Bernadette Peters in Concert

Last weekend Bernadette Peters was in town to perform for one night.  Well, not really in town.  She was in St. Charles at Lindenwood University's J. Scheiddegger Center for the Arts.  This was my first visit to this facility, and I was impressed.

I've seen Bernadette Peters in concert a few times and she was, as usual, highly entertaining.  Wearing a signature slinky gown, backed by a full orchestra, she strutted onto the stage to perform Let Me Entertain You, a song from the musical Gypsy, which she starred in a few years ago on Broadway.  That wasn't one of the songs she sang in that show but it was the type of song that Peters loves to sell. She followed that up with No One is Alone from Into the Woods, another show she starred in on Broadway and another song she didn't perform in the original production. From there she went on to There is Nothing Like a Dame, from Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific.  This number is usually performed by a chorus of men dressed as sailors but Peters vamped it in high style. 

The nice thing about a concert is that the performer can perform Broadway Musical songs that she would be the wrong age, or sex, or even size to perform in the actual Broadway show. And Peters took advantage of that, performing Some Enchanted Evening, again from South Pacific, and Johanna from Sweeney Todd.  She did When I Marry Mr. Snow from Carousel, a song she would now be far to old to perform in the show itself.

In between numbers she chatted to the audience, although I had heard much of her schtick about having a house in Florida to sell before.  Although she must be in her mid-60's she looks great and can still pull off the sexy pout when singing the Peggy Lee classic, Fever, on top of a piano.

But my favorite part of the show was the two songs from Follies that she sang.  These were songs she sang herself in the show a couple of years ago:  In Buddy's Eyes and Am I Losing My Mind.  Peters can take a lyric and deliver it in a way that makes you hear it for the first time.  I would have predicted that I didn't need to hear Send in the Clowns ever again in my life, but she made it fresh.

Her high notes are not always as bell-like as they have been in the past, but she can still deliver. And she is probably the world's leading interpreter of the songs of Stephen Sondheim.   One of my favorite songs that she performs is Sondheim's You Could Drive a Person Crazy.

Her final song was Sondheim's Being Alive, and she gave it her all.  For an encore she performed a song that she wrote herself to support her favorite charity, Broadway Barks. 

It was a wonderful evening of show tunes by a Broadway legend.

 

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

This weekend the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis is ending a very successful run of Todd Kreidler's play "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" based on the screenplay for the 1967 Academy Award winning film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner by William Rose which starred Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Syndey Poitier. I meant to write about it right after I saw it a couple of weeks ago but time got away from me.

As we saw a couple of years ago when NBC aired the stage version of "The Sound of Music" it's hard to stage a play that audiences know primarily from a very successful movie.  The audience might object when scenes aren't exactly the same as the film scenes and the audience, who can watch a film performance over and over in this day of digital rentals, can object if the stage actors interpret roles even slightly differently than the screen actors. But in this case the Rep pulled it off very well.

For those who have never seen the film, the story takes place in a single day at the home of a wealthy white San Francisco couple, Matt and Christina Drayton.  He is the editor of a newspaper with a liberal slant and she is the owner of an art gallery.  Their only daughter JoAnna (Joey) comes home from a trip to Hawaii and brings a surprise - a fiance named John Prentice Jr.   Prentice is a doctor with a worldwide reputation.  But the real surprise to the white couple is that their daughter's new fiance is black.  They also eventually meet Dr. Prentice's parents who Joey, as a further surprise, invites to dinner.

Although Matt and Christina have brought Joey up to believe all people are equal, no matter the color of their skin, they are taken aback that she intends to marry Dr. Prentice, perfect though he is in all ways.  Matt, especially, is convinced that the couple is making a mistake in marrying because the world is not ready for an interracial couple and they can expect to receive abuse.  The family's long time black maid, "Tillie", who feels that Joey is as much her daughter as the Drayton's, is also against the marriage and warns Dr. Prentice off.  Finally, Prentice's parents are also completely taken aback and his father is dead set against the marriage.

 The 1967 film, coming in the midst of the civil rights movement, was very popular.  The staged version here in St. Louis, which because of Ferguson, has become the epicenter for a new civil rights movement, also proved popular.  Although this production was planned long before Ferguson happened, the Rep took advantage of the additional interest by publishing a study guide, a play guide and a library resource list on their website. They also had a display in the theater lobby highlighting mixed race couples who live in the area. 

After seeing the play, I rented the film.  It had been at least 20 years (or more!) since I had seen it.  I wanted to compare the stage adaptation to the original screenplay.  A film can open up locations, of course, in a way that a play cannot.  We see San Francisco, the airport, the streets, a drive in burger/soda shop, the art gallery that Christina owns.  But it mostly takes place in Matt and Christina's beautiful home overlooking San Francisco bay.  The Rep's three-quarter jut stage does not, of course, accommodate many changing sets but is tailor made for a one set play.  The set design by Kevin Depenit is beautiful.  The formal dining room in the rear, the California casual living room up stage and, along the edge of the stage, slightly lower than the living room, the "terrace".   We never see the art gallery so, instead, Christina's assistant Hilary shows up at the house with pieces of art.  The "big client" that Christina is to have lunch with is, in the stage version, supposed to come for lunch at the house.  This gives Tillie time, on stage, to interact with not only Christina and Matt but with Hilary and let's us learn that she is opinionated.  We like her and trust her opinions.

I wondered if I would be able to forget Tracey, Hepburn and Poitier's performances enough to enjoy the play.  Margaret Daly and, perennial Rep favorite, Anderson Matthews played the roles differently but I soon was swept away by their performances.  I completely believed in them and the movie versions left my mind.  Richard Prioleau, as John Prentice, was also very good but I never could quite get Syndey Poitier out of my mind.  I think he was somewhat hampered by the actress who played Joey.

Joey is a difficult part, especially in 2015 when upper class white women just don't get married young as much as they did in the 1960's and when getting married to a man they just met is hard to fathom.  I couldn't remember who played Joey in the movie (it was Katherine Hepburn's niece, Katherine Houghton) so I wasn't comparing Shannon Marie Sullivan's performance to anyone's.  I did think her portrayal was the weakest in the show - through much of it I kept thinking "You are far too young to get married to anyone."  In fact, I kept thinking that Matt Drayton shouldn't even have to focus on whether he was ok with his daughter marrying Dr. Prentice particularly, but just focus on the fact that she shouldn't get married AT ALL yet.  I wondered if I would feel the same way re-watching the movie.  I did, but only slightly.  Only on principal, not based on the performances. I completely bought that "movie Joey" knew what she was doing and was completely in love with this man in an adult way whereas I thought Sullivan's Joey seemed young, flighty and possibly in love with the idea of love.

When I went back to watch the film I wondered if Sydney Poitier would live up to my memory of him from watching the film 20+ years ago.  And he did.  Wow, did he.  He really was fabulous.  It is a subtle performance that includes his body language and his eyes.  Of course, these things are easier to do on film than on stage.  But not every screen actor could carry it off the way Poitier did.  And watching Poitier and Houghton interact in the film, especially after seeing the interaction between the characters in the play, I was struck by how well Poitier and Houghton conveyed a couple in love by the little touches that passed between them and the way their eyes would meet.  It was all very natural - but, again, naturalness is easier to catch on film than it is to portray on stage.

The other supporting players in the stage version were very good. All in all it was an enjoyable and thought provoking evening of theater.  What is sad is that while so much has changed, legally,  so little has changed socially - at least so little has changed here in St. Louis.  A white liberal family today, one who believes that all people are equal no matter the color of their skin, probably would still be concerned if a family member was to marry someone of another race -- because they know that society is still going to make it hard on them.

The Floating Palace: A Duet Performed by The Saint Louis Symphony and Circus Flora

 

The Floating Palace was a circus showboat that played up and down the Mississippi River just before the Civil War.  It was an extremely elegant barge, pulled by two paddle wheelers with a full circus ring inside. 

So it said in the program that I received when I walked into Powell Hall last night.  You can’t really go wrong attending The Saint Louis Symphony on a Saturday night and it was a program full of my favorites:  parts of Copland’s Rodeo; Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King; a series of pieces from Bizet’s Carmen; and Falla’s Fire Dance among others.  

But as we headed down the aisle to find “Orchestra Center, Row F”, we knew it wasn’t going to be the usual “what a great night at the Symphony” kind of night.  It was going to be something we had never experienced before.

For one thing, Row F is, as you might imagine, the 6th row at Powell Hall.  But not last night.  Last night they had removed rows A, B, and C and didn’t sell any seats in rows D and E. So we were, in effect, in the front row.  And we were almost directly under the high wire where the Flying Wallendas were going to perform later in the show.  That’s right, the Flying Wallendas were going to perform with the Symphony right over our heads.  I looked at the woman next to me and she said, “Oh yeah, I’m VERY nervous.”  I looked at my sister and she said, “If they drop those pole things, they’ll probably kill us.”  I said, “At last we’ll break their fall.” 

St. Louis has it’s own local circus company, Circus Flora, that performs each year in a one ring circus tent set up on the parking lot of Powell Hall in June after the Symphony season is over.  It’s a lot of fun to go see, a traditional one ring circus where you can almost reach out and touch the performers.  The clowns circulate among the audience and you probably could hear the breaths of the performers if the Circus band weren’t playing so loud.

To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Circus Flora got itself a bigger band.  It teamed up with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra to do a circus right there on the stage of Powell Hall.  We weren’t sure what to expect.  Where was the orchestra (which usually takes up the entire stage) going to sit and where would the Circus performers perform if there was no ring?   Well, the Symphony was on raised platforms on the back three quarters of the stage and the Circus used the front quarter of the stage and the space above it and above the first few rows of the audience. 

It was a great night, one of the best things I’ve ever seen.  First, the Symphony was, as usual, wonderful.  I have no idea how guest conductor Alistair Willis got this gig.  I searched his bio for any sign that he’d been in a Circus Band in a previous life but, if he had, it was scrubbed from his official history.  He seemed to have a good rapport with the Orchestra and they sounded sharp.  

The choice of music for each act was usually spot on.  Of course, the Symphony is committed to playing the entire piece and, unlike the Circus Band, can’t suddenly end a piece to make the music and the performer end together.  But the Circus had made provision for that and had “other” things to go on after the performer ended their spot.

Circus Flora usually puts together a loose narrative that ties together all the acts and last night was no different.  The circus performers were on The Floating Palace, performing up and down the Mississippi.  One of the performers was pining for a girl he had met in St. Louis.  There were three stowaways that made appearances now and then.  And of course everyone lived happily ever after.  But mostly it was all about the performances.

Where to begin.  There was, of course, juggling – performed to Stravinsky’s Circus Polka.  There was a duet of two female performers hanging from a big ring usually only by their toes (it seemed) – performed to Copland’s Corral Nocturne from Rodeo. Aerialist Una Mimnagh did a ballet like performance holding onto a rope high above the stage – performed to selections from Falla’s Three Cornered Hat. 

There were no horses at this circus, unlike the summer version, but the dog act was back and they are one of my favorites.  Johnny Peers & the Muttville Comix performed to selections from Kabelevsky’s The Comedians.   Each dog in the large menagerie has been rescued from a pet shelter and none of them match any of the others.  But if you’d love to see a Bassett Hound riding a skateboard, this is the act for you. 

Another favorite of mine are the St. Louis Arches, who are a young troop of local acrobats.  I feel that I’ve seen these kids grow up and every year they get better and better.  Last night was the best I’ve ever seen them. 

Aleysa Gulevich wowed the audience with hula hoops – performing to music from Bizet’s Carmen.  She started with one hula hoop and by the end of her sultry performance she was covered in hula hoops. 

Duo Voltart was new to St. Louis, performing here for the first time and they were a wow.  Their act, performed to Falla’s Fire Dance, was a combination of dance moves and breathtaking acrobatic lifts.  Sitting so close, we could see every muscle in Damien Boudreau’s arms quiver as he held Genevieve Cliché in unbelievably difficult poses and lifts.

That wow was matched by arielists Andrew Adams and Erika Gilffether who performed equally difficult poses and holds high above the stage using ariel straps.  Their music was the beautiful ballade form Sibelius’ Karelia Suite. 

And there were, of course, a clown and also a rope spinning artist.  But the hilight of the evening was, as always, the Flying Wallendas/Great Wallendas who did their high wire act right above our heads using bicycles no less.   They did not attempt a large pyramid, but they did have two members on bikes with a chair on a pole between them holding another member of the act.    Without the “use of nets or safety devices of any kind”.   I held my breath the entire time. 

All in all it was one of the best nights I’ve ever had at any venue and I hope they repeat this every year. 

Over the Tavern

I went to see the Rep’s production of Over the Tavern on December 23, last Thursday.  We always end up with tickets the week of Christmas which is a little stressful in the days leading up to it but relaxing once we get there and realize that we’re just going to relax for an evening. 

We’ve seen Over the Tavern before at the Rep.  I remembered it as a rollicking funny story about a Catholic family who lived … over the tavern,of course.  The tavern is a family affair run by the father.  Supposedly the mother also tends bar but mostly she just seems to be a mom.  What I remembered about the show was that the father was loud and  bad tempered but he was redeemed in the end (I didn’t remember how) and I remembered that the one kid (Rudy) who gives the old nun a heart attack (literally) because he didn’t want to be confirmed was a sweet kid who just couldn’t keep himself from speaking the truth to power.  With the predictable consequences.

I remember liking that production.  This production I didn’t like as much.  The kids were so terrified of the father in this production that it was impossible to believe that he wasn’t more physically abusive than his character was written and I found it impossible to believe in the redemption at the end because of that.  I don’t think that was the fault of Kevin Cutts, who played him.  I think it was the fault of the way the kid characters reacted to him.  If they had blown him off a little more and taken him a little less seriously, it would have worked.  I have friends who had “Loud” dads who scared me but who didn’t seem to scare my friends.  They knew to ignore him most of the time.  And they knew when to steer clear of him.  That’s what these kids needed.  They needed to be tired of his moods and wary of him but not terrified of him.  These kids just seemed terrified. 

And Rudy was played with no sweetness in him whatsoever.  He was really kind of a dislikeable know-it-all. That was a problem.

On the other hand, Celeste Ciulla’s Ellen (the mother) and Eric Nelson’s Eddie (the older brother) were both delightful and when they were on stage the other flaws faded.  And I sat up straighter every time Sister Clarissa came on stage. (But did they really need two nun-shows in a row?)  The set design was also one of the best I’ve seen at the Rep.

So it wasn’t a bad production, it just wasn’t one of my favorites. I think having a terrified family as the Christmas show just didn’t work for me.   I hope they go back to having a musical next year. 

The last production of Over the Tavern was on December 26 so it is too late for you to catch it if you missed it.

Next Fall

According to the program notes, The Rep’s Studio Theatre production of Next Fall is only the second production of Geoffrey Nauffts’ play.  It opened off-Broadway in 2009 in a production put on by a group who wanted to “create theatre ‘for a generation that wanted to break out of convention and scream.’”   The production eventually moved to Broadway where it ran for half a year.  

If you can get there to see it, you should.  It is running at the Grandel Theatre in Grand Centre through November 14. 

The play, directed by Seth Green, opens in a nondescript room that might be a living room or a waiting room, where Holly and Brandon are sitting in chairs.  It isn’t clear at first how well Holly and Brandon know each other, or how they know Arlene the older woman with an almost Arkansas accent who joins them, bringing Holly coffee.  Eventually we figure out that the scene is set in a hospital and the thing the three people have in common is someone named “Luke” who has been involved in a terrible accident and is hanging onto life.  Luke is Arlene’s son and the friend of Holly and Brandon (who appear to know each other but not be close).  Eventually Butch, Luke’s dad who has the same twang as Arlene, shows up.  We figure out that he and Arlene are no longer married.  Finally, Adam arrives from the airport.  Greeted by Holly as “sweetie” and looking visibly nervous around Luke’s parents, it isn’t clear who Adam is.  

Through a series of flashbacks we learn about Luke and his relationship with Holly and Brandon and, especially, Adam.  Luke and Adam, it turns out, are in a long term relationship but Luke has never told his parents that he is gay.  

On simply that basis, this might be an interesting play.  The idea that Luke is dying but Adam isn’t even allowed in to see him because only “family” is allowed in raises all kinds of questions.   The same is true for heterosexual couples who aren’t married but, of course, they at least have the choice to marry.  Of course, they ALL have the choice of legal documents in anticipation of this type of situation and the lawyer in me wanted to scream “See?  You should have planned for this.”  But I digress.

If this was simply a play about the idea that you never know when life will throw you a curve ball and you should be sure to tell the people you love that you love them before it is too late, it would be a good premise for a play.

But this play is even more interesting.   The program notes say this about the playwright:

Geoffrey Nauffts grew up in a household with no religion or spirituality.  he was always fascinated by people who practiced religion, but more to the point, he was fascinated by people who had faith in a creator. The idea that there is a larger entity, a creator, a protector, who is omniscient, who guides us, perhaps punishes us, and hears our prayers is not a belief that he shares … [He] has chosen to write a play that explores the dynamic between a believer and a non-believer … [and] has chosen to make the main characters a gay couple.  All this allows him to investigate the nature of faith and generosity of spirit from a number of different interesting and dramatic perspectives.”

Boy did he. In the flashbacks we meet Luke, who is just a wonderful person.  He dropped out of law school to be an actor and he is a generous, open hearted person who knows the moment he meets Adam that it is love.  Adam is a funny, insecure hypochondriac who falls hard for Luke.  They eventually move in together. 

If the definition of a good relationship is one in which each party can disagree with each other with respect, this is a great relationship.  Sure, there are moments when each crosses the line and angers the other one but they are able to get past those moments by true contrition – which doesn’t mean changing their mind about their own position.

And what do they disagree about the most?  God and faith.  Adam is an agnostic or even perhaps an atheist.  A good person who lives a good life but has no real need for faith.  It would not be true to say that he has no patience with faith because he does show infinite patience with Luke who has abundant faith. 

Luke is a Christian.   But Nauffts didn’t make him just a generalized Christian, he made him an ultra-conservative type of Christian.  Luke doesn’t just pray quietly before every meal, he truly and deeply believes in heaven, hell, sin and the rapture.  He is also a true Christian in the sense that he doesn’t judge those who aren’t like him.  He is also not particularly evangelical.  He wishes that Adam would accept Jesus Christ because then Adam would go to heaven when he dies but he understands that he can’t force Adam to any kind of belief.  It is, in fact, Adam who usually brings up the”religion issue” and argues with Luke in a very patient rational way. 

Adam’s arguments make complete rational sense.  He lays out for all to see the absurdities of some of Luke’s beliefs.  But it never matters.  Luke truly believes and he never stops believing.  And we the audience believe that he will never stop believing. 

And so at the end when Adam can tell Luke’s obnoxious right wing racist homophobic “Christian” dad, who is having a hard time dealing with pulling the plug on Luke, that Luke firmly believed that he was going to a better place, we know Adam is telling a truth even if it isn’t the truth that Adam believes. 

All of this sounds intense and sad and full of argument and rage.  But this is a funny play.  There are laugh out loud moments.  Each of the characters seem very real.  Butch may be the closest to a stereotype but we are left in no doubt that he loved his son.  Arlene may be more forgiving than Butch but she is still tied into the same religious belief system.  Holly believes as Adam does but she never wants to rock the boat.  And Brandon?  Brandon is the most enigmatic of characters.  Like Luke he is a gay Christian but his quiet exterior hides a great deal more self hate than Luke.  In one scene it becomes clear that Brandon (who is only attracted to black men and, hence, not to Luke) has fallen out with Luke not because Luke hooked up with Adam but because Luke fell in love with Adam.  Brandon understands the occasional “sinful act” but he cannot condone the wrong kind of love.  

And yet even Brandon seems a bit redeemed by the end . 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the wonderful cast.  Each and every one was perfect in their role.  Susan Greenhill, as Arlene, and Colin Hanlin, as Luke, were outstanding.  It’s rare that I completely forget that a stage actor is an actor, but throughout the whole play I totally believed they were their characters.

But mostly I liked the play itself.  The contrast between the writing of this play, which is tight and directed and focused with deeply drawn characters, and the writing of High which seemed to be all over the place, was extreme.  I can see why this play moved to Broadway and had a nice run there.  It is playing in The Studio Rep because … well, probably because scenes of homosexual men showing affection for each other are still considered too much for the mainstage at the Rep.  It’s a shame, because this play is 100 times better than High. 

High

We don’t get many shows in St. Louis that are en route to New York, so when we do we feel flattered.  Which probably isn’t the right way to feel.  After all, if they are trying out a show before it hits New York what they really need is honest criticism.

On Thursday night I saw High at The Rep, written by Matthew Lombardo and directed by Rob Ruggiero and starring Kathleen Turner. It is supposedly on its way to New York.  If it makes it there I don’t think it will last.  Not because of the actors but because of the script.

A three character show, Turner plays Sister Jamison Connelly, a Catholic nun who works at a rehab center run by the Catholic Church.  Michael Beresse plays Father Michael Delpapp, the priest who is in charge of the facility and Evan Jonigkeit plays Cody Randall, a junkie serving a 30 day court ordered stay at the facility with whom Sister Connelly must work.

Matthew Lombardo is, by his own admission, a recovering drug addict.  The role of the drug addict is well written and Jonigkeit played it perfectly.  It is hard to like Cody while at the same time it is easy to see how easy it would be to enable him in his behavior.

Lombardo was also, by his own admission, born Catholic.  So was I. And in the notes for the performance he attributes his own “coming clean'” moment to a spiritual awakening when he hit rock bottom and asked God for help.    According to Lombardo, he was delivered to a nearby hospital where he began treatment. 

Not, you notice, a Catholic rehab center.  He should have stuck with what he knew.

I see the plays at The Rep in the last week of performance.  By the time I see them they have either jelled or not jelled.  My cousin (who was also raised Catholic and is a psychologist) saw this play at the beginning of the run.  I saw her after she had seen it and I asked her how she liked it.  She said she didn’t want to ruin the plot for me so she wouldn’t go into that, but she thought the play itself (the script) needed significant work before it went to New York.   Then she remarked that, despite growing up Catholic, it didn’t seem as if the writer had ever met any “real” Catholics who worked in places like these.

I have to agree with her.  I thought the script was weak.  The drug addict was the best drawn character and, as I said, Jonigkeit played him perfectly.  But the nun and the priest characters seemed forced.  I think Turner and Beresse did as well as they could with what they were given, it wasn’t their fault.  But the way the characters were written seemed outdated.  And there were so many things that he seemed to have gotten wrong.

For instance, the priest is dressed throughout most of the performance in his clerical blacks (with roman collar).  But this seems to be a facility at which he lives and we never see him in “street” clothes.  Priests do wear them at times, you know.  And at one point in the performance he gets dressed in vestments that are used only when saying mass.  There is no indication in the script that they have moved into a sacristy (the part of the church where the priest robes) or that he is preparing to say mass.  He just brings them into the room that, up until that point in the performance, has been the nun’s office, and puts them on as he talks to her.  Huh?  Why?

At one point Sister Connelly talks about how she doesn’t wear traditional nun garb with a rosary around her neck.  It isn’t against the rules to wear a rosary around your neck but most Catholics in the United States don’t.   Back in the day when nuns did dress in habits, their rosaries were usually hanging from their waists from where they could easily be detached and used in prayer.

These are things that could easily be fixed.  A bigger problem was the dialog. Lombardo tried to show that “nuns are people too” by having Sr. Connelly swear a blue streak.  But in every other way she talked as if she were out of a 1950’s movie about nuns.  Think Rosalind Russell in The Trouble with Angels.   She was unlike any nun I’ve ever met in the last 20 years.  And I’ve met a lot of nuns in my life.  A LOT of nuns. 

What it came down to was this:  it wasn’t at all clear why this character needed to be a nun.  The only reason she needed to be a nun was seemingly because she worked in a Catholic rehab center where a priest was in charge.  Having her be a nun must have seemed a good way to increase the tension when she stood up to the priest.  I have news for Lombardo:  lots of lay people work in facilities run by priests.  And there’s plenty of tension when they stand up to them.

Oh, and they don’t stand up to them by going around their backs to the archbishop about a problem that is no more than a run-of-the-mill disagreement.  They don’t even go to the archbishop for BIG disagreements.  Why?  It would be like going to the Governor because you disagreed with your boss who was the head of the highway department.  It just isn’t done. 

I can see why Lombardo wanted to have the priest character.  He was playing with stereotypes and preconceptions by making the audience have to consider their current conceptions about why a priest would be interested in helping a teenage homosexual prostitute drug addict.  The priest sex abuse scandal is always there in the background and it is somewhat useful for Lombardo’s purposes in obscuring some of what he wants to save for the end.  But there was no reason that the actual therapist had to be a nun.  It just doesn’t work and he should change that.

But finally, and most problematically, the story of the drug addict is just not that shocking.   It seemed pretty run-of-the mill to me.  Which would be fine EXCEPT that his story is supposed to shock Sister Connelly intensely. So intensely that it makes her reveal to the audience something terrible that happened in her past.

Give me a break.  Nuns don’t exist in vacuums.  They don’t get to be counselors at a rehab center because some mother superior sends them there.  They have to go to school these days.  They do internships.  They read case studies.  They are exactly like lay people who work at drug rehab centers. 

Even if this kid were her first homosexual, prostitute drug addict, there was nothing about his background or anything he did that should have shocked her.  Heck, it wouldn’t have shocked anyone who ever watched The Wire.  It certainly didn’t shock me.

And that, above all, was the fatal flaw in the script that I’m not sure can be fixed.

Master Class

To sit through a real master class, in which voice students work with a master on their technique and interpretation, for most people would probably be like watching a baseball pitching coach work with a promising young pitcher.  On the one hand, a fascinating experience that makes the experience of watching all pitchers more interesting in the future.  On the other hand, frustrating.   Words spoken by professionals have meanings not clear to non-professionals and descriptions of technique that depend upon a particular type of physicality, whether in the arms, torso, legs or vocal chords, mean less to those who do not possess that physicality.   Listening to a master singer discuss breath control with a young singer, the non-singer will inevitably wish they understood more of what was happening between the two professionals.

When Terrence McNally set out to write Master Class, a stage version of the life of the famous Greek soprano Maria Callas, he centered the action around a series of master classes given by Maria Callas at the Julliard in 1971.  The classes were taped but McNally did not reproduce the actual content of the classes.  The real Callas would not have discussed her personal life and personal history and her feelings about both in a class of music students.  But the fictional Maria created by McNally can and does. 

I saw the last performance of Stray Dog Theatre’s production of Master Class this weekend.  If there were any more performances I would recommend the show but now it is too late.   This was the first time for me seeing Master Class and, in my mind, I thought it was a one woman show.  It isn’t.  There are others on stage but the actress who plays Callas is on stage almost the entire time and has most of the dialog.  There are also three actors/singers who play her “victims” (a joke, she says) who arrive to sing for her and receive her assistance and critique.  There is the accompanist, Manny, who is on stage with her the entire time and interacts with her.  And an actor who plays a stagehand who fetches cushions and foot stools and glasses of water for Maria and who, to her chagrin and amazement, has no interest in what is going on onstage.

What I liked most about this play is how McNally has Maria walk through the arias with the two sopranos, discussing the meaning of the words and the emotional state of the character and the physicality.  An audience may not understand discussion of breathing and vocal technique but we can certainly appreciate discussion of character interpretation.  “I’m an opera singer not an actor” one of the students says to Callas and Callas is shocked.   Opera is acting.   Otherwise it would be a recital.  On the other hand, the tenor who shows up and admits to not knowing a thing about the meaning of the Puccini aria he is singing manages to transport Callas, who claims she has never really listened to it before, always waiting in the wings during that aria, preparing for her own entrance and focusing on preparing for her own performance.   Having worked back stage for many years for a local community theater company I completely believe that.

When Callas finally lets the music students sing through the arias without interruption, the lights are dimmed and the music changes to recordings of the real Maria Callas singing those same arias as the stage Maria remembers things about her life, her fears, her joys, her loveless first marriage, her affair with Ari Onassis, her abortion and her ultimate dumping by Onassis for Jacqueline Kennedy. “Ho dato tutto a te”, the stage Maria says, “I gave everything for you”.   This is a line from Medea, the story of a Greek woman who gives her whole life for Jason only to later be dumped by him for a younger woman.  A princess.   These monologues were particularly effective with Maria taking different voices as she creates dialog between herself and the crude Onassis.

Local actress Lavonne Byers is Maria in this production.  It must be a hard role to step into, following in the footsteps of Zoe Caldwell (who won a Tony for the original) and Patti Lupone and the other great actresses who have appeared in this role.  Byers carried the part perfectly with just the right combination of vulnerability and ego. We were sympathetic with her while, at the same time, sympathetic to the character of the soprano Sharon who finally loses her temper at the end and tells Maria off.   Byers dominated the stage and, as Maria says, “Art is domination.”   I tip my hat to Byers for managing to accomploish this after a particularly horrendous start to the performance in which, in the first 3 minutes of the performance she completely blanked out, apologized to the audience, saying something about it being the “last night” and ultimately leaving the stage for a few moments and starting over.  Twice.   I’ve never seen that happen before in any theater production.   And the fact that she could finally overcome whatever the issue was, grit it out and give a captivating performance gave the whole performance a certain “edge of the seat” quality that was very similar to the feeling I sometimes get at opera performances right before a young or slightly older opera singer reach for that high C. 

You Can’t Take it With You

I feel bad that I haven’t been around blogging much lately but I’ve been just slammed in my personal life with things that take away my blogging time. Hopefully October will be better.

On Thursday, in the midst of a very busy day, I saw that the progressive blogosphere was talking about the idea of giving U.S. taxpayers a receipt for their taxes that shows how their tax money is being spent. I didn’t really have time to read all the commentary but I thought it wasn’t a bad idea if it could actually be done (and I had my doubts about that). On the other hand I didn’t really think it would make any difference because Americans are now trained to think that taxes are a bad thing. In my experience, presenting people with facts doesn’t really change most people’s mind. People hear what they want to hear and believe what they are trained to believe.

That same night I went to the production by The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis of You Can’t Take it With You, the comedy classic by George S. Kaufmann and Moss Hart. I’ve seen it many times but I hadn’t seen it in a number of years. (And may I say that this production is the best I’ve ever seen and, if you can catch a performance before it closes, you should see it.)

One of the subplots of the play involves a visit to Grandpa Vanderhof by an Internal Revenue Service Agent named Mr. Henderson who is trying to collect years of back taxes owed by Grandpa. Grandpa was once a successful businessman but one day (apparently years before the play began) he realized that he wasn’t happy so he simply stopped working. Now he catches snakes and watches college commencement exercises and only does what he wants to do. He doesn’t want to pay income tax. This results in a classic scene between Grandpa and Mr. Henderson:

Grandpa: Suppose I pay you this money-mind you, I don't say I'm going to do it-but just for the sake of argument-what's the Government going to do with it?

Henderson: What do you mean?

Grandpa: Well, what do I get for my money? If I go into Macy's and buy something, there it is-I see it. What's the Government give me?

Henderson: Why, the Government gives you everything. It protects you.

Grandpa: What from?

Henderson: Well-invasion. Foreigners that might come over here and take everything you've got.

Grandpa: Oh I don't think they're goin to do that.

Henderson: If you didn't pay an income tax, they would. How do you think the Government keeps up the Army and Navy? All those battleships...

Grandpa: Last time we used battleships was in the Spanish-American War, and what did we get out of it? Cuba-and we gave it back. I wouldn't mind paying if it were something sensible.

Now I’ve seen this play many times and I’ve seen the movie multiple times and each time the audience relates to Grandpa but also realizes that he is eccentric. The very fact that Grandpa is saying this to the IRS agent makes him eccentric.

But how times have changed. Whereas in past productions the audience has laughed through the Mr. Henderson scene, at the production on Thursday night the audience roared with laughter. They laughed so hard it was hard to hear the dialog. I was slightly bothered by that reaction. And I found myself wondering why this time the reaction to the play was different.

For those of you who either have never seen You Can’t Take it With You or need a refresher, it is the story of an extended family who all live in a big old house with Grandpa Vanderhof. They are, to put it very nicely, eccentric. But they are very supportive of each other and of other people in the world who might otherwise be written off as not worth the effort. They are a loveable bunch. The most normal is Alice, one of Grandpa’s granddaughters, who is the only character to work outside the home. She works as a secretary on Wall Street and the dramatic tension of the story results when she begins to date the boss’s son, Tony, and is required to have the boss, his wife and Tony over for dinner. Although she loves her family she foresees difficulties ahead. Tony assures her that all families have their eccentricities. After all, he says, his mother believes in spiritualism. But Alice says:

Your mother believes in spiritualism because it’s fashionable. And your father raises orchids because he can afford to.

My mother writes plays because eight years ago a typewriter was delivered here by accident.

Alice’s sister Essie, who has a home business making and selling candy, took up ballet at about the same time Alice’s mother began writing plays. She is not a good dancer, to say the least, but she flits endlessly around the house practicing and no one seems to mind. Essie’s husband Ed plays the xylophone while Essie dances and delivers her candy for her. He is enamored of a printing press and loves to find interesting sayings to typeset and print off. Alice’s father spends his time in the basement designing fireworks with Mr. De Pinna, the iceman who came one day and never left. Explosions rock the house at all hours. The family does have “help” in the form of Rheba, the black maid, and her boyfriend Donald who is “on relief” and who both seem like part of the family. And Essie’s Russian ballet teacher, Kohlenkov, is there more often than he is not.

One of the great things about the Rep’s production is that Amelia McClain, who plays Alice, invests her with a sort of hyperactivity that makes the audience believe she really is a part of this eccentric family. Too often Alice is played in a way that makes her seem so different from the family that the audience begins to believe that a mistake was made at the hospital and her mother brought home the wrong child. It’s often hard to take Alice seriously when she says that she really loves her family. But Amelia McClain makes this easy for us to believe. Her performance balances perfectly with Joneal Joplin’s interpretation of Grandpa Vanderhof. Joplin plays the character perfectly straight and not for laughs. One can see how sensible Alice, with only a slight change in life direction, could have become Grandpa. Or how Grandpa with only a slight change could have been Alice. And the rest of the cast invests the zany characters with real depth so that they feel like people you might very well meet and not mind being around, eccentric though they are. Jamie LaVerdiere’s portrayal of Ed, the husband of Alice’s sister Essie, may be the best portrayal of that character I’ve ever seen. He invests Ed with a sweetness that is often missing. And rather than make Ed a bumbling nincompoop on the xylophone, he actually plays well and seems to have fun doing it.

By the time Mr. Henderson arrives the audience has completely bought into the idea that the whole household is zany so the fact that the IRS Agent leaves without making any headway in his seemingly reasonable explanations about why Grandpa should be paying income taxes is just part of the fun. But, as I said, in the production I saw on Thursday the audience roared with laughter and most of it wasn’t laughing along with Grandpa it was laughing at Mr. Henderson. Yes, I live here in the midst of Red State Missouri with lots of crazies who don’t want to pay any taxes and don’t seem to care that Missouri’s bridges are all in danger of falling down. (Go see the movie Winter’s Bone if you want to understand how I feel about my state). But audiences at the Rep tend to be a bit more liberal than the average Missourian. So what accounted for my discomfort at the scene and the reaction to it?

I went to youtube and found video of the movie version of the scene. This isn’t completely helpful because for the movie they rewrote the script so that different portions of the act were taking place all at the same time. It is a good way to create the slightly off balance and zany aspect of the household. Tony is, in fact, visiting and his incredulous chuckle when Grandpa says that he doesn’t believe in the income tax is really a stand-in for the audience reaction. (Jimmy Stewart plays Tony in the film). Here it is. You’ll see that the whole household is sort of “off” and while the IRS Agent isn’t likeable he is portrayed as maybe the sanest one in the room other than Tony. A bully, but sane.

My recollection of versions of the play that I’ve seen is that the reaction is the same. Now, in the play, Tony isn’t present for the scene but that’s ok because there is a live audience to chuckle. The IRS Agent is generally played as a typical bullying bureaucrat but the audience recognizes that he is trying to do his job and is astounded at this not-very-normal family he has found. So the laughter is at the fact that a bullying bureaucrat can’t get his way but also an acknowledgement that he has come up against a family that isn’t “quite right”.

Steven Woolf’s direction of this scene at The Rep was interesting. Mr. Henderson enters into a household enmeshed in their typical chaos but as he begins to speak to Grandpa the entire onstage cast (the mother, Essie and Ed) move to chairs and sit quietly like perfectly normal people listening to this encounter and Joneal Joplin as Grandpa plays the scene calmly, almost indifferently. He sees Mr. Henderson as a bit of entertainment to liven up an otherwise normal day. He doesn’t get aggressive at all with the IRS agent and doesn’t overtly bait him, he just states his point and asks questions in a rational tone of voice. And as the scene goes on it is the character of Mr. Henderson who begins to act slightly unhinged as he can’t believe he is having this conversation. It is only at the end as he is shouting at Grandpa about sending him to jail that Ed and Essie begin to act their wacky selves and yet Ed is playing a Sousa march and Essie is marching in mock patriotic way and the staging makes it seem that they aren't so much eccentric as they are a backdrop for Mr. Henderson’s out of control tirade and somehow they make him look like the crazy one.

And as the audience roared through this scene I think what was making me uncomfortable is that this is a completely accurate portrayal of how all conversations go these days in my state. There is no doubt in many people’s minds that they are correct and they shouldn’t have to pay any tax – NOT because they are rebels but because they are the sane ones and the people who believe in taxes are the insane ones. There isn’t any sense in even fighting about it, their demeanor says. If you think taxes are good then there is something wrong with you and we’re sorry for you. And there is a sense that no matter how many facts one might pull from one’s head, it isn’t going to change their minds. And the infuriating thing is that they aren’t evil people. They are people that you otherwise like. They are people you might be related to. Whereas Kaufmann and Hart created an eccentric family that might stymie Mr. Henderson because he hasn’t encountered anything like them before, in 2010 they are the norm here in Missouri.

I don’t think a tax receipt would have convinced Grandpa Vanderhof. And in the end he would still have felt no compunction about committing tax fraud in order to avoid paying his income tax (sorry for the spoiler but I won’t tell you how he does it). And most people around here would applaud him.

Fortunately you don’t have to take my word on the staging for this scene because the Rep has put the end of the “Mr. Henderson” scene on Youtube as part of their advertisement. Compare it to the movie version. I don’t know when it was filmed but imagine a performance where the audience laughter is nonstop and so loud you almost can’t hear the dialog – as you watch the scene you will realize that type of laughter is far out of proportion to what is going on in the scene. If you can imagine that you can imagine my experience on Thursday.

Shakespeare Festival: Merry Wives of Windsor

Nine years ago, the CEO of a local bank had the idea that St. Louisans should be able to watch Shakespeare for free in a park and the Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis was born.

I've only been twice. I went two years ago when they produced Much Ado About Nothing as a western. I tried to go last year to see Richard III but we were rained out. Despite the buckets of rain that fell last week, I managed to see this year's production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. I'm not sure why I didn't go to the festival in the early years. I think it was because I also have season opera tickets in May/June and that's a lot of culture to fit into a short period.

I like Shakespeare and it seems as if I see at least one production of a Shakespeare play somewhere every year. But I never know what to say about his plays. After all, everything that could be said has been said. This year's production was a new experience for me; I had never seen Merry Wives before (although I had seen the Verdi opera that is based on it).

I remembered Falstaff from the Henry cycle (which I've seen in various places over the years) and so I was also familiar with Bardolph, Pistol and Mistress Quickly. I didn't realize that this play was a departure from the Henry plays not only in tenor but in time.

And this particular production was even more outside of time because they "updated" the story by placing it in the 1920's. The characters were dressed in 1920's middle class style similar to what you'd see in old movies. At first I wasn't sure if this idea was going to work but I eventually changed my mind. Putting Falstaff in the laundry basket is the kind of slapstick that old silent films would have loved.

I thought Daniel Talbot as Master Ford was particularly good - switching easily between Ford's jealous rage and Ford's disguise as the hilariously funny Master Brook. Most of the rest of the cast was also good. The set was clever with many doors and windows for characters to open and shut. Here's a photo from my iphone:

The productions take place in what is now known as Shakespeare Glen in Forest Park. This is a gently sloping hill located between the Art Museum and the Zoo. I'm not sure why they chose this location for doing a Shakespeare Festival. There is a 10,000 seat outdoor ampitheater in the park less than a mile away. But I suppose they wanted people to be able to sit on the grass or in their lawn chairs rather than in stadium seats on concrete. And the total audience for the whole festival is only 50,000. And they wanted it to be free.

Some much needed improvements were made to Shakespeare Glen over the winter. Drainage was added so there is no longer a bog when it rains. The plans also call for planting a grove of trees to form (eventually) a natural sound barrier. This is a good idea. The beginning of our performance was marred by the sounds of 70's disco music coming from the World's Fair Pavilion a couple of hills over, where a party was evidently going on.

But it was a beautiful night. Next year's production will be Hamlet. I can't wait to see Queen Gertrude.

The Black Rep: Tell Me Something Good

Last weekend my sister and I went to the The Black Rep to see the first production of their 32nd season, Tell Me Something Good. It was a fun night that took us through the history of R&B in the form of a musical review. A ten member cast of six women and four men sang and danced and sweated their way through more than 60 songs, starting with the doo wop and ending in the present day.

The cast was very good, four of the women and all four men doing most of the singing and the two other women leading the dancing and soloing through many of the numbers. I wish I had saved the program so that I could give everyone credit by name.

The women all had wonderful voices. But if it was a contest we gave the night to the men. The women were singers. The men were also singers but two of the men were also actors and that made the difference. They created roles within the songs they sang and that gave us humor and pathos to watch. J. Samuel Davis, who has been with The Black Rep for years was one of the men and I always enjoy his performances. I always forget that he can sing because I've seen him in so many dramatic productions.

I used to have season tickets to The Black Rep with a friend but, as will happen, she had a few kids and found it difficult to get away so we let the tickets lapse. I'm thinking about picking up a subscription again; this performance reminded me how much I always enjoy their productions. Over the years they've done all of the August Wilson repertoire and other very good dramatic and comedic plays, sprinkled with well-done musicals.

Unfortunately for those reading this now, the production of Tell me Something Good ended last weekend so you can't catch it. The next production, opening February 18, is A Song for Coretta, a relatively new play by Pearl Cleage that premiered in 2007.

Inspired by the long line of mourners who came by Ebenezer Baptist Church to pay their respects to Mrs. Coretta Scott King, the play introduces five fictional African-American women, aged 17 to 57, waiting in the rain to say their good-byes.

The theme for the 32nd season is The Year of the Woman and each of the three dramatic plays in the middle of the five-play season has a cast of all women. The third production of the year will be another relatively new play by Cori Thomas, The Secret Language of Wishes:

The play touches on the meaning of unconditional love without distinctions such as black or white, rich or poor, gay or straight. Jo, a lawyer and the play's main character, learns the meaning of love without boundaries as she engages in a legal dispute between two women- a young white and a black business woman - over the custody of a disabled black teenager.

The fourth play, In the Continuum, explores the problem of HIV/AIDS. They finish up with another musical, Blues in the Night, a "dynamite 'dramatic revue' of twenty-six hot and steamy numbers that tell of the sweet, sexy and sorrowful experiences three delicious women have with one very lonely, lying, cheating snake of a man who does them wrong! "

When I went to look for a youtube with a clip of something that The Black Rep has done I found this extended piece that Public Television did five years ago before the start of the 28th season and, amazingly enough, they were rehearsing that year's production of "Tell Me Something Good", the SAME show that I saw last weekend. The costumes were different and the choreography was different but the songs are the same - so it will give you a good idea of what I saw. Also, part of the clip is an interview with the actor J. Samuel Davis who was also in that production.

The Little Dog Laughed

Last Tuesday I was invited to go see The Rep's Off-Ramp production of The Little Dog Laughed at the Grandel Theatre. This four character play by Douglas Carter Beane, was originally produced in New York in 2006. In typical St. Louis fashion, it wasn't chosen to be a Mainstage production at the Rep because "some" might find the subject matter (and the male nudity) offensive. That's what Off Ramp productions at the Grandel are for (it's a bit humorous, as if the invisible line that separates the city from the county acts as a barrier to protect the fragile sensibilities of the "some", all of whom must live in the county).


This is a play about deception, self-deception, deceptive appearances, and real deception. The four characters are an up-and-coming film actor named Mitchell, his agent Diane, a rent boy named Alex and Alex's girlfriend Ellen. Mitchell and Diane are in New York for an awards dinner and Diane also uses the trip to make a deal for Mitchell to obtain the rights to film a popular play about two gay men. Although Diane points out to the audience that Mitchell suffers from "recurring homosexuality", his image is the good looking, heterosexual boy next door. Diane thinks the film version of the play can make Mitchell a big star. She says: "If a perceived straight actor portrays a gay role in a feature film, it's noble, it's a stretch. It's the pretty lady putting on a fake nose and winning an Oscar." Of course this opportunity would not be available if Mitchell were not perceived as a straight man.

The problem is that Mitchell has met Alex, who has rocked his world. Diane is worried about protecting her investment even if that means keeping Mitchell in the closet and getting rid of Alex.

The undoubted key to the play is Diane, who is acted brilliantly by Erika Rolfsrud. Diane spends a great deal of the play talking to the audience, analyzing Hollywood, the film industry, and the other characters with ruthless precision. Diane doesn't deceive herself or the audience of the play but her life is based on deceiving other people, including of course Mitchell's adoring public. One of the best scenes in the play is when she and Mitchell meet the (invisible) playwright over lunch to persuade him to sell the screen rights to his play and she is asked to give her word "as a professional" that they won't ask him to change the ending. She looks at the audience and says "That's like asking a whore for her cherry." And then promptly makes the promise.

But all the characters are deceitful, either with others or with themselves and sometimes both. Ellen deceives herself about Alex but also has just ended a relationship with an older man and is running up his credit cards to the max. Mitchell is living a lie for the benefit of his fans. Both Mitchell and Alex deny that they are gay at the beginning of the play, Mitchell tells Alex that he just does occasional homosexual acts. Alex says he does it just for money and that he has a girlfriend.

Alex, who is the heart of the show in the hooker with a heart of gold mode, is still a character who steals Mitchell's money after Mitchell passes out and uses dishonesty as a shield (when Mitchell asks him about his first time with another man he blurts out that it was his stepfather but rescinds it and comes up with another story when he sees that Mitchell can't handle that truth.)

One of the interesting things that Beane did with the script was to make the action seem almost but not quite to be a play within a play, all controlled by Diane. As the play goes on she expounds either to the audience or to other characters (visible and invisible) about how a script should be structured and how to give audiences what they want. Her opening monologue is about Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and how the first five minutes of the film are among the most perfect openings ever - and then it is all ruined with the appearance of Mickey Rooney.

By the end, Diane is on the phone lecturing the poor (invisible) playwright as to how his play needs to be re-written so that the main character ends up with the girl, not the guy. At the same time she is orchestrating just such an ending for Mitchell's true life story. The success of this play, I think, is that the (real life) audience is not left with any happiness in the ending, but rather the feeling that they've just seen something very sad happen. The audience wanted Mitchell and Alex to end up together. The sadness isn't so much because they didn't end up together but because Diane has been proved right about what motivated all the other characters and was able to manipulate a Hollywood happy-ending in which perception becomes reality. And yet the (real life)audience knows that this is not a happy ending and is not the ending they would have chosen.

And maybe the sad feeling at the end is because Hollywood (and perhaps The Rep) so underestimates the sensibilities of the American public.

Musical Emma

I’m not sure what I had against the idea of a musical version of Jane Austen’s classic novel Emma, but it seemed like a really bad idea to me. It isn’t that I think costume drama and musical theater shouldn’t mix (Phantom of the Opera puts that idea to rest, not to mention Kiss Me Kate), it is just that Jane Austen’s story is small and quiet and subtle and the musical theatre genre tends to be big and loud and, well, not subtle.

But what do I know? Paul Gordon had previously converted Jane Eyre to the musical stage and at the time it seemed like a decent idea to me. The Bronte novel is melodramatic in the same way that Phantom of the Opera is melodramatic. It seemed perfect for adaptation in an age of big, dramatic, operatic musicals. But, in the end, I didn’t like Jane Eyre and found myself wishing Gordon had left it where it belonged – on the shelf. Maybe that’s why I was doubtful when I heard he had pulled Emma off the shelf and placed her in the spotlight. I had a chance to judge for myself when it appeared in my subscription series at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis last week.

I like Emma although it is not my favorite Austen novel. Some people complain that Austen always writes about the same thing – women and marriage. But I think they miss the point. Yes, I think Austen always writes about the same relationship, but I think the relationship that interested her was the relationship between women and money. And how a woman's relationship with money affected her view of life and her choices, including choices about marriage. And while some of her novels focus on one woman, she usually ends up exploring multiple women in multiple circumstances.

In Pride and Prejudice she explores the viewpoints of women currently living a life with access to money but with the knowledge hanging over their heads that they will lose it all once the man of the house dies - a sword of Damocles if you will. In Sense and Sensibility she explores the viewpoints of women born with money who have lost it because the man of the house dies. In Mansfield Park she explores the viewpoint of a woman born without money because her mother, from a wealthy family, made an ill-suited marriage out of love and without regard to money. In Persuasion she explores the views of a woman who earlier in life was persuaded to forego a love relationship with a poor man. (I leave out Northanger Abbey because I honestly don’t remember it very well.)

In Emma, Austen creates a heroine who has no financial concerns. This offers Emma a freedom that other Austin characters can only dream of. Unlike the other Austen heroines, Emma has no need to at least consider marriage as a means of keeping a roof over her head and food on her table. In other ways, Emma's financial independence puts limits on her life. She is expected to set an example and to act charitably. Perhaps because of boredom with the usual projects engaged in by wealthy young women Emma makes a project of her friend Harriet Smith and determines to find her a suitable husband.

In contrast to Emma, Austen creates two other characters: Jane Fairfax, an attractive, educated and talented woman who has no money and is facing a future as a governess, and Mrs. Weston who was, in fact, Emma's former governess and but who is now happily married. Jane Fairfax and Mrs. Weston combine as two sides of a typical Austen heroine. Jane Fairfax, a woman with all the talents necessary to be a woman of leisure but who has no money and is facing a bleak future unless she can marry well. Mrs. Weston, now living the life of relative leisure after a lifetime of work, all because of a good (and, fortunately, loving) marriage. It is in fact Emma who has brought this blissful married state to Mrs. Weston by introducing her to the man who became her husband, a man of greater means and higher station than Mrs. Weston could have expected to marry. And it is Emma who, it turns out, could deny Jane Fairfax this blissful married state to Frank Churchill, a man of greater means and higher station than Jane Fairfax could expect to marry, if he were to fall in love with Emma.

In even greater contrast, Austen creates Mrs. and Miss Bates, relatives of Jane Fairfax who are living in what used to be called genteel poverty, a poverty that is growing each year. Although fairly ridiculous in some ways, they are mostly objects of sympathy in the novel. A turning point in Emma's personal development is when Emma humiliates Miss Bates by making an offhand critical comment about her only to be taken to task for this by Mr. Knightley who points out to Emma their poverty and their need for her charity and her friendship.

I see Emma in some ways as part cautionary tale. Although not as wealthy as Lady Catherine DuBourg from Pride and Prejudice, Emma's desire to direct others in their life choices is similar to Lady Catherine's. And when Emma is rude to Miss Bates, it is possible to see where she could go down the wrong path and end up like the rude and interfering Lady Catherine. Fortunately, Mr. Knightley was created in the role not only of love interest but of conscience for Emma and brings Emma to a realization of her faults.

As a subject for a musical, the story turned out to be surprisingly well suited. Its pace never dragged although the show clocked in at about two and a half hours. I don't think they dropped any of the major plot points out of the story and each of the characters was well developed. It is a show that is a dream for women actresses - seven principal roles for women. The actress who played Emma's protege, Harriet Smith, stole the show.

It is not, however, a great piece of musical theatre and that is because the music is melodic but completely forgettable. I heard no one humming on the way out. I'll close with a sample. This is the song sung by Mr. Knightley as he realizes his love for Emma (he is thinking aloud, so she can't hear him):