Juliet and Romeo

Back from yesterday's matinee of Romeo and Juliet at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre on Capitol Hill. It was a tight almost-three-hour afternoon, well paced, and I really really liked the production. Mostly. I have issues.

This is sort of a problem play for me, and the very spunkiness, intelligence, strength, and independence of the strikingly young-seeming actress Erin Weaver as Juliet made the problem all the more vivid. Juliet is too good for Romeo. She's too smart for what happens to her. It's always been a problem to me that Juliet doesn't just go off with Romeo in his banishment.

Erin Weaver, Michael Goldsmith, in Romeo and Juliet. Photo by Teresa Wood for Folger Theatre, via Facebook

Photo by Jeffrey Malet for Folger Theatre, via Facebook

This production gives her a little bit of a reason to stay: fear, in the form of the menacing ferocity of her angered father (played by Brian Dykstra). So maybe the answer is that she's too smart to run away from a father who is that determined to sell her off to his friend. One of the strengths of this production was seeing the growth of this Juliet, from nerdy, bookish little girl with a teddy bear to a passionate bride eager to begin her life as a wife.

But beyond the text (some of which was used for this staging, directed by Erin Weaver's husband, Aaron Posner), I do think that this Juliet was also too good for this Romeo (Michael Goldsmith). Just my opinion, but a feeling shared by a few of the folks in our Meetup group. I wasn't feeling the chemistry, the sense that these two were perfectly matched and meant to be. It's intangible, but there needs to be charisma, and I just didn't feel it from Goldsmith--nor, for that matter, from the Mercutio (Brad Koed) or the Tybalt (Rex Daugherty). I think they performed their roles well, but again, it's an intangible something I missed.

My eyes (and ears) went to the amazing Eric Hissom, portraying the good Friar Lawrence (as well as taking the lines otherwise assigned to the uncast chorus and Prince). He was the ghost-tiger at Round House last season in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.

Eric Hissom, via Maryland Theatre Guide

Cast, Romeo and Juliet. Eric Hissom, center. Photo by Jeffrey Malet for Folger Theatre, via Facebook

What a presence! What a voice!



So this brings me to the other "issue" I had with this production. I didn't mind the edits to the text, though I thought the accompanying exhibit out in the Folger Library's great hall was kind of funny: Titled "Here Is a Play Fitted," it seemed to be one great justification for abridging Shakespeare. There's even an exchange of letters between an actor and another early 20th-century theatrical type (producer?) agreeing that it is not possible to perform Shakespeare as written. (Excuse me?)

I'm not opposed to choices made in deference to exhausted audience members with short attention spans. The lines delivered were deliberate, clear, and clarifying. Scenes then overlapped one another, keeping the production tight and lively. So I never missed all that much of the excised text. Until the last lines.

I imagine there are few people attending a production of Romeo and Juliet willingly who don't know that the Prince is supposed to come out at the end and tell them that the tale of woe they just saw was a tale of woe. Yes, it's like, duh: Romeo takes poison in a brash romantic gesture to his dead love, only to recoil in horrific pain at the reality of that choice. Juliet then rashly thrusts the dagger into her own breast, making the same romantic choice, and likewise recoiling in horrific pain. The reality was obvious, so the recap by the Prince probably is superfluous.

But from a practical, audience point of view, that slow, silent fade out deprived me of that glorious voice of Eric Hissom one last time. I felt cheated. It also meant I didn't know when to applaud. Yes, you do need to cue the audience. Duh.

As I said, I really really liked this show. My criticisms are minor. Well, except for the last lines. I really wanted those:

A glooming peace this morning with it brings.
The sun for sorrow will not show his head.
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd;
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
Folger Theatre (Washington, DC), October 15-December 1, 2013
Directed by Aaron Posner

Cast:
Juliet: Erin Weaver
Romeo: Michael Goldsmith
Friar Lawrence: Eric Hissom (also fight captain)
Nurse: Sarah Holt (understudy for Sherri L. Edelen)
Mercutio: Brad Koed
Tybalt: Rex Daugherty
Benvolio: Aaron Bliden
Lord Capulet: Brian Dykstra
Lady Capulet: Shannon Koob
Lord Montague: Allen McCullough
Lady Montague: Michele Osherow
Paris: Joe Mallon
Balthazar/Peter/Friar John: Matthew McGee

Production credits:
Composer: Carla Kihlstedt
Scenic design: Meghan Raham
Costume design: Laree Lentz
Lighting design: Jennifer Schriever
Sound design: Christopher Baine
Fight director: Casey Dean Kaleba
Dramaturg: Michele Osherow

eta ~ funny how I just now noticed that dramaturg Michele Osherow also played Lady Montague. She wrote in a nice bit of business for herself. I never remembered that Lady Montague dies before the end of the play. The textual reference to it must have been in the masses of words left on the cutting room floor. Here, the character is shown pouring poison into her own wine cup and drinking it, then joining the ghosts of Tybalt and Mercutio (and later, Paris) on the platform above the surviving characters, overseeing their actions. I thought it was a great staging.

Funny Forum

What better remedy for the dreary November in one's soul than a farcical trip to the Roman Forum?

Catching up now with my excursion to the invited dress for Shakespeare Theatre Company's new production of the classical classic A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. In the Zero Mostel/Nathan Lane role of Pseudolus, we have Bruce Dow deftly maneuvering his girth and mirth with Jackie Gleasonesque ease.

Clearly Dow is the star to be promoted, but you know my eye is always going to seek out Tom Story in any production I attend locally (he'll be in a Round House production early next year). I should have paid more attention when the show was being put together and wormed my way into the meet-the-artists reception.

Tom Story with guest at Meet the Artists reception, Shakespeare Theatre Co. (via Facebook)

And of course Tom's performance as the high-strung ("I'm Calm") head-slave Hysterium (played by Jack Gilford in the Zero Mostel film) hit all the right points of giddy, goofy, poignant, overwrought wackiness. I just love him!

The revelation for me in this show was Lora Lee Gayer as the delightfully dim virgin Philia. She performed this role earlier this season at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, NY, alongside (coincidentally) Tom Deckman as Hysterium. (Playing my six degrees of Clay Aiken game: Tom Deckman played the Historian and Prince Herbert in Clay's Spamalot run, 2008-2009.)

Lora Lee Gayer as Philia, Bay Street Theatre (via LoraLeeGayer.com)

Lora Lee Gayer (via LoraLeeGayer.com)

Rehearsal at Shakespeare Theatre Company: Lora Lee Gayer (Philia), with Steve Vinovich (Senex). Via Facebook

I wish I had a picture showing Lora Lee's "I'm Lovely" pose--elbows out and the backs of her hands delicately cradling her cheek, with that perfectly deadpanned look of innocence. With a show that's otherwise overflowing with over-the-top performances, this oasis of utter simplicity (in every sense of the term) was probably the funniest part of the night. Stare and pose. I was roaring.

Lora Lee tweeted during the Sag Harbor run:

Lora Lee Gayer ‏@LLcoooolG
Nathan Lane came to see our production of "Funny Thing Happened.." It's like having Thomas Edison watch you screw in a light bulb.

I would guess Mr. Lane thought the performance well "screwed." *g*

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum

Shakespeare Theatre Company, Sidney Harman Hall, Washington, D.C.

Book: Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart

Music and lyrics: Stephen Sondheim

Director: Alan Paul

Cast:

Pseudolus, slave to Hero: Bruce Dow

Senex: Steve Vinovich

Domina, wife of Senex: Julie Johnson

Hysterium, slave to Senex and Domina: Tom Story

Hero, son of Senex, in love with Philia: Nick Verina

Philia, a virgin: Lora Lee Gayer

Marcus Lycus, buyer and seller of courtesans: Danny Tutigliano

Miles Gloriousus, a warrior: Edward Watts

Erronius, an old man in search of his kidnapped children: Harry Winter

Proteans: Matthew Bauman, Nick Flatto, Blakely Slaybaugh

Courtesans: Ashley Marinelli (Tintinabula), Chelsey Arce (Panacea), Ashley Blair Fitzgerald and Sarah Meahl (The Geminae), Lisa Karlin (Vibrata), Jennifer Frankel (Gymnasia)

Performed November 21, 2013 - January 5, 2014

eta 12-14-13: Thanks to STC's e-mail blast, we have a pic of Lora Lee as Philia, in her "I'm Lovely" pose:

hosaa starts practicing this in the mirror...

Haiku: untitled (dream sequence 2)

Goodbye dreams, fakers,
glad to see the back of your
Mickey Mouse ear world.

maintenance memo 2

Temporarily unpublishing posts to get rid of the phantom hits. BBL. ~h

eta Nov. 20, "active" posts republished, but I'm still getting fake hits from phantom sites elsewhere. Boo.

If you're a real human reader, thank you for stopping by.

Love, hosaa
swatting vampires

Chris Botti at Strathmore

This will go under the category of Briefly Noted. I have nothing clever or original to say about jazz trumpeter Chris Botti, except he's a masterful musician in the best way that jazz creates music. His solo work is spectacular, but his duets are inspired.

At the Strathmore in Bethesda on Thursday, he singled out the members of his six-piece band when they were featured (drummer Billy Kilson held out for his killer solo till near the end of the set). Guest artists were violinist Caroline Campbell and vocalist Sy Smith, both of whom are impressive artists that Botti let shine on their own. But when he joined them, pure magic. Caroline and Chris are so physically well matched, it was like watching Torvill and Dean. And Sy's scatting matched Chris's notes effortlessly, like they could read each other's minds.

Caroline Campbell and Chris Botti in 2011. Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images North America, via Zimbio

Sy Smith and Chris Botti with New York Pops (2013). Uncredited photo via Broadway World

The cool thing about live performances is seeing how the artists work the audience--and the stage. When the house lights went down and the band entered, Botti was ready to begin, but the stage lights weren't! He calmly called for the lights, and quipped, "We're moody, but not that moody."

The first number, "En Aranjuez Con Tu Amor," had me grinning, and my joy never let go throughout the nearly two-hour set. The Aranjuez piece, of course, is a jazz take on Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, and different enough from the Jim Hall version to remind me again that jazz is probably the most creative of all the living arts. Creativity, improvisation, is what it's all about, as Botti and band demonstrated again in their take on Miles Davis's "Flamenco Sketches."

Other standout pieces were Sting's "La Belle Dame Sans Regrets" and "Cinema Paradiso" from the When I Fall in Love album and "The Very Thought of You" from Italia. Now that I'm scanning the tracks, I don't see that he did that much other than Aranjuez from his latest CD, Grammy-winning Impressions, which I bought at the concession stand before the show (on faith, just from sampling my beloved Aranjuez). No matter, I'm hooked. I see another Christmas CD (December) heading toward my Amazon shopping cart!

Chris Botti at Major League Baseball All Star Game 2012. Photo by Rick Swig via ChrisBotti.com

You see I was good and didn't take any Botti clack. *g*

Love, hosaa

jazzed up

Haiku: Morning

Morning

Memories and dreams

evaporate, making way

as new moments wake.

-----------------------

Annotation: This is slightly revised from the version I posted on Facebook yesterday, but it still doesn't quite satisfy. Due to an unexplained shift in my REM cycle, I've been dreaming closer to when I'm supposed to wake up, so the images are lasting longer. The music and news from the radio alarm mix themselves into a dream-soundtrack, and I remember my dream images of crashing planes and refugees.

The thing about dreams and memories is that they play on the same psychic field. Am I remembering that correctly, or did I dream it? As I've gotten older, I'm finding it harder to remember my dreams. I'm finding it harder to remember my memories. I'm sad when I forget the song I composed and sang in a dream, but I'm sadder when I forget experiences that really happened. 

The time between both dreams and experiences and their evaporation is getting shorter with the amount of time ahead for new ones to wake.

love, hosaa

remembering dreams, at least temporarily.

Garden art, Strathmore Mansion (Bethesda). Credit: C. G. Wagner

The Right Planets, and Stuff

Back from last night's "Off the Cuff" program at the Strathmore, wherein Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conductor Marin Alsop was joined by astrophysicist Mario Livio (her good buddy, she delighted to inform us!) to reflect on Gustav Holst's masterpiece, The Planets. The chat and slideshow went on about 20 minutes, followed by the BSO's thrilling execution of the work. The program repeats tonight at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore.

Marin Alsop. Credit: Grant Leighton, via WGBH

Mario Livio. Courtesy of MarioLivio.com

This was my first experience with the "Off the Cuff" program, which is designed to educate audiences a bit before immersing them into the music. It speaks to the interdisciplinarians among us, the liberal-arts majors who like to know everything about everything. Marin took us on a tour of the musical and mythical stories that Holst told through his seven planetary movements; Mario tutored us on the physical matters of planetary fact, including that one of the planets (Neptune, "the Mystic") was discovered purely through mathematics.

The performance was followed by a question and answer period, but we didn't stay for that. I did have a great question all prepared, but it turned out that the performance itself answered my question:

Why was the grandest, most awesomely stirring movement, "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity," stuck in the fourth position and not used as the ending of the suite? The very natural impulse of anyone experiencing this music (especially performed live in person by real human musicians) is to burst into loud, prolonged joyful cheers. Instead, Holst ends the suite with faint murmurings from the farthest rock from our Sun, "Neptune, the Mystic." The suite thus quietly fades out in the echoes of a celestial chorus (in this instance, the Women of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society).

Mario Livio contributed high-def images of our dramatis planetae, projected on a screen above the orchestra during the program. These included a caption shown toward the end of the "Neptune" movement reminding us that our own messenger to the cosmos, Voyager 1, has left our solar neighborhood. It carries our humanity with it into the unknown. Its next "stop," the nearest star system, is 10,000 years away.

Now the music makes sense: We are left with our innate wonder, awe, and imagination. Holst is a genius.

Prescient, too, Mario reminded the audience. Pluto was discovered some four years before Holst died, and he was asked if he would like to add a Pluto movement to the suite. He refused, and Pluto was later demoted anyway.

Another interesting point that Marin made about Holst's work was how evocative it was to later movie music makers like John Williams. She had her orchestra pull comparative samples from the opening of "Mars, the Bringer of War" and from the soundtrack of the original Star Wars. 

And of course, anyone who knows me knows my favorite movie in life is The Right Stuff, which captured my imagination aurally through the Academy Award winning soundtrack composed by Bill Conti. So here's my story:

About thirty years ago, my favorite movie in life became The Right Stuff, largely because of the glorious and inspiring music in the soundtrack. (Of course, Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager was sexy as hell, so that didn't hurt, either.)

Sam Shepard, Barbara Hershey in The Right Stuff. Courtesy of PhilipKaufman.com

After the movie ran an abbreviated course in theaters, largely considered a failure (whether the movie killed John Glenn's presidential hopes or Glenn's politics killed audience interest in the movie can be debated by others), I went on a mission to find the soundtrack. It won an Oscar, demmit! It should be out there for me to buy!! No dice. I heard or read somewhere that Bill Conti was not satisfied with the score. Color me mystified.

Then one night, while falling asleep with the radio still tuned to my favorite classical music station, I sat bolt upright in bed when the theme from The Right Stuff started playing! OMG, Conti's soundtrack on classical music radio!

The rousing finish of the movement came and, yes, I probably did jump up and burst into a loud, prolonged, joyful cheer. That's what Bringers of Jollity do to you. The announcer then informed me that I'd been listening to a selection from Holst's The Planets.

Now, I always smile when, in the opening credits of Casablanca, Max Steiner's composer credential is accompanied by a quick theme from "La Marseillaise" in the soundtrack. We know Max Steiner is a movie musical genius, but he did not compose the French national anthem. Nor did Bill Conti compose any of the Holst themes--Jupiter, Venus, Mars--that were so seamlessly integrated into his Right Stuff score (rumor has it that this was not Conti's decision, but the producers'--probably explaining his dissatisfaction). 

Several years later, I did come across a symphonic rendition of themes from The Right Stuff paired with music from Conti's work for the TV miniseries North and South. I do recommend this 1990 disc. But I now learn that, just this year, a limited edition CD was released without the N/S tether, but with an exceptionally odd and disconcerting addition--a dance mix of the "Right Stuff" theme (see track 12). A single? Seriously? They were releasing this to radio? Pardon my WTF moment here.

Now back to Holst. You may notice that I didn't include a link to a recording of The Planets. This is where I pitch the live human musical experience as the only way it all makes sense. If you want to listen to it on your own, find some nice pictures of real live planets to look at. Enjoy, with awe and wonder, what your fellow humans create with their awe and wonder.

Courtesy of NASA.

Love, hosaa
awed, wondering

eta (Nov. 10): I couldn't resist - I purchased the digital album of Conti's The Right Stuff. It has more tracks than the version with North and South. I'm listening now. It's interesting how little there is on Conti's version of the score that is recognizable to someone who has seen the movie well over 25 times (probably closer to 50). This is like a "director's cut" of a movie--it's the artist's original conception.

Even the "Tango" cut on this was replaced in the movie. I didn't remember where it was used until I watched the movie again. It's in the last scene at the clinic where the astronaut prospects are undergoing medical tests. Tough Navy aviator Alan Shepard has just had some balloon inserted in his bladder and needs to get to the john before it is released and makes a mess. Very funny scene, because he's at the mercy of nursing aide Gonzales, whom Shepard had offended with his Jose Jimenez imitations.

Anyway, I think it would be fun to montage the scenes from the movie with Conti's music. (What, another non-Clay, non-futurist video project??? Can I have more hours, Madame Clock?) ~h

etaa - The "single" is still bizarre. I guess Conti thought they needed something to sell the album to MTV in 1983. Without liner notes, though, it's hard to tell.