Lyric's "Murder": Twelve Suspects Walk into a Car

Remo Airaldi & Will McGarrahan in "Murder on the Orient Express"
(photo: Mark S. Howard)



Well, make that eight suspects walk into a pullman car. The self-appointed jury of twelve first seen in the iconic novel by Agatha Christie and seen subsequently on several movie and TV screens over the years has been reduced to eight (thus canceling out Christie's clever allusion to a jury of one's peers); hence the current stage adaptation by Ken Ludwig (“at the request of the Christie estate”) of Murder on the Orient Express , now being produced by Lyric Stage Company, has already lowered expectations somewhat. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since anyone who has seen any of the more successful iterations of this concept might not want to revisit an exact reenactment of the popular story with a full dozen backstories. Yet it's actually hard to envision a potential audience member out there who hasn't already experienced the absurdly coincidental tales of the interrelated passengers who all happen to find themselves on the same track at the same time, or the clever twist at the end, which was, and continues to be, literally unforgettable . That said, this offering, Directed by Spiro Veloudos, makes up for its possible element of real mystery with a chance to see some local actors theatrically strut their shtick.

The Cast of "Murder on the Orient Express"
(photo: Mark S. Howard)

And strut they do, as the famed Orient Express train is trapped by an avalanche in a snowstorm shortly after midnight. As the script puts it, “And so it begins”. In no time at all, an American tycoon is suddenly found murdered in a compartment which is locked from inside. Among the other passengers and crew are eight potential suspects, all of whom have ironclad alibis (and motives). By chance or by choice (Agatha Christie's, that is), it just so happens that one of the passengers aboard the train is none other than the justly famed Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot (Remo Airaldi). It is his role to interrogate and investigate the Conductor Michel (Scot Colford, who also plays the Head Waiter), Princess Dragomiroff (Sarah deLima), Helen Hubbard (Kerry A. Dowling), Greta Ohlsson (Marge Dunn), Monsieur Bouc (Will McGarrahan), Colonel Arbuthnot (Davron S. Monroe, who also plays Rachett), Hector MacQueen (Michael John Ciszewski), Countess Andrenyi (Celeste Oliva), and Mary Debenham (Rosa Procaccino). One semi-spoiler: the Butler didn't do it (seeing as there isn't one). But the heavily expository nature of most of the entire first act doesn't help; it was disorienting. Some jokes fit, some do not, and some arrive overdone (three times we're told Poirot is Belgian, not French). Fortunately, the overly familiar plot becomes less involving than the appreciation of the acting chops on display as well as the creative contributions.

The Cast of "Murder on the Orient Express"
(photo: Mark S. Howard)

On that creative side, the Scenic Design is by Brynna Bloomfield (serviceable and clever but not nearly as posh as the real Orient Express, which the script extols as a “legend”), with Costume Design by Gail Astrid Buckley (becoming threads from the period, which is 1934), effective film noir-ish Lighting Design by Scott Clyve, Sound Design and Original Music by Dewey Dellay (with some snippets from Anything Goes, and Flight of the Bumblebee as well as Chattanooga Choo-Choo) and fluid (in fact, constant) Projection Design by Seaghan McKay. They're the true suspects in this melding of art deco and film noir. The Direction by Veloudos is solid, especially in the second act, and the acting turns are universally tantalizing, with standouts from Airaldi, Dowling and McGarrahan in the meatier roles. It's also the screen debut (no, that's not a typo) in a brief role by young actress Josie Chapuran as Daisy Armstrong.

The Cast of "Murder on the Orient Express"
(photo: Mark S. Howard)

Whodunnit? Or who didn't? Did he/she deserve it, and does it really matter? Find out who, what, where and most of all why. In the beginning, the script proclaims that “If you break the rules, you pay the price”; in the end, it was “all about justice”, and “doing the right thing”.

It's now deducible at Lyric Stage Company through December 22^nd. And oh, what a cast of characters to suspect!

"Quixote Nuevo": Hombre de la Plancha, Early Stages

Emilio Delgado in "Quixote Nuevo"
(photo: T. Charles Erickson)

The new play with music, Quixote Nuevo, being performed as part of the Huntington Theatre Company's current season, may seem familiar, at least with respect to its main characters and general themes. After all, this tale of a somewhat loony (dare one say quixotic?) cavalier in 17^th century Spain has morphed over the centuries from an iconic novel by Miguel Cervantes, to several films, an opera, a symphony, and perhaps its most successful adaptation as a piece of musical theater in Man of la Mancha. 

Emilio Delgado & Cast of "Quixote Nuevo"
(photo: T. Charles Erickson)

Updated to the present and relocated to La Plancha (literally “grilled on a metal plate”), a fictional town on the Texas/Mexico border, this version centers around a former literature professor and Cervantes scholar with early stages of dementia, Jose Quijano (Emilio Delgadi, who has portrayed Luis the lovable repairman on “Sesame Street” for four decades), who sets out not against windmills but the border patrol in search of Dulcinea (Gisela Chipe), a migrant worker on his father's ranch who has returned to Mexico. As in all previous iterations of the basic story, he is accompanied by his second banana, ice cream vendor Sancho Panza/Manny Diaz (Juan Manuel Amador) who helps him evade ICE. Our intrepid duo also has to evade Death Himself (Hugo E. Carbajal), as portrayed as one of group of guitar players or Calacas. Meanwhile the hero's sister plans to put him in an assisted living facility. Full disclosure: this critic has worked as a nurse for three different companies that provide such environments, and is quite familiar with the quandary of whether and when to remind a resident of their names or join her or him in a self-created world of one's own imagination. Can one blame this Quixote for persevering in his quest? And here's the rub: should one view Alzheimer's as funny?

Hugo E. Carbajal in "Quixote Nuevo"
(photo: T. Charles Erickson)

The first act (beginning with this new Quixote's challenge: “I know who you are, I know what you want”) is laced with sophomoric humor akin to the sort of dialogue one might encounter in a typical Hasty Pudding Club review, with silly allusions to Iron Man, Hoover vacuums, Game of Thrones, and scatalogically puerile bits of business. The second act gets a bit more serious, spotlighting Orlando Arriaga as Padre Perez (and other roles, a bit confusing). It is during several scenes with more sober content that the story at last comes alive. Written by Octavio Solis, one of the storytellers of the Oscar-winning Disney film “Coco”, it's meant as a funny take on this perennial fantasy, and to some extent it succeeds. It ends with our knight errant exclaiming as he dies: “How it trembles like the wall of Jericho (see, there's this wall along the border and all). . Fall, you horror! Fall and make room for Quixote!” to which Sancho declares: “I'm here, say the word”. But it's all for naught, a quest doomed to failure from the onset. Along the way, there are numerous opportunities for the talented cast of nine to excel, and they do, especially with respect to Delgadi's forlorn hero, whose performance is charming. The expert creative team includes Scenic Design by Takeshi Kata, Costume Design by Rachel Anne Healy, Lighting by Brian J. Lilienthal, Sound Design by David R. Molina and Musical Composition by Molina and Eduardo Robledo.




Emilio Delgado & Cast in "Quixote Nuevo"
(photo: T. Charles Erickson) 

First seen at California Shakespeare, this completely revised work is now a Co-Production of Hartford Stage, Houston's Alley Theatre and our own Huntington Theatre Company. Directed by KJ Sanchez, who had urged Solis (who grew up in El Paso on the border and was a consultant on the terrific Oscar-winning “Coco” animated film) to attempt this task. Solis wisely chose to expose cultural identity and memory, even on a personal level, and how much this can change as it both “sweetens our soul and torments it at the same time”. He asks if we can mend the past and go backwards in the same manner that we go forward, and can see the past in an entirely different light, with that knowledge changing us. Though it's a difficult process, putting ourselves under a microscope of sorts, he maintains that it's well worth the healing that may ensue. The same could be said for an audience member's enjoyment, if this sort of unsubtlety is her or his bag.

Share this impossible dream at Huntington Avenue Theater till December 8^th.

BSO's Greig (& Mahler): Leif Peepers

Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes with the BSO
(photo: BSO)

For the first half of the unabashedly popular program presented this past week by the Boston Symphony, the orchestra, reunited with Conductor Andris Nelsons and the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, played the popular work of Edvard Grieg, arguably his most renowned longer piece, the Piano concerto in A Minor, Opus 16 (utilizing the Schumann Piano concerto as a template). Though he composed it in 1869, at the age of twenty-four, he continued to tweak the piece for the rest of his career. One Norwegian analyst has pointed out that the opening piano, built of a sequence consisting of a descending second followed by a descending third, is a very characteristic Norwegian musical gesture, typifying as it does the pervasiveness of folk imagery and sound. This first movement is loaded with accessible themes, some obviously derived from one another, others strongly contrasting. It creates richness that has played a significant role in maintaining the concerto’s appeal. The animato section of the first movement includes tunes similar to those used by fiddlers in the folk genre; the lyric song of the second movement is harmonized in the style of some of Grieg’s later folksong influences; and the finale contains dance rhythms reminiscent of the halling and springdans so typical of Norwegian lore. It brought back fond memories of a visit in Bergen Norway by this critic to the composer's simple but charming home in his fatherland, now a museum dedicated to its famed inhabitant. Sometimes referred to as musical comfort food, it was praised by none other than Tchaikovsky for its perfect simplicity. As performed at Symphony Hall by Andris and Andsnes, it showed how deserving a concerto can be, as judged by the audience's repeated standing ovations.

Soprano Genia Kuhmeier with the BSO
(photo: BSO)

Mahler's Fourth Symphony in G , the subject of the second half of the program, is the last of his trio of Wunderhorn symphonies, with text from the German folk poems Das Knaben Wunderhorn. Completed in 1901, it was first heard in Munich, then several other German cities, but poorly received in virtually all of them. Many felt it was too “sunlit”, transparent, and brief, thus un-Mahler-like. He dismissed critics' “banal misunderstandings”. (All ye critics take note). The composer himself felt his adagio was his best slow movement. The final movement is an expansion of an 1892 song Das himmlische leben (“Heavenly Life”) here featuring Austrian soloist soprano Genia Kuhmeier in her BSO debut. It's a work that features quirks such as no trombones or tubas, both beginning and ending with sleigh bells, demonstrating how transporting music can be. It was first performed in this country by the New York Symphony Society in 1904, while its first appearance on the schedule of the BSO was not until 1942. Suffice it to say that while it argues that no music on earth can rival that of heaven, and may lack the universal acceptance of his Second (“Resurrection”), this pointedly ends with the proclamation (amidst some strange images of heaven) “so that all may awake for joy”. And so it was, reflecting the ideal weather outside the confines of Symphony Hall.

BLO's "Fellow Travelers": Climax Change

Jesse Blumberg & Jesse Darden in "Fellow Travelers"
(photo: Liza Voll)

It's always a pleasure to discover and share a sensational new opera such as Fellow Travelers. It's one of those rare anomalies these days, a contemporary work that manages to be challenging in some of its modern music while at the same time surprisingly filled with lovely tonal composition. As one opera buff noted many years ago in reference to Wagnerian operas, just focus on the orchestral parts and the singing will come through, as in the end it always must. That's certainly true of this opera, with Score by Composer Gregory Spears and Libretto by Greg Pierce. First performed in 2016 by The Cincinnati Opera, based on the 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon, now being given its New England premiere by the ever-adventurous Boston Lyric Opera (which exceeds even its recent triumphant Handmaid's Tale), it's yet another thoroughly engaging production by a company that also travels, from concert halls to skating rinks. Quality is often defined in part by the process of taking risks (and succeeding at them), and this portrayal manages to do so while reflecting the frightening parallels between the “Lavender Scare” of the Era of McCarthyism and the false promises of the Error of Trump. While there is no explicit connection between then and now in the opera, it serves as yet another reminder (as quite recently noted by this critic) that history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Jesse Darden & Jesse Blumberg in "Fellow Travelers"
(photo: Liza Voll)

Since this is an unfamiliar opera, it necessitates a more comprehensive synopsis than most. It begins in September 1953 in a park at Dupont Circle in Washington D.C., where aspiring reporter, naive Timothy Laughlin (Jesse Darden), eating his lunch (with milk), is approached by the suave State Department employee Hawkins Fuller (Jesse Blumberg). “Hawk” flirts with Tim, later arranging for Tim to be hired as a speechwriter for Senator Charles Potter (James Maddalena), a friend of Senator Joe McCarthy (David McFerrin) who claims that the U.S. Government is full of “Communists, Soviet spies and homosexuals”. (Oh, my!). Tim drops off a thank-you gift for Hawk at his office, where he meets reporter Tommy McIntyre (Vincent Torregano), as well as Hawk's assistant and best friend Mary (Chelsea Basler), and his secretary Miss Lightfoot (Michelle Trainor). Tim is at home cooking soup when Hawk drops by, ultimately staying the night. The next day Tim enters St. Peter's Church, torn between his profound Catholic faith and his passion for Hawk. Miss Lightfoot overhears an intimate exchange between Tim and Hawk; Hawk is subsequently ordered to Interrogation Room M304 where an Interrogator (McFerrin again) tests his sexual orientation. Tim and Hawk discuss the interrogation, and Hawk's sexual encounters while alone in New York. The act ends rather abruptly (“what's in a name?”), leaving the audience unsure that it has indeed ended. But it's a very minor glitch among a scorefull of gems.

 

Jesse Darden in "Fellow Travelers"
(photo: Liza Voll)

In Act II, Potter warns McCarthy he must give up helping Roy Cohn's friend David Schine to get special treatment in the Army, and give up Cohn himself. Mary is also in the warning mode as she describes (to Tim) Hawk's fickle nature, and tells Tim she is pregnant after a one-night stand. Hawk, rejoicing he's been cleared of homosexual allegations, wants to celebrate, which shocks Tim, leading to his enlisting in the Army. Mary quits her job with Hawk over the atmosphere of panic and persecution. Two years later, Tim writes to Hawk and Mary from where he's stationed in France. Hawk has married a woman named Lucy (Brianna J. Robinson) but implies he'd like to rekindle his affair with Tim. They rent a house in D.C. for their afternoon trysts, but Hawk warns Tim he cannot be for him all that Tim wants, resolving to end the affair. Hawk admits to Mary that he has secretly acted against Tim to end their relationship. In the last scene, at the same park at Dupont Circle where it all began, it is May 1957; the lovers face their futures.



Michelle Trainor & The Cast of "Fellow Travelers"
(photo: Liza Voll)

The critical roles are those of the inexperienced Darden (his Catholic guilt in “Last night how many?”), the seductive Blumberg (“Our very own home, Skippy”) along with long-suffering Basler (“I worry, that's all”). All three are exemplary. McFerrin provides a creepily menacing McCarthy with his historically accurate harangues about “sexual subversives”. Several supporting roles, such as Potter's Assistant, a Bookseller, a Priest and a Technician, are sung by Simon Dyer. There are also two impressive operatic quartets in the second act. The production was Conducted by Boston University alumna Emily Senturia (the first time a woman has conducted this company's orchestra in two decades), leading a 17-piece orchestra. As she has described the score, it includes post-minimalist passages as well as baroque music (and heavy use of trombones) as well as patter in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan, making for unusually accessible music for a contemporary work; in fact, it's been stated that the predominant musical strategy used by Spears and Pierce is one of indirection. The rest of the creative team, some duplicating work they originated for the Minneapolis run, included Stage Director Peter Rothstein, Set Designer Sara Brown, Costume Designer Trevor Bowen, and Lighting Designer Mary Shabatura.

Chelsea Basler & Jesse Blumberg in "Fellow Travelers"
(photo: Liza Voll)

Author Mallon (who observed “the scene” as a student at Brown and Harvard) calls his book a “political thriller”, with “outsized emotions...everything in the book is so claustrophobic, behind closed doors with drawn shades”. More to the point, he notes that “virtually every gay man has, at one point in his life, dated a guy who is mesmerizing but not good for them, ultimately”. It's been described as “Mad Men” meets “House of Cards”. Timothy doesn't see why he can't be a conservative and Catholic and still love whom he wants to love, and thinks their relationship is a gift from God, a view obviously at odds with the justly infamous Executive Order #10450 (banning homosexuals from government service). This represents a group described as almost entirely friendless, politically, making the opera's final betrayal (no spoilers here) all the more stunning. And stunning it is, to see such obviously mismatched a couple inescapably headed for an all but inevitable climax, so to speak.

Jesse Darden & Jesse Blumberg in "Fellow Travelers"
(photo: Lisa Voll)

Given the political climate at the time, it should not surprise that the opera's climax is a change from what one might expect today. And what more could one ask for in a contemporary opera? One needn't echo the famed line from the play Tea and Sympathy: “when you talk about this, and you will, be kind”, as, even apart from its political importance, the work stands as an engrossing story exceedingly well written and performed. BLO has outdone itself yet again with this opera for our time and for times yet to come. What an extraordinary feat.

At the close of the opera, the surtitles (appropriately written by Librettist Pierce himself) add historical heft: five thousand queers lost their jobs, only to receive an official retroactive apology decades later by former Secretary of State John Kerry on the last day President Obama was in office; that apology was quickly and quietly excised on January 20, 2017. Does this date ring any bells?

Hopefully, you made haste, fellow opera buffs, and traveled by November 17^th to the Emerson Paramount Theater; but best you didn't tell them Joe (McCarthy, that is) sent you.

ArtsEmerson's "Magic Flute": Survival of the Flautist

The Cast of "The Magic Flute"
(photo: Keith Pattison)

With its familiar overture suddenly performed as though never heard before, with drums and marimbas, this version of Mozart's “Magic Flute” was not the typical form of this deservedly popular allegorical opera, here adapted and directed by Mark Dornford-May for the Isango Ensemble of Cape Town. While the basic libretto and music are essentially the same, the sound is not, making for a unique reintroduction to Mozart’s magic. A production by Eric Abraham and the Young Vic (which won the 2008 Olivier Award in London as Best Musical Revival), this was a revelation. Told as a South African Tsonga folk tale (titled Impempe Yomlingo in the South African language of Xhosa), it resonates with tropes familiar to such folklore, from bird catchers to trial by fire and water.

 

 

The Queen of the Night in "The Magic Flute"
(photo: Keith Pattison)

With a cast of some two dozen dancing singers (actually quadruple threats, as actors and instrumentalists as well), it’s a revival in several senses, especially in the Musical Direction by Paulina Malefane and Mandisi Dyantyis and Choreography by Lungelo Ngamlana, something to hear and see. With a raked Set Design by Dornford-May and Dan Watkins, Lighting Design by Mannie Manim and Costume Design by Leigh Bishop, this morality tale was given a whole new lease on life. If you think you’ve seen the definitive “Magic Flute” sometime in the past, think again. This was the “Magic Flute” of the present and the future. It’s not unlike rediscovering the pleasures of being in the company of an old friend, with suddenly renewed vim and vigor filling the Cutler Majestic Theater as perhaps never since the company's first visit with this production five seasons ago. The ensemble is even more energetic, though some soloists in this current production seemed out of their vocal comfort zone.

The survival of this flautist continued through November 10^th.

Odyssey's "Maria Regina D'Inghilterra": Tudor Compact

Amy Shoremount-Obra & Alise Jordheim in "Maria, Regina D'Inghilterra"
(photo: Kathy Wittman)

Odyssey Opera continued its streak of presenting seldom-heard operas recently with what is believed to be the North American premiere of Maria, Regina D'Inghilterra, by composer Giovanni Pacini with libretto by Leopold Tarantini, based on the 1833 play Marie Tudor by Victor Hugo. It was an unqualified success when first produced in Palermo in 1843, but would soon be overlooked and forgotten, until revived by Opera Rara in London in 1983, almost a century and a half later. Local audiences had two recent opportunities to experience its attributes for themselves, as local treasure Odyssey Opera presented the work on November 1^st and 3^rd as part of its Season of Tudors, (the second of six works this season) about an implied compact between Queen Mary and her Lord Chancellor and its dire consequences.

Cast of "Maria Regina D'Inghilterra"
(photo: Kathy Wittman)

The story takes place in 1553 London, three centuries earlier than its composition. Mary I, Queen of England (soprano Amy Shoremount-Obra), is infatuated with Scottish adventurer Riccardo Fenimoore (tenor Kameron Lopreore), whom she ennobled as Lord Talbot. He has been unfaithful to her with the foundling Clotilde Talbot (soprano Alisa Jordheim), the only surviving child of the late Earl of Talbot, now betrothed to (and adored by) the commoner Ernesto Malcolm (baritone Leroy Davis). Lord Chancellor Gualtiero Churchill (baritone James Demler) wishes to protect the Queen by bringing down Riccardo so he informs her of Fenimoore's duplicity, as well as Clotilde's being heir to the Talbot name. The Queen first condemns Fenimoore to death, then repents doing so, ordering Clotilde to help to get him released. To her dismay, however, Churchill has already seen to it that her earlier order to execute Fenimmore has been carried out. She collapses into the arms of her ladies-in-waiting. Also featured were Un Paggio (mezzo-soprano Katherine Maysek, very believable), Raoul (Craig Juricka) and Un Uffiziale (Gray Leiper).

Cast of "Maria, Regina D'Inghilterra"
(photo: Kathy Wittman)

The three act opera, presented at the Huntington Avenue Theater, with one intermission after the second act, was performed in Italian with English supertitles (often unintentionally laughable), Staged and Directed by Steve Maler, with stark Scenic Design by Jeffrey Allen Petersen, confusingly mismatched Costume Design by Brooke Stanton and effective Lighting Design by Jorge Arroyo. The production was Conducted by Gil Rose with the Odyssey Opera Orchestra, with high points being an Act II duet between Jordheim and Shoremount-Obra (whose regal acting, it must be said, seemed forced) as well as a quartet by the four leads.

Cast of "Maria, Regina D'Inghilterra"
(photo: Kathy Wittman)

In the end, it was librettist Tarantini who did the composer no favors with an incredible plot (even for an opera) and incomprehensible historical inaccuracies. Never fear, however, dear opera buffs, there are four more Tudor tributes in our future, with Odyssey performing Rosner's The Chronicle of Nine in February, Rossini's take on Elisabetta, Regina D'Inghilterra in March, Britten's Gloriana in April and German's Merrie England in June. It's enough to make a royal blush.