Tag: Broadway

Outstanding ‘West Side Story’ by Norwalk Symphony

The Norwalk Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Jonathan Yates and in conjunction with Stamford’s New Paradigm Theater produced an outstanding Symphonic Concert version of West Side Story last Saturday. This was just the music, without the choreography, costumes, props or much of the dialog, which gave you a chance to fully appreciate Bernstein’s complex and beautiful score.

Bernstein wrote the orchestra score for 31 players, including 4 percussion players: making it a score you are unlikely to ever hear in local, or even professional productions. And the Norwalk Symphony did better, with the rich sound of 48 professional musicians, including those 4 percussion players.

The New Paradigm Theater recruited and rehearsed the singers and worked out their minimal blocking, staged by Claire Kelly and with music direction by Steve Musitano, and overall artistic direction by Kristin Huffman.

The performance started with the prolog, which is normally a dance number and the first Jets-Sharks conflict, but in this staging, we just heard the music itself. This continued throughout with all of the dance music played in full for us to appreciate.

Some thirty-four singers made up the collection of leads and chorus, giving a full sound to all of Bernstein’s writing. Outstanding in this performance was Evy Ortiz as Maria, who even without much dialog managed to portray the new immigrant who falls in love with Tony. Her voice was clear and always easily heard and understood, with a lovely, soprano sound. Bronson Norris Murphy played Tony with aplomb and his clear tenor voice nailed the (optional) high C in Maria, something few Tonys manage to do as well. Naysh Fox as Riff delivered a compelling version of “Cool,” and Paola Hernandez was a comically entertaining Anita.

The entire ensemble carried off the complex Tonight Quintet with ease, providing a great musical (almost) climax to Act I just before the Rumble dance number that finishes the act. Act I ends with Tony accidentally killing Bernardo, but in this staging you never see that, and it would have been nice if he had collapsed on stage to make that point. And, at the end Chino shoots Tony, but we don’t see that either, Tony just stops singing and leaves the stage.

Normally the solo “There’s a Place for Us” is given to a solo soprano in the orchestra or upstage outside the action, but in this production two very talented children, Nathan Horne and Scarlet Tanzer sung it as a charming duet.

The orchestra had its own fun, providing the finger snapping in the Prolog and in the Dance at the Gym, and all rising and shouting “Mambo” when that section began.

Overall this was a thoroughly professional production of very high quality that brought the audience to its feet at the end, and presumably recruiting more audience for future concerts, which include the family concert of Peter and the Wolf on March 17, and Beethoven’s 9^th (with the Mendelssohn Choir) on May 18.

This performance was miked, with Tony, Maria and Riff using body mikes, and the remainder of the singers gathered around four floor mikes. It might have been better balanced without them, and these singers had the chops for it.

All in all, a delightful evening.

Ben Platt is deep in pseudo-science as well as Tony awards

benplatt Broadway actor Ben Platt sings the title role in Dear Evan Hansen, a spectacularly successful show nominated for 9 Tony awards, included one for Platt as Best Actor. Platt was profiled in last Sunday;s New York Times “He sobs 8 times a week,” in a article discussing the stress the character puts on Platt, who sings six songs, including a gut-wrenching second act number that he sings while crying. If you sing at all, you have to admire Platt’s dedication and talent, because this is really hard to do. Neil Patrick Harris is quoted as saying that he couldn’t do it, “I’d sound like a goat.”

But the Times article while praises Platt’s enormous talent, is way too accepting of some of the alternative medicine crap his coaches are putting him through.

First off, the article describes 4 circles on his back from “cupping,” a weird Gwyneth-level fad where small flasks are heated and applied to the skin, causing suction as they cool. This is supposed to impart relaxation or something. Speaking of relaxation, there´s this site that teaches very good subconscious mind training techniques, that will basically calm your mind down, give them a try. Continuing on the topic. We have previously discussed cupping when Olympic swimmers were trying it last summer. But as we noted, there is simply no evidence that cupping has any effect at all. Articles by Brian Dunning and Orac (David Gorski) confirm that this is superstitious nonsense. All it does is leave ugly circular bruises. Some web sites suggest the cupping can help “detox” your body, but as we have noted before, there is no such thing as “detox.” Your liver takes care of this by itself.

Platt is also on a gluten free diet, which is only sensible if your have celiac disease. For anyone else, it is just a fad, as there is no clear evidence of non-celiac gluten sensitivity. He also is on a dairy-free diet, perhaps to keep his weight down, but in fact studies have shown that full fat dairy is linked to a reduced rate of obesity.

Platt also takes oregano supplements, despite the fact that there are no studies showing any benefit. He also takes a zinc supplement, which is only useful in developing countries. In the US, there is no evidence that it helps with the common cold.

Finally, his voice coach used peppermint oil to treat his voice when he had an infection, but there is no evidence that it provides any relief for any malady at all.

Plat is undeniably one of Broadway’s finest young actors who certainly deserves his Tony, but it is a shame that his “handlers” are forcing these quack regimes on him. It is also a shame that the New York Times doesn’t question this quackery in their articles.

And remember:

Alternative medicine is made up of things we don’t know work and things we know don’t work. If something works, it is called medicine.

benplatthansen

Allegiance- George Takei’s musical in HD

The short-lived Broadway musical Allegiance was screened in HD in some 600 theaters throughout the country yesterday. The show, inspired by Takei’s experiences in a Japanese-American internment camp had music and lyrics by Jay Kuo, and a book by Marc Acito, Kuo and Lorenzo Thione. It follows the experiences of the fictional Kimura family who were forcibly relocated to internment camps far from their west coast homes after the attack on Pearl Harbor, along with about 120,000 other Japanese-Americans.

Generally, HD rebroadcasts of plays, and musical works come with at least a single sheet program listing all the actors and production credits, but the neither Fathom Events organization nor the Trumbull Conn Post 14 theaters bothered with this nicety. Having only a brief glance at the closing credits, most of the cast information came from online sources.

George Takei, the beloved actor who started his career as Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu, and has become an activist and comic commentator led the bill, playing the avuncular grandfather of the Kimura clan, and in a present-day scene the aged version of young Sam from that clan.

While Takei headed the playbill, the real stars were Lea Salonga, playing Sam’s older sister Kei, and Telly Leung ,a fantastic actor with a gorgeous tenor voice who plays Sam Kimura as a young man. Salonga began her Broadway career in Miss Saigon and played roles in Les Miz and voiced the lead in the cartoon Mulan.

Equally important are the excellent Michael K Lee, playing Frankie Suzuki, a young man who becomes Kei’s suitor and eventually husband, and the charming Katie Rose Clark who plays the (white) camp nurse Hannah Campbell and Sam’s love interest.

This show provided an excellent opportunity for a nearly all-Asian cast to shine and they proved themselves incredibly talented again and again in song and dance numbers, where the entire cast performed beautifully.

With such a talented cast, it is a shame that Allegiance never caught hold, running only about 4 months, and the fear that this was a just a history lesson about a shameful period of U.S. history might have kept audiences away. Much of the show, however, is quite entertaining, with the developing relationships and family conflicts making up much of the story.

The central crisis of the first act is the idea that the Japanese-American men should be allowed to enlist to fight the enemy if they would swear allegiance to the U.S. and renounce and allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. This led to principled conflicts both ways, with Sam signing the paper and enlisting, while Frankie refuses and is imprisoned until the end of the war. The second act seems longer than the first and has fewer compelling scenes to keep it moving. The show ran 2:15 without intermission.

Jay Kuo’s music might have been part of the problem, with much of it the sort of full-throated poperetta ballads full of quarter-note triplets that infested much of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s music as well as much of Les Miz. On the other hand the upbeat songs, written in a 1940s swing style are utterly charming, beginning with Sam and Hannah’s duet, “I Oughta Go,” which you can hear on the Amazon site. Unfortunately, all of Lea Salonga’s songs (and there are too many) are in that overblown poperetta style and basically all sound alike. The award-winning orchestrations by Lynne Shankel for a 13-piece orchestra, is wind-instrument heavy with only 3 strings and the wind harmonies are lush and lovely.

Interestingly, the only character based on a real person is the controversial Mike Masauoka (played by Greg Watanabe), a Japanese American functionary in Washington, who became the face of the JACL (Japanese American Citizen’s League) and worked to try to improve life in the camps, primarily by cooperating. He is shown as somewhat of a wheeler-dealer and was not well liked.

This is an important piece of Broadway history that was worth seeing even with its flaws, and it is a shame it never found much of an audience. Now that the HD showing is over, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a DVD version some time in the future. Look for it.