TRIPLE PLAY

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    Three theatrical items from me in the latest Tucson Weekly. First, there’s an introduction to a group that’s trying to move itself out of Phoenix and into Tucson:

Joe Marshall's back in town, and he's looking for company. Specifically, he's looking for an audience for The Alternative Theatre Company, which he's transplanting from Phoenix. He's also looking for enough appropriate actors to support a full season of gay and lesbian theater.

Caught in the Net is officially a sequel to Run for Your Wife, but sometimes, it seems more like a remake. Once again, John scurries from one apartment to the other, trying to keep his households apart. Once again, it's the reluctant Stanley who must come up with one brilliant lie after another to protect John. Once again, there's some confusion about sexual identity. (This time, nobody in the play is actually gay, but Cooney does manage to get laughs out of suspicions of ephebophilia; no, this production was not underwritten by Mark Foley.)

    When I first saw Eric Overmyer's On the Verge two decades ago at Arizona Theatre Company, I hated it. The allegory about the evolution of women's roles from the 19th century to the 20th seemed pretentious in its language, arbitrary in its use of absurdity, and clumsy in its exposition and development of the three main characters.
    After a while, the only images that remained clear in my mind were poor Wendy Lehr whirring an eggbeater and indulging in vacant-eyed, Tourette-like blurtings of the word "manioc." I sincerely hoped that Overmyer wasn't planning to give up his day job writing for St. Elsewhere.
    On the Verge seemed like a substantially better play last weekend in the version by Sacred Chicken Productions, a company that shows itself only at widely spaced intervals, when actress Carrie Hill and her friends find a script they adore that nobody else is doing locally. I still can't quite understand why the Sacred Chicken folks, the always smart director Sabian Trout and theater companies across the country love this play so extravagantly, but thanks to this new production, I'm beginning to figure it out.

RESPONDING TO CRITICS

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    I’m a bit slow catching up on this, but last week oboist-blogger Patricia Mitchell pondered, as she does from time to time, what she should do when a music critic doesn’t get it—particularly when a critic makes a factual error, like crediting her for an orchestral solo she didn’t perform. Says Patty, “I never correct reviewers when they make these mistakes. Having this blog is, I suspect, enough to alienate some who write reviews, and I realize that I may never get a mention because this site here might be off-putting to some people. Correcting a reviewer is just not something I'll ever do ... would a reviewer only comment on me unfavorably if I did that?”
    Well, there are maladjusted, vindictive jerks in every profession, and I’m sure a few music critics answer to that description, but not many. I’m not familiar with the personalities of the critics in Patty’s vicinity, but I think she should try “talking back” to them.
    In the first place, over the years she’s made a point of not badmouthing people or seeming like a general malcontent. (The only person she openly criticizes is herself.) So no reasonable person is going to think she’s on the attack if she offers a reasonable response to something she’s read.
    As a critic myself, I encourage artists to respond to what I write. First, critics who make factual mistakes, no matter whose fault they may be, need to be politely corrected. Any responsible critic wants the record to be set straight. In Patty’s case, she might send a letter to the newspaper’s editor saying, “I appreciate Virgil Thomson Jr.’s positive review of our orchestra’s performance last week, but he shouldn’t have praised me for the oboe solos. Those were actually played by my substitute, Arundo Reed, who was not credited in the program.” Simple, polite, correcting an error without pointing fingers (except maybe at whoever left the sub’s name out of the program, which may have been printed before the substitute was called in).
    Now, arguing with a critic about subjective matters is something else, and probably a futile pursuit. Judging a performance involves one’s personal taste and experience, and putting that judgment into words that accurately convey the critic’s impression. Lots of variables there, and nobody’s going to win an argument about aesthetics. It might be interesting, though, to blog about why a performance turned out the way it did—not to make excuses, just to let people in on elements that affected the concert. Was the conductor especially inspring, or hard to follow? Were there problems with the parts that complicated things? Was the music unusually hard, or so easy and overfamiliar that one was tempted to play on autopilot? Most importantly, if the critic complained about, for instance, shrillness in the Rossini overture or wrong notes in the Beethoven symphony, was that because the performance followed a new edition with prominent piccolos in the Rossini or odd variants in the Beethoven? All these things are worth blogging about, and no reasonable critic should think such musings constitute a personal attack … assuming the critic ever reads the blog.

TAKÁCS GETS NOTICED

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    I assumed there'd be no local coverage of the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music's presentation Wednesday night of the Takács Quartet. But, surprise, here's notice from the Arizona Daily Star. (The accent is even going in the right direction!) It would be nice if chamber music, and I don't just mean our own concerts, were reviewed more often around here; more people might come to understand that it ain't just for snooty specialists.

FLAWED ACCENT

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    Arizona Daily Star editor Bobbie Jo Buel used to say of Spanish words printed in the paper, "If they don't have the right accent, they're misspelled." If that applies to all languages, not just Spanish, then there's big trouble on the arts page today. About the worst mistake a newpaper can make, Bobbie Jo also used to say, is misspelling someone's name. Well, the preview of Tartuffe consistently refers to the playwright as "Moliére." The accent is backwards. Thus, the name is misspelled. Come on, folks ... it's not too hard to look these things up. If the reporter gets it wrong, two copy editors and a page proofer are in line to catch the error, but nobody seems to be consulting the basic reference sources ... or has seen the name in print often enough to know which way the accent goes.

BELOVED?

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    According to the Star's preview of Arizona Opera's presentation of Verdi's Macbeth, "Revzen said the production sets a new standard for staging Verdi's most beloved opera." Does Arizona Opera general director Joel Revzen truly believe that Macbeth is "more beloved" than La Traviata, Aida or Rigoletto? Either the reporter misunderstood him, or I missed the paradigm shift.

CORRECTION

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    In my review of Endymion, I have a passing reference to last season's Rogue adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead, which I wrongly attribute to Joe McGrath. (I should have known better; I saw and praised that production.) Rogue Theatre's Cynthia Meier gently reminds me: "And just for the record, as brilliant as my dear partner, Mr. McGrath, is, it was I who adapted and directed The Dead.  Rogue that he is, Joseph would take complete credit for everything, and although his influence on the project was vast, I won't let him get away with this one." I apologize for this stupid error.
    By the way, a couple of theater people have assured me via e-mail that they have never thought of me as a "nice guy." What a relief.