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Musical Review—“The Life” at Encores

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 22 March 2022 03:16; Written by Kevin Filipski

The Life

Music by Cy Coleman; lyrics by Ira Gasman

Book by David Newman, Ira Gasman and Cy Coleman

Adapted and directed by Billy Porter; choreography by AC Ciulla

Performances March 16-20, 2022

New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street, NYC

nycitycenter.org

The cast of The Life (photo: Joan Marcus)

When it got to Broadway in 1997 after years of workshops and an off-Broadway production, the musical The Life—set in the sordid Times Square of the late ’70s—was seen as a clunky stew of cutesiness and moralizing, sleaze and sympathy, with songs not up to composer Cy Coleman’s best.

So Billy Porter’s decision to revamp The Life for Encores and for our current climate is not surprising. The biggest change is that Queen, the Times Square prostitute caught between her drug-addicted lover, Fleetwood, and the imposing pimp, Memphis, who runs the area, is now a trans woman. This adds another layer of subjugation to a character who’s an outsider desperately looking for a fresh start.

Porter has also split Jojo, the would-be pimp who plays both sides between Fleetwood and Memphis, into two roles, with the new half the older, wiser narrator who recounts the unfolding events from the perspective of four decades and comments on what happened and why, not only among these people but also in the wider culture.

That means, for example, that we see the infamous Daily News headline from 1975, “Ford to New York: Drop Dead,” early in the show. But it’s at the beginning of act two, when both Jojos—and the ensemble—don Reagan and Trump masks and sing about the similarities between these two presidents, 40 years apart, who did nothing about a plague that would kill many Americans, where Porter channels his righteous rage.

Although it comes across as heavyhanded, almost glib in its elated anger, and threatens to derail the entire show, it doesn’t, mainly because of the uniformly excellent cast Porter has assembled. Alexandra Grey (Queen) and Ken Robinson (Fleetwood) play off each other wonderfully, while Erika Olson has a dynamic presence as Mary, a newbie from Minnesota who becomes Fleetwood’s new meal ticket. Mykal Kilgore (young) and Deston Owens (old), capture well the two sides of Jojo.

Best of all are Antawyn Hopper as the menacing Memphis and Ledisi as the hooker with the heart of gold, Sonja, whose powerhouse voices soar above everyone, especially in their spotlight numbers, Memphis’ “My Way or the Highway” and Sonja’s “The Oldest Profession.”

The Encores Orchestra performed superbly under conductor James Sampliner, whose arrangements tended toward more soulful and disco-ish than the originals, which was definitely permissible in this context.

March '22 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 16 March 2022 17:02; Written by Kevin Filipski

Streaming/In-Theater Releases of the Week

Lover, Beloved

(SXSW Festival, sxsw.com)

In concert, Suzanne Vega tells amusingly deadpan tales as illuminating as the direct, durable songs she sings in her personable, conversational voice. Those tough-as-nails songs, often written from the point of view of a detached narrator, make her the ideal interpreter of the life of Southern author Carson McCullers, who wrote such classics as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding and Reflections in a Golden Eye. But Vega’s McCullers solo show, filmed by director Michael Tully, is an awkward hybrid (part concert, part one-woman performance piece, part musical) that doesn’t always coalesce into a uniform and satisfying whole.

Vega plays McCullers with an acceptable southern drawl, speaking the renowned writer’s words while singing several songs that have music by Vega and Duncan Sheik and Vega’s own occasionally biting lyrics. The best moments, such as atmospheric blues or torch songs like “Song of Annemarie” and “Harper Lee,” give a clear snapshot of McCullers’ complicated relationships. Then there are songs like “Me of We,” which do neither McCullers nor Vega no favors.

Fear

(Film Movement)

Bulgarian director Ivaylo Hristov’s black comedy that doubles as a cautionary tale about hypocrisy, xenophobia, and cultural misunderstandings follows Svetia (the memorably dour Svetlana Yanchevaa), a widow in an isolated village, who runs into Bamba (a deadpan Michael Fleming), an African émigré trying to get to Germany. After initial distrust—and a town full of scared citizens—the pair becomes inseparable, to everyone else’s chagrin.

Hristov’s sharp sense of the absurd lets him not belabor his obvious points about narrowmindedness and racism, and there’s genuine feeling throughout, culminating in a final shot—which provides this strikingly-shot B&W film with its only spot of color—that will reverberate in the viewer’s memory.

Great Freedom

(MUBI)

The shameful treatment of homosexuality in Germany—under the guise of Paragraph 175, which made it punishable by imprisonment—is the subject of Austrian director Sebastian Meise’s sensitive drama, which follows Hans, in and out of jail for years due to the simple fact that he’s gay, and his at first tentative then tender relationship with a fellow prisoner.

Franz Rogowski—an actor I’ve never found adequate in anything else he’s been in—gives a sympathetic performance as Hans, and Meise displays, with tact and a lack of cheap sentiment, how humanity cannot be snuffed out even in the inhumane circumstances his protagonist finds himself in.

I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing

(Kino Lorber)

Canadian director Patricia Rozema’s 1987 debut feature is the lightweight, alternately enervating and charming comedy about Polly, an aimless young woman who latches onto her new boss Gabrielle, an elegant gallery owner, discovering new things about herself along the way.

Sheila McCarthy makes a winning heroine, Quebecois actress Paule Baillargeon is perfectly cast as the brooding boss, and if Rozema doesn’t trust her material enough to keep focused—the literal flights of fancy and narrative tangents are more cutesy than necessary—Rozema would find her own voice in her next film, the criminally unseen White Room.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

The Matrix—Resurrections

(Warner Bros)

In this belated sequel, Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) make a return trip to an ever more dangerous alternate reality, as director Lana Wachowski goes for broke and creates a string of staggering visual set pieces that may not make much sense but provide the kind of satisfying head trip that fans will enjoy.

And Wachowski succeeds—to an extent: Reeves and Moss make an endearing pair, while the visual effects and stunts dazzle, but, at nearly 2-1/2 hours, it goes on forever. The 4K/UHD transfer looks stunning; the extras (on the accompanying Blu-ray disc) comprise more than two hours’ worth of interviews and on-set featurettes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Adoption

(Criterion Collection)

In Márta Mészáros’ insightful and mature drama, middle-aged woman Kata, who has always wanted children, insinuates herself close to Anna, a teenage ward of the state who wants to be emancipated so she can marry her boyfriend. With powerhouse performances by the two leads—the great Katalin Berek as Kata and Gyöngyvér Vigh as Anna—Mészáros’ potent chronicle of how women must deal with smothering forces from both within and without remains pertinent today, even without all the Communist-era baggage.

The tightly-focused B&W images (photographed by the great Lajos Koltai) are rendered beautifully on Blu-ray; extras include a 2019 Mészáros interview, video essay about her work, Mészáros’ 1964 short, Low-Ball, and a 1979 documentary, Márta Mészáros: Portrait of the Hungarian Filmmaker.

Hester Street

(Cohen Film Collection)

This clichéd 1975 melodrama somehow gained Carol Kane a best actress Oscar nomination as a newly-arrived Jewish immigrant in 1896 Manhattan whose husband, already assimilated, has little patience for what he sees as her glaring inadequacies. Admittedly, Joan Micklin Silver’s mostly amateurish, threadbare film does depict—in evocative black and white—the thriving Eastern European culture of the Lower East Side (including a lot of authentic Yiddish dialogue), but the characters populating her story are less than compelling.

The film looks authentically grainy on Blu-ray; extras include two new interviews with the director, her audio commentary, archival cast/crew interviews and the original opening sequence with commentary by Daniel Kremer, author of a book on Silver.

Vienna Philharmonic—New Year’s Concert 2022

(Sony Classical)

This festive annual New Year’s concert, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic, is a tradition in Vienna, and that means lots of Strauss music (not Richard, unfortunately): delightful Strauss dances, polkas, overtures and waltzes, including the grandest of them all, the “Blue Danube.”

Daniel Barenboim conducts adroitly, the orchestra sounds terrific, and the masked audience looks enthralled. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio; extras are more Strauss music accompanying ballet dancers and the world-famous horses of Vienna’s Spanish riding school.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra Bewitch Audiences

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 16 March 2022 13:59; Written by Jack Angstreich

Andris Nelsons (R) and Leonidas Kavakos (L) Photo by Chris Lee.

At Carnegie Hall, on the evening of Monday, March 14th, I had the pleasure of seeing a concert presented by the superb Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the stellar direction of the terrific Andris Nelsons, the first of two events on successive nights, the second being a performance of Alban Berg’s classic opera, Wozzeck.

The program opened compellingly with a haunting account of Charles Ives’s uncanny, modernistic The Unanswered Question, here led by assistant conductor Earl Lee in the original arrangement for chamber ensemble and with some of the musicians offstage. The outstanding virtuoso Leonidas Kavakos then took the stage to perform the New York premiere of the contemporary Korean composer Unsuk Chin’s Violin Concerto No. 2, Scherben der Stille, which was co-commissioned by this orchestra, along with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and was written for the soloist. The piece conjures a very unusual sonic atmosphere—one can perceive the influence of György Ligeti, with whom the composer studied—and has power; while seemingly somewhat amorphous, it at times acquires a somewhat dramatic character and ends climactically. Chin joined the musicians onstage to receive the audience’s applause.

The highlight of the evening, however, was the second half of the concert, which consisted of a thrilling version of Hector Berlioz’s extraordinary, stunning Symphony fantastique. Berlioz, more than any other composer—even Carl Maria von Weber, who appears to be more of a transitional figure—is the fountainhead of musical Romanticism and this work, more than any other, announces and inaugurates that revolution. The opening Allegro, “Reveries, Passions,” is largely turbulent, after a suspenseful, introductory Largo section, but concludes serenely, while the second movement, “A Ball,” is a marvelous waltz with exuberant passages. The Adagio that follows, “Scene in the Country,” is evocatively bucolic for most of its length but not without darker, indeed portentous, moments, harbingers of the ensuing, enthralling, if utterly fatalistic, “March to the Scaffold” movement. Even more ominous is the Larghetto introduction to the finale, “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath,” which transforms into an astounding, breathless Allegro. The artists earned an exceedingly enthusiastic ovation.

An Evening With the New York Youth Symphony

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 14 March 2022 14:16; Written by Jack Angstreich

Soloist Grace Park

At Carnegie Hall on the afternoon of Sunday, March 13th, I had the pleasure of attending a concert, of music by American composers, presented by the remarkable players of the New York Youth Symphony under the confident direction of Michael Repper.

The event began with the conductor asking the audience to stand for a stirring performance of the Ukrainian national anthem, with music by Mykhailo Verbytsky, an eminent nineteenth-century composer. The program proper opened auspiciously with the world premiere of the arresting, beautifully orchestrated Ruach (And Other Delights), by contemporary composer Jonathan Cziner, commissioned by the New York Youth Symphony First Music Program.

The very talented soloist Grace Park then took the stage for an eloquent account of Samuel Barber’s magnificent Violin Concerto. The Allegro begins lyrically and gorgeously but moves in a more sprightly and also dramatic direction with the introduction of the countermelody by the clarinet. The Andante is at first more inward and meditative, then becomes more conflicted, but returns to more soulful inflections before ending softly, while the closing, more flamboyant and propulsive Presto proved to be a virtuosic tour de force. Each movement received applause.

After an intermission, Repper announced the the release of the ensemble’s debut album, which includes music by the underrated Florence Price, a couple of whose marvelous scores have been heard in Manhattan—including at this venue—in recent weeks. The second half of the concert was equally absorbing with a wonderful rendition of the now seldom heard but extraordinary “Afro-American” Symphony of William Grant Still. The opening Moderato, like the work as a whole, is jazzy, delightful and eclectic, while the Adagio is more restrained but also enchanting. The third movement, marked Animato, is more celebratory and ebullient, and the concluding Lento begins hauntingly but soon acquires a more cheerful character. As a gracious encore, the music director repeated the terrific third movement—in the closing measures inviting the audience to clap along—earning further appreciation from the fortunate attendees. I look forward to hearing these impressive musicians again before long.

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