The Summer Hubbies 2013

Yes, it's that time again, when we look back in a slight daze at roughly a quarter-year of the city's theatrical life, find some hot picture of a male model, and put together our personal list of the best of the local scene.

So without further ado -

Best Acting Ensembles

House and Garden - Trinity Rep; Angela Brazil, Mary C. Davis, Janice Duclos, Catherine Dupont, Steven Jaehnert, Phyllis Kay, Barbara Meek, Ted Moller, Barry M. Press, Bridget Saracino, Anne Scurria, Fred Sullivan, Jr., Stephen Thorne, Joe Wilson, Jr., directed by Brian McEleny

Rapture, Blister Burn - Huntington Theatre; Nancy E. Carroll, Shannon Esper, Annie McNamara, Kate Shindle, Timothy John Smith, directed by Peter DuBois

Social Creatures - Trinity Rep; Darien Battle, Timothy Crowe, D'Arcy Dersham, Janice Duclos,Rebecca Gibel, Alexander Platt, Nance Williamson, directed by Curt Columbus

Glengarry Glen Ross - Merrimack Rep; David Adkins,  Joel Colodner, Charlie Kevin, Will LeBow, Todd Licea, Jim Ortlieb, Jeremiah Wiggins, directed by Charles Towers

Lebensraum - Hub Theatre Company; Jaime Carillo, Lauren Elias, Kevin Paquette, directed by John Geoffrion

David Adkins and Will LeBow in Merrimack Rep's Glengarry Glen Ross.  Photo: Meghan Moore.

Best Individual Performances

Colin Hamell - Jimmy Titanic, New Rep

Lisa O'Hare, David Andrew MacDonald, James Beaman, Jacquelynn Fontaine, Andrew Tighe - The Sound of Music, North Shore Music Theatre

Karen MacDonald - M, Huntington Theatre

Paula Plum, Marvelyn McFarlane, Michael Kaye, DeLance Minefee - Clybourne Park, SpeakEasy Stage

Lindsay Allyn Cox, Terrell Donnell Sledge, Kris Sidberry, Gregory Balla - By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Lyric Stage

Gabriel Graetz, Beth Pearson, William Schuller - Little Giants, Imaginary Beasts

Tim Spears, Russell Garret, Paula Langton, Jeffries Thais, Paul Farwell - Amadeus, New Rep

Bobbie Steinbach, Paula Plum - Pericles, Actors' Shakespeare Project

Daniel Jones - From Denmark with Love, Vaquero Playground

Lorne Batman, Sam Tilles - The Skin of Our Teeth, Boston University

Aimee Doherty, Phil Tayler, Michele A. DeLuca, J.T. Turner, Lauren Gemelli, Sarah deLima - On the Town, Lyric Stage

The set, costumes, and lighting of Amadeus at the New Rep. Photo: Andrew Brilliant

Best Direction

Brian McEleny, House and Garden, Trinity Rep

Curt Columbus, Social Creatures, Trinity Rep

Charles Towers, Glengarry Glen Ross, Merrimack Rep

And now - see you at the beach!

Best (New) Plays 

House and Garden, Alan Ayckbourn - Trinity Rep

Social Creatures, Jackie Sibblies Drury - Trinity Rep


Best Design

Courtney Nelson (set), Chelsea Kerl (costumes), Katy Atwell (lighting), and Yi-Chun Hung (sound) - The Skin of Our Teeth, Boston University

Cristina Todesco (set), Frances Nelson McSherry (costumes), and Mary Ellen Stebbins (lighting) - Amadeus, New Rep

Seághan McKay, projections - On the Town, New Rep

Johnathan Carr, film production - By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Lyric Stage

Bill Clarke, set - Glengarry Glen Ross, Merrimack Rep

Cotton Talbot-Minkin, Jill Rogati, and Matthew Woods - Little Giants, Imaginary Beasts

Round and round Ayckbourn's Garden with Trinity Rep

Phyllis Kay and Fred Sullivan, Jr. - Ayckbourn's would-be Pyramus and Thisbe.  Photos: Mark Turek.

As Hub Review readers may recall, I left Trinity Rep's production of Alan Ayckbourn's House hungry to see his Garden (they both close this weekend, so hurry). House had been riddled with curious lacunae, and actually climaxed with a scene that seemed like the culmination of Garden; so I imagined that once I'd seen both sides of this dramatic diptych (which is meant to be played simultaneously, on adjacent stages), the two scripts would click together thematically like hand in glove.

Silly me. Garden is certainly worth seeing, but as things turn out, it's quite different from House - thematically, structurally, tonally - indeed, in almost every way possible. The scripts do share that climactic hinge, but aside from that, Garden doesn't re-inforce its sister play's structure so much as sprawl away from it in new directions.

This is perhaps bad for the unity of this dramatic double feature. But oddly, it may be good for Alan Ayckbourn; it's certainly intriguing to see the playwright experimenting at this stage of his career (he's 74, and has penned 70 plays), particularly given he's probing loaded questions around incest and drug use - not to mention the fading illusions of the commercial artiste. If some of what he attempts here doesn't quite come off, or seems to undermine the very structure he so ably set up in House - well, I found such sins easy to forgive, because the play stays clever to the end - and it's worth noting that together House and Garden count for a full five hours of dramatic construction (that's more than three full plays from any of our millennial playwrights). What's more, the forking paths of Garden seem to connect to the arc of Ayckbourn's output in oddly resonant ways; indeed, sometimes the script seems to be sending de-stabilizing roots down beneath his entire sex-comedy oeuvre.

Of course if all that sounds a little heady, or heavy, you can always ignore the deep end of Ayckbourn's themes and just enjoy the superficial garnishes of the form, which he's still happy to serve up. Yes, people actually "do it" in the Edenic bushes in Garden (as the flora sways above them, and old Adam himself wanders by with a mower) - and yes, that's still funny. Likewise the dry fountain at the center of Eugene Lee's overgrown set inevitably spurts in a highly phallic way. (Yuk-yuk.) But in the background of this slapstick, one character goes steadily mad; another escapes her domineering husband by hitching a ride with a possible sex criminal; and another world-weary lover is led off against her will to rehab. One marriage collapses just as the adultery that destroyed it collapses, too - and even as we watch another, faithful marriage grow more and more suffocating by the second. Ayckbourn has always worked in a surprisingly dark vein (remember the homemaker who keeps trying to commit suicide in Absurd Person Singular?) - but this time he lets the personal devastation all but run riot.

Steven Jaehnert and Bridget Saracino make remarkable acting debuts.

He even turns the dramatic knife on himself, believe it or not. The thematic climax of Garden is a long, improbably charming scene between Ayckbourn's aging lothario, Teddy (Fred Sullivan, Jr.) and a visiting French film star, Lucille (Phyllis Kay, both at top).  Teddy speaks no French, and Lucille has little English, but they embark on a fling anyway - and their "communication" in two separate tongues floats effortlessly between barbed satire and comic rue (it helps if you can at least follow along roughly in French). Lucille understands her own moral position far better than Teddy does, but at the same time she still hangs on to some sense of romantic possibility. She knows she's only a B-level star - one who dreamed of being a classical actress but who is now paid well to be offed by terrorists in the first reel. She has even been convicted of drug trafficking (an interesting metaphor for what commercial actors do in an artistic sense?), and faces a grueling cold-turkey treatment at the local clinic. But still she rhapsodizes about Pyramus and Thisbe, and Baucis and Philemon, all in French - while Teddy can only mumble "I don't know who any of those people are . . ."

Kay is peerless through all this, while Sullivan is his usual confidently comic self (although his Teddy isn't very far from a lot of other Fred Sullivan, Jr. performances). Kay is matched by a sterling turn from Anne Scurria as Teddy's long-suffering (and fed-up) wife, and a subtly tragic one from Stephen Thorne as his cuckolded best friend. Alas, the usually-reliable Angela Brazil only brings mania, rather than true melt-down, to Teddy's psychologically unstable paramour, and somehow the talented trio of Janice Duclos, Catherine Dupont, and Barry Press didn't quite make their Edenic ménage come off believably. But this double production did conceal a double acting surprise, in the performances of newcomers Steven Jaehnert and Bridget Saracino. In the roles of the children of the adulterers, who are feeling their own way toward romance, these two were highly compelling throughout - and Jaehnert in particular was remarkable. It seems clear that under the direction of company vet Brian McEleny, Trinity has mounted another acting-ensemble-of-the-year contender. And they have demonstrated that even after 70 plays, Alan Ayckbourn is still a vital dramatic force.

A Titanic performance at the New Rep

Colin Hamell in Jimmy Titanic - photo: Michael and Suz Karchmer.

We live, it seems, in an age of theatrical vehicles. Playwrights are short on vision these days, and the culture is far from coherent; but actors still need work - hence Jimmy Titanic, at the New Rep through this weekend, a bemused and bemusing one-man show, starring the versatile Colin Hamell, as a lost passenger on that famous ocean liner (another vehicle!) that vanished beneath the waves one night to remember in 1912.

Yes, you read that right - this is a light comedy about the sinking of the Titanic; something rather improbable about the supposedly unsinkable. And no, Jimmy didn't survive - the play is (mostly) a wry reminiscence from the heights of Heaven - sometimes leavened with moments of true pathos.  That the evening comes off as comedy at all (and it does come off) is a testament to the skills of both actor Hamell and the script's author, Bernard McMullan. I can't pretend that the play is more than a mildly entertaining way to while away about an hour and a half of your life. But these days - maybe that ain't bad.

Mr. McMullan basically keeps Jimmy Titanic afloat by throwing out all sorts of dramatic material, and then seeing what sticks (at least for a while). And luckily, it turns out he is a skillful sketch writer - there are all sorts of good ideas bobbing around on the surface of his script; but mostly they're all tip, no iceberg. You could argue the playwright thus cannily avoids capsizing his wry tone - but as we watch seemingly a dozen good dramatic ideas drift by, a certain sense of thematic vacuum sets in, and we wonder at the long-term wisdom of his seeming stance.

Still, many of McMullan's gambits are beguiling. He conjures a heaven that's a bit like a down-and-out neighborhood in Belfast (Jimmy's hometown); the Archangel Gabriel shakes down new arrivals for spare change, and the Almighty himself is a grizzled old chain-smoker; there's even a disco (and sex, apparently). This shanty paradise struck me as quite a good idea - but it didn't really lead anywhere. Likewise, the playwright crafts a striking scene in which Jimmy spends his last moments on earth drinking with the Astors, as the water rises around them - another inspired gambit, but we never meet these avatars of the upper crust on the "other side," and indeed the whole question of how heaven might level the social differences that meant so much on earth (and determined who lived and died on the Titanic) never really surfaces.

Other themes can be glimpsed on the edges of the script, passing like strangers in the night. Why did God command that iceberg to drift into the Titanic's path? And what role did human error - or dishonesty - play in the tragedy?  Jimmy himself was one of the laborers who innocently built the flawed vessel - but he never wrestles with his own role in its creation. And what does it mean for those who caused the disaster to be in heaven along with their victims? In many plays, we sense the playwright groping for a compelling theme; here, we feel McMullan all but pushing them aside in the quest for his next one-liner.

Still, if you're in the mood for a light evening that dips occasionally into rueful recollection, shot through with Irish feeling - or if you like pointed little skits that never sharpen their points too far - then Jimmy Titanic is all but guaranteed to please you. Certainly this production, which originated with the Tir Na theatre company, and has already toured extensively, has been buffed to a high sheen by director Carmel O'Reilly (who seems to specialize these days in light reiterations of older, deeper Irish drama). I'd even argue McMullan could be a talent to watch, if he can harness his skills to some larger artistic purpose. And Hamell's performance is surely a focused, precise tour de force - buoyantly secure and skillful - unsinkable, even.

Orchestral manoeuvres at BEMF

Robert Mealy leads the BEMF Orchestra. Photo: Kathy Wittman

Sorry for the delay, but I still have remaining thoughts about a few performances from last week's Boston Early Music Festival (perhaps two posts' worth!).

One of the more intriguing concerts I caught during that busy week was "The Birth of the Orchestra," which featured the remarkable BEMF Orchestra, under the direction of concertmaster Robert Mealy (above). As I've said before, this ensemble is a conclave of superstars (Miloš Valent and Cynthia Roberts on violin, Laura Jeppesen on viola, Phoebe Carrai on violoncello, Gonzalo X. Ruiz on oboe, Avi Stein on harpsichord and organ . . . the list goes on), and the program promised a kind of curated comparison between the two musical centers (Paris, under Lully, and Rome, under Corelli) where that marvelous invention we call "the orchestra" first coalesced.  

The word "orchestra" itself derives from the Greek for the spot in which the chorus performed in ancient amphitheatres - orkhestra is literally "the space in front of the stage," but its etymological taproot is the verb "to dance," orkheisthai.  Given this etymology, it's appropriate that dance figured in this concert (and indeed, courtly dance, which eventually evolved into ballet, was key to the orchestra's early life in France).

So far, so good; and much of the concert proved transporting. But some conceptual disarray - the programming felt more like a potluck than a progression - and occasional passages that weren't as crisp as these stars' best work, often distracted me between the high points of the performance.

From the top, Mealy announced that the ensemble was tuned not to the modern "A" (440 Hz), but instead to a kind of "historical" A, at 392 Hz - a full step lower than we're used to, and the equivalent of the modern "G." Mealy commented that this tuning had been of great help to the singers in Almira, BEMF's main event, so he was hanging onto it - but I didn't really find that argument convincing. To be blunt - there were no singers in this concert, so any argument for a low tuning had to have some other justification. (Singers are always happier with a low tuning, as it lowers the strain on their vocal chords - in fact the seeming march to high tunings over time has often been slowed by battles between singers and instrumentalists.)  

Then there was the question of why this tuning was quite so low. There's a consensus that historical tunings were in general lower than they are today; many scholars cite 415 Hz, a half-step lower than modern A, as a rough guide to "the baroque A." But some evidence contradicts this - indeed, there simply was no standard "A" during the baroque period as there is today, and I've found references for the pitch (from tuning forks and organ pipes of the period) that range as high as A=457, or even A=465 (a half-step higher than the modern A).

Now a concert contrasting orchestral development in Rome and Paris might, you'd think, explore the likely fact that "A" was pitched at very different frequencies between those two locales.  (Indeed, you could make the larger claim that the general movement toward pitch coherence in historic performance is actually anti-historic.) But then again, re-tuning period strings is a tricky business, as for all their beauty these instruments can be recalcitrant; they yearn to return to their habitual tunings, and given variations in humidity and temperature, they sometimes decide to inch out of tune anyway. And this was a slight problem for  the BEMF Orchestra - some re-tuning went on during the performance, but I sometimes felt a few string players were no longer quite in synch with the ensemble.

Some slight gaps in cohesion were felt as well - amusingly so, since Corelli was noted for his nearly obsessive insistence on orchestral unity (legend has it he broke a violin over the back of one unruly player). It's not that these players were unruly, of course - but a few of these stars didn't always seem to be on precisely the same page; although as some were being called to contribute to multiple programs over the course of the week, the occasional gap in focus was almost inevitable.

And there were certainly abundant pleasures here, beginning with the spirited opening of Handel's overture to Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disingonno. Given Corelli's importance in the actual gestation of the orchestra, I was surprised we didn't hear more from him, but his one appearance, with the Concerto Grosso in D Major, Op. 6, No. 1, came off well (particularly the mournful, stately Largo).

One clear argument for a low tuning, of course, would be that it allows for a more darkly shaded and complex sound - I wish that Mealy had said that, for if this was his strategy, it paid off in Handel's overture to Agrippina and Georg Muffat's haunting Dulce Somnium (particularly its fascinatingly labyrinthine Passacaglia). It was intriguing to compare this somewhat-anxious Agrippina to the brighter modern sound Boston Lyric Opera gave it two years ago - here it felt far more mottled, tragic, and well, antique, for lack of a better word. (It's slightly amusing to ponder that early music could itself have conjured a sense of even earlier music.)

Elsewhere the program often focused on dance and dramatic action. While Corelli got short shrift, Mealy lavished his attention on Lully, particularly the dance music.  Here the BEMF Dance Ensemble - Caroline Copeland, Carlos Fittante, Karin Modigh, and Mickael Bouffard - got to strut their stuff in a series of courtly dances in full costume, which I felt was an inspired idea, but only highlighted that the dance component of BEMF is still playing catch-up, I'm afraid, to its musical achievement.

This question is a vexing one, though. There were no "professional" dancers in Lully's day - technically speaking. But the truth is that courtiers devoted much of their lives to dance training, as in the court of the Sun King, himself an avid dancer, favor often fell on the fleet of foot. The BEMF dancers are certainly stylish - Ms. Copeland seems the most accomplished - but they're hamstrung, if you'll pardon the pun, by choreography that can sometimes seem repetitive. Again, there's an argument for limiting their movement to the boundaries of existing documentation (which emphasizes the hands, feet, and floor patterns) - but there are other arguments as well, I'd say, for experimentation and more clearly personal artistic statements. Given that dance and the orchestra were so closely tied at their birth (remember that Greek derivation of the word "orchestra"?), I wish BEMF could provide a deeper focus on dance in future, with perhaps whole concerts given over to dance and dancers.

That's a longer argument, of course, for another day. I'd be remiss, however, if I didn't mention the charming performances of selections from John Blow's opera Venus and Adonis (particularly the lively percussion from Ben Grossman), and an intriguing take on Philipp Heinrich Erlebach's Orchestral Suite No. 1 (a piece with which I was unacquainted). The subtlety of the Erlebach argued strongly for more attention being paid to this composer; the closing Chaconne in particular was a tender marvel. So sometimes you can be lucky in potluck - it can, in the end, yield something truly delicious. 

The awesome beauty of bad weather

As another weather warning was just issued this afternoon, it seems appropriate to post this frightening, majestic video of the kind of Old-Testament-style cloud Yahweh might have spoken out of -  a supercell near Booker, Texas photographed by Mike Olbinski and posted on Vimeo.

Music by Kevin MacLeod - http://incompetech.com. Go full-screen on this one.

Vocal highs and lows at BEMF

Dame Emma Kirkby

I looked at my partner about halfway through Dame Emma Kirkby's concert at the Boston Early Music Festival last week and had to deadpan, "Are we sad yet?"

He could only chuckle; for rarely has an artist risked a set as downbeat as this one - devoted in its entirety to the lachrymose John Dowland, and what's more, skirting for the most part his early, lively stuff.  To be fair, we knew what we were getting into - Dowland is notorious for his dolor; his motto was actually "Semper Dowland, semer dolens" ("Always Dowland, always grieving") - and I don't think he was being ironic.

The composer, a close contemporary of Shakespeare, never achieved a post in Elizabeth I's court (he was Catholic, somewhat on the down low - and even a sometime spy), but his wildly popular music played heavily to the unique taste of the Elizabethan moment: the worship of virginity was at its height when he published his "First Book of Songs," and Elizabeth's subsequent death soon brought even a deeper note of mourning to the cult of love denied.  Dowland's output likewise tilted toward the funereal; his early lyrics hoped that his tears might "sweetly weepe into my Ladies brest"; but later songs command Time to actually stop, so that he may be "bedded to my Tombe;" centuries before Wagner's Liebestod, Dowland was obsessed with the idea of "Love-death."

It goes without saying that Kirkby, a beloved doyenne of the early music scene, at this point in her career can program anything she likes - and so virtually a full house showed up to hear a concert all but designed to make you want to open a vein (or at least live forever with the knife poised over your wrist).  The draw, of course, was the hand-in-glove fit between her voice and this material.  Kirkby doesn't boast a large sound, nor is she a particularly agile vocalist (in fact I believe she never trained to be a professional singer), but in its vibrato-free purity, her voice comes close to the early-music ideal, and her stage presence is open, frank, and sweetly appealing.

She approached the Dowland songbook as a source of comfort and solace - which worked quite well at first; Kirkby was moving, but never maudlin, in the heart-breaking "Flow my tears," and brought a rush of sweet immediacy to the imploring "Wilt thou unkind thus reave me."  And interspersed among her vocal selections were peerless lute solos (including the famous, foundational "Lachrimae") rendered delicately by Paul O'Dette.

Still, a program this repetitious demands some sense of exploration - or explication - but Kirkby didn't supply either; the first lament sounded much like the last. And perhaps there's a touch of stylistic naïveté to an approach that holds back from the underside of Dowland's obsessive erotic melancholy - that takes him at his own weepy word over and over and over again. His lyrics may not quite be Shakespearean sonnets, but their poetry has its own subtexts and intrigues, that purity alone cannot limn. Still, the concert did end on a paired note of devastatingly simple beauty, in Kirkby's take on "Thou mighty God," Dowland's heartfelt prayer for deliverance, and O'Dette's tender rendition of the haunting "Farewell."

The Hilliard Ensemble.

Another mainstay of the early music scene also made a visit to BEMF this year - but with far less satisfactory results.  Indeed, I confess I hesitated before writing anything at all about the Hilliard Ensemble (at left), as their performance at Emmanuel Church on Friday night was among the weakest I have ever heard on a professional stage. Given the group's illustrious history, this of course was startling; at first I couldn't quite believe my ears, in fact. Were they under-prepared? Were they exhausted? Ill? Energy and volume were low, intonation was insecure (countertenor David James missed some pitches completely), phrasing was tentative - as one acquaintance put it during intermission, it sounded more like a first rehearsal than a full performance.

This was really too bad, because the program was certainly of interest - it opened with a suite of obscure songs inspired by Petrarch's poems to the famous Laura, then segued into hymns to the Virgin Mary (an interesting curatorial idea).  Things did move slightly uphill as the concert progressed - a later set of songs by Pisano more or less hung together, and after intermission (during which the audience was audibly restive), the Hilliards came back with more power, at least, on three hymns by St. Godric of Finchale which are among the oldest surviving scores of vocal music.  These proved compelling, and there were further sparks of feeling, and some coherence, in the English song "Ah! Gentle Jesu," as well as "Otche nasch," an anonymous rendering of the Lord's Prayer.  Alas, things did begin to drift once more, even though a set of Armenian hymns, or "Sharakans," was quite intriguing harmonically; the final piece, however, Perotin's "Viderunt omnes" proved a disappointment.  Sigh. An encore by Arvo Pärt, written specially for the Ensemble some years ago, only gave a reminder of how high a profile they once enjoyed; but again, the music intrigued, the performance did not.

After these two concerts it was hard for me not to ponder the profound shift in professionalism, and the concomitant expansion in artistic scope, which the early music scene has enjoyed over the past few decades. Today the replication of a period style is not nearly enough to pass muster - and academic indulgence of inconsistent skill is completely a thing of a past. Indeed, the high points of the Boston Early Music Festival, such as Gilbert Blin's double bill of Charpentier, made fresh intellectual points about the music in question (and its period) while maintaining the highest technical standards in terms of performance.  Is it enough to say that "early music" has itself left its "early" phase?  These concerts made me think that might be the case.

If you haven't seen the amazing video "Paper City" . . .

Paper City from Maciek Janicki on Vimeo.

Here is your chance to take a breather from BEMF and check it out.