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This weekend I was back 'On the Town' for the first time since my brain surgery two weeks ago. David and I started on Friday evening at the Lake Shore Cafe with fabulous Dixieland Jazz by JJ and the Jazz Masters, with their wonderful vocalist Gina Gibson. They were all on a high!
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Then on Sunday afternoon we attended a spectacular presentation of Puccini's final opera Turandot at the Lyric Opera. David dropped me off at the door and went to park the car while I staggered in on my new cane.
A wonderful stage setting for the work by Chris Maravich. Sir Andrew Davis was the conductor.
As Turandot, Amber Wagner had the high notes and the power demanded for the role but lacked nuance and often screamed out the very highest notes.
Stefano La Colla was Calaf. He, too, had the range and volume for the part and sang with ardor.
The best singing of the evening was by Maria Agresta as Liu. Her lovely voice was expressive and balanced from top to bottom.
The rest of the cast all sang well and the chorus was superb.
Whenever I hear this opera I think about my personal favorite Turandot, Lucilla Udovich, whom John and I met in Rome in 1982. She had had to leave the operatic stage because of constant back problems, making it difficult for her to stand for any length of time. We asked her to sing for us when we visited her in her garden apartment. When I heard this voluptuous voice I said to her 'Lucille, you must perform!' She answered 'But I can't stand to sing.' I said 'Then sing sitting down'. And a year or so later when she and her sister Annie came to the USA, that is exactly what we did: concerts with her seated. We did a number of concerts together and she did master classes for my students at Harvard and in New Jersey.
Our times together were a high point of my musical life. Here from You Tube are examples of how the role of Turandot should be sung. Franco Correlli isn't bad either!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71KKTJ4-Yf0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luvZWyBrwgc
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To finish off my first weekend out, we saw Red Velvet at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. Written by Lolita Chakrabarti, it is based on the life of Ira Aldridge, a black actor who was thrust into the role of Shakespeare's Othello when the noted actor Edmund Kean collapses on stage at Covent Garden in 1833 London.
Ira has made a name for himself in the provinces but has not appeared in London. He is also the first black man to perform the role of Othello, the Moor, in London.
His reviews are very racist and the play closes after three performances. However he goes on to have a great career playing works of the Bard throughout Europe for the rest of his life.
As Ira, Dion Johnstone is very strong. A good actor with a large, resonant voice, he commands the stage. The other actors are equally good. Halina and Margaret Aldridge were played by Annie Purcell, Jürgen Hooper was Casimir and Henry Forester, Terence and Bernard Ward were played by Roderick Peeples, Connie by Tiffany Renee Johnson, Betty Lovell by Bri Sudia, Michael Hayden played Charles Kean, Chaon Cross was Ellen Tree, and Greg Matthew
Anderson was Pierre LaPorte.
The play demonstrates the racism of the British just at the time England was voting to free the slaves in their colonies. Thirty years before out own civil war.
This weekend David and I saw another double-header! What is it about Chicago?
Friday evening was an unusual production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which for some reason was interlaced with a play about the Columbia Women's Club by Ron West. The obvious reason for this was that the cast was composed of all women, the 'club' giving it reason for this casting. This was merely a complete reversal of the way it was done in Shakespeare's day when all the roles were taken by men, but that has long gone out of fashion. The scenes of the club, and their attention to the women's suffrage movement (the date was supposed to be 1919) simply broke up the action that Shakespeare designed.
Alexandra Henrickson
At the end of the production in a 'club' break-in, the actress playing Kate, Alexandra Henrickson, announces that she simply cannot say Kate's final speech now that women have been given the right to vote. She finally says the lines about obeying her husband's every demand. Petruchio, played by Crystal Lucas-Berry, does not put his foot on her offered hand, but instead takes her hand and says 'Come on and kiss me Kate!' Ms. Lucas-Berry said it rather quietly at which time the cast put on sashes proclaiming women's right to vote and sang a patriotic song.
Crystal Lucas-Perry
Poor Will must be rolling around in his grave!
The cast all did a fine job of pretending to be men by speaking very loudly and swaggering about. A good bit of overacting! But I'd rather see a mixed sex cast.
It brought to mind the comment I made recently about changing the last scene of Menotti's The Consul which we saw last week. When one is working with the art of a genius, just sing the song the way he wrote it!
It reminded me of perfomances I attended of Vittorio Gianinni's opera based on the play at the New York City Center in 1958. My dear friend, the late Dorothy Fee, was the librettist and attended every performance with me as her escort. Those were my gigolo days, I guess. Phyllis Curtin was Kate and Walter Cassell was Petruchio. It is a wonderful opera and should be revived! This was when I first met Phyllis. We became friends and, in our old age, shared many happy times together trashing singers we didn't like!
At about this same time I saw Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate! on Broadway with Patricia Morrison and Alfred Drake in the leading roles. Great show!
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'Time magazine called The Skin of Our Teeth “a sort of Hellzapoppin' with brains,” as it broke from established theatrical conventions and walked off with the Pulizer Prize.'
Well something has happened since 1942 when it opened on Broadway with Talullah Bankhead, Frederic March, Florence Eldridge, and Montgomery Clift. The production we saw last night at the Remy Bumppo Theatre just couldn't get off the ground.
The play is supposed to be a 'comic strip' version of human exsistance from the ice age to a post-nuclear war. The Antrobus family struggles for thousands of years to survive.
Last night's cast barely made it.
Kelly O'Sullivan
Kelly O'Sullivan as Sabrina and Linda Gillum as Mrs. Antrobus were the liveliest actors and help keep the play afloat.
Linda Gillum
The final act seemed deadly slow.
The best costumes by Micka van der Ploeg were for the Mammoth and the Dinosaur, who appear in Act One. I have always thought that I directed this play years ago at the Methodist Church in Red Bank, NJ. I remember the wonderful costumes Margaret Stehlik made for those creatures, but I draw a complete blank on the play. Perhaps it was another play with a Dinosaur and a Mammoth?
Old age is hell!
I'm back in Chicago for the winter months except for January when we will be in Albuquerque.
Saturday David and I attended an interview with Trevor Noah of the Daily Show. We both enjoy watching this program. I especially enjoy seeing it in Chicago since it airs at 10:00 pm rather than 11:00 as it does in the East.
Trevor is a very bright, witty young man who has written a book about his growing up in apparteid South Africa with a black mother and a white father.
This was a part of a book tour he is making throughout the country. He had many amusing and wise things to say about our recent disastrous election, comparing it to politics in South Africa. An interesting afternoon.
Last night we saw King Charles III by Mike Bartlett at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. This play was written, rather oddly, in iambic pentameter and concerns a plot by the real William and Kate to get the Prince of Wales to abdicate in their favor after the death of Queen Elizabeth.
I doubt very much that Her Majesty was amused!
It is difficult to accept a contemporary play about real persons that is written in blank verse with the odd rhyme at the end of an important speech. For one thing we have seen and read about these people for years and this distorted image of them did not ring true.
Possibly behind the scenes this sort of plot is being hatched. I have heard rumors that many in Britain would prefer to skip over Charles in favor of William but I don't think the Government is actually planning to follow this procedure.
The large cast was headed by Robert Bathurst as King Charles III, Kate Skinner as Camilla, Jordan Dean as William, Amanda Drinkall as Catherine, and Alec Manley Wilson as Harry.
The last contemporary play I saw that was in blank verse was The Lady's Not For Burning, by Christopher Fry in 1950. It had a Medieval setting about a witch and starred Richard Burton and Claire Bloom. Fry was a much better poet! I also put on The Coming of Christ by John Masefield (blank verse) with music by Gustave Holst at the Red Bank, NJ Methodist Church in 1958. Also a better poet.
This evening David and I saw The Heir Apparent at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. It is a re-write of Le Legataire Universal by Jean-Francois Regnard,
(7 February 1655 – 4 September 1709, "the most distinguished playwright after Moliere") brought up to date as far as language by David Ives. The impressive stage set and costumes remain in the 17th century.
It is a farce about a group of family and servants trying to trick an old man into leaving them his wealth, a sort of prequel to Gianni Schichi.
Mr. Ives has kept the dialogue in rhymed couplets, which at first tended to drive me crazy, but by the second act I was used to the rather inane translation from the French and enjoyed the play.
Nate Burger
The fine cast included Jessie Fisher as Lisette, Cliff Saunders as Crispin, Nate Burger as Eraste, Linda Kimbrough as Mme. Argante, Paxton Whitehead as Geronte, Emily Peterson as Isabelle, and Patrick Kerr as Scruple.
Emily Peterson
The fascinating set included a large clock that farts the hours, a stage full of elegant furniture, and a chest, which supposedly holds the old man's money. Early in the production, they manage to open the chest and find 40,000 francs. They also find a copper sou, which they toss out the window. At the end of the play, when the old man has a change of heart, he tells them that the money is in the farting clock.
Eraste leaps from the window to find the coin. When they insert it in the clock, it opens and pours out gold coins, much like a slot machine.
It made for a fun evening, which was preceded by Dover Sole at Riva! Right next to the theatre on Navy Pier. Fabulous!!
