Sharpenicity

NOTHING BUT THE HITS  Part 2  was nothing but the BEST!  The Heights Players, Brooklyn’s oldest self-sustaining community theater, has done it again!  For their Gala ending their 59th year, they selected some three dozen of American musical theater’s greatest hits for performances on June 10-12.  The singing was pitch perfect and the tap dancing  tiptop as  two dozen Heights Players danced and sang through decades of songs.  Under the direction of Thomas Tyler and Ed Healy,  the show moved  quickly  from one production number to the next.  Cast members shined in a fabulous progression through the show with Musumi Iwai adding some  delightful surprise acrobatics to her ballet number. Stand outs  include the choreography of Aurora Dreger,  the song stylings of newcomer Jonathan Merechant,  and the superb vocals of Rachel Coffin and Ivis Fundichely David Fletcher’s  mu...

WHEN JANUARY FEELS LIKE SUMMER The statue of Ganesha enshrined on the stage at Mosaic’s latest production is no ordinary prop. The Hindu deity is the remover of obstacles.   And do the five characters in When January Feels Like Summer have obstacles! Nirmala (Lynette Rathnam) is a walking widow of an arranged and unconsummated marriage in India that has brought her to New York City.  She runs a grocery while her husband who was shot three years ago is on life support. Ishan/Indira (Shravan Amin) is her brother who wants her to pull the plug on her brain dead husband to use  the insurance money to complete gender reassignment surgery.   Enter Joe (Jason B. Mcintosh), a sanitation worker, to clear out the porno trash that Nirmala’s husband has left— just as his trashy spouse has left him.  Devaun (Jeremy Keith Hunter) and Jeron (Vaughan Ryan Midder) are best friends.  Jeron has the brains but Devaun has the know how with women....

GO GET  YOUR TICKETS NOW FOR  JOURNEY TO THE WEST You don’t need to go to a travel agent and book THE TRIP OF YOUR LIFETIME—Let Constellation Theatre Company take you places you cannot imagine!  In  Journey to the West,  the artistry of director Allison Arkell Stockman  and playwright Mary Zimmerman converge for a multi-layered experience.  A  Buddhist monk (according to ancient Chinese legend) is in search of sacred scriptures in India.  Along the way, he meets a rambunctious monkey (the mind which flips and turns), an insatiable pig (the body and base appetites), and a fiery river monster (heart and muscle).  What started as the re-telling of a historic pilgrimage of a 7th century monk, and became the legend that was recorded as one of China’s four classical novels in the 16th century, has in turn spawned hundreds of films, operas and books on into the  21st century.   Over the centuries,  the ...

OPERA PLOTS: HISTORICAL OR HYSTERICAL …or BOTH? Robert Devereux and Electra While Robert Devereux takes liberties with historical facts, the opera is based on a real person, the English nobleman who was a favorite of Elizabeth I and an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II.   The opera so named after Devereux, based on his downfall and death, is really about    Elizabeth I, sung by no less than soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, who has sung all three Donizetti Tudor Queen operas in the same season   (Mary Stuart,   Anne Boleyn and now Elizabeth I). Electra is a mythological Greek character, the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus princess of Argos.  Nina Stemme is Electra — last seen in Turandot , this October to be Isolde.  (an equally formidable trio of roles to compare to the Tudor Queens!) Besides their royalty, both women  have the opportunity on stage to enact their rages.  Elizabeth   c...

THE MET SIMULCAST WHAT I DID FOR LOVE  - MANON, MIMI AND MADAMA B Madama Butterfly was a most appropriate opera scheduled for the start of  Cherry Blossom Festival Week in Washington DC.   Even though many in the audience have been suffering from allergies, there was delight at seeing the cherry blossoms drifting like snow— but on the screen so assuredly not real blossoms.  Soprano Kristine Opolais continues to amaze as one of Puccini’s women who is obsessed by passionate love, exuding a sensuous aroma in her portrayals of Manon, Mimi, and Madama B.  Only a few weeks before on Met Simulcast,  she sang Manon Lascaut   In April 2014, she made Met Opera history  singing Mimi  in  Boheme when the lead was sick, with short notice, after having sung Butterfly the night  before.   (Yes, two Puccini women in 19 hours!)  And this is what invites the comparison, that Opolais presents each of the ...

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS JEFFERSON, CHARLES DICKENS, AND COUNT LEO TOLSTOY:  DISCORD If you want the God’s honest real true gospel story, stop in to catch  Washington Stage Guild’s latest production of Scott Carter’s  - THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS JEFFERSON CHARLES DICKENS, AND COUNT LEO TOLSTOY:  DISCORD. These three eminents find themselves after death in a locked room (a No Exit situation, seemingly eternal but not specifically either heaven or hell)  with the task to figure out why they are put together before that door will open.    What is given is that each has written his own gospel, extracting from the original four evangelists what fits his construct of ideas simmered by his personal quirks. The rational Jefferson  (Brit Herring), the sentimental  Dickens  (Peter Boyer), and the passionate Tolstoy ( Steven Carpenter) set about this task.    How will these three ever agree provides th...

THREE IN A ROW --PUCCINI'S WOMEN Manon Madame Butterfly Turnadot (Not on this year are Mimi/ La Boheme and Tosca.) What they all share—exotic (erotic?) appeal and emotional vulnerability.   And they also made me wonder, what were the real women in Puccini’s life like. It’s complicated.  Puccini began an affair and had a son with a married woman, Elvira, in 1884. After her husband was killed by the jealous husband of his lover in 1904, Elvira married Puccini.  In 1909, Elvira accused  Doria, a maid, of being Puccini’s mistress.  Doria then committed suicide.  An autopsy showed she was a virgin.  As a side note, Elvira was sentenced to 5 months in prison, which she did not have to serve because Puccini took care of things. While all of Puccini’s opera women end up dead,  Liu, the slave girl in Turnadot , is the only one who is not actively engaged in a physical love affair, like Mimi, Tosca, Butterfly an...