GRAY AUDIENCE?

posted by James Reel

While I have your attention, here's a good article from the Los Angeles Times debunking the notion that the graying audience for classical music is either a new or tragic thing. Read the article, and you'll be looking at a fairly rosy picture. The only challenge remains how to help younger people make the transition to classical concertgoing once they have the time and money, and I don't think that will be so hard; young people are more musically omnivorous now than they ever have been. What a relief!

IN THE DARK

posted by James Reel

Well, I'm still fending off my case of sinusitis, which returned after a brief hiatus, but yesterday the doc gave me some antibiotics that should rid me of the infection once and for all. I may not be fit for air work, but at least I can point you to my latest Tucson Weekly contribution, a review of the latest Beowulf Alley effort:

In a conventional thriller, darkness means danger. The best twist in Frederick Knott's perhaps too-twisty play Wait Until Dark is that darkness works to the innocent heroine's advantage--she's blind and can easily find her way around while the bad guys flounder. I doubt that I'm giving anything away, because Knott's mid-1960s play was once a Broadway hit, has been repeatedly revived there, can be found in community theaters everywhere, and pops up regularly on cable TV in the form of a nicely edgy little movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin. The appeal of Wait Until Dark isn't what happens at the end--because it's dark, you can't really see much of what's going on, anyway--but how the characters inch their way toward that climax. Beowulf Alley is presenting a not entirely secure production of the play, but its greatest asset is what counts most: a sympathetic but slightly sharp-edged actress in the lead role.

You can read the detailed pluses and minuses here.