American Classical Orchestra 40th Anniversary Concert

The American Classical Orchestra (ACO), described by its founder/conductor as "our labor of love," utilizes period instruments to better produce classical pieces as the composers composed them. Their 40th Anniversary Concert included Mozart's Andante in C Major for Flute & Orchestra, with Sandra Miller as soloist. Miller is a founder of and principal flute for the ACO, and she was wonderful on the wooden period flute she used. 

Sandra Miller

The program also included Mozart's Andante from Serenade, K. 388, played by the woodwinds section, again with period instruments. I don't have the musical vocabulary to discuss in detail period instruments vs modern ones, but I do know that they are harder to play--and particularly harder to play loud enough to be heard in a good-sized auditorium. The piece was completely audible, present, and beautiful. I'm sure the superb acoustics of Alice Tully Hall enhanced the performance.

Thomas Crawford

The program ended with Beethoven's 7th Symphony, on which ACO did an okay job. The experience may have been injured by Crawford's prefatory remarks, which included snippets of the piece with explanations of how they were written and why they were notable. The remarks were interesting in themselves, but acted as spoilers. In addition, the performance lacked oomph. 

Wendy Caster

In Search of Elaina

Annette is winning at life. She has just negotiated a major promotion; her boyfriend Charles is attractive, considerate, and wealthy; their major life challenge is whether to stay in the Upper West Side or move to Greenwich Village. Then Annette receives a text: her high school boyfriend has been killed in a car accident. Her earlier life, which she has happily abandoned, comes flooding back. 

Garrett Richmond,  Aimée Fortier

Photo:  Al Foote III

Annette decides not to go to the memorial, in California, ostensibly because she'd have trouble getting back to New York in time for work on Monday. But Charles talks her into going back and then talks her into his coming along. He tells her, "I’d just like to see where you’re from." She answers, "I'm from here now!"

After a cross-country plane ride, followed by driving a long, snaking road up the side of a mountain, they are in the world of Annette's childhood: rural, poor, lacking resources and opportunity, battered by drug addiction. Annette's old friends greet her with differing levels of enthusiasm; she hasn't been in touch in ten years. And, to Charles's astonishment, they call her "Annie Rae."

Rachel Griesinger, Aimée Fortier

Photo:  Al Foote III

To describe what follows--culture clashes, drunken confidences, old wounds reopened, secrets revealed--sounds cliché, but in Kara Ayn Napolitano's exceptional new play, In Search of Elaina, everything is new, real, and earned. The play is well-served by excellent direction, by Joy Donze, and vivid, convincing acting. As Annette/ Annie Rae, Aimée Fortier moves seamlessly from being a sophisticated professional in her early 30s to a confused, yearning teenager and back again. The rest of the cast is also excellent: Greg Carere, Jamie Effros, Alexandra Gellner, Rachel Griesinger, Garrett Richmond, and Lee Tyler. It is a first-class production of a first-class play. 

(For tickets, click here.)

Wendy Caster

Attorney-Client

One is not supposed to focus so much on trees that you miss the forest, right? I get that. But what if they're really big, ugly, focus-grabbing trees?

I suspect that Client-Attorney, Alex Ladd's drama at Theater for the New City, is a solid, thoughtful play with a careful structure and something important to say. But I don't know for sure because the same repetitive, abrasive, and unpleasant music is played during every scene change. And there are a lot of scene changes. The music neither enhances nor complements the show. It does, however, interrupt the play's rhythms and knock the audience out of the world of the play and the characters. By the end of the show, I was sticking my fingers in my ears each time a scene ended. If I had been able to quietly consider what had just occurred before each scene change, this review would be much more useful. As it is, the deeply annoying music/tree made it impossible for me to fully appreciate the play/forest. 

The basic set-up of the play is that two young men, one White and rich (Joss Gyorkos), the other Black and poor (Lovell Adams-Gray), are arrested for a hit-and-run car accident in which a young woman is injured. The White man's father gets him the best defense that money can buy, with the attorney also played by Adams-Gray. The Black man ends up with a public defender (also played by Gyorkos), who does what he can to help him but is limited by a lack of resources and the built-in inequities of the justice system. The young men are pressured to behave in the ways their lawyers think best, which have little to do with who the young men are, what they want, and whether or not they are guilty. 

All of this is, of course, underlined and misshapen by systemic racism. This theme is more referred to than developed. That the white guy is rich and the black guy poor stacks the deck. And the constant costume changes (accompanied by that damn music), don't allow the impact of the show to build as it might. While switching off the roles might be fun for the actors, I suspect a four-person cast, with a more streamlined presentation, would be better for the play.

Adams-Gray, Gyorkos

Adams-Gray and Gyorkos acquit themselves pretty well, although Gyorkos's accent for the rich white guy is puzzling at best. The direction, by Pat Golden, has strengths and weaknesses. She has helped the actors develop well-differentiated characters, and that is certainly a plus. But she clearly feels a need to avoid a static stage picture, and has the characters--the white guy in particular--get up and walk around for no reason other than to have someone moving on stage. But the writing is sufficiently interesting to keep the audience's attention all by itself.

Please remember to take this review with a huge grain of salt. The music was so off-putting to me that I just couldn't give the show my full concentration. If the creators promised to remove the music, or replace it with much better, more varied music, I would actually like to give the play a second chance.

Wendy Caster 

The Ask

There's a little gem playing at the Wild Project through September 28th. One set, 80 minutes, with terrific and compassionate writing (Matthew Freeman), directing (Jessi D. Hill), and acting (Colleen Litchfield and Tony-nominated Betsy Aidem, both of whom were in Leopoldstadt on Broadway).

Aidem, Litchfield
Photo: Kent Meister

Tanner (the vivid and canny Litchfield), a nonbinary person who uses "they/their" pronouns, is a fund-raiser with the ACLU (where playwright Freeman worked for years) and they have come to the home of Greta (the compelling and wry Aidem), a long-time generous donor.

Greta wants to be heard, seriously heard. She feels abandoned by the ACLU on a personal and political level. She argues that the ACLU is suffering from mission creep by expanding the issues the organization addresses. In addition, as a liberal, second-generation feminist in a world of changing beliefs, customs, language, and even gender, she feels marginalized. She used to be the cool one.

Tanner  has to treat Greta with kid gloves, but they also want to be honest and not to disrespect their own being and beliefs. It's a tightrope for sure!

What makes this piece way better than it might have been is that Freeman doesn't fall into the simple equation of "rich oblivious person bad/hip nonbinary person good." Greta has legitimate points to make, and Freeman lets her make them. Tanner has legitimate points to make as well, and Freeman and Lichtfield let them make their arguments (and mostly keep their integrity), while trying to entice Greta to quintuple her donation. The debate/dance is fascinating and full of texture; I'm still thinking about it days later.

Aidem, Litchfield
Photo: Kent Meister

In the small space of the handsome set (designed by Craig Napoliello), Greta feels free to pace and wander. Tanner, a guest in Greta's house and in the less-powerful position, never leaves their chair. Greta sometimes feels like a predator stalking her prey, though she would never see herself that way. Greta wants to get her way, and also to be approved, liked, and sympathized with.  (In a funny/horrible moment, Greta asks nonbinary, nonwealthy, working-for-a-living Tanner if they have any idea how it feels to be marginalized.) Aidem manages to make Greta a genuinely sympathetic and even likeable character while never diminishing her vivid faults. It's a great performance.

As Tanner, Litchfield has perfected the meaningful squirm and the eloquent gesture. She gives an amazingly physical performance, brilliantly done. We can feel who Tanner is.

(It's worth taking a moment to point out that this fabulous female character and equally fabulous nonbinary character were written by a male playwright. Good writers can indeed write across gender, race, age, etc. In fact, it's what good writing is.)

If this show were on Broadway, both performers would be nominated for Tonys--and it would cost hundreds of dollars to see them. But at the Wild Project, they can be seen in an intimate space for a reasonable ticket price. It's excellent theatre; it's a bargain.

Wendy Caster

Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy (Book Review)

On one hand, there could never be too many books about Stephen Sondheim. On the other hand, each book should be able to justify its existence through untold stories (are there any?), a new point of view, or access to previously un-interviewed people. 

Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy, by Stephen M. Silverman, justifies its existence in a number of ways. It's thorough (though not quite complete, since Here We Are opened too late to be included, except in passing). It is a large and handsome book, with dozens of photos, many of them in color. It includes a bibliography, source notes, and index, and is all in all a classy book. And yet.

It's just not that good a book. 

Silverman is frequently inaccurate. For example, he writes that Mandy Patinkin won a Tony as Best Actor in a Musical for Evita, when he actually won for Best Featured Actor.

Here's another example, about Night Music: 

A musical duel, set in waltz time, between Fredrik and the Count, "In Praise of Women," takes place before an actual duel with firearms. Said duel leads to young wife Anne running off with Henrik, Fredrik's sexually frustrated seminary student son.

Well, no. The duel takes place after Anne and Henrik run off. In fact, the only reason Fredrik agrees to the duel (Russian roulette, actually) is that he is in shock from losing his wife and son and not thinking straight.

The quote above can also be used as an example of another weakness of the book: an oddness in presenting information. Why specify that "In Praise of Women" is in waltz time when the whole show is in waltz time or variations thereof? Isn't that the more salient point?

And some of Silverman's conclusions are just bizarre. Here is an example:

It was said, just as it later was of Sondheim, that Babbit's "difficult music" required repeated listening before it could be appreciated, even comprehended.* [Asterisk in original]

[The footnote:] *Which might explain the line in Merrily We Roll Along, when the producer tells the crestfallen theatre hopefuls, "It's not a tune you can hum."

Why attach that line to Babbit when it was completely and 100% about Sondheim and his work--and is based on, at least to some extent, Sondheim's experiences getting his foot in Broadway's door?

Here's another example of the klutziness of the writing:

"One of the things I couldn't care less about is posterity," said Stephen Sondheim. "If you can't enjoy life while still alive, what is the point?"

As usual, he gave the statement a quick second thought.

"However, while I'm still alive, I'd like my shows to be done as much as possible.

That's not a second thought! That's more of the first thought!

And, and this is a big and, Silverman tells the famous story about Ethel Merman, Loretta Young, and the swear jar, and makes it not funny. (I guess, in its own way, that's an impressive accomplishment.) Sondheim tells the story here.

Am I picking nits? Yes. But there are an awful lot of nits in this book. Here are some more:

• Pacific Overtures: [The song being referenced is] "Next," of which it could be said that it is to Tokyo what Company's "Another Hundred People" is to New York City. 

• Merrily: The theme of the 1934 play and the 1981 musical and, presumably, the 2040 movie is that ambition trumps friendship. 

• In keeping with the narrative structure of Merrily We Roll Along--which is told in chronological order but backward--this book's account of Sondheim's musical begins in the the future, with what will be [the movie's] 2040 premiere ... 

• Pacific Overtures: The placid "Pretty Lady" is sung by three foreign sailors positioning themselves to take unfair advantage of an innocent Japanese woman. 

• Sweeney: [Mrs. Lovett's] business success is short-lived, however, when Mrs. Lovett herself ends up in the oven at the hands of Sweeney, who disposes of her for having kept secret that the insane beggar woman on the street is, in fact, Barker's wife. After this horrible moment, the apprentice, Toby, slits Barker's throat out of an act of love for Mrs. Lovett. 

• Pacific Overtures: "Chrysanthemum Tea, like A Little Night Music's "A Weekend in the Country," advances the action, but this time with lyrics delivered by a shogun's mother as she slowly poisons her son.

 Completist Sondheim fans may want to own Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy. It does cover Sondheim's whole life, and nearly all his work. It does allow a trip down "Memories-of-Sondheim Lane." If only it were better.

Wendy Caster

Suffs

First, how cool is it that Suffs exists, and that it's so good, and that it's been recognized and rewarded? And how sad is it that the show is still timely? But things are changing. The night it became clear that Kamala Harris would be the democratic nominee for president, the audience chatted "Kamala, Kamala, Kamala" as the show started. The cast had to freeze to wait for the audience to wind down, and how moved they must have been! History honoring history. (You can watch a video here.)

Shaina Taub's book, music, and lyrics have been compared to those of Hamilton, and the show has even been called "Hamilton for women." Ignoring the fact that Hamilton is Hamilton for women, and that Suffs is Suffs for women and men, there are certain similarities. Both are excellent shows. They share a more-or-less-historically-accurate depiction of a scrappy, outspoken protagonist; the humanization of people from the past; some nontraditional casting; and occasional similarities between songs. 

But Suffs is its own, unique, excellent show. It is full of joy, comraderie, warmth, and humor. It also depicts the mistreatment suffered by suffs both in jail and on the street--and it acknowledges just how long it took for suffrage to be achieved. 

(And who kept women from having suffrage in the first place? Those ostensible heroes of Hamilton!)

It seems to me that there is something missing from Suffs, some song or scene or something that would unify the show and bring it home. But while it's not perfect, its quality is undeniable, and the festive feel in the audience--full of women and girls when I saw it--is inspiring and moving. The cast is wonderful, and the all-female orchestra is fabulous.

I tip my hat to Shaina Taub for her talent and her heart and also for her ability to make this show happen! To get it to Broadway! 

Suffs depicts history and it makes history. It's a hell of an accomplishment.

Wendy Caster