July theater madness

Well, I reckon NYGASP has had all the reviews it’s going to be getting for a while. The Washington Post surprisingly did not turn up to see us do “Gondoliers” at Wolf Trap – the first time in our fourteen successful years there that we’ve done something other than Pinafore/Pirates/Mikado. And it’s their God damn loss, I say, because it was a great performance with a large, appreciative audience. Also no review from our recent gig in Missouri…

The SHOW ME STATE. Which you may recall - if not let me show you - is located here. COLUMBIA, MISSOURI is pretty much in the middle of the state, in the foothills of the Ozarks, between St. Louis and Kansas City. Columbia is quite a college town. Over half the population has a bachelor’s degree, plus the city has been ranked as high as the second-best place to live in the United States by Money Magazine's annual list and is regularly in the top 100. Lots of college students = lots of bars = lots of blonde, buttocky babes imbibing beer. Many German immigrants in Missouri, you know. I recently returned from five days there. Ten NYGASP principals went to do a “concert, staged” performance (us in full costumes and makeup running around while the chorus sits in their chairs with scores) of The Pirates of Penzance, with Al along to conduct the pretty good Missouri Symphony in their fabulous renovated theater. The orchestra was large, the chorus of hired college students was small. It was the usual concert opera arrangement – principals cavorting downstage, conductor and orchestra behind us, and chorus sitting in the back. Of course Al is much more adept at accelerating arbitrarily and holding fermatas longer/shorter than rehearsed than he is at listening and keeping it all together, so having us perform with our backs to him had its difficulties. Michael Galante found a blog by one of our Missouri chorus members (click on that to read, it’s short), which in the second paragraph describes Al as “This Daddy Warbucks/Humpty-Dumpty fellow…” here to illustrate his point:

                             

 

I am including this statue of Mr. Toad because he is bald, too. I love that Toad.

Val and I went to “Gypsy” last weekend. Best revival on Broadway, with certainly the best musical performance, by Patti Lupone as the Shakespeare-quality Mama Rose, also including an even better than usual pit orchestra with particularly brilliant trumpet playing. The kid who played Baby June was quite a firecracker. Conducted by PATRICK VACCARIELLO, delightful fellow who once upon a time conducted Patience for my summer opera company in Maine.
We also saw and loved AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY. Funny, cruel, shocking, and surprisingly worthy of all its awards. Estelle Parsons as another (see "Gypsy") wack-o mother.

Saturday night: DAMN YANKEES AT CITY CENTER! With a cast of “supporting role” TV “celebrities.”
This is supposedly the first NY revival of "Damn Yankees" with the original orchestrations, Fosse choreography, and original book (the Broadway revival in the 90s was “updated” to make hindsight FAG GAGS, for Christ’s sake, about J. Edgar Hoover!), though I think Village Light Opera Group has performed it [I am wrong] and I can’t imagine they would have re-written much. "Damn Yankees was" the first movie musical I ever willingly watched, when I was 10(?), as an alternative to the usual Sunday afternoon Red Sox the rest of my family was watching in the living room. I tuned in for the Faust subject matter (middle-aged turd makes a deal with the Devil to become a young star ball player and beat the Yankees) and was so taken by the music drama aspect of it that I am now what I am today (deliberately vague sentence).

Wednesday: The 39 Steps. A handful of actors performing onstage the kind-of-frantic 1935 Hitchcock movie.

We’ve also seen “The Incredible Hulk” and “Hancock.” “Hulk” is good, especially the deafening, violent, crazy final fifteen minutes. I don’t usually pay attention to stuff like this but Val was there to make sure I noticed that the guy (of color) sitting in front of us had his phone out and was texting throughout the movie (what the hell is that about?); the couple (middle-aged and without color) near us was conversing QUITE FUCKING AUDIBLY about the movie and any other little neuron spark that happened to flit through their brains; and that some idiot dad of color a few rows away had brought four LITTLE CHILDREN, one of whom was SCREAMING HER GUTS OUT throughout the entire final, scary, noisy fight I mentioned before. Naturally the volume was murderous and the subwoofers were giving it everything they had; was this little kid screaming to get into it or because it was just too damn much for a five-year-old girl to try to process as entertainment? Finally, when we left the theater, there was an adult guy (colorless) in the lobby speaking into his cellphone for all to hear: ‘YOU’RE NOT MY FRIEND! I’M SICK OF THE LIES! NEVER CALL ME! I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND! DID YOU HEAR ME? I SAID YOU’RE NOT MY FRIEND? I’M SICK OF THE LIES,” etc, etc. Going to the movies with the masses – must it be such an adventure?
“Hancock” was comparatively sedate and will certainly enthrall anyone who’s ever enjoyed Will Smith, with the superhero stuff incidental to the character comedy.

If you only read two celebrity autobiographies this year here’s the first one -- WILLIAM SHATNER’s “Up Till Now.” Shatner has finally attained some wisdom. I always knew he had it in him. Not only is the book full of nutty Shatner adventures in showbiz and the occasional hilarious rant, you actually feel like he has experienced an epiphany or two during the writing and come to some positive philosophical conclusions about life.

Comments

[Dan Kravetz]

VLOG has never done DAMN YANKEES and probably never will. Why? Because there is little or nothing for a women's chorus to do.

[Brad]

Sometimes I think Steve Quint is a genius.

[eva]

He IS a genius, Brad.