The Bagel And The Rat – Page 13 – A Reviewer-at-Large Goes 15 Rounds with New York City and the World

Audubon’s Aviary: Portraits of Endangered Species at the New-York Historical Society

The New-York Historical Society owns all of the 435 original watercolors from which the aquatint engravings in John James Audubon’s Birds of America were made. Being fragile and sensitive to light, the watercolors cannot be shown for extended periods. However, the museum is currently displaying about 40 of these magnificent artworks through March 16, and they are well worth the museum’s $10 admission. (Incidentally, that’s half the price of what many of NYC’s great cultural institutions charge, and you’ll notice it’s even less than a movie ticket.)

Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), ca. 1825
Havell plate no. 26.
Watercolor, graphite, pastel, gouache, and black ink with scratching out and selective glazing on paper, laid on thin board.

The exhibit also includes the museum’s copy of the full-size Birds of America on a specially designed display cabinet. Though these iconic pictures are to some extent familiar to most of us, only by seeing the hugeness of the book can you appreciate the impact they originally made. (No flipping pages, though – it’s under glass.) Samples of the popular, much smaller quarto edition are also shown.

The exhibit also pairs some of the drawings with recorded songs of the depicted birds. And finally, there’s a nice gilt-framed video display on what looks like one of those led screens of a selection of the images juxtaposed with video of the same birds in nature – a marvelous way to appreciate Audubon’s achievement.

A poignant aspect of the show is that some of the birds in the paintings, like the passenger pigeon, are extinct. Many others are threatened. The descriptions also note some “success stories,” birds whose populations have rebounded after being drastically reduced.

The only downside of the show is that because of the low light in the display room, it’s difficult for aged, floater-occluded mammalian eyes to read the placards. I have this problem in all museums, but it was especially difficult at this exhibit.

Really getting my $10 worth, I also saw the museum’s small but densely packed exhibit about the Marquis de Lafayette’s triumphant 1824-1825 visit to the United States – a country he had helped birth the previous century, when he was only in his 20s. Objects on display included Lafayette’s copy of the Declaration of Independence, letters from him to George Washington, and this carriage, which was used to ferry him from town to town in New England in 1825.

Carriage that Transported Lafayette in 1825

The N-YHS’s more permanent displays include many iconic paintings, including Thomas Cole’s spectacular “The Course of Empire” series, as well as sculpture, silver, porcelain, and a lot more. Finally, the museum is also running a 9-11 exhibit, which includes some pieces of wreckage, interesting to look at. But I didn’t spend any time at the 9-11 photography and video displays – this is still too raw for me even after six and a half years. It’s a livid memory, not a matter of history. I would, however, recommend the exhibit for out of town visitors.

On the way home I snapped this shot of some gulls flying around Central Park. This past Friday, we had the only significant snowfall of the year so far. It looked especially nice in the park.

Music DVD Review: Fairport Convention: Maidstone 1970

Being the only known filmed footage of Fairport Convention's Full House lineup, this release is a bit more than a mere curiosity. However, its brevity and modest sound quality make it a must-have only for the most diehard of the band's fans.

With Sandy Denny out of the band, Fairport Convention in June 1970 consisted of Dave Swarbrick and a pre-facial hair Richard Thompson, with Dave Pegg on bass and mandolin, Dave Mattacks on drums, and Simon Nicol on rhythm guitar. The most famous, successful, and lasting band of the British folk-rock movement, the Convention was almost as well known for its shifting lineup as for its music.

The performances at this event are excellent, especially the multipart harmony vocals. But of the seven songs, only five are actually by Fairport; in the middle of the sequence are two songs by Matthews Southern Comfort, led by ex-Fairporter Iain Matthews. This band, one of many Matthews projects, would later record a hit version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock," but is otherwise mostly forgotten.

The total running time of the concert footage is only half an hour. From Fairport we get a jig and reel medley, followed by "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Now Be Thankful." Then Matthews Southern Comfort steps up with two disappointingly boring numbers. Fairport returns with "Flatback Caper" and "Jenny's Chickens & The Mason's Apron."

Besides the concert footage, there is one extra feature: a fifteen-minute interview with filmmaker Tony Palmer, who relates some background and trivia on how this film came to be made. Though the sound has been remastered, it's certainly not high fidelity. In fact, the shots of the crowd are probably more interesting than those of the band, although all of it is filmed and edited artfully.

The Maidstone Fiesta was truly, as Palmer describes it, a "family day out." Happy hippies dance to the faster tunes, but much of the audience consists of families with children. Watching the kids play, the hippies wander in and out of the woods, and the "normal" folks squint at the band is entertaining. You really get a flavor for how people looked, dressed, and interacted on a hot summer day in Kent in 1970.

Interrupting the set is a little Army helicopter show. Shades of "Puppet Show and Spinal Tap"? Not quite – Fairport was highly popular at the time – but it's funny anyway. Overall, it's an interesting set, but necessary only for huge Fairport Convention fans and completists; a minor addition to the historical record of the British folk-pop movement.

Music Review: Idina Menzel – I Stand

It sounded intriguing: bring together a mega-talented Broadway star and a mega-talented studio/songwriting wizard to record an album of original music. Idina Menzel, a star of Rent and Wicked (and recently seen on screen in Enchanted), is one of very few Broadway stars of relatively recent vintage to have made the leap beyond Broadway into the wider culture. Producer extraordinaire and songwriter Glen Ballard, the genius other half of the Alanis Morrissette phenomenon of the 1990s, has more recently worked with rock and pop royalty ranging from the Goo Goo Dolls and Shakira to Dave Matthews and Annie Lennox.

As an admirer of both artists, I really wanted to like this CD. Unfortunately, the best that I can say about it is that it's produced and arranged really well. Adult contemporary pop is rarely a nursery for originality, so I wasn't expecting anything world-changing or socks-knocking-off. But given Ballard's heavy participation – he co-wrote many of the songs with Menzel – I was hoping for at least a few good tunes. The closing ballad, "Perfume and Promises," is nice. The title track and "Gorgeous" have halfway decent hooks. That's as good as it gets. The songs are so drowned in cliche that "uninspired" seems a kind way to put it. As an album, it's listenable, but only because of the pretty soundscapes.

All Menzel's vocal passion and fireworks and Ballard's studio wizardry can't polish bad, half-hearted, Disneyesque material into something truly shiny. As with Disney's latest Broadway shows, though, this is probably one of those situations where critical reviews mean little. Judging from most of the listener reaction at Amazon.com, Menzel's fans are out in force, and they love whatever she does.

I can't help it, though. I feel strongly about this. I could walk out onto the street with my eyes closed and in four seconds trip over a songwriter who could write better pop songs than these for Idina Menzel (or any singer). Hugely successful creative artists like Ballard seem to often lose perspective amid all the plaudits and awards, and start to believe that whatever they do is brilliant. And no one's willing to listen objectively and say the emperor has no clothes.

Maybe a star like Menzel, not yet a mature songwriter, needs a collaborator who's hungry to succeed. With the exception of that good ballad at the end, Idina Menzel hasn't been well served here on her first project as a singer-songwriter.

Theater Review (Brooklyn, NY): Macbeth with Patrick Stewart

I used to say Patrick Stewart was responsible for one of the great theater experiences of my life. Now I have to say TV's Captain Picard was behind two of them.

In Stewart's solo version of A Christmas Carol, which he performed on Broadway for several winters during the 1990s, there was only one man on stage telling/enacting the classic Dickens tale. But the production didn't shout "tour de force" or feel tricky in any way. He made our experience of the story warm, enthralling, and genuinely wonderful.

The contrast between that touching and generous performance and his current role shows that for a man with such an unmistakable voice, Stewart has a large range. But before I get to the Scottish Play, a further word about the actor. American critics often describe him as best known in the US for his Star Trek character. That's true in one sense, but in another it's not. Star Trek fans are notoriously geeky, which, by definition, means intensely curious about the object of their geekdom. I'd wager the great majority of them know as much about the shows' stars as they do about the warp drive. Any self-respecting Trekker knows William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy are both Jewish, Majel Barrett was Gene Roddenberry's wife, and Patrick Stewart had a respected career as a Shakespearean actor in England, to which he returned after the long run of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The sexagenarian actor has expressed regret that he's now too old ever to play Hamlet. It's safe to say it doesn't matter, though, now that we have his Macbeth. In the vicious Scottish king, the actor finds a deathly torment of indecision, though it's more compressed in time than the Dane's. Once the murders have commenced, fate grabs the Macbeths by their bloody shirts, and there's nothing they can do about what they do, besides wail and gnash their teeth.

Rupert Goold's ambitious Chichester Festival Theatre production, in residence at the Brooklyn Academy of Music through March 22, is one of the great Macbeths of our time, and if it's not the greatest in recent memory I'd be amazed. Stewart and the extraordinarily intense Kate Fleetwood (Lady Macbeth) lead a uniformly excellent ensemble. And speaking of uniforms, the fascist/Stalinist setting isn't the first for this play, but it works well. Macbeth is, after all, about terror and totalitarianism. This aspect of the production also comments, without having to make a point of it, on the second Bush Administration's disastrous power grab.

What's more striking, in terms of modernity, is the heavy use of rear-projection video and loud sound effects. These are well integrated, and so effective in adding to the impact that one feels Shakespeare would have approved wholeheartedly.

Everything great theater can be and do, this production is and does. It has absolutely top-notch acting, of course, but also flair and humor and bonechilling thrills. I was sure they'd found some tricky way to suddenly and drastically lower the temperature in the theater as the terrifying image of Banquo's ghost ended the first half. In one of many inventive bits of staging, the Weird Sisters aren't outdoor hags but creepy hospital nurses, and the ghastly way they give Macbeth their second set of predictions really shocks. In another, MacDuff's family is murdered in a stunning stop-motion sequence.

Yet some of the play's most iconic scenes, like Lady Macbeth's guilt-wracked sleepwalk and Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech, are played beautifully straight. With the possible exception of a few specific video images, all the effects seem integral and necessary, part of a complete and consistent and totally captivating vision of the play. This Macbeth is a theatrical spectacle in the true, best sense.

Theater Review (NYC): The Play About the Naked Guy

David Bell’s breezy, witty, colorful comedy The Play About the Naked Guy cleverly sends up Off- and Off-Off-Broadway and takes a hilarious poke at the gay nightclub scene as well. If that leads you to imagine a lot of in-jokes and self-referential gags, you’re right, but don’t let that deter you from seeing this delicious confection. Gay or straight, backstage insider or casual playgoer, you’ll come out in a jolly mood.

The one-liners and flashy bits zip rapidly by, but if you miss one, six even better ones are on the way.

Eddie: Pleasure doing business with you, Mrs. Anderson.

Mrs. Anderson: Those were my husband’s final words.

The plot may be a little Swiss Cheesy, but no matter. The Integrity Players are in dire straits: down to three company members, they can’t draw an audience to their “lesser known classics,” but Artistic Director Dan (Jason Schuchman) refuses to compromise his principles and do anything more commercial. He and his wife Amanda (Stacy Mayer) have a baby on the way and no money to raise it, unless they give up their artistic dream and cave in to Amanda’s overbearing mother (the hilariously regal Ellen Reilly), who’s about to withdraw her funding of the failing company.

Harold (Wayne Henry), Integrity’s third remaining member, is an actor with great talent but a sad personal life. His loneliness leads him to a club where he meets the Bialystock-like Eddie Russini (Christopher Borg), a producer who’s grown rich on gimmicky, gay-themed stage shows like “Naked Boys Running Around Naked”. With his two preening minions in tow (the screechingly funny Christopher Sloan and Chad Austin), and a haughty porn star like the ones you sometimes see on https://www.watchmygf.xxx/ (Dan Amboyer) ready to take the lead role that would otherwise have been Harold’s, Eddie may just be the struggling Integrity Players’ saviour – but at what cost?

Kit: I have a new master! And his name is Uta Hagen!

With a lot of help from director Tom Wojtunik and a fine cast and crew, Bell has created an entertainment that’s sweet-natured and smart, very funny with just the needed touches of touchingness. He plays each of his plot strands fully through – the coming out story (as is sometimes seen in raunchier fashion on https://www.fuckedgay.xxx/), the love elements, the character development – even as he mocks his characters, the crass and the pretentious alike. Sometimes Bell seemed to be reading my critic’s mind; his spoof of small theater companies’ invariably vapid mission statements is priceless.

Insider references aside, The Play About the Naked Guy is a show for all of us – all of us grown-ups, anyway. Might want to leave the little ‘uns at home for this one.

Presented by the Emerging Artists Theater at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, which ably plays itself in this production, in repertory through March 2. Buy tickets online or call (866) 811-4111.

Straight Talk about the Death Penalty

If only all Americans, including our elected representatives and our justices, thought like Justice William Connolly of the Nebraska Supreme Court. Writing for a 6-1 majority in a death penalty appeal that claimed execution by electric chair to be “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore unconstitutional, Justice Connolly wrote:

We recognize the temptation to make the prisoner suffer, just as the prisoner made an innocent victim suffer. But it is the hallmark of a civilized society that we punish cruelty without practicing it. Condemned prisoners must not be tortured to death, regardless of their crimes.

“Punish cruelty without practicing it.” Seems like that ought to be a pretty self-evident truth. But a lot of people – including a lot of people in power – aren’t interested in a civilized society. Or else their definition of a civilized society isn’t the same as mine, or Justice Connolly’s. In my civilized society, we don’t torture, whether we’re interrogating or executing. Whether the death penalty in any form is “cruel and unusual” is another question. But you only have to watch an electrocution to know that while it may be relatively quick (assuming all goes well), it’s a form of torture and shouldn’t be used. I hope the strong majority in this 6-1 decision resonates beyond Nebraska.

Rivington House

The other day I played with The Kings County Blues Band for a roomful of AIDS patients at Rivington House, a long-term care facility in downtown Manhattan. The residents were very appreciative of the live music, and the cheerful staff and volunteers seemed to have an impressive ability to turn what is essentially a hospital into a not so gloomy place for people who are suffering badly from AIDS to get the care they need. The website also lists volunteering opportunities.

Music Review: Indie Round-Up – No Girls Allowed Edition

No ladies need apply to this edition of the Indie Round-Up – it's all guys, all the time.

Steve Northeast, Inside

Steve Northeast crafts energetic and emotional hard rock songs loaded with raspy guitars and cataclysmic rhythms. He puts a lot of emotion into the songs, and that, together with the deep engagement with what's going on the world, means that at times he risks overwhelming the production's generous musicality – and the excellent guitar work – with lyrics that bend towards earnest cliche. But at their best, the songs evoke the David Bowie of Heroes and the Soundgarden of the '90s. Favorites: "The Way It Is," "Out of Here," and the power ballad "Phoenix."

Listen at the website.

Jann Klose, Reverie

Jann Klose makes complex but accessible chamber pop with intelligent lyrics and contagious rhythms. Songs like "Doing Time" and "Clouds" have a European and sometimes Beatlesque sensibility. (It doesn't hurt that Klose's voice sounds a bit like Paul McCartney's.) The German-born, South African-raised singer-songwriter, now based in the Bronx, has been a theatrical performer, and he has a fine feel for how to arrange his songs with "stageworthy" effectiveness, easily slipping in horns, strings, reeds, and more unusual instruments. The touch is light; a song like "All These Rivers" may remind you of some of Sting's solo work, while the gentle "Remember Your Name" could have come out of southern California in the 1970s. Overall, a sweet salve for troubled times. Listen or buy.

The Alternate Routes, The Brooklawn Session

This disc is an acoustic re-recording of The Alternate Routes' superb debut album Good and Reckless and True, with the same eleven songs in a different order. At the moment, it's available only at concerts, and since the band is between tours right now, you'll have to borrow mine if you want it. (Low hourly rates!) You can, however, hear a couple of the tracks at their Myspace page. The disc has a sort of distant, ghostly, furry-wall-of-sound quality, very pleasing if you're in a coffeehouse mood yet want to hear good songs that aren't self-indulgent like a lot of acoustic singer-songwriter fare. Why am I writing about it if you can't buy it? Because it's another opportunity to tell you that you should really check out this Bridgeport, Connecticut band. Go out of your way if you have to; take an alternate route.

This Holiday Life, The Beginning of the End of the World

I sympathize with new bands trying to establish an identity; a band's name is quite important, but all the good ones, it seems, have been taken. Still, This Holiday Life could have tried a little harder.

Fortunately, the abbreviation THL seems to have been available – in any case, they're using it, and it flows off the tongue a lot better. The music, I'm happy to say, flows out of my speakers very pleasantly too.

The San Diego quartet has made a well deserved name for itself on the West Coast, with catchy songs and a modern sensibility which nevertheless nods back to the '80s new wave of Tears for Fears and Flock of Seagulls. A lot of the lyrics are abstract but there's no mistaking the meaning of "This is the end it's alright we're here together." "Undercover" is a strong earworm. "Animal" is a rubbery, surrealistic, evocative look at I don't know what, and "Oh Sister Please!" is another stretchy, hooky little gem. The slight quirkiness in the arrangements is amusing and endearing, not self-conscious. Overall, THL pops. Hear some tracks.

Theater Review (NYC): Conjur Woman: A Folk Opera

What better way to start observing Black History Month than to take in Sheila Dabney's spellbinding performance of Conjur Woman, Beatrice Manley's one-act folk opera. Backed by music performed on stage by the redoubtable Yukio Tsuji (guitar and percussion) and Jasper McGruder (harmonica and percussion), with tunes composed by the performers along with LaMama's founder, Ellen Stewart, Dabney belts out the Conjur Woman's tale of woe in a series of songs and hollers that vividly suggest the music of slavery times.

Conjur Woman turns her husband into a tree so the slave traders won't get him. Alas, she can't save him from the sawmill. That's the story in an acornshell. But what a telling. Jun Maeda's simple, beautiful set of jagged wooden walls changes color and mood from song to song (Jeff Tapper's lighting design is superb), serving as both cabin and woods. With a little bag of charms and herbs, a rope, and the passion in her rich, piercing, worldly-dark voice, Dabney takes us into the heart of darkness.

Background musicians left to right: Harry Mann on the mystical bass, Jasper McGruder, and Yukio Tsuji, backing Shelia Dabney. Photo by Brian Dilg.

The simple story roils with irony and allegory. Conjur Woman's magic is so strong it gives her power over nature itself – but only in her homeworld. Foreign gods (Christianity, modernity) render her charms inert. "God don't like that," she admits of her conjuring. But later: "God be with me in my hatred. God bring him back to me, God keep us together, God take us out of here." But even invoking the Christian God by three names (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) can't help her, and at the sawmill, the "machine ain't got feelings. Can't conjur machine."

We, however, are made to feel the full force of the conjuring. This isn't "Poof, you're a tree." Conjur Woman sings us a visceral description of how the man's body, part by part, becomes tree, and her image of his eyes still visible behind the wood, shining in silent terror as he's chopped into boards, is harrowing. This magic spell is no plot device; it's the substance and grain of the story.

Though drawn from the black experience, the music through which the tale is told – and the show as whole, staged by La Mama's Resident Director, George Ferencz – should resonate with any thinking being. The gulf between the "old ways" of wonder and nature and the new ways of technology is evident in cultures the world over. Though many centuries old, the battle is still with us, ever raging, if sometimes obscured by day-to-day life, inside our simian brains. Conjur Woman is a deep draught of wise wonder and emotional magic, with a mesmerizing central performance by the remarkable Shelia Dabney.

Through Feb. 10 at The Annex at La Mama. 66 E. 4 St., NYC. Visit Ovationtix online for tickets, or call (866) 811-4111.

Theater Review (Bronx, NY): Agnes of God

America, 1979. Ten grim syllables indeed. One sign of the Me Generation's ascendancy was the vogue for, and faith in, psychiatry as panacea. Through its many flavors and techniques, this alluring semi-science promised the self-grokking and inner peace that had become elusive amidst the brittle secularism of the age and the unfettering of the greed that we could already smell in the air.

A deeply psychological play like Agnes of God might not have been plotted to depend on a technique like hypnotism if it were written today. And Dr. Martha Livingston, the court-appointed psychiatrist tasked with determining a young, visionary nun's competency to stand trial for the murder of her newborn, might not have been written as so indulgently self-analytical.

Despite that dated aspect, the play's overall dramatic soundness makes it still effective, and its theme – faith and unbelief, the scientific vs. the miraculous – resonates strongly in this new century of militant Islam and Dawkinsian atheism. Center Stage Community Playhouse's new revival, staged in a spacious converted chapel, does well by John Pielmeier's claustrophobic, but intermittently funny, three-character play.

Ruth Chiamulera, Keri Seymour, and Pauline Walsh in Agnes of God

The story was made known to a wider audience through Norman Jewison's 1985 film version that starred Jane Fonda, Meg Tilly, and, in the meaty role of Mother Miriam Ruth, Anne Bancroft. Bancroft's seething performance, and before that, Geraldine Page's famous, Tony-nominated portrayal on Broadway, might seem tough to live up to, but the relatively unknown Pauline Walsh has a grand time with the part here, speedily banishing any famous ghosts.

The play's outward mysteries are straightforward: who fathered Sister Agnes's baby, and who killed it? But the unfolding of the old nun's own character forms a powerful parallel to the whodunit, and Walsh plays that power like a rope through her fingers, easily untangling the script's knottiness, with the able help of Ruth Chiamulera as Dr. Livingston. If, in the end, Mother Miriam is rather more, and rather less, than the kindly, worldly old nun she first appeared to be, we are grateful to have been so artfully misled.

The role of the "holy innocent" Sister Agnes is full of gristle too, and Keri Seymour bites bravely into it. Frightened out of her mind, hemmed in by the demons of her childhood, shifting from denial to release, from small and meek to towering and angry and back, Sister Agnes is simultaneously an ancient archetype – the visionary, stigmatic ascetic – and a creature of her psychologically aware times. Covered in a flowing white habit, with (like Mother Miriam) only the center of her face showing, she shocks and smolders, as does this production, thoughtfully directed by Tal Aviezer. Definitely worth the subway ride to the Bronx.

Performances are Feb. 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, and 10 at Foster Hall, 2474 Westchester Ave. in the Bronx (Westchester Square stop on the 6 train). Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM, Sunday matinees at 2. General admission $18, Senior and Student $15. $2 discount on General Admission tickets for Bronx Cultural Card holders. For reservations call (718) 823-6434 or email [email protected]. Caution: cigarettes are smoked on stage.

Theater Review (NYC): Glimpses of the Moon at the Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel

Glimpses of the Moon is a new but charmingly old-fashioned “jazz age musical.” Based on a novel by Edith Wharton, it was written specifically for the Algonquin Hotel’s famous Oak Room. As soon as we hear composer John Mercurio’s first, Gershiwinian piano chords and see Lisa Zinni’s authentic-looking costumes, we settle comfortably into the 1920s, and the bright-eyed cast and almost Wodehouse-like plot do nothing to dispel the spell.

A musical comedy of manners, Glimpses tells a jaunty little story that’s very specific to its time. In the Roaring Twenties, divorce was newly acceptable. almost fashionable, and women in particular were beginning to wriggle out of some of the chains of social convention. Susy Branch (Xanadu‘s Patti Murin) and the perfectly named Nick Lansing (Stephen Plunkett, with Michael Minarek taking over on Feb. 19) are moneyless social climbers who’ve attached themselves rather precariously to high society. Their scheme, to marry for convenience and live off their pricey wedding gifts until they can find wealthy “real” spouses, intersects with the lives of their high-living friends, who include Streffy, a British fop with little money but a handy property in Maine, and Ellie and Nelson Vanderlyn, a rich older couple with a New York City brownstone and a Newport mansion.

If you’re envisioning elaborate sets, stop. There are no sets, not even a stage, just a small space in front of the piano. The Oak Room is a cabaret supper club, not a theater. This is pointed up during the number “Right Here, Right Now,” set at the Oak Room itself (of 1922) and sung by a different guest performer at each show. (Last night it was KT Sullivan; Susan Lucci and Joyce DeWitt are among those coming up.)

Director Marc Bruni uses the small central space and the room’s shape cleverly, keeping the action tightly controlled and more or less intelligible, though those seated at the far ends of the room may have missed some of the lyrics during the faster sections. In general the actors’ unamplified voices carried Tajlei Levis’s witty lyrics loudly enough, which is important, for they are sharp and precise, with occasionally Cowardly turns of phrase.

Ms. Murin is sweetly disarming as Susy. Her Disney-perfect voice contrasts nicely with the knowing alto of Beth Glover, who steals many scenes as the riper Ellie. Ellie’s social independence takes a hard-hearted form, but she gets the funniest lines, particularly in the hilarious number “Letters to Nelson.” For his part, the clueless Nelson (Daren Kelly) makes much of the show’s one ultimately sad development, in “Tell Her I’m Happy.” Mr. Plunkett, as Nick, is suitably unprepossessing, but it is the scholarly young swain’s celebration of the Vanderlyns’ Newport manse as the perfect place to get started writing his novel that sets the story’s moral conflict in motion.

Act II opens with a comical boating accident that suddenly makes the dandyish Streffy into the Earl he’s always pined to be, giving Mr. Peters, who plays him with an intense, absurd, and very funny grace, the opportunity to bring down the house with “Terrible News.” A shopping scene in B. Altman’s has Ellie make the ambitious but stuffy Coral over into a more glamorous creature, the better to make off with Nick. I suspect you’re beginning to get the picture.

Mr. Mercurio interprets his own music on the piano. He has collaborated before with Ms. Levis, and the partnership results in songs that trip lightly through the ears – and, to some degree, the eras. The chords and rhythms evoke jazz age music, but big sustained vocal blasts at climactic moments suggest modern-day, corporate Broadway. Though designed for this limited space, the show could certainly do well in a bigger setting. But the elegant, dark-paneled Oak Room suits the show’s jazz age finery just fine.

Through March 10, Mondays only. For tickets, visit the show’s website or call (212) 419-9331.

Some Other Place

Get your Whisperado here! This post is showing off a playlist of our CD Some Other Place using the Last.fm playlist widget.

Theater Review (NYC): Fabrik

After an extensive run through Norway, where it originated, a powerful little piece of theater called Fabrik, subtitled The Legend of M. Rabinowitz, has landed in New York City. A historical drama about Norwegian Jews prior to and during the Holocaust, Fabrik is told through puppetry, music, miniatures, and masks, but its power lies in its fusion of crafty stage magic with a near-minimalist – dare I say Lutheran? – economy of narrative.

The Wakka Wakka Ensemble's three talented puppeteers and whip-smart production team present the true story of Moritz Rabinowitz, who immigrated from Poland to Norway in 1911. Starting with very little, he eventually became a prominent businessman with a chain of clothing stores. But he was also a prolific writer of articles attacking anti-Semitism and warning Norwegians about the rise of Hitler. Upon the German invasion of Norway in 1940, Rabinowitz's volubility caused the Nazis to perceive him as the leader of the local Jewish resistance.

This is an edge-of-your-seat production, and waiting to learn whether Moritz will escape the Nazis is the least of the reasons for the suspense. Scenes of commerce, domesticity, battle, singing, dancing, and the play's centerpiece, a lovely and terrifying dream sequence, flow smoothly one into the next, but from moment to moment we almost never know what's coming. In the midst of every kind of theatrical artifice, we are completely swept up in the reality of the story.

This, I know, is a big reason people use puppetry and other distancing techniques. Just as storylines that wouldn't work on a live-action sitcom can feel touching and real on The Simpsons, puppets can create a magical space that frees our minds in a way live actors – because we feel their presence so viscerally – cannot.

The Wakka Wakka Ensemble masterfully employs fabrication to sharpen history's blurry reality, and not only through their puppets and masks, evocative and magnetic as those are. Blasting through a darkened theater, a German spotlight seeks out the puppet-boat on which puppet-Moritz has purchased an attempt at escape to England. The air over the stage has become the water of the harbor merely through sound and the motion of the puppet figures and puppet props. In another scene on another scale, a miniature Nazi ship slides into the miniature town's miniature harbor, and I literally saw the tiny vessel bobbing in the "water," though it wasn't bobbing at all.

A brutal Nazi guard is nothing but a pair of boots – no more is needed. A murderous-looking mask stunningly personifies the evil behind the infamous, fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And so on. It feels pedestrian and a little bit wrong to even be picking out such moments, since the play is so seamless. Indeed, the production itself felt like such a team effort that the printed program's failure to list which ensemble members were the actual puppeteers, and the identities of all of the many characters they portrayed, seemed not just okay but appropriate. But I hope they give you a sense of Fabrik's many small marvels, and of why it is well worth seeing.

Through Feb. 17 at Urban Stages Theatre, 259 W. 30 St., NYC. Tickets online at Theatermania or call (212) 352-3101.

Photo captions: 1. THE RABINOWITZ FAMILY, l to r, JOHANNA (wife), EDITH (daughter) and MORITZ. 2. MORITZ RABINOWITZ facing boots and DAVID ARKEMA. Photo credit: Nordland Visual Theatre

Theater Review (NYC): Wanda’s World

Aimed at “the tween in all of us,” the brash, sparkling new musical Wanda’s World lives up to its billing splendidly. Director-choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett fashions Beth Falcone’s rock and pop-inspired tunes into a series of colorful song-and-dance numbers that tug the ear, delight the eye, and yank you through the story in spite of yourself.

It’s a story with universal kid appeal, including for the kids who still live inside adults. Thirteen-year-old Wanda, played by a petite firecracker named Sandie Rosa, has a rich imaginative life: she stars in her own TV show, but only in her bedroom, attended solely by her loyal dog Spangles (Chris Vettel). In real life, Wanda is starting at a new school and terrified of not making any friends. An additional, more unusual problem magnifies her fears, and things look grim when we’re introduced to the cliquey kids she’s going to be thrown in with.

A number called “She’s So Last Week” exemplifies the show’s cleverness, as the popular girls quiz Wanda on what bands she likes and so forth. Putting on a friendly front, cheerleader Jenny Hightower (Jennifer Bowles) undercuts the newcomer with every other line. Meanwhile, football star and straight-A heartthrob Ty Belvedere (the superb tenor James Royce Edwards) is running for class president. In his number “What’s Not to Like?” he extols his own perfect virtues while allowing a peek at the good heart inside. When jealous P.J. Dunbar (Leo Ash Evens) prods Wanda and her videocamera to pursue Ty to his house for a post-game interview, a dangerous, if not very original, scheme is afoot.

It’s a feel-good tale that actually makes you feel good, not icky. Encouraged by a pair of sympathetic teachers, played twinkly-eyed by Broadway veteran Valerie Wright and the delightful Mr. Vettel, Wanda’s true talents and social skills emerge. The “villians” get their comeuppance without cruelty, and there’s even a romantic side plot furthered by a couple of charming cups of coffee. Though directed pointedly at “tweens” – kids roughly ten to twelve – the show mostly held the attention of my not-quite-eight year old companion, who “liked the dog” but also, as it turned out later at “how was the show?” time, had followed most of the fairly complex plot and was anxious to relate it.

The performances are excellent, with not a single weak link. A few colorfully painted pieces of furniture and backdrop video effects create the necessary schoolyard, TV studio, and bedroom sets, while Aaron Spivey’s inventive lighting and Jennifer Caprio’s wonderful costumes are almost supporting characters of their own, especially during the appropriately garish and slightly scary Halloween Dance segment. Only a small technical problem with one of the microphones (and the small stage) reminded us that we weren’t seeing a full-on Broadway production.

Speaking of Broadway, Wanda’s World is rather long for a one-act; it would take only a modest expansion to turn it into a two-act fit for the Broadway stage. It has all the ingredients. The spoken scenes – written by Eric H. Weinberger, who cooked up the story with Ms. Falcone – are just long enough to advance the plot and give us needed breathers between the highly energized musical numbers. And the limber cast delivers it all with kid-friendly, enlarged realism.

The music itself relies on kicked-up but fluid modern rock arrangements of a fairly small number of easy-to-grasp themes. It’s not easy to write and arrange music that seems to effortlessly balance simplicity and fun with originality and musical literacy. Ms. Falcone, with musical director Douglas Oberhamer, has done so.

In short, this romp of a show is a pure delight, appropriate for any but the smallest children, and for any adult with a yen for fun. Wanda’s World, presented by Amas Musical Theatre, plays through Feb. 10 at the 45th Street Theatre, 354 W. 45 St., NYC. Tickets at Theatermania or call (212) 352-3101.

Theater Review (NYC): North at La Mama

Ready for something different? North is a different kind of show, and that's appropriate, as it's the creation of Heather Christian, a different kind of singer.

Neither a drama nor a musical, North consists of an hour of music on a white-decked stage, with several dance segments, a shadow puppet number, and striking, if unexplained, visual and sonic imagery. Ms. Christian's band of musician-dancers, the Arbornauts, first enter, marionette-like, amid a series of blackouts, and the songspiel begins with Ms. Christian playing Chopin on a grand piano, which leads into a beautiful song by The Decemberists called "The Engine Driver."

Here it becomes apparent that Ms. Christian – in the most general sense, a singer-songwriter – is fundamentally a voice fetishist. Like pop singer Regina Spektor but to a much greater extreme, she makes her voice a self-referential and autoerotic object rather than an instrument through which thoughts and feelings are expressed. The expression here, the drama, is in the musical arrangements and the staging.

Whether the star's alternately breathy, nasal, infantilized, and heavily vibrating vocalizations strike you as interesting or annoying will determine to a great extent how much you enjoy the avant-garde entertainment she has devised. The songs themselves, some her own and some covers, are set with sometimes lovely, sometimes howling, occasionally bewildering arrangements and in some cases, curiously alluring choreography and evocative video. The snowy, angelic, dreamy, outlandish costumes and white-clad set suggest a winter landscape; there is a recurring theme of an airline flight; and the order of the songs feels vaguely meaningful. But otherwise the cantata has no story.

Ms. Christian's own piano-based compositions tend to be sparely written art songs and mood pieces that climax dramatically. The other four musicians play trumpet, clarinet, violin, electric guitar, melodica, and drums, and despite some out-of-tune playing (intentional? I couldn't tell) the impassioned builds are very effective. Set among the singer's own compositions are an assortment of classical and pop covers (Debussy, the Beatles), which carry most of the musical hooks.

For many singer-songwriters, it's dangerous to place your own compositions among recognized masterworks for fear they'll suffer by comparison. But here the atmospheric staging and the strange vocalizing take some of the burden off the songs themselves, and we are left with an impression that we have witnessed a sensational event while half-asleep or drugged. North continues through Feb. 2 at La Mama.

Best. TV Show. Ever.

I have seen the past, present, and future of television. I have seen the ultimate and fundamental raison d’être for the invention of cathode ray tube technology and its modern successors. In short, I have seen the greatest TV show ever created: Shimmy, which airs Tuesday nights at 8 PM (ET and PT) on FitTV.

Turn on this show and you will be (if female) drawn to get up and start gyrating along with the dancers’ belly-dancing moves, or (if male) unable to lower your eyes from the humming sensuality on the screen or shut out the soothing yet energizing music.

If Shimmy doesn’t change your life in 30 minutes, I will gladly refund the money you paid to read this blog entry. With interest.

Staggering

I turn 45 this month and I am glad to be the age that I am. In those four and a half decades I’ve been amazed to observe staggering changes in the world. Although technology will continue to advance rapidly, and today’s children will see many changes in their lifetimes, the world may not again change in such a fundamental way. I say that because we have crossed a very significant line: the digital line, which has enabled an unprecedented level of interconnectedness.

The next leap will be to a “firmament of all knowledge” that will provide something approaching telepathy. That may be some decades off, and catastrophe could intervene to prevent it. So it’s possible that the digital line will be the last really major techno-social line we will cross for a very long time.

Since 1963 we’ve gone from…

8-tracks, LPs, and cassettes to CDs, MP3s, iTunes, and Bittorrent (i.e. analog to digital)
Cold War, the American Century, and American untouchability to a borderless Europe, 9-11, and American decline
Nixon, Humphrey, and McGovern to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney
Moon landings and oil rigs to nanotechnology and spooky action at a distance

And in the month that I turn 45, I am setting a personal record for playing gigs with the most different bands ever in one month: five. How we get recorded music may have changed, but people still want to play it live and hear it live. I suspect live music will remain a fairly recession-proof business. No matter how high the seas rise.

Music Review: Indie Round-Up – American World Edition

American world? Sure. This week we feature music from artists who, although based in the US, make music that breaks boundaries and feels like it’s built from colorful, jagged pieces of the whole world.

Susan Krebs & the Soaring Sextet, Jazz Aviary

A jazz concept album about birds – not Charlie Parker, but actual birds – sounds potentially pretentious, or precious, or both. But this disc, from singer Susan Krebs, musical director-pianist Rich Eames, and some ace sidemen, is actually a sweet, sincere, unprepossessing, and lovely set of bird-themed tunes. Most of the tracks could stand alone, but the set also flows together like a flock of – I don’t know – some kind of flocking bird.

There are well-known songs, like “Skylark,” “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” and, in a nod to Bird with a capital B, “Ornithology.” There are more obscure songs, like Abbey Lincoln’s “Bird Alone” and Krebs and Eames’s original, meditative tune “The Peace of Wild Things,” which faintly echoes “‘Round Midnight” and features some beautiful flute playing by Rob Lackart. And there are surprises, like Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “The Lark Ascending,” which the musicians give a reverential, meditative treatment, aided by a string section.

A few tracks feel a little icy and overly careful, but Krebs and Co. hit the mark far more often. One of my favorites is their epic take on Dave Brubeck’s “Strange Meadowlark.” Another is “Bob White” with its herky-jerky rhythms. Krebs is not the most powerful or adventuresome vocalist; she sings with what I think of as a shy artistry with a touch of humor. The latter comes into play, for example, in Hoagy Carmichael’s “Baltimore Oriole,” and in the medley of roots and pop (non-jazz) standards that starts with Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” My biggest beef with jazz vocalists is that they frequently lack a sense of fun. Not so here. The “twinkle” in Krebs’s delivery is an important part of this disc’s appeal. So are the little throwaways – quotes from poems, recorded bird sounds, percussion sound effects – that dot the tracks.

Sample all tracks and purchase the CD at CD Baby.

One World, Share My Love

Here’s a band that wears its heart on its sleeve. One World’s new disc contains an hour of jazzy Latin adult contemporary tracks, touched by rock and funk and soft pop, most sung in English. It’s all very smooth, but loaded with good cheer, and has plenty of melodic hooks and rhythmic bounce to keep you on your toes. There are sad moods (“She Longed For His Love”), but One World’s one world is one world without anger and meanness. Check out some sample tracks from this great party record.

N-Side, Just a broke brotha’ tryin’ to come up!

It’s easy to dig jazz poet N-Side. He’s chill. He’s solid. He speaks his poems as neither an angry young man nor a self-satisfied old one, but as a literary artist. As a result he makes you really pay attention to his lyrics. “People wait for me to get fed up, frustrated – hate-filled with aggression, preparing myself to throw down. / But those folks rich in spirit have taught me force isn’t needed to keep this prize called knowledge around.” N’s poems – some rhyming, some more freeflowing and prosy, but all engaged with the complete human experience – are backed by Ricardo Love’s nu-soul grooves and organic hip-hop beats decorated with small splashes of jazz. (Two tracks are by Russell Case.)

The tracks rest in easy grooves that match the poet’s calm intensity as he talks to people we can’t see or hear but whom he makes us envision clearly. “Someone said… they had no culture here and neither did I… ‘Can you lay claim to an original thought of your own?’ / I loaded up with all the names that I was about to call him: sellout, racist, double agent, cultural perpetrator, antebellum negro, no-risk vicarious activist… but I didn’t say a word… finally I… realized once again, I was talking to myself. / Hopefully these type of conversations will change, and not be taken so personally.”

Deep and useful stuff. Sample all tracks and purchase the CD at CD Baby.

Finally, here’s a pic of Stratospheerius, the “full-on electro-fiddle-trip-funk” band whose CD I reviewed back in July. They rocked the legendary Bitter End last night with an all-too-short early set.

It’s good to know that some things, like the Bitter End’s tiny bathrooms, never change. But electric six-string violinist Joe Deninzon (who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia) leads this most excellent band through some serious rhythmic changes. Is it prog-rock? Jazz fusion? A jam band? Ask the portraits of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell on the walls, I don’t know. A little of each maybe. All I know is it’s kickass. They closed the set with the instrumental “Heavy Shtettle II: Heavier Shtettle.” I said kickass, right?

Here’s a bonus shot of drummer Lucianna Padmore in action. She is an even more awesome musician in person than on CD.

In Which Kenny Vance Calls In from the New Jersey Turnpike

The other night I had the chance to interview Kenny Vance, a founding member of the seminal group Jay and the Americans and currently leader of Kenny Vance and the Planotones. He was also the music director for American Hot Wax, Animal House, and Saturday Night Live. I had recently reviewed the Planotones’ new CD.

In person Kenny turns out to be a one-man treasure trove of information and perspective on the early rock and roll era (and a really nice guy). You can listen to the whole interview online at BC Radio Live, and/or read excerpts over at Blogcritics. Then pick up the new disc Countdown To Love.

Theater Review (NYC): The Pirates of Penzance

The Pirates of Penzance, one of Gilbert & Sullivan's most popular light operas, has just a couple more performances this go-round at City Center, and you ought to catch it if you can. Dazzling staging and choreography, superb singing, and an emphasis on rich, zany humor add up to an exhilarating evening for all ages. If you're like me you won't want it to end.

Purists might find a little too much stage business – mugging, gesturing and the like – for their tastes, but if you're a Gilbert & Sullivan "purist" you should probably be going back to chill school anyway. This New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players production is a sheer delight.

The soprano Laurelyn Watson Chase, a NYGASP veteran, brings her fluid coloratura voice and a bright-eyed but knowing wink to the role of Mabel. She's matched in vocal skill and acting warmth by newcomer Colm Fitzmaurice, an operatic tenor who turns out to be a natural for the demanding but relatively "straight" role of Frederic, the "poor wand'ring one" whose devotion to "duty" will lead him anywhere – for or against his own principles.

The cast also includes the very droll Stephen Quint as Major-General Stanley, a Howard Stern-bewigged David Wannen as the boastful but too soft-hearted Pirate King, and the ball-of-fire alto Angela Smith as Ruth, the Pirate Maid-of-all-work. From these leads, down through the featured performers (like the delightful David Macaluso as the Pirate King's right hand man), all the way to the least-featured company members, the entire cast flounces and leaps about Lou Anne Gilleland's imaginative set, in Gail J. Wofford's fanciful costumes, with what seems the greatest of ease. In fact the whole production is made to look easy, which it assuredly is not.

This is no doubt due in part to the company's long experience. Some of these performers have been with NYGASP for a quarter of a century. Almost all have considerable Gilbert & Sullivan experience. And it shows.

There are just two more performances of NYGASP's Pirates of Penzance at City Center this winter season. (It is playing in repertory through January 13.) For tickets visit the City Center website or call (212) 581-1212.