Last chance and a new horizon at Peabody Essex

Albert Bierstadt, Donner Lake from the Summit

I can't get to everything, I tell myself. Still, when I haven't gotten around to writing about an exquisite show like Painting the American Vision at the Peabody Essex Museum, I give myself a few psychological kicks. So I wanted to throw in a quick word about the exhibit to readers - this is its very last day, but if you have the afternoon free, hop in the car and get up to Salem to take it in. You'll be glad you did.

Painting is an import, basically, from the New-York Historical Society (and drawn entirely from that Society's famous collection).  Its focus is the Hudson River School, although its landscapes range far beyond those of that lovely valley, or the East Coast in general.  And frankly, the exhibit's not really a clearly curated view of the movement, anyway.  It's impressionistic, organized "thematically," and includes a fascinating (but odd) set of paintings by Thomas Cole on the rise and fall of "Empire" that are placed in some classical-fantasy setting unusual for the School.  And the "first" (Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, etc.) and "second" generations (Frederich Church, Albert Bierstadt, John Frederick Kensett, etc.) of the movement aren't carefully delineated, either.

But you don't really care.  The show follows a roughly historical timeline, with many dazzling landscapes drawn from sites all over the globe (and even beneath it, in one interior view of Kentucky's Mammoth Cave).  The exhibit culminates in Bierstadt's great Donner Lake from the Summit (at top) and the sublimely strange Cayambe, a kind of hyper-realistic South American zoological-topological fantasy, from Church (below).

Frederic Church, Cayambe

While you're at Painting the American Vision, you should step next door to check out the brilliant Man Ray and Lee Miller show in the adjacent gallery (which has only a month left in its run).  And you should also savor some wonderful news - the Peabody Essex has just announced it has raised some $550 million toward an overall endowment campaign of $650 million - a number that out-strips even the MFA's fabled $504 million campaign for the creation of its new American wing.  I adore this museum (as does Greg Cook of the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, with whom I often converse on the visual arts), so as you can imagine, I'm pleased as punch.

Some $300 million of that total will go to an expansion and renovation of the museum - the remaining $350 million will go to the endowment, which will vault the Peabody Essex into the company of the top 10 museums in the country in terms of financial resources.  (It will also allow about half of PEM's annual operating expenses to come from earned income on that money.)

And while I have no confirmation of this whatsoever, I'm going to go ahead and state a hunch that part of that expansion will go to permanently housing the wonderful collection of Dutch art owned by Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo (who are on the PEM Board), which we were dazzled by a few months ago. Back then, I wondered aloud where that world-class collection would end up; now I think I know. Or at least I hope I know.  We'll try to find out more in the coming weeks.

Frost-bitten at Merrimack

Gordon Clapp as "Robert Frost"

It's easy to be seduced, I think, by A.M. Dolan's This Verse Business (at the Merrimack Rep through November 13). And particularly easy to begin to imagine that it's something it's not.

What it is, is this: a slight but genuinely - indeed, often deeply - affecting entertainment, stitched together from the poems of the late, great Robert Frost along with utterances from the many recitations the poet gave on stages throughout New England (and elsewhere) in the last years of his life.

It is not, however, anything like a biography.  Nor is it about Robert Frost, the person.  It is instead about "Robert Frost" the persona.  It is the re-creation of a self-performance by a raconteur very carefully crafting a personality to match his poetry.  It tends to make audience members say, "You know - he was just the way I thought he'd be!"  Yes.  Exactly.

We've seen this kind of thing before, of course - Hal Holbrook and Julie Harris pulled the same trick with Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson, respectively, years ago.  This Verse Business, however, strikes me as a bit more complex than either of those two one-man (or -woman) warhorses.  For "Mark Twain" the personality was always obviously a theatrical construction (even his name was fake!), and as for the Belle of Amherst - well, she's a complete historical cipher, isn't she.

But Robert Frost floats somewhere between these two biographical poles.  In fact the actual personality within the famous persona - the flinty, self-reliant Yankee farmer with a warm heart but dark places in his soul - has become a bone of contention between competing biographers.  His personal failures - and there were many - have now been extensively picked over by various chroniclers; one even went so far as to claim the poet was an egotistical "monster."  Needless to say, revisions and re-revisions of that condemnation have occupied the academy ever since.

The man himself,  just before his first success.

For my part, I find it easy to imagine that Frost (like most of us) was neither quite as appealing as he would have liked to appear, nor as terrible as his most avid critics would like us to imagine.  I merely point out that This Verse Business only gives us half that argument - Frost's half.  But to many, that's more than enough, because the production includes a generous sample of the poems themselves, read in full (of course most are short as sonnets - indeed, some are sonnets). And the persona that Frost learned to perform them in does map well to their surface as well as their depths (he might have made a good playwright. frankly; he has certainly done most of A.M. Dolan's work for him).  In a way, as we listen, we realize we don't want to know more about Frost; we're happy to revisit what he himself felt was universal about his experience, rather than what was petty or particular.

And luckily, it's clear actor Gordon Clapp (familiar from his role on NYPD Blue) and director Gus Kaikkonen share the same attitude.  Their vision of Frost may be a forgiving one (like his own), but it's still gently mature, and alive to the shadows lurking in almost all the poems.  Which come to subtle life in Clapp's thoughtful, un-showy, fully-inhabited presentations.  The echo of the death wish beneath the reverie of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening;" the dissatisfied acquiescence to balance that undergirds "Mending Wall;" they're here, as is the haunting drama of "Death of the Hired Man," perhaps the evening's most piercing sequence, in which Clapp's performance reaches its height.  There are other familiar pleasures - as well as some unexpected ones.  I wasn't familiar with one of Frost's last, great poems, "Never Again Would the Bird's Song Be the Same,"a touchingly romantic elegy to Eve (and by extension his own lost wife Elinor) - so its inclusion here was a wonderful, if poignant, surprise.

But then I confess it's hard for me to pretend I don't love the chestnuts, too.  And Clapp's thoughtful interpretations unpretentiously drew out what perhaps is most precious about Frost's deceptively simple odes: the sense that despite their carefully calibrated meters and rhymes, they were nevertheless minted whole, perhaps from the stony earth of New England itself.  I did have a few caveats about the production, here and there - chiefly that the evocation of Frost's farmhouse by Kaikkonen was far too clean and quaint.  Something both more severe and weather-beaten would have been more apropos.  But that couldn't sour me on what in the end was a lovely experience.  Anyone who cares about this great poet - or his work - will want to catch this memorable performance.

Epic theatre as epic fail; or - does size matter?

Welcome to the dollhouse, Nora!  Photos: Richard Termine

I don't like lectures much.  I avoid Suze Orman and Deepak Chopra like the plague, and I remember my mind always tended to drift back when I was in class in college.

Which may be why Mabou Mines' DollHouse (currently at ArtsEmerson) grated on my ears more irritatingly than nails on chalkboard.  For it's one very long lecture (two hours and forty-five minutes worth!) from  the Professor Emeritus of Postmodern Theatre himself, Lee Breuer, who "deconstructs" Ibsen's A Dollhouse so thoroughly - indeed, all but relentlessly - that he might as well be center stage at a blackboard, circling things, and drawing arrows from Point A to Point B. Indeed, the production really should be subtitled "Lee Breuer Explains It All For You."

Now I admit - some people loved being in class back in college.  And some people like "deconstructing" things more than they like experiencing them.  Not for them the thrills of theatrical illusion, the seductions of identification and catharsis!  No, some people prefer taking a car apart to driving one.  They'd rather dissect a horse than ride it.

Bu then some people enjoy talking to insurance salesmen! And filling out tax returns! I actually think those are the kind of people who might enjoy DollHouse - my guess is that if you think of yourself as bohemian but are actually utterly bourgeois - or if you have a thick, pedantic streak right down the middle of your personality (as many critics do, which perhaps explains the applause for this long-touring production) then this could be the show for you.

Although I have to report that, judging from the audience at ArtsEmerson, most theatre-goers are not that kind of person. The thin house on Wednesday night was often restive, and the crowd shrank noticeably after intermission.  (The people behind me left well before that, declaring loudly to anyone who would listen, "Will this never END?")  I myself had to run out, grab a snack, and knock back a few drinks to face the second half, and I almost didn't return at all - partly because my buddy suddenly quailed once we admitted to ourselves that intermission was probably over.  "I'm not going back there!" he said to me from behind his beer.  "And you can't make me!!"

Trooper that I am, I trudged back across the street alone and ducked back into the theatre.  But you know - the drinks helped!  So my advice is - come drunk.  Or better yet, come at intermission (and drunk).

Because trust me, that makes all of Breuer's spoon-fed metaphors a whole lot easier to swallow.  In case you haven't heard, the production's central gambit is that the female characters are played by tall women, while the oppressive men are played by little people.  I know, that sounds stupid - but wait!  It's actually really complicated and stuff!  Take Nora, for instance (if you don't know who I'm talking about, read the plot summary on Wikipedia, or the review in the Globe).  She's played by the towering Maude Mitchell - but she speaks in a breathy little doll's voice (which is often hard to hear - the size of the Cutler Majestic dwarfs everybody in DollHouse).  So - do you get it?  She's big AND she's small.  Mitchell looks like a giantess on the tiny set - she has to crawl through the door - but various psychological visions loom over her (all female, btw), and at one point she's played by a little person too!  And her children are sometimes dolls, but sometimes they're little people as well.  And the toy piano over on stage left doubles for a big keyboard that looks like it's built right into the stage.  Get it?  The whole stage is a piano on which Ibsen is playing cheesy nineteenth-century music, beneath whore/opera house drapes and a cheap chandelier.  Get it?  Get it?  Get it?

Oh, Jesus Christ.  Breuer doesn't trust us to "get it" all by ourselves even for a minute; he can't let a single moment breathe; this isn't a production, it's a non-stop harangue. And a crude one at that - the text is being "deconstructed" with a box of crayolas.  And if you think that sounds like fun in a slummy kind of way, believe me, the relentless air-quotes rob the antics of their power as satire.  Laughter depends on surprise, after all, but there are no surprises here; everything is pre-determined; it's a phony paean to "freedom" in which no one and nothing is in any way free.  And God forbid Lee Breuer should ever have an original or controversial idea about Ibsen!  What really makes DollHouse such deadly theatre is not that its director's perceptions are "wrong" - indeed, they amount to a standard-issue interpretation of A Dollhouse - it's that all they're all clichés.  And when Breuer "complicates" his clichés, they just become, well, complicated clichés.

No, please - don't do it! For all our sakes!

Somewhere you can tell the director knows this, because his production becomes more desperate as it grinds on.  Gimmick is piled on gimmick, and "shock" on "shock"; what was already meta goes meta all over again.  Banners drop from the flies; strobe lights flicker; the actors throw furniture at each other; ghouls stride through on stilts; blizzards of snow blow onto the stage; dwarves brandish strap-ons; and it all has no theatrical impact whatsoever.  I know - politically, you're being pounded with a hammer; but theatrically, your mind remains untouched -  indeed, I spent some time going over my grocery list,  roused only when the actors started to strip down, when I began praying to myself "Nooo . . . please God, don't let them go all the way!"  (Sometimes they don't, but be warned, sometimes they do.)

I know the objection has often been raised to this production that the little people in its cast are being exploited by Breuer and Mabou Mines.  Only I didn't mind that, really.  I mean they are being exploited, rather obviously, and the objectification is sometimes quite creepy. But they've agreed to appear this way, and they seem to believe in the project, so it's really nobody's business, I suppose.  The idea seems to be that they are not being held up as literal grotesques, as they might once have been in some horrible sideshow, but instead are being presented as grotesque metaphors.  Okay, guys - whatever!  In the old days, theatre depended on the self-exposure of its characters for dramatic impact; today, it depends on the self-exposure of its actors. So it's your call.  For the record, several of these performers transcend their casting, particularly Kristopher Medina, Joe Gnoffo, and Hannah Kritzeck; I'd be very interested to see them in a show that didn't exploit their physical appearance (I know, I know, for highbrow, not lowbrow, effects; big deal!).  But as our theatre is constructed - or deconstructed! - now, that's unfortunately unlikely.

I felt basically the same way about the production's star, Maude Mitchell - she, too, was betraying her obvious talent, and was knee-deep in self-exploitation.  Indeed, for the first three-quarters of the show, she delivered the most obnoxious performance by a great actress I've ever seen.  Her "living doll" act was a direct contradiction of Ibsen's development of Nora; it was the opposite of "acting;" and besides, it was just boring as hell.

But wait; let's take a time out to discuss epic theatre, shall we - for Mabou Mines basically represents the downtown dregs of that Brechtian mode - and how epic theatre can become an epic fail, as it does here.  The style, which depends on maintaining emotional distance in the audience, is meant to thwart simplistic identification with the characters and situations it treats, the better to nurture intellectual, rather than emotional, engagement.  (And it can still work; a brilliant example was The Speaker's Progress a few weeks ago.)

Alas, what many Brechtians (including Brecht himself) often allowed epic theatre to devolve into was a simplistic identification with a political, rather than emotional, stance; it became the melodrama of the left.  And that's part of what's so wrong with DollHouse.  It's pretentious and crass because it imagines that its lamely rendered feminist posture counts as enlightenment, when of course these days it's simply the lingua franca of its audience.  And can a true radical preach only to the choir?  (Especially at such monotonous length?)

I often wish the culture could remember that the original "A Doll's House" was actually titled A Dollhouse - the change in that title reflects an unfortunate distortion in our perception of the text; Ibsen was positing an existential, rather than a feminist, critique of two people (Nora and her husband, Torvald). This is what makes the play map poorly to epic theatre - Ibsen's interested in Nora's inner transformation, her consciousness, her "soul," and we need to identify with her to access that artistic material - a process which is neither dated nor inherently melodramatic, btw. In fact, in its emphasis on interiority and the flouting of accepted political norms, A Dollhouse represents the antithesis of melodrama (and the antithesis of epic theatre, too). Indeed, it's hard not to feel that if he were alive today, old Henrik would have in his sights the dominion of Lee Breuer - who is all too obviously playing a manipulative off-stage Torvald to Mitchell's Nora.

Like much conceptual theatre, it gets better at the last minute - the whole show was basically a preamble to this installation.

But to be fair to old Lee, I'll admit he does have one great idea, at the very finish of this tedious extravaganza. In the final moments, Mitchell's Nora doesn't slam an actual door but instead leaves the stage, to strip down in a box and have a good cry with the audience; and a backstage curtain rises to reveal another audience, of doll-size Noras and Torvalds, watching from their own tiny boxes. It's a great, multi-valent conceptual stroke - even if the nudity feels a bit, well, melodramatic (Mitchell's head is shaved, too, like a concentration camp survivor's), and the segue into lip-synching to actual arias (another nod to the nineteenth century, I guess!) feels forced. Still, the overall effect is resonant - you could even argue that it validates the rest of the production (if it had been shortened to a brisk, bitter skit, that is).  But it's important to remember that this image is not about the play itself, or its characters, but rather about their subsequent effect on society - a more valid object for the epic-theatre treatment, I think. Indeed, we sense in these last moments that only now are we reaching appropriate material for the Mabou Mines method. But at the same time, we're grateful the whole dreary shebang is over. As is the production itself; this is the end of the road for it; these are the farewell performances of its years-long tour. And over all, I'd have to say - good riddance.

A jookin' take on a classic

The dancer above is the amazing Charles "Lil Buck" Riley, familiar from Janelle Monáe's "Tightrope" video and the new dance craze from Memphis (his hometown) known as jookin'. In some ways the performance below (some of it briefly en pointe), performed impromptu to the same familiar chunk of Saint-Saëns with Yo-Yo Ma, is even better than the more formal version above.  The dance world keeps looking for ways to combine the vigor and energy of the street with the ambitions of classical dance.  Could Mr. Riley be the first talent to really bridge these worlds?  It's at moments like this that I wish for what I've called the "Critical Project" fund - one which could simply and confidently move at a moment's notice to bring an artist or an idea to Boston without years of "development" or a convoluted program of educational and social goals.  Somebody just buy Lil Buck a plane ticket and rent him a hotel room.  I think he can do the rest.

Balancing act

Rinaldo Alessandrini in action.

What makes the period music movement so exciting is that it's in such ferment that there are dozens of different musical voices and visions jostling for space within it.  (There's really no comparable spectrum of interpretation among conductors of the "standard" repertoire - the BSO may vary a bit in quality from week to week, but it generally moves within a circumscribed artistic horizon of "excellence.")

And happily, we often get to see that ferment bubbling at the Handel and Haydn Society; whenever artistic director Harry Christophers is away (no slouch himself!) the Society invites major international figures like Richard Egarr and Roger Norrington to the podium, who reliably shake things up musically and intellectually.

Last week's H&H concerts proved no exception to this tradition, as the Society hosted Italian conductor and keyboard master Rinaldo Alessandrini (above), who has been tearing up the Continent in recent years with his acclaimed "Concerto Italiano" ensemble.  The program was territory Alessandrini knew well: Pergolesi's classic setting of the Stabat Mater for two voices, as well as his lesser-known "Salve Regina" (both composed at the very end of his short life), along with two concerti: Francesco Geminiani's Concerto Grosso Op. 3, No. 3, and Bach's Keyboard Concerto in D (BMV 1054).

So - to be honest, one sits down at these events wondering, "What's going to be the big idea this time?" Well, Alessandrini - a gently intense, romantically dapper presence onstage, who conducted from the harpsichord - says his passion is for “cantabilità.” Now this loosely translates as "singability," so it doesn't tell you much; but what was evident from performance was that Alessandrini is all about balance, detail, and harmonious proportion.  Hence these performances were models of delicate, graceful control - there were no large, daring gestures - and little impish eccentricity, either; refinement was the order of the day.  If there was a larger artistic statement to be gleaned from Alessandrini's finely-tuned engineering, I'd say it had something to do with another kind of balance: the intriguing way in which the text of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater exists in tension with its musical setting - which, as this concert convincingly argued, owed much to the new "singing" Italian style.  In other words, Pergolesi's suffering Virgin Mary stands (the Latin title literally translates as "Standing Mother") with one foot in the sacred but the other in the secular.

And right now, to be honest, a commitment to graceful balance is a perfect fit for the newly-remodeled H&H string section (which dominated these concerti).  I commented after the H&H season opener on how artistic director Christophers had brought a new sheen to the period orchestra's sound; and if anything, under Alessandrini the strings sounded more focused and flexible than ever; there was simply gorgeous playing on offer here, particularly in the Geminiani "Adagio."  (Unsurprisingly, the instrumentalists returned the love Alessandrini had clearly lavished on them with a stomping ovation at the concert's close.)

But you know me; I had my nits to pick.  The program was a thoughtful one, with a subtle and convincing argument tracing influences and echoes back and forth between the three composers on offer.  Still, if the intent was to highlight the emergence of the harpsichord as a solo instrument in the Bach, then I'd have to say its musical line still sounded slightly too submerged - not because of Alessandrini's playing, which was one sparkling, light-fingered flow, but rather because his conducting duties meant that his back was to the audience, and so even though the lid was off the harpsichord, its sound couldn't quite compete in size with that of the rest of the orchestra.

Meanwhile the singing - by soprano Liesbeth Devos and mezzo Emily Righter - was likewise generally transporting, but did make you ponder certain issues in transit.  The emphasis on proportion and "singability" meant that this Stabat Mater - which is, after all, rooted in Mary's suffering before the Cross - was only occasionally as piercing as I've heard in other performances (perhaps because things sounded a little rushed in places), although both vocalists impressed with the richness and gravity of their interpretations.  The strikingly statuesque Righter - slightly overdressed in a lavishly ruched turquoise gown - employed more vibrato than you usually hear in period performance, but her voice has a remarkably burnished, almost tragic lustre, and she seemed to go deeper emotionally than anyone else on stage.  Meanwhile Devos was perhaps more agile throughout her range (which glittered most at its top), but sometimes sounded as if she sympathized, but could not identify, with her text.  Such are the pitfalls, I suppose, of secular and sacred "balance"!  The good news is that the voices of these two did blend exquisitely - in purely musical terms, their timbres mapped memorably to the kind of evocative equilibrium Alessandrini seemed to be seeking.

More nights (and days) of stars

Philippe Jaroussky

What's on Boston's cultural plate this week? A lot, it turns out. Tonight I'm visiting the ICA, both to see the "Dance/Draw" exhibit, and to hear legendary choreographer William Forsythe - arguably the most influential dance-maker in the world - discuss his career (that's at 6:30 pm, btw). Tomorrow I'll stop by ArtsEmerson to catch the famous/notorious Mabou Mines interpretation of Ibsen, DollHouse. Then Thursday I'll return to Boston Ballet for Romeo and Juliet, at the Opera House. Friday is even more dance - the Boston debut of Aszure Barton at Celebrity Series.  Then Saturday is crunch time - I've got Robert Lepage's Siegfried from the Met in HD all afternoon (it's six hours long; I'm praying "The Machine" works this time, or I'll have to leave early), followed by Philippe Jaroussky, the greatest counter-tenor in the world (IMHO), at the Boston Early Music Festival with Apollo's Fire, Cleveland's red-hot period orchestra.  Sunday is the long-awaited Boston Lyric Opera production of Verdi's Macbeth, which is rarely seen in these parts.  And then . . . well, after a possible nervous collapse, I'll have a lot of reviewin' to do!

Boston Ballet's "Night of Stars"

The school and company of the Boston Ballet.

Last weekend Boston Ballet opened the fall season with its traditional "Night of Stars," a dazzling benefit that generally features the company's recent hits, a preview of an upcoming work, and a few virtuosic solos, often from a guest star.  This year, that luminary was Jennifer DePalo, of the Martha Graham Dance Company, who did indeed shine in a series of short dances, including one of Graham's signature works, Lamentation - an intense, if somewhat bare, physical metaphor for grief (done seated), in which DePalo strained against her shroud-like costume as her character did against her anguish. Elsewhere the dancer deployed a palpably sensual presence and an extremely clean technique in lighter moods: Graham's Serenata Morisca (after Ted Shawn) was almost amusing in its haughty lustiness, while Satyric Festival - a reconstruction of an American Pueblo Indian dance in which DePalo leapt for the sky and whipped her golden mane of hair repeatedly - may have been a bit opaque, but was still strangely exuberant.

The solos from the Ballet company were the other highlights of the evening; I'm afraid none of the ensemble dances came off quite as well as they have in the past.  The opening gambit, Jorma Elo's breathless Double Evil, sometimes looked half-hearted, despite the thundering propulsion of the Philip Glass score (although it did feature spirited work from Paulo Arrais, Lia Cirio, and Dalay Parrondo, and the men sometimes had the right kind of athletic passion).  There were likewise strong individual turns in other group pieces - Sabi Varga hung onto a stern command throughout the goofy "Indians" excerpt from La Bayadère (in which the "natives" look ready to throw Fay Wray into a volcano or something) - and Erica Cornejo was delicately haunting in her solo from Jerome Robbins' Antique Epigraphs (although she couldn't save this piece from a certain moody monotony).  Weakest of all was the excerpt from William Forsythe's The Second Detail, which wasn't nearly as cleanly (or as casually) savage as it should be.

Oh, well - as I said, the solo and partner pieces made up for all this and then some.  Adiarys Almeida beamed with a plummy radiance through a confidently executed Carnival in Venice, attentively partnered by Joseph Gatti, whose signature leaps are as gracefully sculpted as ever.  Meanwhile the charismatic Jeffrey Cirio brought his customary zip to The Golden Idol (also from La Bayadère), although he couldn't quite transform his boyish breeziness into the fascinating alienation the idol's presence should really exude.  Later in the program Lia Cirio and Nelson Madrigal offered a gently lush pas de deux from Les Sylphides, but were probably bested by the dancing of Misa Kuranaga and James Whiteside in the one piece by Balanchine on offer, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.  Kuranaga and Whiteside were stunning in their Balanchine performances last year - this one didn't have quite the same precision in places, but was still luminously subtle and often exquisite.

Then came the Ballet's traditional Défilé - a long pageant in which everybody in both the Ballet's school and company takes a bow (that's right, from the beginners all the way to the stars). It's a charming custom, and a delightful parade, that ends with a dazzling tableau (at top) which helps the Ballet's audience connect with the full sweep of its endeavors. And needless to say, the entire program is designed to whet one's appetite for the upcoming season, which opens this Thursday with John Cranko's Romeo and Juliet (a lovely production I've seen before).  I'll be writing about that early next week; I hope to see you there.