By JOHN DeMERS

As a card-carrying member of opera’s Old Chestnuts (big thanks here to my late father, who made me invariably think of them as that), Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata has many reasons for being produced worldwide, year after year, and indeed century after century.

For starters, it’s one of the art form’s rare stories that everybody can believe and invest in. Though set in glittering Paris of the 1800s, it portrays elements of romantic love that most have experienced in their own lives. According to opera history, Verdi himself was experiencing a similar story just as he was setting Alexandre Dumas’ La Dame aux Camelias to his own brand of stirring, passionate, lyrical music. Maybe it helped. For another thing, La Traviata’s front-and-center role of courtesan Violetta Valery has a wonderful way of creating divas, the kind based on art instead of attitude.

That, more or less, is what happened last night at Houston Grand Opera’s moving (if intellectually strained) production. In that age-old showbiz tradition, Russian-born soprano Albina Shagimuratova walked onto the Wortham Center stage as a singing actress, and left it close to three hours later as a star. All members of the cast received enthusiastic applause, especially since many understood that tenor Bryan Hymel had been called in to take over the male lead something like three days earlier. But that unique Texas blend of classy “Brava!” and hootin’ and hollerin’ was reserved for Shagimuratova, who has been embraced as “local artist” since her days with HGO Studio.

Despite barriers thrown up by British director Daniel Slater, last seen here with Lohengrin in 2009, this Violetta was everything one should be, both dramatically and vocally. She seemed alternately filled with bravado and vulnerability, a woman who seems to know she’s dying more than in some productions but who reacts to this and rages against it with heartbreaking intensity. For once given coloratura fireworks that paint character rather than simply show off singing, Shagimuratova displayed an almost-breakable wonder in each and every note. Her Act I anthem, “Sempre libera,” was a showstopper. And by the end, as Violetta breathes her last in the odd manner Slater  devised, no one watching could doubt she truly loved this young man Alfredo, that she made the sacrifice she makes for him out of love, and that she prays God will thank her with the forgiveness she seeks with a checked past but a pure, penitent heart.

Born in New Orleans but a veteran of opera houses across Europe, including La Scala in Milan and Covent Garden in London, Hymel delivered a convincing presence to the role of Alfredo, his sufferings at the hands of his life’s great love very close to the surface. When, on her deathbed, Violetta prays that he will find a beautiful young girl and marry her, it was all the audience could manage not to shout “No!” right along with him. Hymel’s singing was impassioned and technically first-rate, a particular joy in his Act I “Brindisi” drinking song and his duets with Violetta. Giovanni Meoni was terrific as Alfredo’s father, Georgio Germont – though his balding head made me nostalgic for the tufts of hair sprouting from a crumpled hat that were  the late Robert Merrill’s signature in the role. Meoni took second to nobody, however, when singing his famous lyrical invitation for his son to leave a life of sin and return home, “Di Provenza il Mar.”

Now, about Slater’s direction… It’s starts out cinematic and logical enough, using the brittle sighs of Verdi’s overture (brilliantly drawn out by music director Patrick Summers) as a present frame for a past narrative. In movie terms, this opening dissolves into an extended flashback. Yet within that completely effective and non-intrusive storytelling trick, Slater intrudes again. And again. And again.

Unsatisfied with flashing back, or even giving Violetta a lookalike ghost to haunt her with approaching death and the occasional camelia, this director from time to time paints the flashback as being driven half-mad by the woman’s fevers. Her ever-celebrating friends, in this production, slink and slither around ballrooms in ways that are interesting as choreography but not helpful, and even Alfredo himself gets caught up in some kind of hallucination later on, a fantasy about matadors and bulls. At least Slater got the second part right.

By the time Violetta is due to collapse and die, she walks instead across the open room and disappears “into the light.” New Age coolness, to be sure. Yet in the process – and really, this is what’s wrong with Slater’s device – it steals precisely what we in the audience need to see and need to feel. Any production of La Traviata, even one that turns its soprano into a star, needs to end with a lover weeping over the beloved body in his arms, not with just another guy sitting alone on a couch.

Photos by Felix Sanchez: (top) Shagimuratova and Hymel; (bottom) Shagimuratova and friends.

By JOHN DeMERS

To say something is “like an opera” is another way of saying it resembles the cruel and often deadly succession of English kings and queens through a period that lasted, well, a very long time. After all, even here in Texas, we don’t typically have our exes beheaded.

When it comes to Henry VIII, of course… not so much. Donizetti’s opera Anna Bolena, which opened at Lambert Hall last night as produced by Opera in the Heights, is the composer’s breast-beating Italianate take on the fate that befell Anne Boleyn, who historically appears in Henry’s list of wives between Catherine of Aragon and Jane Seymour. Anne was indeed beheaded after a trial on a jumbled-up and probably made-up hodgepodge of charges weaving adultery into treason, with maybe a bit of witchcraft for good measure. Yes, the saga is “like an opera.”

Unfortunately, Anna set in England is mostly an old-fashioned opera, lacking even the weird fascination of the same composer’s Lucia di Lammermoor set in Scotland, with its heroine’s justly famous mad scene. In case you’re wondering, you know an opera is “old-fashioned” when the surtitles showing the lyrics in English either stay the same or, as though out of embarrassment, disappear from the screen altogether. This means the singer is repeating the same words over and over, mostly to show off a host of the composer’s trills and tricks. This habit had largely disappeared from opera by the era of Puccini and the verismo composers who came after him.  Any four-year-old with a crayon could trim 30-40 minutes out of this three-and-a-half-hour running time with nobody in the audience being the wiser.

On the other hand, and it’s a big one, this is Donizetti we’re talking about – one of the most tirelessly pleasing and surprising composers to ever come out of Italy. Every time you’re about to throw in the opera-tolerance towel, you realize that some of the most beautiful music with some of the most haunting harmonies you’ve ever heard is slipping through the cracks. You listen suddenly, listen and are amazed. There are too many of them and they go on too long, but the solos and duets in Anna Bolena are terrific. And even they are outdone by the series of quartets, quintets and sextets in which characters sing their souls simultaneously with music that stops your heart.

While still-new Opera in the Heights artistic director Enrique Carreon-Robledo has plenty to work with here, and he does, wonderful stage director Brian Byrnes has to make the most of what he’s given. Sure, the history is big and bold, but the opera itself is frustratingly static, without a lot of clear or passionate steering currents. Let’s just say that at no point in the opera could I think of a better way to stage a scene than the way Byrnes did it, even if I might wish the scene itself had gone away. Byrnes’ efforts got solid support from scenic designer Rachel Smith, costume designer Dena Scheh and lighting designer Kevin Taylor.

With Opera in the Heights’ tradition of double-casting some leads, not one but two “local girls” get to shine in the role of Anna. Camille Zamora from Houston, a wonderful and expressive singer who’s even more beloved for her annual Sing for Hope fundraisers, makes the Emerald-Cast Anna seem as believable as she can – though the unsympathetic victim’s role the libretto gives her seems at odds with history’s conniving and manipulative Boleyn. It’s a good bet that Emily Newton from Lake Jackson will enjoy similar success with the Ruby Cast.

Eric Kroncke is an imposing Henry VII in all performances, his basso edging toward profundo – or maybe that’s just in the monarch’s job description. Also memorable in the Emerald are Sandra Schwarzhaupt as Jane (here, Giovanna!) Seymour and tenor Lazaro Calderon as Anna’s probably-lover Lord “Riccardo” Percy. Bass Daymon Passmore is something of an Oh! Regular, and in both casts he is super as Lord Rochefort. His duets with tenor Calderon on opening night were true highlights.

Top photo by Shannon Langman: Zamora and her ladies. Bottom photo by AlysonToups: Passmore and Calderon.

Broadway Across America, Hobby Center through Jan. 15

By JOHN  DeMERS

Surely, those who watched the cheeky old Addams Family TV series, which aired in appropriate black and white from 1964 to 1966, never imagined it would someday be a big-bucks Broadway musical. Then again, the same can be said about those who read that newspaper comic strip during the Depression – you know, the one about the spunky redheaded girl and her dog. And Annie seems to have done okay as a musical too.

The point here is not that anything can be turned into a Broadway show with enough money, though the worst offenders (like Disney) would have you thinking so. The point is that once you reach a certain age, an updated, slightly more cynical and hip version of what you used to laugh at seems one of the best tickets you could ever buy. Thus, we have a New York-savvy version of the Charles Addams-inspired yarn heading out on tour through what New Yorkers see as the provinces, and no doubt packing ‘em in at each stop.

The musical on display at the Hobby Center offers many bits and pieces from various TV episodes, plus a few borrows from the series of terrific films starring Raul Julia as Gomez and Anjelica Huston as Morticia. Add those lustrous names to John Astin and Caroline Jones from the small screen, and the two stars now singing and dancing in Houston have quite a legacy to contend with. And, of course, to milk for all its worth. Handling the Gomez role launched on Broadway by Nathan Lane, Douglas Sills shines a bit more brightly than his counterpart, Sara Gettelfinger – though her cleavage is more daring than any displayed by either the TV (of course) or movie Morticias. In fact, part of the show’s suspense, for many, must involve the concept of wardrobe malfunction.

As the romantic Latin lover, Sills is clearly drinking the Kool-Aid left by both Astin and Juilia: he is wild-eyed and lustful at all times (seldom in entertainment history has so much lust been directed by a man toward his wife!), plus he wears the same kooky grin whenever the couple turns “normal” expectation on its ear – a big part of the fun. In Addamsville, all things dark, painful and feared, starting with death itself, become glorious, welcome and even longed-for. Many a laugh comes from this playful inversion, while Sills shines in his otherwise not-very-interesting songs and especially in the tango-meets-bolero-meets-flamenco number he gets with Morticia near the show’s end.

Broadway veteran Martin Vidnovic is always great to watch, even as the boring, grouchy, judgmental husband to Crista Moore’s flaky, ever-rhyming wife, both from someplace called Ohio. See what I mean about a “New York-savvy” show? When they turn up at the creepy Addams mansion in Central Park to meet the parents of the girl their son likes, the confrontation of lifestyles is worthy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which the Eisenhower era drops in on the transvestite ‘80s. Brian Justin Crum does what he can with their son Lucas, while Cortney Wolfson turns Addams daughter Wednesday into an impressive, torch-singing Broadway belter. Who’d have thunk it?

Pippa Pearthree is fine as Grandma, as is young Patrick D. Kennedy as Wednesday’s torture-loving brother Pugsley – a chubby stand-in for all other boys tortured in one sense or another by their older sisters. And Tom Corbeil as Lurch contributes a properly hulking presence and a stirringly operatic bass voice. Though he has big shoes to fill after manic Christopher Lloyd in the movies, Blake Hammond gives us a funny, lovably insane Uncle Fester. He also makes the most of some bigtime schtick inspired by his love of the moon, spinning off quick, get-it-if-you-can references to Debussy’s most famous harmonies and Ralph Cramden’s signature line from The Honeymooners.

By JOHN DeMERS

To watch any play by Anton Chekhov, written as they were at the turn of the 20^th century, is in some ways to witness the turn of the 21^st. Not only was Theater of the Absurd, coming into its own a half-century later after the globe’s nuclear trauma, foreshadowed in these quirky characters’ endless non-connecting conversations, often about nonconnecting. So are, arguably, the tireless self-absorption, non-commenting “comments” and non-replying “replies” of Facebook and Twitter.

Therefore, when we see one Chekhov character barely emerge from a long soliloquy about his or her broken dreams, only to have another step forward and announce to no one, “I am so very happy right now,” we of the 21^st century should feel at home.

These are thoughts that come to mind – that are, in fact, unavoidable – watching the Classical Theatre Company’s first-rate production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, directed with spirit and sensitivity by John Houchin. I initially wished Classical had taken on a different Chekhov work: The Seagull perhaps, or my personal favorite, The Cherry Orchard. Yet all such quibbling faded  as we were dragged into the lives of characters of diverse ages and birthrights, all stuck together for a vaguely defined period of time in what seems a truly boring Russian country estate. There is, apparently, work that keeps the old place going, yet in true Chekhovian terms we don’t see anybody actually doing anything. In Chekhov’s onstage world, there’s apparently some kind of government stipend just for talking. And then talking some more.

The basic premise of Uncle Vanya was probably used before, and certainly has been used since in theater, movies and television. The owner of this estate – a retired academic who’s written books described as derivative, meaningless and, of course, boring – is thinking of selling the place for cash, thus potentially displacing the unmarried daughter he has from his late first wife and that first wife’s unmarried brother, known around the house as Uncle Vanya. For his part, the old professor has a gorgeous young wife, whose desirability is obvious to all male characters onstage.

Beyond that, what is there? Yet in Chekhov, beyond that, what do you need? As perfectly acted by the ensemble cast led by veteran Philip Lehl, characters careen into and off of each other through scene after scene, emoting, pronouncing and longing – heavy on the longing. There is, as in Shakespeare, utter chaos for most of the play, followed by a certain order and an uneasy peace. The writing is lovely as ever, filled with striking allusions and intensely observed details. As has often been said, Chekhov’s “other job” as a physician armed him well for the clinical nature of his best writing. Clinical, but with a big heart.

Lehl is magnificent as the title character, lamenting all he’s given up now that he’s old (he’s 47!), but not averse to taking a last stab at happiness with the Professor’s young wife, a role in which Tracie Thomason proves his delicious foil. The woman’s morals stand between her and a fling with Vanya, but not so much between her and a fantasy with a young “radical” doctor who ignores other patients to spend more and more time around the house. David Matranga is the perfect Chekhovian here, making huge pronouncements about life, love and forests (a recurring, intriguing metaphor) but then invariably undercutting himself with something like “but maybe not” or “perhaps I’m simply insane.” Chekhov’s characters step willingly into any spotlight that will hold them, but they’re never comfortable there for long.

Eva Laporte delivers a sterling performance as Sonya, the unmarried daughter who for years has loved this doctor from a distance, while Carl Masterson brings ample sputtering and dithering to the role of the senile, gout-ridden Professor with the young wife and the country estate he’s hoping to unload. Yes, hilarity ensues. It really does. Yet thanks to the master’s touch, it’s a kind of hilarity that’s never far from life’s disappointments, resentments and numberless dead ends.

Uncle Vanya, Thursday-Sunday through Jan. 22. TBH Center, 333 S. Jensen.  www.classicaltheatre.org.

Photos by Jan Saenz: (top) Philip Lehl and David Matranga, (bottom) Tracie Thomason and Eva Laporte.

By SARA E. DeMERS and AMANDA C. DeMERS

After our review last week of the ongoing Alley Theatre production of “A Christmas Carol – A Ghost Story of Christmas,” we’d like to show you the other side of the coin. In addition to Dickens’ holiday classic, the Alley is once again presenting a second holiday production, David Sedaris’ “The Santaland Diaries” on the more intimate Neuhaus Stage.  This one-man show chronicles the author’s true and sometimes comedically horrifying experience as a worker in Macy’s SantaLand display in New York City. 
 
As a 39-year-old struggling actor, the main character seeks out a job as an elf in this world-famous holiday display and is reluctantly exposed to overly-enthusiastic elfin management, parents who care more about the perfect holiday photo than the fact that their child is terrified of the rotund, bearded man in red, and Santas who seem to be incapable of breaking character – even in the Macy’s employee cafeteria.
 
As a one-man cast, company artist Todd Waite reprises his role as “Crumpet the Elf” in a high energy and sometimes physical performance that keeps the audience completely engaged throughout the hour-long show.  Locals will get a kick out of some of Todd’s one liners and gestures doing what we collectively identified as “channeling Sheldon Cooper” – Houston native Jim Parsons’ character on the hit show “The Big Bang Theory.”
 
Although David Sedaris first broadcast his essay “Santaland Diaries “ on NPR in 1992, the plot resonates more than ever now in 2011.  The Alley’s production references the current recession, joking that most of this year’s elfin workers are the unemployed staff of Lehman Brothers and other failing financial institutions.  This isn’t the only script-change that long- time fans of the piece will note; the production also pokes fun at the currently downtrodden Houston Rockets and the hell that is eastern Lubbock. 
 
The audience was a well-rounded group of high schoolers, couples on date night and Houston’s most established.  All may have been seeking a break from the traditional Holiday fare of cheery yet cheesy that we are all spoon fed during 24-hour marathons of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  Instead, audience members enjoyed hearty helpings of anti-Christmas humor with a whopping a side of sarcasm.
 
The show runs November 30 to December 31, Tues., Wed., Thurs., and Sat at 7:30 pm; Fridays at 6pm and 9 pm; and Saturdays and Sunday Matinees at 2:30 pm, and is approximately 1 hour long with no intermission.

By JOHN DeMERS

The Alley Theatre hedges its bets each holiday season by presenting its fairly traditional version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in tandem with David Sedaris’ wildly irreverent Santaland Diaries – the first filling the huge theater upstairs, the second filling the smaller space down under. Oddly but delightfully, many Houstonians now have a holiday tradition of seeing both shows – the first more likely with the kids.

We’ll be checking out Santaland starring Todd Waite next week. This time, we’ve got to report that if you’ve loved Christmas Carol at the Alley the past few years, you are certain to love it again. With company stalwart James Black in the director’s chair, rather than onstage, the update originally created by Michael Wilson comes off as surprisingly un-stodgy. Some of that, of course, comes from sly bits of attitude that go for an easy, arguably cheap sitcom-level laugh. But neither at the show’s important conclusion nor at any juncture along the way does such license undermine the hard lessons Dickens is teaching. If anything, license seems to set the hard lessons in relief, making them feel harder still.

As most understand by now, even if they’ve read only Oliver Twist from the Dickens shelf or seen only the Lionel Bart musical Oliver, the author was militant in his commitment to the poor. There is no record that Dickens himself ever “Occupied” anything, but he surely would have been tempted to. The now-familiar emotional journey of one Ebeneezer Scrooge through the revelations of three ghosts on Christmas Eve doesn’t teach him a thing we don’t all know to be true. And really, as what Scrooge decides to do is personal rather than political, it comes off as heartwarming-with-an-edge. In other words, profoundly human, profoundly real.

For those who’ve seen TV versions of A Christmas Carol featuring everybody from Mr. Magoo (my childhood favorite) to Mickey Mouse, the darkness and even scariness of the Alley production might come as a shock. Still, the story has to be one of literature’s first cases of “scared straight,” since the threat of dying alone, despised and purposeless is what turns Scrooge around. Presumably, nothing less would have worked. An extra set of ghosts garbed in eerie white, still carrying the instruments of their murders, joins the spirit of Jacob Marley chained to a very real-seeming hell as near constant reminders of what this author saw in the afterlife for those who don’t live and give in the present one.

The Alley cast, led by Jeffrey Bean as Scrooge, seems largely unchanged from last year – as in, why tinker with a very good thing? This is a perfect role for Bean, mean, small-minded and sniveling through all but the last few minutes, then hysterically joyful at the end. Other standouts of a near-flawless performance include James Belcher as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Chris Hutchison as Tiny Tim’s genuine and loving father, the famously overworked and underpaid Bob Cratchit.  David Rainey is back again too, as Marley’s ghost and, even more memorably, done up in wig and Victorian dress as Scrooge’s bizarre housekeeper, Mrs. Dilber.

Alley Theater photo: Jeffrey Bean and James Belcher

By JOHN DeMERS

I was lucky enough to see the Beatles perform live twice – at City Park Stadium in my hometown of New Orleans on Sept. 16, 1964, and at Suffolk Downs in my father’s hometown of Boston on Aug. 18, 1966. The fact that these two concerts came from their first U.S. tour and their last was never lost upon me.  So much had changed in the world during those two short years; and when it comes to music, most of what had changed was because of the Beatles.

Now, thanks to the Broadway touring company of Rain (with only two more shows today at Houston’s Hobby Center), I might actually consider saying I saw the Beatles perform live three times. And, in all seriousness, the Boys have never sounded better.

At heart, the show is a two-plus-hour concert by a Beatles tribute band – and, yes, I know, there are a lot of those. I caught one called Revolution on a cruise ship once, and it was scary how much its “John Lennon” looked the part even in the bar after the show. Houston’s own Fab Five plays some amazing Beatles music, though I do hate it when they play other people’s stuff from the ‘60s around the edges. Impressed as these listening experiences invariably leave me (I was in a band as a teenager and tried to play Beatles music the minute it hit the radio), it must be broadly doable to lots of musicians.

Rain brings two things to the Hobby Center that most tribute concerts don’t or can’t. For one thing, the four guys playing the Beatles – Steve Landes as Lennon, Joey Curatolo as Paul, Joe Bithorn as George and Ralph Castelli as Ringo – work harder at their characterizations than the norm. It is a Broadway show, after all. Most tribute bands do something to act or sound like their “characters,” but these guys take the acting seriously. The show’s program makes it sound like they’ve been at this since the ‘80s or even the ‘70s, so they’ve got each role down to nuances by now.

Secondly, the show features Broadway-style production values: evocative lighting and terrific costumes from all major phases of the Beatles’ career (including that rarely seen quasi-military get-up from the Shea Stadium concert in 1965), plus an eye-popping series of time-capsule montages of silly TV commercials, newsreels from historical events, and a colorful nod to mind-altering drugs. No part of this is more impressive than the scratchy, black-and-white, and thoroughly iconic newsreels of the Beatles themselves, but with the actors you see onstage inserted somehow into the frames. John, Paul, George and Ringo – say hello to Forrest Gump!

As Rain began to near its end, after a delightful jam session the Beatles themselves never did publicly (“We Can Work It Out,” “In My Life,” “Girl,” “Mother Nature’s Son” and a wild hoedown-ification of “I’ve Just Seen a Face”), I found myself thinking about what isn’t here – and probably should never be here. Though the faux-Boys do seem to grow a bit older through the show, they never grow any older than the day each song was created. Marriages and divorces are left out, not to mention an extremely bitter breakup during which each Beatle recorded separately and left it to the studio to paste things together. Most of all, there is absolutely no reference to the cancer that took George from us, or the late-night bullets outside the Dakota that silenced the seemingly unsilenceable John. There is certainly no mention of the fact that these two guys are dead.

Looking around me, past two of my own daughters, to all the people of several generations bouncing where they stood at their seats and singing the ”Na-na-na” to “Hey Jude,” I understood suddenly what Rain really is. It’s a chance for us to grab hold of human history, including our own lives, and rewrite it all with a happy ending.

By JOHN DeMERS

For many years, the late Horton Foote was known as the “Chekhov of the South”; and if there were any Chekhovians other than me in the audience at the Alley last night, they’d know immediately why that was. Dividing the Estate, a production that was born for Broadway and has imported most of that cast,  brings to the South (to a fictionalized version of Wharton, Texas, no less) much of what was funny, tender and bittersweet about Chekhov’s plays portraying the fading landed gentry of czarist Russia.

Another of Foote’s plays has been compared to the Russian’s Three Sisters, but Dividing the Estate is definitely The Cherry Orchard. An air of change and likely doom hangs over the Gordon family as their matriarch Stella, magnificently played by Elizabeth Ashley (who has a long history of greatness with Tennessee Williams roles as well), issues pronouncements about what will and won’t become of the family “fortune” after she’s gone, while 92-year-old servant Doug dodders about the house between stops to rest. As played by Roger Robinson, Doug is the South’s answer to Chekhov’s tired and near-senile serfs, who still did what they did but had no clue if they’d have a role in the new Russia forming around them.

Around these two aging emblems of the past, as in Chekhov, Foote has grouped at least two younger generations. Occasionally, especially early on, their ages and familial relationships are unclear, even with all those Deep South nicknames like “Brother,” “Sister” and of course “Sissie,” instead of their given names. Several characters are called “Mama,” including Stella’s daughter Mary Jo by her husband Bob. Families are all about how people are related to each other, but as in Russian dramas with their patronymics ending in “ich” and nicknames that all sound like “Misha” or “Sasha,” it can be hard to know who’s really on first.

The Alley production taking over every inch of the Hubbard Stage is a single, open complex of well-appointed rooms in the Gordon family’s mansion on 5,000 acres, which seems idyllic until we learn about other families dumping their land for much-needed cash and letting stores and fast-foot outlets clog the highway. There is much talk of Texas Gulf Coast weather, along with what seems Houston in the 1980s, complete with plummeting oil prices and a disastrous real estate depression.  As further evidence of an otherwise unmentioned time, there’s amazement over new-sounding VCRs and glimpses of a very large cordless phone.

Still, what matters in Dividing the Estate is not what’s timely but what’s timeless. The reluctant fading of a ruling generation, the painful and often angry interplay of siblings, the resentment of a thousand slights from the past and the fear or a thousand new setbacks to come – all these and more are sure to come up whenever the South’s extended families get together, with alcohol or iced tea, with spouses and memories of those Texas exes. Foote looks into it all, going for laughs without having to work up a sweat, yet also embracing his characters and their numberless foibles with a literary edition of tough love.

All members of the cast from Broadway are convincing here, starting with the playwright’s own daughter Hallie Foote as Mary Jo and moving through James Demarse as her faltering real estate husband, Nicole Lowrance and Jenny Dare Paulin as their two daughters, and Maggie Lacy as Son’s school teacher-fiancee Pauline. Joining Robinson among the “help,” Pat Bowie as Mildred and Keiana Richard as young Cathleen bring their Broadway chops to the Alley stage. James Black is the only familiar Alley face in the crowd, making quick work of Louis, a.k.a. “Brother,” the family drunk who, we learn slowly, is having an affair with a teenager who works at the local What-a-Burger.

As directed at a lively yet loving pace by Michael Wilson, Dividing the Estate is one delightful evening of theater. There are many ghosts that inhabit a stage whenever the house lights go down. And when the late Horton Foote is serving up delicious lines along with what the South loves to call “dinn-uh,” I’m convinced that Anton Chekhov has to be one of them.

Photos by Jann Whaley: (top) Hallie Foote and Elizabeth Ashley; (bottom) Maggie Lacey and Devon Abner.

By HOLLY BERETTO

In what proves to be one of the best productions I’ve seen at Opera in the Heights, Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment (La Fille du Regiment) fairly skips across the stage. It’s a sparky lark of an opera, the story of the orphan Marie (soprano Ashlyn Rust, Ruby Cast, in her role and Opera in the Heights debut), who is raised by a regiment of French soldiers, who falls in love with the peasant Tonio (tenor Gennard Lombardozzi, also making his Oh! debut) and discovers she’s the niece of a marquise. Set in an alpine enclave at the end of a battle during the Napoleonic wars, it’s two hours of fun and frivolity.           

The story follows Marie and Tonio as they declare their love for another and are torn asunder by the Marquise de Berkenfield (the marvelously funny and impressive mezzo-soprano Nancy Markeloff) and ultimately helped back together by same said Marquise and Marie’s beloved regiment, led by Sulpice (bass-baritone Stafano de Peppo, easily the best voice of the production).           

Donizetti’s rippling score fairly shimmers with effervescence, as Rust’s loveably goofy Marie alternatively prances and pouts, and her Tonio defiantly declares his love. The singing is capable and pretty. Rust is at her best in “Il faut partir,” her final aria in Act I. But she moments of brilliance and rippling singing in “Chacun le sait,” the regimental song and “Salut a la France,” making her a young soprano to watch as her voice ripens and her acting matures. 

As Tonio Lombardozzi tosses off the nine high Cs of “Ah, mes amis” without much fuss, earning well-deserved applause. But it’s his “Pour me rapprocher de Marie” in Act II is much better done, with more pathos and spirit. Both Markeloss and de Peppo are fetching and funny, by turns, and their trio with Marie in Act II (“Le jour naissait dans la bocage”) can only be described as joyful.           

Brian Byrnes directs his cast with aplomb, and their grand gestures and campy blocking only add to the comedy. Rachel Smith has taken Oh!’s sets up a notch here, offering a lovely landscape of a little mountain town as a backdrop and a serviceable façade of a building that stands as both the regiment’s stopping place and is later turned into the Marquise’s garden, complete with lattice work and wicker. Enrique Carreon-Robledo, in his first season as Oh! artistic director conducts the orchestra with grace.           

It’s nearly impossible not to have a good time with Daughter of the Regiment. Donizetti’s score is happily bounce and go, and even its tender sides provide more wistful smiles than grief-stricken tears. Between Marie and the music, there’s very little not to love.

Photos by  Isidro Urena (top) and Gwen Turner Juarez (bottom).

By MARLENE WEYAND

Max McLean’s stage production of C. S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” played to sell-out crowds in Houston this past weekend.  McLean’s voice, coupled with his robust acting abilities, made for a superb Screwtape.

McLean and Jeffrey Fiske adapted and directed for the stage one of Lewis’ masterpieces, this one set in the pit of Hell, which chronicles the training of a young demon named Wormwood by his “uncle” Screwtape, also known as His Abysmal Sublimity Screwtape.  The “Letters” of the title include correspondence between nephew and uncle regarding one of Wormwood’s assignments: a young man on Earth identified as the Patient. The production is narrated by Screwtape in its entirety.  The summaries of Wormword’s progress are woven into the narrated instructions of his uncle, epitomized in the book’s keenest observation: “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

The power of Lewis’ work is in its raw observation and the readers’ subsequent realization that there is a spiritual plan by unseen forces whose most powerful tool is keeping Truth from humans: “It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”

The sheer power and enormity of Lewis’ work was somewhat diminished, however, by the fanciful set and the playful Toadpipe (respectably played by Karen Wright), Screwtape’s secretary.  McLean and Fiske risk trivializing Lewis’ work with these distractions.  C.S. Lewis  fans don’t need it and those looking only to be amused may possibly leave saying “So what?” Only needed for their brilliant adaptation is a chair and a spotlight; Lewis’ profundity to penetrate the minds and spirits of the audience will do the rest. 

The Houston audience comprised two worldviews: the intellectual and the Christian.  From the feedback during the post-production informance with McLean, it appears the intellectual was grateful for a comfortable characterization of the incredibly evil Screwtape, with lots of tittering and snickering at the protagonist’s observations. Regarding the Christians’ expectations (trying to avoid falling into the trap of spiritual pride that Screwtape aptly pokes fun at when speaking of Christians), I will say that their worldview is not of this world. Subsequently, the straining of Lewis’ work may have left them, shall we say, hungry for more.

“Screwtape” was produced by The Fellowship for the Performing Arts and Walt and Anne Waldie and William and Bridget Coughran.  The production was inspired by Tony Lawton’s stage adaptation.   For more information, http://www.screwtapeonstage.com/aboutus.