Friday Dance Party: PIRATES!!

I love this clip from The Pirates of Penzance production in Central Park, a show so successful, it moved to Broadway for a multi-year run. They made a film of the show, too, but I've chosen the clip below to share, though it is grainier than the corresponding clip in the movie. I chose it because the presence of the audience is clearly exciting the performers to higher heights. Almost without exception, when I see a stage production taped live before an audience, then a film of the same piece taped in a studio, the stage production wins out. Though it necessarily has cheaper production values, the excitement generated by the audience infects the performers, and the viewers. I also enjoy this clip for the presence of Tony Azito (the chief policeman) and especially, Kevin Kline. I wrote a while ago about seeing Kline for the first time in On the Twentieth Century, and here, he's a dynamo.

Naturally, as I'm occupied this week with the preview and opening performances of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (see entry below), this clip came to mind because it includes pirates. Tom Stoppard has cleverly interpolated piracy into his riff on Hamlet, and they play a small but pivotal role in the proceedings.

Sort of.

Anyway, for this week's Dance Party (and finally, there is a bit of dance in this one, or at least, marching), enjoy Kline and Company as they belt the hell out of "With Cat-Like Tread" from Shakespeare In The Park's The Pirates of Penzance:

The Politics of the Preview

It's a good thing I'm not in charge of theatre administration, because I would never have come

up with the clever way the NC Stage folks are presenting our previews. Each day this week, a new incentive encourages audiences to pop in to see the new show. We had an invitational dress on Tuesday, attended by about 30 people who, I'm told, always come to this performance. The first time in front of an audience is often an awkward one, especially with a comedy such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a language-heavy piece with existential overtones. As a result, we started with a whimper rather than a bang. As the performance progressed, however, the audience warmed up a bit, and were quite nice by the time they got used to this odd world we were introducing. Wednesday's show

was Pay-what-You-Can, a enticement commonly used to beef up the house during the preview period. It was a large and friendly crowd, again, I'm told, made up of folks who always attend this event. They "got" the play from start to finish, and I have a hunch they were the various artists, performers, and literary loons who populate Asheville. Thursday night, the theatre hosted a Happy Hour before the show (actually, Hour and a Half), and the attendees were already lined up outside the lobby when I arrived at the theatre at 6. Sated with munchies and wine, they were another nice house. Tonight, Friday, is the Talk-Back performance, and no, that does not mean the audience is encouraged to shout at the actors during the show. After the curtain comes down, viewers are invited to hang around and ask questions, give feedback, etc, to the cast and director. I'm told that, here again, the same crowd tends to come to this performance during the run.

So NCStage has really come up with some creative ways to fill the houses before the show's official opening. It puts a lot of the pressure off the Big Night, which will seem like performance #5 to the cast, rather than #1. We've learned a lot this week from our audiences, and each night before the show, the cast has assembled to tweak certain moments and, hopefully, improve.




So far, so good!

Louie Bellson

1924-2009

Duke Ellington called him "the world's greatest drummer," and in a career spanning three quarters of a century, he worked with such Big Band giants as Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and Harry James, as well as Ellington. When the era of the large orchestra gave way to smaller jazz combos, Bellson moved smoothly into the new genre, and played with Woody Herman, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, James Brown and dozens of others. He was a gifted instrumentalist, percussionist, sideman, musical arranger, and composer. It was during his tenure with the Duke Ellington orchestra, in which he was the only white member, that he met and married singer Pearl Bailey. Their interracial marriage, highly controversial in the early 50s, lasted until her death 40 years later. He appeared on hundreds of recordings and was considered an expert on percussion and its instruments.

Bellson passed away last week from Parkinson's disease aggravated by a broken hip.

R & G Gets Set

We've completed tech for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and are ready to put it all together. The weekend spent on technical matters was, while not really fun (are they ever?), pretty painless. The house is under a hundred seats, and in such a black box, scene changes amount to the rearranging of boxes and the hanging of ropes and stuff. The real technical challenges are with the sound and lights, which seemed to be solidly on the right track for our show.










I was surprised to have experienced a first this weekend. Several infants attended our technical rehearsals. This startled me, I suppose, because I am used to more formal techs, with hard-ass directors demanding the impossible from harried designers, and tension reigning supreme. Instead, several new parents in the company brought along the tikes, who were cared for by anyone who was around when needed. (I wonder what Michael Kahn of The Shakespeare Theatre Co. would have said about that, if such a thing ever happened during his nightmare Techs From Hell). But it reminded me of a couple of things. NCStage is populated with young adults early in their careers and just starting their families; the folks involved are eager to make their theatre a welcome place to work and live. It's all very warm and familial (I'm the only newcomer in the bunch), and I have not heard a single argument between anybody about anything.




I don't imagine that will change as the week progresses. Today's afternoon run will be our first, followed by the Invitational Dress, which is predicted to have an audience of about 30. I have very little responsibility in this production, which may mean I'm in for a lot of fun. Stay tuned.

Hugh Leonard

1926-2009

Leonard achieved great success as a playwright, adapter, and columnist. He provided the BBC with several teleplays of classics such as Nickolas Nickleby and Great Expectations, but found greater fame writing for the stage. The Au Pair Man was his Broadway debut, for which he won a Tony nomination in 1973, though the show was a flop running only 37 performances (its stars were Charles Durning and Julie Harris, who received one of her ten Tony nominations for her role).

He had greater success with his 1978 memory play, Da, which won the Tony as best play, and was turned into a film starring Martin Sheen and the show's undisputed star, Bernard Hughes. (I wrote about seeing the production here). He achieved yet another Tony nod for his 1980 play, A Life.

Leonard wrote a weekly newspaper column for which he became known as the Curmudgeon. He wrote of his experience working as an extra on Olivier's Henry V; the Agincort scenes were shot in Ireland. "I can find myself drowning in a French swamp. We were paid four pounds a day, but if you had a horse, it paid eight." With withering wit but a thin skin, his quips were legion. When a particularly nasty critic was hospitalized, he commented "It was probably something he wrote." Along with contemporaries Brian Friel and Thomas Murphy, he helped create the Irish Dramatic Movement of the 1960s and 70s, though he had little use for his colleagues. "An Irish Literary Movement," he once wrote, "is when two Irish playwrights are on speaking terms." His plays seemed more accessible than those of his contemporaries, and were regarded as shallow by the Irish arts world. Ireland, he once said, was "a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent."

Leonard died last week at the age of 82.

My Favorite Valentine

In honor of the day, allow me to share a clip of my favorite version of one of my favorite songs. It accompanies one of my favorite movies of all time, one which I feel is under appreciated. Psychologically menacing, emotionally complex, beautifully photographed, thrillingly acted by Damon, Paltrow, Law, Blanchette, and Hoffman, exceptionally written (and among all that, sexy), please accept "My Funny Valentine" from The Talented Mr. Ripley, as my gift to you.

Friday Dance Party: Couples Skate

This weekend includes Friday the 13th and Valentine's Day, so in an attempt to honor both, please enjoy this week's Dance Party, a tribute to unorthodox, sometimes horrifying, couples. Yes, I know it's just a bunch of clips set to music, with no dance whatsoever, but when has that ever stopped me?

Happy V-Day.