Baby's breath

Liz Hayes and Nael Nacer take a breather.  Photo: Andrew Brilliant.

One thing is clear about Lungs.

You have to have amazing lung power to perform it.

Particularly if, like the talented Liz Hayes (above, with the equally gifted Nael Nacer), you're trying to put over the nameless "W," who comprises only half the cast of Duncan Macmillan's two-hander (through March 10 at the New Rep), but who is talking for something like 90% of the script.  "W" talks and talks.  And talks.  She banters, she barters, she barks; she harries and harangues, badgers and berates, accosts and accuses.  She never shuts up.

And this causes problems for Hayes, and Macmillan's play, too.  It's not just that Lungs never gives its leading lady a chance to catch her breath; it's that her character's annoying volubility keeps drawing focus from what appears to be Macmillan's theme.  The playwright seems to be attempting a kind of wry black comedy about the way millennial morals bleed into narcissism - for when "M" innocently suggests to "W" that they think about having a baby (he pops the question in IKEA, no less), she erupts not with happy surprise but instead with every save-the-planet cliché in the Whole Earth Catalogue (remember that?), as well as every insecure accusation she can think of.  Indeed, unlike just about every other professional woman with an eye on the biological clock, "W" seems determined to find every and any excuse not to have a child.

But therein lies the rub.  As "W" rants on about her carbon footprint (so why not stop talking?) and her doubts about her partner - he smokes (!), he needs a better job - we begin to realize that all her criticism isn't going anywhere constructive.  There's no plan for the future in the offing, and the possibility of adoption is never investigated - the conversation is just a cascade of her own issues; indeed, "W" sucks up so much oxygen that we begin to wonder why anyone in his right mind would want a child with her; for a gay man, watching these scenes is like peering into the seventh circle of some special heterosexual hell.

(Spoilers ahead!)

Such a neurotic display also forces us to consider these two constructs as characters, but Macmillan denudes them of all specifics (indeed, the stage is supposed to be completely bare, although the New Rep sneaks in a backdrop of what might be a bronchial tree).  Thus this pair never really looks in the mirror; we suffer through all their symptoms, but we're denied a diagnosis.  So while "M" and "W" are presented as archetypes, they're hard to fathom; but then (surprise!) the playwright yanks the rug out from under us with a plot twist that not only renders his conflicted couple poignantly ridiculous, but also guarantees them a fund of audience sympathy.

But wait!  There's yet another twist - and a corresponding shift in tone - that pulls M&W back onto the road to parenthood, which this time they accept with no questions asked.  And yet there's more.  Suddenly Macmillan accelerates into a fast-forward play-by-play that lands one of his characters in a nursing home, and the other in the grave.  Ta-da!  The end.

So where are we now?  It's hard to say.  I'd argue that Macmillan has meant for the breezy irony of his final scenes to blow through the entire play - he's calling bullshit on an entire latte-sucking generation.  But director Bridget Kathleen O'Leary's forte is perceptive empathy - so there's a built-in conflict, and a kind of funny hinge, in her production; halfway through, she seems to just give up and let the characters she has been trying to build up ever-so-carefully suddenly slip on Macmillan's biological banana peel and go splat.  

Although frankly, the performers looked a little relieved.  And for the record, Liz Hayes does hang onto something like our sympathy through everything; this actress is such an open and likable presence that she's often cast to take the edge off obnoxious roles, and that helps her here; plus she has done her usual careful homework on the part, and beat by beat she's impeccable.  Hayes may actually be slightly upstaged by Nacer, though, who seems to always be at his best when he's just silently emoting (The Aliens, Our Town); here he manages to be adorable even when he's haltingly confessing to what amounts to adultery.  Indeed, the real (if unintentional) question raised by this production may be, Who wouldn't want to have this guy's baby?

Flying high with Haydn

Violinist Aisslinn Nosky.

First, the bad news.

Apparently the music of Franz Joseph Haydn is no longer enough of a draw to fill Symphony Hall; for last weekend's all-Haydn program from the Handel and Haydn Society played to only a two-thirds-full house. It seems Boston is only happy to listen to Haydn when he brings a friend along for the ride - like Mozart.  Or Beethoven.  Or even Handel!

And to be blunt - THAT'S SO WRONG.

Catch a grip, people. Haydn is awesome.  Totally awesome.

For proof you need look no further than this program itself, dubbed "Haydn in Paris" (even though most of the music was written in Austria). It opened with the early Symphony No. 6, known as "Le matin," a delightful evocation of a pastoral morning (and very probably an inspiration for somebody else's "Pastoral" Sixth Symphony).  

Next came the Violin Concerto in G major - a buoyant yet mature crowd-pleaser.  Then the overture to a lost opera, L'isola disabitata - with a storm scene like nobody else's.  Finally, Symphony No. 82 (yes, 82), "The Bear," which closes with a rousing Scottish dance that seems to transform the entire symphony into a hurdy-gurdy (orchestral onomatopoeia was a Haydn specialty, btw).

I know; four hits in a row - that was the good news.  The better news was that Handel and Haydn pulled all this off with vivid color, a crisp attention to detail, and a palpable joie de vivre - which is everything in Haydn, frankly, as he was as witty a composer as Mozart (perhaps even wittier).  Artistic director Harry Christophers has been working for some time on physically loosening up the H&H players, and you could hear (and see) the results of all that coaxing last weekend.  Most of the orchestra played standing up, and there was a graceful lilt swinging through their performance (particularly in "The Bear") that was clean yet thrillingly free.

The orchestra didn't just give it up for Christophers, though.  Concert mistress Aisslinn Nosky came center stage to lead the Violin Concerto in G Major, dressed in her best Sgt. Pepper duds (above left) - and with this musician at the helm (whose playing is as fiery as her hair) the performance proved a  lively wonder. What's more, Nosky seemed to have left behind the showy excesses of her turn in the spotlight last season; this time around, there was a depth and singing eloquence in evidence that beautifully matched the music, as well as her own passion for playing.

Meanwhile Christophers dazzled twice, in both "Le matin" and "The Bear," thus banishing all memory of the slightly uneven playing in his recent Purcell outing.  In "Le matin" the ensemble was deliciously fresh, and turned on a tonal dime from the sparkling opening movement (distinguished by Christopher Krueger's lark-like flute) to the very different demands of the far-more-sober Adagio (marked by what amounted to a delicately rising duet between Nosky and cellist Guy Fishman - Nosky again impressed in a subtle interpretation of the later violin solo).

"The Bear" is perhaps less complex in over-arching theme, but it's still a barn-burner (and I think the only piece in "Haydn in Paris" that was actually written in Paris - see comments).  The second movement revolves around a dazzling development through the classic conceit of theme-and-variation, but it's the finale that sends the audience home smiling.  It is also the source of the symphony's sobriquet - to early audiences, its rhythmic, bag-pipe-like drone recalled the music of the fair, and the dancing bear.  Well, at H&H "The Bear" certainly danced - it all but stomped, in fact, in a climax that went on and on, as Haydn indulged one of his favorite jokes: the symphony that won't quite end.  Not that anyone wanted it to!  Now if Christophers, Nosky and Co. can only convince Boston that Haydn is Da Man, and reason enough all by himself to make a trek to Symphony Hall . . .

Discombobulated Dostoevsky at Trinity

This is just a quick post mortem on Trinity Rep's production of Crime and Punishment, which closed this weekend, and which must go down as one of the oddest misfires in that illustrious company's history.

I feel bad about kicking the show in the pants on the way out the door, but on the other hand I feel I have to note its passing somehow, and I didn't really have the heart to hack it down while it was running (it was the kind of production where you felt for the actors). 

I admit I walked into the theatre with some trepidation, because the very idea of adapting Dostoevsky's great psychological case study sounded like folly - but then I also have to admit that Trinity put its foot wrong just about every way possible. For some idea of the project's scrambled tone, check out the graphic at left - that was actually the poster for the show; yes, Dostoevsky's famously conscience-stricken killer, Raskolnikov, has apparently joined the Flying Brothers Karamazov - which gives you some idea of the incomprehensible car-crash that has held sway on Trinity's Dowling stage for the past few weeks. 

To begin with, as expected, the adaptation proved problematic.  Penned by Trinity artistic director Curt Columbus, it turned out to be only an hour-and-a-half long (length of novel: almost 500 densely printed pages!) - although I admit Columbus did pack in almost every plot point I remember from high school (he wisely begins after its pivotal double murder, which in one of the production's few effective moments, is re-enacted in flashback). Still, with a cast of only three actors, much telling detail is lost (even the crucial moral difference between Raskolnikov's two victims seems blurry) and given the speed with which events whip by, the script has an inevitable Cliff's-Notes vibe.

Add to that the fact that director Brian Mertes directed the whole thing as if it were occurring within Raskolnikov's head, during one of his episodes of delirium (admittedly, the script's pastiche would nudge any production in that direction), while set designer Eugene Lee came up with what appeared to be a Soho loft decorated for Cowboy Mouth (complete with keyboards, video cameras, a tech booth, lighting that descended to bonk the actors on the head, and of course a man-sized crucifix), and hoo boy, you've got one for the history books.

The actors were basically helpless within this surround, but even within those limits, Stephen Thorne, an expert comic actor who always looks a little panicky when pushed into a tragic role, slightly disappointed anyway.  (He should have fought for Raskolnikov's arc somehow, despite everything.)  Meanwhile television star (and former Trinity mainstay) Dan Butler - who played detective Porfiry as well as just about every other male role - seemed to take the whole thing as a lark, sometimes going shirtless for some reason, but more often simply trying to have a little sardonic fun wherever he could.  I have to report, however, that there was one reason to see this production - newcomer Rachel Christopher was the only member of the cast to tap into the torment of the novel, and her many cameos (particularly her turns as Sonya and Lizaveta) were just as harrowing as they should be. Hopefully, next time Trinity decides to do Dostoevsky, they'll simply cast Ms. Christopher in a one-woman show.

Stuck in the middle with Will

Marianna Bassham, stuck in Middletown.  Photo: Stratton McCrady

I left Middletown (at the Actors' Shakespeare Project through March 10) wondering exactly how a playwright as bright as Will Eno could have written a play quite this boring.  

Like a lot of people, I was struck by Eno's spiky monologue Thom Pain (based on nothing) a few years back, so I was quite excited to see one of his full-length plays. But just a few minutes into Middletown I was checking my watch, and by the end of the first act I was all but climbing the walls - although I can't really blame director Doug Lockwood's slightly-light but generally perceptive production; despite a Quirky-with-a-capital-Q decision to angle the audience sideways to the stage (ASP likes playing hide-and-seek behind pillar and post), the talented ensemble essayed intelligent and sensitive performances, and delivered Eno's lyrical non sequiturs with just the right spritz of unspoken pathos.

Indeed much of the production is pitch-perfect; that's the problem. This is what Eno wanted, I kept telling myself, as I wondered why, exactly, being trapped in a bad play is so exquisitely insufferable; why is it so much worse than waiting for two hours in an airport, for instance?  I'm not sure - although perhaps it's that you never feel the airport begging for applause or approval.  It doesn't care about you, but it also doesn't care whether you care about it.

But a garrulous (if soft-spoken) playwright is quite a different thing, particularly one with only a single idea.  For it turns out Middletown, like Thom Pain, is a monologue, albeit a monologue for chorus; there's but one voice here, and one perspective; indeed Middletown only counts as a "play" because it has been rather obviously draped over the borrowed scaffold of Our Town.

You get the impression Eno thinks he's subverting that warhorse in a sneakily awesome way with his quizzical re-enactment of its themes.  All I can say is - if only!  For here Thornton Wilder's rubrics of Everyday Life, Courtship, and Death all wilt under the Aspberger's-Syndrome treatment that is by now the default mode of millennial theatre; no one in Middletown can connect, everything is pointlessly questioned, logic runs inevitably toward contradiction, etc., etc., and oooh look at this funny little thing I noticed about human behavior; isn't that formally interesting?

Sigh.  Yes, kids, you're ironically sweet and clever as hell, and you know just how to sell that, too (Middletown is obvious Charles Isherwood bait) but God, are you ever monotonous; to be fair to Eno, his jokes do sometimes land (it helps if you're in college, either as student or teacher), but they battle a relentless undertow of boredom, because his play, like a lot of plays these days, doesn't really have a reason to exist. And honestly, at forty-something, isn't this author a bit old to be twirling his hair and sighing ruefully, all while doodling on somebody else's text, like Annie Baker or Sarah Ruhl? Aren't we tired of millennial autism yet?  How about somebody writes - oh I don't know - a villain for a change.  Or a hero?  With a goal?  I know it sounds crazy - but how about it, huh?

Okay, right now every literary manager in America is doubled over in laughter at the sheer gaucherie of such a suggestion.  (Only a white male would even think of that! That would be like so awkward!) And again to be fair, maybe it's Eno's bad luck that we just saw a stunning revival of Our Town, so his miniature critique, seemingly sculpted out of a single bar of responsibly-sourced soap, looks even smaller than it otherwise would.  Although hang on, I agree, there are "mysteries" secreted in its various lacunae. (Whose baby is really born in the last act? And why the Native American war dance in whiteface?) But honestly, who cares; I'd prefer a little action instead.  And contrary to Charles Isherwood's vapid suggestion, this is NOT Samuel Beckett, because there's no expanding frame of artistic reference; Middletown gets sadder (and sadder), but it doesn't get any deeper. And I think even those who missed David Cromer's re-invention of Our Town will remember the shocking emotional boomerang of that play's finale: what had seemed a sentimental reminiscence, shot through with starchy wit, suddenly becomes a devastating comment on death.  Here death is just one more reminder that we're all stuck in the middle of something that we cannot understand.  Which is very true, but Eno has been saying it for two hours by now.

Oh well, here's the part where I get repetitive.  Once again I was struck by the pathos of talented actors struggling to put over thin material.  The ASP cast is quite fine across the board; I don't know why director Doug Lockwood (who is an acquaintance of mine) was attracted to this text, but he has certainly drawn an exquisite ensemble performance (probably one of the year's best) from his cast.  Marianna Bassham, Michael Forden Walker, Steven Barkhimer, Paula Langton and Gabriel Kuttner are all known quantities, and have often been praised in these pages.  The news here is that local hottie Grant MacDermott, who has always shown potential, delivers by far the best work he has ever done, and two young actresses make their first major impression on the professional scene.  I've admired the lovely Esme Allen and Margaret Lamb before in either minor roles or student productions (Lamb just graduated from Boston Conservatory).  Here they steal almost every scene they're in.  Both could shine as any number of classical heroines; but I imagine they'll be stuck doing variations of millennial melancholy for some time yet.

Sunrise on Mount Washington

We haven't had a time lapse on the Hub Review for - well, some time now.  This one was taken at the summit of New England's own Mount Washington.  Apparently it was shot just this morning!

The Lyric pockets a small miracle

Phil Tayler and Daniel Berger-Jones.  Photos: Timothy Dunn.

Perhaps I was simply in the mood for any type of theatre done well by the end of last weekend (after I had suffered through three misfires in a row), but the Lyric Stage's Stones in His Pockets struck me as something of a small miracle.  I don't want to make any large claims for Marie Jones' sturdy two-hander - which has become something of a warhorse since its premiere in 1996 - although to be fair, it has affecting emotional and political dimensions; it's a worthy, fully-crafted play.  

But above all, it works, and Jones lavishes her two actors with cameos to die for as they impersonate virtually an entire Irish village (and the Hollywood film crew that invades it).  And luckily, the Lyric has cast two of Boston's smartest and most charming young performers, Phil Tayler and Daniel Berger-Jones, in these demanding roles; and they basically go to town with the show as only bright young talents can.

I admit that by now I have something of a man-crush (and a girl-crush too, who am I kidding?) on both these handsome thesps, who are among the most reliable actors in town.  Over the past year, Tayler, who is at heart a musical-theatre man, seems to have suddenly been in everything, everywhere, after lighting up the caverns of Floyd Collins last spring.  In contrast, Berger-Jones is more of an actor's actor, and made a huge impression in such demanding roles as Jimmy in Look Back in Anger with the Orfeo Group (which he co-founded); but Orfeo has disbanded, and we haven't seen him that much of late (somehow, despite being a born Shakespearean, we've never seen him in a leading classical role).

I'm happy to report that these two are naturals together, even though their instincts and approaches are often opposed.  Tayler likes to go big, while Berger-Jones values precision; but both are clearly committed to nailing the multitude of accents in Pockets, and at least to these American ears, they come through with flying colors.  Berger-Jones even carries off the daunting task of conjuring a Hollywood actress struggling (and hilariously failing) to muster an Irish brogue - surely a master-class acting-accent challenge.

Triumph 'n tragedy on the Irish set.

Indeed, the vocal smorgasbord served here (along with our ability to discern every separate spice) is reason enough to see the show.  Beyond that, even though much of Courtney O'Connor's production is painted in bold colors, the dynamic duo at its center do often manage to limn the underside of Jones' comedy, which basically depicts the destruction of a beleaguered Irish community by not only the temptations of the Hollywood dream machine, but larger global and market forces as well.  (The title, unexpectedly enough, refers to a suicide.)  

I admit that if you claimed the Lyric company doesn't quite pull off the playwright's intended mix of satire of Gaelic woe (the extras for the flick in question, The Quiet Valley, are directed to "Look dispossessed!") with a potent dose of the real thing, I wouldn't really argue.  Still, the production is often a good deal more complex than you expect - as the author, and these actors, inflect even their on-the-make Hollywood types with unexpectedly sympathetic motives and impulses.  Then again, both lead performances aren't entirely perfect: Tayler could dial back the barking here and there, and one of his female characters is all but indistinguishable from a swishy gay stereotype (he needs to come up with a little opening signal for her, as Berger-Jones does with his lead actress, "Caroline Giovanni," who is always sweeping a stray tress behind her ear).  Meanwhile Berger-Jones, for his part, could attend to a subtler problem: we learn a sad secret about his lead character toward the close of the show - and looking back, we realize how much more resonant his performance would be if a vulnerable desperation had subtly tugged at his character's hopes from the start.

But these are only quibbles about a production that more often than not simply carries you along with its own exuberant theatricality.  The bottom line is that the Lyric has another hit on its hands, and Tayler and Berger-Jones have earned a matched set of acting laurels.

Daisey at Disney, and in the desert

Cinderella's Castle at Disney World in Florida.

The trouble with Mike Daisey's American Utopias, which opened ArtsEmerson's "The Next Thing" festival on Friday night (sorry, it closed Saturday) is pretty obvious - and ultimately pretty irritating: it never coheres the way his best work does.  Instead it just rambles along, behind Daisey himself, as he checks out Disney World, and Burning Man (the annual hippie-Thunder-Dome bash in the Nevada desert - the next one begins August 26), and then doesn't check out Occupy Wall Street, but feels guilty about ignoring it instead.

And why doesn't the monologue cohere, you may ask?  Well, if you played a quick game of "What Doesn't Belong?" with this script, most people would agree that last year's doomed protest at Zuccotti Park does not belong next to Disney World and Burning Man.  The reasons, again, are obvious: Burning Man and Disney World are both essentially theme parks (even if Burning Man is only a temporary one; their iconography has begun to converge, as you can see in the posted photos). Disney World is a fantasy about pre-puberty and the suppression of sex; Burning Man is a fantasy about puberty, and, well, sex.  But beyond that, they're remarkably similar; both are ticketed events ($380 for Burning Man this year!), both lean heavily toward group participation, both peddle "thrills" and "awesomeness," both require tons of planning to visit (and far more to construct!), etc., etc.

Daisey is, amusingly, a fish out of water in both environments; he's childless, so he can't relate to just how many kids there are at Disney; and, well, he's none too comfortable with the nudity and general orgiastic atmosphere at Burning Man, either.  (Daisey at left; dudes at Burning Man, at right - not that they all look quite that good.)

So, properly alienated, Our Narrator casts his usual gimlet eye on the goings-around him, and both the hyper-competitive, anxious "fun" at Disney and the laid-back nude-beach-lizard vibe at Man come in for some well-deserved knocks.  But Daisey rarely attempts to synthesize his experiences at each into anything like a statement (word has it that an earlier version included a "dream sequence" in which Walt Disney wandered through Burning Man; I vote that be restored!).  If he ever gets around to doing so, though, I think Daisey could have the beginnings of a classic on his hands.

But alas, interlarded with these musings are what amount to a non-starter: his odd decision to avoid Occupy Wall Street (even though he lives in Brooklyn!).  All Daisey offers for a motive here is that he didn't want to look "dorky."  Really? I hate to break this to you Mike, but . . .  oh, well, never mind!  And honestly, if you can't even bother to take the subway to Zuccotti Park, how do you expect to us take seriously your fulminations against Bloomberg, capitalism, etc., etc.?

The hot men of Burning Man.

Indeed, if Daisey had visited Occupy Wall Street, I can't imagine he would have tried to triangulate it with Disney and Burning Man; nor, I think, would he have categorized all three as "utopias;" the shock of seeing the grungy, from-the-ground-up attempt at a true utopia that for a time occupied Zuccotti Park would have ended any such illusions about EPCOT, Black Rock City, et al.

So what we're left with is an idiosyncratic ramble that frustrates more than it enlightens (although to be fair, it does enlighten a bit).  I have to also mention that as if to add insult to injury, after cheerfully admitting that he dodged any engagement with Occupy, Daisey leads the audience out into the street for a shot at conjuring some faux political commitment that really set my teeth on edge.  As a frequent visitor and supporter of Occupy Boston, this self-aggrandizement pretty much pissed me off, and only recalled the sense of egotistical delusion that allowed him to swear repeatedly that he personally saw the labor abuses of Apple and Foxconn in China. (And for the record, Daisey skeptics have already picked apart a few of the claims in American Utopias; so no, he hasn't entirely changed his ways.)

Of course, Mike Daisey is still entertaining, even when he doesn't really have much to say.  His fans will be glad to hear that he once again has constructed (under the direction of his wife, Jean-Michele Gregory) an elaborate vocal and emotional roller coaster (which is hardly spontaneous, though, whatever his claims; whenever he pauses, you can see that he simply has hit a glitch in the tape reel running in his head).  Daisey thunders and bellows; he whispers, giggles and squeaks; his hands twist and flutter, and enact a thousand dances; he's like some crazed, avenging Buddha, and as ever, the contradictory vision of his enormous theatrical energy remaining utterly anchored and still behind his little wooden table is, for a time, mesmerizing.  But as his script runs on and on, that hypnotic atmosphere slowly drains away.  And we're left wondering why this notorious paragon of the theatrical left thinks it's "dorky" to occupy anything other than Disney.

Burning Man 2012 - even the architecture tells you it and Disneyland have begun to converge.

Snowbound with The Shining, or how Stephen King beat Stanley Kubrick at his own game (Part I)

What the heck is going on in this movie? Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Posting has been a bit light of late, I know, basically because many of last weekend's performances were washed out by the blizzard.  Which is also why I spent much of Saturday hunkered down with some favorite movies, among them Stanley Kubrick's celebrated 1980 horror extravaganza, The Shining.

Actually, I'm not sure The Shining is one of my favorite movies; I watched it again at the suggestion of Facebook friends who insisted it was the perfect film for a snowed-in Saturday night.  (It beat out Doctor Zhivago in a small poll, but maybe it shouldn't have!)

But I'm in disagreement on that point, it seems, with the general public, which has enshrined The Shining as "one of the greatest horror movies ever made" after a slightly uncertain embrace on its release (the movie was a minor hit, though, and saved Kubrick's commercial reputation from the blow delivered by Barry Lyndon).

Now it's not that The Shining doesn't intrigue me.  Stanley Kubrick never made a less than fascinating movie; the so-called "trilogy" of Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange may comprise the height of his achievement (and, you could argue, the height of intellectual pop cinema in general) - and perhaps nothing else in his oeuvre matches them.  Still, his "second tier" - Paths of Glory, Lolita, and Full Metal Jacket - would be the envy of almost any other filmmaker, and Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut are all intriguing to various degrees.

Although to be honest, I'd actually put The Shining at the bottom of that last tier - only it takes a little 'splainin' to define why - and also why the public thinks differently.

But first, a little background.  The work of auteurs who enjoy long careers can generally be divided into three phases (with Welles as the exception that proves the rule).  The first phase consists of small-scale grappling with the apparatus of commercial filmmaking, and the search for voice and theme.  Kubrick's initial phase is quite short - Paths of Glory, a huge leap in his achievement, was only his third full feature. (Compare to Hitchcock's silent phase, which despite strong hints of his eventual direction, took a dozen films to coalesce; Bergman arguably took nine; in contrast, Lean only took two, and Fellini, like Welles, spoke in his own voice in his first film; but both had worked as editors or assistant directors for years).

The second phase is generally far longer, and builds from a commercial breakthrough (Paths of Glory , for instance, connected Kubrick with Kirk Douglas, who tapped him to take over Spartacus).  Suddenly larger resources and a fresh sense of the artistic self are both available to the auteur, and a kind of long extrapolation begins; his or her distinctive language and perspective (and often the core team that helped develop it) are applied to a series of projects that slowly define - sometimes in rambling fits and starts - an over-arching statement.  Sometimes, as with Lean, this phase boils down to a series of leaps in scale.  Occasionally, as with Coppola, the auteur's talent is too dependent on certain collaborators or circumstances, and his arc devolves into slow collapse. With Kubrick, this extrapolation took the form of an ongoing exploration of differing genres, and covered almost all his remaining career; only in Eyes Wide Shut did he begin what I would call a retrospective phase, in which he self-consciously began to re-examine his means and methods (compare with Hitchcock, whose first retrospective film is probably Vertigo, followed by North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, and Frenzy - indeed, all his classic late pictures are retrospective in their essence, although sometimes radical in their technique).

What has all this got to do with The Shining?  A good question - and the answer is that in the rear view mirror, it's obvious that often the extrapolation phase of an auteur's career is beset by unresolved or buried conflicts in the artist's method or personality (or both).  In Hitchcock this issue could be summed up as the limits of anxiety and fetish; in Fellini the problem became a self-consciousness that concealed a deeper self-doubt (indeed, his retrospective phase probably began as early as La Dolce Vita).

Kubrick's extrapolation phase, in contrast, was troubled less by what many saw as his pop short-comings (the clinical tone and meditative, chess-player pace) and more - and more - by clear, if undiscussed, conflicts with his source material.

Narratives that end in "twinned" concepts - the concrete version in The Shining.

Which is hardly surprising, as Kubrick's movies are marked by thematic consistency, despite their differing sources and superficial variety (war picture, black comedy, science fiction, costume drama, horror).  In every Kubrick film, isolation plays a leading role; the characters are always trapped in a harsh or even inhuman environment (a battleground, or outer space, or a blizzard) - and what's more, they move through it in ignorance.  I think ignorance (and specifically moral action in ignorance) has rarely been given the consideration in Kubrick's work that is its proper due, especially as (curiously enough) it may be his most basic theme.  His first full-length films were noir variants, and all his movies have a sublimated hint of that genre's sense of mystery.  The desperate military brass of Dr. Strangelove spend most of the movie trying to figure out what General Ripper has been up to;  Dave and Frank have no idea why they're going to Jupiter;  Alex agrees to the Ludovico technique with no knowledge of its effects; the list goes on and on.  Everyone is flying blind in Kubrick.

But beneath this lies a different kind of interest, in something even deeper than ignorance; call it un-knowability, for lack of a better word. For Kubrick was obsessed with the contradictory nature of human experience - the places were logic stops, where we suddenly realize our bedrock mental concepts conceal their own antitheses; and many of his best films deconstruct such archetypes to limn their embedded, twin-like oppositions.  The symbiosis of man and machine in 2001 is the most obvious example; but connections between sex and death drive Eyes Wide Shut, and Full Metal Jacket turns on the complex relationship between aggression and fraternity. Indeed, Kubrick was at his best when he could tease from a simple pop trope a hauntingly resonant contradiction; he conjured HAL, the "white hotel room," the monolith, and all of 2001, for example, from the slim premise of Arthur C. Clarke's short story The Sentinel.

Yet as I sat through The Shining last weekend (as my house, like the Overlook, was slowly buried in snow), I began to realize how often Kubrick actually failed in this ongoing project.  Try as he might, he couldn't work his magic on all his sources. Certainly in Barry Lyndon his duel with Thackeray ended in a draw; and I'd argue that in The Shining, his similar showdown with Stephen King led only to frustration, and a concealed defeat.   Which I will consider more fully in the second half of this two-part series.

Bowing the winter blues away with Gil Shaham

The intrepid Gil Shaham braved winter's worst last weekend.

Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night stayed violinist Gil Shaham from the completion of his appointed Celebrity Series concert last Sunday, which went forward in the face of two feet of fresh snow and nearly gale force winds, which together left Jordan Hall half empty for his performance. Which is too bad, of course - but to tell true, for those who did brave the Blizzard of '13, it meant the concert seemed to glow with an intimate coziness and warmth.  Let Nemo roar all he wanted - we were going to be listening to Schubert and Bach instead!

The atmosphere was helped enormously by the fact that the virtuosic Mr. Shaham all but beams with his own sweet charisma, and that he was joined on stage by the composers of two of the pieces he played - rising star Avner Dorman, and elder statesman William Bolcom, who was there with his wife and, of course, performance partner, the delightful mezzo Joan Morris.  (In one of the touches that made this concert so very memorable, Bolcom took to the piano to play "Happy Birthday" to Ms. Morris - it was her 70th - as all of Jordan Hall sang along.)

But back to Schubert and Bach, who filled out the first half of the program quite beautifully; indeed, the opening Schubert Sonatina in A minor for Violin and Piano (D. 385) proved the highlight of the afternoon.  This work dates from Schubert's nineteenth year, and from one of the most furious cascades of musical productivity any composer has ever achieved (in the space of two years Schubert completed four symphonies, three masses, five musical dramas, three string quartets, three violin sonatas, and over 300 songs).  

The sonatas (it was the printer Diabelli who re-named them "sonatinas") are, I suppose, only small splashes in this musical torrent; but they are nevertheless charming in a surprisingly mature manner - and though not technically too demanding, they're still subtle and complex.  And with the help of pianist Akira Eguchi - who displayed such musical sensitivity that I longed to hear him as a soloist - Shaham sculpted an utterly beguiling Schubertian landscape, often daring a kind of hushed delicacy that induced the entire hall to lean forward; you could all but hear the hissing pressure of Shaham's bow on his instrument (the "Countess Polignac" Stradivarius, btw, produced right at the cusp of the "golden period" of Strads).

From minor Schubert Shaham turned to major Bach, and a piece that's at the core of the solo violin repertoire - the Partita No. 3 in E Major (BWV 1006) - even if you don't know Bach, you know the melody of its "Gavotte en Rondeau."  I was less happy with this than I had been with the Schubert, however - for it seemed Shaham was determined to treat it largely as a showpiece, and what was on show was his remarkable speed.  Actually, right at the top he spun out of control in an awkward false start.  That didn't slow him down, though - he tore through the opening "Preludio" at a breakneck pace - yes, I know, it's entirely sixteenth notes, but its speed should serve its sense of musical flight, not become an end in itself.  Shaham did slow down (a bit) for the dances that followed - which allowed him more expressive elbow room, as it were; but surprisingly it was the closing bourée and gigue that came off best (rather than the more famous gavotte).

After intermission, Shaham led with a new suite for solo violin from Bolcom, which proved to be a series of light divertissements only very lightly connected (and held together by book-ending, meditative movements called "Morning Music" and "Evening Music").  The highlight of these was probably "Lenny in Spats," a bow to Bernstein which brought Bolcom's sly syncopations up into the stratosphere of the instrument (where Shaham was completely comfortable).  There were other intriguing moments in a rather jagged "Barcarolle" and a furious little "Tarantella," but in the end these different tangents didn't seem to be incorporated into any major over-arching statement; nor would I claim this was major Bolcom - perhaps it merely summed up the random musings that had occupied him between dawn and dusk of a single day.  But at least it demonstrated that this grand old man of the American scene still has his witty musical smarts.  

And if the Bolcom felt a little light, the newly-commissioned works that came next felt practically paper-thin. I was somewhat taken with the post-romantic atmospherics of Julian Milone's In the Country of Lost Things . . ., but couldn't really tell you what all the composer's musical quotes and references were meant to add up to; likewise Dorman's Nigunim (Violin Sonata No. 3) felt like far too many millennial world-music surveys these days - it seemed designed to tease some quirky new timbres from familiar material, and that's all (although admittedly Dorman won over the crowd with showy runs and a few crashing climaxes for pianist Eguchi).  By now I was a bit worried that perhaps Shaham and his pianist were only show-boating, albeit in a sweetly modest way; but all was forgiven when Bolcom took the stage again at the curtain call, and pounded out his classic "Graceful Ghost Rag" on the ivories while Shaham played a poignantly lilting accompaniment.  Because basically, once you've heard William Bolcom himself play the "Graceful Ghost Rag," you can die happy.

Taxing questions

Can a tax break hook Broadway producers?

Folks have been asking me what I think about the proposed bill to "woo" Broadway try-outs with a tax break.

And I confess my first reaction is:

Aren't we already doing this at the A.R.T.?

I mean, it seems silly to be giving Pippin, or The Donkey Show (of all things!) a financial advantage that we deny to other tourist-trap theatre.

So the answer to the question "Should we cross this particular public policy Rubicon?" is actually "Uh - we're already disembarking on the other side."

Of course, perhaps we shouldn't let everyone get away with what we let Harvard get away with.  After all, Harvard's special.  (For reasons we do not discuss.)

So in the end, I think the bottom line on this particular question is simply, Will it bring additional monies into the state that we otherwise would not collect?

That simple question may not have a simple answer, however - although one basic reply might respond to a more specific query: Will the additional taxes brought in from restaurants, hotels, and the wages of the show's employees exceed the revenue lost by giving the producers the tax break in question?

Even that doesn't quite address the full issue at hand, however, as all sorts of variables are at play here that are hard to quantize.  The first is - If the producers don't bring in the show to begin with, the state gets squat, so the tax bait has to be substantial for the deal to work at all.  But a balancing proviso to that consideration is: When it comes to the size of the tax rebate, we could end up in a "race to the bottom" with competing offers from other states if we seem too eager.  (It's worth noting that Louisiana and Illinois already have similar breaks on the books.)  This perhaps argues for restraint in the first offer we put on the table - we can always up the ante, and sink to the level of Louisiana and Illinois, if we have to.

An economic impact study is in the works, to model the rest of the revenue question.  Just off the top of my head, though, it strikes me that the proposed credit ceiling - 35% of state labor costs, up to a cap of $3 million (with a $10 million ceiling on all theatre tax credits for a single year) is - well, a bit high.  For the state to recoup this on taxes from restaurant receipts, for instance, a show would have to move close to $60 million in meals over ten weeks, which seems to me unlikely - as hard to believe, frankly, as the idea that people would actually journey to Boston and stay in a hotel simply to see a Broadway tryout.

These questions are partly offset, of course, by the fact that such a try-out would create jobs for Massachusetts residents (a telling criticism of the state's tax credit for film production is that most of the created jobs go to out-of-state professionals). I can't argue against that - but I also want to see it in writing: the tax break should only go to labor costs from existing Massachusetts residents who remain in Massachusetts.

To be honest, I'm more skeptical of other aspects of the bill. The Globe reports that in its current form, for instance, it allows theatrical tax credits to be sold off by producers to other bidders. And in a word - WRONG. Epic fail, in fact. If we're interested in stimulating the theatre, there's no reason to allow the resulting tax credits to be traded like party favors.

Another aspect of the bill I have an issue with: it allows similar tax breaks to commercial producers working with non-profit theatres like the Huntington and the A.R.T. And again - this is probably a bad idea.  The A.R.T. is already a lost cause on this score, of course (at least until Diane Paulus is gone); but believe it or not, there are signs that the rest of the nonprofit community is holding out against the temptation of her example.  (So far.)  Let's not make it any harder for them.  Bringing added financial temptations to bear on the sector will only compromise these theatres' missions, and reduce their willingness to engage in risky new work that doesn't fit into a commercial niche.

I should also mention that there's another aspect of this bill (and the whole mindset behind it) that irritates me no end.  In short - who the hell wants Boston to be a Broadway try-out town again?  I mean besides Josiah Spaulding, Jr.?  Not me, that's for sure!  Broadway is all but artistically dead, and New York in general is more and more theatrically moribund, and depends on imports to sustain its national profile; as a friend of mine once put it, "If you can make it there, you've already made it everywhere!" 

Thus Boston's urban theatre community dreams of growing beyond New York's economic shadow forever - our ambition is to join Chicago and Seattle as independent theatrical forces, not to keep paying obeisance to the Great White Way.  So why reify what amounts to an outdated suburban attitude in the tax code?  (With unintended irony, the Globe mentions that thanks to the Louisiana tax credit, New Orleans hosted the Broadway try-out of The Addams Family.  Wow.  I am so jealous.) 

Indeed, why not simply pour $10 million of state money directly into our own arts scene instead of handing it to a gaggle of Broadway producers?  I mean, do people not go out to eat before seeing local shows?

I'd be more intrigued to see the tax credit conceptualized as what it really is - seed money from the state.  Nothing wrong with that, of course - only why not treat it as an actual investment?  This is where I part ways with the likes of Josiah Spaulding, Jr., who seem to imagine that the public coffers should operate as a charity-of-first-resort for their cronies in the private sector.  I've got no issue with investing public money in a private venture, of course - as long as that money is treated as an investment, with a possible return.  In short, if the state invests $3 million in The Addams Family 2, or Tuck Everlasting (which Spaulding is helping put together at the Colonial next summer), it seems to me that it should be treated as any other investor - and should get a return on that $3 million if the show turns a profit in New York.  Indeed, I'd like to see that principle extended throughout the private sector, which depends utterly and completely on innovations and ideas funded by public investment. To my mind, for instance, Apple should be paying a fee on every iPhone to the federal government, which paid for the development of almost all the technology in it.  In fact I'd argue that all university licenses of federally-funded innovation should include at least a 3% return (to beat the inflation rate) to the public.

So I guess what I'm saying is: if you want to talk public investment in the private sector - well, let's talk investment, not charity.  A hand up, not a hand-out.

Clemency performance added Monday night

I'm pleased to report that an added performance of James MacMillan's Clemency (full review below) has been scheduled for tomorrow night, Monday, February 11, at 7 pm at the Artists for Humanity Epicenter. To purchase tickets, or exchange tickets from one of this weekend's canceled performances to attend the Monday show, email your name and phone number to boxoffice@blo.org or call 617.542.6772 (Monday between the hours of 10am-5pm). I don't usually do this kind of direct plug for a production, but I think this opera is important enough to make an exception for.

Another landmark from Boston Lyric Opera

David Kravitz welcomes strange travelers to his table in Clemency. Photos: Eric Antoniou.

If you haven't been keeping up with Boston Lyric Opera's traveling "Annex" productions, then I'm afraid you've been missing out on the most challenging opera the city has to offer.  (Perhaps that it has ever had to offer.)  The three previous annex productions - The Turn of the Screw, The Emperor of Atlantis, and The Lighthouse - were all startlingly intelligent renditions of landmark twentieth-century chamber works.  And now BLO is offering a brand-new co-commission, Clemency, at the Artists for Humanity Epicenter in South Boston (through Sunday), which I'm stunned to announce belongs in its predecessors' august company.  Indeed, something tells me that this brief, haunting piece - by Scottish composer James MacMillan and British poet Michael Symmons Roberts - will eventually earn a reputation as a minor classic of the millennium, and it's exciting to think that Boston has been a part of its genesis.

At first glance, Clemency seems conventional enough - it's based on a vignette from the Bible, and its musical style is generally in a late-modern "sacred" idiom.  But beneath its deceptively simple surface lies a daring intellectual and political statement, of the kind that perhaps only Tony Kushner or Caryl Churchill of today's playwrights could equal.  For MacMillan and Roberts have seized on a strange resonance with the present day in their chosen episode from Genesis, in which the childless Abraham and Sarah are unexpectedly visited by Yahweh himself and two angels, who declare that the barren Sarah will bear a son, Isaac - and thus kick-start the entire Judeo-Christian tradition.

But this seemingly joyful story hides a strange sting in its tail: it turns out that Yahweh is just stopping by on his mission to level Sodom and Gomorrah - indeed, the central action of the vignette becomes Abraham's shocked plea for, well, "clemency" for the twin cities of the plain (a plea which, as we all know, is ultimately unsuccessful).

So the birth of the Judeo-Christian tradition is unexpectedly bound up with terror, indeed a kind of divine jihad; and when one ponders that Abraham, through his servant Hagar and their illegitimate son Ishmael, is the founding father of the Arab world as well as the Jewish one, one begins to get a sense of the ironic resonances running every which way through Clemency.  Indeed, BLO has extrapolated these ramifications by pairing the opera with a staged version of Schubert's "Hagar's Lament" ("Hagars Klage"), which treats the despair of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert (after Sarah expelled them from her home), prior to the appearance of a divinely-ordained spring that spares them from death ("clemency" again - but why?).

This double bill lasts only a little more than an hour; but even that short sketch of its opposed narratives gives you some idea of the thematic density of the evening.  Which, I have to warn you, BLO has both clarified and doubled in complexity by building a sort of time warp into the production. When Hagar sings to Ishmael, for instance, she is in biblical garb, but Ishmael is in modern dress - we're watching two times at the same place, and the implied correspondence between the ancient destruction of the "twin towns" (in Roberts' phrase) with the modern destruction of the "twin towers" on 9/11 is thus concretized.  What's more, we see that this modern Ishmael is being raised by a modern Abraham and Sarah - in Israel?  Or New York?  It is as if Hagar is crying for mercy after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but calling to a modern-day Ishmael before the destruction of the World Trade Center.  Two time bombs are ticking in Clemency - one for Sodom, and one for us.

Indeed, the central - and most shocking - image of the opera comes when Yahweh's avenging angels are revealed to be suicide bombers.  There are many I know who will bristle at this notion - as the Globe's Jeremy Eichler did, when he complained that "Hitting an audience over the head with the most glaring symbol of present-day extremism ends up muffling the work's power as an ancient parable with more universal resonance."

This, of course, is precisely wrong, and only reveals Eichler's inability to comprehend what he saw and heard in Clemency.  Rather obviously the opera is not intended as merely "an ancient parable," and ironically enough, its equation of Yahweh's avenging angels with today's suicide bombers is exactly what gives it "universal resonance."  Only it's not the kind of universal resonance Eichler is comfortable with; he doesn't want to face the fact that Judaism and Islam - in fact Christianity too - have terror wound into the foundations of their cultural DNA.  (Too bad the writers of Genesis felt otherwise.)

True, they have something else wound into their DNA, too - Abraham begs for pardon for Sodom and Gomorrah, or at least for pardon if any of the righteous do indeed live there.  Indeed, in the end, Clemency is basically a portrait of the age-old conflict between humanism and the stern dictates of religion.  Nothing really new there, I suppose - except  that perhaps it's difficult for humanists whose government is routinely ordering the killing of civilians by drone to appreciate the irony of their horror of suicide bombers.

God's suicide bombers prepare to attack in Clemency.

So Clemency is both intellectually and politically challenging in an exciting and daring way - just as contemporary opera should be.  The good news is that musically it is also quite strong, and often strikingly good.  MacMillan's compositional voice isn't, perhaps, highly original - it sounds most like modernist chant with a Middle Eastern accent; but his structures are muscular, and his use of musical metaphor is consistently powerful and apt. Abraham and Sarah sang in subtly different modes - and Abraham's first aria was set to a text that seemed to be in some sort of pre-language (suggesting that prior to Yahweh's choice of him as a patriarch, Abraham was unknowable and alien to us).  MacMillan's writing for the three avenging angels was even more effective - they sang in fierce homophony at first, conveying Yahweh's cold, inhuman purpose; but as Abraham reasoned with them, their musical voice "broke up" into a more polyphonic response - God was now of more than one mind (the libretto somewhat blurs the clear impression in Genesis that one of the three visitors is Yahweh himself).  And Sarah had a memorably disturbing aria at the finale - perhaps the most lyrical moment in the opera - in which she pondered a spiritual world in which the price of her pregnancy was the rising smoke of the twin towns (or the twin towers).

After all that exegesis, however, I have to admit - the current production isn't perfect; and maybe the libretto itself isn't quite finished (one orchestral interlude was papered over dramatically with projected text).  Certainly the solid cast (many of them rising local artists) sang with power and finesse, I'm happy to report - but perhaps almost too much power at times, given the size of the space at the Artists for Humanity Epicenter.  In the "pit" (actually a side gallery to the space), conductor David Angus kept a firm grip on the score, and the reliable David Kravitz and Christine Abraham both contributed subtle and moving portrayals of Abraham and Sarah - even as Samuel Levine, Neal Ferreira and David McFerrin brought a scary kind of focus to their trio of angelic vigilantes. But soprano Michelle Trainor perhaps sang with more intensity than variety in the opening "Hagar's Lament" (orchestrated by Angus) which was generally hampered by the fact that the larger conceptualization of the evening was hazy at the start.  (Indeed, in its original production in the U.K., Clemency was set clearly and entirely in the present day.)  And I also wondered at BLO's reliance on supernumerary players to enact the modern-day Abraham and Sarah - these weren't supernumerary parts; they were roles for professional actors. There was also a noticeable bump in the segue to the opera proper (Schubert ran right into MacMillan), although I understood the intriguing desire to cast the two pieces as one unified meta-opera.

I likewise had a few issues with the playing space in general - although I also appreciated the layered metaphors of Julia Noulin-Mérat's design, which conjured the great shade-tree of Abraham's oasis from a cascade of broken planks and falling office furniture - perhaps from the World Trade Center?  I couldn't help but wonder; which gives you some idea of the thoughtfulness of this production - you could debate it all night.

Which is why I'm simply proud of Boston Lyric Opera at this moment - commissioning a work like Clemency only caps four years of impressive achievement in the Annex series with a memorable original new work.  At last we truly have cutting-edge opera in this city - and you only have two more performances of Clemency to be a part of it.  And trust me, you want to be there.  For I have an inkling that in years to come, plenty of people who couldn't make it will be claiming they were in attendance.

Lost in translation

Omar Robinson looks lost in Patrick Gabridge's Fire on Earth. Photo: Jeffrey Mosser.

I confess I'm only reluctantly writing about Patrick Gabridge's Fire on Earth (at the Factory Theatre from Fresh Ink Theatre through Feb. 6).  I don't much like delivering bad news to small or fringe companies - but this time my protests were only met with poignant requests for a rigorous dramaturgical analysis.

I greatly admire that spirit, of course; the only trouble is that this time there's almost too much to diagnose, and the doctor doesn't know where to begin.  You can tell everyone involved in this production is smart and talented and earnest; so it's hard to understand how it all went so wrong!

But I suppose the best place to start is indeed with the play itself.  Mr. Gabridge is a local author of some note, and I've often admired the tight comedy-drama cameos he has produced for the Mill 6 "T Plays" and other festivals.  But here, grappling with an ungainly, contradictory chunk of history (the first translation of the Bible into English, completed just before Henry VIII began dreaming of divorce) all his skill seems to either desert him, or divert him into confusing dramatic eddies, and wild swings in tone and focus.

To be fair, the playwright is attempting to limn a daunting dramatic landscape - in brief, a portrait of the intrigue surrounding William Tyndale, who produced the first English translation of the Bible in the early sixteenth century.  Tyndale claimed his version was more accurate than the Latin of the Vulgate, the official Catholic version - and what's more, his interpretation had a Protestant slant (he translated "priest" as "elder," for instance) that undercut the Church's position (and hence its power) as the great intercessor between God and man.

Needless to say, once the vicars of Christ got wind of this, Tyndale was a wanted man, and his Bible was produced on the run (and on the Continent).  But his followers, both spiritual and commercial (for there was money to be made in selling Bibles) often ran afoul of the Catholic hierarchy all the same, and the two whom Gabridge treats in detail - John Tewkesbury and John Frith - both became martyrs to the cause (as Tyndale did, too, eventually).

But you can see the theatrical problems inherent in this diffuse situation: the protagonist is always in motion, yet is essentially inward and dramatically passive, while the real "plot" lands on the shoulders of his subordinates, who are opposed in character and yet somehow find their way to similar fates.  And alas, Gabridge is unable to manage the balancing act required to pull all these disparate strands together and develop them in parallel; indeed, the arcs of his characters don't seem to exist, and neither do their relationships, to be honest.  What we get instead is a patchwork of lightly ironic comic gambits mixed with heavy-handed horror tropes (along with some amusingly mordant sketches of two bishops who might be dubbed Mean and Meaner).

St. John's Gospel in the 1526 Tyndale Bible.

But this isn't really enough to hold us - and it's also hard to miss a certain millennial naivete in Gabridge's portrait of the period.  His characters all seem to believe that "the Bible wants to be free!," or something like that; little do they dream that the decline of the Catholic Church would only leave a power vacuum into which equally-ruthless nation-states would quickly rush.  Indeed, soon there were new heresies, new heretics, new tortures; you could easily argue that Tyndale's Bible - which only two years after his death became the basis of the official Anglican version - only contributed to a century of renewed religious persecution (certainly its publication inspired no Christian-libertarian utopia).

So the outcomes here are twisted with even a higher degree of moral irony than usual; and to be blunt, Gabridge's idealistic heroes were probably political dupes.  Perhaps sensing this problem, the playwright hacks off the ironic end of his strange, eventful history, wrapping with the martyrdom of two of his principals (and ignoring the swift downfall of their killers) - but I'm afraid this only makes the overlong script suddenly feel oddly truncated.  In the end I think a complete rewrite is required to make it viable - one with a clear focus, on a single character, and a single conflict - and even, if possible, in a single tone.

This would certainly help the performers of the play's next iteration (if there is one).  At Fresh Ink there were at least two amusing turns, by Scott Colford and Brett Milanowski as that pair of villainous bishops (Milanowski in particular all but twirled a virtual mustache) - but alas, there wasn't much more beyond that.  Bob Mussett made a pale Tyndale, and newcomer James Fay lacked real depth as Frith; meanwhile Omar Robinson (who made such a strong impression earlier this year in Superior Donuts) thrashed about as Tewkesbury.  At least the set and lighting were memorable - designer Natalie Laney made imaginative use of props (such as the cascades of Bibles that poured from the tech booth), and Chris Bocchiaro's lighting was consistently atmospheric.  I never felt that director Rebecca Bradshaw had a clear grip on the material, but then I wasn't sure how she could have. I'm afraid this play's future all comes down to its author, and whether he can find in his sprawling first draft a viable dramatic core.

Double fantasy

The divas take a moment to relax on an earlier stop of their tour.

You know, some days I feel so lucky to be able to do this.  And one such day was last Sunday, when I was privileged to hear Renée Fleming and Susan Graham (above) warble to each other - and to a packed Symphony Hall - in a sold-out Celebrity Series concert.

For this proved a vocal match truly made in heaven - or at any rate close by.  Superstar soprano Fleming - familiar not only from the Met and TV, but also from her many appearances with the BSO - drew the big crowd, I suppose; but I'd say it was the warm (and witty) Graham who most completely won them over by the time the house lights rose.  Be that as it may, the two ladies seemed untroubled by any sense of competition, perhaps because they've been friends ever since they won the Met auditions some 25 years ago (and perhaps because vocally they're in such exquisite, mutually-supportive balance).  Indeed, their entwined voices seem to all but become one at times - only to soon delicately part ways again.  These ladies weren't just born to sing, they were born to sing together.

Fleming, of course, possesses one of the purest and most gorgeous sopranos on the planet, although her lower range isn't as powerfully supported as her top.  Graham's rich and dusky mezzo is, in contrast, far steadier across its range - indeed, she is an expert at the kind of superbly controlled vocal swell that seems to rise like a musical standing wave.

Both ladies looked fabulous, btw - first in black, then in dazzling shades of silver (Graham) and pink ruby (Fleming).  With her hair pulled back, and her gowns off the shoulder, Graham made a striking, statuesque amazon (and appropriately enough, given her successes in pants roles); Fleming, meanwhile, favored stoles and drapes that transformed her into a kind of opening flower.

That image was quite appropriate to the repertoire they'd chosen - most of it from the Parisian salons of the Belle Époque, where most every song was meant as a kind of bloom.  And the ladies had an intriguing case to make about this particular period of musical ferment - that the sopranos who first sang these songs had a key role in their very creation; they were not merely interpreters but actual muses - and not just in the salon but also the boudoir.  (!) Thus between numbers Graham and Fleming often extolled the crowd with anecdotes and back-stage war stories - and at the top of each half of the program, we got to listen to some delightfully salty reminiscences by the Scottish soprano Mary Garden, who sang for Debussy and Massenet.

Graham's hearty stage presence gave her patter a welcome shot of spice (sometimes delivered with a native Texan twang), while Fleming mostly played hostess; still, in general, the chit-chat came off well, although I sometimes wished they'd just sing some more instead.  For to be honest, almost every number was transporting.  The opening duets from Saint-Saëns were lively and exquisite, but then the Fauré that followed was so good that I began to feel a little faint. The long, gently devastating droop of "Puisqu’ici bas toute âme" may have actually been the highlight of the evening - although who could resist the trembling depth of "Pleurs d’or"?

There were surprises to be found here as well (who knew the melody of Fauré's familiar "Pavane" came with catty lyrics?), as much of the program proved fairly obscure - obscure but gorgeous, I should say.  And each lady shone in solo turns as well as duets.  Fleming seemed to glow with the limpid grace she's famous for in Debussy's brief, but heart-breaking "Beau soir," for instance - and then demonstrated she can sashay with the best of them in Delibes' jaunty "The girls of Cadiz."

When Graham took her solos - in a memorable silver sheath - she focused on the lesser-known songs of Reynaldo Hahn, a favorite of hers who was a possible lover of Proust (the program told us that, improbably, Hahn lived from 1847 to 1974 (!); his real dates are 1874 to 1947).  Let's just say that Graham more than made a case for Hahn - and revealed her own talent for implied romantic tragedy in the composer's subtly moving "Infidélité."

But wait, there was more, still more - a ravishing rendition of Offenbach's drifting "Barcarolle," more heartbreak courtesy of Berlioz (in "La mort d'Ophélie"), and a dream-team rendition of the "Flower Duet" from Lakmé.  As a kind of intermission, accompanist Bradley Moore also essayed the familiar "Clair de lune" with  a surprising level of architecture and attack; and as an encore, Graham turned to Piaf, accompanying herself on the piano through a take on "La Vie en rose" that was so confidently happy (she entered with a cigarette dangling from her lip, and all but gargled Piaf's guttural 'r's) yet so rich with real romantic feeling that I honestly think I will remember it for the rest of my life.  In fact, I have to admit - something shifted in my musical soul at that moment.  I'll adore Renée all my days - but now my heart belongs to Susan.

Servant of two styles, but Master of one

The cast of The Servant of Two Masters.

It's hard to argue with comic virtuosity; and certainly the Yale Rep production of The Servant of Two Masters (at ArtsEmerson through Feb. 10) is comically virtuosic.  Although is it really a Yale Rep production?  Fans of the late Theatre de la Jeune Lune may feel differently; with Jeune Lune mainstay Stephen Epp in the lead (as Truffaldino), working with a director and several actors from that company, this amounts to a kind of revival of the style of that Minneapolis theatrical landmark.

To many, that's good news, but I have to admit I'm not an unalloyed fan of the Jeune Lune aesthetic.  If you are, of course, more power to you, and trust me, you'll love this show.  But if you're more like me (and I'm like about half the audience at opening night, I'd argue) the Jeune Lune manner begins to seem like almost too much of a good thing after about an hour or so.  After that, I confess I remained bemused, but slightly bored, by the cast's antics (even when they showered raspberries on the ART's Pippin, which actually became a punchline).  But then I tune out at Three Stooges festivals, too.  It was only toward the finish, though, when I really felt they were trampling over author Carlo Goldoni, that I began to get a little irritated.

Still, since Jeune Lune claims a kind of intellectual pedigree, it's worth pointing out the madness in their method.  What Goldoni did was integrate the the techniques of the classic commedia dell'arte into a longer narrative arc - his plot for Servant is ridiculously over-complicated, but it does give many of the classic commedia characters a chance to shine, and what's more, it evoke themes that were highly salient in his day (and would reach their highest pitch in Beaumarchais and The Marriage of Figaro).

Thus there was perhaps an inevitable tension between Goldoni's goals and the short attention spans of commedia fans; indeed in the earliest drafts of the script, improvisatory cadenzas by the likes of Truffaldino and Pantalone were clearly bracketed off from the action.  That boundary between romantic narrative and comic free-style blurred in later iterations, it's true - but it's also true that Jeune Lune has claimed the whole text for pure commedia, and simply ignored the resulting problem of diminishing comic returns.

Which means that basically, Goldoni gets the shaft from the Yale Rep.  Director Christopher Bayes has done this kind of thing before - he meted out the same treatment to Hitchcock in The 39 Steps - but that became a hit, too; there's clearly an audience that loves to see narrative and character given a kick in the baggy pants.  For the record, though, the hijinks Bayes and his team have dreamed up this time are even more inspired than they were in that earlier production.  There is plenty here that's plenty imaginative; my favorite moment came when Truffaldino and Smeraldina wrapped themselves in the curtains of Bayes' impromptu proscenium (at top), and then instantly transformed the rumpled drapes into the sheets of a marriage bed. The physical production was likewise seductive; Chuan-Chi Chan's lighting was ravishing (fireflies that morphed into stars was another magical moment), and Valerie Therese Bart's over-ripe, lived-in costumes were just right.

Pantalone presides over a comic duel in The Servant of Two Masters.

The tireless cast was likewise brilliant in its broadness (in an added bonus, it turned out everybody could sing, too!).  Epp was endlessly inventive, but I felt he was somewhat upstaged by the wonderful Allen Gilmore, who gave Pantalone a whacked-out warmth that the production generally lacked (indeed, his "I've fallen down and I can't get up" schtick was the only thing in the whole show that truly broke me up).  But I was also impressed, if not quite charmed, by Sarah Agnew's no-nonsense Beatrice, who was for some reason in love with Randy Reyes's really weird Florindo (but then all real romance was out the window in this version - the resulting gap in mood was occasionally filled by some lovely singing).  I likewise liked Liz Wisan's hearty Smeraldina in the abstract, but felt that somehow she never attained the status in the story that she should properly have won.

This was because Smeraldina's virtues - her worldly wisdom, her earthy tastes - had no traction in Bayes' meta-beyond-meta environment.  One minute the production had both feet in Goldoni, but the next it was slipping on banana peels from every single one of the Norman Lear comedies of the 70's. The rush of pop culture sampling never stopped - in fact it became its own end. Thus, though truly encyclopedic in its frame of reference, this Two Masters ended up flat in its effect; indeed, the most interesting thing about Goldoni's play - the way in which the romantic leads are none too comfortable with their servants' romantic freedom - seemed awkwardly irrelevant in this version.  Which made me wonder - are we truly freer than Smeraldina and Truffaldino, or have we simply come to terms with our slavery in a new way?  At various times in the production, Epp would ask the crowd incredulously, "Is this the play?  Has the play started yet?"  Well, it hadn't; even though for some the laughter never ended, the play itself never began.