New Rep season ends with a thud

The final play of the 2014-15 New Rep season was to be The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, starring Olympia Dukakis. Unfortunately, Ms Dukakis pulled out many months ago, due to "a family commitment." (Perhaps she and Tom Brady have a common family?). Instead of replacing her, the theatre changed horses completely and subsituted a world premiere of a new play by Ronan Noone, an Irish immigrant who attended Boston University and now teaches at the Walnut Hill School. The play is "Scenes from an Adultery," and stars Ciaran Crawford, Peter Stray and Leda Uberbacher. The plot as it is involves a married couple, Tony and Lisa, (Stray and Uberbacher) and their long-time friend Gasper (Crawford), a bachelor who plays the field. Never seen are another couple, who are having marital difficulties due to the husband's one-night stands. Should they get involved? Should they stay out of it? WHO CARES! Gasper is sure that he caught the wife also having an affair. Should they tell the husband? Should they stay out? The lack of serious plot development is covered up by lots of swearing and over-emoting, mostly by Tony. To show his true friendship to Gasper, Tony reveals that he had an almost-affair while away on a business trip which he stopped before consumation because of his conscience. Gasper, of course, tells Lisa about this, leading to another marriage falling apart. The denoument involves a modest surprise which I will not reveal lest you are set on seeing the play. The actors are generally good and the set is attractive but the material is weak. Don't waste an evening.

City of Angels - rollicking fun

The current show at Lyric Stage, running through May, is City of Angels, a musical comedy which pokes fun at both Hollywood and the "noir" genre while entertaining the audience. The play includes a "play within a play," which sounds complex but works well. A writer of hard-boiled detective novels is in Hollywood on contract to turn one of his novels into a screen play. We see the ex-cop private eye solving a disappearance and attempted murder while lamenting his lost love and breaking the case in a series of scenes. Simultaneously we see the Hollywood big shot producer/director insisting the writer change the story line to be more "Hollywood." We see all the stereotypes of syncophantic hangers-on, starlets and crooners buzzing around the producer. There are affairs, marital spats and reconciliations. All this with a finely-sung set of lyrics and a great band barely seen behind a curtain. Most of the cast play two roles - one in the "real" Hollywood and another in the detective story, and this works. Most are familiar faces in the Boston theatre scene, and all have adequate if not great singing voices. Go see it!

NBSO conquers Russia

Under the direction of David MacKenzie, the New Bedford Symphony has become a first-class orchestra. This was demonstrated Saurday evening at the Zeiterion with two Russian masterpieces. The first half was devoted to Shostakovich's 9th Symphony, a relatively short work that premiered in 1945. WHile I am not a great fan of 20th Century music, the performance of this complex piece was flawless. It was also a demonstration that Dr. MacKenzie is challenging us to listen to pieces outside of the Romantic period. The second half was the magnificent 2nd piano concerto of Rachmaninoff, featuring Ukranian-American pianist Marina Lomazov as the soloist. Ms Lomazov brought energy and enthusiasm to the piece and was amply supported by the full orchestra. Several members of the orchestra had cameo solos, and all held up their end well. The piece gathered a well-deserved standing ovation, and the audience was in turn rewarded with a charming short solo piano encore. The final concert in the 2014-15 season is on May 9. Do not miss it!

The God Box

The God Box, running at the New Rep's Black Box little theatre through April 19, is the third and last in their series featuring women theatre makers. Like the first two previously reviewed, it is a one act short piece with a solo performer. In this case, Antonia Lassar is both playwright and performer. The basic plot line is that Gloria Adelman, an observant Jew, is cleaning out her daughter's apartment after the daughter dies tragically in a car accident. She finds a shoebox labelled "God" and in it an assortment of objects (New Testament Bible, Crystal, Koran) suggesting that her daughter may not have been an observant Jew. Armed with her superb cheesecakes as warm-up gifts, she sets off to discover what her daughter may have become. In addition to playing a somewhat over-the-top Jewish mother, Ms Lassar also takes the roles briefly of a Christian minister, a new-age practitioner and a Muslim with an Irish accent. The play is quite funny and while somewhat "in-group" in its use of Yiddish-isms and jokes that are funnier if you grew up Jewish, is universal in its look at what faith means.

Folk music fun in New Bedford

New Bedford has many under-appreciated cultural events, one of which is the "salon series" of folk concerts put on by Wepecket Records' Jack Radcliffe. These are held the first Saturday of every month at the Wamsutta Club in a cafe setting. Most of the audience sits at tables and you can order food and drink to enjoy while you listen to the music. The cost is low, and while you do not see big name acts, the singers are uniformly good. The most recent concert had "the two Rix:" Rick Nestler and Rik Palieri. Both of these singers have toured and sung with Pete Seeger. Rick Nestler is a gravelly-voiced singer-songwriter who has seven albums to his credit and who wrote "The River That Flows Two Ways," the anthem of the Hudson River. Rik Palieri is a multi-instrument virtuoso who not only played guitar and banjo, but also the Native American flute and the Polish bagpipe. The concert included lots of audience sing-along and was a rollicking evening of fun. Look for these events on-line and come on out!

H+H revisits St Matthew Passion

In their bicentennial year, Handel and Haydn are pulling out all the stops, presenting a sort of "greatest hits" of period pieces. I have reviewed Elijah in a previous post and this past weekend was a full performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion, a lengthy work that at is often presented as excerpts. Here the full performance lasted 3 hours with a brief intermission. A "passion" is a recital of Jesus' arrest, death and burial, and can be taken from one of the four Evangelists' texts. Director Harry Christophers describes the Bach Passion as probably the greatest work of classical music ever written, and must indeed have been innovative for its day. While I hate to say a critical word given such hyperbole, I found the performance a bit flat for such a lengthy period of sitting. The lion's share of the work belongs to tenor Joshua Ellicott as the Evangelist. He gives the narrative and intoduces the other characters. Fortunately he had a splendid voice and expressive face. Baritone Roderick Williams played Jesus, a surprisingly small part, and while his voice was beautiful, he lacked emotion. The soprano Joelle Harvey soared in her parts, while the mezzo Anna Stephany came across as a bit dull. Both tenor Matthew Long and baritone Sumner Thompson were adequate but not inspiring. An interesting feature of the piece is Bach's use of solo instruments to back up a number of the solo vocal presentations. This allowed H+H's superb instrumentalists to display their virtuosity. The chorus performed as two antiphonal choirs, and a third choir made up of students from H+H's Vocal Arts Program came in at times to add volume. The voices of the H+H chorus are magnificent, but the work did not really allow them to display their full range. The ending of the Passion was more of a whimper than a shout. An important work, a huge effort, but on the whole not as satisfying as was Elijah.