THREE FOR THE SHOW

posted by James Reel

    It’s review time again in my little space in the Tucson Weekly. This time, I have a trio of plays to cover. Some highlights:

    Of three theater openings last week, one show focused exclusively on women with big hair, while another dwelled on men with big aspirations under their G-strings. The third integrated two men and a woman in a way that shows neither gender to particular advantage, but it did so more fully and honestly than the other two productions, which aspire to be little more than light entertainment. …
    For the most part, the UA's Arizona Repertory Theatre production serves Betrayal well. Director Samantha K. Wyer has made sure her three actors play something more than self-absorbed twits. Well, yes, they're British, so that particular element is inescapable, but there are honest human feelings behind the twittage. What we don't quite get is an authentic Pinter rhythm, those bursts of short, staccato lines separated by uncomfortable pauses. …
    The Full Monty is a commercial show by the standards of Arizona Onstage Productions, which is more closely associated with the deeply felt, nonpandering works of William Finn. Still, if the company finds it necessary to replenish its bank account with a crowd-pleaser, at least it's not compromising its principles. Like most Arizona Onstage shows, The Full Monty deals with issues of sexual identity and the nature of friendship and family without tripping over too many clichés. True, the men here can be macho pricks; the women are tough providers with a keen eye for the male thigh; and the guys are coached by a tough old showbiz veteran who could pass for Martha Raye. But they all have to sort through their strengths and insecurities in ways that seem fairly authentic, by the standards of the Broadway musical. …
    Women get their chance at Live Theatre Workshop, which just opened Robert Harling's Steel Magnolias. It's a formulaic, manipulative and therefore not surprisingly popular account of two years in the lives of women who congregate in a beauty parlor in the fictitious town of Chinquapin, La. A chinquapin is also a kind of chestnut, which is exactly what we get from Harling. I'd love to roast it on an open fire, but director Sabian Trout and her strong cast give us a production that respects the characters, as well as the intelligence of the audience.

ADDENDUM

posted by James Reel

    Former KUAT relief announcer Michael Dauphinais has pointed out to me that, as engaging as the concert announcement in the previous post may be, it neglects to mention that the singer has an accompanist, or who it is. Hmm ... Michael is a pianist who works a great deal with singers. I wonder who the accompanist might be? Not Michael, I've learned; he's busy tickling the ivories in Florida right now, and won't be back in Arizona until next month.

FUN CONCERT ANNOUNCEMENT

posted by James Reel

    Here's an announcement that local singer and actress Molly Holleran circulated among her friends recently, and was forwarded to me. It's not a formal press release, but I wish more were written in this spirit:

    I would like to invite you to a voice recital, featuring me, on Sunday, February 25 at 3:00 p.m. Come thrill to gorgeous melodies from Bach's St. John Passion, revel in the beauty of songs by Berlioz, Mozart and Tchaikovsky - try not to cringe at my Russian pronunciation - and we'll top it off with some jolly fun: Gilbert and Sullivan.
    The dear members of the Northminster Chancel Choir will host us for one of their lovely and renowned receptions afterwards, which you will not want to miss.
    The recital will be at Northminster Presbyterian Church, at 2450 East Fort Lowell Road, which is the corner of Ft. Lowell and Tucson Blvd.
    I'd love to see you there!

REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/ILYA GRINGOLTS/GEORGE HANSON

posted by James Reel

    An impassioned performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony more than redeemed last night’s Tucson Symphony concert under George Hanson, a concert whose first half was dissatisfying despite good playing.
    The trouble started right away, with a well-paced, crisply delivered performance of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain in its Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration for brass, percussion, flutes and first violins. At least that’s how it sounded, despite the visual evidence of a full orchestra hard at work. For at least the first third of the piece, the low strings lacked the heft to give the music its needed menace, and in tutti passages all you could hear from the woodwinds was a piccolo shrieking to be rescued from the sonic muck. Solos came across better, but when the orchestra played at full force, the sound turned to sludge.
    This has been a problem for the woodwinds for the past couple of seasons. Either Hanson needs to rethink his balances, or I need to abandon my balcony seat in what used to be the hall’s sweet spot.
    Aural congestion was much less of a problem as the concert progressed, mainly because of the different ways the composers themselves deployed the orchestra. Yet Ilya Gringolts’ performance with the orchestra of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 was also, if not unsatisfying, disquieting. There’s no faulting Gringolts' technique, and he is certainly a young soloist with ideas. His and Hanson’s approach to the concerto was compelling, if you don’t mind Prokofiev played in the style of Shostakovich. Gringolts’ expansive, searching treatment of the opening material set the tone for the work’s first two movements, a performance that conveyed the depressive brooding of Shostakovich rather than the contemplative mystery of Prokofiev; it’s a subtle but key stylistic difference. In the slow movement, Gringolts played one separate, dying phrase after another, surrendering to Prokofiev’s long-lined lyricism only when sent to a high tessitura. In the more upbeat final movement, Prokofiev’s mischief turned to frantic desperation. The approach was highly effective in its way, but not entirely relevant to the work at hand.
    After intermission, Hanson and the orchestra proved to understand Tchaikovsky’s Fourth through and through. On the way to the concert, my wife, unsure of the program, asked, “Are they playing the sad Tchaikovsky symphony?” I replied, “No, they’re doing the noisy one.” Many performances of this symphony merely ride on the adrenalin of the blaring fanfares that dominate the first and last movements; while Hanson and the TSO gave these passages their full due, they realized that there’s also a great deal of drama and development to be found elsewhere in the score.
    For example, the performance emphasized the swaying, sighing lyricism of much of the first movement’s material, and even in the development section’s most turbulent passages, phrasing remained highly attentive; nobody was going to be content just to blast away. Oh, the forces could muster power aplenty when necessary; at the very end, they delivered a blazing coda worthy of Yevgeny Mravinsky, and stayed together much better than Mravinsky’s Leningrad Philharmonic did some 45 years ago. Whatever reservations one might have about the concert’s first half, this performance of the Tchaikovsky symphony made it a rewarding evening.

TIN CUP

posted by James Reel

    Monday afternoon, I went down to Green Valley to read a scene from Othello for an adult Shakespeare class. The instructor declared that I was receiving no compensation for my appearance (he didn't mention that he'd bought me a sandwich and some tea for lunch), and proceeded to pass around KUAT pledge cards, hoping at least that the station might benefit from my reading. If things don't work out for me here at the radio station, maybe I can develop a career as an organ-grinder's monkey!

OPEN, SAYS-A ME

posted by James Reel

    Previews galore from me in the latest Tucson Weekly. Not enough space for ’em all, alas, so first comes a two-in-one package. Or is it three-in-one?

    Two local theater producers are thinking big this weekend.
    Arizona Onstage Productions, which usually presents offbeat shows in small venues, is moving into the Temple of Music and Art this weekend and next for its most extravagant (and mainstream) production to date, The Full Monty. Meanwhile, Chamber Music Plus Southwest is cramming two different shows into a single weekend. One, with live classical music, has Sharon Gless (of Queer as Folk and Cagney & Lacey) narrating an imagined correspondence between poet Emily Dickinson and "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind; the other, with an original jazz score by Avery Sharpe, presents Jasmine Guy (A Different World, Dead Like Me, many Broadway shows) in Raisin' Cane: A Harlem Renaissance Odyssey.

    Gavin Kayner's output as a writer includes six full-length plays, two one-acts, several shorter pieces and three screenplays. And that's just since he retired from teaching five years ago.
    As if he weren't busy enough, Kayner has formed a company--Piquant Plays Productions, or P³--expressly to mount his play Thumbs. Kayner describes it as "the story of a young man named Isaac who, stripped of an emotional and a spiritual context, loses a grip on his sanity. With the help of a psychiatrist facing his own dilemma, Isaac struggles to gain some grace by unraveling the knot of his past."
    Says Kayner, "It's an idea play, about the eternal and infernal questions we're all burdened with. I don't know the answers, and it's much more interesting to the audience if I don't. I'm trying to be entertaining and provocative, and give people something to talk about afterward--unlike The Odd Couple, which, once you've seen it, you've seen it."