Stage Left Podcast, 4 May 2007

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Interviewed: Cabaret star Barbara Brussell, about her upcoming appearance May 10th through 13th, 2007, at The Cabaret at Savor in St. Louis, her eclectic musical tastes, and why you should write Jewish and act English. Or something like that. Those of you in St. Louis can order tickets for the Savor show by calling 314-531-0220 or going to licketytix.com.

Isn't it Romantic?

[Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano brought their cabaret show, A Little Romance to The Cabaret at Savor series in St. Louis April 26th through 29th, 2007. This is the text of my review for KDHX-FM.]

If memory serves, when Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano appeared at the Grand Center Cabaret series back in the fall of 2005, they struck me as being a pair of very talented performers who, while they shared the same program, had not quite jelled as a duo. They were both very strong, but the result, as I recall, was rather a mix of fire and ice (or chilled martini, at any rate).

Of course, at my age, memory doesn't always serve; sometimes it merely stands and waits. Still, when Comstock and Fasano took the tiny stage at the Savor cabaret series this weekend, it seemed to me that they were now, without a doubt, a Team. This wasn't an evening with Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano, it was a night out with the Comstock-Fasano Duo — and a richly rewarding night it was for lovers of American song.

The theme of the show this time is A Little Romance, and so the program is dedicated almost entirely to the pursuit of what Quentin Crisp once referred to as “the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress”. The mood ranges from the yearning of Billy Strayhorn's “No One Knows” and the Weill/Anderson classic “It Never Was You” (from 1938's Knickerbocker Holiday, Weill's second American show) to the unabashed celebration of promiscuity in Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh's “When in Rome”. The balance between ballads and up-tempo numbers is just right, and the selection nicely showcases the variety of the idea of romance from the serious to the sexy and from the sad to the sublime.

There's also a nice mix of familiar standards and new discoveries. Fasano notes that one of the joys of putting together a program like this is coming across a previously unknown gem of a song such as Jule Styne and “Yip” Harburg's lovely “That Something Extra Special” from Darling of the Day, a 1968 flop (31 performances) that starred Vincent Price as an artist who switches identities with his deceased “gentleman's gentleman” to escape the pressures of fame. The score is, I'm told, a warm and witty affair, and Fasano's performance certainly makes a strong case for it here, as she does for another rarity, the Alec Wilder/Fran Landesman collaboration “Photographs”.

Even some well-known songs get new lyrics here. “All I Need is the Girl” (from Gypsy, of course), for example, gets a female spin in the second chorus and Comstock provides a raft of new lyrics for Porter's classic “Let's Do It”. That's not exactly radical of course — everyone from Noel Coward to Garrison Keillor has had a whack at it — but this is the first time I've head the song used for political commentary. Comstock does it in such a droll and witty way, however, that only the most rabid neocon is likely to be offended.

The bulk of the evening, however, is given over to stylish and sensitive performances of songs that are familiar because they're such fine examples of the songwriter's art. That includes “As Long as I Live” and “My Shining Hour” — two classics by one of America's more under-appreciated composers, Harold Arlen — and a subtle rendition of “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top” by Fasano that concludes with a rather cinematic fade-out. It was also nice to hear “The Lady's in Love With You” — a Burton Lane/Frank Loesser collaboration introduced by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross in Some Like it Hot, a 1939 trifle that has, as far as I know, nothing to do with the 1959 hit of the same name.

Comstock's piano technique remains fluid and occasionally even witty in a sort of Chico Marx vein, and he and Fasano harmonize beautifully on “As Long as I Live”, as they do throughout the evening — even when they're not singing together. If their marriage is as solid a partnership as their act, there will be “Two for the Road” (to quote the final song in the program) for many years to come.

Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano will be bringing A Little Romance to the Flim-Flam Room at Savor, 4356 Lindell, through Sunday [April 29, 2007], after which they're off to Katonah (NY), Ann Arbor, and then back to The Big Apple for a Johnny Mercer tribute at Carnegie Hall. For information on the Savor show, call 314-531-0220 or visit licketytix.com. For information on future peregrinations of the Comstock-Fasano Duo, visit ericcomstock.net or humanchild.com.

Stage Left Podcast, 23 April 2007

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Interviewed: Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano about their upcoming appearance April 26th through 29th, 2007, at The Cabaret at Savor in St. Louis, their musical and romantic partnership, and the significance of Cecil B. DeMille. Those of you in St. Louis can order tickets for the Savor show by calling 314-531-0220 or going to licketytix.com.

Way Out West

[Paula West played The Cabaret at Savor April 19 - 22, 2007. This is the text of my review for KDHX-FM in St. Louis.]

It has been just about four and one-half years since Paula West brought her classy, jazzy and blues-inflected cabaret act to town. Back then she played the spacious and acoustically odd Grandel Theatre. This year it's the more intimate Flim-Flam Room, upstairs at the Savor St. Louis restaurant, and the new venue seems to suit her just fine.

When Ms. West appeared at the Grandel, I admired the way she combined the improvisatory spirit of jazz with the fidelity to the songwriter's intent that characterizes a good cabaret performance. I described her act then as “the best of both worlds”. It still is.

Although somewhat physically restricted by the small playing area at the Flim-Flam - the room was, after all, designed to host close-up magic, which it still does most weekends - West nevertheless connected quickly with the audience. She opened with a solid one-two punch of Vernon Duke and John Latouche's “Taking a Chance on Love” (from Cabin in the Sky, where Ethel Waters introduced it on Broadway) and Gershwin's “It Ain't Necessarily So” - the latter tremendously effective even if Ms. West did have to do both the call and response herself.

The song is an interesting choice, by the way. In Porgy and Bess, it's sung by Sportin' Life, the morally flexible hustler, as a sarcastic response to the hymn singing of Catfish Row's more devout residents. The song's point of view is decidedly male and, in my experience, female singers don't usually take it on. The fact that Ms. West makes it her own is an indication of her willingness to take chances with both song choices and interpretations.

Other examples of her willingness to strike out in new directions include a powerful rendition of Dylan's “Like a Rolling Stone”, the obscure “Man Wanted” by British composer and jazz critic Leonard Feather (another one premiered by Ethel Waters), and a surprisingly upbeat version of “The Bonnie Banks O' Loch Lomond” - a song which, is after all, about “the low road” of death. There's also Oscar Brown, Jr.'s wryly funny “The Snake”, about the folly of believing that love alone can change a snake's nature. It resonated strongly with the women in the audience; can't think why.

It was also a pleasure to hear a moving performance of Bert Williams' 1905 classic “Nobody”, along with a few words about that late, great African-American superstar. Largely forgotten today, Williams was, in the early years of this century, a performer of such immense popularity that, when Ziegfeld made him a Follies headliner in 1910, bigoted protests from some other Follies performers were silenced. Ziegfeld told the protesters that they could be replaced, but there was only one Bert Williams.

That's not to say that Paula West doesn't provide a full measure of familiar tunes, including Porter's “Don't Fence Me In”, Roger and Hart's “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” (including some extra lyrics that may not have been Hart's), Charlie Chaplin's classic “Smile” and “Thanks for the Memory”, Bob Hope's signature tune, first sung by him and Shirley Ross in The Big Broadcast of 1938. In every case, Ms. West puts her own unique spin on the song while still keeping true to the composer's and, more importantly, the lyricist's intent.

As she did in 2002, Paula West comes with a solid combo of jazz pros. This time around it's pianist/arranger George Mesterhazy and bassist Vicente Archer. West allows plenty of time for solo instrumental breaks in nearly every song, and Mesterhazy and Archer made the most of them. Mesterhazy is the flashier of the two, with impressive technique to spare, but Archer's subtle and intelligent performance deserves close attention as well. Their teamwork is especially impressive in the encore number “You Came a Long Way From St. Louis”, as they trade licks and the occasional quote from jazz classics such as Bobby Timmons' “Moanin'”.

The bottom line is that Paula West starts off the spring Cabaret at Savor season with ninety minutes of powerful, fasten-your-seat-belts song that will please jazz fans and traditional cabaret lovers alike. She'll be there through Sunday [April 22, 2007]. Tickets are available from licketytix.com. You might also want to consider arriving early for the fixed-price dinner. Savor's excellent cuisine is a bit pricey, but worth every penny.

Those of you outside of St. Louis can catch her at The Jazz Standard in New York City May 17th through 20th, the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco (her home base) on June 15th, and at the prestigious Oak Room at Algonquin Hotel for four weeks, beginning in mid-October. Check out her web site for details. Her three CDs - Temptation (1995), Restless (1999) and Come What May (2002) - are also available on line from amazon.com and other from merchants, both physical and virtual.

Stage Left Podcast, 18 April 2007

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Interviewed: Jazz and cabaret artist Paula West, about her upcoming appearance April 19th through 22nd, 2007, at The Cabaret at Savor in St. Louis, her music, and her CDs. Those of you in St. Louis can order tickets for the Savor show by calling 314-531-0220 or going to licketytix.com.

The Story of Her Life

[This is the text of my review for KDHX-FM of Sally Mayes' appearance at the Savoy Room Cabaret here in St. Louis.]

When the late 18th century English author Horace Walpole first coined the term “serendipity”, he meant it to refer to the knack for discovery, by accident and sagacity, of one thing while in pursuit of something different. Due to what may have been a copying error in the original Oxford English Dictionary (OED) entry, the word has since come to mean "the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident". Sagacity, somehow, failed to make the final cut.

I bring this up because the appearance of Sally Mayes as the closing act in the current Cabaret at the Savoy Room series is an instance of both notions of serendipity. Her show, The Story Hour, is a happy and unexpected discovery, and Mike Isaacson and company have shown great sagacity in engaging her when Marin Mazzie was forced to bow out. Both Walpole and the OED are thus satisfied.

So was the audience, judging by the response. Mayes combines solid musical skills and shrewd dramatic judgment with an effervescent, “down home” approach that, I expect, harks back to her childhood in the east Texas town of Livingston. She describes the place as “a hell-hole not to be believed”, but it seems to have added a dimension to her stage presence that performers raised in larger towns closer to the 20th century don't always possess. The result, in any case, is irresistible.

Originally performed and recorded live for Varese Sarabande back in 1999, The Story Hour is a surprising, enlightening and thoroughly entertaining evening of songs by writers who are, for the most part, well outside the usual Great American Songbook crowd, including Bruce Springsteen, Jim Steinman, Dar Williams, Christine Lavin and even Mayes herself. “This is an evening of story songs”, noted Mayes in her introduction. “Hopefully, some of them will make you laugh; some of them will make you cry. And who knows? Along the way we might even learn something.” They do, and I believe we did.

The Springsteen number is “Meeting Across the River”, a film noir-style slice of urban lowlife. It's an odd choice, given the strong thread of bathetic male bravado that runs through it, but Mayes made it work anyway. From Jim Steinman, we have “Heaven Can Wait”, an unusually lyrical moment from the 1977 Meat Loaf album Bat Out of Hell. The actual meaning of the lyrics is as elusive now as it was back then, but it's great to have them sung by some one who actually has the vocal chops to give them real expression.

Woman singer-songwriters aren't often represented on cabaret programs, so it was nice to hear two of the best represented on The Story Hour - Dar Williams and Christine Lavin. From Williams, there's “The Babysitter's Here”, a sweetly sentimental memory portrait of the 1960s'-hip sitter which, even if it didn't make any of us cry, clearly brought a lump to some throats.

Well, to mine, anyway.

Christine Lavin is represented by the delightful “Shopping Cart of Love: The Play”, a funny and truthful song/monologue combo from the 1990 Attainable Love album. This is great piece for a singing actress and Mayes performance is sheer perfection.

That's not to say that more traditional songwriters are ignored completely. There is, for example, a Frank Loesser song, but it's his little-known (to me, anyway) “Hamlet” from the 1949 musical murder mystery (!) film Red, Hot and Blue, where it served as a showpiece for Betty Hutton. Mayes and her music director Patrick Brady gave it a high-energy, close harmony treatment reminiscent of The Manhattan Transfer or, to be more historically accurate, the Andrews Sisters.

There's also a Burt Bacharach/Hal David number, “Anyone Who Had a Heart” (a Dionne Warwick hit from 1963), but it's ingeniously combined with the Leon Russell/Bonnie Bramlett chestnut “Superstar” - a song which, until I heard it in this context, I really thought I never wanted to encounter again. The fact that I actually liked it this time is a tribute both to Mayes' heartfelt interpretation and Brady's shrewd arrangement.

Brady, I should note, is more than just a skilled accompanist. He also provided solid backup vocals on several songs, and his arrangements are impressive. He and Mayes were an unstoppable team, even when the Sheldon's dysfunctional HVAC system threatened to wilt performers and audience alike.

In fact, the only criticism I can offer of the evening is that something in the sound system sometimes rendered lyrics incomprehensible, especially in rapid patter songs like “Hamlet” or very soft ballads like “Meeting Across the River”. Listening to these same numbers on the CD, every syllable was clear as a bell, so I'm inclined to blame some combination of the technology itself or Mayes' lack of familiarity with the hall rather than the performances themselves.

That said, Sally Mayes' The Story Hour brought the 2006 - 2007 Cabaret at the Savoy Room series to a brilliant conclusion. It also completes the circle that started last fall with Kitty Carlisle Hart's own “story hour”, reminding us that one of the things that makes us human beings unique is our irresistible desire to explain ourselves and our world by telling stories. At its best, that's what cabaret does, and what The Story Hour did.

For more information on the Savoy Room series, check out the web site. For more information on Sally Mayes, go to her agent's web site.

Hustle and Show

[The national tour of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels played the Fox Theatre in St. Louis March 27th through April 8th, 2007. This is text of my review of the show for KDHX-FM.]

As the popularity of the recent BBC TV series Hustle clearly demonstrates, just about everybody loves a good con story as long as no one gets seriously hurt and the plot twists play fair with the audience. So the musical stage version of the 1988 comedy caper film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has a lot of good will going for it from the start. The fact that it retains that good will right to the end despite some missteps along the way demonstrates, once again, the timeless truth of the old theatrical axiom “always leave 'em laughing”.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Michael Caine-Steve Martin film (or the Marlon Brando-David Niven vehicle Bedtime Story on which it was based), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is the tale of suave middle-aged con artist Lawrence Jameson, who makes his living bilking rich matrons on the Riviera, and his rivalry with Freddy Benson, a young, vulgar short-con man who ropes the unwilling Jameson into acting as his mentor. Quickly tiring of each other, they agree on showdown: they'll both try to dupe heiress Christine Colgate into parting with fifty grand. The loser has to leave the Riviera.

The resulting battle of wits generates the bulk of the show's humor and nearly all of its plot twists. Alas, it doesn't really get going until around an hour into the first act, by which time Dirty Rotten Scoundrels comes perilously close to wearing out its welcome.

Why? Well, there are, to begin with, too many songs that simply fill time without advancing the plot or illuminating character - including one number, “Oklahoma?”, that looks like an outtake from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (although it does get points for rhyming “Oklahoma” with “melanoma”). There's also too much of what struck me as overly broad (not to say crass) humor. And I'm someone who actually thinks The Three Stooges and Weird Al are funny.

As a result, by the time intermission came around, I was beginning to wonder if something more substantial than the cheap red wine available in the lobby might be called for.

Happily, Scoundrels redeems itself with a solid second act. The comic reverses, as Lawrence and Freddy try to cut each other out, are fast and furious, and while the ending might not be that surprising to fans of caper films, it's still dramatically and musically satisfying.

Composer and lyricist David Yazbeck, who earned Grammy and Tony awards for another film adaptation, The Full Monty, back in 2000, is at the top of his form here as well. His music is bright and appealing, with witty lyrics that are, unfortunately, sometimes incomprehensible due to the muddy amplified sound. Television veteran Jeffrey Lane wrote the book, which provides the required plot twists and is, despite an excessive reliance on cheap sight gags, generally quite funny - often hilarious, in fact, especially when it breaks down the “fourth wall” makes fun of theatrical conventions.

He and Yazbeck also have two of the most amusing program bios I've seen in some time. I wonder how many audience members have actually read them?

But I digress.

Tom Hewitt is delightfully debonair as Jameson, “oozing charm from every pore” like Zoltan Karpathy, but with considerably more class. D.B. Bonds is thoroughly believable as Benson, Jameson's crude, out-of-control opposite. The role calls for a strong physical comic and dancer, and Bonds fills the bill admirably.

Laura Marie Duncan is a terrific Christine Colgate, “The Soap Queen”, perfectly capturing all of the character's varied moods. Hollis Resnik brings an endearing wry charm (a la the great Elaine Stritch) to the role of Muriel Eubanks, an early convert to Jameson's “exiled prince” scam. Nicely matching her is Drew McVety as Jameson's accomplice Andre Thibault. The slowly enfolding romance between the two provides lovely moments of more low-key comedy to balance the maniacal hijinks generated by the Jameson-Benson rivalry.

Paige Pardy also deserves an honorable mention for her deliriously over the top cameo as Jolene, the Oklahoma oil heiress. It's a physically demanding bit and while I didn't find it all that funny, I recognize that my gripe is with the material itself rather than her admirable performance of it. Your mileage may vary.

Gregg Barnes' costumes and David Rockwell's fluid sets are a riot of tropical color and choreographer Jerry Mitchell, whose award-winning work includes La Cage aux Folles, Hairspray and The Full Monty, demonstrates his versatility again with variations on everything from the tango to a two-step. Indeed, the entire production looks and sounds appropriately bright and brassy. Superficial it may be, but then you don't go to a show like this expecting King Lear, after all.

The bottom line on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is that it's a real treat for lovers of caper films and musical theatre who also have a high tolerance for the well-turned Cheap Laugh. And even those who are more attuned to (say) Bob and Ray than Moe, Larry and Curly will probably find much to admire, even if most of it won't show up until after intermission.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels ran through April 8th [2007] at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis. You find out when the show will be in your area at the official tour web site, dirtyrottentour.com.

Sex and Violins

[This is the text of my review for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert of Friday, February 16th, 2007 for public radio station KDHX-FM in St. Louis.]

As David Robertson pointed out during his comments to the audience at this Friday's thoroughly captivating St. Louis Symphony concert, one of the little-known links between the three Russian romantic composers on the program (Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin) is that all three were involved, around the turn of the previous century, in a debate on synaesthesia.

To the psychologist or neurologist, synaesthesia is rare and somewhat mysterious condition in which (to quote the U.K. Synaesthesia Association) “two or more of the five senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily and automatically joined together”. Synaesthetes might head sounds when reading certain words, or see colors when they hear certain sounds or musical notes. It's not generally regarded as a pathological condition and, in fact, many synaesthetes regard it as life enhancing.

For Alexander Scriabin and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the association of specific colors with certain musical keys was a fact of life, even if they disagreed strongly as to which keys were associated with which colors. For Scriabin, this was also an integral part of what Paul Schiavo describes in his program notes as “an elaborate personal philosophy that combined art, religion and eroticism in a quest for enlightenment” - a philosophy expressed most vividly in his Poem of Ecstasy (a.k.a. his Symphony No. 4), which concluded this weekend's concerts.

Composed between 1905 and 1907, when the composer was actively involved with the Theosophical Society (and, not incidentally, pursuing one of his many extramarital affairs), the work is accompanied by a long series of verses by Scriabin, ending with: “I am a moment illuminating eternity....I am affirmation...I am ecstasy." Although scored for an orchestra of (Richard) Straussian proportions, including a massive brass section, two harps and an organ, the Poem has sections of great lyricism and transparency that are reminiscent of the French impressionists. They contrast nicely with the rock concert-level sound of the more climactic moments.

Robertson and the symphony musicians delivered a stunning performance of this complex and difficult music. Both the intimacy and exuberance of the music were given full measure, and the work as a whole never lost the underlying sense of tension that finds its final release in the massive full-orchestra climax and brief C-major coda.

Most commentators, by the way, have been a bit coy about the exact kind of ecstasy the composer had in mind with this lush, unabashedly romantic work, but Scriabin biographer Faubion Bowers, referring to the 300+ lines of verse that accompany the score, concludes that “behind this distillation of Scriabin's world-view there was something blunt - sex.” I have to agree. With the ebb and flow between states of languor and near-hallucinatory excess and its rather orgasmic coda (the piece was, after all, originally titled Orgiastic Poem), Scriabin's Poem is probably one of the more R-rated pieces in the repertory.

Sex plays a rather more indirect role in Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Le Coq d'or (The Golden Cockerel). Composed near the end of the composer's life and not performed until after his death, the opera is the story of the bumbling King Dodon who is so smitten with the beautiful Queen Chimaka (part of the spoils of his war) that he double-crosses a wizard - with predictably fatal results. The Le Coq d'or Suite, which opened the second half of this weekend's program, is a classic example of the composer's melodic inventiveness and orchestral ingenuity. A recurring melismatic and vaguely Middle Eastern theme helps to establish the fairy tale atmosphere, for example, and the courtship dance for Dodon and Chimaka covers some of the same territory as Scriabin's Poem, albeit somewhat more discreetly. The finale, in which Dodon's increasingly pompous wedding procession is interrupted by the return of the vengeful sorcerer, brings it all to a rousing conclusion with a riot of orchestral color.

It has been over 35 years since the St. Louis Symphony performed the Le Coq d'or Suite, but you wouldn't know that from the brilliant and polished reading it got Friday morning. Although it calls for orchestra forces nearly as great as those in the Poem, the suite offers many opportunities for solo instruments to shine - and shine they did. It's a reminder that the orchestra these days is truly an ensemble of virtuosi.

Solo virtuosity was on display in the first work on the program, the Piano Concerto No. 1 of Sergei Rachmaninoff. A contemporary of Scriabin and friend to both him and Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff is now known as one of the last of the great Romantic pianist-composers. Originally written while both he and Scriabin were students at the Moscow Conservatory, the Concerto was later revised substantially on the eve of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and it's not hard to hear the faint echoes of that turbulence in the sweep and drama of this. Piano soloist Stephen Hough played with the ease and confidence that are the hallmarks of solid keyboard technique, and showed a rapport with Robertson that one of the hallmarks of the accomplished musician.

Next at Powell Hall: Mozart, J.C. Bach and Frank Martin with Jeffrey Kahane as conductor and piano soloist, Friday through Sunday, February 23rd through 25th, 2007. For ticket information, call 314-534-1700 or visit the Symphony web site at slso.org.

Reality TV and Other Oxymorons

Disclaimer: as always, the opinions expressed on this blog are mine, all mine, I tell you, and do not necessarily represent those of any particular organization I might be associated with at any point in time. Or anybody else. So there.

That concert version of My Fair Lady that I discussed in my 1/29/07 blog entry (a co-production of Stray Dog Theatre and the Clayton Symphony Orchestra) opens in two days, which means we've had some decent coverage in the local press. That includes a very nice spot on the February 13th edition of Show Me St. Louis (the title is a gloss on Missouri's self-assigned reputation as "the show me state"), a TV show produced by local NBC affiliate KSDK that focuses on sports, entertainment and other "soft news" items.

The video, which runs around 5 minutes, is available at the KSDK web site. When you view it, you'll see what appears to be coverage of a typical rehearsal, complete with actors and orchestra. We're seen and heard rehearsing bits of "I'm an Ordinary Man", "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "Get Me to the Church on Time" (in which the more musically astute among you will hear me blowing part of the lyric) and there are interviews with our leading lady, director, and the orchestra's conductor/director.

As with much of TeeVee, however, "things are seldom what they seem" (to lift a W.S. Gilbert lyric).

The fact is that KSDK records spots like this on its schedule, not yours. So instead of bringing the host and camera tech out to one of our evening rehearsals, we were asked to stage a rehearsal just for them on a Monday morning. Which we did. The songs chosen were based on who among us principals was able to make it to a 9 AM Monday rehearsal. That turned out to be Jennifer (Eliza), Michael (Higgins) and me (Doolittle), hence the songs listed above.

So what you really see in the video is a staged-for-TV rehearsal.

In many ways, this is a difference that makes no difference. We did do each one of those songs in its entirety on the actual stage with most of the actual orchestra, which was actually useful for those of us who could be there. But it strikes me that this could, in a very different set of circumstances, be the first step on what could be a slippery slope. At what point does the made-for-TV version of an event stop being merely a variation of the real thing and turn into an outright fabrication? Our rehearsal clearly stops short of that line, but how would you, as a viewer, know that it did unless you read it here? How many other supposedly "real" things on TV are nothing of the sort?

Hey, don't get me wrong. I really appreciate the fact that KSDK gave us the coverage, and I'm sure their viewers are happy to have the information. One this one, everybody wins. It's just that it does raise those nagging questions about the other things you see on the Tube.

Review: The Light in the Piazza (2007 American tour)

[The tour of The Light in the Piazza played the Fox Theatre here in St. Louis January 31st through February 11th, 2007. This is the text of my review for public radio station KDHX-FM.]

Corporate Broadway, like corporate Hollywood, has become a place for high-stakes gambling, where big producers spend bigger money on huge shows in the expectation of massive returns on their investments. It's a gargantuan theme park, relying on a steady stream of money from tourists who have been told, by corporate media, to expect those huge shows.

In such an environment, it's remarkable that a modest, romantic show like Adam Guettel's The Light in the Piazza was produced at all. That it also ran over 500 performances and garnered a raft of awards in the process is downright miraculous.

So is its appearance here at the Fox. Like the tourists at the Broadway Theme Park, Fox audiences have come to expect expensive blockbusters on that outsized stage. Choosing a beautiful and subtle show like Light shows that someone at Fox Associates has taste and courage, both of which should be saluted.

Based on Elizabeth Spencer's 1960 novella of the same name, The Light in the Piazza is the story of Margaret Johnson (Christine Andreas through February 8th, then Jane Brockman), an upper crust South Carolina matron traveling in Italy in 1953 with her daughter Clara (Leslie Henstock through February 4th, then Elena Shaddow). As they're admiring the naked statues in Firenze (that's Florence to us Anglos), Clara's straw hat is blown off by a fateful gust of wind and retrieved by Fabrizio, a young apprentice in his father's tie shop. David Burhnam, promoted from his position as an ensemble member in the Broadway production, plays the role here.

Fabrizio and Clara are instantly smitten with each other, but there are obstacles. Clara may be 26, but a riding accident as a child has left her with the emotional maturity of someone half her age. Trying to protect her daughter, Margaret does her best to keep the lovers apart. When that inevitably fails, Margaret has to come to terms with the flowering of her daughter's identity, the withering of her own marriage, and the future they all must face.

The cast for this tour is just plain flawless. Ms. Henstock and Ms. Andreas are (to quote a line penned by Guettel's mentor, Stephen Sondheim) “a practically perfect pair”* as Clara and Margaret. Ms. Henstock nicely captures Clara's hidden child without sacrificing the woman, and Ms. Andreas is beautifully sympathetic as her conflicted mother.

Mr. Burnham is all boyish enthusiasm as Fabrizio and handles his soaring melodic lines with ease. There are fine performances also from Jonathan Hammond as Fabrizio's older, but less mature, brother Giuseppe and Wendi Bergamini as Giuseppe's wife Franca, torn between love and anger.

Evangelia Kingsley has a show-stopping moment at the top of the second act as the leader of the impassioned Italian quintet, “Aiutami”, reminding us that, in love “risk is everything”. Her operatic background is evident in her strong contralto. David Ledingham completes the list of principals with a wise and witty Signor Naccarelli.

The book, by noted playwright Craig Lucas, handles this tale of “love among the ruins” with great warmth and, when appropriate, good humor. The characters are beautifully drawn and their relationships crystal clear, even when a scene or an entire song is in Italian.

The score, by third-generation theatre composer Adam Guettel, is lavish and romantic without being saccharine. The musically sophisticated songs are so well integrated with the book that that the show feels, in retrospect, like one continuous aria, some of which just happens to be spoken rather than sung. The illusion is enhanced by the score's heavy reliance on the strings and harp, as opposed to the winds and synthesizer typical of other recent shows. The effect is, if you'll pardon the over-used word, luminous.

But then, light is the underlying theme of this piece. Specifically, it's the warm, golden light of what Margaret calls “a city in the sun”. It's manifested in Michael Yeargan's airy and flexible set (enabling fast and fluid scene changes) and in Christopher Akerlind's lighting, which evokes mellow, autumnal or (in the one brief Roman scene) harsh moods as required.

Bartlett Sher's direction pulls it all together into one seamless whole and moves everything along at a brisk pace without ever seeming rushed. At only two and one-half hours including a thirty-minute intermission, The Light in the Piazza is relatively short by recent mega-musical standards, but it's long on believable human drama.

The Light in the Piazza will be warming our frigid winter nights through February 11th [2007] at the Fox in Grand Center. For ticket information, call 314-534-1111. Since this isn't anything like a theme park musical, you should be able to get good seats for most shows, and intelligent entertainment like this deserves our support.

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*It's from Do I Hear a Waltz?, from 1965; another show about a middle-aged American woman dealing with romance in Italy, this time with music by Guettel's grandfather, Richard Rodgers.

Of Laws, Sausages, and Musical theatre

“Laws”, Otto von Bismark is reported to have said, “are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.” Had he been an actor instead of 19th-century Germany's Iron Chancellor, he might have added, “Oh, and musical theatre, too. Especially musical theatre.”

So here I am sitting in the large rehearsal hall at Clayton High School. In front of me is the full Clayton Symphony Orchestra, the concertmaster literally within arm's reach, although reaching him would be a fairly dumb idea right now. To my right are the sixteen other singing actors of Stray Dog Theatre with whom, in less than a month, I'll be appearing in a concert version of one of the ten best musical theatre pieces of the last century, Lerner and Lowe's My Fair Lady.

The opening bars of the overture are a bit scrappy and the tempo and meter changes a bit scrappy, so Mary, our choral director (who's on the podium pending the arrival of Ed, the Symphony's music director) confers with the concertmaster. They launch into it again, and already it sounds more assured.

Then Ed shows up - he commutes from Columbia and was delayed in traffic - and the real work starts.

This is where von Bismarck's comment about laws and sausages comes in. Because while there's no denying the visceral thrill of singing with a symphony orchestra on one side and a chorus on the other, the fact is that, at this relatively early stage of the rehearsal process, what will eventually be a beautiful testament to Lerner and Lowe's genius “ain't that pretty at all” (to quote the late Warren Zevon). We're not all comfortable with the musical entrances and exits yet, not all of the planned cuts in the score have been worked out, some of us (yours truly included) are still a bit wobbly in the ensemble numbers and things are, in general, a bit chaotic.

Fortunately, all of us have done this before. We know it's going to be messy for a while. We also know that, if we all do our jobs right, when the rest of you come to see My Fair Lady the weekend of February 16th, none of the current blood, sweat and tears will be visible. There is, happily, no theatrical equivalent of C-SPAN where everybody can see the show being made, warts and all.

And that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. When I go to the theatre, I want to buy into the illusion. I don't want to be aware of how hard everybody is working to maintain it. One of the great ironies of the performing arts is that nothing requires more effort than making your work appear effortless.

So - anyone for Bratwurst?

Stage Left Podcast, 1 February 2007

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Explained: Why there hasn't been a new episode in over three months. Short explanation: the show was on hiatus while Your Goodly Host appeared in three shows in rapid succession: Orpheus Descending at HotCity Theatre, Amahl and the Night Visitors at Midwest Lyric Opera, and My Fair Lady at Stray Dog Theatre. Whew! Reviewed: Spencer Day's cabaret show, complete with musical examples.

Stage Left Podcast, 22 October 2006

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Reviewed: Steve Ross' Close and I Won't Dance and Divas, a new Andrew Lloyd Webber collection. Interviewed: Mabel Award-winning cabaret artist Steve Ross, appearing for two weeks at The Cabaret at Savor in St. Louis, October 25th through November 4th.

Stage Left Podcast, 15 October 2006

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Reviewed: The soundtracks from Hollywoodland and Jet Li's Fearless; the original cast recordings of Tarzan and The Drowsy Chaperone; The Broadway Musicals of 1963 and music from Cirque du Soleil's Quidam. Interviewed: Merle Dandridge, who plays Kala in the Broadway cast of Tarzan.

Stage Left Podcast, 24 September 2006

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Reviewed: The soundtracks from Crank, Quinceañera, The Black Dahlia and The Wicker Man, as well as the original cast recording of Michael John LaChiusa's Bernada Alba. Interviewed: Cabaret star Craig Rubano on the subject of his upcoming appearance in St. Louis and his affinity for Cole Porter.

Stage Leftover Podcast: Interview with Ron Stevens and Joy Grdnic Part 2 (1 March 2005)

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We take a look inside allstarradio.com, among other things, and listen to some of their new material: "Sponge Bob QueerPants", "Michael Jackson Trial Re-Enactment", and "First Witness News".

Stage Leftover Podcast: Interview with Ron Stevens and Joy Grdnic Part 1 (1 March 2005)

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Formerly known as the comedy team of Stevens and Grdnic, Ron and Joy are now the owners of the radio syndication service allstarrradio.com. In this first segment, we discuss how they got started in radio and what it was like writing for WKRP in Cincinnati and listen to a couple of their classic comedy tracks, "Fast Food" and "Marijuana Helper".

Stage Left Podcast, 3 September 2006

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I'm a week late with this one, but it's a double-length episode. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Reviewed: The Broadway Musicals of 1949, Anne Kerry Ford's Weill, Maria Friedman's Now and Then, and the two latest releases in Silva Screen's Film Music Masterworks series, Film Music by John Williams and Film Music by James Horner. Interviewed: The Los Angeles based composer and lyricist team of Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner. They're responsible for the now-notorious "Happy Mornings" coffee commercial and are working on a stage adaptation of the film Secondhand Lions with Rupert Holmes.

Stage Leftover: Interview with Keith Knight, Jr., Part 2 (29 March 2005)

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More conversation about cartoons and politics (as if there's a difference these days). This interview segment includes "Yes Pants" from The Marginal Prophets disc Bohemian Rap CD.

Stage Leftover: Interview with Keith Knight, Jr., Part 1 (29 March 2005)

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Cartoonist and rapper Keith Knight, Jr. talks about his art (both on stage and on the page), the alternative comics scene and more. Check out Keith's work at www.kchronicles.com and www.marginalprophets.com. This interview segment includes "Hip-Hop Hypocrisy" from The Marginal Prophets disc Bohemian Rap CD.