Ragtime: Westchester's hometown musical

Ragtime, the musical picture of America at the dawn of the 20th century, is currently playing until May 4 at Westchester Broadway Theatre, close to what might be called the show's hometown.

Based on E.L. Doctorow's novel of the same title, Ragtime begins with the book's first sentence, anchoring the action in Westchester County, just north of New York City: "In 1902, Father built a house at the crest of the Broadview Avenue hill in New Rochelle."

Even more amusing for this reviewer, my current residence, Mamaroneck (just a few miles northeast of New Rochelle) gets a literal shout-out from a train conductor later on.

The cast of Ragtime

This production is directed by John Fanelli and produced by his Standing Ovation Studios performing arts facility in Westchester. Last year, Fanelli's production of In The Heights was a major hit at WBT and a stretch for a suburban dinner theater more accustomed to showcasing classic fare such as Guys and Dolls.

Ragtime is a big, sprawling show with three intertwined stories: a white, middle-class New Rochelle family (Father, Mother, Mother's Younger Brother, Grandfather) takes in a troubled young black woman and her baby; the baby's father (ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker, Jr.) encounters vicious racism and reacts violently; a Jewish immigrant from Latvia (Tateh) struggles to make a better life for himself and his young daughter.

Also putting in an appearance are some of the giant personalities of the age: Henry Ford, leftist agitator Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini, Booker T. Washington and chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit, whose jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, shot her lover, architect Stanford White, in a roof garden theater.

I've always loved Stephen Flaherty's score and Lynn Ahrens' lyrics and Terrence McNally's Tony-winning book is worthy of a great playwright. However, Ragtime to me has generally felt like a history diorama with the real-life figures trotted out to make a point.

However, this cast makes the most of the show's intimate moments, underscored with such glorious melodies as "Ragtime," "Your Daddy's Son," "The Wheels of a Dream," and "Till We Reach That Day."

FaTye and Brittney Johnson as Coalhouse and Sarah.

Coalhouse is played by the Westchester-based actor FaTye, whose story is a journey as dramatic as this musical. Raised in foster homes and group residences around New York, FaTye was mentored by several Westchester educators and theater people, including Fanelli at Ovation. I saw him in a smaller part last year in In the Heights, however he has had lead roles, including Jim in Big River at WBT. 

On opening night, FaTye seemed a bit tentative, however, both he and Brittney Johnson (who played Sarah, the baby's mother and was miked too loudly) were contending with difficult sound problems that may well have thrown them off a little. I would love to see FaTye take the stage with power and verve, because he has acting and singing talent to burn and deserves to inhabit fully his gift.

Two other standouts for me were Victoria Lauzun and Joey Sanzaro. Lauzun plays Mother, the compassionate New Rochelle woman who takes in Sarah and her son, radiating grace and tenderness in songs such as "Goodbye, My Love" and "What Kind of Woman."

Mother (Victoria Lauzun) and Tateh (Joey Sanzaro)

Sanzaro as Tateh reminded me of a young Topol, his warm tenor blending beautifully with Lauzun's on "Our Children," as Mother and Tateh form a deep friendship. Earlier, in "A Shtetl Iz Amereke," Sanzaro ably communicates a father's rage at the brutality of a new land and his desperate quest to keep his child safe.

Although it received lukewarm reviews when it opened in 1996, Ragtime has become a very popular show, with another production in Westchester on the boards last fall. Two years ago, it was produced at the Shaw Festival in Ontario, Canada. Click here for that post.

WBT's production, at three hours, could be tightened up, however choreographer Greg Graham moves the 40-member cast smartly through ragtime dancing and illuminates in movement the wariness of three groups of Americans -- whites, blacks and immigrants. Steve Loftus' set echoes the 1909 Queensboro Bridge and Gail Baldoni's costumes cover shades of cream, burgundy and tan for the three groups.

Ragtime's theme is that America is a land of hope, despite the times that it fails to live up to its better nature, and this production shines with that ideal.

A theatrical work of art

Musical theater lovers, mark the opening of The Bridges of Madison County with rejoicing! A gorgeous work of art has appeared at Broadway's Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre that will fill your head with melody and stretch your heart with emotion. All the elements of this show -- direction, performance, music, script, lighting, sound, set design -- gather to create a memorable whole that should take a significant place in the Broadway canon.

However, don't expect a stage version that exactly replicates the 1995 movie with Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. Composer Jason Robert Brown, book writer Marsha Norman and director Bartlett Sher have re-imagined Robert James Waller's 1992 novel about an Iowa housewife's brief affair with an itinerant National Geographic photographer.

Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale

This Bridges uses the stage to create a fluid sense of time and space, deepening our view of the worlds of Francesca Johnson (Kelli O'Hara), and Robert Kincaid (Steven Pasquale).

Brown has written his greatest score, beginning the show with a simple, soulful cello line as Francesca recalls how she came from Italy to Iowa -- "To Build a Home." (I don't know if it was a sound problem or O'Hara is still settling into the Italian accent, but I and my companion had trouble understanding the lyrics in the first song.)

Michael Yeargan's set design and Donald Holder's lighting design (they both won Tonys for their work on Sher's South Pacific at Lincoln Center) mesh beautifully to create an Oklahoma!-like vision of Iowa's vast, lonely horizon. Holder's work with the subtleties of daylight and moonlight is particularly important in a story where one of the main characters -- the picture taker -- also paints with light.

The covered bridge that Robert arrives to photograph is a set of rectangular arches, lowered for the appropriate scenes, while other elements -- kitchen furniture, fences, trucks -- are moved in and out by cast members. Some of the actors remain, seated, at the edges of the stage, reminders of rural neighbors who may be as nosy as they are kind.

Francesca's husband Bud (a sturdy Hunter Foster), a very decent but emotionally limited man, is off with their son and daughter to the Indiana State Fair for three days and Francesca is looking forward to a bit of a rest.

Hunter Foster and Kelli O'Hara

Then Robert walks up her drive to ask directions to "the Rosamund Bridge." He is, as he sings, "Temporarily Lost" as he muses on a life of deliberately solitary wandering in the service of his art (and this country-tinged number could easily have been sung by Glen Campbell in his prime).

The first inkling that this is a different Bridges comes during Robert and Francesca's first dinner at the farmhouse, when Robert's ex-wife Marian (Whitney Bashor) -- his past, in other words -- walks through the kitchen and sings about their marriage in "Another Life." Bashor's poignant soprano gives this folkish song a special quality on such lyrics as "a woman wearing four years of confusion like a scarf."

(However, I don't know why Sher directed Robert and Francesca to watch and react to characters who are from the past or another place and clearly not in the same location. I found it slightly distracting.)

Carolyn (Caitlin Kinnunen) and Michael (Derek Klena), Bud and Francesca's children, are also fleshed out as we see them testing their adolescent limits at the fair ("State Road 21/The Real World").

Robert and Francesca’s gradual dance of attraction is beautifully directed by Sher, climaxing at the end of Act I with the duet “Falling Into You,” which sounded to me like it could be a lush, romantic ballad of the 1940s. One of the fine things about Brown's work in Bridges is how successfully he composes in different genres.

Act II becomes even more musically fulfilling, as a raucous country-western song at the fair (which maybe goes on just a tad too long) segues into the quiet bedroom where Robert and Francesca are holding each other. Again, we hear the cello's sweet melancholy and they sing about "Who We Are and Who We Want to Be" with a melody line that is just meltingly beautiful.      

Francesca recalls her youth in Italy, so different from plain Iowa, and in this astounding score, Brown has given her an echo of Puccini and opera in "Almost Real." As her family returns home, Francesca ponders a decision, a choice between passion or faithfulness.

No matter how much additional material is brought to this story, it lives and dies on the two characters at the center and O'Hara and Pasquale create a romantic couple for the ages.

Her sweet soaring soprano and his soulful tenor (how is it possible this is Pasquale's Broadway musical debut?) build upon each other and blend emotion so brilliantly that the listener gratefully gets lost in one song after another.  

In the end, Bridges is a masterpiece because it successfully, achingly explores the eternal desire for love, for connection at the deepest level, and for discovering in love your authentic self in the world. You owe it to yourself to experience this show.

Who is a musician?

The question posed in this headline has tortured me for a long time and I was given cause to ponder it again after last Saturday, when I performed at the adult students’ recital at the Music School of Westchester in Larchmont, N.Y.

We were nine adults performing individually -- voice, violin, piano -- and an amplified pop trio. I had prepared "The Simple Joys of Maidenhood" from Camelot for my solo singing debut and a Clementi sonatina and Chopin prelude for the piano performance.

Several of the adults -- like myself -- had played when young, been away from music for a long time, and returned in middle age. Several were just starting out, chasing a long-held dream.

The setting -- the music school's reception area, equipped with two Steinway grand pianos -- could not have been friendlier, yet the day before, when I had climbed the stairs and saw the chairs set up in audience configuration, my stomach had lurched.  

At the piano

As usual, the performance terror descended – pounding heart, shaking hands even at the visualization of sitting there, waiting to be introduced, then playing in front of everyone.

I decided to try visualization, seeing a successful performance, but that had limited effect. I just practiced some more and decided to use deep breathing, under the principle that flooding the brain with oxygen would help me remember lyrics and settle the hands. 

The next night, as our group gathered, it was apparent that nerves were affecting a fair number. I could hear one participant obsessively practicing in a rehearsal room.

A couple of us were performing for the first time and had skills that were still developing. I sat next to a nice Frenchwoman who was compulsively rolling and unrolling her music to the extent that I wondered how she was going to set it on the piano.

My song was early on -- deep breaths -- and I had decided to introduce it briefly, since I have no fear whatsoever of public speaking. It's a wonderfully amusing song and it went well, although about ten percent of my best sound got left in the rehearsal room through nerves. But I was very happy and grateful for teacher Mazzelle Sykes and accompanist Vladimir Babadzhan, the school's music director.

The piano -- always the source of greatest joy and greatest fear -- loomed. More deep breaths. A glance at the music since I seem not to have seen it before. Overall, also good, although the Clementi was too fast out of the gate due to the heart racing and there were a couple of glitches. The Chopin was 100%. (Thank you, teacher Nataliya Blidy.)

So why do we do this? How do cope with the fact that there are worlds of players and singers more expert than we are, starting with our teachers? Can we call ourselves musicians?

Well, I never thought I could sing a solo in public when I started voice lessons last fall, and sing it well and creditably. When I returned to the piano, I was convinced my history of musical stage fright would continue and my living room would be my only venue. 

However, I discovered that performing garners respect and several of my musician friends (people I would consider "real" musicians) chipped in with tips and a bit of coaching on technique. "We are now in the same nerves boat," one e-mailed. 

For me, one of the more affecting parts of the recital is in hearing which pieces of music are inspiring my fellow students and hear how they interpret them, how it becomes Joe's Schumann, Seth's Rachmaninoff, Marie Jeanne's Bach -- and sharing my music with them. Solange's Clementi. Solange's Chopin.

I loved both pieces I played. The Clementi (Op. 36, No. 3) revels in buoyant speed and melodies within scale runs. It's just purely happy. The Chopin (Op. 28, No. 20) carries a world of sadness in its dark chords. and yet, with a simple E natural at the top of one chord, literally sounds a note of hope. I find it profoundly moving. I chose the pieces for their contrasts.

   

Finally, the essence of the evening for me came when Sophie, of the rolled music, came back to sit down next to me. She'd performed a Thelonious Monk piece called "Ruby My Dear," swingy, with pretty chords, but had bobbled a couple at the end.

"That was really nice," I commented to her. She unrolled her music and pointed toward the last few measures: "But I made a mistake here." 

I replied, "Don't worry. Don't obsess over it. You introduced a wonderful piece of music to me and played it really well with your unique feeling. That's what's important." 

I realized that's why we were there - to share, to support, to realize that music holds us, saves us, feeds us and even though we may feel inadequate, progressing slowly due to work and family and adult life, even vowing to quit -- we don't. I realized that the hardest work I do at the piano, even when frustrating and daunting, still nurtures my soul.

Yes, every person in that room is a musician.

Better than the Super Bowl

Last weekend, I was in a New Jersey at an intense competition featuring dynamic, highly-trained participants focused on a goal line.

No, it was not the Super Bowl. It was better (and since this is being written just after the game, that statement is certain).

I was a judge at the Speech and Theatre Association of New Jersey's high school theater acting competition and awards, held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

Logo of the Speech and Theatre Association of New Jersey

As it turned out, I experienced high school theater and college theater in one day, but more on that in a bit.

It was my second experience with STANJ, the first being the subject of this blog post last year. This year, in the preliminary round, I judged "scenes," play excerpts of no more than 15 minutes that required at least three actors.

My top two were a trio who performed a scene from Playwriting 101:The Rooftop Lesson by Rich Orloff and a group who did a scene from Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Steve Martin's delightful musing on the development of the 20th century through imagined conversations between Picasso and Einstein at the Parisian bistro Lapin Agile.

In Playwriting, a controlling instructor lectures on the craft of playwriting, using two live examples: a would-be jumper on a ledge and a would-be Good Samaritan trying to save him. The teacher (a woman, in this cast) uses a clicker to freeze the action and the two guys must obey - until they don't. 

I was impressed by the trio's good, fast comic timing, excellent vocal delivery and sharp differentiation of character. 

The competition was an acting competition (we were not to judge other elements) and the Playwriting group certainly did very well with just a box to represent the ledge. The Picasso group, on the other hand, decided to create theatre, bringing several boxes to put together for a bar, chairs, bar glasses, costumes and sound effects on a laptop.

Their intensity -- particularly the main characters -- and obvious research into the text really shone through, along with their creation of the world of Paris in 1904.

In the final round, I was one of the judges with the improvisational pairs, where two actors picked a situation from an envelope we judges had, then had five minutes to set up and perform an improvised scene. 

My top picks were two boy-girl couples, one of whom created a post-coitus scene so smooth it seemed like a written play and another who invested a scene between a parachute jumping instructor and a student with great comic tension.

Excited participants watching the awards ceremony, with the golden hardware at center right.

The awards ceremony at the end of the day had enough energy to lift the roof as the teenagers cheered, whistled and hollered as their schoolmates were called. My Playwriting duo won the top prize in their section and the Picasso group placed sixth! As I was chatting with a teacher, I learned that the Picasso group were inner-city kids who had as much in common with a Parisian bistro as I have with a police station. The transformative power of theater had gotten hold of them and worked its magic.

The college performance later that night took place at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. Vow, subtitled An Evening of New Musical "Shorts," was an intriguing project that brought together the college's musical theatre students with composers and lyricists in an evening of stories taken from the weddings/announcements section of the New York Times.

The program also noted that the students had had a hand in developing the characters and several of the students received additional solo songs from the Directory of Contemporary Musical Theatre Writers, a two-year-old project that connects writers (there are 160 in the directory now)  with teachers and students interested in new work.

At the opening of Vow, this journalist particularly loved the opening song about the New York Times, feeling it caught the intrepid spirit of newspaper reporting, and the rich comic story of a hard-news reporter assigned to the "Vows" section that prints anecdotes about how couples met and fell in love.

The cast of Vow - some looking for love at the protest.

Throughout the 90-minute show, opposite-sex and same-sex couples meet, fall in love or like, even on the front lines of the "Occupy" movement, even when tragedy strikes.

At the piano, musical director David Sisco provided expert accompaniment for the ensemble songs of Russell Kaplan and Sara Wordsworth, Will Reynolds, and Clay Zambo.

Solo songs from the "directory" were written by Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond, Kenneth Kacmar and Joe Miloscia, James D. Sasser, Katya Stanislavskaya, and John Bucchino.

It might have been a little hard to follow the "vows" theme through the mix of solos and ensemble numbers, but the very fine cast and the show as a whole was beautifully directed with a strong and confident hand by Laura Josepher. 

“Titanic” sails into Westchester Broadway Theatre

The 1997 Tony Award-winning Best Musical, Titanic, is being launched again in a new, intimate production and has docked at Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford, N.Y., direct from rave reviews in London. It is scheduled to run until Feb. 23, then steams toward Toronto before a Broadway berth.

The passengers of "Titanic." Photo: John Vecchiolla 

On press night, composer Maury Yeston was in attendance at the venerable dinner theater, where the menu features four entrees served on the great ship and a wine/rum punch named after the White Star line. Yeston’s score won a Tony, as did the late Peter Stone’s book, Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations, Stewart Laing’s scenic design and the musical itself.

This revised version, directed by a member of the original cast, Don Stephenson, features a nearly-bare stage, a set wall of luggage and packages, a high frame representing the legendary ship’s bridge and projections of the grand staircase, starry night, etc., to deepen the action.

Without special effects (apart from the projections) or large set pieces, this Titanic focuses on relationships ...

To read the rest of this review, please click here: allaboutarmonk.

A family plot

Family conflict over an inheritance has inspired rich plots from Henry James' The Spoils of Poynton to Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and it sets the scene for a new play called The Portrait, by Sarah Levine Simon, currently playing off-Broadway at Theater 54.

The enigmatic ancestor in The Portrait.

Two brothers in late middle age, Toddy and Henry, have gathered with their wives at Toddy's apartment for a dinner to which nephew Marty and his wife have been invited.

Each brother covets a painting Marty has inherited -- a portrait by noted artist Thomas Sully of their ancestor, Solomon Ezekiel Renard.

They lay a wager as to which one of them can acquire it, then are joined by wives Helen (Toddy) and Agnes (Henry). The atmosphere turns arch as the two women also square off over such heirlooms as chairs, tables and "father's desk."

When Marty, a theater director, arrives along with his spacey opera singer wife Alissa, we learn that Solomon Ezekiel was Jewish and the family has somewhat conflicted attitudes towards their faith. In the present day, a daughter named Harriet has married a Protestant minister, causing a stir since the family has always been "discreetly Jewish," a phrase that speaks volumes.

Marty is developing a theater project "about America's first Jews" that needs money and the brothers practically claw each other to bid for the painting, thereby financing the play. One of them wins, but as he goes off to get his checkbook, the other reveals the truth about the portrait.

Director Roger Hendricks Simon plays the conniving Henry and James Williams the fussy Toddy, with Caitlin O'Heaney as glamorous and bitchy Helen and June Stein as temperamental Agnes. James Leaf brings a bracing practicality to Marty while Jessica Eleanor Grant gives Alissa a charmingly hippie quality. Rutanya Alda perpetually looks as if she is about to drop the dishes with a crash as the ditsy French maid Honoré.

The play is billed as "a new comedy of bad manners" and is played as farce, albeit with a pace that I thought could have been quicker. However, what resonated for me and what I would have loved to have seen further developed -- perhaps as drama first, with humor second -- were the serious themes of family history, relationships and greed. As it stands now, The Portrait is an enjoyable evening in the theater and, potentially, a meaningful one. 

 






    

"When shall we three meet again?"

Recently, Solange on Theater (SOT) asked the 16-year-old offspring and her best guy friend what show they would like to see for Christmas.

SOT had envisioned her childhood - perhaps the New York City Ballet's ever-wondrous Nutcracker or the power and joy of Handel's Messiah. If the ballet seemed too juvenile and the oratorio too classical, then possibly a Broadway show, preceded by an elegant dinner and a stroll through Rockefeller Center to take in the tree and the lights.

Nutcracker?

Messiah?

Little did she realize she would be plunged into a world of blood and madness as the high schoolers said they would like to go to Sleep No More, the two-year-old interactive theater performance based on Macbeth.

Ballet and song of a different kind.

Instead of Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall, the three of us headed toward a former warehouse on West 27th Street and Tenth Avenue. Sleep No More is a production of Britain's Punchdrunk company, which has been devising immersive theater experiences since 2000 in environments that aren't traditional theaters, a concept called site-specific.

The converted warehouse is called the McKittrick Hotel, supposedly a luxury hotel that was shuttered in the 1930s and re-opened for this show. We lined up briefly under the streetlights, outside the black entrance door, as a bouncer marked with an X the hands of our underage non-drinkers.

Upon entering, down a dimly-lit hallway, we are told to check coats and bags ($4 charge), given a playing card as a ticket and ushered into a red-lit bar/lounge called Manderley (not so much a nod to Macbeth as to the Gothic novel and film Rebecca).

Our guides are rather arch in manner. We are given white masks (see photo above), told to wear them at all times and that there is to be no talking during the performance. It's a film noir atmosphere stirred with a touch of unease.

We are guided onto an elevator, told to explore and that "fortune favors the bold." Once off the elevator, I began letting my eyes adjust to the dim light as eerie music filled the air. Feeling my way down the hallways felt like a haunted house set and the sounds added to the sense of foreboding, but I knew there would be nothing as trite as ghoulies jumping out of the shadows.

There are four floors and dozens of rooms decorated in time-warp, hallucinatory fashion. The first room I entered had a double row of clawfoot bathtubs and resembled a 1920s hospital. A young woman in a gray nurse's uniform was washing a couple of shirts in one of the tubs and we masked voyeurs gathered to watch. Our pale uniform faces rinsed away all expression and identification. We were not tempted to look at each other.

She moved quickly out of the room and we followed, but I went down another corridor. Our group had been split up and one of the hints about the show is that it is best to explore alone. Each person has a unique experience. I wandered through many rooms - a bedroom where a woman was writing a letter, a tailor's shop where a man was meticulously sewing tags on a piece of clothing. The letter-writing woman entered and they danced. He wrapped her in a bolt of cloth, then unwrapped her.

However, I seemed to be wandering through a lot of rooms with much furniture and decor but no people and after the first half hour, was looking at my watch. Then things got active. Themes of blood and water - washing away blood -- recurred as a couple (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth) in a bedroom tried to sluice away guilt and murder. There was some nudity but somehow, behind our masks, we were each individually watching and there was no creepy crowd feeling, although there were at least two dozen people there. It was almost sacred.

"Out, out damn spot." 

Then the couple began a wild dance - on the huge bed with its brown sheets, along the piled-up suitcases and brown dressers against the wall. They flung each other down and around, even up against the walls. The lines from Macbeth ran through my head -"Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!/Macbeth doth murder sleep.'" I saw two tortured people, demons wakefully haunted by bloody deeds, trapped in a hellish storm of their own devising, and I was brought to tears.

"Still it cried 'Sleep no more!' to all the house."

Following crowds and characters, I came upon a large room with low stone walls and trees. Here amid flashes of strobe lighting was a witches' sabbath of desperate eroticism as Macbeth and the three witches communed with the dark forces of the supernatural. All the symbolism of the scenes in Macbeth was there -- the bloody child (a baby doll, of course), a naked man wearing a donkey's head, the trees of Birnam Wood -- astonishing, sensual, brilliant.

As time wound toward 10 p.m., black-masked guides took up positions on the stairs, forcing us to go down to the main floor and a large open room where a stage was set with a banquet scene. Macbeth was at the head of the table and his male and female guests were arraying along it, almost dancing in place to music. And there was the ghost of Banquo, the last bloody-faced man, haunting the host at what becomes his last meal.

The evening ended at the Manderley Bar and our group of three reunited, although I had run into the two others along the way. All the way home, we compared notes and impressions, describing the personal, individual drama we had witnessed. It wasn't the usual Christmas show, but distinct and memorable nonetheless.

Note: this blog post is in memory of Pam Leven, a writer friend taken from us suddenly and too soon just five days ago. Now her story is ended, but while she lived she wrote it with verve, great humor and style. I'll always remember our adventures, Pam. It is so hard to say "farewell."