OuterStage

Review by Robert Liebowitz

Opera is no doubt a powerful, highly expressive art, but most productions of operas usually disappoint. Why? Simple–every other production element that goes into making a theatrical event is simply ignored; all that is concentrated on is the actual singing. Acting, directing, set design, costumes, make up, lights…these get treated like step-children and, unbeknown to the director, their production suffers as a result. Add the Met’s recent production of Tosca to this list of passable but mediocre endeavors.

Happily, however,  this notion has made a U Turn of sorts, at least for the short while. The Bronx Opera’s production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale has not only exceeded expectations, but has done the near impossible–taken a minor, insignificant work, and converted it into a captivating, entertaining, successful evening. Sometimes taking a small step, sometimes a great leap, this version surprises at every turn.

Donzinetti composed this near the end of his life, taking all of two weeks; sometimes it feels as if he were double parked while writing. The music is unmemorable and as dull as dishwater; the plot is a tiresome, grade-school cliched collage of trickery that dozens of composers have done better. The hidden gem, however, is the libretto, sung in English, and still sparkling 160 years after its inception. A tip of the hat goes to Director Royston Coppenger for simply having the good insight or fortune of casting correctly, which in turn brought this gem into a vital, glistening light.

It is highlighted by the brilliant, wise-cracking, scheming-but-with-a-good-heart Ms. Nicole Lee Aiossa. She portrays the sexy, wistful Norina with uncommon wit and charm, and is worth the price of admission by herself. She is helped by the able Jack Anderson White, who portrays the title role quite effectively.

The company is also to be commended for its non-traditional casting of Robert Arthur Hughes in the role of Ernesto, Don Pasquale’s nephew. Mr. Hughes need a bit more seasoning as far as his acting goes, yet his voice– in his arias but in particular in his duets with his love interest Norina–provides a haunting contrast, and made for several memorable stretches of true dramatic story telling.

As mentioned, some of the other elements of dramatic story telling fall by the wayside in a sea of neglect. If an actor is waiting for a cue for their entrance, they must not be seen in the wings actually waiting. If one receives a letter from a servant, it must be in an envelope; if it is not, it changes the plot of the play. If one is packing clothing in a pair of suitcases, it must appear that there is at least something in these cases besides air. If a significant part of the Act II plot hinges on an actual slap, from husband to wife, then an actual slap–fingers to cheek–must occur. When you are successful, the willing suspension of disbelief enjoyed by the audience will go a long way…but then is momentarily destroyed when these inexcusable missteps occur. The costumes are from the Edwardian England Era, which would be quite an accomplishment, since the opera takes place in Italy, and the Era was nearly 70 years away, safely ensconced in the following century. A program note of time and place is required.

No matter. The Bronx Opera on the beautiful Lehman Campus hosted an enjoyable night at the opera!

[The Bronx Opera presented the New York staged premiere of Weber & Mahler's Die Drei Pintos. As is tradition at the oldest opera company of its kind... the production was double cast. here is the first review by Lenny Stough. A second review of the other cast is forthcoming.]

Every season, The Bronx Opera dares to be different and present a rare or unique opera to start its year. This time, they present one that is rare AND unique. Die Drei Pintos, a piece created by Carl Weber, was incomplete at time of his passing. It was parceled from composer to composer until – 65 years later – it was brought to fruition by Gustav Mahler. What is finally there is an engaging, joyous work brought to appreciative audiences in The Bronx and Manhattan. The plot focuses on privileged student Don Gaston deciding to have a little fun with immensely MORE privileged squire Don Pinto by stealing his papers and attempting to woo his rich fiancée, Clarissa – call it 17^th century identity theft. He drags girlfriend Inez and long-suffering servant Ambrosio along for the ride. He thought it would be easy as Clarissa’s father, Don Pantaleone, never met the man to become his daughter’s husband, until he encounters a stumbling block in her secret boyfriend Don Gomez – who Pantaleone also never met. Get the picture?

Eapen Leubner as Gaston has a marvelous voice and excellent stage presence. He played the adventurous young man like a matinee idol complete with self-absorption and ultra-brite smile. He was a great foil to Kirk Dougherty’s Gomez who – macho in voice and presence – found all the fun in the role. Jeremy Moore achieves perfection as the droll servant Ambrosio with a top notch voice peppered with great falsetto and well-timed double-takes. Moore was a standout. Hannah Rosenbaum was lovely as Inez, playing the innkeepers daughter with a wink towards Carmen. Catherine Meyers and Patrice Eaton were simply superb as the befuddled bride-to-be and her savvy servant. Both were in great voice and both handled Ben Spierman’s witty topical translation to perfection. Kudos to Brace Negron, who played the pompous Pantaleone with great command, and special nods to Jonathan Harris as the snarky innkeeper and Michael Sarnoff-Wood as the sycophantic servant to the lord of the manor.

And then there was the titular Pinto. An orchestra unto himself, Michael O’Hearn’s interpretation of the foppish Pinto in question was truly uproarious. Clothed straight out of Moliere, O’Hearn’s deep tones and larger than life presence was a guilty pleasure from beginning to hilarious end. His delivery of such simple lines as “I shall marry … a woman” brought peals of laughter from the house. A touch of a snore was enough to make an hilarious drunken bit end perfectly. One can imagine O’Hearn as a Falstaff with ease.

Ben Spierman’s deft pairing of classical style staging with a witty and even slightly sarcastic translation make a visit to The Bronx Opera enjoyable for all tastes. Meganne George’s sunny day in Spain set was gorgeous and made for a fine canvas to Joshua Rose’s expert lighting plan. Meg Zeder’s costume design – like Spierman’s juxtaposition of past and present – gave a hint of time period and a helping of social status for each character with Gaston looking like a (non-Tramp) Charlie Chaplin, Ambrosio straight out of Dickens and Pinto – as a parable to him being behind the times – in full classical wig and cloak.

The orchestra sounded lovely under the baton of Michael Spierman (Eric Kramer – who penned the bright and breezy overture of the opera – conducted the opening). And a top-notch chorus was wrangled well by Michael Hagler.

If you were to Google current productions of Boheme or Traviata, you would undoubtedly get scores of hits – pardon the pun. Goggling rare works like this will supply a lot less – and that shows the real bravery and dedication of The Bronx Opera. They are on to the more intimate and recognizable Don Pasquale in May in its native Bronx and out to Long Island. With quality an expectation from this sincere company, I am sure it will be worth the trip to The Bronx – and beyond.

New York International Fringe Festival 2009

Reviewed by Christian Graysen

Unless you’ve been living in outer space for the last few years, you know that every industry that had a “boom” is now going “bust.” For further evidence, there’s Genesis Repertory’s production of The Check Is In The Mail for the 13th Annual Fringe Festival. This high-speed one-act gives us an eye-in-keyhole view of the travails of a once flourishing business, now suffering due to one stupid move.

Playwright Robert Liebowitz once again hands us a well-written play spoken by the people for the people. Two Fringes ago, he put family matters in The Twilight Zone with the ghost story, The Wisdom That Men Seek. In this case, Check is the story of two partners in a prosperous printing firm (Allen Lewis Rickman and Jay Michaels) who made their first million in the days when business was run on cocktail lunches, a working knowledge of Yiddish and ribald humor, and a healthy dose of misogyny. The aforementioned stupid move was from founder, Leon Lipkin (Rickman), shortchanging star salesperson Janet Kupper (Cynthia Granville). Kupper instantly quits and sends the company into a tailspin with no way out … except one.

The cast is a group of seasoned pros and fresh faces: Allen Lewis Rickman and Jay Michaels as partners Leon Lipkin and Jerry Case, respectively, are enthralling. At once Bialystock & Bloom, then Felix & Oscar, Laurel & Hardy, Jekyll & Hyde, then Hyde & Hyde, the two banter almost non-stop for 70 minutes with humorous kibitzing giving way to dark accusations and devastating plot twists with Michaels excellently carrying the lion’s share of maneuvering the plot through all its sharp turns. Cynthia Granville deftly plays salesperson Janet with a world-weary air while maintaining a vulnerability needed to carry the subplot involving her relationship to Leon. Completing the quorum is Francis Callahan as Tommy, the lawyer for the unlawful. Callahan imbues Tommy with a savage persona then covers it with a lilting tenor tone. A perfect wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Populating the office was a bevy of supporting players whose countenance served as commentary for the action. Theresa Chow as Jerry’s officious assistant played the admin-afraid-of-losing-her-job with grace; Domenick Petito, stone-faced and imposing, as Cavanaugh’s right arm; and Kristin O’Blessin, the light comedy of this dark comedy as Helen, the befuddled office manager. O’Blessin’s presence turned her scenes with the two partners into a vaudeville routine prompting high-pitched screams from Rickman and old-fashioned double-takes from Michaels. O’Blessin then joined the dance trio for top-notch routines. That is not a typo, there are dance routines.

The play by itself is lively and engrossing but in the hands of director Mary Elizabeth MiCari (that’s right a female director for a play about chauvinistic white men) it is turned into an inspired piece of theatre. Injecting modern music, eerie lighting, and surreal dance breaks that seemed to both sum up and foretell, MiCari turned a naturalistic play into an ancient parable of hubris. Three dancers (O’Blessin, veteran dancer/choreographer Joyce A. Adams, and the fleet-footed Stefanie Smith, memorable as Leon’s less-than-perfect date) tapped, swayed, clogged, and marched to the beat of tunes played under foreboding newscasts of world affairs spoken by actual announcers from WPLJ. The company prides itself on finding ancient markings within all art and MiCari (the company’s new artistic director) outdid herself. The dancers were pagan priestesses, Greek chorines, or Macbethian witches, take your choice.

Technically, the show proved that less is more. Two desks made different by a soup of character driven props were all that was provided. While you might have wanted Leon to have an old woody desk and Jerry some modern piece of glass; the old monitor and chatkies on Leon’s desk told his tale while Jerry’s laptop, prescription pill buffet and stone statue summarized him. Likewise were the costumes. Jerry’s pinstripes battled the rumpled brown of Leon, with Janet in basic black and Tommy, a Clarence Darrow knockoff. Genesis’s crew – Shauna K. Smart from Hunter and Andrew Liebowitz from Brooklyn College (from the company internship program) – led by stage manager Robyn Gabrielle Lee, handled the lighting set-up, precision light and sound cues with ease.

Genesis Repertory is a parable of these changing times in and of itself. Once owners of the Jan Hus Playhouse, the company survived its lean years coupling with colleges and arts programs. Now a decade old, it can take its place as a fixture of the New York independent theatre scene, always presenting worthy works. This fall it begins work in its new 350 theatre in Brooklyn.

The Fringe – ironically – also is a parable. After 13 years, the Fringe is no longer the innovators but the competitor, with Fringes and Fringe-style Fests cropping up from Brooklyn to the Berkshires. But with clients like Genesis remaining loyal to the company store, New York will always have Fringe benefits.

The Check Is In the Mail has one more weekend – August 29 & 30. Go to www.fringenyc.org for details.

Reviewed by Rich Grey

The expression “history is written by the winners” can be interpreted for theater productions as “works that are affordable are remembered.” Encores got a hold on countless musicals teetering on the brink of obscurity and gave them life, now the Readers’ Ensemble Company does the same for straight comedies and dramas. This new group dedicates itself to finding and presenting, in de-constructed format, works that are either not done or can’t afford to be done anymore. The latter case fits their second entry in a four-play series – The Madwoman of Chaillot. We’ve all heard of this play, we may have seen it in a university setting, but when was the last time you saw a 24-character play performed on, or directly off, Broadway?

Director J. Michaels gave himself every obstacle in this Jean Giraudoux surreal comedy written as a response to World War II. A staged reading is tricky – daunting when done by two-dozen actors. He added performance elements (a dancing deaf mute, masque work – albeit very simple, and touches of modernization like a Spanish-speaking flower seller and a yuppie stock broker). His gamble paid off as the evening yielded a fine show.

The play opens in cartoon fashion with a President, Baron, Broker, and Prospector (Nick Fondulis, M. Alan Haley, John Stillwaggon, and Michaels himself, respectfully) gleefully chatting about their wealth, how to get more, and the middle and lower classes whom they disdain. Fondulis supplies us with an excellent mixture of mustache twirling villainy while keeping things real enough to make us think of every bank president across the country today, he is complimented by Haley’s confused aesthete of a baron, willing to sell his name to make money. The electricity was turned-up tenfold by Stillwaggon’s high-speed banter and game show host smile as the broker. J. Michaels added to the humor as a humorless old hermit prospector, deadpanning around the three corporate stooges.

They are greeted by the titular character, Countess Aurelia, the Madwoman of Chaillot. The casting choice was spot-on with Sheila Mart. Ms. Mart’s majestic presence in a tiny frame epitomized the character. Her staccato delivery fooled the audience by alternating between doddering and ingenuous. This allowed us to follow her down her rabbit hole (literally) to the play’s surreal conclusion.

There are also lovers (of course). The innocent, not-from-these-parts, Irma (played by Brianna Carlson-Goodman) and the repentant juvenile Pierre (Jim deProphetis). Carlson-Goodman and deProphetis played off of each other well, sharing innocence and pain, love and loss. Carlson-Goodman’s Act I monologue was a refreshing moment of clarity, while deProphetis’ scenes with Aurelia were charming and engrossing.

The financial wizards are forced to do battle with a cacophony of tradesmen and vagrants including a sassy waitress (played with great vigor by Sara Minisquero), a Latina flower seller (played in Spanish by Jessica Real-Mohr, whose gestures allowed even the most dense to understand her dialog), a lunatic foot doctor (Tracy Lipson doing her best impression of a 3 a.m. infomercial), two wacky policemen (Josh Silverman, hilarious as a new cop on the beat, and John Payne, truly funny and commanding as an old-fashioned beat cop complete with brogue) all led by an urban Ragpicker, played by Lorenzo Valoy. Valoy’s high energy and inventive delivery as the bearer of bad news in Act I and fire and brimstone channeling of all the evil of the world in Act II were high-points of the evening.

Act II brings a group of new characters. A sewer man (played with surreal joy by Robert Saunders) who thinks he’s a stand-up comic; three other madwomen: Constance (Dana A. Iannuzzi), whose choice of puppet dog over invisible dog – how it is normally played – was inspired; Gabrielle (Carla Kelly), an innocent chanteuse with an overactive libido, whose facial expressions and strange noises were a source of great humor, and the commanding Josephine (queenly played by Theresa Chow). Chow manages to make some of the play’s most absurd dialog sound totally logical.

Wide-eyed, tattered, and diminutive, teenager Adele Wendt – a trained ballerina – danced her lines (another inspired touch) as the deaf mute, adding a new dimension to this reading. Her frenetic “conversations” with Irma were a witty diversion and her Act I “ballet” (choreographed by Joyce A. Adams) became the play’s parable – the smallest flower can have the deepest soul.

Producers Dana A. Iannuzzi and Justin Flagg are to be commended for making possible a series that includes a rare George Bernard Shaw one-act (last week’s Press Cuttings), a Russian work made famous by Lon Chaney (next week’s He Who Gets Slapped) and rising star Lynn Nottage’s African-American drama, Intimate Apparel, which closes the festival. The small, warm theater chosen for the presentations might be an indication of an austere budget – a fitting parable as to why certain plays are allowed to vanish.

The festival is at University of the Streets on East 7th Street.

For more details log on to readersensemblecompany.org