Shakespeare, saved for all time

Anyone who loves Shakespeare -- or a good story about Shakespeare -- and lives in the suburbs north of New York City would do well to get to the Elmwood Playhouse in Nyack, N.Y. for the current production, "The Book of Will," running through April 11.

The book in question refers to the authoritative collection of Shakespeare's plays published in 1623 and known as the First Folio. How, exactly, this came about is the subject of Lauren Gunderson's drama, directed with a sure hand by Lisa Spielman.

The play opens with a hapless actor (played by Damon Fischetti) reciting the most famous speech in theater: "To be or not to be ..." but the familiar lines crumble into confused, pedestrian writing. "Aye, there's the point/to die, to sleep, is that all?/Aye, all/No, to sleep, to dream/Aye, marry there it goes ..." Oy, not "aye."

Just to get the bad taste out of our mouths, the speech as published in the First Folio is:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 

and by opposing, end them. To die - to sleep

No more; and by a sleep, to say we end 

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to.

 

You just have to pause and breathe for a second at the depth, beauty and rhythm of those words. 

From left, Burbage (Ted Odell), Condell (Adam Bloom),
Heminges (Michael Fleischer) and Heminges' daughter,
Alice (Alison Costello) discuss saving Shakespeare's plays.
All photos/Elmwood Playhouse/Omar Kozarsky

The garbled version of "Hamlet" (which actually was published in Shakespeare's lifetime and is now known as the "Bad Hamlet") is dissected post-show at the Globe Tavern by three of the Bard's friends, actors Richard Burbage (Ted Odell), Henry Condell (Adam Bloom) and John Heminges (Michael Fleischer). Outraged at the dramatic mess and literary piracy, Heminges declares, "They just steal the title and Will's name and make up the rest."

Will himself has been gone for three years. Heminges has retired from acting and become a manager of the King's Men, the company in which they all kept audiences enthralled at the Globe Theatre. Burbage, whose volcanic outrage stems from the fact that he was the first Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello, is still on the boards, along with Condell. 

We immediately, and throughout the play (with a nod to Spielman's direction), see and feel how much these men and women care about their late friend and the great work they brought to life. By their hands, Hamlet contemplated death and life, Macbeth was tortured by conscience, Othello driven to murder. Above all, the words mattered, exactly as they came from Will's poetic genius, not sort-of, not paraphrased, not summarized. 

Ben Jonson (Andrew Greenway) intimidates 
scribe Ralph Crane (Charlie Scatamacchia). 

Macbeth doesn't say, "Well, the days sure are long when your spirit is extremely troubled." He says, "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day/To the last syllable of recorded time." How can you not feel for a man expressing such despair?

However, the practicalities of the job facing the actors is immense. Around 18 of the plays have been printed, even badly, but another 18 have not - titles that include "The Tempest," "Macbeth," "Julius Caesar" and "Measure for Measure." They only exist in fragments - actors' memories, journals, prompt books, individual scenes on paper. Even if the actors succeed in piecing together the scripts in accurate form, how can they manage to print all 36 plays in what would surely be a very large book? 

They face an unexpected setback - Burbage has memorized many of the plays, but he dies early in the project. However, Rebecca Heminges (Meg Sewell) and Elizabeth Condell (Amanda Bloom) warmly support their husbands' enthusiasm. The actors manage to convince the larger-than-life Shakespeare friend and rival Ben Jonson (Andrew Greenway) to write a dedicatory poem for the volume. 

Far left, Rebecca Heminges (Meg Sewell) and
 (far right) Elizabeth Condell (Amanda Bloom),
support their husbands' printing project.

The project is taking shape. A key member signs on - Ralph Crane (Charlie Scatamacchia), who helps authenticate the play texts due to his work as a professional scribe with the King's Men. However, the only printer in London with the capacity to take on such a large book is the elderly, blind William Jaggard (Ralph Bowers), who has printed copies of Will's plays with blithe disregard for accuracy or permission.

Disagreement over hiring Jaggard almost splits Heminges and Condell's friendship, but Jaggard's son, Isaac (Todd Brown) convinces them with sincerity that he intends to do the project justice.

Will the team succeed? Gunderson's script and Spielman's direction keep the suspense taut - even though this is one story where we know the outcome. 

The cast is uniformly excellent. Fleischer creates a Hemings who is a careful man, realistic enough to point out roadblocks, but Adam Bloom's Condell is willing to take more risks. Gunderson's inclusion of the women in the men's lives is a brilliant touch, rounding out family life and the scene in 17th-century London. Sewell's Rebecca, savvy and tough, manages a food business as Costello's Alice, smart as they come, keeps the ale flowing at the tavern as she, too, dives into the project. Amanda Bloom's Elizabeth keeps Henry on track with her special warmth and humor.

Putting together the First Folio on Rob Ward's
theater set. 

Odell and Greenway turn in sensational performances as giant personalities Burbage and Jonson.  

Scatamacchia plays Crane as a sometimes-crabby man in a very precise job who has specific ideas about how to do it right. 

Rob Ward's set design takes a rectangular space, seats the audience on the long sides, and uses simple wooden furniture to create a tavern at one end, a print shop in the middle and a theater stage/home at the other end. It's a beautiful playing space and director Spielman, along with lighting designer Deanna Koski, make the most of it.

So many details of this show are surprising and delightful. Costume designer Claudia Stefany puts a little modern touch on each period outfit, with a “this isn’t only history but lives now” vibe - a ball cap on Ralph Crane, a Grateful Dead t-shirt on the "Bad Hamlet" actor. There's no sound designer credited, but the incidental music featuring modern tunes played in an Elizabethan style was a clever choice. 

Today, the First Folio is one of the most important books ever published, second only, some say, to the Gutenberg Bible. Seven hundred fifty copies of this large-format, 900-page book were produced in 1623. A complete copy sold in 2020 for $10 million. Heminges, Condell and the team preserved a genius' insight into human psychology and motivation that advanced our knowledge of the world and continues to resonate to this day.

You might say that's worth a play.   

"Dangereuses" times, then and now

The Schoolhouse Theater, in Croton Falls, N.Y., surely has one of the most varied seasons of any regional theater, starting with a searing portrait of Louis Armstrong in "Satchmo at the Waldorf," ending the season in December with the British hijinks of "Jeeves and Wooster in 'Perfect Nonsense'" and now, mid-season, presenting "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," running until Sept. 21.  

A dark story of sexual intrigue among the pre-revolutionary French upper classes, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" was written by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, a military officer from the bourgeoisie who encountered members of the nobility as he rose through the ranks. It was published in 1782.

Written in the form of a series of letters, the story relates the amorous adventures of Mme. de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, former lovers and kindred spirits in ruthless psychological manipulation. 

The book was turned into this play by British playwright Christopher Hampton and produced in 1985 to great acclaim, followed by a 1988 film.

The Schoolhouse production, directed by Owen Thompson, opens upon a traditional, lovely 18th-century salon, courtesy of set designer Tony Andrea and scenic artist Isabelle Favette. Throughout the play, rearranged furniture and a sliding panel suggest other salons, other boudoirs.

Patrick Zeller as Valmont and
Elizah Knight as de Tourvel

Merteuil (played by Elisabeth S. Rodgers) is playing cards with her cousin, Mme. de Volanges (Lisa Ann Goldsmith), whose 15-year-old daughter, Cecile (Kate Day Magocsi) has just left the convent where she has been educated. 

While the Volanges women are in the room, Merteuil and Valmont are all politesse, but when they leave, their voices harden and Merteuil makes a shocking proposal to Valmont: seduce the girl so that the man who really wants her -- Gercourt, himself a lover who left Merteuil -- will be humiliated. 

Valmont, who prides himself on his "reputation" as a seducer, has a different plan. A married lady of known virtue, Mme. de Tourvel (Elizah Knight) is staying with his aunt, Mme. de Rosemonde (Brinton Parson).Getting her into bed would be a real triumph:  "I want her to believe in God and virtue and the sanctity of marriage, and still not be able to stop herself ... I want the excitement of watching her betray everything that's most important to her."

Patrick Zeller as Valmont and
 Elisabeth S. Rodgers as Merteuil

The intensity of his ardor stings Merteuil, who recalls when she and Valmont were lovers. Surely he isn't in love? "Love is something you use, not something you fall into, like quicksand," she remarks.

And so the spiders begin weaving their webs, also drawing in a young man who is genuinely attracted to Cecile, Chevalier Danceny (Max Murray). Merteuil and Valmont use lies, emotional deception, even sexual assault as they play amoral games with real people's lives. 

What trips them up, to their surprise, is genuine emotion. Valmont really is in love with De Tourvel, who softens his heart with her sincerity and vulnerability. Merteuil's jealous pride as the "woman scorned" turns her heart to stone. Deceit builds on deceit, reaching a deadly conclusion. 

Laclos' "Liaisons" still fascinate us since the beautifully-dressed characters (courtesy of costume designer Nancy Nichols) toss off such sophisticated witticisms as, "I think there's something very degrading about having a husband for a rival. It's humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed."

Thompson is well aware of the parallel with today as his director's notes read that "lace cuffs have given way to tailored suits, gilded coaches to private jets." Valmont and Merteuil's downfall and the rot under their schemes echoes Epstein and Maxwell, one dead in prison, the other still in prison.

Rodgers and Zeller give sensational performances as Merteuil and Valmont. Merteuil has been hardened by the realities of her society: "One of the reasons I never remarried, despite a quite bewildering

range of offers, was the determination never again to be ordered around." Rodgers gives a brilliant and affecting portrait of a woman fighting against her own heart. Zeller's aggressive energy is undeniable, as Valmont, too, finds a kind of benediction along with the cynicism. 

Knight beautifully conveys de Tourvel's emotional agony, playing a character whose hysteria could get tedious -- but not in her hands. Magosci's fresh-faced Cecile is charming. However, I don't quite buy the script's portrayal (no knock on the actor) of Cecile as a girl who is quickly convinced that rape is necessary "instruction" in the bedroom arts.  

Goldsmith's Volanges is as wise, but not as hard, as Merteuil. Murray's Danceny is an innocent young man until he's forced to face up to Valmont's actions. Parson expresses de Rosemonde's slight cluelessness but I wish she had spoken a bit louder at this performance since her lines were sometimes hard to hear. Overall, the pace was sometimes a tad slow. Dennis Parichy's lighting design, as usual, was highly professional, with such nice touches as the sequential illumination of the wall sconces to begin the play.

They are a fascinating crowd, these French aristocrats with no scruples -- and as contemporary as today's headlines. 

Satchmo: A life of improvisation

The Schoolhouse Theater, in Croton Falls, N.Y. presents a range of plays but it just so happens that the last three plays I've seen there have been about various facets of the black experience and the most recent, "Satchmo at the Waldorf", by Terry Teachout, directed by Bram Lewis, (running through June 8, 2025) is well worth a visit. 

"Satchmo" was Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), one of the great entertainers of the 20th century. His trumpet playing revolutionized jazz and his singing and joyful stage persona made him beloved by millions.

Louis Armstrong in 1955. Photo/Herbert Behrens

At the height of his fame, in the 1960s, his recording of "Hello, Dolly!" bumped the Beatles from the no. 1 spot on the record sales charts. Watch this clip of "Dolly" from a 1965 Berlin concert - it's all there, the incandescent personality, the improvising horn, the scat singing. The U.S. State Department sent him on a performance tour of Africa, Europe and Asia as an American good-will ambassador. 

However, the "Satch" (a nickname derived from "satchel mouth," referring to his wide mouth) we meet in this play is the private Armstrong.

In a sensational performance by Wali Jamal, this Armstrong paces his dressing room at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York before a gig in the high-class Empire Room.

He has reached the top of the show business world, with a comfortable room at a prestigious hotel, yet the days when black performers had to find segregated roadhouses and get food from the back doors of restaurant kitchens crowd his memories. 

Wali Jamal as Louis Armstrong

This is a different Armstrong from the man on stage who always sported a huge grin. His first words in play are, "I shit myself tonight." (The play contains a truly spectacular amount of profanity.) He is preoccupied with his declining health, in May 1971, in what will be his last gig before his death in July. 

Jamal brilliantly conveys the charisma of the man, born in the New Orleans red-light district of Storyville and sent to a boys' home at age 12 where he found the magic - a brass band.

Coming up in the jazz joints of New Orleans, Chicago and New York, Armstrong is squeezed by gangsters and finds manager Joe Glaser, a tough-talking Jew from Chicago -- also played by Jamal with a Southside accent and cigar in hand. 

They form a symbiotic partnership - Armstrong leaves all the business aspects to Glaser, whom he always calls "Mr. Glaser," and Glaser advises Armstrong to "stop blowing your brains out playing all them high Cs. That voice of yours - that's where the money is." They operate on a handshake instead of a contract.

Armstrong's story is riveting, but I began to wonder if the script would illustrate why his playing was so special. Then Armstrong turns on a recording of his "West End Blues," featuring a golden cadenza that he describes as playing "kinda like an opera singer showing off ... then I work my way up to that high C, let it ring out like Caruso."

While the 1960s brought Armstrong worldwide acclaim, social issues such as the civil rights movement and new forms of jazz such as be-bop clashed with his image. Putting on a pair of Miles Davis' signature sunglasses, Jamal becomes the cool rival trumpeter, who spares no words.

"Miles Davis loves the way Louis plays trumpet ... Can't play nothing that doesn't come from Louis, not even modern shit. But I hate the way Louis acts onstage. Man gets up there and pulls out that hankie and starts jumping around like Jim Crow on a stick - all to make them sad white motherfuckers happy." 

Davis' view intersects somewhat with my young years in the 1960s when my black music heroes were Jimi Hendrix and the Motown stars, and Louis Armstrong seemed like a nice, old-timey personality without much relevance to the present. I thought that about Ella Fitzgerald, too. Time and appreciation for their musical genius has shown me the shallowness of those early opinions. 

The audience at "Satchmo" was predominantly white, and this is the value of Schoolhouse Theater's bold play choices, courtesy of Lewis, producing director, and Owen Thompson, artistic director. One of the previous works I saw was "MisUnderstanding Mammy," a one-woman play in which actress Hattie McDaniel defends the maid and cook's roles she played against accusations of racial pandering. (The third play was "Master Harold ... and the Boys," set in the time of South African apartheid.) 

Director Lewis keeps the action interesting as Armstrong reminisces, holding his horn, or sits wide-legged as Joe Glaser. Jamal suggests Armstrong's distinctive gravelly voice then switches to Davis' smooth higher-pitched speaking tones, changing his body language for each of the three characters. 

Tom Christopher's set design is described in the program as "the style from the twenties known as Brutalism. Odd angles. Trapezoids."

I found it odd, indeed, since the play is set in the 1970s, Armstrong was a real person and the Waldorf is a real place. It was strange to see Armstrong pick up a phone handset shaped as a block of white plaster, but the nearly all-white set and impressionistic furniture certainly kept the focus on the main character and his emotions.

Dennis Parichy's lighting design literally and subtly highlights the character changes.

Toward the end of his life, he recorded "What a Wonderful World" and it became a signature song for him. This video is from an ABC broadcast in 1967 and between his great big smiles, you can see the seriousness of a man for whom music was existence itself.

About his horn, he says in the play, "Everything I got in this world come outta this. My life, my soul, all right here."

It is indeed a wonderful world that gave us Louis Armstrong. 

   

  

Coming of age in the days of apartheid

There's a bit of deception in the title of South African playwright Athol Fugard's 1982 play, '"Master Harold ... and the boys,' now on stage in a crackling production directed by Owen Thompson through Sept. 22 at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls, N.Y. 

Just looking at the title, you might think the play was primarily concerned with someone named Master Harold and a few secondary characters, but this drama, set in 1950 just two years into South Africa's system of racial segregation known as apartheid, places "the boys" -- two adult black servants -- on the same level of importance as "master" -- a 17-year-old white boy. 

The men, Willie (played by Devin E. Haqq) and Sam (Alvin Keith), work as waiters at a tea room in Port Elizabeth. It's not specifically mentioned in the play, but after 1948, the city was a significant example of a South African city that was stratified into racially-restricted areas through land zoning and legislation.

Fugard, who is now 92, has written some 35 plays and was one of the leading voices against apartheid, which lasted until Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa's first black president in 1994. 

"Master Harold" was initially banned in South Africa and was first produced at the Yale Repertory Theater in 1982 and subsequently transferred to Broadway, where it ran for nearly a year. In 2011, Fugard was awarded a Tony award for lifetime achievement.

Schoolhouse Theater since 1986 has been producing classic and new plays, with a reputation for high quality. Last year's "mis-Understanding Mammy," about actress Hattie McDaniel, was reviewed here.    

"Master Harold" begins on a lighthearted note as the men straighten up the dining room, devoid of customers on a rainy day. Willie is struggling with ballroom dancing in advance of a competition and Sam good-naturedly needles and coaches him.

The Harold of the title, a 17-year-old white boy nicknamed Hally (Will DeVary), arrives, wearing his school blazer and carrying his book bag.

The three have known each other for years, but their respective social status is communicated immediately as Willie jumps to help Hally off with his coat. Yet the play is full of surprises. Fugard won't let us settle into a particular narrative. 

From left, Devin E. Haqq as Willie,
Alvin Keith as Sam, Will DeVary as Hally

As Hally's mother has been busy running the tea room and his father is a disabled alcoholic, the boy has partly been brought up by Willie and Sam. 

However, the men also have taken something from the relationship. Sam is able to trade smart banter with Hally about the great men of history because he has drilled Hally in his lessons, educating himself at the same time.

As Hally starts his schoolwork, the three reminisce about seemingly inconsequential things -- a time Sam and Hally flew a kite, young Hally's desire to hang out in the "servants' room."

But the fond regard these three have for one another can't exorcise the underlying tension of a racially-polarized society. Hally mouths rhetoric about society needing a "social reformer," then falls back into the arrogant manner of the white supremacist: "What does a black man know about flying a kite?" "Why don't you start calling me Master Harold ... Thank of it as a little lesson in respect." 

From left, Devin E. Haqq as
Willie, Alvin Keith as Sam

Hally's emotions become more intense after he remembers having to care for his father, including helping Sam clean him up after he's passed out from drink. The rainy afternoon closes in on the three until a searing confrontation threatens to destroy relationships within a few seconds.

Alvin Keith brilliantly embodies Sam's dignity and lifetime of pain in his final speeches that, against all odds, still contain a note of hope that people -- especially good friends -- can find connection in pure humanity. It's worth noting that for this man in his 40s, racial discrimination in South Africa didn't just start in 1948. It was part of the country's reality since Dutch colonization 400 years before.

While Sam is the older and wiser of the two black men, Devin E. Haqq beautifully expresses Willie's more guileless nature. His reactions to the thunder of Hally and Sam's clash are heartrending. One almost thinks that Willie is more devastated by what is happening.

But there is a disturbing element to Willie's character -- he hits his girlfriend Hilda. Although Sam tells Willie to stop, playwright Fugard, writing in 1980, seems to regard violence against a woman as just one of those things that happens sometimes. No one gets anywhere near as emotional about it as they do about racism and, of course, we never hear from Hilda.     

Will DeVary is clearly an intelligent actor, but his (or Thompson's) decision to play Hally throughout with a consistent tone of angry nastiness left this viewer seeking a bit of vulnerability and some variety of tone. DeVary's South African accent occasionally made it difficult to understand lines. 

Thompson's direction seems to have inspired the cast to plumb the depths of their characters and he keeps the action consistently interesting on a one-set play. He notes in the program that "Master Harold" is the play that means the most to him in four decades of professional theater, having played Hally as a young man. Far from being a period piece, "it has much to say to us in the deeply divided America of the present moment."

Indeed. Even in the realm of world politics, Sam's words ring powerfully: "Open a newspaper and what do you read? America has bumped into Russia ... rich man bumps into poor man. Those are big collisions, Hally. They make for a lot of bruises."

Thompson is also the play's sound designer, responsible for the raindrops and juke box song, among others. Tony Andrea's set design and Dennis Parichy's lighting design are particularly fine, especially a beautiful scrim at the top of the show that illuminates softly the rainy scene outside the tea room's main window. 

This production of "Master Harold" marks a distinguished start to Schoolhouse Theater's season.

   

 

   
 

  

Illinoise, a state of motion

There are two kinds of theatergoers: those who like to read about (and listen to, if possible) a show before they see it and those who want to go in pure.

I'm usually the first, but life and time and stuff got in the way and I made a quick decision to get a ticket the day before I saw the Broadway musical Illinoise.

The show opened at the Park Avenue Armory last spring, then transferred to Broadway and is playing at the St. James Theater through August 10. 

My decision proved the power of the Tony Awards show. I had never heard of the composer, Sufjan Stevens, or knew anything about the show, but I was riveted by a number performed on the Tonys (above) on June 16, 2024.

Two men, awakening on the floor, obviously in bed, obviously a couple, danced fluid, passionate movement, tender but not madly erotic until a final kiss. The choreography for the men's arms, as they were intertwined while they were seated, was exhilarating. A male-female couple entered. One of the men on the floor was friends with the couple, but something separated their friendship. These brief moments were deeply poignant and left me wanting to see more. 

The musical won Best Choreography for Justin Peck, who is the Resident Choreographer at the New York City Ballet. Sadly, I've fallen out of the habit of attending NYCB, so I was familiar with Peck's name, but not much of his work. 

I randomly listened to a couple of Stevens' songs the night before the show - lyrical, sensitive songs about love in the singer-songwriter mold. I learned that he is, at age 49, beloved by "geriatric millennials," those born between 1980 and 1985. This 1954 baby liked them, too, and wondered if the term "geriatric baby boomer" is redundant.

Justin Peck
Photo/Ryan Pfluger

The Illinoise set at first looks bare. The onstage band is on a high level platform and three singers are on a mid-level deck, but the stage becomes a field, a bedroom, a campfire.

The show is described as a musical, but there are no words other than Steven's lyrics. Although playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury is credited with the book, her work, with Peck, consists more toward drawing Stevens' songs together in a linear story. 

Storytelling is key to Illinoise. The Playbill program contains a graphically-lovely insert that's a few pages of a diary kept by one of the characters, Henry, that is full of the yearning and questioning of a young person looking at love. 

Sufjan Stevens

He brings his journal to a campfire gathering, where the characters bring glowing lanterns to signify the fire. Henry and the others write in their journals as Stevens' lyrics ask, "Are you writing from the heart?"

I've read posts online from people who were confused about the plot of Illinoise, but a show that's purely dance and music allows us to bring our own memories and experiences to the adventure happening onstage. 

During the campfire scene, I thought, "Yes, I remember my in-laws' family gathered in the summer evenings around a campfire on Prince Edward Island, Canada."

The scenes and songs move smoothly as Henry recalls a road trip to Chicago ("Chicago"), the friendship with Carl and Shelby that ended in tragedy ("The Seer's Tower" - a play on Chicago's Sears Tower), his awakening to his true nature and his love with a man named Douglas:

I fell in love again

All things go

All things go

Drove to Chicago

All things know

All things know ...

The lyrics seem simple, but paired with Stevens' hymn-like, dreamy music, they conjure up emotions and thoughts - "Why did she go?" "Oh yes, I remember him from elementary school. I really liked him." "I had a sense of adventure then."

Not all the songs are related to Henry's journey, but all have some connection to the state nicknamed "The Prairie State."

"A story about zombies," one of my favorite scenes, has a young woman powerfully fighting the undead, who emerge from (what else) a cornfield. The creatures of the night, however, wear the masks of well-known figures of American history: Ronald Reagan, Ulysses S. Grant, Joseph McCarthy, Andrew Jackson, suggesting that the country's past continues to haunt its present and future.

 

Despite the show's deeply-felt moment of sadness, it ends on a hopeful but realistic note about longing and remembering in the song "Epilogue": "I stand in awe of gratefulness. I can and call forgetfulness."

A "forza" of nature

 The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Verdi's "La Forza del Destino" for me accomplished what Wagner called Gesamtkunstwerk -- a totally successful work of art. 

Attending a March Saturday matinee, I was completely thrilled at director Mariusz Treliński's cinematic conception, a brilliant cast led by superstar-to-be soprano Lise Davidsen, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin's passionate interpretation of the score and Verdi's driving, intense compositions - "movie music" in the best sense, foreshadowing and underscoring scenic emotion. 

Listen to the ominous three notes right at the beginning of the overture, played by brass and bassoons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkPOVYg4Bxc

Now, John Williams' Darth Vader theme from "Star Wars":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzWSJG93P8

Like a good police detective, I say, "Coincidence? I don't think so!" Of course, after the three notes, the themes go in different directions, a heavy militaristic march from Williams and, from Verdi, the violins entering with an anxious, jittery theme. 

Solomon Howard and Lise Davidsen
 as the Marquis and Leonora
Photo: Karen Almond/MetOpera

Treliński dramatizes the overture, so we see a statuesque woman, Leonora (Davidsen), in a gorgeous magenta evening gown pacing in and out of the "Hotel Calatrava," nervously tossing a cigarette away. As Boris Kudlička's trifold set revolves, she walks into the hotel's ballroom, where her birthday party is setting up and the henchmen of her father, the Marquis of Calatrava (Solomon Howard) are giving him a half-Nazi salute, then into his office next to the ballroom.

We soon see the source of her distress: her lover, Don Alvaro (Brian Jagde) climbs through the window, eager to spirit her away. The original story (published in 1835) says he is of South American Native heritage, but in our 21st-century eyes, his being a man of color is no reason why the two should not be together. 

This "Forza" is set in a modern time, but this, friends, is not a modern story. The Marquis discovers the two and violently opposes the match, declaring that Alvaro is beneath Leonora, that she has obviously been seduced and a marriage with him ("the baseness of your origins") will bring disgrace on her family. Alvaro protests and, to demonstrate his worthy intentions, throws his gun at the Marquis' feet. It accidentally discharges, killing Leonora's father. 

Brian Jagde as Don Alvaro
Photo:Karen Almond/MetOpera

This is the terrible event that propels the hand of fate for all the characters. Leonora's brother, Don Carlo (Igor Golovatenko) swears vengeance. Leonora, poor girl, is so consumed with guilt at being the unwitting cause of her father's death that she seeks out a religious refuge in order to do penance. Alvaro flees, wanders the country and joins the army as war sweeps across the land. Don Carlo pursues both, with a determined rage that echoes a Sicilian vendetta. 

The cinematic flow of the action was enhanced by Projection Designer Bartek Macias' moody scene-opening videos showing such scenes as soldiers marching through snow and  Leonora driving through the rain.

 

Davidsen has, up to now, been known for roles in the German repertoire, such as Elsa in Die Meistersinger. She did not disappoint in her first Italian role. Her commanding yet beautifully rounded tone, seemingly effortless projection and dynamic control received several ovations during the performance. For example, in Act IV, Leonora, completely broken in spirit, asks God for peace. In the aria "Pace, pace, mio Dio," Davidsen spun out a high B flat so that the note floated through the house on pure wings of magic. 

Lise Davidsen as Leonora
Photo:Karen Almond/MetOpera

All the principals meshed well in this cast. Jagde's ringing tenor and passionate acting gave Alvaro the same emotional strength as Leonora. Golovatenko's baritone matched Jagde in their three sizzling duets. Howard's majestic bass brought dignity and a sense of cruelty to the dual roles of the Marquis and Padre Guardiano, the abbot of the monastery where Leonora is to live in seclusion.

It sounds like an unrelentingly grim tale, but the depth of emotion and constant action are enthralling. The march of destiny progresses inexorably from the elegant hotel of Act I through scenes of army camps, prison-like enclosures and decadent clubs to a final scene in a bombed-out, gutted train station that reminded me of another apocalyptic movie - "Escape from New York." In "Forza," there's no escape.   

     

Hattie McDaniel: Always in the picture

The question, "Who gets to tell your story?" receives an emphatic answer in Joan Ross Sorkin's play with music "misUnderstanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story," starring Tina Fabrique and directed by Seret Scott, being performed at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls, N.Y. through July 30. 

McDaniel, an accomplished actress and singer, was the first African American actor to win an Academy Award. In 1939, she took home the prize for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Mammy in "Gone with the Wind."

In this one-woman play, which debuted in 2007, McDaniel literally takes center stage to celebrate her "firsts" (the Oscar wasn't the only one), relate her many-sided entertainment career, answer those who criticized the cook and maid's roles she played (especially the NAACP's Walter White) and stake her claim to being not just a survivor but a star in Hollywood and American society.

Hattie McDaniel receives the 1940 Academy 
Award for Best Supporting Actress

The play is Schoolhouse Theater's second post-pandemic show (following the play "Red" last spring), and there's still a palpable sense of joy among the house staff that live theater is back.

Not that the path to "misUnderstanding Mammy" was smooth. Artistic Director Owen Thompson announced before the show that the originally-contracted star had to bow out due to health issues (it was Myra Lucretia Taylor). Fabrique agreed to take on the 80-minute role with two weeks' notice, so the audience shouldn't be surprised if "a script magically appeared," Thompson said. 

We see McDaniel near the end of her life, coping with breast cancer and wearing a lavender robe, in a room in the Motion Picture House in Los Angeles. She's obsessed by the post-WWII campaign that the NAACP's White launched against "mammyism" -- stereotypical depictions of grinning servants rather than fully-rounded characters in a variety of roles -- and against her personally.

Ruminating about her life and seeing White in her mind, she addresses him, noting that she is the "first colored patient" at the Motion Picture hospital. 

Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in
"Gone With the Wind"

Fabrique powerfully brings McDaniel to life, forcefully expressing her bitterness at what she sees as unfair criticism and lack of respect for her many talents. Born in Denver in 1893, she was the youngest of 13 children to parents who were formerly enslaved. "I sang everywhere," McDaniel says in the play, and Fabrique, with a fine gospel/blues voice, demonstrates McDaniel's talent as a songwriter as well as a singer. 

She performed in her father's minstrel show and other touring ensembles. In the 1920s, a new radio station debuted in Denver, and she recalls that "I was the first Negro woman to sing on the radio." Nothing kept her down for long. Stranded in Milwaukee by the Great Depression, she worked as a washroom attendant at a nightclub, but her talent could not be repressed and eventually she became a regular singer at the club.

However, more opportunity beckoned westward. "I arrived in Los Angeles with $20," and found her way to radio again, performing as "Hi-Hat Hattie," a bossy maid character. When radio work flagged, she worked as a maid. Gradually, she won parts in films, appearing opposite Mae West, Will Rogers and Jean Harlow. Look up the dinner scene in "Alice Adams," with Katharine Hepburn. McDaniel plays a maid who really couldn't care less and steals the scene. 

She was making very good money (the legend is she once said she'd rather make $700 a week playing a maid than $7 a week being one) when she auditioned for "Gone With the Wind," as she says, "dressed as Mammy."

She made $450 a week for "GWTW," in 1939, when a loaf of bread cost eight cents. "I was paid to act. Did you think I had control?" she asks, sharply pointing out that she took what she could get. "I was making those parts funny, honest, not demeaning ... I fought for our people, lifting them up to the silver screen," she protests.

She's clear-eyed about colorism as a heavyset, dark-skinned black woman. The implication is that she wasn't about to get the parts that went to Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge, light-skinned and glamorous. "I'm black as Africa and proud of it!" McDaniel declares, then needles Walter White for his name, his light skin and his white wife.   

Racism, as always, entered her career. The "GWTW" black actors were not allowed to attend the all-white Atlanta premiere of the film. It's not in the play, but the story is that Clark Gable threated to boycott the premiere, but McDaniel convinced him to go. In the play, she says disdainfully, "I said I was otherwise committed."

 

She did attend the Hollywood premiere and, of course, the Oscar ceremony, but was seated at a separate table with her black escort and white agent. 

If you doubt Hattie McDaniel's acting prowess or why she received that Oscar, just look at this scene from "Gone with the Wind":

Hattie McDaniel as Mammy tells Melanie

of Rhett's distress at the death of his child

 

Tina Fabrique is always riveting as Hattie, even with a script in her hand, leaving me to wish that she'd had the time to memorize the part and bring even more nuance to it. No matter, Seret Scott directs with a sure hand, keeping Fabrique's movement about the bedroom set interesting, whether she is reminiscing, excoriating Walter White or addressing us, her audience, both in the 1930s and now. 

By the way, McDaniel went on to star in the early 1950s in a popular TV show, "Beulah," where she played a maid yet again, but as always, she stole her scenes. When she died, five thousand people attended the church service and the funeral procession consisted of 125 limousines. Many of her Hollywood friends attended.

McDaniel was barred from her first choice of cemetery, Hollywood Cemetery, due to her race, and was buried at Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles. In 1999, Hollywood Cemetery erected a memorial to her. 

If you can, you should make Hattie McDaniel's acquaintance in this play.