THREE ANGELS AND ONE WHO ISN'T

posted by James Reel

My theater review in the latest Tucson Weekly begins with an excuse:

Because our page count is tight, I often have to cram two reviews into the space of one. Usually, that's not a problem, but this week, we have very strange bedfellows snuggled up together: a family-friendly romp at the Gaslight Theatre, and a strictly adult drama at Live Theatre Workshop. I'll start with the family fare, and then you children can go do something safe, like play in the street, while I have a few words with the grown-ups about the other show.

Each is good in its own way, as you’ll learn here.

MASS UNAPPEAL

posted by James Reel

Douglas McLennan’s recent blog post on the failings of CNN and other cable news purveyors leads to a comment on where newspapers have gone wrong:

Rather than attract a hipper younger audience, they alienated their core readers and failed to get the kids as well. In our increasingly nichefying world, using mass-culture strategies to get bigger audiences works against you. A proliferation of sources means that people can be pickier to get exactly what they want, and general bland multi-purpose content has less and less appeal. A lesson for anyone competing for an audience these days.

It’s also a lesson, I might add, for public broadcasting. You can find the full post here.

HANK CINQ

posted by James Reel

Last night I attended Arizona Theatre Company’s presentation of The Acting Company/Guthrie Theatre’s joint touring production of Shakespeare’s King Henry V. I’m not reviewing it for the Weekly, because it will be long gone by the time the review would hit the street, and I’m disinclined to blog a full review. But I do want to call your attention to it; it’s a good production, and I don’t think tickets are selling very well.

It’s not perfect, and it never quite lives up to its initial coup de théâtre, but it’s a solid and often inventive production that attends as closely to the humor as to the stirring battle cries. Some audience members have objected to the set and costumes, but I think they’re very effective, especially for a touring production. The set is a curving faux-brick wall with sliding panels, evoking the lower reaches of a Medieval tower, and the costumes suggest both the Middle Ages and the World War I period without ever yanking the action out of the original context.

The dozen actors perform valiantly, all in multiple roles except for Matthew Amendt as Henry. Despite my overall approval, I have some doubts about Amendt—not his conception of the character, which righly vacillated between the grasping ambition of a young ruler and the charm and fear of a still boyish ex-wastrel. No, I was distracted by Amendt’s delivery, especially during the first half. The accent itself is unidentifiable, sort of Aussie-French-American, mostly American, but spoken in a way suggesting that English was not his (or Harry’s) first language: Amendt tends to stress or draw out the final syllable of a word here and there. Is he trying to emulate Elizabethan pronunciation? If so, he doesn’t go nearly far enough to reproduce that (to us) now nearly incomprehensible accent. And if this were the intent, the other actors would be doing it, too. Very strange. (Also, William Sturdevant, the very strong actor playing Fluellen, employs a thick brogue that sounds a bit more Scottish than the intended Welsh.)

I see I’ve expended more words on quibbles than praise, but I do recommend this production. It runs only through April 5. The Arizona Theatre Company Web site is not readily forthcoming with info—you need to drill down into layers I can’t link to—but you can start your search here.

LATE THEATER, GOOD CHINESE

posted by James Reel

The Tucson Weekly has a brand new site design, and here’s your incentive to take a look at it: content provided by little old me.

Two items this week. First, an article on the boomlet of late-night theater:

Five years ago, it was an experiment by a single Tucson theater; this year, it's looking like a local theater trend: provocative performances for night owls. Live Theatre Workshop made the first sustained effort at late-night programming with its Etcetera series, launched at the beginning of 2004 (see "Live From the Eastside," Jan. 22, 2004). Since last fall, two other groups have begun series that cozy up to midnight: Beowulf Alley launched LNT @ The Alley, and the Rogue Theatre is hosting the young artists of the Now Theatre in a series called Rogue After Curfew. Generally, these efforts run on Fridays and Saturdays starting at 10:30 p.m., and finish by midnight. Rogue After Curfew this weekend concludes a run of Tennessee Williams' one-acts with _This Property Is Condemned_; this Friday, Etcetera will open Anne Thibault's _I Wrote This Play to Make You Love Me_; and on April 17, Beowulf Alley will open a two-weekend presentation of Brian Hanson's _I'm Sorry I Liked You_. Success is slow to build. Rogue/Now and Beowulf Alley, which just launched their initiatives a few months ago, are still drawing very small audiences, even though the late-night performances follow mainstage shows that come close to selling out. Beowulf Alley's manager, Beth Dell, reports that the average audience so far for LNT @ The Alley is only 22, and attendance at Now's opening nights has been no better than that. But keep in mind that in early 2004, Etcetera was lucky to get six people to show up for its openings; now, for many shows, it sells out its compact Live Theatre Workshop space and sometimes has to add performances.

You’ll find the full article here. Then put on your bib and accompany me on an excursion to a hidden-away Chinese restaurant:

Sometime in the mid-1990s, Mark Salzman came to town, and we needed to fill him with Chinese food. Salzman is best known for _Iron and Silk_, a memoir-turned-movie (in which he starred) about the time he spent in China teaching English and studying martial arts. I'd fallen in with a group charged with his care during his local appearance, and we thought a Chinese meal would remind him of the good old days. But this is Tucson, where Chinese restaurants abound, but quantity has somehow edged out quality. Where could we take Salzman for a Chinese meal that went significantly beyond adequate? Somebody made reservations at a nice place tucked away on a side street a bit west of Interstate 10, and the meal greatly pleased our guest—and the rest of us. A few years later, the owners sold the business, and the restaurant went into a steep decline; even the booth upholstery started to look shabby. The last meal I had there, early in this decade, was a severe disappointment. A couple of years ago, one of the original owners, Harry Gee, regained control of the restaurant. Recently, two of my neighbors (one of whom is an American of Chinese descent) urged us to give the place another try. We did (with those neighbors joining us)—and I'm pleased to report that the establishment is back in top form.

Get the details here.

MIDDLEBROW ADVOCACY

posted by James Reel

Greg Sandow expresses my sentiments exactly:

There's a tendency, in arts advocacy, to go all middlebrow, to talk about the arts in rapturous terms, as a part of life that's inspiring and elevating. Whereas art is so much more complex than that. Some of it isn't pleasant. Some of it isn't inspiring. Some of it paints the world in dire colors. Some of it is confrontational. Some of it is difficult.

And if the arts were so uplifting, nobody who loves the arts would be a jerk.

You’ll find the entire post here.

CONCERTO GROSSO CORNUCOPIA

posted by James Reel

Here are a couple of Handel concerto grosso reviews I wrote for two different publications a few months ago ...

Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 Nos. 7-12. Martin Pearlman conducting Boston Baroque (Telarc 80688)

Handel dashed off his dozen concerti grossi published as Op. 6 in barely a month, but it’s been a full 15 years since Martin Pearlman and Boston Baroque recorded the first half of the set. Now, at last, here’s the rest of the group, and it was well worth the wait.

In 1739, Handel’s publisher, John Walsh, was eager to cash in on the popularity of the concerti grossi of Corelli and Geminiani, so he asked Handel for something in the same manner. Handel quickly complied, and made his work a bit easier by dropping in quotes from his just-completed Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, not to mention pieces by Scarlatti and Muffat. Despite the borrowings, the whole set sounds like vintage Handel, and Pearlman and his little band of string players know exactly what to do with it.

As in their recording of the first half of the collection, and their more recent treatment of the Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, the playing is quite suave. The period-instrument group easily meets Handel’s greatest challenge: conveying stateliness without stiffening up. Beyond that, the musicians can also sound light, playful, even Italianate, as in the final concerto. Throughout, there’s a suppleness that stops well short of affectation, even while Pearlman devotes great attention to such details as attacking musical paragraphs differentely from the way of attacking individual phrases within them. The only complaint: Telarc shouldn’t have taken a decade and a half to complete this fine cycle. James Reel

HANDEL Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 * Martin Gester, cond; Arte dei Suonatori * BIS SACD-1705/06 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 163:39)

Both pronunciations of the word “polish” come into play here. First, with the long “o”: Arte dei Suonatori is a first-rate Polish period-instrument ensemble that has previously recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Telemann for BIS, and made a fabulous version of Vivaldi’s La Stravaganza with Rachel Podger for Channel Classics. Now the group is featured on a BIS survey of Handel’s Op. 6 concerti, those for strings only, and here’s where the other pronunciation comes in: These are wonderfully polished performances. The solo work is nimble, the textures are clear, the tempos are lively and lithe in the fast movements and stately in the slow ones, the latter carrying a plaintive elegance reminiscent of Corelli. The interpretations are not particularly extravagant; this is—after all, Handel rather than Vivaldi—and the ornamentation is fairly restrained by current standards. Because director Martin Gester’s tempos are not hard-driven (though neither are they sluggish) and repeats are generous, the dozen works spill over to a third CD. The package is sold for the price of two, which is fine, but with performances of this quality one wants even more; I wish BIS had added Handel’s Op. 3 set and charged full price. The SACD sonics are up to the label’s usual standards, clear projection in a resonant space that gives firm support to the bass line. Good liner notes by David Vickers add to the value of the package.

At this writing, there seems to be no SACD competition for this Handel Op. 6 set, but Gester’s edition is a top choice in any format, alongside the rather more driven Andrew Manze/Academy of Ancient Music version on two conventional Harmonia Mundi CDs and the elegant Martin Pearlman/Boston Baroque version on Telarc. James Reel