#1
Posted: 3/15/08 at 12:58am
The first thing you see when you enter the theatre is--a blue wall. The back wall of the stage has been painted a bright Smurf blue (the bricks and pipe show through) surrounded by an enormous battered-looking gilt frame. Several smaller picture frames, plush chairs, a dressing screen, and a chandelier suspended just above the stage floor complete the picture.
The five lieder singers are attired in Pierrot-like mime costumes, which they don't keep on for long--nor does anyone else in this sex-obsessed production. I've never seen so many actors tearing off each other's clothes in my life. This is not a complaint, mind you--it just takes a little getting used to. I don't know where they could have found the lieder singers, who are certainly used more physically than we're used to (they all have stunning voices)--during "Remember", for example, they chase each other around the stage barefoot (in robes and corsets) and tumble over one another in a large bed which slides on and off the stage (this bed is central to most of the scenes). When the flirtatious maid Petra (Sarah Uriarte Berry) zeroes in on the prissy, repressed Henrik (Josh Young), she unceremoniously shoves her face into his crotch. Later, when this same Petra finds a more responsive partner in the lusty servant Frid (Jonathan C. Kaplan) their seduction scene goes as far as is humanly possible to go on stage (the audience draws in its breath)--it's actually a relief when the scene is interrupted.
All this uninhibited physicality actually illustrated the theme--that love and desire make all of us into clowns--more convincingly than the conversations did. The production is alive in the details and the margins, but its center is lacking. Barbara Walsh (Desiree) and Stephen Bogardus (Frederick) are good singers and pleasant musical-comedy performers, but the roles require actors. Bogardus has a lightweight, TV-style presence; his speeches barely register (he has none of the puzzled anguish Len Cariou managed to bring even to the dreadful movie version). Walsh wears the same grimacing smile in every scene, and her "Send in the Clowns" vanishes from memory before it's finished. She's also rather cruelly treated by the costumer, who puts her in very strange, inelegant shades of green and brown. In "A Weekend in the Country", she wears the most horrifying hat I have ever seen--it looks like a partially digested hamburger that is eating her head.
Polly Bergen had considerable difficulty with her lines and lyrics as Madame Armfeldt--she went up in the middle of "Liaisons" ("What once was a rare champagne/Is now just an amiable hock" came out as "What once...champagne...is now..." and I swear I heard the "f" word). Maxwell Caulfield's gravelly vibrato destroyed Carl-Magnus' songs (he was allowed to strut offstage holding the high note at the end of "In Praise of Women" for WAAAAAY too long). Fortunately, Kate Baldwin displayed catlike comedy timing as the Countess, and Josh Young imbued the normally lifeless role of Henrik with so much screaming sexual frustration you couldn't take your eyes off him (he also has the best voice among the men in the cast.) You couldn't take your eyes off Sarah Uriarte Berry during "Miller's Son", either--she has a killer voice and a passionate fury that made me wonder why the show wasn't about her (or, at least, why she wasn't cast as Anne--a rather fluttery, one-note performance by Julia Osborne.) The score was GLORIOUSLY sung by one and all, especially the choral numbers (no mean feat, when the cast had to dress themselves while delivering the last chorus of "Weekend"--several were gasping for air before the end). And Wayne Barker's orchestra reduction actually worked for this score--it added to the feeling of wistfulness and evanescence (especially the clarinet and harp solos during "Send in the Clowns"). There are several things to be worked out, obviously, but a thrilling production nonetheless--one of the rare ones where the flaws are just as interesting as the (considerable) strengths.
The five lieder singers are attired in Pierrot-like mime costumes, which they don't keep on for long--nor does anyone else in this sex-obsessed production. I've never seen so many actors tearing off each other's clothes in my life. This is not a complaint, mind you--it just takes a little getting used to. I don't know where they could have found the lieder singers, who are certainly used more physically than we're used to (they all have stunning voices)--during "Remember", for example, they chase each other around the stage barefoot (in robes and corsets) and tumble over one another in a large bed which slides on and off the stage (this bed is central to most of the scenes). When the flirtatious maid Petra (Sarah Uriarte Berry) zeroes in on the prissy, repressed Henrik (Josh Young), she unceremoniously shoves her face into his crotch. Later, when this same Petra finds a more responsive partner in the lusty servant Frid (Jonathan C. Kaplan) their seduction scene goes as far as is humanly possible to go on stage (the audience draws in its breath)--it's actually a relief when the scene is interrupted.
All this uninhibited physicality actually illustrated the theme--that love and desire make all of us into clowns--more convincingly than the conversations did. The production is alive in the details and the margins, but its center is lacking. Barbara Walsh (Desiree) and Stephen Bogardus (Frederick) are good singers and pleasant musical-comedy performers, but the roles require actors. Bogardus has a lightweight, TV-style presence; his speeches barely register (he has none of the puzzled anguish Len Cariou managed to bring even to the dreadful movie version). Walsh wears the same grimacing smile in every scene, and her "Send in the Clowns" vanishes from memory before it's finished. She's also rather cruelly treated by the costumer, who puts her in very strange, inelegant shades of green and brown. In "A Weekend in the Country", she wears the most horrifying hat I have ever seen--it looks like a partially digested hamburger that is eating her head.
Polly Bergen had considerable difficulty with her lines and lyrics as Madame Armfeldt--she went up in the middle of "Liaisons" ("What once was a rare champagne/Is now just an amiable hock" came out as "What once...champagne...is now..." and I swear I heard the "f" word). Maxwell Caulfield's gravelly vibrato destroyed Carl-Magnus' songs (he was allowed to strut offstage holding the high note at the end of "In Praise of Women" for WAAAAAY too long). Fortunately, Kate Baldwin displayed catlike comedy timing as the Countess, and Josh Young imbued the normally lifeless role of Henrik with so much screaming sexual frustration you couldn't take your eyes off him (he also has the best voice among the men in the cast.) You couldn't take your eyes off Sarah Uriarte Berry during "Miller's Son", either--she has a killer voice and a passionate fury that made me wonder why the show wasn't about her (or, at least, why she wasn't cast as Anne--a rather fluttery, one-note performance by Julia Osborne.) The score was GLORIOUSLY sung by one and all, especially the choral numbers (no mean feat, when the cast had to dress themselves while delivering the last chorus of "Weekend"--several were gasping for air before the end). And Wayne Barker's orchestra reduction actually worked for this score--it added to the feeling of wistfulness and evanescence (especially the clarinet and harp solos during "Send in the Clowns"). There are several things to be worked out, obviously, but a thrilling production nonetheless--one of the rare ones where the flaws are just as interesting as the (considerable) strengths.
I ask in all honesty/What would life be?/Without a song and a dance, what are we?/So I say "Thank you for the music/For giving it to me."
