Spoleto

I just got back from Spoleto this morning. Left Asheville about 10:00 Saturday morning, arrived there at about 3:00. Went to Hampton Park to catch a bit of the Piccolo finale stuff. Hot! They were still sort of setting up, but there was an r & b/jazz group playing good music (a terrific "Summertime"--thought of you, Bev, when the singer said the Gershwins had written it in Charleston) and I ate yummy fried plantains. Stayed as long as I could stand the heat (about 45 minutes) and headed downtown. Found a parking place! Saw "The Cody Rivers Show" at 5:00--you're right, Bev, it was really, really funny. The little puppet scenes in the camping sketch were my favorite. But I had to leave 10 minutes early to make it to my 2nd show, "Samurai 7.0" by Beau Jest Moving Theatre (I'd heard of them somewhere years ago). Should have stayed at the first one--"Samurai" was really bad, to my mind, but in an interesting way: Sort of as if my Otrabanda friends and I had decided to get back together after 30 years or so, having learned nothing in the meantime except how to put on weight (that's a bit cruel--and one of them seemed to be anorexic, actually), we had made a new play using theatrics that seemed so cool in the early 70's but now seem very dated. It was really disturbing. And incredibly boring. An object lesson: I sure need to watch out for just recycling old, outdated stuff. Although there was actually one very cool effect where each of the nine actors held up a long stalk of grass and trembled and waved it to the sound of wind. In contrast to other effects that you could tell the actors and director thought were cool but weren't, this one was quite striking.

But: "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" was great! Well, I'm not sure the opera itself is great--although the cumulative effect was quite powerful, there were periods where I was wishing they would just get on with it. But the design! Fantastic--kind of updated, very big budget Brecht. Bev, I think you would have either really liked or really hated the costuming (no, you would have liked it), particularly the colors--very, very bold and in combinations that should have, to my untutored eye, clashed but didn't. Kind of like minor chords in colors: kelly green and chartreuse and hot pink (?) and orange and electric blues. Those were the male chorus colors. The female chorus (prostitutes, what else?) were not quite so electric -- wait, here's a link to some photos (but they don't do the colors justice--much more vivid than in these photos):

http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/6601.html

The photos don't show the makeup on the men's chorus members--they made their first entrance down the aisles, and I had an aisle seat--cool. I saw them up very close, and the makeup was also bold and expressionistic, but in colors, not just black and white.

The piece was set in the time it was written--late 20's, but wildly exaggerated and expressionistic (again, true to the era). No obvious contemporary references, though one couldn't help but think of Katrina (see next paragraph).

The set was amazing, too--again, big-budget Brechtian elements such as a couple of huge "half-curtains" that were actually huge sheets of corregated steel. The end of Act One was played in front of a HUGE painted drop with a very abstract representation of a satellite image of Katrina hitting the Gulf (the story involves hurricanes almost destroying the city of Mahagonny twice--very topical) which, at the very end, dropped to the floor revealing the massed chorus behind. Wow. There was a great scene when they do a drunken mock ship voyage in a barroom by rolling some characters around on a large pool table (might have horrified you, Don, come to think of it). See one of the photos. Also had a really huge bar that moved around. And the two half-curtains/corregated sheets were used in all kinds of ways, always to good effect.

The music was great, needless to say (though I like the music to Threepenny much more), and the singing was, well, operatic, but with a good deal of Brechtian growls and howls thrown in, as well as some speaking. I'm glad they sang in German--it helped keep the whole think in the right mode, given that it wasn't set in America but in a crazed, bizarre, fantasy-America visualized by someone (Brecht & friends) in love with and horrified by an America of gangsters, jazz, boxing, and corruption.

There were a couple of moments/lyrics/ideas that stopped me cold: 1) The idea that hurricanes might wreak a lot of havoc but it's nothing compared to what can be done by humans seeking pleasure; 2) The idea that we put so much energy into creating desire--advertising--and the longing to have desires fulfilled is enormous and potentially violent, but the longing is all there is; once the thing is bought (drink/person/etc.), it loses it's allure. That seems a very contemporary idea (walking past all those trendy shops on King Street....). The opera is deeply, deeply cynical, and so, in a sense, unsatisfying. But the anthem at the end, massed voices endlessly repeating, "There's nothing you can do for a dead man.." (at least that's how I remember it). Very strong.

So I liked it a lot, and it gives me a few ideas for Threepenny--but we'll see. Don't think the budget will really stretch to fit. But I sure don't want to make ours a tame production after seeing this one!

Welcome

This blog constitues a continuation (after a hiatus) of a blog begun during a sabbatical spent (among other activities) attending theatre of different kinds: descriptions of performances, thoughts inspired by them, readings, thoughts inspired by them, etc.

Here's the link back to that blog: Contemporary Performances

Now if I can just post to the damn thing...