Thornton among the dinosaurs

I don't often catch student efforts, but I was intrigued by BU's recent production (it closed last weekend) of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, an extravaganza seen about as often as the prehistoric fauna that romp through its first act.  Indeed, I've only seen the script fully mounted once before, almost thirty years ago - for reasons obvious (mammoths and dinosaurs are required, along with a tidal wave and a glacier) and not-so-obvious (more on that later). In short, it's the kind of script you almost have to turn to students these days to see at all; and so its appearance at BU felt like the perfect cap to a local season largely given over to Wilder on stages both large (the award-winning Our Town) and small (the intriguing Little Giants).

Alas, the production (directed by BU éminence grise Sidney Friedman) slightly disappointed - which probably shouldn't have surprised me. On Broadway, it's true, it was a hit, but that was during wartime (it's about crisis, and depends on a crisis atmosphere) and with people like Tallulah Bankhead, Frederic March, and a young Montgomery Clift in the leads. Not that the kids at BU weren't talented - they were. But only two actors were exactly right for their roles, and others went wrong in ways that made me wonder if the culture isn't closed off to much of Wilder's curious meditation on human history.

There is, of course, a sense of timelessness hanging over his biggest success, Our Town - and questions of divine purpose likewise loom over the novel that put him on the map, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Wilder clearly had his eye on the long view (even the juvenilia of Little Giants hinted as much) and hence the cyclical "plot" of The Skin of Our Teeth stretches for eons, and mashes together the Ice Age, Noah's Flood, and World War II with something like the arch tone of a caveman cartoon in The New Yorker (or, if your prefer upper-lowbrow to lower-highbrow, an episode of The Flintstones).

This tells you that in one way Wilder's concept is almost too simple: he follows the travails of the archetypal Antrobus family (anthropology + omnibus, get it?) as they encounter the threats to human existence that have recurred in various forms throughout history. But as if self-conscious about the artifice of this gambit, the author embeds his action in a welter of postmodern framing devices, breaks "the fourth wall" repeatedly, and finishes off the whole thing with a direct lift from Finnegans Wake (the audience is supposed to exit the theatre as the play returns to the top of its cycle, to continue on forever, like the dreams of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker).

If all these high-low/low-high cultural contrasts sound like too much for the bookwormish Wilder to bring off - well, there are many who agree with you. But I have a soft spot in my heart for The Skin of Our Teeth, probably because in its modern-lite way it treats questions that few dramatists have ever attempted to answer - the persistence of human evil probably being first among them (the Antrobus scion, Henry, was formerly known as Cain - so you know what happened to his elder brother). Indeed, I'd argue that beneath the script's Thurber-ish surface, there are very dark (and yes eternal) conflicts brewing; the trick for any production is to suggest them beneath all Wilder's parlor-game wit and twee quotation.

And at least two of the Boston University actors managed to do just that. Lorne Batman made a polished, genteelly steely Mrs. Antrobus (although she could have hinted at even more ferocity when saving the bad seed in her brood). And as Cain/Henry, Sam Tilles found a believable arc from spoiled, impulsive brat to - well - Hitler. Wilder's other conceptions of human character seemed to confound the young cast, however. His Mr. Antrobus - inventor of the wheel, serial adulterer, and silent mourner of the lost Abel - is built of a long series of suppressions, culminating in something close to despair, but there was little sympathy for (or comprehension of) his slow-burning fuse at BU. Likewise the author's polyglot temptress, Lily Sabina - whose name derives from two competing legends of femininity, the sexual demon Lilith, and the rape victims known as the Sabine women - seemed to flummox the relentlessly sex-positive mindset of the cast. To them, the very idea that sexual temptation could be a dishonest snare seemed alien, and apparently director Friedman didn't know what to do about that.

Of course perhaps Wilder is himself a dinosaur - wrong about sex, as well as the nature of men and women (certainly his "timeless" domestic arrangements seem quite dated). Then again, perhaps modernity is in denial regarding a few basic facts about the species, and we ignore Wilder's wisdom at our peril (certainly the climate change crisis is highly reminiscent of his Ice Age scenario). At any rate, the production did showcase some outstanding, resourceful design by BU students. Costumer Chelsea Kerl actually pulled off a winsome dinosaur and mammoth (amusingly mimed by Zoe Silberblatt and Grace Woodward), and Courtney Nelson imaginatively evoked not only the collapsing Antrobus homestead, but also Atlantic City avant le déluge, and even the war-torn Western Front, helped immensely by Katy Atwell's lighting and Yi-Chun Hung's sound. Clearly if the cultural cycle ever returns to embrace The Skin of Our Teeth, the technical talent is out there to put Wilder's vision over.

Mamet's masterpiece lights up Merrimack

David Adkins, Tony Licea and Joel Colodner in Glengarry Glen Ross.  Photo: Meghan Moore.

The Merrimack Rep is perhaps our leading example of a great theatre constrained by its budget. They consistently operate in the black, and enjoy a great deal of support from their community (indeed, up in Merrimack you feel an extraordinary bond between the theatre and its audience, closer and more trusting than just about anywhere else).  But you can also feel in their season, which is typically devoted to small-cast plays, a sense of financial (and hence to some degree artistic) limits. This perception is particularly acute given the fact that their "big" play each season is so reliably terrific. One guesses that with only a little more funding, Merrimack could mount seasons that would consistently rival, and possibly eclipse, the best being done on the regional landscape.

Certainly Glengarry Glen Ross (through this weekend only) is the most powerful show currently on the local boards.  It's true I've never seen David Mamet's balls-out potboiler fail; given a competent cast, its nasty mix of coiled masculine anxiety, frustration, and aggression always grips.  After all, it's practically an X-ray of the power dynamics of the locker room, where the stakes are always high, and the men always naked (at least metaphorically).

What's more, alas, the script also makes one reminisce for the days before Mamet lost his mind to the sort of political and sexual paranoias one would associate with a denizen of one of his shark tanks. For Glengarry is not only perhaps this playwright's greatest play, it's also his last great play; in his next major effort, Speed-the-Plow, he crossed over from sympathy with his bad boys to literal identification with them. Women became the Enemy, and thus the ironic finale of Glengarry, which dashes any hope of honor among his masculine thieves, would prove the last of its kind in the playwright's oeuvre.

But at least we have director Charles Towers, and the cast at Merrimack (which is far better than competent), to remind us how electrifying the playwright once was. You could argue, I suppose, that this Glengarry plays everything by the book - but to my mind that only underlines the fact that, as the culture really moves so slowly these days, the play's constructs still feel up-to-the-minute. Mamet's men are stripped of any connection to society at large, much less the other sex. They seem to exist in a vacuum, and even their sales prowess is somehow evanescent; it's a skill - or a potency - that has no physical basis (it can evaporate at a customer's whim). Thus these men are only men when they believe they're men, and so their emotional predicament in a way feels timeless (even if the sums of money in play clearly date the script).

David Adkins and Will Lebow make a deal.  Photo: Meghan Moore.

They are, of course, not only near-tragic figures but snakes-in-the-swampgrass as well. As mentioned earlier, part of what makes Glengarry so much more bracing than later Mamet is that it's so unsentimental about the dishonesty and back-stabbing moving behind the solemn cult of masculinity. Mamet's real estate gods - so seemingly concerned with admiration and trust - are constantly cheating on the down low; their very livelihood, in fact, is based on proverbial Florida swampland. (Which may be why the play was at first misinterpreted as a critique of capitalism.)

Fortunately the cast at Merrimack is all but expert at floating at will between these opposed identities and moral poles - and their command of the famously staccato "Mamet-speak" (here at its hilarious height) is virtuosic.  As cocky top salesdog Ricky Roma, Todd Licea exudes a more open sense of predatory Las-Vegas charisma than usual, but he so smoothly manipulates each and every social transaction that his sales success is utterly convincing.  Ditto for Will LeBow's desperate Shelly Levene, a kind of lizard on his last legs who alternates between claims of prowess (he was once known as "The Machine") and pathetically low compromises, deals - and even thefts.

These two superb actors supply the engine of Mamet's own machine, but there are several remarkable performances elsewhere in the production. Merrimack mainstay David Adkins gives his Williamson (the shop boss, in effect) a stronger shot of alienation than callow slime, but he's intriguing all the same. Meanwhile Jeremiah Wiggins is just about perfect as the shop's latest mark, and Jim Ortlieb makes the aging, bumbling Aaronow a figure of true pathos.  I was only dissatisfied with Charlie Kevin's Moss, who had less of a hidden edge than I think the character demands - but after the play's opening gambit, his is a minor role.

In its look and feel, the physical production is likewise just right - from the blood-red backdrop of the Chinese restaurant to the cheap, off-white gypsum board of the burgled office (thank you, designer Bill Clarke).  All in all, Towers and company have practically built a time machine on the Merrimack stage (even the salesmen's 80's-era ethnic slurs have been preserved, along with the c-word, and a deluge of other profanity).  It all brings us back to the days when Mamet was a playwright of promise, and still had the talent (and self-awareness) to grip you by the lapels - and not let go.

Jephtha resurrected at Handel and Haydn

Harry Christophers leads Jephtha in Disney Hall. Photo: Brian van der Brug, Los Angeles Times.

I'm late with an appreciation of Handel and Haydn's stunning performance of Jephtha, Handel's final oratorio (and one of his greatest). I heard it over a week ago, in fact; but frankly, its impact still lingers.  Indeed, in some ways this Jephtha may have been the finest hour of artistic director Harry Christopher's already-remarkable tenure; it was a model of internalized tragic emotion expressed with exquisite musical poise.  And certainly it marked the most impressive roster of soloists I have yet seen grace the Society's stage - at last they have the people up front to match the people in back, i.e., their by-now-legendary chorus. This version also hinted at the overwhelming importance of rehearsal time - and, actually, performance time; Boston heard Jephtha only after it had toured the West Coast (including a touchdown at Disney Hall, above), and the consequent coherence and depth of the Society's interpretation was noted by many.

Certainly Jephtha deserves the extra attention. It has largely slipped from the active repertory (the Society itself hadn't performed it since 1867!), I suppose because it boasts only a few show-stoppers (although at least one aria, the ravishing "Waft her, angels, thro' the skies" is often heard in recitals, and others should be).  The oratorio makes up for its lack of superficial fireworks, however, in subtlety, dramatic insight, and (for lack of a better word) sheer profundity.  It tells the story of the Old Testament hero Jephtha (although the story is an archetypal one, and appears in many cultures), who rashly promises Yahweh that if he prevails in battle, he will sacrifice the first thing to meet his eyes upon his return.  That thing, of course, turns out to be his only daughter, the beloved Iphis.

Hence submission to the cruel demands of inscrutable Fate (be it of Jewish, Christian, or any other persuasion) forms the terrible crux of Jephtha.  And in an added twist of musical fate, Handel himself was struck down by affliction during its composition - his vision began to fail due to a botched cataract operation, and his original manuscript bears testament to a long pause after the completion of "How dark, o Lord, are thy decrees"(ironically enough) with the heartbreaking note, in the master's handwriting, "Unable to go on owing to weakening of the sight of my left eye."

Handel did, however, eventually complete the score - and even conducted its premiere in Covent Garden.  Perhaps an angel intervened, as one does in the Jephtha libretto (by Rev. Thomas Morrell), which deviates from the Old Testament in explicitly granting poor Iphis a reprieve from death, if she dedicates her virginity to God.

Joélle Harvey, a talent to watch

Perhaps it should have been unsurprising, then, that the "find" of the concert turned out to be its Iphis, Joélle Harvey (right), a young soprano who is undoubtedly on the cusp of a major career (indeed, H&H has already signed her for a return engagement next year).  Ms. Harvey's tone is of  almost unbelievably luminous purity - a good thing, too, as many of her arias are utterly exposed - and even at the top of her register she can waft a vocal line thro' the skies at something close to a whisper.  Ms. Harvey also proved a subtle dramatic actress, and was able to convincingly convey both her love for her betrothed, Hamon, and her contradictory willingness to sacrifice herself for the sake of Israel.  Hers was a performance to remember.

Only a small step behind was mezzo Catherine Wyn-Rogers as Storgè, Iphis' mother, who skillfully hinted at sorrowful portents early on, and then was absolutely riveting as she desperately begged for her daughter's life (Wyn-Rogers is also coming back next season, I'm happy to report).  Meanwhile, in the title role, tenor Robert Murray was less commanding, oddly, than his wife or daughter, but his Jephtha, though perhaps an unconvincing warrior, nevertheless grew on me as the character's psychological torment increased. Indeed, Mr. Murray's almost-intellectual interpretation proved, in the end, quite harrowing; particularly in the famous recitative "Deeper, and deeper still . . .," his insights into the role mapped well to the sense of introversion latent in the score (which perhaps in turn maps to Handel's own private struggles).

There was still more good news in the supporting roles.  As Iphis' betrothed, Hamor, countertenor William Purefoy proved exquisitely matched to Harvey in their duets, while baritone Woodrow Bynum stepped down from his usual place in the chorus to sing with startling authority as Jepththa's brother Zebul. The reliable Teresa Wakim, another mainstay of the chorale, likewise impressed as the angel who spares Iphis' life. Together these two give some idea of the talent on tap these days in the H&H chorus, which sang - as they always do - with remarkable clarity, utter commitment, and superbly sensitive dynamics. Indeed, now they seem able to communicate complicated moods in a way few choruses can - their reading of the poignant phrase, "Whatever is, is right," for instance, seemed to encompass every interpretation of the line: its frustration and pain seemed locked in a search for triumph through acquiescence, which is precisely the right idea.

Conductor Christophers has a lot to do with all of this, of course - he's a positive genius at sublimating intense emotion within graceful rhetoric (a peculiarly British talent, if you ask me), which makes him perhaps the ideal conductor of Handel.  His Jephtha (which he had carefully edited, btw) seemed perfectly poised between several artistic poles: at times it nodded toward the drama of opera; at others, toward the rhetoric of oratorio - and at still others, toward the private world of internal dialogue.  That Christophers kept these many oppositions in balance, and in organic harmony, was remarkable.  As was the playing of the H&H period instrument orchestra, which has rarely sounded so vibrant or responsive.  The performance was memorable enough that many around me were openly wondering whether this version was to be recorded.  If there are no such plans, there should be; this could be close to a definitive Jephtha.

A post-mortem on Pericles: lost and found at sea

Paula Plum gets into the swing of things in Pericles.  Photos: J. Stratton McCrady

I was late getting to the Actors' Shakespeare Project's Pericles (which closed this weekend), but honestly, I wasn't in too much of a rush. This troupe has found their audience, certainly - and good for them (I mean that); but I don't think they have too much to say about the Bard that they haven't said already - and what they have said so far hasn't limned his depths. Their ensemble always offers a few striking performances (but never quite a whole play's worth), and certainly there's a sense of literate smarts about the troupe as a whole. But their productions usually misfire one way or another - certainly they never come together with the resonance that great Shakespeare achieves. 

This is the result of subtle, ingrown issues. The troupe's penchant for casting against type often costs them, and they still betray a seeming inability to fully identify with the Bard's characters and tropes in their historical context, while forgetting their own internalized, patronizing, postmodern-collegiate frame. Thus they've almost proven the opposite of what their founding was intended to demonstrate; ASP's light, rag-tag, self-aware, actor-driven theatre has proven just as variable and incomplete as the pretentious director-driven dreadnoughts that it was designed to challenge. Indeed, ironically enough, they're most prone to being led down the primrose path to artistic downfall by the wackiest, wildest directorial conceits. (So I guess now we know neither approach works, and that somehow they often end up in the same place.)

Well, so it goes. The trouble is that Boston seems to have given ASP credit for conquering the Bard anyway, and the rest of the theatrical establishment has been happy to hand him over to them. And who's the wiser? Who has seen great Shakespeare in Boston? It's all but unheard of - certainly almost all the professors who jaw about it in town have rarely (or never) seen it; I can only think of one production in the past decade or so - Nicholas Martin's Love's Labour's Lost at the Huntington - that even came close to what the RSC or Canada's Stratford Festival can do at their best (and even those redoubts are beginning to flag in their ability, it seems to me; Shakespeare will go down, too, I imagine, as the general culture does).

But anyway, back to Pericles, Prince of Tyre (the play's full title) - which intrigues because it is so important in the canon while being a strange jumble of a play. Much of it probably isn't by Shakespeare, in fact; these days the latest software tells us that the first two acts (or more) may be by one George Wilkins (who published his own account of the legend prior to the play's quarto edition; it didn't make it into the First Folio).

Now to many observers, the mixed (or contested) authorship of the play somehow makes it of lesser artistic interest than the rest of the canon. But to my mind, the reverse is actually true. Indeed, Pericles fascinates me precisely because, like Timon of Athens, it seems half-finished, so seeing it is like viewing a cross-section cut out of the Bard's work process.

But let's back up a bit and ponder the whole Shakespearean authorship question. No, not that authorship question - the whole Earl-of-Oxford boondoggle is an utter waste of time. I mean the question of what Shakespearean "authorship" actually means - for I certainly don't think Shakespeare was an author in the Romantic sense of being the "onlie begetter" of his plays, the lone genius who forged our conscience in the smithy of his soul. Not that educated people quite believe that; even schoolboys know the Bard borrowed his plots - but few seem to grasp that this makes Shakespeare something of a critic of his own raw material, a re-shaper and re-caster rather than, well, an "original," for lack of a better word.  Indeed, you could argue (to paraphrase a famous quip about musicals) that a Shakespearean text isn't written - it's re-written.

Hence the uncanny depth of much of the canon - it reflects a genius analyzing extant cultural material rather than heaving it up fresh from his own subconscious. It's all a rewrite, a polish, an enhancement. And thus the peculiar position of Pericles: in its first two acts, the  urtext is bare, or at best only slightly re-worked, sticking out of the script like a bone. Indeed, you can almost feel the script "becoming" Shakespeare as it shifts gears in its third act.

More intriguing, still - Pericles, for all its flaws, represents a major pivot in the canon (and thus a fulcrum in Western literature as a whole). In fact Wilkins' scrappy potboiler re-directed the energies of the West's greatest genius into a radical new genre (the romance) which would culminate in his final masterpiece, The Tempest.  We can even find among the lines of Pericles the thematic kernel of this final phase expressed in a nutshell: "Did you not name a tempest/a birth and a death?" the resurrected Thaisa begs of her husband in the ultimate scene, unaware she's making a trenchant artistic forecast. In formal and historical terms, Pericles thus looms over many another more fully realized Shakespeare play.

But why did George Wilkins' Prince of Tyre capture the imagination of the Bard?  Part of its appeal perhaps lay in its timing: Shakespeare began working on Pericles just as the birth of a granddaughter no doubt inspired a sense of rapprochement with his semi-abandoned wife and family.  But as Celia comments in As You Like It, "There is more in it." I have little doubt that as Shakespeare surveyed the "rough cut" of Pericles he began to perceive in it an amazing coincidence (rather like the many in the play itself): its stripped-down, cartoonish tropes paralleled and even extended many of the deep themes that had been moving beneath the surface of his own oeuvre.  Storms and shipwrecks, identities lost and found, families broken and healed, societies rejuvenated; twins and doubles and hints of magic; he had been trading in these (in more sophisticated form) since The Comedy of Errors, that is for his entire artistic life.

Thus the challenge to any production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre: to suggest in its crude, tempest-tost action what Shakespeare saw there, even though he wouldn't develop his vision fully until The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.

And it must be admitted that while ASP attempted to pick up this gauntlet, it often fumbled the move.

Omar Robinson, Johnny Lee Davenport, and Johnnie McQuarley ham it up as pirates of the Caribbean.

But first the good news: the show basically looked and felt as Pericles should - there were no disastrous high concepts mucking things up as there were in some recent ASP outings. The ocean was central to set designer Dahlia Al-Habieli's rendering, which is exactly right, as Marina, the daughter who reclaims her father from living death, is both born at sea and literally named for it (she is the sea).  Deb Sullivan's lighting was likewise evocative, but alas, costume designer Molly Trainer drew her sartorial choices from the shores of the American colonies, which only recalled the sexual repressions of The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible rather than the pagan fires that lit the original myth.  Too bad, but this misstep wasn't fatal (and might have proved fruitful if Al-Habieli had come up with some Greek-revival architecture for Diana's temple at the finale, but the production eschewed the pageant-like elements of the script - Diana herself never appeared in a masque-like vision, for instance, another small error).

Even more artistic wobbles I'm afraid dominated the first two "Wilkins" acts. The opening presentation of incest (Pericles discovers his intended bride has already been bedded by her father) had little threatening force, and director Allyn Burrows played the ensuing pursuit of his hero largely for laughs - as many a misguided production does, even though curious stage directions such as "Enter Pericles, wet" clearly indicate that rebirth is the business at hand.  Real evil is afoot in the action, too (as well as genuine good), but all this seemed lost in broader-than-broad antics from the likes of Omar Robinson, Johnny Lee Davenport, and Johnnie McQuarley (above), who are all capable of far more subtlety (indeed Davenport is a tragic talent that ASP seems, for unknown reasons, to refuse to tap). Playing against the slapstick, alas, Jesse Hinson was merely a hunky blank as Pericles, and as his wife Thaisa (whom Pericles wins, then loses, then finds again), Kathryn Lynch was hampered by her Hester Prynne get-up, while the usually reliable Michael Forden Walker looked lost as her father, the benevolent king Simonides.  So there wasn't much going on in the first half, even as Paula Plum wandered through now and then, doing her familiar wise-woman thang as Gower, a narrative host inherited from Wilkins.

Still, the production did move up-hill. Burrows staged the central tempest imaginatively, and Plum brought unexpected depth to Ceremon, the magician who revives the drowned Thaisa.  And while Elizabeth Rimar made Marina rather a pill (despite the fact that she's repeatedly described as radiant), her own misadventures grew more absorbing, as Bobbie Steinbach lit up their central episode with a saucily knowing take as the Bawd who imprisons her in a brothel (alas, Gabriel Kuttner wasn't much more threatening as her henchman, the beastly Boult, than he had been as the silkily perverse Antiochus in the first act).  Basically, Burrows began to achieve something like the right atmosphere as Shakespeare's hand grew more apparent in the text: Hinson put over Pericles' desperate alienation from his tragedy, and by the reunion at the finale, something of the music of the spheres had indeed begun to echo onstage.

You could argue, of course, that these achievements were too little, and came too late.  I was somehow encouraged by the production, though.  Its sometime successes were real, and what's more, they were genuinely Shakespearean - which alas, is not always the case at ASP.  Here's to more like them in the future.

Another triumph at the Ballet

Patrick Yocum, Bradley Schlagheck, Whitney Jensen and Lawrence Rines in Symphony in C. Photos by Gene Schiavone.

At 49 years of age (yes, next season marks their big 5-0), Boston Ballet has become the most reliable arts organization in the city - hands down. I go there with more confidence than I bring to any other local venue, in any art form. When my partner looks at me and says, "What are we seeing tonight?" and I say, "The Ballet," he always just says, "Oh, good." (Well, sometimes in a rough week, he says "Thank God.") Indeed, among Boston's "Big Culture" behemoths, the Ballet's consistency leaves the BSO, the MFA, the BLO, and the Huntington (great as they often are) in the dust. At the Ballet, a reviewer never has to separate the wheat from the chaff - it's all wheat; one merely teases the tastiest grains from the rest.  It's the easiest critical gig in town. (In fact it's not really a "critical" gig at all.)

Right now the troupe is in the midst of a suite of performances that by its close will have stretched several weeks. Tonight wraps their startling pairing of Balanchine classics with Chroma, by edgy new talent Wayne McGregor; next Thursday brings more Balanchine (the master's luminous Coppélia). In between we were blessed with a treat from the Ballet's "Next Generation," which included a delightful version of Jerome Robbins' Fanfare.  And all this came after a sumptuous Sleeping Beauty last month. Needless to say, dance fans have been happy campers this spring.

But back to Chroma, which couldn't be more opposed in spirit to Balanchine's Serenade and Symphony in C - and so showcases the expressive range available to the Ballet today. Balanchine is ballet's Shakespeare, and like the Bard, he is enraptured by the feminine.  Indeed, often when the boy (sometimes a single boy) does show up in a Balanchine ballet, he's an obvious factotum for Mr. B himself - as is the case in the luminous Serenade, which opens (see masthead) as a kind of apotheosis of ballet class (it was actually written for all the girls in training with Mr. B at the time). They might be a choir of angels, but these maidens are in an attitude of chaste denial, until Balanchine begins to work elegant variations on their solitude (complicated here and there by an apparently disposable boyish partner) led by Ashley Ellis and Misa Kuranaga, and set to Tchaikovsky's famous Serenade for Strings.  

A story of sorts takes shape (abstracted from standard ballet tragedy, like the choreography itself) as a mature danseur finally arrives (Nelson Madrigal), led blindly by a seeming angel of death (Dusty Button). It's easy (as it is in the case of Apollo) to equate this figure with Mr. B himself, but perhaps this nameless male is meant instead as a kind of embodiment of the masculine principle. At any rate, after a series of piercing duets with "the Waltz Girl," as she has come to be known (Ellis), he abandons her - led off again, blindly, by that dark personification of Terpsichore. Devastated - but supported, and perhaps mourned, by her bevy of vestals - she dances her own poignant apotheosis.

It is among the most haunting works in the canon, and the Ballet performed it all but flawlessly (and with a noticeably higher finish than they managed some five years ago). Kuranaga was, needless to say, exquisite, although Ellis seemed to me a bit too sturdy in her opening variations to hint at the ruin to come. Still, she seemed to mature emotionally as the dance progressed; Madrigal wasn't as technically dazzling as some of the Ballet's men now are, but he can cast a palpable romantic spell - and in her brief, stalking appearances, Button suggested a spooky alienation. The corps, however, outshone all the soloists, I think - which is a good thing, because Balanchine always makes intense, complex demands on his corps; here they were beautifully synchronous, technically pure, and superb in attitude - all but perfect.

It was a bracing plunge, however, from this elevated pathos to the harsh beauty of Chroma. Angular, jarring, knotty, almost painful in its extremity - yet set in a pure, pale box - Wayne McGregor's choreography seems to be about romantic partners who yearn for freedom more than each other. Thus it's worth mentioning, I think, that the sexual frame of Balanchine is here long gone; men and women are both in unisex costumes (at one point there's a same-sex variation), and the girls aren't emotional victims anymore (although sometimes they look like physical ones). Tragedy isn't an option, even though there's still a chorus - but it hangs back from getting involved, preferring to wait in judgment, peering at the combat from the back of the stage (below), or simply waiting for it to finish, with backs turned. 

The cold struggles of Chroma: Lasha Khozashvili and Lia Cirio.

Meanwhile, center stage, both sexes struggle, they writhe; they climb over, grapple, and all but attack each other, before suddenly drooping in exhaustion (above), or freezing in odd stand-offs. The men attempt to manipulate the women, and other times punish them; the women respond with oddly predatory japes and threats. McGregor is ceaselessly inventive, but almost cruel himself in his demands on the dancers' bodies.

So Chroma is not a pretty picture, but it's a fascinating one nonetheless, and set to one of the most arresting dance scores I've heard in years, by Joby Talbot and Jack White of The White Stripes. I know what you're thinking, but rest assured, this isn't the kind of ambience-driven simplistic pop one usually gets from rock musicians gone high-cult. Instead, it's more like Stravinsky gone bossa nova; the score calls for literally four kitchens' worth of percussion, as well as beefed-up brass and winds in the pit; but for once the point isn't just volume (although there's plenty of that).  The timbres are haunting, the motifs sophisticated; passion seems to fight it out with alienation as we listen - the score alone all but blew the roof off the Opera House (the ballet orchestra kicks *ss too, btw).

The dancers did as well - indeed, they received the longest, loudest ovation I've ever heard at the Ballet, or maybe anywhere; the audience wouldn't stop clapping, and wouldn't sit down. This was, to put it simply, because the performers were all brilliant across the board.  One expected superbly crisp work from Paulo Arrais, Lia Cirio, John Lam, Jeffrey Cirio, and particularly the coolly virtuosic Kathleen Breen Combes, who always excel in postmodern attack.  The surprising news was that more classic specialists like Misa Kuranaga, Whitney Jensen, and Lasha Khozashvili had the same relentless edge, and younger dancers Isaac Akiba and Bradley Schlagheck likewise seemed as strong or stronger than I've ever seen them.   

It's true that Chroma seems to just stop rather than end; it lacks the structural development of Serenade. But to be honest, it also leaves you with a haunting question: with the emotional underpinnings of classic ballet stripped away, is that kind of structure even possible?  Or has the frustrating "freedom" of postmodern life rendered the grand statement obsolete?

Such fraught doubts were banished, however, as the curtain rose on Balanchine's ravishing Symphony in C (at top) which arrived like the most powerful palate-cleanser ever devised.  It's set to Bizet's symphony of the same name, and of course key (written with sparkling exuberance when the composer was all of 17); and it is, I think, the divertissement to end all divertissements; Balanchine, who devised it at age 43 as Le Palais de Cristal (which gives you some hint of its thematic links to the later Jewels), seems to be able to tap into Bizet's youthful invention while retaining some deeper atmosphere of worldly experience.  The variations keep coming, the scheme keeps growing in size (by the finale there are some 50 dancers onstage), and yet the work never loses its butterfly-lightness, its knowing brilliance.

And amazingly, many of the dancers who had powered through Chroma came back and triumphed again without missing a beat. This time it was Jeffrey Cirio, Whitney Jensen, Misa Kuranaga, and Lasha Khozashvili who were in their element; but they were dazzlingly matched by Paulo Arrais, Lia Cirio, Kathleen Breen Combes, and Bradley Schlagheck (who this year seems to be coming into his own in a general way).  It was the kind of performance you never want to end, the kind that (like some negative twin of Chroma) really can't end until the curtain falls.  Indeed, I'm sure for many in the audience, it's still lighting up their dreams.

Mostly Mozart at the New Rep

Tim Spears as Mozart reacts to Salieri's machinations.  Photos: Andrew Brilliant.

Peter Shaffer's biggest hit, Amadeus (now at the New Rep through May 19), a highly fictionalized account of the relationship between composers Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is oft described as a battle royale between genius (Mozart) and mediocrity (Salieri).

Which is good enough, I suppose, as far as it goes.  But it leaves out one crucial fact.  

Which is that playwright Peter Shaffer himself is - well, something of a mediocrity.  Smart but not insightful, learned but rarely wise, Shaffer made a career out of seemingly criticizing small-mindedness while all the time indulging it.

Thus Shaffer's play works as a kind of pseudo-intellectual stand-up, but never really gets anywhere as drama - for his Salieri is all bitter one-liners; he's a tragic character sans anagnorisis (that is, epiphany); and his Mozart remains clueless to the end, too. Indeed, once the playwright lays out his mildly clever premise (that the jealously aloof Salieri poisoned brilliant-but-boorish Mozart as some sort of cosmic revenge on God), he can only work more and more tedious variations on his set-up, and never really digs beneath his own assumptions. In a way, it's as if Shaffer has constructed one of those Nabokovian follies, like Pale Fire, in which the lead character is unaware he is creating a devastating self-critique - but unfortunately Shaffer leaves the audience in the dark about it, too.

That gap has not prevented the play from being popular, though - people love its heavy irony, its Man-for-All-Seasons-level theology, and the way it gives them credit for artistic insights they wouldn't really have on their own. But then the music of Salieri once wowed the crowds as well (although what that says about Shaffer's blockbuster I think the playwright may have never pondered).

Not that Amadeus isn't snarky fun. It is - for a while, at least (alas, the second act treads water). And certainly the New Rep has pulled out all the stops to put this middlebrow magnum opus over; they've mustered a large cast, a bold set, sumptuous costumes - the works.  

But even at its best, the play is only a vehicle - a tandem vehicle, perhaps, festooned with Broadway bells and whistles (and to be fair, many witty references to Mozart's oeuvre) but still a vehicle. As Salieri never develops into more than a stick figure, and Mozart remains a clown, the success of Amadeus boils down to its casting.  Essentially, if you have charismatic actors who are perfect for these roles, and can keep burrowing into them for three hours, a production can coast to the finish line on their star power.

But the New Rep hasn't been quite that lucky.  They're halfway home with Tim Spears' Mozart; he doesn't push the role's scatological jokes, and generally conveys a touchingly innocent, if infantile, vulnerability.  I have seen at least one Mozart who conjured from scraps in the script a growing awareness that God was basically as cold to him as he was to Salieri; but that was an exceptional case.  Spears is the best reason to see this show.

As Salieri, local star Benjamin Evett isn't as compelling, but this is almost an accident of casting - Thomas Derrah, a better fit for the role, reportedly withdrew from the production, and Evett graciously stepped in.  But Evett's easy-going, roguish stage presence is almost the opposite of what you'd want in Salieri (which is intended as a compliment); Evett has always been at his best playing confident, cocky dudes; if anything he should be playing Mozart, too.

Benjamin Evett comes to grips with Mozart's genius.

But he's stuck with the lead (left), and he does make a go of it in the play's stronger first half, which also contains most of Shaffer's best set-pieces, such as the moment Mozart makes mincemeat of a trudging Salieri march  (just btw, Salieri wasn't all that bad - judge for yourself). In short, Evett can do indignation.  He has more trouble with envy - but the secret handshake between envy and piety is essentially the sine qua non of the part. Particularly as Salieri seems so block-headed.

At the very top, the composer is clueless enough to offer God a deal (while God, as I recall, only makes deals on his own terms): in exchange for a pious life of Christian decorum, Salieri expects to be accorded fame (note he doesn't ask for talent). And God does grant him celebrity - He keeps his end of the bargain - but He also gives him Mozart, talented beyond measure, despite flaunting all the proprieties that Salieri staked his soul on. It's a pretty obvious life-lesson, but the scales never fall from Salieri's eyes.  Instead, actually insulted, he embarks on a "war" with Jehovah (guess who wins?).

And so Shaffer's script devolves into a tedious chess game in which Salieri is always one move behind the Almighty. But imagine how interesting Amadeus might have been if the emotionally crippled court composer changed his mind (after all, he's destroying the source of the music he adores, even fetishizes) - yet was unable to stop the cruel wheels he had set in motion?  Or what if Salieri began to appreciate his own evil, began to worry for his own soul (given his faith in God's presence, this seems all but inevitable?). In any number of ways, Amadeus could grip us to the end.

But no such luck. Schaffer tends to rigidly replicate a certain template (basically, a conventional bureaucrat destroys an ecstatic), and he elaborates that trope here, but can't transcend it.  So the cast at the New Rep does its best to pretend that we're still interested in the latest iteration of Salieri's hopeless battle royale (it's a bit like watching a Roadrunner cartoon in powdered wigs that runs for three hours).

Still, certainly there's plenty of talent on the stage, and director Jim Petosa keeps things moving with flair, although again, subtle casting issues sometimes undermine everyone's best efforts. The lovely and talented McCaela Donovan, for instance, looks far too elegant in Frances Nelson McSherry's gowns for us to believe she'd ever go slumming with the likes of Mozart. It's likewise a pleasure to see the gorgeous Esme Allen on stage again, but she's actually far too good for the part she's got.  On the plus side, Paula Langton makes an impression as one of Schaffer's gossips, as do Paul Farwell and Jeffries Thaiss as various over-dressed courtiers. And Russell Garrett puts an amusingly precise spin on the stupidity of Joseph II.

So there is always someone to watch on stage - and you can even admire the stage itself, too.  The costuming, as I've mentioned, is lavish, while Mary Ellen Stebbins' lighting is always imaginative.  And Cristina Todesco's set is quite brilliant: it features a central oculus - God's eye, literally - from which Mozart tumbles like a mote, and from which emanates the music of the spheres (its lid even turns out to be a cathedral's rose window).  I wish Shaffer's play was worth the efforts of all these talented people. But apparently that wasn't God's plan.

Tomorrow night the "Next Generation" arrives at Boston Ballet

The members of Boston Ballet's Next Generation - Photo: Igor Burlak.

There is one dance season event I always look forward to - Boston Ballet's "Next Generation" performance, which showcases students from the Ballet's several schools in a one-night-only concert at the Opera House, tomorrow, May 8 at 7:00 pm.

That's right, these young artists get to perform on a professional stage (exciting enough in its own right) and with live accompaniment too, by the New England Conservatory's Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, this year for the first time under the direction of the Ballet's own Jonathan McPhee.

The performance always begins with an original work choreographed by the Ballet's faculty to demonstrate their students' skills (this year the piece, traditionally called Les Passages, is set to music by Ambroise Thomas, from his operas Hamlet and Francoise de Rimini).  This suite is reliably charming in and of itself (and not just to the proud parents beaming from the audience; the students' accomplishments are quite impressive), but what's more, it's always followed by more mature artistic statements - including works and even premieres you would be unsurprised to see in a full-fledged professional performance (and often featuring members of Boston Ballet II, more than half of whom have risen through the Ballet's schools).  

This year the program will include Jorma Elo's Lost by Last (set to spooky Hitchcock motifs by Bernard Herrmann) as well as the Grand Pas de Deux from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty (danced by the talented Dawn Atkins and Marcus Romeo, who were seen in the recent full production).  The concert closes with Jerome Robbins' Fanfare, an extravaganza set to Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra which deploys some 34 dancers. And as an added bonus, the Youth Philharmonic (which sounded terrific last year, just btw) is throwing in Bernstein's wonderful Candide overture.

You know, I'd like to say I go to "Next Generation" to support the future of dance.  But I'm not really that nice. The concert does support the future of the Ballet - but that's just the icing on the cake; I really go because it's a great evening of music and dance.  And I hope to see you there.

Boston Ballet's Next Generation 2013 from Boston Ballet on Vimeo.

It's always the right time for a time-lapse of our beautiful home

Time-Lapse | Earth from Bruce W. Berry Jr on Vimeo.

I never tire of looking at the Earth.  Particularly from space.  If I were younger, stronger, and quite a bit richer, I'd be in line for one of those commercial low-orbit flights that some screwball billionaire is always planning.  Just to look out the window for a while.  But till then, the Vimeo time-lapse above, from the International Space Station, will have to suffice.  And honestly it's not half-bad!  Enjoy (and go full-screen).

Two vocal stars on the rise

Soprano Susanna Phillips

I first heard the soprano Susanna Phillips (at left) four years ago at Boston Lyric Opera, as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. And I knew immediately I was listening to a star in the making; I raved over "a vocal bloom that would be ravishing in any role," and hoped that Donna Anna would become "a staple of her career."

So I was glad to learn that Ms. Phillips is singing Donna Anna at the Met in New York these days, and is now, indeed, on the cusp of a major career.  Which made me more eager than ever to hear her again, up close and personal, in a double bill with rising tenor Joseph Kaiser (below right) in last week's latest from the Celebrity Series "Debut" season in Pickman Hall at Longy.

It's wonderful, of course, to hear glorious young talents in such an intimate setting - although frankly, Phillips and Kaiser didn't always realize, I think, how large their voices seemed in this particular room.  Indeed, sometimes their vocal prowess felt overpowering; it all but wrestled you to the floor. This made it all the more surprising to  learn that Kaiser was battling the effects of a cold (although this may have accounted for a few strained top notes early on); he bowed out of a demanding solo in the second half in order to save himself for a climactic duet with Phillips from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette (the favored language of the evening was French - it even included a rare French text setting by Mozart).  But this proved only one small glitch in a generally ravishing program.

For her part, Phillips was in superb voice, and seemed to know it (she all but glowed in a ripe, elaborately ruched raspberry gown). Which may be why she missed the dark tone of the opening Mozart song, Dans un bois solitaire et sombre - a strange tale of love's pain re-awakened, which in Phillips' rendition was anything but sombre.  She was on firmer comic ground with Grétry's Certain Coucou, an amusingly acid sketch of a donkey judging a singing contest.

Tenor Joseph Kaiser

Kaiser, looking a bit self-conscious, then essayed a suite of songs by DuParc - and acquitted himself well despite his cold, I thought; only a few top notes were a bit thin, and the young tenor (whose rich sound probably stems from having started out as a baritone) seemed to have plenty of power, and fluently shifted from the heroics of Le manoir de Rosamonde and Le Galop to the limpid heartbreak of Chanson triste and especially Phydilé.  The singers' respective timbres did feel like an exquisite match, but in their first duet, Messiaen's intriguing La mort du nombre, Kaiser generally dominated, while Phillips mostly contributed mystical phrases from some otherworldly presence.

High points from the second half of the program included an expert rendition of Debussy's Apparition by Phillips, and a lovely rendering of Massenet's "Meditation" from Thaïs, played with light but expressive precision by violinist Andrew Eng and pianist Myra Huang (who was an exemplary accompanist throughout the concert). This interlude gave Kaiser some breathing (or sneezing?) room; and Phillips returned with a surprise, announcing that as the evening had so many slow numbers (true enough), she had decided to perform Juliette's first, dancing aria from the Gounod ("Je veux vivre") rather than her final number (from the tomb).  It proved a wonderful choice, for perhaps no other aria of the evening showcased Phillips' almost bubbling virtuosity quite so well.

The two finally faced off fully in "Romeo! qu'as-tu donc?" (the famous lark scene) from the Gounod - and Kaiser's rest seemed to have paid off, for his performance was ferocious, while Phillips likewise fell into paroxysms of vocal passion, tossing off piercing high notes at will.  Again, this was a bit much for a hall not much larger than your living room - but it gave one a sense of the powerful operatic engines that had been revving all evening long within the confines of art song.  Perhaps to spare Kaiser further stress, there were no encores - we had to content ourselves with the lingering memory of two young talents seen on the brink of stardom.

Happy (belated) Cinco de Mayo!

A mariachi band serenades a Beluga whale at the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut in this touchingly surreal vignette. Apparently the mariachis were at the Aquarium to play for a wedding party, but came over to do a number for the whale when it seemed interested.  Somehow I have the feeling that if we ever contact intelligent extraterrestial life, the interaction will look a lot like this.

Hampson is as Hampson does

Thomas Hampson, baritone

I'm late with an appreciation of last weekend's appearance by Thomas Hampson at Celebrity Series (who wrap their season this month with the annual Alvin Ailey visit, btw).  And as usual, when I've been dragging my feet, it's because I've got bad news.  The great baritone was in fine voice, mind you - and his co-stars for the evening, the Jupiter String Quartet, likewise made a strong impression.

It was their program that didn't quite enthrall me.  It featured an appealing, but early, Schubert quartet - as well as an exquisite Webern piece which the Jupiters played superbly.  But the centerpiece of the concert - and a New England premiere - was Mark Adamo's setting of Billy Collins' Aristotle, which proved a strange misfire; and the program wrapped with a series of Hugo Wolf lieder that felt like one long appetizer rather than a main course.

On the other hand, it was wonderful just to hear Hampson (if only we could attract him to the Hub for a full operatic performance!).  At 57, this lyric baritone hasn't lost his elegant, maple-hued timbre (nor his personal elegance, either), and his sound is still of striking size - indeed, the very walls of Jordan Hall often vibrated in resonance with his power chords (as it were); Hampson might need a microphone in Gillette Stadium, but that's about it.

He also exuded a collegial, collaborative spirit with the Jupiters, who were actually the first to take the stage, with Schubert's Quartet No. 10 in E-Flat.  Written when the composer was all of sixteen, the piece pushes at the limits of Haydn with brilliant exuberance.  The Allegro is stuffed with sweetly singing lines, while the Adagio is a gently rocking lullaby, and the Scherzo all but kicks up its heels.  We can feel the adolescent Schubert showing us everything he can do, which consistently charms; but the final effect is diffuse (if virtuosic).  Still, the Jupiters gave a sympathetic, insightful account of the piece, and aptly captured its many colors and moods (particularly when violinist Nelson Lee was in the lead).  

The quartet was even more impressive, however, in Anton Webern's far-more-unified Langsamer Satz, ("Slow Movement") another slightly "junior" piece, as it was completed in the shadow of Schoenberg (Webern's teacher) rather than Haydn.  Indeed, Langsamer Satz so clearly echoes Transfigured Night in its structure and thrust that you could almost call it Transfigured Lite. That doesn't dull its own haunting appeal, however, and the Jupiters essayed its lush melancholy with remarkable sensitivity.

Then Hampson arrived, for Mark Adamo's Aristotle, set to the poem of the same name by former poet laureate Billy Collins. Now Collins - and his poetic voice - are known and admired quantities, I'd say; indeed, Collins proved one of the most widely read of poet laureates precisely because his approach - populist, sympathetically bemused, lightly ironic - is so accessible to the public at large. 

But not to composer Mark Adamo, apparently, who seems to have imagined that Aristotle - which gently ribs that philosopher's pronouncements on high drama through a catalogue of "beginnings," "middles" and "ends" in the comical/tragical mix that makes up actual life - is the equivalent of The Waste Land, or perhaps September 1, 1939.  Thus the composer supplied an appealingly sophisticated setting whose anxious modernist tone was utterly inappropriate to the text, and misled Hampson into some curious histrionics (and the wrong kind of parody).  I might trust Adamo with Larkin's Aubade; but I have to say Aristotle counts as the oddest misinterpretation of a text by a composer I've ever heard; indeed, Adamo and Collins only came into alignment at the very last minute, when Collins conjures a closing image of death in "outside a cabin, falling leaves."

Oh, well!  The second half of the concert was devoted to Hugo Wolf, whose shining success at the end of the nineteenth century has perhaps dimmed as the years have gone by.  Still, Hampson and the Jupiters had some of his strongest stuff on offer: the instrumental Italian Serenade (a charming trot through Tuscany, which encounters a few storm clouds but chases them away), and a suite of six songs mostly drawn from the Mörike-Lieder (named after their texts by Eduard Mörike), which was composed in a remarkable artistic burst in Wolf's late maturity (originally for voice and piano, but persuasively re-configured here for string quartet).  The Mörike-Lieder retain their appeal, although the texts  are mostly standard-issue (German bachelor wanders through the beauty of der Wald, etc.), and while Wolf almost equals, he never quite surpasses Schubert and Schumann. Still, the best song here conceals a surprising sting, which draws from Wolf his best music: in "Auf ein Altes Bild" ("To an Old Picture"), the poet imagines the Virgin and Child at play in "a green landscape," in which "the stem that will become the cross" is already growing, and waiting for them.

There was a happy surprise from Wolf in the encore, too - his “Die Rattenfänger,” ("The Rat-Catcher"), set to Goethe's wicked poem to the Pied Piper of Hamelin.  Hampson sang this frisky, unforgettable little number with diabolical wit, and the Jupiters struck just the right note of gleeful malice. It may be the best song Wolf ever wrote, and it was certainly the most captivating performance of the evening.

The two must-sees this weekend: BLO's Flying Dutchman and Boston Ballet's Chroma

Chroma at the Royal Ballet - the Boston version may actually be a bit better danced!

The two current "must-sees" of the Boston cultural scene are The Flying Dutchman (at Boston Lyric Opera, see review below), and Wayne McGregor's Chroma (above) at Boston Ballet.  Chroma is all jagged, up-to-the-minute postmodern viscera, set to a strikingly sophisticated (though pounding) score by Joby Talbot and Jack White of the White Stripes (with orchestrations by Christopher Austin).   I promise you it will be the most-discussed dance of the season; and what's more, it's set in a program of Balanchine classics (Serenade and Symphony in C) whose austere lyricism somehow brilliantly sets off McGregor's extremities.  Full review to follow - but don't wait.