The Play’s the Thing

From the Theatrical Vault Dept.: Here’s another orphan piece, orphaned insofar that I can’t find any indication that it ever ran in any of the publications that used to publish me. So I offer it as a snapshot not only of what I chose to write about in 2006, but also the kind of cultural offerings that came to the Albany area – in this case, to a school that badly needed such things.

                                                                                        

IT HAS BECOME the most daunting of theatrical roles, one that has enticed and destroyed actors for four centuries. Because the bar is perceived to have risen so high, Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy is the bane of many an actor.

Tom Wells

Yet Shakespeare’s masterpiece continues to be the most-performed play in the Western world, has been translated into every major language, and has been the subject of dozens of films and operas. The version presented Mon., Feb. 6, at Watervliet High School by Lenox, Massachusetts-based Shakespeare & Co. is a 90-minute, seven-character touring production tailored for use with school groups.

As such, it probably will serve its audiences as a first glimpse of this formidable play and can, in that context, be judged as something of a success. It moves quickly; it held the attention of a restive audience; it played up elements of Hamlet’s character that remain resonant with teenagers.

As a theater piece, this production bears the stamp of Shakespeare & Co. in its kinetic staging and energetic approach to vocal delivery. Too often, however, this energy got in the way of the play. “Speak the speech,” Hamlet is famously quoted, “trippingly on the tongue.” The youthful cast in this production tended to mistake outright yelling for passion, and, instead of tripping, sometimes fell.

This Mulligan is a Gimme

From the CD Vault Dept.: Here’s a trio of CD reviews from 23006 that I found languishing in a single file (computer, that is, not physical) no doubt intended for Metroland magazine. But I don’t think they were published. I find no record of them in my sent-to-Metroland directory. Jazz, old-timey folk, and pseudo-opera are considered. So, in the spirit of exhuming anything and everything to which I put my digital pen, I offer them here and now.

                                                                                          

MOSAIC RECORDS has an admirable history of issuing the finest series of jazz compilations you’ll ever want to invest in. They’re a joy to own and listen to, and once each limited-run pressing goes out of print, its collectible value skyrockets. Typically ranging from four to ten CDs in an attractive box with very detailed program notes, they sport about the best remastering I’ve ever heard, and the scope of each defines a particular jazz artist and/or label during a particular scope of time.

Recently they initiated a new line of reissues under the title Mosaic Select, each a three-CD set that focuses on (typically) a more recently active artist. Not as exhaustive in scope as the big sets, they allow more of surgical strike on the artist’s catalogue. Thus we have Art Pepper from 1956, some 1957 Bob Brookmeyer sessions (complementing Mosaic’s now out-of-print Jimmy Giuffre set), live Dexter Gordon club date recordings from 1978-79, plus sets by Randy Weston, Bennie Green and many more – 22 of them as of this writing.

Number 21 fits in nicely with the series, presenting Gerry Mulligan in a number of different settings (and contrasting with Mosaic set no. 221, which features Mulligan’s Concert Band recordings from 1960-62).

Back to the Classics

From the Musical Vault Dept.: Keith Jarrett was a little grumpy when I got him on the phone. This was in 1985, and I called to interview him in advance of his appearance in Troy, NY, playing classical Baroque-era selections. Or maybe I came across as a jerk and pissed him off. Either is a possible explanation as to why I didn’t get very much out of him and resorted to quotes from others to fill out the piece below. Nevertheless, I was looking forward to seeing his performance, but he cancelled at the last minute. Five years ago he suffered a pair of strokes that have ended his performing career. So this remains my only in-person brush with the man, although I unreservedly recommend his recording of Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues. I’ve left the piece below in its entirety, including a glimpse of other arts events in the area.

                                                                                           

IT LOOKS LIKE an abrupt change of career, but Keith Jarrett’s recent switch to playing the classics is really a sort of coming home for the pianist, whose early studies included rigorous classical training. Referring to this change, Jarrett told one interviewer last year, “It seems sudden, but several years have been involved. I won't call it a shift. It’s more a choice for the music.”

Keith Jarrett

This makes sense when you realize that Jarrett considers himself not so much an improvisor at the keyboard but a voice for the music he plays, leading him to observe, “It’s appropriate for me to play music that already exists. I’m redirecting the same energies.”

On Saturday, Jarrett brings a program of music by Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti to the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall for an 8 PM concert. Those three composers are being feted this year for sharing the same year of birth three centuries ago. Did this fact motivate Jarrett’s programming? “It’s fortunate that this 300th birthday happened at a time when I might have done this anyway. It’s nice to know that it works out. But I also feel, for example, that Handel’s keyboard music needs to be played more often.”

Coca Nuts

From the Theater Vault Dept.: The madcap excesses of the “Barber of Seville” we discussed last week reminded me of a very different, very funny musical: “On the 20th Century.” I saw it in 1987, when the Broadway tour came to Schenectady. The musical opened on Broadway in 1978, where Judy Kaye replaced Madeline Kahn after a few performances, and it made Kaye’s career. Also in that cast was Imogene Coca, the incredibly funny foil to Sid Caesar for so many years. We were fortunate to have both Kaye and Coca in the cast of this tour, as noted below.

                                                                                           

THE DROP THIS TOURING COMPANY USES for a curtain has giant postcards painted thereon, as if written on board the Twentieth Century, a train that once connected New York and Chicago. The portraits cleverly used on the stamps are of the songwriters responsible for the musicalization of this vintage play: composer Cy Coleman and librettists Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

Imogene Coca

Might as well be so bold as to display their faces. It needed a team this good to take an already good play and make an entirely convincing musical out of it.

It started as “Napoleon of Broadway” by Bruce Millholland. Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht fashioned it into “Twentieth Century,” placing the emphasis on board the train.

Comden and Green added lyrics and some dramatic touches of their own, with a Coleman score that is a throwback to the operetta-ish stuff of Jerome Kern’s day.

The spectres of great actors hang over this show. Thanks to the 1934 movie, it’s easy to recall John Barrymore and Carole Lombard as the irascible producer and mercurial star. Which gives Frank Gorshin and Judy Kaye a hell of a tradition to top, but they did so with gusto.