Bits & Bytes
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| Fun in Seattle Teatro ZinZanni, Broadway Festival, Dolly! | |
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by Milton W. Hamlin -
SGN A&E Writer Fun - in music, in dance, in dinner - takes the focus this week for Bits&Bytes. After dreary weather and serious theater topics, fun finally returns to the Emerald City. Read on: BROADWAY FESTIVAL DELIGHTS AT PNB, FOUR DANCES, FOUR SONGS Audiences certainly are getting their money's worth at the Broadway Festival the current mixed repertory package at Pacific Northwest Ballet. Four Broadway-related dances, a free first intermission vocal excursion of four Broadway classics and three extended film clips related to the works on stage. Such a deal. Bits&Bytes used to love the alliteration of "Five Bucks a Ballet" when PNB started ticket prices at $20 a seat. Now, the $25 starting level makes that smooth sounding come-on impossible. With four dances, four bonus songs and three film clips, well, that seems to be 11 events for the ticket price. You do the math.... PNB's Broadway Festival uses three major works associated with classic Broadway musicals. George Balanchine's Slaughter On Tenth Avenue comes from the legendary 1936 Rodgers & Hart hit, On Your Toes, generally acknowledged to be the first musical to thoroughly integrate dance into the plot line. Carousel (A Dance) is a new ballet using the Rodgers & Hammerstein score for Carousel and many of the show's visual motifs. It makes no attempt to replicate the famous Agnes de Mille choreography. West Side Story Suite is Jerome Robbins' own adaptation of his original dances from West Side Story. PNB's fourth selection, Take Five...More Or Less premiered at PNB last year. It is a short, contemporary ballet danced to music by Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond. Susan Stroman, director of Broadway's Contact and The Producers, was commissioned by PNB to create Take Five - and her Broadway award-winning works as director and choreographer is the only Broadway Festival association. There was no doubt that West Side Story Suite was the favorite work on the program. The power of the full-length musical, just opening in a much-heralded revival in New York, is fully captured in the seven dance selections, some with vocals, that Robbins created for New York City Ballet in 1995. The dances, credited for years to Robbins alone, are now credited to Robbins and to dancer and choreographer Peter Gennaro who choreographed "a majority" of "America" and the "Mambo" sequence for "Dance At The Gym." The challenging Suite uses the musical's characters and plot sequences to showcase the seven dances collected here - "Prologue," "Something's Coming," "Dance At The Gym," "Cool" (with its world famous finger-snapping accompaniment), "America," "Rumble" and the "Somewhere Ballet." Lucien Postlewaite, in last Friday night's cast, was a fine Tony, and Sarah Ricard Orza was a lovely Maria, but it was Batkhurel Bold as Bernardo and the sizzling Carla Korbes as Anita who stole the show. Many of the vocals were performed by the dancers themselves, but a group of five vocalists in the orchestra pit took over many of the solo sequences. The Suite's final moments, combining the whole cast singing "Somewhere," the show anthem of hope, is a moment to treasure. The evening opened with Slaughter On Tenth Avenue. PNB took a gamble and showed a lengthy film clip of the full number staged for Hollywood's adaptation of the Broadway hit. Shorter and using a different lead dancer than the Broadway production, the clip was illuminating, leaving PNB's live performance in a strange spot for many in the audience. Seth Orza was sensational as the Hoofer, played on Broadway originally by a young Ray Bolger, several years before The Wizard of Oz. Eddie Bracken took the role in the film version. Orza had great fun with the role. (On opening night, Jeffrey Stanton, in the same role, sprained his ankle trying to avoid landing on a prop beer can discarded, as planned, on the set. The stage directions were changed immediately to avoid another mishap, and the beer cans were thrown behind the bar from then on. Ah, the joys of live performances.) Only Carla Korbes as the female lead, the femme fatale, seemed limited in her performance. She looked far too young to be the jaded seductress. Her dancing was fine, but compared to the just-shown film clip, she seemed miscast. Carousel (A Dance) was a joyous combination of the classic musical themes of Richard Rodgers and the new choreography by Christopher Wheeldon, designed in 2002 for New York City Ballet. Jodie Thomas was incandescent as Julie Jordon, the female lead of the musical. A ray of bright yellow sunshine in her innocent spring dress, Thomas was a constant delight. James Moore matched her success as the tormented Billy Bigelow, the carnival barker who finds salvation in the love of the young woman. The supporting cast was often the center of attention. Using the show's prologue, "The Carousel Waltz," Wheeldon turned the corps de ballet into the animals of the carnival's carousel. With simple, never affected, movements reflecting the turning and the elevations of the carousel animals, the whole stage turned into theatrical magic. The men, in various subdued striped T-shirts and jeans, and the women, in deep-colored, full-skirted dresses with deep-gored inserts in contrasting colors, held stage center for most of the work. The clever use of wooden poles in the dance's final moments added to the live carousel effect. Stroman's Take Five...More Or Less was fun and clearly delighted the cheering crowd. If it didn't quite fit into the Broadway Festival format, no one seemed to mind. Special praise must be directed to the PNB Orchestra and conductors Stewart Kershaw and Allan Dameron. Kershaw conducted the challenging Carousel and Take Five sequences - and what a contrast between the classic Dave Brubeck sound and the immortal Richard Rodgers Carousel themes. Dameron conducted the Slaughter On Tenth Avenue and West Side Story selections - and played the piano solos in the Take Five recreation. Talk about talent.... At first intermission, three soloists from the West Side Story sequence, joined together for a four-song bonus performance. The three opened with a rousing "Lullaby of Broadway" and then each woman took a solo outing. Jeanette D'Armand, with Cole Porter's "I Get A Kick Out Of You," and Billie Wildrick, with The Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm," were obvious crowd pleasers. Wildrick is soon to be Dot, the female lead, in Sondheim's Sunday In The Park With George at the 5th Avenue Theatre. Broadway Festival continues through Sunday. Next on PNB's schedule is a revival of the beloved Swan Lake, running April 9-19 at McCaw Hall at the Seattle Center. Reservations and ticket information on all PNB events is available at (206) 441-2424. TEATRO ZINZANNI DELIGHTS WITH NEW UNDER GYPSY MOON Bits&Bytes will wax poetical in next week's SGN about the zany new Teatro ZinZanni show, Under The Gypsy Moon, but, for now, just know that Gypsy Moon is another out-and-out hit for the glorious crazies that continue to make Teatro ZinZanni one of the biggest theatrical hits in Seattle history. The new edition, running through June 21, has all the trademark ZinZanni features - a large cast of cabaret and circus-styled performers, an elegant five-course dinner, a three-hour event that makes "special occasions" truly special. As usual, ZinZanni promises "Love, Chaos & Dinner" and follows through on all three. Check it out. Reservation details at (206) 802-0015 or zinzanni.org. Watch SGN next week for detailed reviews. HELLO, DOLLY! RETURNS TO 5TH AVENUE THEATRE AFTER 27 YEARS AWAY Hello, Dolly! returns to the 5th Avenue Theatre after 27 years with a spirited, high kicking, audience-pleasing production that continues through March 29. There's so much to like, so much to admire in this snappy Dolly! that it seems mean-spirited to mention the production's obvious - and major - problems. So, with this week's theme of fun in the city in mind, let's dwell on the high points. Hello, Dolly! has always been a crowd pleaser, in part because the show has such a wide range of major supporting characters. These are the high points of the current production. Director/choreographer David Armstrong, who is also the 5th artistic director, guides the show with an uneven pace. Not until "Put On Your Sunday Clothes," a full-ensemble production number a good 20 minutes into the show, does the show catch fire, click into gear. With that high point established, the audience relaxes and gets into the spirit of things. Earlier sequences seem strained, with lack of focus. Even the costumes finally worked in "Sunday Clothes." When the cast arrives at Mrs. Molloy's hat shop for scene three, the show suddenly takes life and breezes by in a flash. Seattle's Susanne Bouchard is radiant as the young widow, the shop's proprietor. Her "Ribbons Down My Back," one of the lovely ballads from Jerry Herman's rich score, dazzles the audience. Tracee Beazer, a Broadway veteran, is a constant delight as Minnie Fay, the shop assistant. Teamed with Seattle's Greg McCormick Allen, as Cornelius Hackl, and 5th Avenue veteran Mo Brady, as Barnaby Tucker, the four are the heart and soul of this Hello, Dolly!. Their "Elegance" that opens Act Two and their whole Harmonia Gardens sequence work like clockwork. Later in the show, Cornelius' "It Only Takes A Moment" is another sweet vocal highlight. For the audience, the most famous number, of course, is the "Hello, Dolly!" musical portion of the lengthy Harmonia Gardens scene, but that whole sequence - from "The Waiter's Gallop" to the polka contest to the lengthy dialog scenes in the restaurant's private dining rooms - has always been the center of the show. For the record, the "Hello, Dolly!" staging is terrific with the jumping, zipping waiters deserving their cheering ovation. In the show's major male role, Seattle's Pat Cashman's Horace Vandergelder is an obvious crowd-pleaser. He plays the part properly "gruff" and that seems fine with the cheering audience fans. Jenifer Lewis, a Broadway and Hollywood veteran with mainly supporting roles in her past, has always wanted to play Dolly Gallagher Levi. Early in her career, the African-American actress had little chance of landing the plumb musical role long associated with Carol Channing. Even after Pearl Baily lead an all-black cast on Broadway, the show rarely featured "colorblind casting" in regional or national stagings and revivals. Indeed, Channing, who was born in Seattle, often starred in national tours and Broadway revivals. Lewis' lifelong dream and her long association with Armstrong made this Dolly! possible. For many, Lewis is a constant delight, a force of nature playing a force of nature. For Broadway purists, her Dolly Levi is a strange mix of Las Vegas and summer stock. She is not a natural Dolly and her character seems to have little heart for most of the show. Some slurred lines on opening night (and a dangerous fall at the first preview) suggest that Lewis was still working on the character and might well grow in the role during the show's three-week run. For now, the good news is that Hello, Dolly! is back - and back "where she belongs." There's much to like about this Dolly!. Season subscribers will enjoy the high energy production and single-ticket buyers will delight in the comic antics of the script (Michael Stewart's slick adaptation of the original Thornton Wilder The Matchmaker) and the strong work from the Seattle-based supporting cast. The production continues with evening performances and weekend matinees through March 29. Complete information and reservations at (206) 625-1900 or, toll free, at (888-584-4849) for out-of-area musical theater fans. |
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