STAGE ROYALTY

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    One of the Lion King touring companies has come to town, and, surprise, even though it’s a commercial musical, I like it:

Everything you've heard about it for the past nine years is true: The Lion King is a tremendously inventive, visually arresting and often musically compelling stage show that can captivate adults as well as children. And the further it strays from the Disney animated movie, the better it gets. … The stage musical takes the movie only as a starting point; in the music hall, we still have to put up with fart jokes and Elton John, but we are introduced to new elements in every department that take the story's African setting and culture seriously. Experiencing this in the theater is a far richer experience than watching the Disney animation on a DVD.

UNASKED QUESTIONS 2

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    Arizona Daily Star reporters and their editors continue to parrot press releases instead of digging up facts independently. Example: Monday’s article announcing that “Animal care officials hope new rules will put an end to the breeding of wolf-dog hybrids in Pima County.”
    The proposed rules—at this writing, the Star hasn’t bothered to follow up this story with a report on the Board of Supervisors’ action—arise from ignorant hysteria about the nature of wolf hybrids. The problems with these animals have more to do with bad owners than with animal nature, but attach the word “wolf” to anything and people grab their rifles. (Note: There has never been a properly documented wolf attack on a human being in North America.) The excuse for banning wolf hybrids is that the rabies vaccine has not been proven to be effective on them. Well, actually, it has been proven effective, but the USDA has refused to approve the vaccine for political reasons. Furthermore, rabies vaccines have been used successfully in wild wolf reintroduction projects in North America and Africa, so what’s the problem with hybrids?
    You won’t learn any of this background from the Star article. Instead, reporter Erica Meltzer relies on three sources with very narrow perspective: Pima Animal “Care” Center veterinarian Bonnie Lilley, local Humane Society director of operations Pat Hubbard, and Linda Searles of the Southwest Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Foundation. Searles deals with wild wolves, hardly any hybrids, and so isn’t really qualified to speak on this subject. Hubbard can talk about wolf hybrids being abandoned at her shelter, but her remarks have to do with owner malfeasance, not problems with the animals themselves.
    Then there’s Lilley, the primary source, who gets to state her case without the reporter providing background or finding an opposing source (which would not be difficult). Had reporter Meltzer dug into her own newspaper’s archive, she would have noticed an article from Aug. 28, 2005, reporting that “Problems at Pima Animal Care Center involving animal care and customer service have prompted officials to replace the facility's manager. Veterinarian Bonnie Lilley was hired as manager last winter, but she has been criticized by animal rescue groups that said she is thwarting adoptions and failing to properly care for animals. … Rescue-group leaders said that when they are being offered animals, they were often very sick and have languished untreated at the center for days.”
    In other words, Lilley was removed from her administrative post for incompetence and obstructionism. Presumably she is also the person who recently withheld treatment from Clay, the dog found stuck up to his neck in a muddy wash, during the pound’s standard three-day countdown to euthanasia. Perhaps Lilley was too busy masterminding her wolf-hybrid witch hunt to tend to the animals in her care.
    Oh, and here’s an interesting tidbit: “There have been at least three cases nationwide in which vaccinated wolf-dog hybrids contracted rabies, Lilley said.” Three cases over how many years? Which vaccine was used? Are there any cases during the same period in which vaccinated domestic dogs contracted rabies? Without any of that information, Lilley’s “three cases” are statistically meaningless.
    Why does Meltzer allow this source, with her unscientific agenda and questionable integrity, to go unchallenged? Because the Star lets its reporters get away with repeating, rather than reporting.

STREAMERS

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    Burt Schneider, afternoon host over at KUAZ-FM, files this report:

Alan Campbell [a former KUAT-FM morning announcer] checked in the other day. He's programming five streaming stations on the internet from his hideout in Monterrey, Mexico. He says one of his stations has just passed the 10,000 listener mark. I don't remember which one, but you can check out his offerings here.

REPUTATIONS

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    A couple of weeks ago I tweaked Terry Teachout for letting Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s affiliation with Nazism color his opinion of her artistic work. I’m happy to report that Terry has now laid out a quite sensible guide to evaluating the sins of artists. Here’s his first point:

Be historically aware. Judging the sins of the past by the standards of the present can be a shortcut to self-righteousness. Make sure you have all the facts—and that you understand their historical context—before passing sentence. Robert Conquest, author of "The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties," was reluctant to condemn the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko for toadying to his Soviet masters. "We might yet accept," he explained, "that in Soviet circumstances [Yevtushenko's] record, with all its shifts and compromises, may merit, on balance, a positive assessment." As Mr. Conquest knew, Soviet artists like Yevtushenko and Dmitri Shostakovich lived in fear of being jailed—or shot—for saying the wrong thing. Are you sure you would have done differently in similar circumstances?

HEAR HIM ROAR

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    In the latest Tucson Weekly, I go to the trouble of previewing a show you probably already know whether you want to see or not:

    Nathaniel Stampley is the king of the jungle, and he is a just and noble king, so he thinks you should be warned about a few things before you visit his realm.
    Stampley's domain is the theatrical version of The Lion King, a story that started out as an animated Disney movie but is now in its ninth year as a live Broadway show. It's also been showing in London for a very long time, and in Hamburg and in Tokyo, and two companies are currently touring it around the United States. One of them—Stampley's—will settle into the Tucson Convention Center Music Hall for a substantial run Aug. 17-Sept. 24.
    Stampley plays Mufasa, the story's initial lion king, who is killed and usurped by his brother, who in turn is brought to justice and replaced by Mufasa's son, the story's ultimate lion king. But right now, it's Stampley who is lounging on his jungle throne. Actually, he's sitting on a hotel bed between shows in Houston, on the phone to tell the Tucson multitudes what they should and should not expect when they come to witness the end of his reign. …
    "It is very different from the film," he says of the live musical. "From the opening number, you realize this is going to be somewhat like the film, but entirely different. We are people on a stage, so we can't exactly re-create the animated film." …
    All well and good, but there's another important point that Stampley wants you to know: He is not James Earl Jones.

PLUTO

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    If the new definition of “planet” just devised by the International Astronomy Union (IAU) is ratified next week, Pluto will retain its status as a planet after all. A diminutive planet, though; a new category, “pluton,” is being created for Pluto and three other bodies in the solar system that are just a bit undernourished to count as full-strength planets. (“Pluton” sounds more like a particle than a planet, doesn’t it?)
    I have nothing against Pluto itself, but I was hoping that it might be downgraded simply so we could divorce British composer Colin Matthews’ “Pluto” movement from Holst’s The Planets. Around 2000, conductor Kent Nagano unwisely asked Matthews to “complete” Holst’s suite with a piece depicting the one planet that hadn’t been discovered when Holst wrote the original work. This was a very bad idea for several reasons. First, The Planets has nothing to do with astronomy; as I’ve been belaboring for years, and as Tim Mangan pointed out in a recent concert review, The Planets is about astrology. That’s why, for example, Mars is presented as “The Bringer of War”—that’s the planet’s astrological association. (If Holst had intended a tour of the physical solar system, wouldn’t he have written an “Earth” movement?)
    So not only is Pluto conceptually out of place, but tacking anything onto the end of The Planets is a horrible idea; extra music ruins that long, ethereal, death-haunted fade-out of the women’s chorus at the end of “Neptune.” Besides which, Matthews’ music sounds nothing like Holst’s. Matthews’ “Pluto” deserves to be heard, but only as an independent piece.
    If you want to learn about the solar system, turn not to music but to various reader-friendly books by my astronomer friend William K. Hartmann.