The Eichler-Levine connection begins to get a more public airing . . .

The Hub Review has long noted that Globe critic Jeremy Eichler has seemed to be "in the tank" for James Levine. These days a lot of other folks seem to be voicing the same opinion. Check out Eichler's review of Lorin Maazel's recent appearance with the BSO (which no, I didn't catch). And read the comments (which include a few blunt accusations). It seems even some orchestra members applauded Maazel. Not so much Eichler.

Ok, the bigots won in Maine, so can we at least give up on "letting the people speak"?

I'm not surprised that Maine repealed gay marriage yesterday; seriously, are you? Of course perhaps if you're Andrew Sullivan, or some other vapid talking head who's highly invested in the idea that civil rights for minorities should come from the electorate rather than the courts, you actually are.

But here's a news flash for Andy and his ilk: civil rights for minorities are almost always granted by the courts, not the electorate.

Why should it be otherwise? Civil rights exist as a safeguard against the abuses of the majority, which has always been uncomfortable with the principles of our own government. And courts are the legitimate institutions for the protection of those rights. The prescience of the Massachusetts legislature - which insured freedom for gay families by tying up bigoted ballot questions indefinitely - should now, I think, be admitted even by Sullivan (who decried it at the time). Because let's be honest - when it comes to ballot questions, passionate bigots almost always win out. Face it, guys - it took intervention by the Supreme Court just to make condoms available to straight people! And you think you can win gay marriage at the ballot box? Get real.

And let's also be honest about something else: gay marriage is no longer some frightening experiment, some sort of tampering with an ancient tradition, blah blah blah. It's a fact in several states, and in some form or other in most industrialized countries. We've had it in Massachusetts for five years!

And what exactly has happened as a result to straight people, or the institution of marriage? Precisely nothing. Gay marriage opponents can't point to any deleterious social effects. Nada. Ixnay. None. Zip. Zero.

Thus, in a word, there is no legitimate argument against gay marriage. None that should stand up outside a theocracy, that is. (Please, don't bring up polygamy or sex with your dog; the obvious answers to those puerile debating points are available all over the web.)

There's only the bigotry against gay people. And that may exist - well, forever, just like racism. I hope that someday gay marriage is the law of the land for everyone in the United States. But frankly, I won't be surprised if that isn't the case for another hundred years. And in the meantime, it's perfectly okay - and I mean perfectly okay - to rely on the courts to protect our rights.

Our man in Rwanda

Fedna Jacquet and Tory Bullock face the overwhelming ending of The Overwhelming.

You have to admire the good intentions of J.T. Rogers, who decided to pen a searing drama in response to the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and his own clueless, but horrified, response to same.

But you don't have to admire his play.

Because The Overwhelming - now in a solid production from Company One at the BCA - is derivative as drama and contradictory as politics. And it's not hard to understand why. The play concerns an American academic family (Dad's researching a book) blundering into the Rwandan genocide equipped with little more than their own cultural assumptions and politically naïve good will - and that's pretty much all J.T. Rogers has brought to the party, too.

Indeed, the playwright has blatantly lifted his key plot points from Graham Greene (from The Third Man in particular), then tacked them onto his African mise-en-scène, cribbed together a half-baked domestic drama as counterpoint, and bound the two halves together with long spiels of political exposition. To be fair, the final scenes are indeed gripping - but generally, once people begin pulling out machetes, things get interesting all by themselves. And until then, The Overwhelming tends to be somewhat underwhelming.

True, Rogers's ongoing lesson plan does serve the purpose of enlightening us, the audience, regarding the Rwandan backstory. But how does it avail the play's characters? The author seems to want us to pin some sort of blame for the crisis on their ignorance - if only they'd understood all this, they might have done something to stop it, etc. But at the same time, his movie-thriller conventions depend on the unknowability of who's who and what's what; indeed, the dramatic action seems to imply something like a brief for the Clinton administration's indifference - since us ugly Americans can't understand the complexity of the bad blood between the Hutus and Tutsis, the play implies despite itself, it's best we not get involved at all.

These issues are of course only symptoms of a deeper, rather exasperating conceptual problem with the script: why, exactly, should a play about Rwanda take the form of a thriller about white people? This is the kind of assumption that Company One usually skewers, and it seems intuitively obvious that only an African could convincingly dramatize the dark heart of the Rwandan genocide. (And Wole Soyinka already has, at least at one remove; so why hasn't Company One produced him?) Okay, J.T. Rogers is no Wole Soyinka; still, even by Hollywood standards he offers a pretty thin and predictable pastiche, along with clunky chunks of symbolic dramaturgy that can't help but irritate: when Sonny loses his virginity, for instance, Dad simultaneously loses his innocence about the situation in Rwanda, too. (Somehow I think Junior got the better end of that deal.)

The Company One cast does what it can with this material, and director Shawn LaCount, if not actually drawing much subtlety from his players, keeps things moving at a crackling pace (on an evocative and smoothly functional set by Sean Cote). In the lead role of Jack Exley, local stalwart Doug Bowen-Flynn has his moments, but doesn't exactly chart a harrowing downward arc. The fresher faces in the cast by and large make a better impression; as Exley's new, African-American wife, Lindsay Allan Cox proves smartly poised, even if she doesn't nail her character's unconscious vanity (she styles herself a writer of "narratives of self"). As their troubled son (whose mother died not long ago - get the parallel?), Gabe Goodman is also appealing, but a bit generic (above left, Bowen-Flynn with Cox and Goodman). The young actor does develop a nice rapport, however, with newcomer Tory Bullock, who sports perhaps the easiest, most natural stage presence of anyone in the show (Bullock hasn't quite essayed his character's murderous underside, however). In the "Harry Lime" role, the eloquent Cedric Lilly likewise hasn't quite shaded in any of the troubling doubts the script forces on him; meanwhile Obehi Janice and Fedna Jacquet make strong impressions in simpler, shorter parts. In the end, you get the feeling most of these folks could overwhelm you, given an overwhelming play.

Woman on top

Right now you could say that pianist Ingrid Fliter is, if not on top of the world, still at nearly the top of her game. She's just won the prestigious (as in $300,000 worth of prestigious) Gilmore Prize, and with that as her calling card, has begun making a series of debuts in the U.S. and internationally. Sunday brought her to the Celebrity Series at Jordan Hall, where she steadily impressed, and finally riveted, a crowd that hardly filled the auditorium, but at least was there for the right reason: genuine curiosity about what might be the Next Big Thing in keyboard playing (Leif Ove Andsnes and Piotr Anderszewski were previous winners of the Gilmore). I think few of those in attendance were disappointed. Next time around, the place will most likely be packed.

One reason why is that Fliter (pronounced "fleeter") certainly doesn't lack for stage presence, although her straightforward sexiness (at left) is somehow a bit surprising on a concert stage, where we're more used to slinkiness than sunniness. But what also impresses one immediately about this pianist is her musical intelligence; one senses from her (as one doesn't from, say, Lang Lang) a sincere desire to explore the music she is playing. As with the earlier Gilmore pianists, for Fliter every performance is a kind of investigation.

Sometimes, of course, an explorer can seem uncertain, or even a bit lost, and I admit I wasn't completely taken with Fliter's first effort, the familiar Beethoven Sonata No. 18 (she's playing the fourth movement in the video above). Her touch is well-considered but hardly exquisite, and there was something a bit insistently experimental about her approach. Her playing was never crass or bombastic, but her rubato didn't seem tethered to any single interpretation, either; some phrases suddenly opened up, while others closed down, and still others ran together, for reasons that were hard to parse.

The bevy of Chopin waltzes that followed were in contrast all of a piece in tone and attack: rhythmic, yet more thoughtful than sparkling, with an emphasis on their hints of melancholy; some, indeed, sounded like swiftly lilting nocturnes. The highlight for me was a brief rarity, the haunting Waltz in A minor, which (unbelievably) was only "discovered" in 1955. (For encores Fliter tossed off charming versions of two far more famous waltzes, Op. 18 and the "Minute.")



Fliter's final selection was the challenging Schumann "Symphonic Etudes," a bravura piece which seemed to match superbly the pianist's persona and style. Fliter included in her performance the five variations published after Schumann's death, yet the order in which she played these seemed to vary from what was published in the program (although I'm not expert enough in this particular piece to track the differences). Nevertheless, the performance was riveting; with her combination of serious technical command, exploratory sensibility and yes, regretful self-awareness, Fliter proved the perfect guide to the mood, if not the letter, of this demanding work. My guess is that Schumann may be Fliter's true forte - certainly with the "Symphonic Etudes," she ended her Jordan Hall concert triumphantly on top.

Across the universe

The planet Saturn in eclipse.

Long-time readers of the Hub Review know I have a special jones for astronomy, and so I have to recommend a post on Daily Kos, the wonderfully comprehensive "Photo Tour of the Solar System". Includes just about all of Saturn's moons, plenty of asteroids, and even a shot from the surface of Venus. Be amazed, be very amazed.

[Update: Part II of the Tour, including more of Saturn's moons, as well as Uranus, Neptune, and blurry images of Pluto, is available here.]

Phantom menace

Look, honey - there's nothing scary over there!

If you, like me, were suckered into Paranormal Activity by the marketing tease - well, I wish I had a plan to get our money back, but I don't. And as we both know, we certainly can't look back on any satisfying scares for our combined $20. Indeed, all I can admire about the movie is its marketing campaign, and how it hooked me with a line perfectly tailored to my demographic. Was I dumb enough to fall for Blair Witch Project, the Yuppie Edition? Yes, I was.

Not because I believed Paranormal Activity was, indeed, some lost video of ghouls gone wild. But I did believe, as so many reviewers (and even acquaintances) assured me, that it was a clever vehicle for several good scares, done entirely through suggestion. It scared me silly, went the refrain, and there wasn't even any gore at all! Indeed, some critics (like the Globe's semi-evil Ty Burr) claimed that the growing chorus of complaint that the movie just wasn't scary was the result of a fanboy sensibility so blunted by Saw and its ilk that it was unable to appreciate a good, old-fashioned yarn.

If only. Oh, sure, the premise was great - hubby sets up video cameras when something wicked starts t-t-tapping at the bedroom door - but unfortunately, that premise is all the movie really has to offer. And sure, there are some fun, spine-tingling moments at the beginning, when a door squeaks a few inches open, or an overhead fixture begins to swing all by itself.

But to be blunt, we're not squealing at those moments because of any skill in storytelling or direction (much less indirection); we're squealing because we've been primed to squeal, and are happy to do so, and then giggle to ourselves afterward. We've been told to expect the best ghost story since The Sixth Sense, only this time told entirely through suggestion, with only the simplest of effects. And we are so ready.

Slowly, however, our squeals and giggles grow fewer and farther between, as we realize that writer/director Oren Peli doesn't really have any narrative cards up his sleeve after all. All he has are a pretty-good bedroom set (above), with shadowy hall running off to a classically dark staircase - and refs to other movies: the shower from The Shining, the attic from The Exorcist et. al., all do cameos to fill up Peli's 90 minutes or so of running time. The references are, in effect, his plot. Because not only could Peli not afford any effects, he couldn't afford many actors, either (even though his central pair are appealing), much less such luxuries as exterior shooting. The claim was that he was clever enough to work within those admittedly tight constraints. The truth is that he wasn't.

Oh, well. Can anyone tell me when we last had a hit movie that was actually any good? In the meantime, what's scary is that Paranormal Activity II is already in the works. In which, I guess, we follow the terrifying exploits (spoiler alert!!!) of a demon terrorizing San Diego in a tank top and shorts. Oh, yeah, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Another day, another Rose update . . .

In case you haven't heard, Harper's weighed in on the mess at Brandeis this month. Luckily I'm a subscriber (the article's not available online), and glanced over the piece last night. The bottom line: Brandeis borrowed to finance its current expansion, while at the same time investing what endowment it had in risky private equity funds. This hardly seems like news - isn't it what everyone assumed? - but now outgoing Brandeis prez Jehuda Reinharz says he's considering suing the magazine, because the figures are wrong, etc., etc. Uh-huh. Good luck with that, Jehuda! Greg Cook has the details, including the requisite huffy internal memo.