Showing posts with label Basil Twist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Basil Twist. Show all posts
Thursday, May 08, 2008
GOTHAM CHAMBER OPERA: ARIADNE AND BEYOND
This season represents a change of pace for the Gotham Chamber Opera (GCO). After very entertaining stagings of Handel's Arianna in Creta, Respighi's La bella dormente nel bosco (with puppetry by Basil Twist), Britten's Albert Herring, and Rossini's Il signor Bruschino, the company embarked on a relatively experimental 2007-2008 season beginning with Astor Piazzola's dance-filled tango operita María de Buenos Aires and a kind of original staged mash-up of gypsy-related art songs entitled Scenes of Gypsy Life. In both María and Scenes, Gotham delivered musically. But for the performance of María, the dancing didn't seem to be fully realized. And for Scenes of Gypsy Life, the mix of songs didn't gel very well with the staging.
So I'm pleased to report that the musical and non-musical elements merge much better in the music-and-dance mash-up Ariadne Unhinged, Gotham's current production and the last of this season. For this work, artistic director and conductor Neal Goren indulged his apparent jones for the mythical character Ariadne (abandoned by Theseus after saving his life) by mashing up Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna (1608), Haydn's Arianna a Naxos (1789) and Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire (1912) in a collaboration with director/choreographer Karole Armitage and scenic designer Vera Lutter (among others), creating what he calls "a songdance of a woman psychologically unhinged" after her abandonment.
Performing the demanding title role last night was Emily Langford Johnson, who alternates with Brenda Patterson. Johnson outdid herself in what amounted to an Ultimate Themed Recital in which the costumed mezzo-soprano offered impassioned vocal interpretations for more than an hour while interacting with the Armitage Gone! Dance company on a fully dressed modernistic set. Artfully veering between the off-kilter expressionism of the Schoenberg and the relative clarity of the Monteverdi and the Haydn, Johnson registered a wide range of mental states in a memorable portrayal of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The deft musical accompaniment came from Daniel Swenberg on theorbo, William Hobbs on piano, Sato Moughalian and Bejamin Fingland on winds, and Christopher Collins Lee and Andrey Tchekrnazov on strings.
Ariadne Unhinged runs at the charming Harry De Jur Playhouse of the Abrons Art Center (466 Grand Street) through Sunday, May 11.
Coming up next season: Haydn's Il mondo della Luna (directed by Diane Paulus at the American Museum of Natural History) and Montsalvatge's El gato con botas/Puss in Boots (directed by Mois&eacu;s Kaufman with puppetry by Twist). Exciting!
Saturday, June 23, 2007
FALSETTOLAND AND BEHIND THE LID
I recently attended two intimate limited-run productions that might be of interest to BAT readers.
Falsettoland is the third in a trilogy of one-act musicals following the story of a Jewish-American family in which the father comes out as gay. Witty and touching and filled with love, this revival of the well-received National Asian-American Theatre Company revival at the Vineyard Theatre (renamed The Dimson Theatre for this production) isn't some fancy-shmancy affair. The staging is rudimentary, like that of a reading. And the Jewish-American characters are played by actors from Asian-American backgrounds. Yet the strengths of this collaboration between songwriter William Finn and book writer James Lapine still come through movingly, with Manu Narayan and Ann Sanders especially well-cast in their roles as Whizzer and Trina. Discounts might well be available for the performances, scheduled to run through July 1, 2007.
Behind the Lid, an artsy collaboration between the late avant-gardist Lee Nagrin and innovative puppeteer Basil Twist (who seems to assemble some of the friendliest and most competent troupes ever), is only open to 18 people at a time. The audience assembles at the entrance to Nagrin's Silver Whale Gallery then descends into a surrealistic environment that offers a sense of Nagrin's life and times...and her feelings about art and country. This often confounding and hardly seamless 90-minute work won't appeal to everyone, but it brims with creativity and, like this Terrapin Industries duplex, shows how an urban interior can be radically transformed. (If you aren't afraid of spoilers, you can find write-ups of Behind the Lid here and here.) If you decide to give this a try and you can still get a ticket before the scheduled run ends on July 7, I suggest arriving about 15 minutes early and reading the program before beginning your descent down the mysterious Silver Whale rabbit hole (below). Hang around afterwards to show your appreciation.
Photo: David Marc Fischer
I recently attended two intimate limited-run productions that might be of interest to BAT readers.
Falsettoland is the third in a trilogy of one-act musicals following the story of a Jewish-American family in which the father comes out as gay. Witty and touching and filled with love, this revival of the well-received National Asian-American Theatre Company revival at the Vineyard Theatre (renamed The Dimson Theatre for this production) isn't some fancy-shmancy affair. The staging is rudimentary, like that of a reading. And the Jewish-American characters are played by actors from Asian-American backgrounds. Yet the strengths of this collaboration between songwriter William Finn and book writer James Lapine still come through movingly, with Manu Narayan and Ann Sanders especially well-cast in their roles as Whizzer and Trina. Discounts might well be available for the performances, scheduled to run through July 1, 2007.
Behind the Lid, an artsy collaboration between the late avant-gardist Lee Nagrin and innovative puppeteer Basil Twist (who seems to assemble some of the friendliest and most competent troupes ever), is only open to 18 people at a time. The audience assembles at the entrance to Nagrin's Silver Whale Gallery then descends into a surrealistic environment that offers a sense of Nagrin's life and times...and her feelings about art and country. This often confounding and hardly seamless 90-minute work won't appeal to everyone, but it brims with creativity and, like this Terrapin Industries duplex, shows how an urban interior can be radically transformed. (If you aren't afraid of spoilers, you can find write-ups of Behind the Lid here and here.) If you decide to give this a try and you can still get a ticket before the scheduled run ends on July 7, I suggest arriving about 15 minutes early and reading the program before beginning your descent down the mysterious Silver Whale rabbit hole (below). Hang around afterwards to show your appreciation.
Photo: David Marc Fischer
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