Sharpenicity

The world’s leading baritone, Simon Keenlyside not only made his Met role debut as Don Giovanni, in Mozart’s masterpiece, he had a few things to point out in the intermission about what many viewers might already had in their mind—how relevant the theme is to the modern media headlines. For a history refresher,  Don Giovanni opened in 1787, a few weeks before Delaware was the first state ratified the American Constitution,  and on the  eve of the French revolution.   It was years ahead of Darwin’s Origin of Species .   However he did not have to remind us that the news is filled with debates about what the US constitution (from Supreme Court to Presidential elections)  as well as filled with high profile stories of sexual allegations.   Keenlyside, a Cambridge graduate, could probably have talked about this for as long as the opera, but he had to go back on to Act II which shows Mozart’s solution to such flagrancy.   The...

Look!  That’s an interesting Diebenkorn. Oh, gee! it’s a Matisse. French Window at Collioure (1914) . That is not the only surprise at  the Baltimore Museum of Arts’ Matisse/ Diebenkorn (Jan. 29, 2017), where the works of the two artists are interspersed throughout. The first Matisse that Diebenkorn saw  was at a luncheon at the home of the Steins in California.  Matisse’s portrait Sarah Stein (1916), is the starting point for this exhibition. It was love at first sight, but the true connection developed later when Diebenkorn was stationed at Quantico and visited the Phillips Gallery, the National Gallery of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art.  The exhibit contains  36 paintings and drawings by Matisse and 56 by Diebenkorn, The journey follows the chronology of Diebenkorn’s career from representational paintings to abstract and then back to conceptual art.  It ends with his most celebrated Ocean Park series. The wo...

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE an opera about medieval lovers  for modern lovers of opera  Tristan und Isolde,   probably had more viewers then ever in a single performance on Met Simulcast on Oct 8 than in composer Richard Wagner’s life time. I have no concrete numbers to support that statement—but it is a likely possibility  as this is the way opera is viewed by the most people today. Wagner took a medieval legend, turned it into a story for 19th century  sensibilities.   The Met has gone further with a production with modern  technological touches.   I thought as I listened, how modern is this music, and perhaps it was  because I was seeing the scenes now set in a three level ship and then   in a warehouse and finally in   a hospital room. Perhaps it was because Wagner’s music has had such influence on what was written   after him.   But there was no doubt in my mind, that if Wagner had indeed just composed this...

Urinetown The Musical  at Constellation Theatre Company. Pay toilets are no joke in many parts of the world.  Neither is corporate mismanagement run amok with crooked lawmakers and corrupt  policemen.  But no need to read dry political theorists on such a subject,  when you can see  Urinetown at Constellation! Urinetown’s  premise is that not only do all human have a right to be free, but everyone has a right to pee for free.   It makes it case by exploiting every form of humor  possible from word puns to super metaphors. It incorporates satirical take offs of moments from decades of musicals (to name a few: The Threepenny Opera. The Cradle will Rock,  Le Miserables, Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, Chicago, Annie.)  And it takes self-deprecating asides, on what a musical is expected to do (star crossed lovers yes,  but no happy ending in this one.)   The Tony award winning show is clever  ...

HAND TO GOD AT THE STUDIO THEATRE  No one goes away empty handed from Hand to God . Studio Theatre’s production of the five time Tony nominated Broadway show is set in its natural habit—a small Southern town’s church basement.   It is an unexpected surprise to step in to the theater and see it re-fashioned with  pale yellow cinderblock wall  lined with religious posters.   Mount Logan Lutheran Church of Cypress, Texas, looked so familiar.   The plot is simple  enough—Margery (Susan Rome) is a recent widow trying to stage a puppet show, with her son Jason and his puppet Tyrone (Liam Fore, both roles).   Pastor Greg (Tim Getman) and  a delinquent teenager Timothy  (Ryan McBride) both have the hots for her.  Jason wants to go out with Jessica (Caitlin Collins)  who is in a verbal war with Timothy.   Like a three ring circus— the main action is in the center of the church hall, complete with its own stage...

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....