Photo: Benjamin Suomela
Love in the time of Coronavirus. Love in the time of Presidential elections. That's all we hear about these days.
Reminders of the world's current authoritarian trend-lines, though, were not absent from the Weimar Republic Festival put on by conductor laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen with the LA Philharmonic. That spirit of Germany's impending trauma of 1918-1933, a movement reflected by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht et al, came to Disney Hall in a brilliant production by the brothers Simon and Gerard McBurney.
Can you revel in a stage artist's magical creation of a decadent time? A time of raging capitalism? Of social chaos and political passions? Of rotting morality? All as the lead-in to Fascism? Forgetting that it came with great artistic and cultural freedom?
But of course. Just look around.
Especially at the recent Weimar Festival, where Disney Hall's square interior, with audience arranged on all four sides of the stage and no proscenium arch, I saw its best treatment so far since the acclaimed concert venue opened. A superb effort. Its credits belong to Anna Fleischele, along with Simon McBurney as a designer-architect-engineer-artist team in their handling of and inhabiting the space.
To surround the music (Paul Hindemith, Weill) they created an aura of dark Bauhausian sculptural panels in naturally-placed upstage divisions with chorus members housed in between them. The whole thing had an artistic balance -- an integration -- I've never seen before at Disney.
And its impact -- together with the darkened stage, the grainy black-and-white video clips of street life, Nazi soldiers at the Brandenburg Gate, etc. as background for Weill's "Berlin Requiem " -- was stunning. So too the stark music, splendidly played to its dramatic perfection, along with Grant Gershon's mighty chorus.
The Hindemith work, "Murderer, Hope of Women," had less theatrical advantage, but Salonen and the orchestra let its collective power sweep us into a racing, soaring torrent with voices slashing cross-wise through it.
And, finally, Weill-Brecht's "The Seven Deadly Sins" had a compelling treatment. More videos, this time of the Roaring Twenties in various American cities named in the text. As Anna I (the singer), Nora Fischer made a spunky, no-nonsense adventurer and as Anna II (the dancer), her doppelganger, Gabriella Schmidt embodied the wanton street-girl.
But just in case the name Weimar still does not ring bells, think, for starters, of movieland's émigrés from the early '30s: Fritz Lang, Marlene Dietrich ("The Blue Angel," where she strolled around a restaurant in a top hat and tux singing and kissing women at tables) -- not to mention "Cabaret" (Kander/Ebb), based on Christopher Isherwood's "Goodbye to Berlin."
What's more, the company across the street, LA Opera, was busy -- with two productions on the Chandler Pavilion stage, one that ranged into existential territory: the premiere of Matthew Aucoin's "Eurydice," yet another notch in the mythical subject composers have been obsessed with through history.
From "Eurydice." Photo: Cory Weaver
Aucoin turned to Sara Ruhl who wrote its libretto based on her acclaimed play. It grapples with lots of reality issues embedded in the text: "Am I here, or there? Dead or alive?"And it captures lots of identity insights. "All he cares about is his music," Eurydice complains, of her composer husband Orpheus.
Even with Dan Ostling's provocatively post-modernish designs, though, and Mary Zimmerman's astute direction, it's Aucoin's music that shines through.
His skill is widely evident. The orchestral score -- a glittery frame that boasts a full arsenal of styles from Wagner to Glass -- artfully moves the narrative forward. What's more his innate kinship to the voice produces lines of glorious shape, so sing-able that I would imagine future cast hopefuls galore. Danielle de Niese, as the title character, luxuriated in those soaring lines, as Joshua Hopkins (Orpheus) and Rod Gilfry (the father) excelled in theirs.
But LA Opera's next entry, Donizetti's "Roberto Devereux," tumbled into an opening night jinx, no fault of conductor Eun Sun Kim, who capably held things together. Its scheduled soprano fell ill and canceled. A replacement, Angela Meade, who had sung the fairly treacherous role of Queen Elizabeth I elsewhere, stepped in -- but only by standing at the side curtain, since she had just several days notice and no time to rehearse.
Bad mistake.
Better to be onstage -- even with her music stand -- because the actual animation of singing and being there gives life to the physical interactions of the other cast members, rather than making the supposed drama a drowsy charade. And besides, this simple-minded Canadian production requires little more than face-this-way, exit-that-way-cues, as directed by Stephen Lawless.
To think that Beverly Sills gave hit status to "Devereux" when, in 1970, she sang it with New York City Opera and made history with Donizetti's Tudor Trilogy, featuring those three doomed lives, the first two by the hand of Henry the Eighth (his wives Mary Stuart and Anne Boleyn, besides Devereux).
Even though Meade had the rich lower range to denote the Queen's malice toward her faithless lover, Devereux, -- sung nicely by Ramon Vargas -- that wasn't enough. Sills, of lighter voice, fell short there. But her theatrical power as the almost elderly monarch, stalking around the stage in 55 pounds of upholstered velvet with a heavily chalked visage, commanded everyone's attention. Ditto her charged coloratura, of course.
Here, so did the lovely singing of Ashley Dixon, as Devereux's lover Sara, constitute LA Opera's best feature.
More words and music and, this time, dance, descended at UCLA' Royce Hall:
Pam Tanowitz, among the most sought-after and brainiest choreographers around, knows where to furnish her creative instincts.
How about T.S. Eliot's famous poetry cycle "Four Quartets," ("At the still point of the turning world..."), in a masterly recitation by Kathleen Chalfant, intertwined with the Knights exceptional playing of nuanced interludes?
Yes, you can collect an arts potpourri. But then you must get a Tanowitz to pull it together with movement that is not arbitrary -- which is what makes her stand at the top of the heap.
With this work she shows you what core impetus is. Her response -- abstract, as in Merce Cunningham, as opposed to narrative as in Martha Graham -- to Eliot's deeply questioning words about existence, about life in the midst of so much death (World War II), is revelatory. I marveled throughout the 75 minutes that no moment had an undetectable stimulus, even in the subtlest terms.
But music, alone, was all we needed when Gustavo Dudamel took charge of his LA Philharmonic with a festive survey of Dvorak and Charles Ives, among our country's most spirited musical minds. A true original, he studied his craft deeply and came out an expert -- as well as the open-hearted Connecticut Yankee who so loved our tunes, our marches, our parks' band concerts, our hymns and holidays that he uproariously splintered them together in his best known works. Who could not smile listening to their wit, their cleverness, their experimental adventure?
The surprise, for many, came in Ives' rarely heard 1st Symphony, a part of which sounded like something from mitteleuropa WW I -- gently lilting, tender, luscious. Dudamel and the Phil found those qualities and brought them to loving perfection.
Aleisha Force, Richard Azurdia, Tarina Pouncy and Matt Kirkwood in 'Human Interest Story. Photo by Jenny Graham.
The daily Bulletin is changing its motto from "A free press means a free people" to "A streamlined newspaper for a streamlined era."
Is this the latest symptom of the continuing economic collapse of American journalism? Then why does the motto still bother to include that antiquated word "newspaper"?
In fact, this change of a publication's motto appeared in 1941. It was graphically depicted in the first post-titles image of the movie "Meet John Doe," which was released then, back in the days when newspapers still appeared only on newsprint.
Stephen Sachs of the Fountain Theatre had the inspired idea of not only updating this film's script to 2020, but also expanding it to include a representative of Americans who were hardly visible in the original. In his "Human Interest Story" at the Fountain, "John Doe" is now "Jane Doe" -- a black woman who became homeless after she was laid off from her job as a teacher.
As in the original screenplay, this new "Doe" fills a gap in a yarn that was cooked up by a newspaper columnist -- in this version a man named Andy Kramer. As he's about to be laid off by the cost-cutters who now run his newspaper, he writes and runs a protest letter that's supposedly by the desperate "Doe" -- whose grand finale is a vow to kill herself on the Fourth of July. This letter creates a sensation about the fictitious woman's plight -- and it saves Andy Kramer's job. But he's then asked to find the real "Jane Doe."
Enter the destitute ex-teacher, whose name is Betty Frazier. She agrees to assume the identify of "Jane Doe," initially welcoming the upgrade from homelessness to hotels. Using words mostly written for her by Andy, she soon becomes a celebrity, appearing often on national TV.
The newspaper's new publisher sees Jane Doe primarily as a cash cow -- and then as a potential godsend for his own upcoming political campaign, which begins to draw on funds contributed by Doe disciples. But will Betty Frazier remain as peaceful as, well, a doe? Or will she begin to resent her role as the mouthpiece of two white men -- who can't stand each other?
In other words, Sachs enlarged the scope of the old Robert Riskin script beyond the corruption of journalism and the spectacle of economic inequality to include other red-hot topics: race, gender, homelessness, and a rich media mogul who plans to bulldoze and bully his way into political office via elaborate lies, rallies and stunts. Does any of this sound familiar?
It might sound like too much of a stew, but Sachs has cooked the ingredients into a bubbling boil. He avoided most opportunities to make the play LA-centric. The script is set in "an American city," with a variety of place names that aren't tied to any one metropolis. However, we hear references to the success of the LA Times "Dirty John" podcast and to the fictional city's homeless population of 36,000 -- which also is the number of homeless people identified as living last year within the city limits of Los Angeles.
Under Sachs' direction, Tanya Alexander is equally compelling as Betty and as Jane Doe. Andy is played by Rob Nagle, who delivers solid work in a different new play just about every three months, or so it seems. Aleisha Force plays a sharp-angled, not-so-romantic partner and professional colleague of Andy's. As the media mogul Harold Cain, James Harper channels Trump more than Bloomberg, but the character's name also suggests another newspaper mogul - the Citizen Kane whose own movie was also released in 1941, like the "Meet John Doe" original.
Finding an ending for this saga is a challenge. The filmmakers reportedly found and shot several before picking just one. The play's ending should be open to discussion, but only after you see it; otherwise we're in spoiler-land.
By the way, a stage musical based on the original "Meet John Doe" attained some respectful attention from critics in DC in 2007 and Chicago in 2011. Not having seen it, I don't know how its version of the story ends. LA producers should consider creating the musical's West Coast premiere. It would be fun to see how it might bounce off "Human Interest Story," so start your engines soon. "Meet John Doe" has a lot more contemporary bite than I would have imagined before I saw "Human Interest Story."
Another play that addresses the economic collapse of American journalism -- although without the larger dimensions of Sachs' play -- is Steven Leigh Morris' "Red Ink," about to close in the tiny Playwrights' Arena space in Atwater. Befitting the playwright's experience as a journalist at LA Weekly, "Red Ink" examines the arena of alternative newspapers that are taken over by larger corporations -- but from within the context of Bellevue Hospital, into which the newspaper's former editor has been committed. In other words, it explicitly takes place in New York, not in LA, which was a little disappointing to any of us LA observers who were hoping to witness a more direct connection to the LA Weekly saga.
Speaking of local references in the current crop of new plays, a title couldn't sound much more local than "West Adams," Penelope Lowder's new play. It's set against the backdrop of gentrification in the eponymous LA neighborhood -- although the production itself is at the Skylight, in long-gentrified Los Feliz. Yet as a broad satire that gradually evolves into over-the-top soap opera, "West Adams" seems oddly distant from any actual gentrification area. All the characters are among the neighborhood's new arrivals. No one represents the displaced, who would seem to be an essential component of a play that addresses gentrification.
A much tighter fit between a local subject and a local play occurs in Matthew Leavitt's "The $5 Shakespeare Company." In fact, let's call it site-specific. Its fictional story is set in a small Hollywood theater, backstage as well as onstage, and the production itself is in the pint-sized Theatre 68 in NoHo. The title of the play doubles as the name of the fictional troupe within the play; the $5 refers to the price of tickets to the fictional company's cheaply produced Shakespeare.
Emerson Collins and Cindy Nguyen star in the "The $5 Shakespeare Company. Photo: Karianne Flaathen.
Although "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is that company's current attraction, we see only a few glimpses of it. The heart of the matter is in the backstage comings and goings of the cast, which occasionally approach "Noises Off" territory.
A rumor spreads among the backstage actors that the audience tonight includes a delegation from the city's parks department, which is scouting for a classical company to perform in "Summer of Shakespeare" -- a parks gig that has been vacated by the "Globe-Trotters," whose leader is moving to London. (Perhaps this was inspired by the real-life Independent Shakespeare Company, which performs free Shakespeare in Griffith Park. Its leaders include the British-born David Melville, although he isn't moving to London).
The "$5" actors go agog over the prospect of better pay, larger audiences and greater exposure to Hollywood casting directors. It's an amusing situation, enacted with considerable verve by veteran director Joel Zwick's cast. Those of us who frequently see or are involved in theater in, well, petite LA venues might laugh the loudest.
FYI, the tickets to the real-life "$5 Shakespeare Company" cost $35, not $5. The real-life actors are working under Actors' Equity's 50-Seat showcase code, which limits the number of performances but doesn't require even minimum-wage payments. However, they're receiving small stipends for rehearsals as well as performances, according to a spokesman for the production.
Leaving behind the pint-sized theaters, let's move on to LA's commercial theater business, which has shown a few signs of revival recently. The kingpin of this domain, the Nederlander company that runs the Pantages Theatre near the east end of the heavily visited section of Hollywood Boulevard, is expanding its empire for at least two seasons into the even larger Dolby Theatre, at the boulevard's opposite end, beginning this week with "Escape to Margaritaville."
This is happening as "Hamilton" returns to its previous Pantages home for much of this year, and also as the city has begun to discuss a possible plan to make the boulevard -- already well-served by Metro's Red Line subway -- more pedestrian-friendly and less amenable to solo cars.
Meanwhile, "Rock of Ages" -- the musical set in a Sunset Strip club in 1987 -- has returned to Hollywood Boulevard in an actual club, the Bourbon Room. It's not far from the Pantages, which presented other "Rock of Ages" companies in 2011 and 2012. The new "Rock" is also close to the three other club venues that hosted the musical's earliest incarnations in 2005 and 2006.
'Rock of Ages' cast.
Judging from my several experiences with "Rock," I noticed its refreshingly self-deprecating moments more often than usual in this new and apparently open-ended version. Its arrival roughly coincided with a two-weekend-only commercial run of Tom Eyen's campy "Women Behind Bars," a few blocks away at the Montalbán Theatre, which (under different names) once was a mainstay of LA's commercial theater scene.
Also, for one more weekend at El Portal in North Hollywood, another would-be for-profit producer is trying to revive a project, the newly titled "Hamlet the Rock Musical." This Cliff Jones musical, now produced by David Carver Music, had a long life in LA under a nonprofit banner at the Odyssey Theatre in West LA, with a much better title -- "Something's Rockin' in Denmark," beginning in 1981. That previous title (and also the title for the show's brief Broadway run, "Rockabye Hamlet") indicate a sense of humor that seems to be mostly missing from the current production, but the disco-era costumes might be funny enough for aficionados of the genre.
Most of the original Shakespearean text is also missing from "Hamlet the Rock Musical." Some of the disillusioned characters in "$5 Shakespeare Company," a few blocks away, would probably conclude that this omission might actually attract audiences, because Angelenos "don't care about Shakespeare." But the hordes who attend Independent Shakespeare's productions each summer in Griffith Park might disagree.
The film academy gave the media in town for the Oscars a look around the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, scheduled to open at Wilshire and Fairfax perhaps later this year. For now it's still a construction site, but coming along since the last big reveal. Iris Schneider took the Friday tour for LA Observed.
The 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater is the main feature inside the concrete sphere built behind the landmark May Co. building.
The dome added to the Miracle Mile-district skyline was designed by architect Renzo Piano.
The Dolby Family Terrace provides great views from atop the Sphere building.
The Barbra Streisand bridge connects the sphere with the museum's main building in the former May Company, renamed by the museum as the Saban building.
Scene from Matthew Bourne's "Swan Lake." Photo by Johan Persson.
Used to be that the East Coast Elite called Los Angeles "a cultural wasteland," adding that pejorative to its put-down of populist TV, nation-wide.
It wasn't enough that this city hosted such renowned refugees as Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill et al who created work of extraordinary value here. Or even that its own orchestra, helmed then by the 26-year-old swashbuckler Zubin Mehta, came calling at celebrity's door. The LA Phil still had trouble cracking "the big five" classical enterprises (New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland).
Now, there's no contest. LA's own Michael Tilson Thomas just became a Kennedy Center honoree in the most vibrant profile of the entire televised celebration, and is very visible these days at Disney Hall, since stepping down from his San Francisco Symphony.
Although his reserved, un-hungry persona eschews the rock star spotlight, his stellar gifts (podium meister, pianist, Bernstein-like explainer of music from James Brown to Beethoven, winner of a National Medal of Arts, Peabody award, countless Grammys and founder of Miami's New World Symphony) make him a unique treasure. (More below on MTT's recent Disney Hall concert ).
But Mehta, back in the 60's, got the ball rolling big-time. The Bombay-born maestro was musically high-born. A figure who could not be ignored -- neither in New York, nor Vienna, nor Tel Aviv, nor elsewhere.
His LA Phil tenure (1962-1978) and then his NY Philharmonic post (for 13 years, the longest in that podium's history) came with a mastery of the late-Romantic extravaganzas and a break-out adventurism. But his tripping along with the Three Tenors shows, staged at massive arenas around the world, was often scorned as a crass sellout. (Pavarotti, especially targeted, won public adoration as that golden-voiced presence, that giant cherub waving a big white hanky and sucking in applause as though it were oxygen.)
Funny thing, though. Critical purists pooh-pooh such performances, while artists' managements pray for their popularized artists to bring in a bonus bankroll. Mehta's Time magazine cover signaled his primacy.
And now local audiences honor him with prolonged ovations, even as his stride to the podium is no longer a powerful force, but a slow, labored stroll, the effects of recent illness and 83 years of vigorous conducting.
After all, he never gave up his L.A. residence in the Bel-Air hills. He was an honorary native. He returned over the years to lead Philharmonic programs and to his family -- mainly his parents, who moved here from Bombay, his conductor father Mehli Mehta continuing his career as the American Youth Symphony's beloved music director.
So, who ignites the public? The general public, not just the classical music ticket-buyers. The ones who, even on the downside of their careers, remain top stars. We've got one in his prime now, 38-year-old Gustavo Dudamel.
He can name his pick anywhere in the world. And that ups the ante here at the LA Phil. It marks the city as a major center, with "the strongest, most innovative orchestra in the country," says the NY Times.
Which leads us to the Dudamel question: Who else from the concert hall realm has the wattage to be drafted for a Super Bowl half-time show? And for an upcoming animated film. And for conducting "West Side Story" in a new Spielberg picture? We know. Stars seek out their coterie of stars. It's called product-enhancement. Celebrity loves celebrity. And it pays off.
So no one, arguably, would dispute L.A. as the world capital of entertainment. Even our last music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, turned down a bid to take over the NY Philharmonic.
Okay. So we have Bombay (Mehta), Helsinki (Salonen) and -- hurray -- an honest-to-god Angeleno (Michael Tilson Thomas). Nothing against internationalism, but just to say, not everything is imported.
Tilson Thomas, prior to his Kennedy Center TV airing, came to us with "Appalachian Spring," a reading that grasped Copland's delicacy as a spirit, his rhythmic aliveness and, altogether, the open-hearted sensibility of such American music.
The orchestra, its playing rock-solid, even took some unexpected leaps under MTT's ministrations with its soloist, Daniil Trifonov, in Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1.
Now you can forget the hundreds of times this warhorse has been trotted out by super-virtuosos -- ever since that tall Texan Van Cliburn brought home his 1958 International Tchaikovsky Competition prize from Moscow for his elegant account (which did so much for détente between the Soviet Union and U.S.).
But here was that ever-mindful Russian (who lives in New York) and decided to take it back. I have not heard anyone play the Tchaikovsky 1st with such depth, clarity and power as Trifonov. His unearthing of its structure let us hear something brand new, his simplified, un-pedaled statements revealing an original impetus. No matter where he determined to go MTT and the orchestra followed as a single heartbeat. I even saw a rarity at the 1st movement cadenza: the players sat in rapt attention, hardly breathing.
Something rare, also, had to be the Philharmonic's Viennese New Years show. This time Mehta, a baked-in manager of the mit schlag tradition, led the band in those delectable Johann Strauss numbers. And, come on, who could resist the rollicking "Tritsch-Tratsch" polka, ballet bon-bons or soprano Chen Reiss's Csardas from "Die Fledermaus?"
But do not despair. Mehta, still conducting from his stool, also signed up for his long-time favorite, a Germanic bill of Wagner and, this time, the noted 2nd Viennese School composers.
One thing to count on: that Wagnerian music with this orchestra, in this hall, is like nothing else -- especially, of course, with a maestro like Mehta. The clear lines layering, the beef, the sheen, the balances, the expressivity. All of it thrilling. So what, you can't get to Bayreuth? Hearing these excerpts from "Götterdämmerung" is enough.
The composer's loving heart for Siegfried and Brünnhilde's heroic radiance were high moments. Consider: soprano Christine Goerke's apparatus-like power in the Immolation Scene and her timing with Mehta, as she pushed the stage door to exit exactly on cue with the drum-roll crash signifying that glorious, sacrificial burn.
Deeply, thoroughly symphonic as well, although on a small scale, was Schoenberg's last tonal work, the Chamber Symphony No. 1, written just 30 years later and right before his revolutionary leap to 12-tone music). Mehta and the Phil gave us its restless energy spilling over, its searching quality, its break-outs of longing, all with passionate engagement.
A different kind of breakout hit the Ahmanson Theatre stage when, once more, Matthew Bourne treated us to his satiric social parable, "Swan Lake." You know, the one with menacing male swans, flapping around bare-chested, in their shag-rug pantaloons.
Well, Bourne, a self-confessed "serial meddler" was up to his old masterly tricks again, tinkering with the narrative and inventing new relationships.
The one that grabbed me was the third act ballroom scene with Odile (here called the Stranger). No longer a shiny sex object magnetizing the prince, Will Bozier was the re-incarnation of Marlon Brando confronting Vivien Leigh in "Streetcar Named Desire." The rape scene. And more.
The women here did not ooh and aah, they cringed. He menaced them. Even the queen mother, who craved him, allowed his assault and degradation, all of it especially targeting the prince; he was punished by the sight of his amour having sex with his mother. The slaps, the grunts, the utter domination in Bozier's body language -- his muscular bearing, his authenticity -- left us gaping.
Let's hear it for dancing actors and Sir Matthew, who continues to inspire them.
Photo of Michael Tilson Thomas by Joshua Robison
