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Broadway Musical Review—“Water for Elephants”

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Sunday, 14 April 2024 22:58; Written by Kevin Filipski

Water for Elephants

Book by Rick Elice; music and lyrics by PigPen Theatre Co.

Directed by Jessica Stone

Through September 8, 2024

Imperial Theatre, 249 West 45th Street, NYC

waterforelephantsthemusical.com

Isabelle McCalla in Water for Elephants (photo: Matt Murphy)

Based on Sara Gruen’s 2006 novel that became a mediocre 2011 movie, Water for Elephants has splashed down on Broadway. And the most dazzling moments of this musical set in a circus are exclusively visual: the incredible acrobats and dancers as well as—impressively if derivatively—the puppetry that brings the captive animal performers, including Rosie the elephant, to life.

But despite that, Water for Elephants has songs that are unmemorable and a story that makes soap operas look like Shakespeare. The romantic triangle spotlights our desperate Depression hero, Jacob Jankowski, who joins the circus after a rural New York State performance—since his dad was a vet and Jacob studied it in school, he’s taken on as the new horse doc; Marlena, the beautiful star of the horse show; and ringmaster and circus owner August, who’s Marlena’s loving but brutal husband.

Jacob and Marlena meet cutely when he gives her recommendations about her ailing Silver Star, then they grow closer while training Rosie, who August hopes will be the big new attraction the circus needs. The musical then turns into a romantic rectangle, but its predictability overwhelms it: is anyone shocked by the comeuppance August contrives for aging circus veteran, Camel (who also was close to Jacob)? Then there's the unabashedly sentimental framing device of an elderly Jacob (played by the old pro Gregg Edelman), wandering into a circus from the rest home and telling his story to the workers—and us.

That Water for Elephants isn’t completely risible is due to Jessica Stone’s savvy staging that, whenever the love story cloys, comes to the rescue with spectacular acrobats or boisterously busy dance numbers—credit also to Shana Carroll and Jesse Robb’s clever choreography, Carroll’s lively circus design, Takeshi Kata’s evocative sets, Bradley King’s sharp lighting and David Israel Reynoso’s detailed costumes.

Then there’s the arresting appearance of several adorable animals, from a pet pooch and the circus monkeys to the unfortunate Silver Star, who gets the show’s best moment when Antoine Boissereau exquisitely performs a ballet in the air to visualize the animal’s suffering. Rosie, by contrast, isn’t very imaginatively thought out; in any case, the anthropomorphic animals’ look and movement are cut from the same cloth as the puppetry of The Lion King and War Horse, tweaked by Ray Wetmore & JR Goodman and Camille Labarre but coming in a distant second.

The merely serviceable songs by PigPen Theatre Co. and book by Rick Elice are enlivened by the large and energetic cast, with the lovers Marlena and Jacob winningly enacted by Isabelle McCalla—who might soon give Lea Michele a run for her money—and Grant Gustin. They might not save Water for Elephants from drowning, but the show is a mild diversion.

April '24 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 10 April 2024 18:35; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

Coup de Chance

(MPI International)

For his 50th film, Woody Allen returns to the blunt morality tales of Match Point and Solitary Man, this time set in Paris—and spoken in French (a language he doesn’t speak): a beautiful young wife runs into an old schoolmate and begins an affair, which triggers her jealous husband’s radar, with ultimately fatal results.

Woody foregoes the complex moral study of a masterpiece like Crimes and Misdemeanors for a straightforward story with an O. Henry twist; it’s minor but satisfying, thanks to his economical directing, Vittorio Storaro’s glistening photography and the persuasive performances, especially by the always winning Lou de Laâge.

The Beast

(Sideshow/Janus)

French director Bertrand Bonello has tackled provocative subjects as disparate as pornography, prostitution, terrorism and zombies. His latest, though, is a loose, middling adaptation of a fascinating novella by Henry James (The Beast in the Jungle); Bonello follows Gabrielle, a young woman whose DNA has purified and emptied of emotions, and he shows her past lives, from 1910 to 2044.

The 145-minute film is turgid and slow-paced, and even the myriad stylishness Bonello partakes in—split screens, changing aspect ratios, freeze frames, slow-motion, rewinding, voiceovers—are desperate stratagems to hide the lack of any compelling characterizations or insights. Even the usually magnetic Lea Seydoux at its center—and with fine support from George McKay, who reportedly learned French for the role—can’t keep this from becoming wan and moribund, except for a stunning underwater sequence halfway through.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Monster

(Well Go USA)

Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda has made several memorable films about family bonds and their complexities, and his latest is a riveting, potent drama about the ramifications of a bullying accusation made against a schoolteacher. As usual with Kore-eda, the plot is like a pebble being thrown into a pond: its reverberations take in superbly etched studies of several characters, with flashbacks and shifting points of view keeping us on edge and involved.

The director has enormous sympathy for each of them in turn, his sensitive and insightful approach always paying dividends, and leading to a surprising, emotionally devastating finale. It goes without saying it’s exceptionally acted from a large cast. The film looks wonderful on Blu; lone extra is an English dub.

Lisa Frankenstein

(Focus/Universal)

In this soggy spoof of and homage to silly ’80s horror comedies, writer Diablo Cody has fashioned an occasionally funny but ultimately derivative tale of teenager Lisa, who meets and starts a secret relationship with a male zombie from the Victorian era.

It sounds icky and, for the most part, it is—neophyte director Zelda Williams and Cody lean into the goofiness of the era it’s set (1989), but that only goes so far: it’s up to Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse as the unlikely couple to make this enjoyable at times. The Blu-ray transfer is terrific; extras include Williams’ audio commentary, interview with Cody and Williams, deleted scenes, and making-of featurettes.

Night Swim

(Universal)

This waterlogged attempt at a supernatural horror film is saddled with protagonists—a suburban family consisting of an ill, retired major leaguer, his wife, their son and daughter—that act moronically from the start, as the family buys the house even after the dad nearly drowns after falling into the seemingly haunted pool.

Once strange things start happening—which we know about since we saw a girl drown in the pool in the film’s intro—it spirals into true risibility as it steals from better movies like Jaws and Poltergeist. As the parents, Wyatt Russell and especially Kerry Condon try but fail to keep their heads above water, and writer/director Bryce McGuire is unable to throw the cast a lifeline. It looks good on Blu; extras include several on-set featurettes.

Die Walküre

(Naxos)

The second opera of Richard Wagner’s fabled Ring cycle receives a 2021 Berlin State Opera staging by director Stefan Herheim that’s part perplexing and part powerful—here’s hoping that the production becomes clearer in the final two Ring operas, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung.

Conductor Donald Runnicles nicely harnesses the massive orchestral forces, and the singers (especially Iain Paterson’s Wotan, Elisabeth Teige’s Sieglinde and Nina Stemme’s Brunnhilde—handle the treacherous vocal writing spectacularly. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

CD Releases of the Week

Fauré—Complete Music for Solo Piano

(Sony Classical)

French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was a master of smaller forms, as witness his magnificent chamber music—his piano trio, quartets and quintets; cello and violin sonatas; and string quartet are all masterpieces. His larger works—the opera Pénélope; grand cantata Prométhée and his famous Requiem—are equally brilliant, but, as this new set of complete solo piano music attests, Fauré is justly celebrated for his intimately-scaled works.

Young French pianist Lucas Debargue tackles Fauré’s solo piano oeuvre with passion and precision; the Nocturnes and Barcarolles that Fauré composed throughout his life are imposing in their variety and majesty, and other works—the early F-major Ballade and the late 9 Préludes—sound both revelatory and reassuringly familiar in Debargue’s expressive hands.

Weinberg—Four Sonatas for Solo Cello

(Arcana)

Russia’s Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-96) sadly never witnessed his musical renaissance, which began with his shattering Holocaust opera The Passenger, several productions of which were followed by many first-rate recordings of his varied orchestral and chamber music released in the past couple decades.

Weinberg’s set of four solo cello sonatas (written between 1960 and 1986) nods to Bach’s renowned half-dozen suites—Benjamin Britten also composed three suites for Mstislav Rostropovich between 1964 and 1971—but there’s also a modernity to Weinberg’s technical demands that sets the four works apart. Cellist Mario Brunello plays magnificently throughout, and these formidable sonatas are another aspect of Weinberg’s large body of work that continues to be performed and appreciated.

New York Philharmonic Play Webern & Scriabin

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 09 April 2024 14:35; Written by Jack Angstreich

Karina Canellakis conducts the New York Philharmonic with Alice Sara Ott on piano. Photo by Erin Baiano.

At Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall on the evening of Saturday, April 6th, I had the enormous pleasure of attending an extraordinary concert presented by the New York Philharmonic under the brilliant direction of Karina Canellakis, in her uncommonly auspicious set of debut performances with this ensemble.

The event began admirably with a very impressively executed account of Anton Webern’s challenging but compelling, superbly scored Six Pieces for Orchestra. According to the useful program note by Christopher H. Gibbs (who is James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College and co-author, with Richard Taruskin, of The Oxford History of Western Music, College Edition):

Webern composed the initial version of Six Pieces for Orchestra in the summer of 1909, using as a model Schoenberg's recent Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16, and offering the dedication: “To Arnold Schoenberg, my teacher and friend, with greatest love.”

He adds:

He revised the pieces in 1928, writing to Schoenberg: “Everything extravagant is now cut (alto flute, six trombones for a few measures, and so on).” In a later program note he said that the new version, heard on this concert, “is to be considered the only valid one.”

Webern wrote to Schoenberg before the premiere, saying that:

The first piece is to express my frame of mind when I was still in Vienna, already sensing the disaster, yet always maintaining the hope that I would find my mother still alive. It was a beautiful day — for a minute I believed quite firmly that nothing had happened. Only during the train ride to Carinthia — it was on the afternoon of the same day — did I learn the truth. The third piece conveys the impression of the fragrance of the Erica, which I gathered at a spot in the forest very meaningful to me and then laid on the bier. The fourth piece I later entitled marcia funebre. Even today I do not understand my feelings as I walked behind the coffin to the cemetery.

The composer also “provided the following explanation of the pieces for a German music festival in 1933”:

They represent short song forms, in that they are mostly tripartite. Thematic relations do not exist, not even within the individual pieces. I consciously avoided such connections, since I aimed at an always changing mode of expression. To describe briefly the character of the pieces (they are of a purely lyrical nature): the first expresses the expectation of a calamity; the second the certainty of its fulfillment; the third the most tender contrast — it is, so to speak, the introduction to the fourth, a funeral march; five and six are an epilogue: remembrance and resignation.

The individual movements of the work themselves somewhat deny my powers of description so I shall rest content here with Webern’s commentary quoted above.

The proceedings continued excitingly with a marvelous rendition of Richard Strauss’s magnificent, neo-Wagnerian, and highly dramatic tone poem, Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24. Annotator James M. Keller records that, “In 1895 Strauss acquiesced to a friend's request to provide an explanation of the piece's action”:

The sick man lies in a bed asleep, breathing heavily and irregularly; agreeable dreams charm a smile onto his features in spite of his suffering; his sleep becomes lighter; he wakens; once again he is racked by terrible pain, his limbs shake with fever — as the attack draws to a close and the pain resumes, the fruit of his path through life appears to him, the idea, the Ideal which he has tried to realize, to represent in his art, but which he has been unable to perfect because it was not for any human being to perfect it. The hour of death approaches, the soul leaves the body, in order to find perfected in the most glorious form in the eternal cosmos that which he could not fulfill here on earth.

The second half of the evening was also memorable, starting with an exceptionally accomplished realization of Maurice Ravel’s awesome Piano Concerto in G Major, dazzlingly played—in another amazing debut with the orchestra—by the meteoric Alice Sara Ott, who was dressed in a fabulous, sparkling, silver-white gown. About the composer, Keller records that:

As early as 1906, he reported that he had begun sketching a piano concerto on Basque themes, provisionally titled Zazpiak-Bat, and in 1913 he informed his friend Igor Stravinsky that he was refocusing his attention on it. But in late 1914 Ravel, by then installed in the south of France due to the disruptions of World War I, wrote to his student and colleague Roland-Manuel that he had to give up work on the piece since he had left his sketches behind in Paris. And that was the end of it, except that some material from the project was reworked when Ravel came to write his G-major Piano Concerto.

To the critic M.D. Calvocoressi, Ravel called it “a concerto in the truest sense of the word: I mean that it is written very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns.” He continued:

The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects. It has been said of certain classics that their concertos were written not “for” but “against” the piano. I heartily agree. I had intended to title this concerto “Divertissement.” Then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so because the title “Concerto” should be sufficiently clear.

The initial, virtuosic Allegramente movement is ebullient and jazzy with some moody passages, strongly recalling the music of George Gershwin, and ends forcefully. The exquisite Adagio assai begins with a long, introspective introduction for solo piano; the movement becomes more lyrical with the entry of the orchestra and continues to build in intensity. The propulsive and spirited Presto finale is another showcase for piano technique; the composer’s affinities with Igor Stravinsky—in the latter’s early phase—are at their most pronounced here. Exuberant applause elicited a terrific encore from the soloist, Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina from 1976—the Ravel concerto appeared almost sheerly profligate beside this minimal work.

The night concluded stunningly with a thrilling version of Alexander Scriabin’s glorious The Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54. The composer’s own program note for “a performance in Moscow shortly after the Russian premiere,” is gnomic and confounding:

Le Poème de l'extase is the Joy of Liberated Action. The Cosmos, i.e. Spirit, is Eternal Creation without External Motivation, a Divine Play with Worlds. The Creative Spirit, i.e. the Universe at Play, is not conscious of the Absoluteness of its creativeness, having subordinated itself to a Finality and made creativity a means towards an end. The stronger the pulse-beat of life and the more the precipitation of rhythms, the more clearly the awareness comes to the Spirit that it is consubstantial with creativity, immanent within itself, and that its life is a play. When the Spirit has attained the supreme culmination of its activity and has been torn away from the embraces of teleology and relativity, when it has exhausted completely its substance and its liberated active energy, the Time of Ecstasy shall then arrive.

Scriabin told his friend Ivan Lipaev, “When you listen to Ecstasy, look straight into the eye of the sun!” In 1909, Sergei Prokofiev interestingly remarked about the work that:

Both the harmonic and the thematic material, and the voice-leading in the counterpoint, were completely new. Basically, Scriabin was trying to find new foundations for harmony. The principles he discovered were very interesting, but in proportion to their complexity they were like a stone tied to Scriabin's neck, hindering his invention as regards melody and (chiefly) the movement of voices. Nonetheless, Le Poème de l'extase was probably his most successful work, since all the elements in his manner of composing were apparently balanced. But it was hard to imagine, at first hearing, just what he was trying to do.

In one of his notebooks, Scriabin inscribed the following poem, which served as the basis for The Poem of Ecstasy:

The Spirit
Winged by the thirst for life,
Takes flight
On the heights of negation.
There in the rays of his dream
Arises a magic world
Of marvelous images and feelings.
The Spirit playing.
The Spirit longing.
The Spirit with fancy creating all,
Surrenders himself to the bliss of love. …
I call you to life, mysterious forces!
Drowned in the obscure depths
Of the creative spirit, timid
Embryos of life, to you I bring audacity! …

With the piece’s astonishing and exalting close, the audience delivered an enthusiastic ovation.

April '24 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 03 April 2024 21:49; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

La Chimera

(Neon)

Alice Rohrwacher has been one of our brightest filmmakers since her unforgettable debut, Corpo Celeste, debuted at the 2011 New York Film Festival. Her 2014 follow-up, The Wonders, relied too heavily on forced Felliniesque whimsy, but 2018’s Happy as Lazzaro got the balance between reality and surrealism right. Her latest cinematic fable again traverses that thin line and is as pointed and poignant as anything she’s done.

It follows Arthur (Josh O’Connor, excellent in a bilingual role), an English archeologist who robs Truscan sites of artifacts while pining for his girlfriend Beniamina, his own chimera—an impossible-to-find treasure—and remaining in touch with her family, especially boisterous grandmother Flora (Isabella Rossellini, in her liveliest performance in years). Rohrwacher’s sumptuous film is alternately humorous and sad, angry and melancholic—an enormously affecting exploration of coming to terms with one’s past.

Against All Enemies

(Mighty Pictures)

Necessary but scary is a good description of Charlie Sadoff’s incriminating study about how and why so many veterans of the U.S. armed forces gravitate toward militias and other white supremacist groups, which look ahead—or even forward—to what many of them consider the next civil war.

Sadoff talks with military vets, generals and civilians, along with experts on the subjects (especially Kathleen Belew, who has written expertly about the white power and paramilitary movements), all illuminating a subject that will probably be relevant indefinitely—unfortunately. But why Sadoff ends the film with the fact-free rantings of the unhinged Eric “General E” Braden is a real head-scratcher.

The Lie—The Murder of Grace Millane

(Brainstorm Media)

The awful story of Grace Millane—a 21-year-old English woman who was brutally murdered while vacationing in New Zealand by her Tinder date—is recounted in Helena Coan’s documentary that’s cannily structured like a procedural.

After Grace goes missing, the police question a man who was seen on CCTV cameras with her hours before her disappearance—and his version of the story is methodically debunked by the cops and by Coan, who uses the voluminous footage captured of the suspect’s movements to definitely show that he was, in fact, her murderer. What’s most heartbreaking is his not-unusual excuse that they had rough sex and her death was accident—something she could not rebut.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

All Ladies Do It

(Cult Epics)

Now 91, Italian director Tinto Brass has made playfully erotic films full of pulchritude falling just short of hardcore for several decades, and this 1992 riff on the Mozart opera Cosi fan tutte—also the film’s original Italian title—is a prime example: Diana, the gorgeous, teasing wife of a bespectacled husband, titillates him with made-up tales of sexual escapades, but when he angrily throws her out after seeing marks on her body, she goes further than before.

As usual with Brass, there’s a surfeit of simulated sexual sequences, and his lead performer, the Romanian actress Claudia Koll, is a histrionic knockout. The superb UHD transfer allows viewers to gaze at Koll as intimately as her director did; extras include a commentary, Brass interview and on-set footage.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Doktor Faustus

(Dynamic)

Italian composer Ferrucio Busoni’s greatest opera—which was completed after he died in 1924—is rarely produced for some reason but has two meaty roles for the leading protagonist and antagonist. This 2023 staging in Florence, directed by Davide Livermore, is a well-paced reading of this complex parable about the nature of good and evil.

Busoni’s imposing music is performed superbly by the orchestra and chorus of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, conducted by Cornelius Meister, while the exemplary cast is led by Dietrich Henschel’s Faust and Daniel Brenna’s Mephistopheles. The hi-def video and audio are also excellent.

Maskarade

(Naxos)

Norwegian composer Carl Nielsen wrote two operas, neither of which is frequently performed—the underrated Biblical tragedy, Saul and David, and the frisky comic romp, Maskarade, the latter getting an enjoyable 2021 production by director Tobias Kratzer at Frankfurt Opera.

Despite his reputation as a self-serious composer, Nielsen’s engaging music keeps the pace moving fluidly, and Kratzer’s staging is abetted by a fine and large vocal cast and the Frankfurt Opera orchestra and chorus led by conductor Titus Engel. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

Polar Rescue

Born to Fly

(Well Go USA)

These Chinese films home in on the basics of storytelling to create effective flicks for unfinicky audiences. In Polar Rescue, an 8-year-old boy wanders off into the wilderness after his dad punishes him for his misbehavior, and while they search for him, guilt becomes an overwhelming factor; despite some sloppy writing, director Chi-Leung Law constructs a tidy thriller that has the guts to end on a down note.

Liu Xiaoshi’s Born to Fly has exciting aerial sequences that compensate for more moribund segments on earth as daring pilots test updated fighter jets to try and keep pace with the meddling American air force. Both films have crisp, clean hi-def transfers.

CD Release of the Week

Noémie Chemali—Opus 961

(Dreyer-Gaido)

Noémie Chemali, a gifted Lebanese French-American violist, has titled her first solo album after the area code for Lebanon as a tribute to the people there following the devastating 2020 explosion that damaged the seafront area—as she says in the disc’s program note, her grandmother’s house in that neighborhood was destroyed. Chemali’s disc comprises works by six Lebanese composers written in the past decade, including her own Kadishat, a lovely miniature with a yearning viola line.

Chemali displays her formidable technique on the other works, including Mary Kouyoumdjian’s The Revolt of the Stars, inspired by an Armenian fable, and Wajdi Abou Diab’s rhythmically challenging The Moraba’ Dance. Chemali and her musical cohort (including Yann Chemali, who plays the cello on Kadishat) make beautiful, engaging music together.

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