizable elements of Hemingway in real life are spread over the women’s paired love interests: his competitive envy and swiping of reporting scoops going to Annabelle’s ex-husband, correspondent Joe Rogers (well played by another Joe, Kirkendall) and particularly his “my woman” possessiveness going to Major Philip Brooke-Jervaux, tossed out with a Scottish-Yorkshire brogue by Joel Sandel. The major, who runs the PR office for correspondents at or near the front lines in this part of Italy, represents a certain kind of man who must turn up in every woman’s romantic history – the kind who says, “I’ve got you in my incredible life now; surely you won’t be needing one of your own.”

In addition to the fast-paced direction by Mark Adams, set design by Jeffrey S. Lane, lighting by Eric L. Marsh and spot-on World War II costumes by Main Street artistic director Rebecca Greene Udden, the entire cast deserves the ovation it receives. Special kudos go to Philip Hays as pompous British journalist Leonard Lightfoot and to David Wald as lovable, world-weary, hilariously drawling newsman Tex Crowder, who apparently never found copy in a typewriter he couldn’t steal. Love Goes to Press is an exuberant romp through a piece of history few of us think about anymore, by two women who lived it fully.

Main Street Theatre photo: Elissa Levitt and Joe Kirkendall

Review of ‘Les Miserables’ at Hobby Center

By HOLLY BERETTO

When the newly imagined, 25^th anniversary production of Les Misérables blew into the Hobby Center, shaking the rafters and bringing the audience to an almost simultaneous standing ovation Tuesday night, a small, snarky part of me wondered if we were cheering for the cast, the show – or our own love of the show. Twenty-seven years ago, Les Misérables swept across the earth with towering music, a cast of seeming thousands, and a production scale that made audiences collectively gasp at its scope.

This is a show that broke records, launched careers and caused rock-concert-like lines around theaters all across the globe. It is still the world’s longest-running musical, a testament to its enduring themes and rich music.

This new production keeps all of the elements that give Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil’s  send up of Victor Hugo’s classic tale of love and redemption its real soul – but the new staging takes something away that made it gusty and grand. Anyone who’s ever seen Les Misérables will notice immediately –and likely miss keenly – the absence of a massive turntable upon which the musical, well, turned. But we’ll come to that.

From the very first downbeat, this Les Misérables whisks the audience along in the epic tale of the convict Jean Valjean (Peter Lockyear), imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread to save his starving sister’s child, and Inspector Javert (Andrew Varela), whose vendetta for Valjean causes him to hunt the man across nearly two decades. At its heart, Les Misérables is about the ripples we make in life, how one life touches another and how love is always the answer, regardless of the question or sacrifice. And Valjean’s life ripples forth to touch so many others: Fantine (Betsy Morgan), a factory girl forced to prostitution; her young daughter Cosette (Lauren Wiley), whom Valjean raises as his own; Marius (Max Quinlan), who wins her love; even the unyielding Javert.

The sheer singing talent is superb. Lockyear delivers Valjean’s odyssey from convict to upstanding citizen with humanity and grace, and his poignant moments, such as Act II’s achingly lovely “Bring Him Home” are as affecting as his grim determination to eclipse the clutches of the steadfast inspector. Varela’s Inspector Javert is a force to be reckoned with, especially in his two stand-out moments, Act I’s “Stars,” which sent actual shivers down my spine, and the scene in Act II where he must re-think everything he knows about this prisoner he’s pursued. Quinlan sings Marius with wonderful youth and hope, a distinct difference from any Marius on any recording of the production, where the tendency is toward over-emoting. And the award for realism in performance clearly goes to Morgan, whose Fantine fairly dazzles with the pain of loss. In fact, there’s a much more realistic – and less melodramatic – element to this Les Misérables, and great credit goes to directors Laurence Conner and James Powell for making it so.

Other cast standouts include James Zannelli as the Bishop of Digne and Jason Forbach as Enjorlas, leader of the student revolution. The innkeeper Thénardier and his wife (Timothy Gulan and Shawna M. Hamic) are generally played campy and ridiculous; here they’ve been toned down and are slightly more sinister, an excellent choice as it aligns them more closely with their characters in the original text. “Master of the House” is still a drinking-song-cum production-number, but it’s a trifle watered down. And Briana Carson-Goodman as the Thénardiers’ daughter Eponine does some lovely things with her harmony in “A Heart Full of Love” and her duet with Marius, “A Little Fall of Rain.”

And therein lies the rub. Much of the production seems watered down, but it’s not the fault of the cast, who are definitely talents to watch. There’s a loss of levels without the turntable, and much of the action feels cramped. The projection screens, inspired by the paintings of Victor Hugo, are stunning and the lighting spectacular (both put to tremendous great use in Act II’s sewer scenes), so tremendous kudos to lighting designer Paule Constable and Fifty-Nine Productions, which realized the screens. But the barricade scenes lack dimension with the turntable gone.

In many ways, the barricade and the production force that made it so was another character in the show, and the choice to remove it rankles. Another choice made in this leaner Les Miz was cutting nearly half an hour from the original running time. Bits of dialogue are gone, verses of songs truncated. The result is that you’re whisked along, without ever having the opportunity to stop for breath, to contemplate what just happened, to savor the sweep and devastation, to let your heart recover from one tragedy before stumbling on to the next. (The transition into Fantine’s Act I “I Dreamed a Dream” is particularly horrifying.)

If you’ve never experienced Les Misérables, it’s still a musical of great power and great pathos. It thrills and inspires and moves one to tears. It is, after all, a show about who we are: the flawed and the flailing, struggling as best we can to live our dreamed dreams, to climb to the light. It is an anthem to rising above injustice, and about how love and faith are all we leave behind – and all we possibly ever need. You’ll hear the people sing, all right, but I mourn the empty chair at the empty table where this production began.

Review of Stark Naked’s ‘Body Awareness’

By JOHN DeMERS

Stark Naked Theatre’s season-opening production of Body Awareness is that hat trick of a production: skillfully chosen, sensitively directed and masterfully acted. It is one quirky bucket of weird that also hints at the universal and timeless with every breath it takes.

As directed by Stark Naked co-founder Philip Lehl, Annie Baker’s comedy-drama about life in a small New England college town serves up one juicy surprise after another. Since all the characters are smart and witty, that means all Baker’s dialog gets to be those things too: a largely unforced series of scenes that usually put any two of the play’s four characters in a room to talk about stuff, punctuated by the public comments of one character, an extremely “liberal” college psychology professor introducing guests at the school’s annual Body Awareness Week. That character alone is worth the price of a ticket, since she’s forced by her job to talk about human history and relationships even though she seems morally outraged by virtually everything that happens within them. Still, miraculously, the character is neither 100% cartoon nor entirely unlikable.

So… the college professor Phyllis (played wonderfully by Pamela Vogel) is a lifelong lesbian in a committed relationship with Joyce (Kim Tobin), a high school teacher who was married earlier, giving birth to a son. That son Jared (in a remarkable performance full of tics, outrage and hilarious non sequitors by Matt Lents) seems quite a handful, since he lives in the house with them at age 21 and may or may not have a condition called Asperger’s, indeed may or may not be what he invariably calls a “retard.” Still, things work more days than not – until, in that grand Chekhovian tradition, somebody else shows up.

Frank, a good-looking straight man with a wicked wit and no small ability to cut through carefully orchestrated BS, shows up with his photography exhibit for Body Awareness Week and even stays at the women’s house. Unfortunately for all this chemistry, Frank takes black-and-white pictures of naked women, ranging from girls to senior citizens. Joyce declares the photos beautiful, liberating and clearly, from early on, fantasizes about posing for him. Phyllis, predictably, sees every act of exploitation of women and other minorities since time began in every snap of Frank’s shutter.

Body Awareness seems to understand and even like each of its four characters. Drake Simpson fills Frank’s shoes with particular skill, letting us believe he might be a pervert or at least might be doing something perverted. Yet he’s smart, charismatic and exactly, at times, what Jared needs more than anything, a real live actual male. The pivotal scene in which Frank tells Jared what he needs to do to grow up is wildly off-color, hilarious and true. The fact that a woman wrote these lines makes it her own nuanced but angry plea after no doubt meeting and/or dating “boys” who have refused to do so.

As in Chekhov, there may or may not be anything life-changing happening within this play’s uninterrupted 90 minutes, all made painless to watch by sets and props by Jodi Bobrovsky and lighting by Clint Allen. It’s the little moments that seem to matter in Body Awareness, the little shifts and temporary standoffs, that mark our race’s wobbly stumble toward being, and occasionally even acting, human.