Without Davenport serving as a much-needed emotional anchor, there is little to bring us into the story’s unfolding details. Even tensions between Davenport and the white Captain Charles Taylor (played by Tim Walsh with a Gomer Pyle-esque boobery) fail to elicit anything more than a few reactionary chuckles from the audience. Major plot points feel as though they’re mumbled through
Fox takes audiences on a sidesplitting romp which pulls the rug from underneath the stuffy denizens of a private golf country club. The 43rd annual grudge match between rival golf clubs is thrown for a loop when the best golfer switches teams on the eve of the competition. It’s a hilarious romp with classic elements like mistaken identities, huge consequences riding on the match’s outcome, marriages on the brink of disaster, and secret romantic shenanigans that recalls the Marx Brothers in their heyday. Add over-the-top characters, a furious pace, terrific physical comedy with brilliant plotting and fabulous comic touches by the expert cast and Fox is a well-oiled comic farce.
The highlight of the evening is surely Garrick Ohlsson magisterial performance of the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.3 in D minor, Op.30, often dubbed by its many admirers “The Rock 3”. The first movement, “Allegro ma non tanto” is remarkable particularly for the surprising restraint, and the over all excellent taste of Rachmaninov’s sumptuous orchestration.
It sure seems that prolific playwright Don Nigro has the self referential dialog of those tongue-in-cheek mystery films from the ’40 & ’50’s down pat. His world premiere, City of Dreadful Night is a smart, coy, and full engaging 90 minute mystery reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain novels turn into black and white films.
With our current mode of abbreviated words in newspapers and magazines and texting speak, enjoy the full British precision of the English language in Jeeves, and awaken your ears to its beauty and complexity. Jeeves provides not only exact language, but the most colorful sophisticated insults…a lost art from a bygone era. Even the novel slang and expressions like “a sticky wicket” prove amusing. “Jeeves Takes a Bow” is all silly fun with little social commentary…a wonderfully comedic escape from our complex day-to-day concerns. We need more Jeeves!
American politicians are sold to us as though they were tubes of toothpaste, and Mr. Munby’s Cesar looks to be no different. But the whole thing feels a touch too ironic, too cheeky, as we soon suspect the image of Cesar—like that of all great American politicians—to be infinitely more impressive than the man himself. Yet if Brutus is to enact a genuine tragedy, then Cesar must be no less than he claims: “…constant as the northern star,/ Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality/ There is no fellow in the firmament.” After all, there is no hero’s dignity in slaying an upstart impostor.
Perhaps what is most appealing about Wagner’s 1868 opera Die Mestersinger, despite the near 4 hour and 45 minute running time, excluding intermission, is the sheer accessibility of the subject matter. Rather than taking old folk tales and German mythological heroes for its theme, the opera tells an all too strikingly relevant story of a Guild of Master-singers—a sort of modern German adaptation of Grecian bards, with music added—and the struggle of an outsider and up-start, in this case the noble Walther von Stolzing, against the insensible artistic establishment.
I grew up listening to Billie Holiday records so I am quite familiar with her unique blues-oriented distinct jazz singing style. I can state with absolute certainty that Alexis Rogers has Billie Holiday’s style down pat. Add her fabulously realistic acting deftly depicting the pain Billie suffered as she tried to blunt reality with heron and whiskey and Rogers combines her amazing channeling of Holiday’s singing style with a sting of personal stories about the horrors of her life.
Dispensing with an overt critique of the American foreign policy establishment, BTBZ is about the faces on the ground and their baser instincts for blood, sex, power, and money that threaten to overwhelm them in the aftermath of anarchy. But what, the Tiger asks, might ultimately be said of God’s nature in the face of such wrath and violence? Atheism, in this case, would be the more comforting (if less convincing) position. The darker truth, as BTBZ only intimates, is that God is Himself a warrior—one who, on occasion, demands blood sacrifice.
Covering three worlds: adolescent high school cultural, the events surrounding the Columbine Shootings, and the thirteen-year aftermath, Columbinus runs 2 hours and 43 minutes making it an exhaustive affair. My main problem with this production is its length and the over theatricality of parts of the show.