The Nez at the Birch

I'm a little late posting a recap of Michael Nesmith's performance at The Birchmere. His April 17 concert was the last of his current tour, and it was a sellout, which made it fun to be in a crowd of true fans. But like the time I saw Wicked with busloads of teenage girls who knew every line, I was the outsider, the casually interested audience member in a crowd of Nez-heads.

I guess you have to address the Monkee in the room, because truthfully that's really only how I know of Michael Nesmith. Many of his fans were clearly Monkees fans, and of course I remember the show well. He was the quiet, wry, serious, intelligent Monkee. I don't remember if he was my favorite or not; I might have liked Davy back in the day, because Davy was the cute Brit who once played the Artful Dodger in Oliver!, like my beloved Jack Wild. But I digress.

Links: 

Washington Post review of the performance, by Dave McKenna

Rolling Stone Q&A, posted April 1, 2013

Couple of videos - and pardon the bobbing-eating-drinking-talking silhouette in the foreground. It's all part of the Birchmere experience. *g* 

Also on YouTube:
* First encore, Tonight
* Second encore, Thanks for the Ride

There was a lot of love in the room, and the Nez responded with a great deal of warmth. It was clear that he enjoyed what he was doing. What I loved most were the stories, or rather vignettes, that preceded each number. He takes you to the place where he was in his head when he created the songs, and even though he doesn't have the best voice, he has an artist's vision. It was an embracing and gentle experience. I can see why the fans love him.

I had more to say about the Nez experience as it relates to the Clay Aiken experience, but it would probably require more research and analysis. The phenomenon of having one's big-time show-biz career launched "overnight" by a wildly popular TV show is the obvious similarity. The Nez and Clay both have expressed gratitude for the experience and the lessons. But they both have moved on. They both had record-label frustrations, too. The great Nez story was about being expected to record hits, which led to his titling his next album And the Hits Just Keep On Comin'. Brilliant!

The short story is that the Nez listened to his own voice, worked with musicians he loved, and kept experimenting and growing. It's what artists do, and the audience continues to welcome it.

love, hosaa
cruisin'

Le Corsaire in the Afternoon

I knew already that ballet companies tend to put their star dancers on in prime-time slots: opening night, Friday and Saturday evening performances. So my Saturday matinee selection for American Ballet Theater's spring visit to the Kennedy Center had more to do with timing my first viewing of the classic Le Corsaire with when I would be able to see Daniil Simkin perform in it.

ABT and KenCen do a good job of listing the dance assignments well in advance for the convenience of fans wanting to get tickets on the right days. So I knew Daniil had drawn both weekend matinee dance assignments, but with different roles.

The bad news was that neither role Daniil performs this weekend is the lead, the hero (Conrad the pirate). But the good news is that Le Corsaire is structured to give a lot of dancing to the featured performers.

My Daniil draw today was for Lankendem the slave trader. It's a character role, but he gets to start dancing as soon as the curtain goes up on Act I. Yay! He also does considerable partnering with the slaves he's auctioning, particularly the second lead lady, Gulnare (today performed by Sarah Lane).

When I realized that Daniil would be playing the role of Ali the Slave at tomorrow's performance, I was disappointed that I would miss the iconic role of this ballet. It's Ali (Ivan Vasiliev, photographed by Rosalie O'Connor) on the cover of the program:

And it's Ali the Slave that you see Mikhail Baryshnikov performing during the gala montage in The Turning Point.

But as it turns out, despite the iconic status and the technical fireworks in the slave's big Act II dance, it isn't much of a role. So I was very satisfied with my Daniil dance fix today. I can simply extrapolate and imagine.

Daniil Simkin as Ali the Slave in Le Corsaire, American Ballet Theater. Photo by Gene Schiavone

And before I could even start this blog, Daniil had already blogged his own post-performance assessment: #ItWentWellButI'mKindaTired 

What a cutie!
love, hosaa

Writing "Books" That Matter

Before I get to my reflections on Round House Theatre's production of How to Write a New Book for the Bible, let me get one thing out of the way: I should have changed my Preview-Thursday subscription (which I've had for 10 years), while I had the chance when I renewed last month for the 2013-14 season. I miss the lovely couple who used to sit next to me, and now I have the loudest talkers sitting behind me.

Stupid people. My fellow subscriber who kept telling her husband how painful it was to sit through Glengarry Glen Ross in February now spent Act II of Write/Bible commenting on the "superb acting" of MaryBeth Wise, portraying the mother dying of cancer. Okay, okay, okay, I totally agree with you, but SHUT.UP.

And while I'm on the subject of rude audiences, you latecomers shouldn't have been admitted. Get here on time! I did! You make everyone wait for you, and a long show runs late on a weeknight. Ushers, please USH! You need to push, and you need to shush.

I'm clearly cranky about all this.

Back to Write/Bible: And since I'm still cranky, let me get my complaints out of the way. Something I'm really beginning to get annoyed by is reliance on narrative in storytelling. That is, the narrator (in this case the author and character Bill Cain, played amiably by Ray Ficca), was telling the story about himself and telling the audience how universal the story is (unlike the Stage Manager in Our Town telling a universal story and simply setting the characters in motion to illustrate the point).

Photo of Ray Ficca, Mitchell Hébert, MaryBeth Wise, and Danny Gavigan by Danisha Crosby.

The telling part of the storytelling serves a purpose here, which I understand is to convey the sermon message of the play (more on that in a moment). The other characters have their moments of soliloquizing, too, which means acting to the audience and not to each other. This was the entire approach for RHT's 2011 production of ReENTRY.

The other directing choice that bothers me is casting actors in multiple roles unnecessarily. As talented as Mitchell Hébert is (and fun to watch him hop in and out of characters), it was distracting to see him portraying minor female characters. Hire another actress.

Write/Bible (we are told) is an autobiographical play, which author-character Billy explains is the "Mom and Dad" play. It largely revolves around the slow death-by-cancer of the mom, Mary (Wise), who was preceded in death-by-cancer by the dad, Pete (Hébert). Billy, the younger "favorite" (but not really) son does the caregiving duty for his mother while the first son, Paul (Danny Gavigan), goes off and does what first sons do: make parents proud.

The sermon message of the play is that we are all writing our own new books of the Bible. Cain's premise is that the Bible should be viewed as a storybook and not a rulebook (I love that message) and that our families and family stories are new books of the Bible. This all matters, says Cain. We all matter. (And it is a comforting message when one is feeling particularly insignificant.)

But there were a couple of things that author-character Billy Cain couldn't see, as the teller of his own family story, which were blatantly obvious to me. The first was that his family history of cancer seemed to have no impact on his own sense of health or mortality. Yes, I could relate to his caregiving role, but when I was looking after my own mother after her fall(s), all I could think of the whole time was that this is me in 30 years.

Maybe we shouldn't tell our own stories. Maybe we're too myopic. The other thing Cain missed was the brother (and hey, is Cain not an appropriate name?). There is a big stretch in Act I where we see Paul (Gavigan) going off to fight in Vietnam. He misses one week of regular letter-writing to the family, and when he comes home, shaken up, we eventually learn why (an incident involving a battle and a buddy). Then, in Act II, we learn that he has become a teacher and is mentioned on TV when several of his former students have gone on to some kind of noteworthy success.

There's a big gaping gap between these plot points; the Act I sequence (I admit to being distracted while watching handsome Gavigan change into his Army uniform) was actually worthy of an entire play, to wit, ReENTRY. I realize the Mom and Dad play can only have so much big brother in it (enough with the Jesus, Mary, and Joseph references, thanks), but I couldn't help feeling that the big brother mattered less than the younger brother-author-character wanted to admit (that is, mattered less to him, but more to the new book of the Bible). Useful for wrapping up the sermon message, though.

Danny Gavigan, via About the Artists

Since we last saw Gavigan playing another soldier in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, it's natural to draw comparison to that performance: They were completely different. Different characters, different responses to the war and postwar scenarios and traumas. And an actor worth watching at all times.

So anyway, in Write/Bible, the dark family "secret" that would have made a compelling focus (Paul at war, Paul after war) was unfortunately buried in a subplot.

Or maybe that's just me. And of course, when invited, one thinks of one's own family books of the Bible that should be written. We all have something that needs to be said, and one day I'll try to write about my own brother's monsters and traumas and tragedies. But not yet. I'm still trying to learn from (of?) life.

love, hosaa
unsermonizing

Arts Day Off

Today was the first time I could take advantage of one of the Kennedy Center's membership benefits: a free pass to the working rehearsal for the National Symphony Orchestra. It's a 10 a.m. start time (with a be-there-by-9:45 seating deadline), which is fairly undoable in the middle of most weeks. Anyway, I decided to shuffle or defer what duties I could, and go make myself cultural.

The featured performer for tonight's concert is Emanuel Ax, which is perhaps why this morning's rehearsal was a mob scene. I was told when I came in that the upper levels would not be available, but by the time the rehearsal began, those upper tiers were required.

Emanuel Ax, uncredited photo, via Kennedy-Center.org

The first two pieces worked on by conductor Hugh Wolff were Dvořák's Symphony No. 5 and Albert's Rivering Waters, about which much more is probably in the program handed out to the mobs who pay.

Ax didn't come in until the third piece to be rehearsed, which was Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2. The funny thing was, he started warming up and playing during the intermission; people weren't paying any attention to the guy on stage, because, as you'd expect at a working rehearsal, all the musicians were in working clothes--they all looked like us! Somehow, that made it all so much more human and approachable. Ax could have been your favorite professor meeting you for coffee.

I overheard someone behind me during the intermission say that it must have been his encore piece that Ax was rehearsing just then. I didn't hear enough of it through the chatter to tell what it was--only that it wasn't the furniture mover playing it. And then, when the real rehearsal began, Ax's light, lyrical, commanding touch on the Chopin piece was simply thrilling, especially the more familiar second movement. (That's the one people will be humming along with. Stupid people.)

I also didn't hear enough of the Albert piece to make much of it (bad ushering; some of us thought there was an intermission after Dvořák, and we got locked out until Wolff paused the orchestra). (And speaking of bad ushering, they need to go all Metro announcer on people and force them to move to the center of the row. In the unreserved seating scheme, the aisle seats were prime targets.)

So that was the morning's share of my cultural day. When the mobs were released into this bright, cold cherry-blossomless April day, I decided to skip the line waiting for the shuttle to Metro and hiked on up to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. It wasn't a bad walk at all, up through the GWU campus and various other institutional structures - American Institute of Architecture, Organization of American States, etc.

The Corcoran has been going through some hoo-hah about its future and all that, but I received the members' e-mail yesterday announcing some pretty sturdy plans: a partnership with the University of Maryland to keep the education side running and an agreement with the National Gallery of Art to display modern and contemporary works from its collection while NGA's East building is renovated over the next three years. 

The thing I like about the Corcoran is the mix of old and new, familiar and the startling. The "Next" exhibit, which I presume is the current graduating class's work, wasn't available today--I think it opens on Saturday. But I got to peek in through the door. There was this cool interactive sculpture (force-sensing resistors, micro-controller, and speaker) called the Heptachord by Gabriel Mellan:

But what really says "Corcoran" to me is my favorite sculpture, the Veiled Nun by Guieseppe Croff:

And more "sight for sore eyes" from Washington Colorist Gene Davis in Black Popcorn:

Davis's other painting on display in the grand staircase is Junkie's Curtain, and it offered this sweet sculpture an interesting backdrop:

The Sons of Gods Saw the Daughters of Men That They Were Fair, Daniel Chester French, 1923

Love, hosaa
encultured

Ebenezer VanderScrooge's Parade

One of my nerdier hobbies is daydreaming about missing scenes and filling in dramatical (dreamatical) gaps. Most recently, such a gap gaped during A Christmas Carol's many incarnations this past Christmas season. I saw a lot of them, from Mr. Magoo's to Albert Finney's.

But now that I have finally seen the stage version at Ford's, I'll focus on the Scrooge portrayed by Edward Gero, who is now playing the Scroogey Horace Vandergelder in Ford's Hello, Dolly.

So the missing scene from Dickens's Carol (and dang if I can find a copy of the book in this place) is the one that shows how Scrooge got so scroogey after he was engaged to Belle. There he was dancing in the shadows of Christmas Past, all cheery and bright, and then suddenly he's counting coins and Belle is chucking the old engagement jewelry back at him.

What happened? How did money become so important to him? Was he kicked out by the landlord? Lose big in an unfortunate gambling debacle? Get a taste of jealous rivalry with some other clerk?

And where did Belle go, never to be seen in that town again? Had she no relatives, leave no forwarding address? Are these questions answered in the book? (Don't make me re-read it. Not my favorite Dickens book in print.)

So poor young Ebenezer let his parade pass by and never looked up to see it go. Even after he found redemption, post-ghosts, there was no Belle yet available, waiting to give him another chance. Sob.

From my little chair in the Ford's balcony last Saturday afternoon, I smiled as Edward Gero got to hand his Ebenezer a second chance to catch the parade--this time as Horace Vandergelder, the Merchant of Yonkers. You know the story, so I don't need to retell it in details. While looking for a new wife (i.e., a housekeeper, not a householder), Vandergelder is beguiled into a different parade and into the matchmaker's own arms.

Edward Gero as Horace Vandergelder and Nancy Opel as Dolly Levi in the Ford’s Theatre and Signature Theatre co-production of “Hello, Dolly!” Photo by Carol Rosegg.

It's a great show. The voices are strong, the dancing is vibrant. Just all good fun. Aside from Gero, I didn't recognize the other Ford's regulars, though it seems to be a bit of a reunion for some of the players from 1776, Parade, and Liberty Smith.

I can hardly wonder why my own parade has passed me by without a trace of confetti when I spend my mind's time thusly preoccupied with fictional characters' happy endings. But I confess I greatly enjoyed ogling the eye candy that is the singing/dancing waiter chorus line of the present Ford's Dolly, and most particularly the hoo-hah-handsome Alex Puette.

Photo of Nancy Opel with Jp Qualters, Harris Milgrim, Kyle Vaughn and Alex Puette by Carol Rosegg.

Alex Puette, via ModelMayhem.com 

So why is it I am spending my daydreaming time thinking this would be a great match for my Clay Aiken? Hee! There I go again, following someone else's parade.

Love, hosaa

Matchmaking for complete and total strangers....

Edited to add (Aug. 17, 2013) that Alex is, coincidentally, performing in the same company as Clay Aiken for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat this summer. AND he posted this video, obviously filmed sometime during the above production of Hello, Dolly: