What should an academic theatre be?

After a reportedly troubled search that lasted something like a year, the ART finally settled on Diane Paulus (left), a Harvard grad and Obie-award winner, as its choice for Artistic Director. The good news is that the search is over, of course, and that we're now free of Gideon Lester's attempts to replicate past ART seasons. The downside of Diane, however, is that her résumé almost reads like parody. It's thick with pop-music adaptations of Shakespeare (The Donkey Show transported Midsummer Night's Dream to a disco and The Karaoke Show set The Comedy of Errors in a karaoke bar, while The Winter's Tale got a "gospel/R&B" treatment), and includes a pitstop in just about every ditzy directorial trend of the last twenty years: Mozart's Figaro got an update, of fucking course, as well as all three Monteverdi operas (they made it to BAM, naturally), which mixed with the likes of David Lynch (Lost Highway) and even Disney (The Golden Mickeys, whatever that was). Meanwhile her résumé lists no Chekhov, no Ibsen or Shaw, no Sophocles, no Marivaux, no Williams or O'Neill or Miller or Kushner, no Beckett or Brecht or - well, no anybody. Maybe she's done them, but she's certainly not advertising it - when it comes to classic texts, besides the Shakespeare travesties, she only lists Strindberg's phantasmagorical A Dream Play.


Titania goes clubbing in The Donkey Show.

You wonder, in short, if her career might have been devised by some imp at the Harvard Lampoon. It's hard not to get the impression of a very bright, very attractive careerist who read her "mentors" like a book and colored relentlessly within the postmodern lines. And note among all the disco and the Disney that there are few, if any, honest productions of interesting new plays by great playwrights; no, Diane was far too focused to do anything as silly that. That would have required, like, slavish obeisance to a text, dude! It would have blown the whole orgy of signifiers - not to mention the scene!


A scene from Paulus's Brutal Imagination, although it might be from any number of past ART productions.

So it's obvious (if you doubt me, check out the photographs of her work) that her artistic directorship will represent more of the same old, same old from the ART, where the late-70's Village never died (or rather, where it went to die). Indeed, it's hard to imagine how the Harvard search committee could have made a more conservative choice. One guesses the ART will remain mired in yesterday's critical theories, and grow more and more isolated from its community, aside from the Dresden Dolls' fan base, which is probably doing handsprings (along with the Dolls themselves, of course).

Sigh. But will the Huntington do much better? Will Peter DuBois, their incoming artistic director (who arrived after a far more smoothly managed search), actually connect with theatre, and with Boston, the way Harvard seems unable to? Maybe. He's done real plays - Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Beckett, as well as Churchill, Kushner, and others (including, yes, politically-correct lesser talents like Suzan-Lori Parks). DuBois has also, it's good to point out, run a theatre - in Juneau, Alaska, of all places (I'm not making that up), and he's been a mucky-muck at New York's Public, certainly a highly-pressured, high-profile perch. Needless to say, he's also acquainted with the New York (and Hollywood) stars that the Huntington, under Nicholas Martin, began to rely on to boost audience interest in their seasons.

All this, I think, bodes rather well - in case you can't tell, I care far less for postmodern theory and rock-n-roll than I do for theatre. And I'm hoping that DuBois will not only continue the policy of engagement with the city that Nicholas Martin was known for, but will also improve upon it. But what, in the end, should DuBois set as his goals? What should an academic theatre be? In Boston, unlike almost anywhere else in the U.S., we've got two of them, and yet their roles and responsibilities have been a topic of almost no public discussion whatsoever. They are perceived as simply adjuncts of the power bases their respective universities represent; local critics seem to think it's almost rude, somehow, to question the assumptions and goals under which they operate (and under which they gobble down public dollars). But in my next post in this doubleheader, I'll ponder what, exactly, should be expected of an academy that begins to operate as an arts practitioner.

Don Juan Serrand

Stephen Epp stalls out in Don Juan Giovanni.

There's just no point in not saying it flat out - the latest ART/Theatre de la Jeune Lune vehicle, Don Juan Giovanni, is so boring it's even dull to pan. I've actually been trying to drag myself to the keyboard to record the slow passage of this postmodernized "mashup" of Molière's Dom Juan and Mozart's Don Giovanni for something like two weeks - come now, I keep telling myself, writing about it can't be any worse than sitting through it was, can it? Admit it, Garvey, you enjoy saying nasty things about bad shows - everyone says so!!! And in the old days, weren't you able to rouse yourself to something like fury over this kind of cynical exploitation of self-satisfied academics and pseudo-intellectuals?

But I was younger then. Less battle-scarred, more certain life was worth living and mankind worth saving, etc. Also, perhaps to its credit, Don Juan Giovanni isn't really up there in my Top Five Most Boring ART Productions Evah. It has an intermission, for one thing, and so its tedium never gets too intense, or malignant; you don't feel, while you're watching it, that your soul is actually being sucked out of you by vampires, the way you did in Three Sisters. People don't flee it, screaming. No, indeedy - because every now and then, somebody starts singing some Mozart, and suddenly everything's wonderful and you're transported to some magical plane on which high seriousness and joy are making eternal love. You don't really care that the show's M.O. makes little sense, as it muddles both Molière's and Mozart's plots (perhaps a better project would be studding Pygmalion with numbers from My Fair Lady). But who cares? Does a Mozart aria really need an excuse?


So go for the singing, which is far stronger than it was in Jeune Lune's restyling of Carmen. Needless to say, said company is working the lovely Christina Baldwin's body as hard as ever, but in such moments as her aria-powered bike ride (at left) her physical grace triumphs over her director's crass machinations. Baldwin's voice is equally lovely and free, but when it comes to vocal chops, her sister, Jennifer Baldwin Peden, is the sib to watch, particularly when powering through the climactic "I quali ecesso." Peden's only vocal equal onstage was Bradley Greenwald, who essayed a memorable Leporello (and proved a witty comedian as well), although I was also often charmed by the sweet tone and dim innocence of Dieter Bierbrauer, in the Masetto-surrogate role of "Peter."

The problem is eventually the singing stops, and you're once again overwhelmed with ennui, derived, no doubt, from the fact that Mozart on Molière fits about as well as tits on a bull. You can, for laughs, read the program notes. Here Stephen Epp and Dominique Serrand, the show's stars and "authors," inform us that their show "is not recommended for people who fear the sense of vertigo that comes from staring into the chasm between life and death." Certainly not - it would only make them jump. For in the end this strange carcass, like the Plymouth-on-training-wheels at its center, is just a vehicle for Epp and Serrand, and neither is much good. Epp, you feel, could make it work if he'd given himself some better kvetching, but Serrand is simply out of his depth, vocally, physically, and charismatically, on the famously unforgiving Loeb stage. His Don Juan is little more than a sketchy professor out to bag another freshman babe in Theatre and Existentialism.

A deeper problem, of course, is that Serrand naively takes the Don at his word - all his words, in fact, even though Molière deploys them as transparent chicanery. While Juan may be a self-styled philosopher-libertine, he's also obviously an addict (indeed, addiction is the subtext of all Molière), and any honest production should make clear his arguments are also excuses, and that Juan's life is the antithesis of freedom: pussy is his smack, his nicotine. What he needs is dinner with Dr. Phil, not the Commendatore. Needless to say, as Juan and Sgnarelle drive in circles on Route 66, it's telegraphed that their road trip is a dead end - but this feels more like the notes that go with today's lecture than any dramatic coup. Serrand can't make Juan's last-minute hints of self-awareness - and his half-hearted feint at genuine freedom - work because he doesn't believe in them personally; too bad they're the heart of the drama (at least the Mozart half). Perhaps some sparks could have flown if Serrand had somehow bridged Molière's critique and Mozart's sympathy, but throughout, Mozart and Molière orbit each other like planets; their two worlds never collide. And frankly, the Beckettian highway Jeune Lune are headed down simply squashes both the show's classical antecedents flat. Alas, there's nothing Jennifer Baldwin Peden's pipes can do to change that.

That was fast . . .

The North Shore Music Theatre has just announced they have found a successor to outgoing Artistic Director Jon Kimbell in director and choreographer Barry Ivan (looking overjoyed at left). From the press release:

“It is with great pleasure and sincere commitment that I accept this position,” said Mr. Ivan. “Under Jon Kimbell’s direction, NSMT has gained an outstanding reputation for artistic achievement, specifically in the areas of developing new works and providing outstanding theater arts and education programs. My overarching goal in moving forward is to work with the Board of Trustees and staff to build on these considerable accomplishments and further develop and implement the artistic vision of North Shore Music Theatre.”

A nationally recognized director and choreographer, Mr. Ivan’s versatile career includes work in New York City theater, television and film. His accomplishments range from directing and choreographing over 20 musicals at NSMT to being a guest director at Yale University; and his international credits include directing and choreographing West Side Story at the German State Opera. A four-time Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) nominee for Best Director and Best Choreographer, Mr. Ivan’s productions of The Full Monty and Hairspray at NSMT both received IRNE awards for Best Musical.

Highlights from Mr. Ivan’s extensive regional theater career include directing and choreographing Company starring Malcolm Gets and Michelle Pawk; Anything Goes starring Carolee Carmello; and several productions of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, including a recent production starring Dee Hoty and Tony Award winning actress Beth Leavel. Actively involved in the development of new works, Mr. Ivan staged Tony Award winning composer Maury Yeston’s new musical, In The Beginning, and recently directed Tales of Tinsel Town for The Director’s Company in New York City.

Through the end of the 2007 season, Mr. Ivan will work closely with Jon Kimbell to ensure a smooth transition of the day-to-day Artistic Director and Executive Producer responsibilities. In February, 2008, Mr. Ivan will assume the full-time Artistic Director and Executive Producer role. In addition, Mr. Ivan plans to direct and choreograph at least one musical each season.