jane Baldwin

Souvenir, A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster: A Sad, Mad, and Yes Funny Play

By Jane Baldwin | October 26, 2017

Souvenir. A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins
Photo Mark S.Howard

Ten years after staging Stephen Temperley’s two-hander Souvenir, A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins Spiro Veloudos, the artistic director of Boston’s Lyric Stage, has revived it with the same cast. Not having seen the earlier production, I am unable to compare the two. However, both talented performers Will McGarrahan and Leigh Barrett are comfortable and believable in their roles.

Since Souvenir’s Broadway début in 2005, Florence Foster Jenkins has become considerably better known. Coincidently, Peter Quilter’s British iteration with an even longer title: Glorious!: The True Story of Florence Foster the Worst Singer in the World opened the same year. …

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WARHOLCAPOTE: Their World of Celebrity, Competition, Conversation, Art, and Friendship

By Jane Baldwin | September 28, 2017

As its title seems to indicate,Warholcapote , a two character play revolves around a relationship so close that both characters are in some way indistinguishable. Both were honored as avant-garde artists of the mid-twentieth century and both were celebrity hounds. Much of Warhol’s art consists of paintings of beautiful and famous actresses, most notably Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, the most prominent movie stars of their time. Nonetheless, he is perhaps most renowned for his pop art paintings of Campbell soup cans and other consumer goods of the middle class of the period. …

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Constellations: A Relationship Held Together by String Theory

By Jane Baldwin | September 19, 2017

Cambridge’s Central Square Theatre is presently showing Nick Payne’s imaginative Constellations under the auspices of the Underground Railway Theatre as a Catalyst Collaborative @ MIT. Every year a play whose source is scientific knowledge is offered at the Central Square Theatre and supported by MIT as a means of amalgamating art and science. …

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Gypsy: A Wonderful Revival

By Jane Baldwin | September 13, 2017

For its first show of the season Boston’s Lyric Stage, which often produces musical theatre pieces, chose Arthur Laurents’, Jule Styne’s, and Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy. Gypsy is considered by many critics, scholars, and theatre artists as one of the greatest musicals of the mid-20^th century when American musical comedy turned into musical theatre, a more well-rounded genre in which the narrative and characterization were on par with the songs, where comedy could remain an integral part of the show or be dropped.

In 1959, Ethel Merman created the leading role of Mama Rose, a woman dedicated to fulfilling her dream of seeing her two daughters become show business stars, who in Merman’s version was funny, cruel, selfish, powerful, and at times loving. Her loud (and for some abrasive) mezzo-soprano voice and her belting style were inimical.

Since the original closed in 1961, Gypsy has been revived four times on Broadway with Tyne Daly, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, and Patti Lupone as the lead. Tyne Daly, Angela Lansbury, and Patti Lupone won a Tony award, while Bernadette Peters was nominated. What their performances have in common is that their interpretations are less vulgar, tough, lower class, and over the top than Merman’s.
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Louis Riel: An Impressive Revival

By Jane Baldwin | June 18, 2017

Louis Riel, Canada’s leading opera composed by Harry Somers with the libretto written by Mavor Moore and Jacques Languirand, first produced in 1967 to commemorate the centennial has been revived for the country’s 150^th anniversary of confederation. The 2017 production is a collaboration between the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. …

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La fureur de ce que je pense : An extraordinary theatrical experience

By Jane Baldwin | June 8, 2017

Seeing La fureur de ce que je pense was my first experience of Nelly Arcan’s writing, far less known in the English-speaking world than in the French where her work has been nominated for several prestigious awards. Before attaining fame as an author, she worked as a sex escort. At 36 years of age, she hanged herself in her Montreal apartment.

La fureur de ce que je pense, presented in Ottawa, as part of the French language programme of the NAC, was assembled by the director Marie Brassard from Arcan’s works, which although they are largely autobiographical, are representative of the anxieties and stress of many women. This may be the reason that the single character is enacted by six different actresses. Before the show begins, the audience sees what appear to be two levels of mirrors stretching across the stage with blinding lights above them. The effect is that the audience members view themselves reflected, thus making them part of the world of the play. The lights go down slowly. Voices are heard speaking in unison as in a Greek tragedy. There are six extraordinary actresses, all of whom play the same character, but every one of them recounts incidents or aspects of the character’s life through a series of monologues. In addition, there is a small graceful dancer who does not seem to be part of the same world. Does she symbolize Arcan as an innocent child? She enters and leaves the stage seemingly at will. …

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Arrabal: A Story of Love and Politics Told through the Tango

By Jane Baldwin | May 22, 2017

Arrabal, now playing at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge in its U.S. début, premiered in Toronto in 2014. In its present state, it is a fascinating theatre experience, a political drama told without words via the tango and music. It is also an immersive show where some audience members, supposedly at a tango club in Buenos Aires, sit at tables downstage as well as on the orchestra floor, which had several rows of seats removed. In the first scene which takes place in the present spectators are invited to join the performers onstage for a tango lesson.

The joyous mood changes abruptly as the story begins. A projection announces that it is 1976, the year in which Isabel Peron’s government was overthrown by a right-wing junta. We meet Rodolfo (Julio Zurita), an endangered resistant, bringing his infant daughter to his mother who lives in a slum (arrabal in Spanish) outside Buenos Aires. He dances a tender tango with baby Arrabal (a word also associated with the tango) before putting her into the bassinet and leaving her a red scarf. …

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The Bridges of Madison County: Musical Adaptation Adds Corn

By Jane Baldwin | May 11, 2017

In 1992, Robert James Waller wrote the romantic best seller, The Bridges of Madison County, the kind of book which is often dismissed as chick lit. Three years later its next iteration appeared as a film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood with Meryl Streep playing opposite him. The film received better reviews than the book. And in 2014, it opened on Broadway as a musical with the book by Marsha Norman and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. Although it won two Tony Awards, one for the best original score, the other for the best orchestration, it closed after a four month run.

Now available to the regionals, it is presently playing at Boston’s SpeakEasy Stage Company which has particular skill in working with musicals. Jason Robert Brown’s music is varied, moving from operatic songs, to jazz, to bluegrass, to American country music. For this production, SpeakEasy has strong singers, particularly the multi-talented Jennifer Ellis who plays Francesca, the protagonist and baritone Christiaan Smith as Robert who falls in love with her. …

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17 Border Crossings or Around the World in 20 Years

By Jane Baldwin | April 23, 2017

After a three year lapse, the innovative company Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental has returned to ArtsEmerson in Boston, this time with 17 Border Crossings. The earlier production Red Eye to Havre de Grace was a devised musical and dance piece, directed by Thaddeus Phillips, which focussed on trying to solve the mystery of Edgar Allen Poe’s death. Similar to Border Crossings and other works of Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, travel was an important element, although the plot was far more developed.

Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental as its name suggests has no home. It is a travelling theatre that creates pieces which sometimes, as in the case of 17 Border Crossings, can be years in the making. It is based on trips that Thaddeus Phillips, the playwright and actor in this solo show, took over more than twenty years, starting in his youth. It is directed by Phillips’ wife and collaborator Tatiana Mallarino. The setting designed by Phillips is spare, consisting of a table, chair, microphone, radio and a long metal bar hung with lights that can be raised and lowered. In part, the bright lights serve to transition from one voyage to another. In one scene Phillips cleverly uses them to give the impression he is riding a bicycle. Phillips’ performance is reminiscent of Spaulding Gray’s monologues, but without the narcissistic intensity, while his set and David Todaro’s lighting recall Robert Lepage, but at a simpler level. Phillips audited Lepage’s work over a long period and appeared in his Miracle of Geometry. Lepage’s influence can also be seen in Phillip’s movement work.

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Barbecue: A Bizarre Family Story

By Jane Baldwin | April 14, 2017

Robert O’Hara’s play Barbecue is funny, thought provoking, filled with surprises and at times structurally confusing. It is the surprises, particularly one in the second act that make it difficult to write about since to reveal much is to act as a spoiler, but to remain unforthcoming does not allow the reviewer to do justice to the work. Boston’s Lyric Stage, where Barbecue is currently playing, carries secrecy to an unnecessary extreme refusing the audience programs until the end of the first act. …

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