American Ballet Theatre: Mixed Repertory Program
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ABT Spring 2013 PlaybillOur American Ballet Theatre season continued Tuesday night with a mixed repertory program featuring Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyesthe company premiere of A Month in the Country and Symphony in C. It was a wonderful evening featuring many of ABT’s principal dancers.

The program opened with Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, which featured a solo pianist at center stage. This is a contemporary piece that was created for ABT and had its world premiere in 1988. Twelve dancers, including principals Marcelo Gomes and Hee Seo, were on stage in various combination showing some amazing musicality as the moves fit exactly the varying tempo of the piano. It was beautiful watching these bodies move together.

Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes

Julie Kent in A Month in the CountryA Month in the Country had some of my favorites in its premiere cast as it featured Julie Kent, Roberto Bolle and Daniil Simkin. This was the only portion of the evening where there was a plot for the dance. Set in the 1850s at a country house belonging to Yslaev and his wife Natalia along with their family, including son Kolia, teenaged ward Vera and Natalia’s friend Rakitin. Everything is disrupted when Kolia’s tutor, Beliaev, arrives. Soon after, Vera develops a crush on him, which causes Natalia to be overcome with jealousy. Beliaev, in turns, falls for Natalia. Their love is fleeting though as Vera catches them and tells the family of Natalia’s betrayal.

I loved Julie and Roberto dancing in this part of the evening. They were stunning together with great chemistry. Roberto had some gorgeous solo moments as well. I wish Daniil had more to do in the piece as I enjoy his dancing. He did, however, make the most of the moments he had.

While I loved the larger dance movements this piece presented, the overall plot didn’t do much for me (it is “freely adapted” from Ivan Turgenev’s play). I prefer the darker aspects of scorned love, such as in Onegin, than this more light hearted approach to it. As I said though, the dancing was exquisite and made it easy to ignore the plot.

The evening concluded with Symphony in C, a George Balanchine work from 1947. I love seeing Balanchine ballets and this one did not disappoint. As the work went through its four movements, more and more dancers filled the stage in a fantastic explosion of movement. Once again some favorite principal dancers were involved–Paloma Herrera, Cory Stearns, Xiomara Reyes, and Herman Cornejo–were among more than 50 dancers who were involved in the piece. It was a perfect end to the evening.

Symphony in C

On Saturday we’re back at the Met for Don Quixote featuring Paloma Herrera and Cory Stearns.

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    Paperback Cover of the Week: The Intruders
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      American Ballet Theatre: Onegin (2013)
      Posted by in Dance, Theatre | Tagged

      ABT Spring 2013 PlaybillWe started our third season of American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House yesterday afternoon with the beautiful and tragic Onegin.

      Onegin was presented at the Met for the first time in its new ABT production last season. It became one of my favorites when we saw it because of it’s dramatic plot and gorgeous choreography. It did not disappoint with a second viewing.

      For this performance David Hallberg played the title role. We saw Hallberg twice last year, once with ABT in The Firebird and the other in a Kings of Dance performance. He was amazing as Onegin, acting the complex role brilliantly and performing the dance to perfection. The final dance in Act III between Onegin and Tatiana was heartbreaking. Principal dancer Polina Semionova was also wonderful as Tatiana, who is initially spurned by Onegin and then years later turns around and spurns him.

      onegin2013-hallberg

      Joseph Gorak, as Onegin’s friend Lensky, and Yuriko Kajiya, as Lensky’s love, were good. Gorak has great fire in Act II when Onegin starts flirting with his girl. Gorak and Kajiva and excellent chemistry as they danced a couple of times in the first two acts.

      onegin2013-2

      This coming week we take in two ABT productions. On Tuesday night we see a mixed repertory performance that includes Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, the company premiere of A Month in the Country and Symphony in C. Then on Saturday afternoon we see Don Quixote.

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        The Collected Works of Jeff Adams
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        BicycleBuiltforTwoLGAs part of their 6th Anniversary, Dreamspinner Press is running a sale thru May 19th. You can grab each of Jeff’s published stories for 30% off! Click here for all the details.

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          Paperback Cover of the Week: Idylls of the Queens
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            Far From Heaven
            Posted by in Theatre | Tagged ,

            Far From Heaven PlaybillYesterday, we went to the fifth preview performance of the new musical Far From Heaven, which is based on the 2002 film of the same name. Between the good buzz the production had following its preview run at the Williamstown Theatre Festival last summer and its creative team–composer Scott Frankel, lyricist Michael Korie (both collaborated on Grey Gardens) and book writer Richard Greenberg (who has a number of great plays to his name, including Take Me Out) as well as director Michael Greif (Rent, Giant, Angels in America)–I figured we were in for something magical.

            The plot follows the film closely. Cathy and Frank live an idyllic life in Hartford, Connecticut in 1957. However, the fall brings changes for them both as Frank can no longer fight his attraction to men and Cathy finds herself attracted to Raymond, the family’s black gardener.

            Kelli O'Hara in Far From HeavenKelli O’Hara is perfect as Cathy. Her journey from happy housewife to the shock of finding out about her husband’s troubles, which starts with her having to pick him up from the police station because of a “loitering” charge, and on to finding out how hateful people can be because of an initially harmless friendship with a “negro.” is spot on. And, it’s no surprise that O’Hara wraps her voice around the music beautifully and her performance is heartbreaking.

            Steven Pasquale was tortured as Frank. He knows what he’s doing his considered wrong for the time. He knows it’s hurting his wife, but that doesn’t stop him from lashing out either. Isaiah Johnson was perfect as Raymond. He wants to be able to have the friendship with Cathy, and possibly more. Unfortunately, reality crashes in and he realizes that it’s not possible.

            Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale - Far From Heaven

            The show is good, although it hasn’t hit greatness (or become magical) quite yet. Unlike Grey Gardens, which took its documentary source material and expanded on it, Far From Heaven plays out like the film with the addition of some songs. Granted, I haven’t seen the film in a few years, but it doesn’t seem like anything has been expanded or altered too much from the source. It feels like a missed opportunity to not further explore the characters and issues presented in the story.

            We attended a post-show discussion yesterday with Frankel, Korie and Greif and an extended discussion happened over the ending of the show. They aren’t happy with it yet, and some members of the audience agreed. The trio said that some new material was going into the show this coming Tuesday (meaning tomorrow) and that they were still tinkering ahead of Far From Heaven‘s June 2 opening night.

            There are some wonderful songs in the show. “Marital Bliss,” which features the wives singing about how much they enjoy sex with their husbands is wonderfully comical but also a little sad since Cathy isn’t getting that with her husband. “Miro,” between Frank and Cathy as they attend an art show was delightful. “The Only One,” which plays between Raymond and Cathy, presents the sad reality of race in 1957 Hartford. “Wandering Eyes” was a perfect song to play while Frank his dancing with his wife but also flirting with another man at a Miami club.

            It will be interesting to see the reviews of Far From Heaven once it opens. Hopefully it can move from the “good” show it currently is to a “great” show.

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              Not Much to Be Glee-ful About
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              gleeSeason four of Glee came to an end Thursday night.

              I’m glad that’s over.

              Sad thing is I’m not sure the recently announced season five and six are going to be worth my time.

              I admit, there’s yet to be a perfect Glee season. The show has never been consistent with its story choices and writing. One week you can have a superb episode only to be followed by something that is poor. Most seasons have a few story arcs worth following–Quinn’s pregnancy, Kurt’s bullying and its aftermath, the constant battle to get to sectionals… regionals… and on to nationals, the courtship of Kurt’s father to Finn’s mom, will Rachel and Finn actually stay together, what kookiness will Brittany do next. Plus, even in bad episodes, you could count a batch of great musical numbers.

              Season four has brought plots that are muddled and no overall arc to hold the season together. At times it’s been sketchy if the gang is actually preparing for regionals or not. There’s been a lot of derivative plot this season too–Rachel’s pregnancy scare and Blaine wanting to purpose to Kurt to name a couple. Some episodes don’t even seem to have a plot, merely some lose concept to hang songs off of.

              The glut of characters hasn’t helped either. How many “sick” days did Joe, Sugar and even occasionally Tina, Brittany and Sam rack up? Most likely this happened because the producers didn’t want to pay the entire cast to show up for the episode. Did they really need all the new characters? Marley and Ryder never really did it for me. Jake was okay, but underused. It was great to see they added Unique as a regular, but she was mostly underused too even though there was such story potential there (which they explored for about 30 seconds when the parents came to school to discuss the issue of dressing as girl). Look at this ginormous cast photo, which doesn’t even have all of them.

              glee-full-cast-season-4

              Oddly, the most interesting stuff of the season happened with the crew in New York. Rachel and Kurt had plot I was interested in. Although it also was mishandled. Kurt got into NYADA, only to turn around and go to Ohio for weeks (he stayed on well beyond his father getting a clean bill of health). Rachel had something going with hunky Brody, only to have him turn into a gigolo (?!?) and disappear. I admit, I do worry that if Rachel gets into Funny Girl that the Glee will end up being more like Smash (and we all know how Smash ended)

              Most disappointing of the season is the drop in good musical numbers. Looking back across the season very few songs stand out–Kurt and Blaine singing “Come What May,” Emma ditching her wedding with “Getting Married Today,” Blaine’s “Don’t Stop Me Now,” Kurt’s NYADA auction of “Being Alive,” Rachel’s NYADA showcase numbers of “Being Good Isn’t Good Enough” and “O Holy Night,” the New York party smash up of “Let’s Have a Kiki” / “Turkey Lurkey Time,” and Quinn/Santana/Brittany on “Come See About Me.” The best song of the season by far happened way back in episode 4 when Blaine broke up with Kurt to a heartbreaking acoustic version of “Teenage Dream.” In seasons past, I’ve tended to buy at least three or four songs per episode. This season, however, I bought fewer than 30 out of the more than 100 songs available.

              As I said earlier, I don’t hold out much hope for season 5. Glee broke their usual paradigm of a season equalling a school  year. As the season ended, they’ve only made through regionals. That means nationals and graduation for the current senior class (people like Artie, Blaine, Tina and Sam) will have to kick off next season. And what of Brittany? Early admittance to MIT… is she not back in season 5 or will the show have to splinter again to cover the goings on at another school? With the school year unfinished it seems difficult for them to be able to start fresh in the fall.

              The best thing that could’ve happened in my mind is to move the show to NYC and figure out a way to get the original cast all living in New York. They already moved Santana. Artie is accepted to Brooklyn Film School. It wouldn’t be hard to get everyone else there and put them in college.

              I will be back for season 5–at least the start of it to see if I can stand to watch. When the show is good, it’s very good. I’m hoping the writers and producers find a way to tip the balance back so that it’s more good than bad.

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