Saltwater Glory from Charlotte Symphony in Seafaring Works by Britten, Williams, and Vaughan Williams

Review: A Sea Symphony at Belk Theater

By Perry Tannenbaum

April 26, 2024, Charlotte, NC – Whether you love the sea for its surf, its tidal rhythms, its abundance of exotic creatures large and small, or its sheer vastness, Charlotte Symphony’s A Sea Symphony will deliver manifold delights – and a thrilling storm or two at no extra charge. The marquee piece, also known as Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 1, soars with enough poetry and ambition to be compared with Beethoven’s Ninth. The four-movement piece, studded throughout with the poetry of Walt Whitman, takes only five minutes less the Beethoven colossus to play, with the assistance of the Charlotte Master Chorale and two fine guest soloists, soprano Georgia Jarman and bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams. More than one Symphony season has concluded with the mighty Choral Symphony and nothing else on the bill, so it is quite generous that conductor laureate Christopher Warren-Green precedes A Sea Symphony with two other substantial seafaring works, Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes: Four Sea Interludes and Grace Williams’ Sea Sketches.

Artistically, opening night was a conquering hero’s triumphant return. Yet it was a mixed bag from a box office perspective. While the orchestra level was conspicuous disappointment, pocked with empty seats on a cloudy, balmy night, the grand tier was packed with loyalists and plutocrats, rewarding the performers’ upward gaze (if they ignored the sparsely populated balconies above). Warren-Green’s affinity for this music from the British Isles proved to be as deep as Vaughan Williams’ affection for Whitman.

Across the Carolinas, I’d venture to say that full-length productions of Britten operas are thinly scattered over the years, even at Spoleto Festival USA (Curlew River) or Brevard (A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Turn of the Screw). Nobody around here realizes that Britten set another great classic, Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, to music?The scraps of Peter Grimes that Warren-Green brings us are therefore hugely philanthropic, even if they reprise a work the maestro introduced at Belk Theater ten years back.

In the first three of the four movements, Warren-Green reminded us how exquisitely he crafted color and texture. Following a dreamy “Dawn,” the middle movements were especially sublime. “Sunday Morning” was dotted with tubular bells – you could almost feel the mist they were ringing through – and that tolling was echoed in “Moonlight” with a simple conspiracy between harpist Andrea Mumm and flutist Amy Orsinger Whitehead. Not really simple if you listened closely, for the single notes they played were not in strictly regular tempo. The magical ritardando was guided by Warren-Green’s instinctive baton. Most everybody will be impressed with the orchestral power of the “Storm,” fueled upstage by the percussionists, but Britten provides an added wallop with the lull in his tempest, ominous with subterranean quaking.

If he weren’t almost a Welshman by birth, you wonder how Warren-Green would have become smitten by the music of Grace Williams (1906-1977). Looking the Welshwoman up in Spotify or Apple Music will likely steer you wrong – to a Christian music artist by the same name who looks, depending on how her hair is combed, like either Renee Fleming or Celine Dion on her album covers. If you dig a bit deeper on Spotify and Apple Classical, you can find a fine 2000 recording of the five Sea Sketches for string orchestra on the CBC label with Roy Goodman leading the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. As you might imagine in a piece that is as meticulously pictorial as Debussy’s La Mer, a live performance discloses buried treasures above and beyond Warren-Green’s more sensitive response to the score. Most memorable for me were the ethereal “Sailing Song” and the concluding “Calm Sea in Summer,” distinguished by its beautifully modulating tempo and its simulation of the quiet wash of wet sands on the shore.

All isn’t dainty, however, though the opening “High Wind” isn’t blessed with full orchestral artillery. That movement is powerful in its own right, and “Breakers” is definitely punchy. In the middle of the five pieces, “Channel Sirens” might be the most intriguing, not seeming to target either the glamorous temptresses of The Odyssey or any kind of alarm. Williams may have been picturing tugboats in muddy or nocturnal waters, I don’t know. The music cast a uniquely portentous spell.

You really need to hear A Sea Symphony in live performance, not only for the bone-rattling surges of orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists resounding through the Belk, but for the extended pianissimo at the end of the concluding “Explorers” movement. The outer movements, “A Song for All Seas, All Ships” and “The Explorers,” are epics in themselves, fittingly for Whitman containing multitudes. You might feel that we have reached the end of this mighty chorale when the opening movement ends, but it we are less than a third of the way into our voyage. The finale will be longer, grander, and more oceanic. In between, there’s the relative quiescence of “On the Beach at Night Alone” and the jaunty heraldic “Scherzo: The Waves,” where the Master Chorale, wonderfully prepared by Kenney Potter, give the lead vocalists a well-needed rest before their final cosmic exploits.

And if you’re familiar with Whitman’s “A Passage to India,” you know that cosmic is no exaggeration as the souls of the singers join the Good Gray Poet, in his most pantheistic and mystic dimensions, beyond the seas to the far reaches of the universe. Some big names have been attracted to the baritone part, including Thomas Hampson and Simon Keenlyside on the CDs that I own, but Foster-Williams emphatically holds his own – while Jarman easily surpasses most of the sopranos I’ve heard on recordings of this demanding work, nicely combining the power and beauty of both camps. She’s formidable as both a dramatic and lyric soprano.

MRS. DOUBTFIRE at Blumenthal Performing Arts

MRS. DOUBTFIRE Flips Wacko to Wisdom Overnight

By: Perry Tannenbaum

Mrs. Doubtfire Tour

Pardon me a second, but I seem to be noticing stretch marks on my suspension of disbelief. Three nights before the curtain rose on the touring version of Mrs. Doubtfire that rolled into Belk Theater, I saw a rather fine production of Twelfth Night across town at Central Piedmont College. Since both of the brief runs include at least one matinee between now and Sunday, my experience of seeing two wives who fail to identify their true husbands can be intensified, compressed into the space eight hours, if you wish, after my relatively relaxed 75-hour exercise.

In Shakespeare’s 1601 comedy, Olivia marries Sebastian – much to his delighted befuddlement – the twin brother of the disguised Viola, the woman who has actually smitten her. Later, on the same day of her wedding to Sebastian, whom she believes is Caesario (!), Olivia encounters Viola still in her disguise, who has the gall to deny they are married!

In the 1993 film starring Robin Williams and in the Broadway musical adaptation of 2021, the mix-up occurs earlier in the action – but after a lengthy Daniel-and-Miranda marriage that has produced three darling Hilliard children from its intimacies and one bitter divorce from its hostilities. The set-up for Daniel’s makeover zoomed by so quickly on opening night that, aside from throwing his son a super birthday party despite Mom’s insistence that he was grounded for his poor school grades, I really didn’t grasp how he had gotten Miranda so pissed.

Not that I blamed her. Rob McClure as Daniel was so hyper, manic, and over-the-top in his early scenes, like a cut-rate Robin Williams in his early nanu-nanu years, that it was easier to wonder why Miranda had married him than why she would file papers. This is one grating, irritating, self-absorbed dude who is spoiling his kids, always “on” in his daddy role, like a badly misfiring Williams improv shtick on latenight TV. Until suddenly, like in an epiphany, he hears the family court judge’s decree and finds himself poignantly pleading for a greater share of his children’s lives.

his is only the beginning of Daniel’s lightning-quick transformation, for it isn’t going to be merely skin- or mask-deep. In Mrs. Doubtfire, to be fair, Daniel is really trying so hard to deceive Miranda – and regain his precious access to his kids, who clearly matter more to him than their mom. So he commandeers all the advanced mumbo jumbo of modern makeup science via his gay brother Frank and his partner Andre. A true artist, he proceeds to artificially boost his bustle and decks himself out as a ragout of Miss Marple, Margaret Thatcher, and Julia Child. With a Scottish accent.

Meanwhile, our playful Daniel sabotages his ex’s email search for a nanny (a bit nasty, really) and moves himself to the head of the line of nanny telephone applicants, impersonating all the losers before shining as Mrs. Doubtfire, a name he improvises on the spot. Cunning and very much in character, except that he’s suddenly catering to his ex-wife instead of blithely ignoring her.

The nanny who appears at the Hilliards’ threshold for “her” in-person interview not only fools Miranda, he also fools his three kids. Well he might. This nanny is not at all Daniel anymore. The voice, the tempo, the personality, and the parenting approach are all radically different. Instead of his previous happy-go-lucky, laissez-faire practices, he now leapfrogs Miranda and becomes sterner, stubborner, and more demanding than she ever was.

Conceived as a stopgap avenue to his children while he regains Miranda’s trust, Mrs. Doubtfire succeeds beyond Daniel’s dreams. She’s a godsend, not only as a caretaker, but as a friend, confidante, and a chef! Miranda cannot remember when she was so happy and wouldn’t ever dismiss Mrs. D in favor of Daniel, no matter how thoroughly or sincerely he has reformed by the time the judge reconsiders custody.

This irony brings no consolation to the kids. As long as the Mrs. Doubtfire ruse continues to deceive them, they are missing their dad. The son, Christopher, has lifted his grades under the new nanny’s guidance, but he still blames himself for the divorce.

So it’s a mercy that Chris and his older sister Lydia accidentally figure it out after a few weeks. A louder tinkle in the toilet on opening night would have made it clearer how this happens.

Otherwise, the show ran better than I expected, rewarding my suspended disbelief with some zany antics and absurd predicaments. Thanks to a humorless family court social worker and an equally stolid TV showrunner, who merely doesn’t display her amusement, Daniel is forced to portray himself and Mrs. Doubtfire simultaneously on two occasions.

These crises force Daniel to enlist emergency assistance. When Romelda Teron Benjamin pops up as the frightfully upright Wanda, the social worker, for a home visit at Daniel’s shabby new apartment, Frank and Andre also show up fortuitously when Wanda wishes to interview both Daniel and Doubtfire. Aaron Kaburik as the brother is the more frantic of Daniel’s speed dressers, unable to tell a lie without raising his voice to fortissimo. Nik Alexander as Andre is the calmer and cleverer of the two, with a soupçon of flare, saving the day by secretly whipping out his cellphone.

Daniel’s second crisis builds slowly to a wonderful catastrophe as Stuart, the hunky new boyfriend, invites Mrs. Doubtfire to join him and the family to celebrate Miranda’s birthday – at the same restaurant where Daniel must meet with Ms. Lundy, the TV producer, to discuss a new series built upon his improvised personae. Once again, Frank and Andre are recruited for the quick changes – maybe in the ladies’ room. Fearing what Mom will or won’t see when she goes to see what has become of Doubtfire, Giselle Gutierrez and Sam Bird (alternating with Axle Rimmele) as the elder sibs must spring frantically to the rescue, reassuring a dubious Miranda that all is well.

McClure does his best work during this hectic denouement, and against all odds, we don’t absolutely despise Maggie Lakis as Miranda, though we’re rooting against her all evening. She and Benjamin eventually melt appealingly. Aided by Daniel’s conspicuous indifference toward his ex, despite Doubtfire’s meddlesome jealousy, Leo Roberts gradually gains our favor as Stuart, even if he is pumped-up and comparatively normal.

Music and lyrics by Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick do little to elevate or damage the script adaptation by John O’Farrell and Karey K, which not only gives Andre a cell but equips the Hilliard home with wi-fi and spoils the kids with various screens, apps, and video games. No melody stuck with me, but I liked the energy of “Make Me a Woman” for Daniel, Frank, Andre, and ensemble. “I’m Rockin’ Now,” with Mrs. Doubtfire fronting the ensemble, brings us handsomely to intermission.

Two other comic gems can be commended, Jodi Kimura’s stone-faced turn as producer Janet Lundy and David Hibbard’s lachrymose portrayal of Mr. Jolly, the kiddie TV host that Daniel is destined to replace. Hibbard is like a Captain Kangaroo who long ago lost his hops, hopelessly lapsed into senility. It was generous of the writers to keep Jolly employed on the new show.

Private Anguish and Global Triumph Keynote Everybody’s Got a Story

Review: Everybody’s Got a Story at VAPA

By Perry Tannenbaum

If you like taking things apart and seeing how they work, there’s an interesting tension at the heart of Everybody’s Got a Story to Tell,the new Charlotte’s Off Broadway production at the VAPA Center. COB producer Anne Lambert describes it more accurately in her subtitle, “The One-Person Play Project.” Then if you apply a QR code reader to your program leaflet, you’ll find that Lambert pulls against the marquee title when she observes that, for some, performing onstage for an audience is a dreaded terror while for others it’s an addictive drug.

Onstage – or on The Moth Radio Hour – baring yourself to the world can be an exhilarating high, especially when you’re showered with laughter and applause. But it turns out that, although we’re certainly watching folk in the addict category, they’re not always telling us their own story. Or blurting it out to us compulsively as might be implied by Everybody’s Got a Story to Tell.

No, when you scan the three titles of the playbill, you’ll hit a roadblock to that confessional concept at the bottom of the page where you discover Eartha Kitt: Cotton to Caviar, written and performed by Toi Reynolds-Johnson. Before that title explodes any notion of a purely soul-baring evening of personal trials, the first play of the evening, Reflection: The Musical might detain you momentarily. Many, many confessions have been crafted into song. But not spontaneously. We know better.

Enriching this impure brew of personal effusions, the names that precede the titles splashed in yellow mustard typeface come into play: director Rob Coppel behind the scenes and PJ Barnes, very much up front as our host. Before we watch Reynolds-Johnson, Spencer Hawkins, and Tyler Wills perform the works they’ve written, Coppel and Barnes conspire to glue the disparate pieces together into a cohesive whole and conjure up the illusion of a natural flow.

Barnes as our emcee actually precedes us into COB’s VAPA nook, welcoming us as we enter and encouraging us to make ourselves at home. So briefly, we are part of the show for those who are already seated. The transition between greeter and emcee is as smooth as possible as the lights dim and Barnes starts strutting the stage in his more prestigious persona, weaving our everybody’s-got-a-story theme. How much of this BS is freshly improvised is hard to discern from whatever Coppel and the writer/performers have fed him in scripted form or as a sort of “head arrangement” as jazz musicians would call it. Whatever, Barnes is one slick and nicely turned-out dude.

The polished impression that Barnes makes contrasts nicely with the vulnerability Wills projects in Reflection, a glittery gay man who is freshly suffering the gut punch of a breakup and feeling the sting of a rejection that will linger for more than a month. After an opening communion in front of a vanity mirror, it’s very apparent that self-loathing is also prominent among Wills’ ills, for he resolutely removes his cruising gear – rhinestone high-heels, high-cut denim shorts with glitter belt, and matching pullover – in favor of workout wear that might be adopted during the isolation of a pandemic.

Double underlining Wills’ self-flagellation, he covers both his vanity mirror and a full-length mirror in shrouds. The powder room is transformed into a house of mourning, and reflection is now done by journaling. In a series of songs and vignettes, Wills is reliving his story rather than telling it. Dramatic intensity is paradoxically increased by Wills’ refusal to break the fourth wall and speak to us, but the intimacy of our encounter with the playwright/lyricist suffers as our peeping is prolonged.

Nor do the pre-recorded melodies, composed by pianist David Roach, dispel the oppressiveness of the 40-day vigil as Wills continues to pour out his anguish and bewail his betrayal. Three nights before Passover, the 40-day, 12-step slog toward self-acceptance and reaffirmation began to feel to me like the Israelites’ 40-year exodus in the Sinai Desert. I gradually despaired that the next song would sound much different from the one I was hearing.

Wills and Roach need to tighten up their collaboration. Or else they need to liven it up with a greater variety of mood and tempos. We’re convinced that Wills has a fine voice and vocal range while we’re frustrated at not seeing more emotional range. Another way to let more light into Reflection before the inevitable uncovering of the mirrors would be by letting us in, occasionally poking some holes in that fourth wall, breaking up the tedium of self-involvement. Just allow the piece to breathe in the here-and-now with occasional retrospective commentary.

Or maybe Wills and Roach overestimated the amount of suspense they were creating. More, please.

Notwithstanding Wills’ final affirmations, I welcomed back Barnes and his stylish patter with more enthusiasm than I’d anticipated. Hawkins and his You’re Accepted offered even more refreshing contrast, though it was also fueled by a breakup. Instead of grieving and self-quarantining, Hawkins deflected, launching into a series of spurious podcasts behind his laptop as if broadcasting his vocational and romantic woes to the wide world live from Davidson. After the parched drought of Reflections, we experienced a dizzying blizzard of sudden twists and turns, inexplicable leaps, mood swings, and casual reveals.

The more Hawkins revealed, the less authentic and autobiographical this confessional, by a Davidson College admissions officer, seemed to me. Cynical, cruelly dismissive, and burnt-out toward the pile of college admission essays on his desk, Hawkins was rather wickedly at-odds with the confessional mode of writing he was practicing himself.

Hopscotching as it does, Hawkins’ script defies a linear summary, likely because it has less to do with the troubles a college administrator has with women and his job, more to do with that cloistered academic’s difficulties in understanding and managing himself and what he’s doing. The quick pacing nicely supports our narrator’s caprices and indecision. What we wind up with is an artful and funny portrait of a peppy but unreliable narrator who lets down his guard often enough to clearly see both his charms and his flaws.

Of the two complete plays, Hawkins’ non-musical was better, but although Reynolds-Johnson’s Eartha was only presented in vignettes after intermission, it easily laid equal claim to the distinction of best on the bill. And where you had to wonder how autobiographical or authentic You’re Accepted and its admissions essays were, you could instantly perceive Reynolds-Johnson’s inspiration. Just look at her eyes! If she didn’t have the idea to portray Kitt on her own, somebody else surely suggested it. Likely on numerous occasions.

We can perversely suggest that R-J looks more like Eartha Kitt than Eartha herself, for when we see her as a child, born on a South Carolina plantation and rejected by both her parents in the opening Cotton scenes, she already looks like the woman she would become at the Caviar conclusion. And the powerhouse superstar who would one day bewitch Orson Welles, make Lady Bird Johnson weep at the White House with her Vietnam War comments, conquer Europe, and play Catwoman on the hit Batman TV series was never more than 62 inches tall.

R-J, likely no taller than her subject, revels in every phase of the Eartha bio. Even the digital playbill doesn’t say, but she’s probably as responsible for the spot-on costumes and props as she is for the writing – though Eartha wrote three autobiographies, plenty to glean from. Nor is R-J at all uncomfortable in sprinkling her various scenes and costume changes with frank narrative, engaging directly with her audience at times. Allowing the diva even more stature in her Caviar phase, Coppel brings Barnes back for one last hilarious shtick as the cabaret queen’s worshipful lackey. Although Adrienne Williams takes on her most prominent role here at the keyboard, we barely get a taste of the Evil One’s full repertoire in snippets of “C’est Si Bon” and “Santa Baby.” Just a cursory look and listen to the top stuff a Google search led me to was more than enough to convince me that there’s plenty of juicy episodes, from her tête-à-têtes with Welles to her verbatim White House harangue, remaining to be unveiled in the complete Eartha.As they stand, the vignettes at VAPA are very tasty and satisfying, but the complete Cotton to Caviar will be richer and spicier

Turandot Grandly Usurps Saint-Saëns at Belk Theater

Review: Opera Carolina’s Turandot

By Perry Tannenbaum

When we gauge the cultural influence of Giacomo Puccini, we’re most likely to invoke the operas he composed that were subsequently repurposed into megahit Broadway musicals. The American colonialism that fueled the domestic tragedy of Madama Butterfly eventually suffused the spectacular Miss Saigon, and La Bohème, Puccini’s verismo masterwork was Americanized – Greenwich Village filling in for Paris – and turned even more successfully into Rent.

But we don’t readily think of Puccini in terms of grand opera, ALL CAPS, unless we narrow our focus to the Italian master’s last work, Turandot, the one opera he didn’t live to complete or see premiered in 1926. The fate of nations routinely hung in the balance when Verdi selected his libretti, but for Puccini, this tale of ancient China and Peking stands apart from his more private and intimate norm. If Traviata is Verdi’s most visionary work, anticipating Puccini, then Turandot is Puccini’s grandest and most retro work.

Opera Carolina’s history with the work tallies well with its popularity. This is the sixth time the company has staged Turandot, decisively trailing Puccini’s big three, Bohème, Butterfly, and Tosca, two of which have reached double figures. Yet since James Meena, a devout Verdian, arrived on the scene in 2000, Turandot has maintained parity with its kindred, staged three times since the turn of the century.

We must, begging Milady’s pardon, bestow an asterisk next to the current incarnation of Peking’s princess. If she wasn’t exactly a last-minute or eleventh-hour replacement for Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah, it’s fair to say that she was an eleventh-month substitution for the previously slated season closer.

Yes, a grand opera was inserted at Belk Theater as the clock or calendar was winding down! Around the world, Maria Callas, Birgit Nilsson, and Joan Sutherland are among the celebrated dramatic sopranos who have graced the powerhouse title role, and the Franco Zeffirelli production at the Metropolitan Opera is as revered for its stateliness and splendor as the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Grand? Monumental.

Needless to say, the Opera Carolina production didn’t figure to deliver legendary grandeur. But instead of smoke and mirrors, set designer Anita Stewart and lighting designer Michael Baumgarten call upon scaffolding and projections to bridge the gap. Stage director Jay Lesenger wisely keeps the curtain down over Stewart’s barebones set until Meena, down in the orchestra pit with the Charlotte Symphony, can begin working his magic with the score. It doesn’t take long to taste its beauties, ranging from delicate to majestic, or realize Meena’s deep affection for it.

Parallel to the build-up to Prince Calaf’s climactic confrontation with Peking’s ice goddess, when the princess asks him three riddles that he must solve – or die – there’s a steady build-up of ritual. A Persian prince has failed the Trial of Three Riddles and must be beheaded. To declare his candidacy, against the fervent wishes of his father and his dear maidservant, Calaf – “The Unknown Prince” – must strike the gleaming gong near the gates of the imperial palace. To stage a new trial, there must be a public proclamation, holy men must gather, the Emperor must preside, and Turandot herself must pose the riddles.

It’s a regal crescendo of pomp, ceremony, and colorful, eye-popping costuming from Anna Oliver that ultimately matches the trumpets heralding the divine Principessa. Watching the royal entrances of Emperor, Turandot, and their respective ministers and maidservants, high up and almost level with the proscenium, I had to wonder how much more scaffolding and stairs there must be hidden in the wings so that all these nobles, old and young, could safely ascend to those lofty heights.

At ground level, my worries began as soon as soprano Jennifer Forni made her auspicious Opera Carolina debut as Liù, the maidservant who has devoted herself to dethroned Tartar king Timur simply because her son, Calaf, once smiled at her before he fled the kingdom. Forni distinguished herself within the first ten minutes with her sweet fruity timbre recounting Liù’s backstory, and her buttery soft notes put the protagonists waiting for their big moments in serious jeopardy of being upstaged. After all, Renata Tebaldi, Renata Scotto, and Montserrat Caballé are among the notables who have been drawn to this role.

If we don’t see or hear the very best of Diego Di Vietro early in Act 1, there was enough Luciano Pavarotti DNA surfacing in his tenor to assure us that he would likely be equal to Calaf’s big “Nessun dorma” moment when the curtain rose on Act 3. The extra panache that was missing before intermission arrived on time, and Lesenger made more of Calaf’s first private moment with Turandot, calling upon Di Vietro to conquer the princess with brutish aggressiveness and charm. The chemistry that was so sorely missing when Opera Carolina brought Turandot to the Belk in 2009 had finally been recovered, making for a more deeply satisfying ending.

Though Lesenger could have given her more to do during Turandot’s icy phase, Amy Shoremount-Obra was certainly majestic, intimidating, and cruel as the Principessa in the stunning trial scene. Nor am I quite sure that Baumgarten took the best approach in lighting the Princess when she first appeared. Yes, Shoremount-Obra was dazzling but blinding might be equally accurate as the lights were so dazzling that there was no chance to behold the beauty of the Princess’s face, utterly bleached by the spotlight. (My photographer agrees.)

Yet there is visual drama in this tense ceremony as Turandot gradually descends the long staircase from her lofty height as her successive riddles are solved. Shoremount-Obra visibly becomes more human and vulnerable as she comes closer to the Unknown Prince’s level at the climax of Act 2 and he proves more and more worthy of her. The dramatic soprano’s stamina wavered just slightly after intermission in her pre-dawn duet with Di Vietro, but by this time, Shoremount-Obra’s beauty had been revealed and the chemistry was kindled.

Otherwise, there was no lack of strength or color among the remaining cast. John Fortson was austere and imposing in all of the Mandarin’s proclamations. Jeffrey McEvoy, Zachary Taylor, and resident artist Johnathan White were delightful as Ping, Pang, and Pong when we needed comic relief. Garbed and bearded in gray, basso James Eder brought out a paternal spirituality in the blind King Timur, and Elliott Brown, decked out in enough gold to be declared a Sun King, was a magnificent Emperor Altoum.

Rather electrifying, all around. Bravi.

Charlotte Symphony’s New Maestro, Kwamé Ryan, Thrills a Packed House

Review: Tchaikovsky & Brahms at Belk Theater

By Perry Tannenbaum

April 5, 2024, Charlotte, NC – The audience at Belk Theater didn’t rise and sing the National Anthem as we do at the start of every new Charlotte Symphony season, but the occasion – Tchaikovsky & Brahms – was auspicious enough for Symphony president David Fisk to take the stage, notes in hand, and introduce the Orchestra’s newly designated music director, Kwamé Ryan. On the heels of CSO’s announcement that they were already at over 80% in reaching its $50 million fundraising campaign goal, ensuring Symphony’s financial stability, Classics subscribers had multiple reasons to express their enthusiasm – as Fisk spoke and when Ryan made his entrance. Both events had been sufficiently ballyhooed in the press. Fisk could wait a leisurely eight minutes after the normal starting time to make his appearance, so the usual curtain-up helter-skelter of late arrivals had subsided. Unless Ryan raised his eyes to the uppermost balcony, he saw a packed house ready to erupt.

Ryan’s greeting was even more personable than Fisk’s intro, so audience adoration actually rose a couple of notches before quiet prevailed and he could put his baton to use. This really was the beginning of a new Kwamé Ryan era, and the director designate did not fail to take advantage of that vibe. Instead of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” Ryan began his reign with what felt like the next best thing. With the composer seated in the orchestra, poised to receive more audience adulation, Ryan and Symphony performed Wang Jie’s Symphonic Overture “America, the Beautiful.” A self-professed “lover of adventure on mountains and cliffs,” Wie was thrilled when the Colorado Springs Philharmonic asked her to create a work inspired by nearby landmark Pikes Peak and the song written by Katherine Lee Bates in 1895 to a melody composed more than a decade earlier by Samuel A. Ward.

The commission was not at all outré, since Bates’s original poem was inspired by her first trip to the summit of Pikes Peak. You might say, however, that Jie’s music was inspired by America in 2016, since her description of this work stresses the unifying effect of the song amid political turbulence. She aimed for a piece that acknowledges how “fractured” we are while expressing the hope that a “re-harmonized” take on the anthemic song could still have healing and unifying powers. Fractured episodes alternate with Jie’s re-orchestrated presentations of Ward’s melody, presented in chunks of eight bars each until all of “America, the Beautiful” is reprised with brassy grandeur, followed by a frantically accelerated coda. Curiously, the piece probably does sound a lot more hopeful today, eight years after it was premiered barely two weeks before Election Day. A revision today might not contain the same wan, ruminating passage from the French horns or the silvery wistfulness from concertmaster Calin Ovidiu Lupanu. Wie’s energetic balancing act was almost nostalgic.

Although cellist Joshua Roman performed Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme in Charlotte as recently as 2012 during an All-Tchaikovsky concert led by Christopher Warren-Green, the piece didn’t skyrocket to mountaintop status for me until Gautier Capuçon played it at the glorious Dvořák Hall during the Prague International Festival of 2019. Reaching that stratosphere would be difficult for both guest soloist Sterling Elliott and Ryan, navigating Pyotr’s score before the vivid memory of Semyon Bychkov’s exploits with the Czech Philharmonic had fully faded. Indeed, the delight and perfection of the Prague experience drifted beyond reach by the time Elliott and the CSO had traversed the mid-tempo prelude, the rococo theme modeled on Mozart, and the first two variations at a friskier pace. Ominously, it dawned on me that this was the first piece I was hearing Ryan conduct with Symphony that wasn’t composed by an American citizen.

With the onset of the dreamy Variation III, Elliott and Ryan found their footing, bringing forth the full sublimity of the Andante sostenuto. At that point, knowing that some bodacious virtuosity lay ahead in the final four Variations and the crowdpleasing coda, I resolved to try and watch Elliott from the perspective of those in the audience who were experiencing the Rococo for the first time. Wiping the slate clean not only enhanced my own experience, it plugged me into the excitement and wonder of the Belk Theater crowd as the buoyed Elliott slashed through the pyrotechnics in the latter half of Tchaikovsky’s concerto and shredded his bowstrings. If you factor in opening night jitters, Elliott’s encore figures to be even more awesome.

The Brahms Symphony No. 1 built to a similarly walloping climax after intermission. Limited rehearsal time – or simply the limited time Ryan and the Orchestra have had to become acquainted with each other – may have accounted for the somewhat listless and shapeless reading of the opening Un poco sostenuto and its subsequent transitions back and forth from Allegro. It was in the ensuing Andante sostenuto, where acting principal oboist Erica Cice had multiple chances to shine bookending principal clarinetist Taylor Marino’s eloquence, that the ensemble seemed to discover its voice, capped by some subtle soloing from Lupanu.

Marino spun a little more magic, in league with principal flutist Victor Wang, at the start of the third movement Allegretto as the ensemble ramped up for the grand finale, where Brahms First echoes Beethoven’s last. Here was where we could find the most encouraging examples of the pacing, sculpting, and exhilaration we can expect as Ryan settles in with Symphony for seasons to come. Repeatedly, principal French hornist Byron Johns was impressive, first as he hovered above the brass and later in concert with the other horns. There was admirable warmth from the strings in the big tune, with effective spotlights from Wang, Cice, and the four trombones. Everything was clicking during this finale, which crested with thunder, and the audience called Ryan back from the wings again and again with a standing ovation.

Falletta and Wilborn Dazzle at the Knight

Review: Charlotte Symphony Plays Wagner + Strauss

By Perry Tannenbaum

March 22, 2024, Charlotte, NC – Charlotte Symphony’s latest concert pairing, Wagner + Strauss, is logical and cohesive enough, but with the two Germans represented by the “Liebestod” (love-death) from Tristan and Isolde followed by the great Death and Transfiguration tone poem, abundant jollity seemed unlikely at Knight Theater. Wedged between these famed titans of 19th and 20th century music, however, were two lesser-knowns, Richard Strauss’s contemporary Oskar Böhme (1870-1938) and American composer Julia Perry (1924-1979). Thankfully, these composers, especially Oskar, lightened things up. Originally scheduled to perform with Symphony in August 2020, renowned conductor JoAnn Falletta returned for her first guest appearance with the orchestra since 2002, and principal trumpeter Alex Wilborn, similarly postponed by the pandemic, made his solo debut in Böhme’s Trumpet Concerto.

When former Symphony music director Christof Perick last performed the “Liebestod” at Belk Theater – almost precisely 15 years ago – he also paired the piece with a revered Strauss tone poem, Also Sprach Zarathustra. Strauss was one of Perick’s prime passions, and the Friday evening performance reaffirmed that the ardent Prelude and Liebestod remains deeply embedded in the ensemble’s DNA. Falletta’s reading, gradually peaking to a lovers’ climax, with delicious peeps at the hypnotic love theme that blossomed with promise, made me feel afterwards like asking if anybody else in the audience craved a cigarette.

Musically, it seems like a trumpet is a better post-coital sequel for Symphony than a cigarette when they finish the Liebestod, for who can contemplate Strauss’s Zarathustra without recalling its trumpet heraldry? Now that Wilborn is in the principal chair, he could bring us a virtuosic account of Böhme’s Trumpet Concerto with a surprise bonbon afterwards. The opening Allegro moderato brought forth a beautifully burnished tone from Wilborn’s horn and delectably supple phrasing, hardly seeming to challenge his technique, while Falletta emphasized the massiveness and lyricism of the orchestral accompaniment. That foundation segued nicely into the middle Adagio religioso movement, which began with stately dignity from the strings and brass and peaked with soaring aspiration from the soloist, no less pleasing than the melodic opening movement. It was only in the closing Rondo that we could savor anything close to Wilborn’s full virtuosity. Some real jollity here.

Perhaps both Wilborn and Falletta felt that the fireworks were all too brief in Böhme’s finale, for after the audience ovation, the trumpet virtuoso returned with perhaps the lengthiest encore ever heard at Knight Theater. Jean-Baptiste Arban’s “Variations on The Carnival of Venice” had all the virtuosic challenges and exploits you could ask for, with merciful orchestral interludes between the clusters of variations so that Wilborn could catch his breath. It wasn’t just speed that was demanded: in the most intense variations, we needed to make out the main melody amid a blizzard of relatively quiet filigree. The effect was sensational, exhilarating, and exhausting. Falletta showed us how much fun she was having long before she could rest her weary arms and face us again, and Wilborn, in a gesture that promised both him and his audience some respite, jokingly signaled to us when there were only three variations remaining.

Sadly, it would be an understatement to say that African American composer Julia Perry’s work has been neglected in her homeland. Only a handful of recordings – and no full-length CDs – exist from her voluminous output, which included 12 symphonies and four operas. The work unveiled in Charlotte, A Short Piece for Orchestra (1952), has only been recorded once, 14 years ago by the Imperial Philharmonic of Tokyo.

Falletta’s helter-skelter reading of the work made it feel far more modern and audacious than the more lyrical and legato Tokyo take under William Strickland’s baton. A live performance certainly brought out more textures after the raucous opening, including some dreamy reeds from principal clarinetist Taylor Marino and acting principal oboist Erica Cice. From the rear of the ensemble, a snare drum’s tattoo and some noodling from a celesta crept in. Really lovely stuff. My first exposure to Perry came just three days before her centennial birthday might be celebrated (apparently, there’s a half-billion-dollar bond deadline that’s considered to be a bigger deal).

The crisp dynamics that distinguished A Short Piece made a difference once again as Falletta turned to Tod und Verklärung. There was thunder like Perick brought to the work plus a little more electric crackle. In the more sweeping passages, the orchestral blend was as exquisite as ever, yet there were also ample opportunities for Cice, Marino, principal flutist Victor Wang, and concertmaster Calin Lupanu to shine in the hushed moments. Perick’s interpretation had more narrative cohesiveness and continental flavor, while Falletta’s took the piece in a more American direction, almost exiting the realm of a tone poem and crossing over into a concerto for orchestra. Opening up the dynamic range was certainly an intriguing and exciting approach. After waiting an extra four years, Falletta clearly triumphed in her return.

Vampires and Trumpers

Theatre

Reviews: Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and Thanksgiving: 2016

By Perry Tannenbaum

For devout upstanding citizens who had decided way back in the hippie ‘60s that Greenwich Village was an abominable den of sin, Charles Busch’s Vampire Lesbians of Sodom was a flaming and perverse poke in the eye. Or an argument clincher when it landed on Macdougal Street in 1985. The New York Times raved, the extravagant little trio of sketches became a cult obsession, and Vampire Lesbians had a five-year run.

Busch slipped away from his castmates when the review came out in the early morning after the Provincetown Playhouse premiere and had a good cry. Why did this diva desecrate his mascara? His career in theatre was now assured. He would write more outrageous comedies and send-ups that he, as the prima donna, could cross-dress and slay in, most famously Psycho Beach Party.

Vampire Lesbians made it to Charlotte at the Pterodactyl Club in 1991, after the slightly wholesomer Psycho Beach had paved the way during the previous year. George Brown directed this orgy of sacrilege with fiendish glee, while Innovative Theatre co-founder Alan Poindexter starred with Keith Bulla as the titular vamps.

With the Rev. Joe Chambers carrying the torch for fundamentalism in the wake of Jim Bakker’s disgrace, Banktown was still a very Christian place. It was my sacred duty to bring my daughter, not yet bat mitzvahed, to see Poindexter in all his counter-culture glory. After beholding the kinky wonders of Psycho Beach, my Ilana would have kissed Alan’s feet.

Flash forward to 2023. Poindexter is gone and the Pterodactyl Club, the one-time cultural capital of Freedom Drive, is goner. But thanks to Nicia Carla and her PaperHouse Theatre, Hollywood antagonists La Condesa and Madeleiné Astarté (a Succubus and a Virgin Sacrifice back in their Sodom days) are undead again!

Taking on Busch’s mantle, Carla directs and stars in this stunning revival at VisArt Video, tucked into the nether region of a strip mall on Eastway Drive – I’m trying to make this little suburban dive sound as risqué as the Pterodactyl! Walls are black as you walk inside, and hostesses in Goth attire and makeup are there to greet you. Whatever Google Maps has told you (it misled both me and my wife Sue on separate occasions), you can now be sure you’re in the right place.

Small as it is, the inner sanctum of VisArt is perfectly sized for Busch’s secret forbidden rites. The seats are soft enough to keep butt burnout at bay for 90 minutes, even if you don’t stretch for intermission and fall prey to the treats in the lobby. Yet sightlines are not ideal according to Sue’s scouting report.

The PaperHouse cast multitasks even more than Busch’s original ensemble, just six players covering the 14 roles instead of seven. All six are battle-tested in madcap comedy, so this outrage is hardly outside their comfort zones. Nicia probably hasn’t had this much fun onstage since Poindexter directed her as The Witch in Hansel & Gretel. She minces and manipulates here as the Virgin Sacrifice, growing regal and stentorian as theatrical megastar Astarté as she assaults the Left Coast. Opposite her, Ashby Blakely is a steely, sneering diva bridging four millennia as The Succubus, aging gracefully into La Condesa and crossdressing in costume designer Beth Levine Chaitman’s most outré couture.

That isn’t to say that Josh Looney and Charlie Carla are anything less than visions of decadence as Sodomite musclemen Ali and Hujar in complementary S&M outfits and Wagnerian wigs. Nicia is already fairly slutty in the opening sketch despite her somewhat revealing white dress, willing to break her hymen with Ali or cut a deal with the cave monster Succubus. Subsequent scenes in Hollywood and Sin City climax in a couple of startling onstage costume changes, most improbably by Tanya McClellan who snoops into La Condesa’s boudoir as gossip columnist Oatsie Carewe.

Gosh, it’s good to see McClellan back onstage in manic comedy mode. Squinting her snoopiness, she sniffs out the ungodly acts performed by Nicia as Astarté on La Condessa’s protégée, luminous Sarah Molloy as flapper Renee Vain, and her meddlesome boy toy, Looney as matinee idol King Carlyle.

Hard times for a vampire? You’ll need to come back after intermission for Blakely’s final transformations. Andrea King’s choreography, on loan from Jane Fonda, elegantly shows off McClellan’s dancing prowess.

Anyone who reads advice columns or cruises social media at this time of year will have an accurate inkling of what Thanksgiving: 2016 might be about. Millions of Turkey Day hosts are wondering how they will keep opposing family factions from shouting their lungs out or coming to blows while the sharp cutlery is still on the table. Playwright Elaine Alexander smartly calculates that the situation is prime fuel for a dining room comedy – or tragedy – but the world premiere of Charlotte’s Off-Broadway production now at VAPA also reveals that the NC native had a tough time deciding which way to go.

Ground Zero for the annual onset of hosting panic was clearly in November 2016 when Hillary Rodham Clinton resoundingly won the popular vote for the US presidency while Donald Jefferson Trump won the Electoral College – and the White House – just as resoundingly. Liberals, Democrats, and rational folk are still in shock. Yet as Alexander deftly reminds us along the way, they are all blissfully unaware of the betrayals of good sense, rationality, rule of law, and democracy to come.

As the West family up in the liberal Northeast prepares to host young Eric’s girlfriend, riding up the highway from Alabama, the aroma of crisis already fills the suburban kitchen. Papa Harry, after diligently knocking on hundreds of doors crusading for Clinton, was hospitalized – either for a nervous breakdown or a heart attack – immediately after watching CNN declare Florida for Trump. The chief Turkey Day watchword from Harry’s physician is for wife and son to prevent the shell-shocked Hillary soldier from indulging his CNN addiction.

Taking to drink in the wake of her husband’s collapse, either out of worry or guilt, Renee has pretty much abandoned any serious intent to impress Brittany, the Southern belle she’ll be meeting for the first time. So it has fallen to young Eric to try to cook a luscious feast for his beloved, even though Mom hasn’t properly shopped for the occasion. Some improvising and substitution will need to be done. Worse, frozen will occasionally need to stand in for fresh.

Worst of all, Brittany voted for Trump, so Eric desperately hopes to keep talk of politics – the subject Dad is obsessed with and still agonizing over – away from the holiday dinner table. Harry has enough difficulty digesting that his son would date a girl from Alabama. Nor does Dad have enough self-awareness to realize that, in a reflexive action stemming from his years in community theatre, he mocks every Southern drawl he comes in contact with.

Finding out she’s a Trump voter could send him over the edge. Getting Dad to refrain from talking politics promises to be even tougher than steering him away from CNN. Finessing how to keep Brittany off the touchy subject is a bridge Eric hasn’t crossed yet.

As a director, Alexander casts father and son perfectly. Matthew Howie is a master of timorous anxiety as Eric. He can craft crescendos of panic and befuddlement while doing a hilariously awful job of warding off disaster with a shit-eating smile. Nor could we improve much on Tom Ollis as Harry. Since his 1997 debut at Theatre Charlotte in Arsenic and Old Lace, Ollis has grown into the most visible volcano on the Metrolina theatre landscape. Whether as Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs, Sweeney Todd, or Titus Andronicus, Ollis is peerless at seething, suspecting, and erupting into towering, raving rages.

Since Harry is also a trial lawyer recently dismissed from his law firm because of his excessive zeal, Ollis can feast on numerous opportunities to cross-examine everyone in sight, bullying and browbeating every witness. Alexander’s women don’t get nearly as much scenery to chew, but her casting choices are nearly as impeccable.

Donna Norcross seemed to be battling opening night jitters early in Act 1 as Renee, but as Mom yielded to a multitude of wine refills, Norcross also relaxed, becoming quite powerful in the Act 2 denouement. Quite ripe for stereotyping, Michelle Strom as Renee entered the West home like a sudden ray of sunshine, without the preamble of a knock or a doorbell chime, her drawl as wide as the Mississippi. No, Dad could not restrain himself, nor could I blame him.

As you can imagine, the setup of Thanksgiving: 2016 is almost pure comedy – until the Trumper truth finally comes out, as an announcement rather than a shy confession, with the proud flourish of a cheerleader’s somersault. Looking from Strom to Ollis as we reach intermission, we can only wonder whether Dad will clutch his head or his heart.

But what can come afterward from our host, our hostess, and from poor Eric? Admirably enough, Alexander lets her characters carry her along across Act 2. But her impulse to bludgeon Harry with more secrets and uncomfortable turns this comedy upside-down. We transition, not very gradually, from a Neil Simon comedy of futile secret -eeping to an impactful series of revelations that conjures up Sophocles’ Oedipus, Strindberg’s The Father, or Albee’s Virginia Woolf. Those revelations are topped off by a  couple of increasingly jaw-dropping ideological rebukes to Harry’s smug liberalism that might shake you up a bit.

We seem to fall over a cliff here, with too little before intermission to prepare us for the high drama afterward. By the time the cast is taking their bows, Renee has radically transformed from a borderline bimbo into a pieta resembling Steinbeck’s Rose of Sharon on the final pages of The Grapes of Wrath. Instead of dumping us off a high cliff, I’d advise Alexander to lay down more track that would guide us around the mountain: a sudden dramatic swerve – not too sudden – would be more satisfying than this swan dive.

A visit to VAPA for Thanksgiving: 2016 is still worth it, delivering hearty laughs and a gasp or two. By all means, dig in!

Moulin Rouge! Welcome to the Megamix of Pops and Plots

Review: Moulin Rouge! The Musical! at Belk Theater

By Perry Tannenbaum

Even before the first downbeat, the musk of forbidden fruit fills the air at Belk Theater each night as Moulin Rouge! The Musical! readies to detonate. Against a scarlet backdrop and under a proscenium studded with vanity bulbs and panning red spotlights, scantily-clad chorines slink onstage, showing limbs and cleavages like ladies in Amsterdam’s red-light district slyly advertising their merch. Elegant tuxedoed gentlemen puffing on cigarettes enter at the opposite end, consumed by each other nearly as much as by the ladies’ legs.

The ban on taking photographs, policed by Belk’s ushers wielding official signage, is already in force as soon as the first glove and high-heeled shoe come into view.

Like our more raucous welcomes to Cabaret and La Cage aux Folles, what follows in leering silence is sexy and showbizzy,. The aroma of illicitness only increases when the music kicks in – unmistakably purloined from the Top 40 pops charts as soon as we hear “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?” for the first time. Why trouble to compose fresh tunes, like John Kander or Jerry Herman, when you can steal or lease pure gold from a multitude of hitmakers and hire a team of co-orchestrators led by arranger Justin Levine to stitch them together?

That’s what book writer John Logan has done in adapting and updating Baz Luhrmann’s gaudy 2001 film, with costume designer Catherine Zuber and choreographer Sonya Tayeh adding their sinful embroidery and panache. All of this talented team knows that mercenary greed is as much at the heart of Moulin Rouge as glitter and concupiscence. Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade” will soon be followed – inevitably – by Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want).”

Our beautiful and consumptive heroine, Satine, wants to sell herself to the lecherous Duke of Monroth, but only because she mistakes the handsome young Christian, a budding songwriting genius from Ohio, for her buyer. Christian is no less smitten by Satine, but his prime motive for invading her boudoir, after witnessing her killer cabaret act, is to sell her on a musical show he has written with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Santiago, a dashing Argentinian dude.

The nightclub glitz is interrupted by a detour to Bohemia, where we catch up on the Christian’s backstory with Toulouse-Lautrec, and preceded by the commerce behind-the-scenes between the two charismatics in the story – the predatory Duke and club owner Harold Zidler, our wicked emcee. Zidler, portrayed with garrulous savoir-faire by Robert Petkoff, hypes and sells his jewel’s charms, wheedling and boasting as he pimps. Since the financial fate of Moulin Rouge now depends on Satine’s success as a temptress, Zidler’s domineering mode is reserved for her.

Petkoff is marvelously matched with Andrew Brewer as the Duke. With a sinister sneer, Brewer aristocratically assesses and stalks his prey, hardly troubling himself to move around or give up his proprietary lounging position. Until he strikes like a snake when he takes his turn backstage in milady’s boudoir. In the wake of Satine’s onstage glitter – including “Diamonds Are Forever” morphing into “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” before swerving into “Material Girl” – the Duke answers brutally with a Rolling Stones medley. Brewer pounces on “Sympathy for the Devil” and builds from there with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and a climactic “Gimme Shelter,” maybe the most savage and primal track in the history of rock.

If that weren’t enough contrast to dramatize the Duke’s first big splash, consider the sweetness of Christian Douglas as Christian, serenading Satine with Bizet, Offenbach, and “La Vie en Rose” during his pitch. That’s the business end of his visit after springing a new song on Satine that he has written just for her, Elton John’s “Your Song.” Christian is also a crack lyricist. Back in Montmartre, he’s doctoring a Toulouse throwaway into promising shape as “The Sound of Music.”

Lowered from the flyloft on a decorous trapeze after her extended build-up, Gabrielle McClinton gets every lift she could possibly need from director Alex Timbers’ staging to bedazzle the Duke, Christian, and her breathlessly salivating audience. To me, she’s a letdown in more ways than one. Given a megamix that evokes Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, and Beyoncé in a matter of minutes, Satine should be a goddess who commands the leading men’s adoration. But instead of mesmerizing, McClinton is… meh.

It would be hugely consoling to be able to report that McClinton’s tearjerking efforts as the dying Satine are any more riveting than her diva moments. But there’s a bit of a plot megamix going alongside the pop megamix, so McClinton’s opportunities to rouse our empathy don’t quite keep pace with Mimi’s in La Bohème or Violetta’s in La Traviata. Christian has framed what we’re watching as his story and Zidler wants everyone to care that the fate of the Moulin Rouge hangs by a thread.

Our wicked emcee is augmented by the lowlife charms of Nick Rashad Burroughs as Toulouse, Danny Burgos as Santiago, and Sarah Bowden as Nini, Satine’s sexy sidekick: reminding us that love and art desperately for sale. So there would be barely enough room for Satine to be both Mimi and Sally Bowles – or Violetta and Gypsy Rose Lee – even if there weren’t more than 70 songs on the playlist to navigate.

But there are more than 70 songs swirling at us, some on replays. Paradoxically that’s what saves this Moulin Rouge superstorm from itself despite the vacuum at its vortex. The fun is not only in the pacing, the spectacle, and the jets of confetti that that tops off Zidler and Luhrmann’s circus style of cabaret. It’s in our efforts as well, episode after twisted episode, to keep up with the anachronistic onslaught of melodies and lyrics that pelt us throughout the evening. By hearkening back to 19th century hits at one end of the spectrum and contemporary sounds at the other end, this epic playlist is cunningly engineered to confound.

Whether you are old or young, devoted to pop hits or the classics, whether or not you remember when rock was young or even have a clue what Tin Pan Alley was, you will face moments at Belk Theater when you’re asking yourself: have I ever heard this song before? and what the hell are they playing now? Because its score thrusts you far outside of how you normally absorb a musical, casting you out into the realm of memories, half memories, and speculation, Moulin Rouge succeeds at sucking you in. There’s no songlist in the playbill to cling to as you swim this ocean.

Even if you’re fully versed in Luhrmann’s film, you will likely be cast adrift or taken by surprise, for Logan and Levine haven’t stood pat. Not only Beyoncé, but also Pink, Sia, Lorde, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Adele and others are mixed into the fresh brew. And Lady Gaga!?!

If you’re a Broadway or jukebox musical maven, there’s another sort of question you’ll be asking yourself. How did Elton John’s “Your Song” get in here when Sir E never had the chutzpah to put one of his megahits in any of his own musicals? Good grief, they actually got the rights to perform part of a Beatles song?

Teasing you out of thought on your drive home, you will likely continue pondering what you heard or may have missed inside the lacy valentine world of Moulin Rouge. Yes, Elvis and the Everly Brothers were covered, but what about Gershwin and Cole Porter, Charlie Chaplain and Fats Domino? Likely you’ll shuttle back to remembering that Nat King Cole and Whitney Houston were enfolded in this musical’s fond embrace. There were whiffs of Marilyn Monroe and Madonna.

That’s when you realize that Satine and the Moulin Rouge nightclub – the red windmill, if you need a translation – swept you away after all.

Normality Attacks a Serial Killer in Catch the Butcher

Review: Catch the Butcher with Post Mortem Players @ CATCh

By Perry Tannenbaum

Serial killers, wherever they prey on young defenseless women and girls, are universally detested, even by fellow criminals. Yet these monsters, vying with vampires in wickedness and cunning, surely have a captive audience that greatly outnumbers their victims. Identify one and he’s frontpage news, sure to draw breathless airtime on local and national TV. Invent one who is truly special and you may spawn a bestseller and even an Oscar winner.

Yes, the guilty pleasures of sopping up the gory conquests of killers at-large and thrilling in the hunt to stop and avenge their rampages are perverse addictions shared by millions. Our susceptibility to the lurid scent of butchery was more than enough license for playwright Adam Seidel to bring us Nancy, his sacrificial lamb in the grimly satirical Catch the Butcher.

Nancy doubles down on the audience’s unspoken perversion: she wants to be abducted by “the butcher of Harbor Park.” Night after night, she sits alone on a park bench deep in the darkness of that dreaded landmark, fearing that she will be stalked and longing for it. As directed by Heather Wilson-Bowlby in the current Post Mortem Players production at CATCh, the company’s first sally into the QC, Nancy is almost advertising her yearning.

She’s reading The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule’s account of her friendship with serial killer Ted Bundy, a classic in the true crime genre. Heather-Bowlby’s mischievous touch, we will learn, is especially apt because the Harbor Park butcher dabbles a little in literature, dedicating a poem to each of his victims. Nancy’s fandom runs deep, admiring the fiend’s verse and feeling an unspoken kinship.

Parallel to this literary thread, the action of the early scenes is dark, silent, and animal until the Butcher pulls off his abduction. The silence of this lamb, as her killer circles ever more closely around her, is not merely evocative of a silent movie creepshow, begging for organ music in the background. We come to realize that it was also like a National Geographic documentary depicting a mating ritual in the wild.

Throughout Nancy’s bizarre captivity, Seidel has his fun juxtaposing the sophisticated with the primal and the drudgery of domesticity with our natural savagery – to shocking or comical effect. Numerous twists are in store as this butcher-victim pas-de-deux develops, including at least one complete flip-flop. And why not, seeing that Nancy and the butcher of Harbor Park were actually stalking each other?

If you don’t scan the QR code on Post Mortem’s flyer before the lights go down, gaining access to the full digital “Slaybill,” you won’t have any idea of where the silent opening scenes are happening, who we’re watching, or when the action takes place. That heightens our suspense and delays the onset of humor we’d expect at CATCh (Comedy Arts Theater of Charlotte). You’ll know most of the details if you’ve read the script beforehand, but Wilson-Bowlby flouts the playwright’s insistence that we’re in the present day, giving her star headphones instead of earbuds and a boombox instead of an iPhone.

We’re no further back than 1980, when The Stranger Beside Me was first published, but the copy that Jackie Obando Carter is clutching shows considerable wear and age. Costume designs by Carter were no more decisive to my eyes in designating the decade. More impressive were the design and execution of special effects that Carter and Hilary Powell collaborated on: one stabbing was particularly impressive since, at CATCh, my wife Sue and I were seated as close to the action as we would be watching a card trick.

Carter’s chemistry with her abductor, Chuck Riordan as the Butcher, is deliciously volatile. The vibe is more spiced with sensuality on Carter’s end as Nancy tries to divert and charm Bill – revealing his name bares the first chink in the Butcher’s armor – as her survival instincts kick in. While Nancy is dazed and disoriented when she first awakens in the Butcher’s soundproofed dungeon, this is what she quested for during her previous vigils in the dark.

She is not like us. She needs prodding to scream her loudest and confirm Bill’s soundproofing. A knife at her throat as she sits helplessly handcuffed to a chair? Carter must calibrate the mortal terror that Nancy is experiencing with her fantasy fulfillment and delight. The more we realize how diligently Nancy has worked to be here, the more we appreciate the complexity of Carter’s performance.

Since she candidly lets out that the Butcher and his technique aren’t what she expected, Bill is also a bit disoriented as he realizes what he has stepped into. Being measured against the glamor and terror of Nancy’s dream serial killer begins to tilt his attitude toward defensiveness and appreciation. While maintaining his dominator role, he finds he must prove himself as a ruthless butcher and sustain the admiration his victim has professed toward his poetry.

Riordan, like Carter, is making his QC debut in a role that requires deft and sudden navigation. But he has significantly more leeway in how he portrays this monster as his vulnerabilities are exposed. He doesn’t get to be quite so sure of himself as the adventurous nothing-to-lose Nancy – deviations from glamor, savoir faire, and fearsome menace all redound in his favor as we see more beneath his façade. He’s an anti-villain, in a sense.

Riordon can thus roll with the moment and seem authentic so long as he doesn’t fumble his lines or visibly stumble in his actions. Especially in Bill’s domesticated scenes, Riordon can mute his paranoia and be altogether humdrum. There are key moments when Riordon is suddenly called upon to show a killer’s steel or a lover’s grace. He masters these with aplomb, and he’s strong on Bill’s telling trait: he wants to make his mark with his murders and his poetry, desperate for both notoriety and acclaim.

It would be heartless to give an even sketchy summary of how the story unfolds with Seidel’s unfailing logic. So let’s concentrate on a sequence that was pivotal for me.

To gain precious time, Nancy has convinced Bill that she wishes to hear the poem that was written about her. Bill not only picks up on the ploy, he notices that, compared with previous victims, Nancy isn’t as terrified when a knife is at her throat. She is not what he expected. He must consider the possibility that Nancy is a cop or an FBI agent, particularly after she escapes her handcuffs to use the toilet.

Fast forward a bit past some juicy action, one of them with French toast, and Bill has finished his new poem. We haven’t sampled the Butcher’s literary craft before, so we presumably know less about what we can expect than Nancy. “A Single Rose,” as Bill titles it, is recognizably dreadful – so dreadful that I initially suspected that the serial killer was laying a fiendish trap for our lady in distress, testing whether her esteem was worth having.

Asked for her reaction, Nancy comes back with an utterly hilarious, magnificently audacious response: “It’s not your best work.”

At this point, we had reached a realm of dark humor that was unfamiliar to me. In perfect style. From here, Seidel could take us wherever he wished – even upstairs, out of the Butcher’s dungeon, to a new household.

In the aftermath, we get to know the couple’s next-door neighbor, Joanne – a bubbling busybody portrayed by Jennifer Briere, yet another talented Post Mortem newcomer. She enters through the front door with a bundt cake, then a vase filled with freshly cut roses, seemingly well-acquainted with the welcoming-new-neighbors drill. Briere is especially precious when Joanne learns how Milwaukee, wherever that is, differs from Texas. You will see that all the audacity Nancy has shown us before is eclipsed the moment she dares to open the front door for Joanne, defying Bill’s stern commandment.

Reviews of Catching the Butcher sometimes cite Silence of the Lambs as an inspiration and inevitably Dexter, because the original Nancy in the 2015 Off-Broadway production, Lauren Luna Vélez, was a fixture in that series. If you’ll permit a more classical viewpoint, Seidel’s macabre comedy reminded me more of John Fowles’ The Collector, may favorite horror novel alongside Dracula. Bill is more of a scientist than Hannibal, less of a gourmand.

The household idyll we see blossoming after intermission, with its undercurrent of doom, took me back to prelapsarian Adam and Eve, with snoopy vivacious Joanne subtly installed as our Serpent. Wilson-Bowlby may have been feeling similar vibes as she staged the ending, giving it more of a wedding or honeymoon tang than Seidel could have imagined. Quite wonderful.

Kennedy’s Bridge Circle Meets Its Quota of Quips – and More

Review: The Thursday Bight Bridge Circle at Theatre Charlotte

By Perry Tannenbaum

Since 1987, the last time I watched a live performance at St. John’s Baptist Church, I haven’t cut a deck, played a hand, won a rubber, or even bid a single No Trump – I’ve even lost track of my copy of Charles H. Goren’s Point Count Bidding. But since that night when PlayWorks staged The Octette Bridge Club at St. John’s, I haven’t needed much knowledge about the game of bridge or its culture. My last brushes with the game were in Sunday columns I would read in the arts section when The Charlotte Observer was a traditional newspaper.

So it was a little concerning, when I sat down at Theatre Charlotte for the premiere of Ray Kennedy’s The Thursday Night Bridge Circle, that I found no less than four bridge teachers were credited in the playbill for their contributions. My concerns were thankfully unfounded. Visitors to the Queens Road barn will not be assailed with bridge terminology, the intricacies of bidding, or even extensive card play.

Louise Kennedy’s circle is a looser agglomerate than P.J. Barry’s octet, which was an unwavering group of eight sisters. And it’s only Louise’s circle tonight because hostess chores hopscotch from member to member on successive Thursdays. Nor are participants constant, we learn, as Louise welcomes us to her cheery, symmetrical, split-level living room – two tables flanked by two sofas – a luxe scenic design by Tim Parati that gives us peeps at the garden and the foyer.

Tonight, for example, Louise’s college co-ed daughter, Mary Carter Kennedy, is in town to play one of the hands, to be partnered with Louise’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Kennedy, who has earned a risqué reputation in LaGrange, North Carolina, as a liberal. Since one of the regulars can’t make it this week, dear Louise is bracing herself for the arrival of Miss Virginia, who will likely be roaring drunk as soon as she can guzzle sufficient booze. Excitement is ratcheted up further by a new player that only our host knows, Carmella, feared to be a judgmental Yankee – and to have a profession!

Imagine that!

The two tables are filled out by Bootsie and Cluster, gals from Louise’s generation, and two more elders, Miss Caroline and the eternally disapproving Mrs. Coltrane, Louise’s mom. You can bet there will be plenty to rouse Mom’s umbrage, beginning with the fact that housemaid Margaret and her daughter Bernice will be mixing drinks, pouring beverages, and preparing the hors d’oeuvres. Mary Carter also has a truckload of disclosures that will disconcert her granny.

Hosting such an exhilarating event is so intricate, complex, and daunting that Louise – or anyone who hosts the circle – cannot be expected to participate in the cardplaying. The standard of perfection is too high for a hostess to divide her attention. Tables must be carefully set, partners thoughtfully chosen, and place cards placed exactly so at every chair.

Sadly, Carmella hasn’t chosen the best night for her first sampling of Southern hospitality – or the best year. It’s 1970, LBJ is midway through his second term and the backwater of LaGrange still has separate black and white schools, bathrooms, and post offices. “It’s always been that way,” Miss Caroline complacently declares, and none of the LaGrange ladies except the liberal Mrs. Kennedy seems to suspect that Margaret or Bernice might be discontented with the racist status quo.

Needless to say, Kennedy has concocted a comical time bomb that is primed to explode before our eyes. Desegregation has arrived and Louise’s mom and husband have decided to send their imperiled offspring to military school – a betrayal of Louise’s bestie, Bootsie, who was counting on her public-school solidarity. Nor will Mary Carter, an activist at school, take this well, while Carmella and Mrs. Kennedy will be reliably alarmed. Toss in a stray N-word from Virginia when she’s sufficiently lubricated and you may conclude that a polite evening of bridge has been scuttled.

Before his fictional kindred took the stage on opening night, the playwright Kennedy spoke to us about his autobiographical work and introduced us to the real-life Mary Carter, proudly sitting in the third row. So when Tonya Bludsworth entered as Louise, it was a bit like a continuation of the playwright’s monologue, except that the hostess was giddier with excitement and nervousness because she didn’t know how the evening would go.

Sketching each lady who would sit in each bridge chair, the intro was a bit draggy despite Bludsworth’s fretful charm, particularly since the playwright doubles down on his intros by granting Louise mystical foresight into who is arriving at her front door – tripling down when she greets them by name. Most people will be delighted with Kennedy’s style, which endows most of his characters with the ability to come up with a Southern-fried quip or a salty simile in nearly every sentence.

Almost by magic, Kennedy is able to differentiate between his ladies anyway, thanks to the big family squabble and the political, class, and age divides. Dennis Delamar’s stage direction is as handsome as Parati’s set, elegantly accessorized by “props team” Lea Harkins and Lois Marek. No doubt Delamar’s successes are facilitated by the presence of at least three more actor-directors in his cast, Corlis Hayes as Margaret, Paula Baldwin as Mrs. Kennedy, and Bludsworth as the fourth ace. Assistant director Dee Abdullah is no slouch, either, as a dramaturge.

Kennedy’s lapses into logorrhea may be the result of his not realizing the full power of his script, which bursts forth with terrific force on Queens Road, first when Hayes reacts to the bombshell dropped by Kathryn Stamas late in Act 1 as the soused Virginia (which Grace Ratledge as Mary Carter and Ashley Benjamin as Bernice refuse to let go) and then a stunner by Ann Dodd as Mrs. Coltrane when she is unexpectedly confronted deep in Act 2.

Costume designer Angeli Novio accepts the challenge of making the hotsy-totsy New York lawyer, Stephanie DiPaolo as Carmella, stand out among the local LaGrange fashionistas in her haute couture. DiPaolo does her Long Island accent lightly enough to maintain her stature as an evolved Yankee outsider, but instead of leaning more into her legal expertise and feminist superiority, the playwright lets her devolve into an excuse to more thoroughly introduce us to the natives.

No matter how charmingly Jenn Grabenstetter as Bootsie and Amy Pearre Dunn as Cluster expound on the origin of their Dixie nicknames, I just don’t care, even if it did incentivize them to audition. Let’s get to the juicy stuff quicker! And when we do get there, let Baldwin have more space to bemoan and bewail how her son could conspire with Mrs. Coltrane to send her dear grandson off to a boarding school. It’s a glaring plot point that needs to be addressed – and weren’t we in the middle of a war in 1970?

Regardless of how much more meat Kennedy could pile onto our plates (and how much candy he could discreetly remove), Hayes makes an enduring impression in her climactic monologue, deftly calibrated by the playwright not to become a tirade. Ginger Heath, anointed my first Best Actress many years ago, get surprisingly little to sink her teeth into here despite her imposing wig, but that only spotlights the exploits of the newbies all the more.

Benjamin absolutely commands the stage when she unexpectedly returns in Act 2 as Bernice, a bit of a surprise after her badly miked debut as Tinman last September. That leads to a rather memorable sequence of assertiveness, contrition, and reconciliation begun by Dodd in her QC debut as the formidable Mrs. Coltrane. I didn’t expect to weep after intermission, but I did, even while the quips kept landing.