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.

The Super Bowl ad Coke and Pepsi don't want you to see . .

This ad from SodaStream, targeting the environmental pollution caused by plastic soft drink bottles - was reportedly refused a berth in SuperBowl programming after pressure was applied by Coke and Pepsi.  Something to remember the next time someone tells you that a free market ensures a free exchange of ideas.

Beethoven on the West Bank

You-know-who on the West Bank barrier.

The distinguished conductor Daniel Barenboim has insisted that his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, perhaps the only symphony in the world where Israelis, Arabs, and Iranians play side by side (and which made its Boston debut last week at Celebrity Series) is "not a project for peace."

Okay.  It's hard to fully agree, but Barenboim is quite eloquent on this point, and deserves to be quoted at length:

"The Divan is not a love story, and it is not a peace story. It has very flatteringly been described as a project for peace. It isn't. It's not going to bring peace, whether you play well or not so well. The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. A project against the fact that it is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it. I'm not trying to convert the Arab members of the Divan to the Israeli point of view, and [I'm] not trying to convince the Israelis to the Arab point of view. But I want to . . . create a platform where the two sides can disagree and not resort to knives."

It's sad to say, but clearly the knives are, indeed, still drawn regardless: none of the names of the young players of the West-Eastern Divan could be listed in the program due to security concerns.  So clearly even this dream of building a platform for communication - which Barenboim and co-founder Edward Said named for Goethe's grand cycle of poems inspired by the Persian poet Hafez - remains a threat to some people.

Sigh.  It's somehow comforting, then, that even if the Divan "isn't going to bring peace, whether you play well or not so well," its players still play very, very well.  Barenboim has in fact worked a kind of miracle with what is largely a youth orchestra (plenty of players seemed to be on the sunny side of 25, or even 20 - the membership from the Middle East is supplemented by players from Spain, btw, where the orchestra is based).  Indeed, the conductor has drawn from these dedicated young musicians a startlingly mature, muscular sound that often achieved an impressive sense of majesty.

Barenboim in action with the West-Eastern Divan.

I would have to add, however, that what Barenboim delivered was "Beethoven with a capital B;" he kicked it old school - or at least mid-twentieth-century school - and hardly nodded to any of the fresh insights that the early music movement (or other iconoclastic interpreters) have recently brought to our understanding of the grand Ludwig van.   Thus the orchestra for the Second Symphony was large, and for the Third (the so-called "Eroica," or "Heroic"), truly titanic - practically Wagner-sized, in fact, probably twice the size of the forces at Beethoven's original disposal (and needless to say everyone was playing modern instruments). Perhaps more tellingly, Barenboim conducted both symphonies as if they were the Fifth - there should be an enormous gap, I'd argue, between the lingering Haydn-esque echoes of the Second and the stunning experiments of the Third; but here they both sounded like variants of a kind of quasi-religious musical consensus (intriguingly, sourced in German high culture) that defied what we know of their actual genesis.

Still, as I said, Barenboim is a master of this sound, the orchestra clearly worshipped him - and you could argue that "Beethoven with a capital B" is all too appropriate to the Divan's political aims (to Western ears, at least). And the musical results were often compelling, if not enlightening.  Barenboim favored a thoughtful pace that led to slow, expansive statements - even his idea of a scherzo proved pretty deliberate. Indeed, he often seemed to drop his beat entirely to focus on sculpting some sonic peak; thus one was constantly reminded of mountains emerging from mist. Still, this worked splendidly in the Larghetto movement of the Second, and the more dramatic passages of the "Eroica" - particularly the funereal second movement and the driving finale, which despite a rather strident string section (the winds and horns were less insistent) burned with a palpably grand fire.  Which the packed hall at Symphony clearly adored; and to be honest, even I felt the combination of a nostalgic take on Beethoven with a committed political idealism had proved a potent mix.

Perhaps even a heroic one.

A question for Polly Carl

We watch the career of Polly Carl (at left) over at Emerson's Center for Theater Commons with increasing interest.  Recently, it was announced that Ms. Carl and her Center would be part of a philanthropic effort to embed playwrights in (partly) administrative positions within regional theatres.  

This set off a few warning bells for us, which prompted a somewhat re-assuring response from the Huntington.  Now we read Carl is also looking to hire critics, too - not to write reviews, however, but to - well, you know, "foster a space," "respectfully dialogue," etc., etc.

So . . . now we're talking about equipping theatres with their own in-house playwrights, and even their own in-house critics. What's next - paid audience members?  (Just kidding!)  

With that trend in mind, I submitted the following question to Carl's post on HowlRound.  I'm curious to read her response.

Okay, I'll take the bait, because I'm curious - are you thinking of hiring critics to critique your own productions, or other people's? There would seem to be some obvious conflicts of interest in either case, of course - but I'll assume you're interested in enlisting a critic to discuss your own productions.

Now integrating a critic into the internal development process strikes me as a good idea, actually; indeed, several budding playwrights have asked me to critique their work. It's the public face of this supposed "critical" writing that strikes me as problematic.

You say, for instance, that you don't want to publish "reviews," and you don't want to "wake up in the morning to a bad review." (Only guess what - I don't want to go into the theatre and see a bad show, either. And yet it happens all the time!)

Only if the critic isn't being paid to write a "review," then what, exactly, is he or she being paid to write?

Well, you say it's going to be "positive" and "respectful," which is nice. Beyond that, though, the project seems vague. Very vague, in fact - although these critics will apparently ask questions about "what gets produced and why," and inquire, "Why this play, playwright, or story now?"

Only frankly - those queries don't sound like critical questions, in that they seem to dodge any issues of aesthetic analysis. They sound instead like political questions, designed to subvert critique with open-ended gestures toward "diversity" and various demographic targets (in short, the academic version of audience development).

Not that there's anything wrong with audience development! Only of course it's not criticism, and those who practice it are not critics. Which is why I question the nomenclature of your headline, "Call for critics!" I don't think you're calling for "critics," because I don't think you're really looking for criticism.  Well, okay, you're looking for critics, perhaps - only you'd like them to write something else.

The silvery tones of Quicksilver

Quicksilver in action at an earlier concert.

Sometimes you can feel it in the air, that sense of a collective "Wow."  It was certainly all but palpable at the Quicksilver concert from the Boston Early Music Festival last Saturday night.

Wow.  Just - wow.

I'd already heard the buzz from their last performance at BEMF - a late-night jam session that left people dazzled, maybe even dazed.  The same happy vibe hummed through the chatter at intermission last weekend - "Can you believe it?" "Oh. My. God!" The partner unit and I were similarly punch-drunk.  "So," I said drily, "how good are they, would you say?"  He thought for a moment.  "They're f--king incredible," he replied.

Indeed and verily.  Pardon my French, of course - and I don't expect to see "F--king incredible! - The Hub Review" on Quicksilver ad copy anytime soon.  But you get the point.  It almost doesn't matter what these people are playing - each member of Quicksilver is so virtuosic, and their ensemble is so tight, attentive and sympathetic, that they could probably make you swoon over "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat."

On the other hand, perhaps it helped that almost everything they played was obscure, but also thrillingly beautiful.  (Yes, that usually helps.) Quicksilver seems devoted to exploring the very beginnings of what lead violinist Robert Mealy calls "abstract music" - that is, music sans religious or political pretext, or indeed text of any kind; music that obeys only its own rules.  

Specifically, Mealy and Co. focus on the earliest forms of the sonata, whose rules were made up in the 17th century - and last Saturday they zeroed in on composers in Germany.  What they revealed was a gorgeous kind of chaos, united by a ravishingly mournful tone that can only be described as silvery (hence, perhaps, their moniker?).  These sonatas, from the likes of all-but-forgotten names like Kerll and Vierdanck, literally leapt from effect to effect, voice to voice, and stance to stance. Bustling turns on the dulcian by the virtuosic Dominic Teresi powered the opening number from Matthias Weckmann; something close to a muezzin's call echoed through the Bertali sonata that followed; and then bagpipes (believe it or not) suddenly - and hilariously - marched through Johann Schmelzer's Polnische Sackpfeiffen.  Sometimes in this concert you felt as if you'd bought a ticket to some sort of musical ark.

To be honest, this stuff makes for a wonderful showcase for performers, but its constant variety, and the lack of any over-arching structures, perhaps wore a bit thin by the end of the evening.  It was wonderful, for instance, to hear keyboardist Avi Stein give the glorious organ of the First Congregational Church a full work-out, but Nicolaus Bruhns' Praeludium turned out to be all sudden surprises, starts and stops.  Still, even late in the program there were wonders to take in, such as the stunning face-off between Mealy and violinist Julie Andrijeski (joint directors of Quicksilver) in a fierce little sonata from Johann Kaspar Kerll.  And I have to mention the seductive touch of Charles Weaver on the theorbo, which is probably the most softly sensual stringed instrument in existence. (Again - wow.) Still, the star of the evening was clearly violinist Mealy.  I admit he himself obviously agreed with that assessment, but if he served his solos with a small side of ham, where's the harm?  His sound is nothing less than heart-breaking, his interpretive thrust consistently of the highest order - and clearly he's aware he's only first among equals.  Together this stunning consort seems to be raising the bar for early music without even trying; certainly at the very dawn of the local season they have already essayed one of its most memorable concerts.