Of the sea, song, and sirens

In the old days, BSO programs aspired to some sort of intellectual coherence - most often, to pairings of the "compare and contrast" variety. These days, however, national origin seems to be enough to shape an evening around, as in this weekend's offering of "French music," featuring Berlioz, Duparc, Debussy, and a new commission from Henri Dutilleux, sung by reigning concert soprano Renée Fleming (at left).

The evening opened with an expertly gauged, if utterly conventional, reading of excerpts from the Berlioz "Roméo et Juliette;" though to be fair, James Levine coaxed some real feeling from the suite's "love scene," and the "Queen Mab scherzo" sometimes shivered with eerie, moonlit fantasy. Still, this seemed like an aperitif before the main course: Fleming.

The diva entered looking glorious in a sea-foam stole over a shimmering, fishtail sheath (someone must have told her La Mer was on the program), and she was generally in fine voice - although perhaps the warm opalescence of her pipes isn't precisely right for Dutilleux, whose precision might be better served by crystal than pearl. Fleming also seemed at times to be laying her own patented stamp on the music rather than responding to the Ligeti-esque textures around her. Still, there was reason for her to feel isolated; like many a mid-century composer - which is essentially what the nonagerian Dutilleux still is - the Frenchman hadn't so much supported her voice as built an environment for it to explore, and her soprano did retain a poignant vulnerability as it rose and fell through the exquisite, alienated soundscape the composer had constructed. Of the short vocal suite he supplied, perhaps the strongest was the opening piece, "L'Temps L'Horloge" (roughly "Time and the Clock"), which hauntingly evoked time itself rippling through the cogs and gears of its own measurement (with the woodwinds following suit), rather than slipping silently by us "like a thief in the night." Less compelling, at least on first hearing, was the burnt-offering setting of "Le Dernier Poeme," the famously minimal verse (by Robert Desnos) in which romantic despair meets the doom of the death camps. Dutilleux hit on an odd but intriguing instrumental choice for the piece: what sounded like a beaten-down accordion accompanied Fleming through her desolate admonition to the War's survivors; but perhaps the vocal line was slightly too spare to fully mine the pathos of the poem.

Fleming was more in her element in the ensuing group of songs by Duparc, achieving something like perfect synchronicity with Levine and the orchestra during the gorgeous "L'Invitation au Voyage," and the more muted rapture of "Extase." Even here, however, she sometimes sounded fragile, and her voice brushed at least once against the top of its register, perhaps leading to a rather constrained reading of "Phidylé," which might have brimmed with more passion.

This hardly mattered to her fans, however (several of whom departed the hall with her); they'd drunk at least intermittently from the golden spring of her voice, and left happy. Too bad they missed the best part of the program: Levine unexpectedly summoned up a brilliant performance of La Mer, which of course is putatively a portrait of the ocean over the course of a single day ("I particularly liked the bit at a quarter to eleven," Satie once quipped), but is actually - like so much of Debussy - a long meditation on submerged sensual pleasure. Sublimity of this type is a Levine specialty, of course, and he didn't stint on color, or spray - the performance's real pleasure, however, lay in its expertly contrived, but seemingly carefree, polyrhythms, which underpin whatever "structure" La Mer has. Here Levine caught precisely the play of tiny phrases over the deeper sway of the piece, and skillfully drew the orchestra from the rolling surge of dawn to the orgasmic thrash of a mid-day storm. There were perhaps no new soundings of Debussy's ocean here, but it was still exhilarating to hear the evening end with such a splendid splash.

We can dream, can't we?

The "mug shots" above and below - doctored photos by artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese - are currently on view in an exhibit called "Line Up" at the New York Public Library. Needless to say, FoxNews is very, very upset.

I'm dreaming of Bobby Orr on a white Christmas, Mamma Mia

Really, today's Globe must have hit some kind of wacky new low. First, on the front page, Geoff Edgers snickers about some silly gay artporn down in New York - ditzy queen Kurt Kauper "drew on his childhood love of hockey" while painting the heads of Bobby Orr and other Bruins on the naked bodies of anonymous guys, and now his fever dreams are on display at the "hip" Deitch Gallery. Sigh. The paintings have, I suppose, a slightly interesting vibe of childish sexual fantasy - still, such pathetically transparent gay shenanigans always make me cringe. I mean, I've got nothing against naked sports stars - I think I own every Dieux du Stade (below) calendar ever made! - but really, shouldn't they at least consent to their own objectification? Somehow that seems only polite. And if these were paintings of women, would the Globe still be giggling? Somehow I don't think so. (As for Kauper's stuff operating as "art" - please; only Geoff Edgers could pretend that! Unless, of course, he's merely dangling red gay meat in front of the Globe's Neanderthal audience in a Herald-like maneuver - the probable explanation, actually.)

Not that the Globe doesn't have some Christmas porn for everyone. In the Living/Arts section, the girls get down with three big fat low-brow shows - White Christmas, Mamma Mia, and A Christmas Carol - and whaddya know, they just love every single one! Between Bobby and Irving Berlin, it looks like everybody can have a white Xmas!

Don't watch the director's cut!

My last mention of Donnie Darko recalled to me one of my cultural pet peeves - the obviously undeserved cachet of the "Director's Cut." I've seen a lot of these, and it's hard for me to recall a single one that was clearly superior to the studio cut - indeed, most have been quite a bit weaker. Still, the prestige of these projects, situated as they are at the intersection of the "auteur" theory, youth culture, and good old-fashioned marketing, lingers on. But here's what you can expect from a few of them:

Apocalypse Now: Redux - Ack! Far, far less enjoyable than the original, hacked-up studio version. The suits were right - the newly interpolated colonial interlude is pompous, airless, and just plain dumb. I prefer the choppy anarchy of the original (which yes, ends up pompous, airless and just plain dumb anyway).

Donnie Darko - Another case where you should definitely avoid the director's cut, at least until you've seen the original. Director Kelly here spells out the "time travel" hypothesis for Donnie's tribulations in all-too-apparent detail, which perhaps mollified those frustrated by the trimmed-down, impacted theatrical release, but essentially tosses our doubts about Donnie's stability out the window, and hence dilutes the movie's weird, ambiguous vibe.

Alien - The "Director's Cut" includes a scene of Ripley discovering the rest of the (presumed dead) crew cocooned as future alien hosts. Alas, the scene adds nothing to the forward momentum of the picture (which at this point is careening headlong), and the sequence is filmed without Scott's usual visual inspiration. Still, it doesn't actually hurt the movie so much as undercut the impact of James Cameron's sequel.

Speaking of which:

Aliens - The "D.C." includes an opening sequence on the planet surface, in which the colonists happen upon the alien ship, and their first "face-hugger." Again, the scenes are indifferently directed, diminish the later discovery of the abandoned colony, and turn a long movie into an overlong one.

And then there's:

Blade Runner - The one case where there are defensible artistic reasons for the "Director's Cut" - which hints in its last moments that Deckard himself may be a replicant (a recent "Final Cut" apparently makes this point clearer). Other messy bits and overdubs have been cleaned up, it seems - but whether the entire movie is improved by this new information is an open question. (And I actually never minded the original voice-over!)

Of course there are plenty more examples and counter-examples to throw into the debate: Das Boot (the D.C. may be better), Amadeus (the D.C. is not any better), Lean's Lawrence of Arabia and Bertolucci's 1900(both D.C.'s are clearer, but longer, and arguably more depressing). But now that we've seen the "Director's Cut" of The Butterfly Effect, Daredevil, and Stargate, I'd say the argument has become largely moot: the "D.C." has become an excuse to revisit a film you liked, for whatever reason, whether or not you expect the new version to be any better. So go ahead - watch it. You know you want to!

Second Life

This fall many Boston theatregoers unexpectedly found themselves at the movies: the Huntington hosted the pre-Broadway run of Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, while the ART produced a stage version of cult fave Donnie Darko. Both companies stumbled in the process; Steps merely ridiculed its source, while the ART, by all accounts (no, I didn't bother) mounted an oddly literal physicalization of Darko. But the third time seems to have been the charm: the Lyric successfully makes the jump from screen to stage with a smart, modestly scaled version of It's a Wonderful Life (with local hero Neil A. Casey, above, playing every part) that manages, for the most part, to evoke its source without getting either too meta or too maudlin.

Casey pulls off the trick by serving as his own narrator - in between dipping into one role after another - and in the process largely rehabilitates the Frank Capra classic from its corny reputation. True, the film hinges on a device so sappy it could rot your teeth - a dotty angel-in-waiting saves a human soul to earn his wings - but what's shocking about It's a Wonderful Life is how tough-minded and dark it gets before it starts groping for your heartstrings. Next to, say, Steven Spielberg, Capra is defiantly clear-eyed about life, wonderful or not, and he sends his hero, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart, above right) through a graduate course in the School of Hard Knocks before finally finding redemption via that angelus ex machina. Over the course of the movie, children are abused, loved ones die, dreams are crushed, and the hero is repeatedly disappointed or frustrated; still, scene after scene is either buoyant, sexy, or lyrical; life is obviously worth living despite everything. Indeed, it's hard to count how many memorable moments (and hairpin turns in tone) Capra packs into his sprawling canvas: there's the giddy dance over (and into) the swimming pool; the dreamy, moonlit walk home to the tune of "Buffalo Gals" (at left), the tense run on the Bailey Savings and Loan; the "honeymoon" in the abandoned house; and of course, the Dickensian supernatural interlude with its rising hysteria and film noir shadows.

It helps the Lyric, of course, that the set design of Life has become so iconic; designer Jenna McFarland Lord has only to simulate the famous truss from which George nearly leaps, along with the welcome sign from Bedford Falls (both built in glorious black-and-white) to conjure the film's mise en scène. And once the show begins, the dialogue reminds us how closely, and how beneficially, classic films once emulated the theatre. Casablanca is obviously a barely-opened-out melodrama; The Wizard of Oz is deeply indebted to vaudeville; even Citizen Kane's deep-focus essentially squeezes "upstage" and "downstage" onto celluloid (Welles was first and foremost a great stage ham). And like most of these, It's a Wonderful Life is built of long, dialogue-heavy "acts," usually performed within a single set, that don't seem out of place on a stage proper.

Neil Casey does face one daunting challenge in bringing Life back to life: its cast is relentlessly superb. Capra had worked with almost all the movie's actors before, and the one newcomer, Donna Reed, delivered a performance at least as mature as those proferred by the old hands around her. Casey, alas, doesn't even try to do justice to Reed; he does his patented funny, superficial feminine schtick when channeling Capra's actresses (and thus one of the film's great moments, the passionate joint phone call between Stewart and Reed, is here played merely for laughs). He's much subtler, oddly, when chewing the scenery (or at least his wheelchair) as Lionel Barrymore, and even better as Jimmy Stewart; he nails Stewart's stuttering delivery from the start, then settles into an increasingly complex and gripping characterization; by the finale, we realize he's earned that perilous spot on the bridge over Bedford Falls.

It's too bad, however, that adapter Steve Murray has left much of the political edge of the movie on the cutting-room floor, so some of Casey's performance seems to be happening in a vacuum. This even though the economic message of Life - that capitalism must be balanced with humanity - is today more relevant than ever (bank runs are once again in style, and of course our looming subprime crisis dwarfs the mortgage meltdown in the movie). The edits, of course, are probably due to the fact that today the "free market" occupies something of the same cultural space "virginity" once filled for the Victorians. Still, you'd think if people can handle Capra's unapologetic populism on TV, they can handle it onstage - a thought which does raise the question, Why see the stage version of It's a Wonderful Life at all, when sometime before Christmas it will inevitably pop up on cable? Perhaps the answer lies in what's lost in the isolation of home viewing: the sense of community that even moviehouses (where Life was designed to be seen) once offered. And without that, Capra tells us, life is a whole lot less wonderful.

Strung out

The St. Lawrence Quartet: Lesley Robertson, Christopher Costanza, Geoff Nuttall, and Scott St. John. (Photo by Anthony Parmelee.)

The recent St. Lawrence Quartet concert at Jordan Hall (sponsored by the good folks at Celebrity Series) proved surprising in more ways than one. Probably the first surprise, to those not in the know, was that the quartet has been playing musical chairs in the last year or two, and only founding members Geoff Nuttall and Lesley Robertson are still with the group. A second surprise, however, was that Nuttall, widely perceived as leading the quartet's musical profile, would be "rotating" to second chair. But the third surprise was that only the second half of the concert focused on the St. Lawrence String Quartet at all. The first half featured soprano Heidi Grant Murphy, accompanied by her husband, Kevin Murphy, in a somewhat uneven program of art song which nevertheless yielded the concert's fourth surprise: a pretty wonderful premiere, Roberto Sierra's "Songs from the Disapora."

Ms. Murphy boasts a richly honeyed soprano which she seems able to tinge with either sun or earth; but her first offering, Ernest Chausson's limpidly doomed "Chanson Perpétuelle," suited neither the warmth of her voice nor the essential optimism of her presence. She was more at home in a set of Schubert lieder, loosening up delightfully for "Sweethearts of All Kinds," and then imbuing "Litany for the Feast of All Souls" with a genuine prayerfulness, although her effects were undermined by her husband's indifferent accompaniment. He, too, came alive, however, when joined by the quartet for Sierra's "Diaspora," a song cycle based on textual and musical fragments from the Sephardic expulsion from Spain (the Sephardic Jews were banished by Fernando and Isabella in 1492). Sierra's 'reconstruction' nearly overflows with haunting ornament, and its melodies all but bleed with melancholic gypsy atmosphere; indeed, "Diaspora" pretty much leaves its obvious competition, Golijov's bloated, pop-ified "Ayre," in the Spanish dust. If the piece doesn't always fully satisfy, however, it's because its lyrics are too fragmentary - the composer might have "reconstructed" them a bit, too.

The concert's mood, of course, then took a hairpin turn as the St. Lawrence took the stage solo for Beethoven's Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 - the one appended by the famously savage and dissonant "Grosse Fugue," here played in full. The fugue, as Ludwig van enthusiasts all know, was far too edgy for audiences of its day; while now, of course, its forward-looking fury has become something of a modernist cliché. As first violin, Scott St. John perhaps lacked Nuttall's personal "hottie" charisma, but he was more than up to the demands of the piece, which he practically attacked (so much so that cellist Christopher Costanza seemed slightly startled by his volatility). Throughout, the quartet's playing was intense but clean, although most marked by depth of color in the short Presto passage. Intriguingly, the St. Lawrence (or at least St. John) seemed to be making the case that the fierce Grosse Fugue is, indeed, separable from the rest of the quartet; they definitely found a mournful equilibrium in its penultimate movement. The crowd was in no mood to quibble over interpretation, of course; they'd come to hear the St. Lawrence Quartet play a string quartet, and were very happy when they finally heard one.

Hey, Drood

Michael Mendiola and Erin Tchoukaleff get in the mood for Drood.

I'll do it right up front: The Mystery of Edwin Drood is "a Dickens of a Christmas show!!!" "With more carols than A Christmas Carol," it's "no holiday turkey" even if "Drood looks like a lady!" "Only a Scrooge wouldn't like it!"

Okay, okay. It actually is a good show, even if it hadn't entirely gelled the night I saw it (the last preview, just before press). SpeakEasy has once again outdone itself, production-wise: this time they've erected a complete Victorian music-hall, with swooping red-velvet curtain and flickering chandeliers, within the Roberts Studio, and corralled la crème de la crème of Boston's musical talent to warble showtunes on its stage: Leigh Barrett rubs elbows with Brendan McNab, who bumps up against Kerry Dowling, who almost collides with Will McGarrahan.

What's more, Drood proves quite appropriate to the Christmas season; Dickens and his crew amused each other with ghost stories during long December nights, and the cozy/spooky yin-yang of Christmas Carol echoes through the unfinished Drood (which, appropriately enough, Dickens died before completing - hence a mystery within a mystery, which the audience "solves").


The cast confronts their judges during the "audience participation" segment.

You also have to ponder, however, Rupert Holmes, who single-handedly drew Drood from the page to the stage. Yup. That Rupert Holmes - the "Piña Colada Song" guy. And while yes, Drood is a bit better, musically speaking, than that great late-70s classic, it's not that much better. And Holmes not only wrote the music, but also penned the lyrics and the "book," so . . . you get the idea. Plus, he isn't really interested in drawing out the themes Dickens might have embedded in his answer to The Moonstone - instead, Holmes posits a broad romp for Broadway's bridge & tunnel crowd (indeed, the mystery of Edwin Drood is how it won a Tony). But while Holmes clearly longs to imagine himself the camp equal of say, Charles Ludlam, Drood actually toodles along at an acceptable level without ever cracking either the heights of the sublime or the depths of the ridiculous. It's just a nice show, tied up with a big, overlong bow of "audience participation," for those who still find that kind of thing hilarious (above, the cast proposes, while the crowd disposes).

But hey, it's Christmas (almost), and if you can't really face that bratty Tiny Tim one more time, trust me, Drood won't let you down. Neither will this cast. Michael Mendiola does a nice twist on Roger Rees as the melancholy, menacing John Jasper, while Brendan McNab brings a slightly goofy spin to the exotic, menacing Neville Landless, even as David Krinitt channels Dick van Dyke as the drunken, menacing Nick Cricker. The night belongs, however, to Kerry A. Dowling (as opiatrix "Princess Puffer") and Will McGarrahan (our "Chairman," or emcee, at left), who deliver what may be the best performances of two sterling careers; both understand the ghoulish charm that Drood should exude, and deliver it in spades. Alas, as Drood himself, the great Leigh Barrett hasn't quite found her feet (the kid should be a far chipper British innocent adrift in colonial effluvia), but she's hilarious once she's in disguise, as the mysterious Dick Datchery, whose Basil-Rathbonesque headgear flaps about endearingly in her deadpan musical numbers. In moments such as these, the success of Edwin Drood is no mystery.