Bungle in the Jungle

If imitation is the sincerest flattery then the creators of the international entertainment behemoth Cirque du Soleil ought to be really flattered by Jungle Fantasy, the latest show from the Florida-based franchise Cirque Dreams. How flattered? Let me count the ways.

Singing female protagonist (Mother Nature, in this case) who leads male protagonist on a journey of discovery? Check. Non-stop, vaguely world-beat-style music? Check. Lots of European circus performers? Well, they're mostly from what used to be the Soviet Union but, yeah, check. Colorful costumes and sets? Yup. Lots of jaw-dropping, spectacular performances?

Well, you can't have everything.

That's not to say that there aren't some great acts in Jungle Fantasy, only that there aren't nearly enough of them. Probably the most impressive were Vladimir Dovgan and Anatoliy Yeniy, decked out in Day-Glo zebra-patterned outfits and balancing on top of tables stacked on a metal cylinder and then, even more insanely, on top of five stacked cylinders. Equally remarkable was the classic static balancing act of the "Jungle Kings", six strongmen decked out in lion-inspired costumes. Their combination of strength and control was world class. Ditto the "Contorting Lizards" - four impossibly nubile young women from Mongolia where the ancient art of contortionism is apparently something of a national sport.

There's also skilled juggling, including a short but eye-popping nine-ball routine from Russia's Andrey Averyushkin and a flashy routine using open geometric shapes (pyramids, square and the like) to form rapidly changing patterns in the air.

The rest of the acts are somewhere between competent and good. Some of the creature costumes were quite ingenious (my wife was especially taken with the colorful frogs) and the impossibly tall electronic violinist Jared Burnett made the most of the score, such as it was. The main problem is that nothing in the show - including the monotonous music and pedestrian lyrics - is all that original. You'd think that a company with $2.5 million to spend on its own 20,000 square foot production, rehearsal and training space could come up with something more creative than this. If Jungle Fantasy is any indication, Cirque Dreams is (to paraphrase J. Michael Straczynski) little more than Cirque du Soleil with the serial numbers filed off.

That said, I'd be less than honest if I didn't report that much of the opening night audience at the Fox seemed to be enjoying the show. Most of them even laughed at the opening routine, in which a pair of alleged clowns made fun of two pre-auditioned audience members. I found it predictable and annoying, but then my standard for that bit of business is the pre-show shenanigans of Circus Flora's incredibly charming Nino (Giovanni Zoppe), so perhaps my expectations are too high.

The bottom line on Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy is that if you've never seen Cirque du Soleil and aren't a regular at Circus Flora you might find this glossily packaged imitation entertaining. Small children almost certainly will. Whether or not you think that's worth up to $63 per seat is your call. The show runs through March 29th at the Fox; call 314-534-1111 for ticket information.

Big Bang

As we approached the exultant coda of Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3 Friday morning [February 27, 2009] at Powell Hall, I was suddenly reminded of a passage in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus in which the Venticelli (Shaffer's equivalent of a Greek chorus) complain about Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. "All those weird harmonies", they snipe, "and never a good bang at the end...so you know when to clap". Had those fictional constructs been present that morning, they would have been pleased; if it has nothing else, the "Organ" symphony certainly has a good bang at the end, and the St. Louis Symphony and organ soloist John Romeri certainly delivered it.

Fortunately, the French master's third has more going for it than mere bombast. Written as a homage to Franz Liszt (who died shortly after work on the symphony had begun), the work includes prominent roles for piano and organ - the two instruments most closely associated with the late composer. Saint-Saëns also employs one of Liszt's favorite compositional techniques: the development of an elaborate musical structure from a single motif - in this case, a rising four-note phrase first played by the oboe in the short opening Adagio. Over the course of the ensuing half-hour, a majestic oak of a symphony grows from that little acorn. Like many of Saint-Saëns compositions, the Third Symphony ingeniously combines musical intelligence with popular appeal, and I like to think that the standing ovation it got on Friday was an acknowledgement both the work's head and heart.

It was also, of course, an acknowledgement of the Symphony's virtuoso performance. Under the baton of Jun Märkl, who moved the first movement's allegro moderato along at a sometimes hair-raising pace, the musicians performed as one finely-tuned instrument. The woodwinds and strings tossed off rapid passages with ease, sectional balance was always quite good and, yes, the finale had a certified rouser. Granted, the electronic organ didn't have the presence of The Real Thing, but music reproduction technology has come a long way in recent years. A subwoofer isn't the same as a 32' pipe but, to paraphrase The Bard, 'twas enough and did suffice.

Unlike Saint-Saëns and Liszt, Antonín Dvorák wasn't primarily a pianist. His first musical loves were the violin and viola, so it's not surprising that his works for strings - especially the quartets - are among his most profound and admired. That being the case, it was probably inevitable that his Op. 33 Piano Concerto, written at the request of the Czech pianist Karel Slavkovsky, would turn out to be the ugly stepsister among his solo works. Snubbed by critics and viewed with disappointment by the composer himself (“I see I am unable to write a Concerto for a virtuoso”), the concerto has languished over the years despite advocacy by noted pianists such as Rudolf Firkusny, who gave the work its local premiere in 1969, six years after his landmark recording.

Listening to Friday's performance with Garrick Ohlsson at the keyboard, I think I can see one reason for the neglect. Although technically challenging, the piano part isn't particularly flashy and doesn't stand out all that much from the orchestra. It's almost as though Dvorák had written a symphony with piano rather than a traditional late-19th-century concerto. Revisions to the piano part in the early 20th century by Czech pianist Vilém Kurz and, in the early 1960s, by Firkusny don't seem to have substantially altered the concerto's fortunes. Perhaps pianists see the game as not being worth the candle. In any case, Ohlsson and the SLSO made a very persuasive case for this rarity. He and Märkl appeared to take considerable delight in the performance, and the overall joy was infectious.

Maybe this is the sort of piece that just needs a great deal of TLC to be effective. If so, it certainly got all that and more. Audience response was so warm and sustained, in fact, that Ohlsson came back for an encore: Chopin's Waltz in E-Flat (Op. 18, No. 1), performed with the grace and wit that you would expect of a former Chopin International Piano Competition winner.

The concert opened with the evergreen Les Preludes by the man memorialized by “Organ” Symphony, Franz Liszt. Märkl and the SLSO musicians could probably do this chestnut in their sleep but there was nothing routine or slapdash about the performance. The winds did overpower the strings in the climaxes, but overall it was an effective reading with all the drama and punch you'd expect.

Friday's program will be repeated Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM [February 28 and March 1]; for ticket information call 314-534-1700. For lovers of the Romantic repertoire in general and Dvorák or Saint-Saëns in particular the concert is, of course, a “must see”. Besides, there's a really good bang at the end.

Next at Powell Hall: The Hubbard Street Dance company March 6th and 7th performing to music of Bach, Stravinsky, Ravel, Bernstein, Britten and Mozart. David Robertson will be at the podium. Visit the SLSO web site at slso.org for details.

At Ease

How comfortable is Tom Wopat on a cabaret stage? Comfortable enough pull out a guitar and start entertaining the audience fifteen minutes before his show was scheduled to start. Comfortable enough to sit down at a front table with some local cabaret artists to watch his brilliant sidemen - pianist and music director Andy Ezrin and local bassist Tom Kennedy - during one of the many instrumental breaks. Comfortable enough, in short, to make the Kranzberg Center's cabaret room feel almost like a living room.

Why do I bring that up? Because one of the first things a cabaret artist needs to do is make the audience comfortable. The more confident and at ease you are on that small stage, the easier it will be to take the folks you're performing for along on the musical journey you have planned. Mr. Wopat, to paraphrase Cole Porter, has got that thing, that certain thing, that makes us all want to watch him sing.

And a good thing, too, since Mr. Wopat made it clear he wasn't going to play it safe. Starting with a performance of Arlen and Harburg's "Last Night When We Were Young" that began a capella and off microphone and continuing through a program that included unusual takes on "That's Life" and "Over the Rainbow" and even a song of his own, "Thailand Sea", Mr. Wopat made what seemed to me to be a number of risky choices. The fact that they generally worked quite well is an indication of how accomplished he is in this genre. Even working under the handicap of a bout of hoarseness didn't prevent him from delivering a solid, entertaining show.

Mr. Wopat is a man of many voices. A veteran of Broadway and television, he had a parallel career as a country singer until 2000, when he turned his attention to recording American Songbook standards. The Tom Wopat on stage at the Kranzberg this week, however, was neither the Broadway baritone nor the country crooner. This Tom Wopat was a jazz vocalist, and a darned good one. Whether zipping through the lyrical whitewater of Annie Ross' "Twisted" (which puts words to a Wardell Grey sax solo from the 1950s) or giving full measure to a heart-on-the-sleeve Jimmy Webb number like "If These Walls Could Talk", he was on solid musical ground, hoarseness not withstanding.

There were, perhaps, moments when Mr. Wopat seemed more interested in ringing changes on the melody than in expressing the lyric, as in his swinging upbeat version of the Gershwin's "But Not For Me". But he didn't go that route any more often than other jazz-inflected cabaret acts I've seen and even when he did, it was still a pleasure to watch.

It was equally pleasurable watching the work of Andy Ezrin and Tom Kennedy - something I had plenty of opportunities to do, given how often Mr. Wopat stepped aside and let them mix it up. I have commented on Mr. Kennedy's virtuoso bass playing in the past, so all I need to say here is that, yes, he's still aces in my book. Mr. Ezrin was new to me. He's not only an exceptional solo performer but, as a friend brought to my attention afterwards, he also knows how to recede into the aural background when necessary. That's not as easy to do as you might think - even top-notch pianists can sometimes come close to overwhelming their singers. Kudos to Mr. Ezrin for doing it so well. I only wish I'd had another $20 in cash on hand Thursday night so I could have bought his CD as well as Mr. Wopat's.

The bottom line is that a splendid time was had by all. My only real regret is that I arrived too late to catch much of Mr. Wopat's pre-show set. If he ever makes it back to town again, I'll make a point of showing up earlier.

Tom Wopat played the Kranzberg Center February 11th through 14th under the Cabaret St. Louis banner. If you want to know where Mr. Wopat will be taking his many voices next, check out his web site, tomwopat.com . Next up in the Cabaret St. Louis season is a return engagement by the evergreen Marilyn Maye at the Savoy Room March 19th and 20th. For more information, visit cabaretstl.com . The next cabaret show at the Kranzberg is our own Jeff Wright in An Evening With Mr. Wright on February 20th, with a reprise on March 14th. For more information on that, go to licketytix.com .

Rustles of Spring

I emailed my friend Maud, inviting her to see the tour of the 2006 hit musical Spring Awakening, and included a plot synopsis. Her response - "It sounds just horrible and I'd love to see it" - pretty much mirrored my own thinking. Based on the controversial 1891 play Frühlings Erwachen by German dramatist Franz Wedekind, Spring Awakening deals with teenagers trying to understand their budding sexuality in a neurotically oppressive environment where the topic can't even be mentioned. "The original play", according to Wikipedia , "was banned in Germany due to its portrayal of masturbation, abortion, rape and suicide." It does sound horrible.

On stage, though, it's nothing short of wonderful. Duncan Shiek's rock score, while wildly anachronistic for the 1891 setting, radiates a hormone-drenched intensity that's absolutely right for his angry and confused teen protagonists. Besides, most of the songs serve to illuminate the characters' emotional states rather than advance the plot, so the sight of late-19th-century German schoolboys pulling out wireless microphones and launching into aggressive numbers like "The Bitch of Living" seems no more absurd than any other musical theatre contrivance.

And brother, does it ever work. Particularly in the high-energy first act, Spring Awakening has a grab-you-by-the-throat intensity that's impossible to resist. It loses a bit of that in the second act, when most of the plot's emotional axe-blows fall, but by then I was so taken by the show's originality and drive that it didn't matter. Steven Sater's book and lyrics, Michael Mayer's direction, Christine Jones' scenic design, Susan Hifferty's costumes and Kevin Adams' lighting and Bill T. Jones' choreography all combine harmoniously with the score to deliver maximum impact. Jones' work, in particular, brilliantly turns the kids' desperate attempts to escape the repression of their daily lives into violent, angular action.

The story centers on two friends - the brilliant and rebellious Melchior and the troubled Moritz. Tormented by the incomprehensible onset of puberty and rejected by his father for failing to advance at school, Moritz commits suicide. When a dissertation that the more enlightened Melchior had written for him on the facts of life is found among the boy's possessions, the hypocritical headmasters use it to blame Melchior for corrupting his friend and causing his death. Worse yet, Melchior's brief roll in the hayloft with the naïve Wendla - whose mother has let her believe that you can't have children until you're married - results in a pregnancy.

Melchior is shipped off to a brutal reformatory. He escapes, expecting to find Wendla and run away with her, only to discover that she has died from an illegal abortion arranged by her mother. On the brink of suicide himself, Melchior is visited by the ghosts of Moritz and Wendla, who urge him to go on with his life and remember theirs. "I'll never let them go", sings Melchior. "Just watch me. / I'm calling. / And one day all will know."

Yes, the story is of another century. But the themes of sexual repression, hypocrisy and cynical cruelty are, sadly, evergreen. As the Melchior sings in "All That's Known": "All they say / Is ‘Trust in What is Written.' / Wars are made, / And somehow that is wisdom. / Thought is suspect, / And money is their idol". The malady lingers on.

The ensemble cast for this tour is uniformly strong, led by Kyle Riabko and Blake Bashoff - both alumni of the Broadway production - as Melchior and Moritz. Singer/songwriter Christy Altomare beautifully captures Wendla's tragic vulnerability and Steffi D has a great cameo as the "fallen woman", Ilse.

As a way of dramatizing the uniformity of oppression, Sater's book has all of the authority figures - from clueless mothers to arrogant headmasters - played by the same two actors. In this production those roles are filled wonderfully by Angela Reed and Henry Stram. Praise is also due to Sarah Hunt as Martha, victimized by a sexually abusive father and a mother deeply in denial. Her song, "The Dark I Know So Well", is heart wrenching.

Under the sometimes overly demonstrative direction of Jared Stein the on-stage rock band, augmented by a small string section, is tight and precise. Better yet, the sound, while loud enough to give the necessary visceral kick to Sheik's music, gets nowhere near "bleeding ear" territory and the vocals are crisp, clear and completely understandable - something of a rarity for tours of rock musicals.

Ironically, this powerful and intelligent show about troubled teens comes with an adults-only "explicit content" warning. It's there largely because of the occasional sexually explicit scene and Anglo-Saxon expletive. So if that sort of thing offends you then, by all means, give this a miss. But if you want to find out just how great a rock musical can be, then by all means rush to get your tickets for Spring Awakening. It plays the Fox through February 22nd; call 314-534-1111 for ticket information.

Two for the Road

The choice of an opening number is always a crucial one for a cabaret act. Ideally, you want something that's an attention-grabber, that plays to your strengths as a performer, and that gives the audience some idea of what to expect from you. The song Liz Callaway and Alex Rybeck chose to open their two-night Cabaret St. Louis gig at the Sheldon this Thursday [February 5th, 2009] - Bernstein's "Something's Coming" from West Side Story - did all that and more.

Although only a few minutes long, the performance encompassed everything we'd see and hear for the next two hours: Ms. Callaway's vocal virtuosity and music theatre smarts, Mr. Rybeck's endlessly inventive arrangements and polished pianism, and the easy give-and-take between these two consummate cabaret pros.

It don't get much better than that.

For those of us lucky enough to have seen Ms. Callaway and/or Mr. Rybeck in action before, of course, none of this will come as a surprise. For everyone else it was, presumably, a joyous discovery.

Witness, for example, the spontaneous standing ovation following their penultimate song - Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Memory", which Ms. Callaway performed for several years on Broadway. Yes, a more cynical reviewer than yours truly might dismiss that as a kind of Pavlovian response to a classic "eleven o'clock number". But that wouldn't explain repetition of that "standing o" after the closer - the more reflective "The Story Goes On" from Maltby and Shire's 1983 Baby, which she also did on Broadway. Standing ovations are sometimes cheaply bought here, but this was simply recognition of a job well done.

No, Liz Callaway is not her more famous sibling Ann Hampton Callaway - a fact she mines for comic gold in a send-up of "I've Gotta Be Me". She is her own unique and equally talented self, as she demonstrated in an evening rich with mostly familiar songs from Broadway and Hollywood delivered with a winning combination of skill and sincerity. There was also a delightful brace of hits from the 1960s (from her recent The Beat Goes On CD) that made up the bulk of what has become the obligatory second act at the Savoy Room. It's a tribute to Ms. Callaway and Mr. Rybeck's abilities that a long intermission cannot wither them nor bar prices stale their infinite variety.

I keep referring to Ms. Callaway and Mr. Rybeck together because they are clearly equal partners in the act. For some cabaret artists, the guy at the piano is there to support the star. He might have done the arrangements and might get a couple of solo breaks, but there's never any doubt about who's in charge. As I have observed in the past, however, Mr. Rybeck is very strong performer in his own right - a fact Ms. Callaway obviously appreciates and of which she makes good use. He's a solid backup vocalist, for example, in "Half as Big as Life" (from Burt Bacharach and Hal David's only Broadway musical, Promises, Promises) and a medley of "The Beat Goes On" and "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)", and occasional comic foil at other times. Throughout the evening, his smart, "on the scene" arrangements kept everything flowing smoothly; before we knew it 10 PM had arrived and we were applauding.

I see that I have spent so much bandwidth praising the performers that I haven't said much about the program itself. Without going into laborious detail, I'll just note that there were over two dozen very well-chosen numbers ranging from the tried and true ("People", "Leavin' on a Jet Plane", and an ingenious Gershwin medley) to the semi-obscure ("What More Do I Need", from Saturday Night, an early Sondheim show that closed before it could open). There were lovely ballads such as Stephen Schwartz's "Meadowlark" and Loesser's "My Heart is So Full of You", up-tempo numbers like the aforementioned Gershwin medley, and some wonderful comic songs, including a parody of Sondheim's "Another Hundred People" that gets plenty of laughs out of the difficulty of singing some of The Great Man's trickier compositions (e.g., "Another hundred lyrics just flew out of my brain"). Ms. Callaway even included a nod to her career in animated musicals with Flaherty and Ahrens' "Journey to the Past" from Anastasia (1997) - a film that looks and sounds so much like a stage musical I'm surprised someone hasn't done the adaptation already.

It was, in short, a great evening at the cabaret. Even the usually mediocre sound at the Savoy Room seemed clearer and the smaller number of tables, while unfortunate from a financial point of view, made for better sight lines. To paraphrase Mr. Sondheim, what more did we need?

By the time you read this, of course, Liz Callaway and Alex Rybeck will already have moved on to their next gigs. You can find out what Ms. Callaway is up to at her web site, lizcallaway.com . Mr. Rybeck, alas, does not have a web site, but if you're a Facebook person you'll find him there.

Next in the Cabaret St. Louis season: Broadway baritone Tom Wopat with Andy Ezrin on the ivories at the Kranzberg Center February 11th through 14th. For more information, call 314-523-1111 or check out their site at cabaretstl.org .

French Dressing

In the final moments of Cyrano de Bergerac Rostand's hero, dying in the arms of Roxanne, shuffles off his mortal coil with characteristic style:

CYRANO
You strip from me the laurel and the rose! Take all! Despite you there is yet one thing I hold against you all, and when, to-night, I enter Christ's fair courts, and, lowly bowed, Sweep with doffed casque the heavens' threshold blue, One thing is left, that, void of stain or smutch, I bear away despite you.

ROXANE
'Tis?. . .

CYRANO
My panache.

As part of the research he and his assistant Marna Petersen did for Chevalier - Maurice and Me, veteran entertainer Tony Sandler discovered that the legendary French star made his exit from life in somewhat the same way as Cyrano. Not wanting his many friends and admirers to witness his final decline, he insisted on dying alone, in his home, at the age of 83. The man who once said that he'd always leave the table before he wound up under it preserved, to the end, his panache.

I bring all this up because the performance of Chevalier - Maurice and Me that I saw this past Thursday [November 13, 2008] at the Sheldon's Savoy Ballroom was, regrettably, somewhat lacking in the nearly indefinable mix of flamboyance, confidence and style that's implied by the word and which characterized the career of France's most popular musical ambassador.

That's not to say that the show wasn't, on the whole, entertaining and informative. It's just that there were too many moments when Mr. Sandler was clearly struggling for his next line and losing his concentration. The occasional slip of this sort is inevitable; show me a performer who says “I've never 'gone up' on stage” and I'll show you a bald-faced liar. But when they're a regular occurrence an unavoidable barrier begins to rise between the actor and the audience.

To be fair, it must be said that Mr. Sandler clearly loves both Chevalier and the songs he made famous, and the script Ms. Petersen has assembled for him provides some fascinating insights into the man and his life. The many jokes woven into the story are generally quite funny, even if some of them were probably old when the teenaged Chevalier was an unpaid café singer in 1901, and Mr. Sandler's joy in performing classics such as “Louise”, “Valentine” and “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me” (which inspired one of the Marx Brothers' more inspired flights of lunacy in Monkey Business) was infectious. It was also delightful to hear some of Chevalier's less-well-known French language hits, even if the lyrics were incomprehensible to non-francophones like yours truly.

The opening night audience obviously agreed. Even those who apparently shared my reservations clearly loved him, and most of them gave him a standing ovation.

Originally performed in 1999, Chevalier - Maurice and Me is an unusual hybrid of celebrity tribute and impersonation, with Mr. Sandler dropping out of the role of Chevalier as needed to relate the story of the entertainer's life and his influence on Mr. Sandler. His realization of Chevalier - it's too uncanny to be dismissed as mere impersonation, my earlier use of the word not withstanding - is often quite remarkable. When, towards the end of the 90-minute, one-act show, he dons a frock coat, grey cloves and matching hat for a re-creation of “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” from the closing frames of Gigi, I felt that I was watching something akin to reincarnation. Unlike Chevalier, however, Mr. Sandler was never a song-and-dance man, so he's less successful in recreating the fluid grace that marked Chevalier's persona.

Mr. Sandler was backed by a small combo headed by his pianist and music director Evan Mazunik and consisting of local musicians Eric Stiller on bass, Joe Pastor on percussion and Isaac Liftis on the essential accordion. Mr. Mazunik's ability to keep everyone on the same page (literally, in a few cases) was really quite impressive, as was his pianism. Mr. Sandler is lucky to have such a sympathetic accompanist, which makes it a pity that he didn't acknowledge him or the other musicians at the end of the show.

The bottom line is that when he was fully “in the moment” Mr. Sandler was the very ideal of Gallic flair, elegance and joie de vivre. Had there been more of them, Chevalier - Maurice and Me would have been more than a pleasant evening's diversion. It would have had (and, for all I know, often may have) panache.

Next on Cabaret St. Louis' schedule is singer/songwriter Spencer Day on Sunday, November 30th, 2008. For more information visit the Cabaret St. Louis web page at cabaretstl.org. To find out which of Mr. Sandler's five shows he's doing next, visit his site, tonysandler.com.

The Soul of Wit

If you weren't already familiar with the work of cabaret legend Steve Ross you might expect his show To Wit: Ross on Wry - Funny Songs Throughout The Ages to be somewhat lacking in variety. After all, how much range can there really be in the “novelty song” subgenre?

The answer, as the audience at the Kranzberg Center discovered this past week (October 1st through 4th), is “quite a lot, actually” - especially when someone with Ross' impeccable taste and graceful style is at the helm.

Over the course of around 90 minutes, Mr. Ross showed just how wide a range of material is encompassed by the phrase “funny songs.” The evening included two dozen numbers that ranged from British music hall classics such as “Don't Go in the Lion's Cage Tonight” (a hit originally for Beatrice Kay and later for Julie Andrews) to a medley of Flanders and Swan gems to Portia Nelson's “Confessions of a New Yorker” (in which she admits to being “in hate/love” with the town). Coward and Porter were well represented, as you might expect, but so were lesser-known songwriters such as Murray Grand (“The Spider and the Fly”) and the team of Hugh Martin and Timothy Gray (“Home Sweet Heaven”, a name-dropping extravaganza first sung by Tammy Grimes in the 1964 musical High Spirits).

Mr. Ross even treated us to a comic monologue, “Prinderella and the Cince”, which seems to have undergone some metamorphoses and elaborations since comic Frederick Chase Taylor (a.k.a Colonel Stoopnagle) first published this classic collection of Spoonerisms in 1946. The original can still be found on line at stoopnagle.tripod.com/prinder.htm, among other places. One look will explain why Mr. Ross was obliged, atypically, to work from a script for this item.

As is so often the case with Mr. Ross' work, it's difficult to anoint any particular collection of songs with the title “highlights”. Personally, I was the most delighted by the half dozen pieces I'd never heard before, such as “The Unrequited Love March” (in which typically languishing lyrics are coupled with a rousing Sousa-esqe melody), Dorothy Shay's twisted “Say That We're Sweethearts Again” (“I never knew that our romance had ended / Until you poisoned my food”) and Brown and Henderson's “Ladies and Gentlemen, That's Love”, which was written as a satirical response to Porter's “What Is This Thing Called Love?” (“When a hippopotamus / Does what no one dare discuss / Ladies and gentlemen, that's love”).

I'd be less than honest, however, if I didn't cop to being equally happy to hear favorites like Ivor Novello's “And Her Mother Came Too” and Coward's caustic “Mrs. Worthington”. And what a pleasure it was to reacquaint myself Rogers and Hart's “At the Roxy Music Hall” - a song I haven't heard since I performed it myself an undisclosed number of decades ago in a revue for the now deceased City Players.

The more discerning among you have probably noticed by now that I've not had much to say about Mr. Ross' actual performance. That's due, in part, to the ease and grace which characterize his work. He makes himself transparent, so to speak, to the music, creating the illusion that the songwriter is communicating with us directly.

It's also due to my inability to come up with novel ways of stating the obvious: the Mr. Ross remains one of cabaret's leading lights. Indeed, simply to say that he is Steve Ross is probably praise enough.

Mr. Ross' show was the first one I've seen at the new Kranzberg Center's cabaret space, and I must say the room itself looks and sounds good. The stage is raised just high enough to give everyone a good view of the artist but not so much that it distances the performer from the audience - as the stage in the Sheldon's more cavernous Savoy Room does. The amplified sound is clear and undistorted and the lighting grid looks substantial enough to meet the needs of any cabaret act I've ever seen. With the unexpected demise of the Flim Flam Room at Savor this past summer, the Kranzberg would appear to be the new first choice for cabaret.

Next at the Kranzberg: Lee Lessack with a Johnny Mercer tribute October 29th through November 1st. Between now and then Cabaret St. Louis, the new organization that sponsored Mr. Ross' appearance, will bring us classical soprano Sylvia McNair with a Great American Songbook program October 16th and 17th at the Sheldon and local cultural icon Fran Landesman with an evening of songs and stories October 22nd through 25th at the Gaslight Theatre on North Boyle. For information on these and other upcoming Cabaret St. Louis attractions, visit their web site at cabaretstl.org.

Lemon Law

One of my dear old mum's favorite phrases is “when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade”.

Yes, it's a cliché, but like a lot of clichés it also contains more than a grain of truth. Turning a sow's ear into a silk purse (there's another one...) is one of humanity's oldest pursuits. Entire industries (public relations and advertising) are based on it. Politicians do it so automatically that they no longer even think of it as lying. It's just “spin”.

I bring all this up because today a local theater company sent out a press release that is, in my opinion, one of the best examples of turning lemons into a tasty summertime beverage that I have ever seen.

The company, The Tin Ceiling, is presenting Sam Shephard's drama True West with a new twist: there's no director. Whether this was done as an experiment or out of necessity is perhaps a moot point. What's really rather clever is the way they handled the fact that, of the three reviews they got, two were positively negative. Here's the full press release:

The Tin Ceiling Theater (The oldest and smallest theater on the South Side) presents for your viewing pleasure, a conundrum, an enigma, a question wrapped in the quizzical look from the guy peeing on the dumpster next to your garage as you pull in.

For the next two weekends, Friday-Sunday, at 8pm, the Tin Ceiling will continue to ask the age old question, "do you really need a director for every play?" The play that will decide this question once and for all for all eternity is our production of Sam Shepard's True West.

We have divided the world into two sides, the Green and the Brown.

The "No, you don't need a director" side is summed up by the opinion of Richard Green. Here's the link to his Talkin' Broadway review: http://www.talkinbroadway.com/regional/stl

This contingent includes the cast and crew, the Funboys (Bob and Ken), the Byrd family, my parents (who haven't seen it yet but they'd agree with me) and William Shakespeare.

The "Yes, for the love of god, yes, you need a director" side we have Dennis Brown's review. Here's a link to his RFT capsule: http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2008-07-16/culture/stage-capsules/

This side is made up of the nice reviewer for KDHX (her review can be viewed here), Meghan (who hasn't seen the show), anyone at Saturday's performance and Elia Kazan.

So come on down to the Tin Ceiling at 3159 Cherokee and shill out $10 to see the show, and weigh in on this most important of issues.

Feel free to post your opinion on our Myspace page. Don't ask me how you would do that, or even if you can do that. All this Web 2.0 stuff gives me a headache. What was the matter with BBSing? Anyway, here's the link to our Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/thetinceiling.

Is this shrewd or what?

That said, I have to say that I've been in my share of shows in which, while there was a director of record, there was, in fact, no direction at all. One or two of them managed to be decent shows because the cast, out of sheer desperation, took turns directing each other, but generally speaking I think a show without direction is going to be a show with no direction.

I agree with Ron Himes' notion of the division of responsibility. The playwright's job is to produce a good script. The director's job is to realize the playwright's vision on stage. The actor's job is to create a character based on the director's interpretation of the playwright's vision. If anybody falls down on his or her job, the end result will suffer.

But what the heck - it's summer. Anybody for a nice lemonade?

All That Jazz

Over at encore.org - a site dedicated to those of us contemplating the “second act” of our lives - my motto is “when you stop learning you stop living”. As a demonstration that (unlike a lot of politicians and media gasbags) I actually practice what I preach, I did something for the very first time today at age 59 that is usually done at a far younger age.

I bought my first pair of jazz shoes.

This wasn't done on a whim, but rather in anticipation of the fact that this Saturday I'll be doing something else for the first time: attending a class on Fosse technique at Leaping Lizards, a local dance studio. “Come dressed in comfortable, loose-fitting clothing”, said the invitation. “Jazz shoes are ideal.”

That class isn't the result of a whim either. It's a result of being cast as King Charles (a.k.a. Charlemagne) in Stray Dog Theatre's production of the Stephen Schwartz musical Pippin. The late Bob Fosse's choreographed the 1972 Broadway original and since then everybody has pretty much followed his lead when it comes to the many dance numbers that help give the show it's unique character. Stray Dog decided to give everyone in the cast - including non-dancers like yours truly - the opportunity to learn some of the key moves.

It's good, as Mel Brooks noted, to be the King - particularly since King Charles isn't expected to do any fancy footwork. I am expected to join the rest of the ensemble in a couple of numbers, however, so my jazz shoes and I will be at the class this Saturday and next.

This isn't quite as crazy as it might sound since I've been taking aerobics classes for nearly thirty years now. Still, it's something new. Hopefully I won't embarrass myself too much or strain something trying.

Just call me a dancin' fool.

Unsavory

Deb Peterson broke the story in the Post-Dispatch earlier today and Chris Gibson, who went to review Elsie Parker tonight for KDHX-FM (where I'm the senior performing arts critic), confirmed it: Savor is closing its doors after the Debby Lennon/Carolbeth True show on June 28th.

Chris said Jim Dolan - the producer of the Cabaret at Savor series and the master of ceremonies for every performance - wasn't there tonight and the woman who was doing the seating apparently had no idea that he was there to review the show. It's not clear whether she was an employee of Savor or Jim's organization.

This is pretty awful news for the cabaret scene locally. Savor was the best all-around cabaret room in town. I went to the press preview for the Kranzberg Center Wednesday (the 21st) and while their cabaret space is promising, the seating will need to be planned properly if it's going to work at all. I have no idea whether they're going to do that or not.

Jim was apparently caught flat-footed by this. His web site is still advertising shows through August 23rd. It looks like Savor made the decision very abruptly.

UPDATE, June 28th: According to an anonymous posting on Ian Froeb's Gut Check restaurant blog, "the owner only knew 5 days before the doors closed for good" and the business "owed over 50 grand to the state in taxes ". How things could get to the point where that would come as a surprise is a question not yet addressed.

Troy Weight

William Walton's 1954 opera Troilus and Cressida has had a history almost as unfortunate as that of its protagonists. From the lackluster Covent Garden premiere, sloppily conducted by an ill-prepared and hostile Malcolm Sargent, through repeated revivals and revisions, this tale of star-crossed lovers in the final years of the Trojan War has acquired a reputation as something of operatic problem child. It wasn't until the 1976 revival - once again at Covent Garden and once again beset by production problems - that the composer, now Sir William Walton, finally received the critical praise he had long deserved for this dark, emotionally charged work.

Revision of the opera continued even after the composer's death, and so it is that Opera Theatre of St. Louis is presenting the world premiere of the latest and (presumably) last version of Troilus and Cressida. The road to St. Louis has been long and winding, but judging from the generally splendid results on view at the Loretto-Hilton Center this past Wednesday night, the journey was well worth it.

The libretto, by actor, lyricist and playwright Christopher Hassall, is based largely on Chaucer's poem Troilus and Criseyde rather than on the somewhat more familiar Shakespearean tragedy. Unlike the many previous versions of the story, in which priestess of Pallas Athena is held up as an example of female inconstancy (a favorite theme of male writers), the Hassall/Walton collaboration clearly depicts Cressida as far more sinned against than sinning - a largely powerless victim of male arrogance and foolishness. Like the pawns in the metaphorically significant chess game which she plays in the second act, Cressida is shuffled about by powers far larger than herself.

In both the original and newest versions of opera, the role of Cressida calls for a dramatic soprano with a wide range and powerful voice. Ellie Dehn, making her OTSL debut, has all that and more. Statuesque and displaying an impressive stage presence, Dehn is as fine an actress as she is a singer - and she's a damned impressive singer. Her second act love scene with Troilus - underscored by Walton's sensuous music - is one of the steamier things I've seen on the Opera Theatre stage in many a year.

Tenor Roger Honeywell is equally strong as the Trojan prince Troilus, utterly believable both as yearning lover and valiant warrior. For this piece to work at all there has to be credible chemistry between the title characters. Mr. Honeywell and Ms. Dehn provide that in quantities sufficient to get over some of the speed bumps in the libretto's first act.

Some of the most remarkable singing comes from tenor Robert Breault as Cressida's fey uncle Pandarus, whose attempts to unite the lovers are undone by royal politics. The role was written for and first performed by Peter Pears and it's hard not to hear echoes of the great British tenor's wide-ranging, flexible voice (to say nothing of the music of his partner, Benjamin Britten) in the role's florid vocal lines. Breault - a late substitution for Stanford Olsen, who was sidelined by a torn tendon - negotiates the many difficult passages with ease and is a solid comic actor.

The principal villains of the piece - Cressida's treasonous father Calkas and the arrogant Greek prince Diomede - are played with considerable gravitas by bass-baritones Darren K. Stokes and Mark S. Doss. Both characters are written with just enough depth to raise them above the level of stock villainy, thereby making them all the more repellent. Doss, in particular, does an excellent job of brining out Diomede's smug self-admiration.

Other fine performances include mezzo Elizabeth Batton as Cressida's duplicitous servant Evadne and baritone Aleksy Bogdanov as Troilus' friend Antenor.

Conductor Antony Walker leads the orchestra with great relish, clearly enjoying every minute of Walton's lush, intelligent score. Sandra Horst's chorus appears in only a handful of scenes, but makes a powerful impression when it does so - particularly in the massive ensemble towards the end of the second act.

Director Stephen Lawless and set designer Gideon Davey have given us a Troy that's a gray, claustrophobic mix of classical and modern design elements, contrasting with a starkly bright Greek camp lit by harsh golden light. I'm not convinced that it all works as a concept, especially in the final act when the treacherous Calkas kills Troilus not by stabbing him in the back as called for in the libretto but by having him shot by a sentry. Up to that point, everyone has been brandishing knives and swords, so the sudden introduction of a modern weapon seems bizarre.

Cressida's death scene is also given a curiously anti-climactic staging. Rather than stabbing herself with Troilus' sword, director Lawless has Ms. Dehn wind the crimson scarf that has served as a token of her love for Troilus around her neck and then pull aside a trap door to reveal a dummy hanging from an identical scarf. The actress then runs offstage, leaving the audience briefly wondering what, exactly, has just happened.

These are minor complaints, however, about an otherwise brilliantly realized production of a rarely-seen opera rich in drama and offering an embarrassment of musical riches. It's a work that resonates, to a degree, with the contemporary political scene as well, given its gimlet-eyed, anti-heroic view of war and the way in which a prolonged siege of a weaker nation by a stronger one has a corrupting influence on both. Sometimes there are truths that only fiction can adequately reveal to us.

Opera Theatre's compelling production of Troilus and Cressida runs through June 29th. Of the three OTSL productions I've seen this year (my own performance commitments prevented me from seeing Madame Butterfly) this was clearly the most consistent musical and dramatic success. It's a "must see" for anyone who enjoys intelligent musical theatre. It's also a fitting tribute to Opera Theatre's late Artistic Director, Colin Graham, who was a long-time champion of the work and friend of the composer. For ticket information, call 314-961-0644 or visit the web site, opera-stl.org .

Yes, We Have No Bananas

Those of you who have read this here blog in the past (aw, c'mon, there must be at least one of you) are undoubtedly aware of the fact that I lead something of a double theatrical life in that I'm both an actor and a critic. This has made me acutely aware of both the difficulty of accurately critiquing a performance as well as the folly of getting worked up much one way or the other about reviews of the shows in which I'm appearing - so much so, in fact, that I try to avoid reading them whenever possible.

Still, as anyone who has hung around a dressing room knows well, it's virtually impossible to avoid hearing your fellow actors either praise or bemoan the show's notices. Last night, for example, one topic of discussion before the lights went up on the first act of Stray Dog Theatre's Morning's at Seven (in which I'm playing the curmudgeonly David Crampton) were some weird errors of fact in a generally very positive review.

The paragraph in question looks like this:

But there are questions about this staging. Why, for instance, has the time frame been moved from 1922, where Osborn set it, to 1939 (the year the play debuted)? The shenanigans that ensue in this small Midwestern town seem out of place in the Depression-era 1930s. And here's another seemingly minor yet bewildering change: In Act One we see Cory eating a banana. In the script, Act Two begins with Cory's husband Thor (David K. Gibbs) eating yet another banana and suddenly realizing that he hates it. In that character-revealing moment we realize how henpecked Thor is. But because director Bell has switched the Act Two fruit to an apple, the setup is wasted, the moment lost.

What's wrong with this picture? Well, to begin with, the script (which carries a 1939 copyright date) clearly states “Time: The Present”. So our director was merely following the playwright's directions. Where the reviewer in question got the notion that the play was set seventeen years in the past is anybody's guess. Maybe it was the pre-show music (which consisted of some classic "Jelly Roll" Morton tracks from the mid-twenties), but I doubt it.

Then there's what Sherlock Holmes might have referred to as the curious incident of the banana in the second act. Referring once again to the script, the stage directions at the top of Act II read as follows:

Scene: The Same. Seven-fifteen the next morning. Bright sun. THOR comes out of the house at right. Is eating an apple, contentedly. Suddenly throws it from him.

THOR: God, how I hate apples!

Yes, we have no bananas.

Your guess is as good as mine as to where the reviewer got these odd ideas, much less why he would devote an entire paragraph to upbraiding the director for making non-existent changes. Could he have somehow gotten his hands on an alternate version of the script? The copy we're working from is the official Samuel French acting edition. I can't find any evidence that there's another version out there, but I suppose anything is possible.

It's a mystery worthy of Holmes himself.

UPDATE: As it turns out, the reviewer in question did, in fact, have an alternate version of the script. Specifically, he had the Fireside Theatre edition, issued in conjunction with teh 1980 revival of the play. That revival made several changes in the text (including shifting the setting back seventeen years) and those changes were reflected in the Fireside Theatre edition.

The Fireside Theatre, however, was never in the business of providing working scripts for theatre companies; that has always been the business of Samuel French, Dramatists' Play Service, and some other, smaller businesses. Fireside Theatre - which folded its tent back in 2003 - was a book club that provided editions of plays intented to be read by the general public. Anyone who has ever acted, directed, or designed for the theatre knows that a company is almost certainly not going to be using a Fireside Theatre edition. Shouldn't we expect professional critics to know at least as much about the business as the average actor?

Who Am Us, Anyway?

[Thanks to The Firesign Theatre for the title.]

Through July 5th, Scott Miller's New Line Theatre is presenting the Midwest premiere of the musical High Fidelity. Reviews have been very favorable. One of those reviews, however, included a couple of comments that caused my Inner Curmudgeon to spring to life.

You can read the entire piece on line (at least until the publication in questions moves it to the archives, when you have to pay for the privilege of seeing it), but this is what made me all grumbly:

High Fidelity started out as a delightful novel by Nick Hornby, then turned into a cute movie starring John Cusack. But it's not an obvious candidate for the musical stage. That's because when we think of musicals, we tend to think of flashy extravaganzas.

My first complaint involves the use of the word “we”. Who is this word “we”? Did she have a mouse in her pocket? I'm a long-time lover of musical theatre and I certainly don't think of “flashy extravaganzas” when I think of musicals. I'll bet most of you reading this don't either.

Maybe I'm being too picky, but it bugs me to see writers use “we” when they really mean “I” or (maybe) “my friends and I”.

As far as whether or not the book was on "obvious candidate for the musical stage", I have to say that if The Lord of the Rings can be turned into musical theatre, pretty much anything is fair game. Would anyone have thought, a priori, that Tales of the South Pacific was a likely candidate for musical theatre? Or Les Miserables? Or Wicked? For that matter, who'd have thought that a painting by Seuralt could be the basis for a musical? It just takes someone with enough imagination to do the adaptation.

Art in almost any form is nearly infinitely transmutable, in my view. The product of any particular metamorphosis may or may not succeed, depending largely on the skill of the artist doing the adaptation, but almost anything is possible.

That's what we (Stuart Little and I) think, anyway.

Sound Bytes

Every now and then I come across an item that spans the divide between my technology blog and my performing arts blog - which is why I'm publishing this little essay in both. Case in point: this interesting item from the New York Times about the use of all-digital orchestras by small companies.

The technology is intended, supposedly, to supplement a small live orchestra. As the author points out, however, there's nothing to prevent it from replacing live musicians entirely.

On the one hand, it might be a boon to small, cash-strapped companies that can't afford to hire many (or any) musicians or community theatres with volunteer orchestras that leave something to be desired in terms of competence. On the other hand, it could make real musicians an endangered species, which is hardly a desirable outcome.

In any case, you'd think it would be an interesting topic for discussion. I expected, therefore, a flurry of responses when I posted the following question to two local theatre email lists: newlinetheatre and stlouistheatre: Would you use an all-digital orchestra for a production?

What I got was a whopping total of one response from New Line Theatre's founder and artistic director Scott Miller, who stated categorically that he would "never do a musical without live musicians". That was hardly surprising, by the way; I've known Scott for some years now and was well aware of his disdain for canned music.

I'm not sure what to make of that. There are a number of musical theatre producers on both lists. Surely at least one of them has an opinion on this. It's not an academic issue, after all. High schools are already using all-digital or mostly-digital orchestras. Surely it's only a matter of time before those small companies referred to above find themselves asking whether or not they should go digital.

So why the silence? Is it because they're all in agreement with Scott? That would be the happier explanation as far as I'm concerned. Or is it because, given the potential cost savings, they wouldn't even bother to think about it before going digital? Could commerce really have trumped art to that degree?

Scary thought, that. Are we facing a future like the one Walter Miller described in his Hugo Award-winning story The Darfsteller? Film extras have already been supplanted by digital animation in big-budget pictures. Could real, live performers of all kinds go the same way?

Will we eventually get to the point where we have made ourselves obsolete?

Rare, Not So Well Done

“[T]hus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.”

- Twelfth Night, V, 1

That bit of Shakespeare jumped unbidden into my mind as I contemplated Opera Theatre's Midwest premiere of Vincente Martin y Soler's bucolic comedy Una Cosa Rara. First performed in Vienna in November of 1786, just six months after Mozart's masterpiece Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosa was, for many decades, the far more popular piece, both in the Austrian capitol and the rest of Europe. It wasn't until the early 19th century that “the whirligig of time” gave Mozart his revenge over Martin. By then, of course, both composers had shuffled off this mortal coil.

It's not hard to understand why Cosa was more popular. It's mostly charming numbers are musically simpler than Mozart's and were probably easier on the late 18th-century ear. Like Figaro, Cosa boasted a libretto by the celebrated Lorenzo Da Ponte. Unlike Figaro, however, the story is pure meringue. What plot there is revolves around the unsuccessful attempts of Prince Giovanni to woo the shepherdess Lila away from her swain Lubino. Lila's fidelity is the “rare treasure” of the title.

In Figaro the aristocrats are a rather unpleasant bunch. In Cosa, they're just silly. Vienna's upper crust probably found that more politically acceptable.

Silly and funny aren't necessarily the same thing, however, and while Washington University musicologist Hugh Macdonald's English adaptation of the Da Ponte's original inserts lots of contemporary language and ideas along with some inside jokes about the opera itself, the result still struck me as somewhat incoherent and, ultimately, a bit dull.

Even in a sitcom - the low end of the farce spectrum - there has to be a sense that something is at risk somewhere in order to provide a little dramatic tension. There's none of that here. How much of that is Da Ponte's fault I really can't say; the only copy of the libretto I could find was in the original Italian and my rudimentary grasp of the language of my ancestors isn't up to the task of reading it. The bottom line is that, despite some impressive coloratura arias, the second act made me want to check my watch more than once.

Director Chas Rader-Schieber and set designer David Zinn seem to lack confidence in the material as well. The former fills every spare moment with movement and physical comedy while the latter has set the entire show inside a sort of cartoon version of an 18th-century drawing room filled with silly props including plastic pink Flamingos, plush animals, and sheep on roller skates. Although the resulting barrage of sight gags struck a good portion of the opening night audience as funny, I found much of it annoying, especially when - as was often the case - it drew focus from some truly wonderful singing and acting. That's just plain discourteous.

I really can't say enough about this terrific cast. Sopranos Maureen McKay and Kiera Duffy are wonderfully engaging as Lila and her somewhat more ethically flexible friend Ghita. Their beautiful voices negotiate Martin's more florid passages and rapid patter songs with ease.

Baritone Keith Phares, whose fine dramatic work graced earlier OTSL productions of Miss Havisham's Fire and Loss of Eden, demonstrates that he's a dab hand at comedy as well in the role of Lubino. Bass-baritone Matthew Burns, of course, showed his comic skills last season as the roller-blading Pish-Tush in OTSL's Mikado, so it 's not surprising to discover that he's equally funny as Ghita's quarrelsome fiancée Tita. Their singing is first-rate.

Tenor Alek Shrader, who was such an impressive Almaviva in The Barber of Seville back in '06, gets to shine once again as a feckless aristocrat in the role of Prince Giovanni. His dramatic aria about the pains of love was a highlight of the second act. Tenor Paul Appleby, a Gerdine Young Artist cast somewhat ironically in the comic geezer role of the scheming Corrado, is also in fine form.

Soprano Mary Wilson, whose supple voice has graced both the Opera Theatre and St. Louis Symphony stages in the past, is a comic delight as the somewhat befuddled Queen Isabella. She, too, is more than a match for some of the elaborate vocal ornaments Martin tosses her way. David Kravitz, another Mikado alumnus, makes the most of the relatively small role of the unscrupulous Mayor Lisargo.

Corrado Rovaris conducts the orchestra with great skill and precision. Maybe it's just the benefit of hindsight, but even in the sprightly sinfonia, I thought I heard echoes of the rapid opening passages of Figaro's overture. The orchestra certainly handles the music with Mozartian grace in any event.

We owe Opera Theatre a debt of gratitude for giving us a chance to hear the kind of music the Viennese thought superior to that of Mozart, but the entire project would have benefited, in my view, from fewer attempts at slapstick and some judicious edits of the score. It's easy on the ear, but I didn't find musically interesting enough to sustain my interest for nearly three hours, including intermission. Cutting around fifteen minutes from second act, for example, would tighten the dramatic structure, such as it is, without sacrificing any valuable musical content.

Opera Theatre's amusing production of Martin y Soler's Una Cosa Rara runs in rotating repertory with the season's other three operas through June 20th at the Loretto-Hilton center on the Webster University campus. For ticket information call 314-961-0644.

Home Sickness

There's a serious homelessness problem in the St. Louis theatre community.

I'm not talking about homeless actors - although, given what the average stage actor earns in a year, that's certainly possible. I'm talking about homeless theatre companies.

Eight years ago, when the St. Marcus Theatre closed in a flurry of bad feeling following a production of Terrence McNally's controversial Corpus Christi (among other things) my friend Joan Lipkin - whose Uppity Theatre Company was one of the groups left out in the cold - remarked that theatre in St. Louis was mostly about real estate. What she meant, of course, was that there were too many companies chasing after too few spaces.

The situation is at least as bad today. A few new spaces have opened up, but a lot more companies have come into existence while others have extended their seasons. It's still a game of musical chairs, with many smaller companies left standing around when the music stops.

It was, therefore, a cause of great rejoicing among local thespians two years ago when developer Peter Rothschild bought St. Boniface Church at Ivory and Michigan in the city's Carondelet neighborhood from the St. Louis Archdiocese and announced his intention to turn it into the Ivory Theatre. He appeared to be serious about it, spending $1 million on the building and another $800,000 to convert it into a modern theatre space, complete with a handsome and well-appointed lobby. Theatre manager Donna Perrino began contacting local companies, looking for groups who might be interested in making the Ivory their home. It all seemed too good to be true.

Which, alas, it was.

The first storm clouds appeared on the horizon with the inaugural production in the space, New Line Theatre's revue Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. Convinced that the title presaged an evening of wild debauchery, the theatre's former owners exercised an odd clause in the sales contract that allowed them to prevent the building for being used for an odd collection of purposes, including “human abortion, sterilization [or] euthanasia” (there's a lot of that on stage these days, apparently), tattoos, massages, anything “pornographic or soft pornographic” and “live performances directed to an adult audience rather than the general public."

The opening night performance was cancelled, dueling press releases were issues, meetings were held and, eventually, the Archdiocese got around to actually finding out what was in the show. They blinked, found a face-saving exit, and Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll went on. The drama, however, had just begun.

In the intervening months, every company that had signed up for permanent residence at the Ivory found itself in conflict with Perrino. Agreements were broken, the facility wasn't maintained, sets were damaged, and rehearsals were disrupted by loud meetings in the lobby. Chaos, in short, reigned. By the early months of 2008, all of the companies that had signed up for residency had flown the coop, each with its own tale of managerial incompetence.

I won't bore you with the details, but if you want all the dirt in detail there's a blog dedicated to the entire unfolding debacle. That, along with a recent Riverfront Times article, should provide you with an ample sufficiency of dirt.

The situation could be worse, I suppose. The Soulard Preservation Hall has finally opened after years of gut rehab, but the facility is more suitable for musical or comedy shows than live theatre. Tower Grove Abbey - another church now hosting theatre - is open for business, but its resident company, Stray Dog Theatre, has an ambitious year-round schedule that doesn't appear to leave much room for sharing. The new Kranzberg Cultural Center in the former Woolworth Building in Grand Center promises “two performance spaces seating 100 in the black box theatre and 75 in the cabaret studio”, bit it's not scheduled to open until the fall and nobody knows exactly what the facilities will look like or how much it will cost to rent them.

The bottom line, though, is that a number of adventurous small theatre companies are now huddling in doorways, begging for spare change. For a city with such a rich cultural heritage, this is a pretty shameful situation.

Spinning Tales

It has been over twenty years since Opera Theatre of St. Louis has seen fit to give us a production of Offenbach's last and possibly greatest work, The Tales of Hoffmann, and it's easy to imagine why. The challenge of finding a soprano who can handle the roles of all four of Hoffmann's love objects is substantial and even a non-realistic production like the current one still makes significant technical demands. That being the case, it's fortunate that the 2008 season opens with a Hoffmann that, despite the occasional misstep and fit of theatrical self-indulgence, is solidly entertaining and generally quite well sung.

Left uncompleted at the time of the composer's death, Hoffman is, by now, a bit of a mess. It has gone through numerous re-writes over the years, the most recent being a major critical edition by Michael Kaye and Offenbach expert Jean-Christophe Keck that takes into account hundreds of pages of previously unknown material unearthed in the 1970s and 1980s. It's this version that's used in the current production, and those who know the opera from older editions may find themselves raising the occasional eyebrow at some of the changes. Those eyebrows will be especially high during the opera's final moments when Hoffman, instead of passing out to the off-stage strains of the students' drinking song, joins the entire ensemble in a hymn of praise to the transformative power of art.

I still prefer the older, more downbeat ending, if only because it's truer to the real Hoffmann's early death from alcoholism and syphilis, but I can't deny the musical and dramatic impact of this one. If only they weren't all singing it to the ghost of Offenbach.

If you don't remember Offenbach being a character in his own opera, that's because this particular gimmick has been added by director/choreographer Renaud Doucet and designer André Barbe, whose inventive work distinguished OTSL's Thaïs in 2003 and Beauty and the Beast in 2005. As they explain in their program note, they see this often-revised score as a labyrinth with the composer “misleading us through it all by hiding parts of his score and by playing some roles he has stolen from the singers”.

Hence a scene taken from real life and tacked on to the beginning, in which a bronze statue of Offenbach and The Muses is unveiled. As the opera proper begins the bronze figures come to life. The muse of poetry takes on the character of Hoffman's young friend Nicklausse (as the character does in previous versions of the libretto) while Offenbach takes on all of the comic servant roles and inserts himself in and between scenes in ways that are amusing at some times but annoying at others. In the opera's final moments, he becomes the center of attention, shifting the focus from Hoffman's redemption through poetry to (presumably) Offenbach's redemption of his final work.

The entire concept strikes me as imposed and unnecessary, but given the strength of the production as a whole, I'm willing to let it go.

Soprano Ailyn Pérez is impressive, to say the least, as the four objects of Hoffman's affection. The roles of the diva Stella, the singing doll Olympia, the mysteriously ill Antonia and the courtesan Giulietta are all vocally demanding in very different ways - so much so that many companies are obliged to abandon Offenbach's intention to have all the parts sung by the same actress. In taking on all four, Pérez is filling the shoes of some of some operatic giants, including Beverly Sills (whose performance opposite Norman Treigle as the villains so captivated me as a youth), Dame Joan Sutherland and Catherine Malfitano. She does so with great skill and while some of her vocal choices (especially in Olympia's coloratura passages) may offend purists, I found her performance completely persuasive.

Bass Kirk Eichelberger takes on the four villains and to my ears, at least, he sounded fine despite the fact that the roles require the extended range of a bass-baritone. His acting struck me as a bit 19th century artificial, but given that bass Jeremy Gaylon (as the various father figures) and tenor Matthew DiBattista (as the bronzed Offenbach) were mining the same vein, I suspect they may just be following Doucet's direction. DiBattista does make the comical roles very comical, however, and his Offenbach wig and makeup are a triumph of the art - credit Tom Watson for that bit of magic. Tenor Garrett Sorenson is a fine Hoffmann and mezzo Jennifer Johnson is captivating as Nicklausse and the Muse.

Stephen Lord, who also prepared the English translation, conducts the Opera Theatre orchestra with great skill. Players and singers got out of sync occasionally on opening night, but by the time you read this that will probably no longer be an issue.

From a purely theatrical perspective, the Doucet/Barbe team has loaded Hoffman up with a plethora of stage business and innovative design elements. That's both this production's greatest strength and biggest weakness, because while some of their ideas are delightful and serve the opera well, others are distracting or even annoying.

The ingenious bunraku-style mechanical creatures at Olympia's coming-out party are a good example of the former, along with visually striking costumes, such as Dapertutto's glittering black and scarlet number in the Venice sequence.

The latter include irrelevant images lifted from M.C. Escher, overdone slapstick in the Olympia scenes, Giulietta's distracting and unflattering seahorse outfit, and the sudden appearance, in the second act, of a giant puppet version of Antonia's mother manipulated by multiple Doctor Miracles. Arriving as it does at a moment of high drama, this sudden infusion of the absurd provoked stifled giggles from some of the opening night audience. Besides, seven Doctor Miracles is six too many.

That said, Opera Theatre's Tales of Hoffmann is still a generally gratifying production of an Offenbach classic, and well worth seeing. It runs in rotating repertory with the season's other three operas through June 28th at the Loretto-Hilton center on the Webster University campus. For ticket information call 314-961-0644.

One final note: Tales of Hoffmann runs around three hours and fifteen minutes with two very short intermissions, neither of which leaves one enough time to do more than make a quick run to the appropriate washroom or hastily gulp down a glass of wine. Tacking on another five minutes to each intermission wouldn't make that much difference in overall running time and would enhance the experience of Opera Theatre's well-appointed concessions tent during these pleasant early summer evenings

The Winning West

Paula West is making her third St. Louis appearance (and her second in the Cabaret at Savor series) this week, which presents me with a bit of a problem. What can I say about her magnetic and compelling performance that I didn't say the last two times? I've already praised her ability to combine the improvisatory spirit of jazz with the fidelity to the songwriter's intent that characterizes a good cabaret performance. I've already described her act as "the best of both worlds". Where do I go from there?

Perhaps I should start by admiring the variety of material on the program. From the opening instrumental blues jam based on a tune by the late Boise-based pianist Gene Harris to the mesmerizing closing performance of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", Ms. West and company provide an impressive variety of songs culled from widely divergent genres.

There are American Songbook standards like Sammy Cahn's "Pocketful of Miracles" (from the 1961 Frank Capra film), "Something Good" (which Richard Rogers wrote for the film version of The Sound of Music) and Rogers and Hart's "Isn't It Romantic" (from 1932 film Love Me Tonight where it's sung by Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier, among others, in a montage sequence). But there are also the Dylan songs, a rollicking version of Hank Williams' "Jambalaya", Jobim's stream-of-consciousness "Waters of March" - the composition of which is said to have been a form of psychotherapy for the Brazilian legend - and the earthy wit and wisdom of "The Goodbye Song", adapted from a Pearl Bailey monologue.

That last one, by the way, is one of several numbers that cast a gimlet eye on that whole Mars/Venus thing. Oscar Brown, Jr.'s "The Snake", about the folly of believing that love alone can change anyone, is another. Ms. West is no starry-eyed romantic, and her wry take on the business of "breakin' in the next man" gives a bit of a feminist slant to the evening. A distinct, personal point of view is one of the elements of a solid cabaret show so that, as they say, is a good thing.

Ms. West delivers all of this with the vocal flexibility and virtuosity that her fans have come to expect. She also does it with a minimum of "patter" - the between-songs chat that most artists use to enlighten us about the music, the performer, or both. That's unusual in cabaret, but Ms. West is content to let the music and her often-innovative approach to it speak for themselves. For her, the combination works beautifully. She connects quickly with the audience and maintains that bond right up to the end.

The combination of Ms. West and her fellow performers, The George Mesterhazy Trio, also works beautifully. I've praised Mesterhazy's impressive pianism and smart, witty arrangements before. It would seem that I'm doing it again now. His arrangement of ur-Hippie eden ahbez's "Nature Boy", for example, features seductive harmonies and a percussion line inspired by a visit to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul ("not Constantinople") while his high-energy version of "All the Cats Join In" - which Benny Goodman's band recorded for a Disney animated short in 1946 - includes one of his signature in-jokes. In this case, it's the bass line from another Goodman hit, Chu Berry's "Christopher Columbus". There was undoubtedly more of that sort of thing during the evening, but I'm not hip to the jive enough to pick up all of it.

Filling out the trio this time around are Cliff Schmidt on bass and Tony Reedus on drums. They're both solid performers and are clearly having the time of their lives playing off of each other and Ms. West who is, as always, careful to give members of the band plenty of opportunities to shine. Mr. Schmidt's action-packed solos drew applause throughout the evening, and Mr. Reedus demonstrated an impressive dynamic range, from the exotic caresses of "Nature Boy" to the slam-bang tang of "All the Cats Join In".

So, there we are. I managed to tell you what a great show Paula West is doing this week at Savor and I hardly plagiarized myself at all. Her show runs through Saturday, May 17th, and you can order tickets by calling Savor at 314-531-0220 or by surfing over to licketytix.com. I'd advise doing that sooner rather than later. The 65-seat Flim-Flam Room was nearly full when we attended on Wednesday; it's a safe bet that Friday and Saturday tickets will go quickly.

Should you miss her, however, despair not. Her three CDs are available at amazon.com , among other places, and you can keep up with future appearances at her web site, paulawestonline.com . And in any case, given the warm welcome the Midwest has accorded the West, I expect we'll be seeing her here again.

Voices of Spring

It was a colorful evening at Powell Hall on Thursday, May 8th, and not just because of the bright spring plumage sported by many of the women (and some of the men) in attendance. The works that made up the program were also riots of orchestral color that gave every section of the orchestra a chance to show off - which they did, to great effect.

The evening opened with that favorite of cartoons and horror movies - Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor - as arranged by one of the 20th century's great transcribers, Leopold Stokowski. Sometimes lambasted by critics for his flamboyant conducting style, "Stoky" was certainly capable of wretched excess from time to time, but I've always had a soft spot for both his performances and his arrangements. Dating from 1926 - and made famous in 1939 by its inclusion in Disney's Fantasia - the transcription is really quite a brilliant display of the capabilities of the 20th-century orchestra in general and the Philadelphia Orchestra (where Stokowski was Music Director from 1912 to 1938) in particular. The way in which melodic fragments are tossed around between instruments recalls Webern's transcription of Bach's "Ricercare No. 2" - albeit on a grander scale - and the occasional echoing of themes between sections put me in mind of the famous antiphonal brass works of Gabrielli.

Early music purists shun this sort of thing, of course, but I've always felt that a sympathetic arrangement in no way denigrates the original but rather creates a new work that's a kind of musical hybrid. Some critics dismissed Stokowski's Bach transcriptions as "Bachowski" but, in fact, that's exactly what they are: collaborations between two musical originals who just happened to have lived two centuries apart.

Peter Oundjian conducted the orchestra in an appropriately Hollywood-lavish performance of this unabashedly flashy piece. The winds sounded particularly fine and it was nice to hear from that orchestral wallflower, the celesta, even if it's only used as a garnish.

Following the Bach/Stokowski was Christopher Theofanidis' Rainbow Body, a transcendent 2000 composition that's a kind of fantasia on 12th century composer, author and mystic Hildegard von Bingen's Responsorium "Ave Maria, O auctrix vite" ("Hail Mary, o source of life") - which was itself an adaptation of an anonymous "Alma Redemptoris Mater" from two hundred years earlier. Mirrors within mirrors. Von Bingen's work radiates a celestial serenity that's difficult to define, but Theofanidis has nevertheless captures it perfectly. The theme is presented three times in this thirteen-minute piece, each time in a different swirl of orchestral color, but its first appearance is simply magical. Played simply by the strings in an arrangement that mimics the effect of reverberation in a large space, this 10th-century chant, expanded in the 12th century and filtered through the lens of the 21st, is simply one of the most beautiful things you will ever hear.

The title, according to Paul Schiavo's program notes, derives from Tibetan Buddhism and refers to "the form an enlightened person takes after escaping the cycle of reincarnation". In this sense, then, Rainbow Body is something of a contemporary version of Strauss' Death and Transfiguration, with each statement of the theme indicating the progress of the "subtle body" towards pure light and energy. Theofanidis illustrates that final transformation with an all-stops-out setting that manages to be both overwhelming and subtle at the same time.

The symphony did this modern showpiece up proud, with a performance that was received with great enthusiasm by the audience - a relatively rare response to most recent classical music. Rainbow Body clearly deserves to be made a part of the regular orchestral repertoire. Writing music that is beautiful as well as intelligent seems to be finally making a comeback, and not a moment too soon.

It was back to the familiar after intermission with that most famous of 20th century settings of medieval texts, Carl Orff's 1936 Carmina Burana. The title is taken from an 1847 collection of secular poetry by anonymous authors from the 12th and 13th centuries that turned up in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery in Beuren, Germany. As befits their "vulgar" status, the poems celebrate not the theoretical joys of heaven but rather the practical ones of earth: spring, sex, food, sex, drink, gambling and sex. They also recognize something that we moderns have lost track of, to our detriment: the heavy influence of blind chance on our lives. The setting of "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" ("Fortune, Empress of the World"), which opens and closes the work, reminds us that the wheel of fortune is always turning and that none of us should get too cocky, as the universe has a tendency to dope-slap the excessively smug.

Orff envisioned this material as the basis for a choral cantata with some mimed action and "magic tableaux" and while it's usually performed strictly as a concert piece these days, the composer's theatrical intentions are evident in every note. Oundjian's reading was appropriately dramatic, with marked contrasts of both tempo and dynamics that called to mind David Amado's somewhat controversial 2003 Carmina. I loved that one and I'm equally smitten this time around. The orchestra and chorus sounded great despite the occasional intonation problem here and there, and the addition projected supertitles saved those less familiar with the work from having to constantly bury their noses in their programs. There was also fine work from the Children's Chorus, brought in from the wings to stand in front of the stage for their brief appearance in the "Court of Love" section.

Baritone soloist Lucas Meachem nicely delineated the various characters Orff created for him. His Abbot of "Cucaniensis" (which I've seen translated as Cuckoominster or Cockaigne, among other things) was especially striking, and he got all the required dramatic mileage out of the tormented, hedonistic narrator of "Estuans interius". Soprano Anna Christy was the epitome of girlish innocence flirting with budding sensuality in "Stetit puella" and "Dulcissime", and she nailed the daunting glissando that opens the latter with ease.

I was less happy with tenor Stanford Olsen's "Olim lacus colueram". The poem is a macabre little piece about a roasted swan seen from the bird's point of view. It's comedy of the dark and creepy variety, and I felt Olsen's overly broad performance (or was it Oundjian's overly broad direction?) pulled it too much towards slapstick and did a disservice to his own fine singing. Sometimes less really is more.

This concluding concert of the 2007 - 2008 season will be presented again Friday and Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, May 9th through 11th. It's a splendid evening of vivid, Technicolor wide-screen music making and a fine way to welcome the season. As they sing in the "Primo Vere" ("Early Spring") section of Carmina Burana:

Rerum tanta novitas in solemni vere et veris auctoritas iubet nos guadere

"All things are refreshed at Spring's celebration, and her authority bids us rejoice."

Call 314-534-1700 for tickets or visit the St. Louis Symphony web site at slso.org . Because in these concerts, the orchestra and chorus truly rock, dude. Seriously.