I Got Rhythm! A Tribute to George & Ira Gershwin
Musical Direction by Chris Leavy
The Winter Park Playhouse, Winter Park, FL

The Winter Park Playhouse experience continues to grow in elegance. This evening, musical director Chris Leavy serenades the preshow crowd with an improved a medley of famous show tunes, perfectly matching the keys and time signatures as he works though hits from “Les Mis” and “Annie” and who knows what else. The WPPH management got their moneys’ worth out of him tonight; besides the preshow, he played for “I Got Rhythm Show” as well as another impromptu medley for the intermission.

Inside the theatre, Leavy is joined by the always impressive drummer Sam Forrest, adding jazz highlights to the show. This collection of songs and anecdotes was assembled by the entire show cast, and covers highlights and obscurities from the Gershwin brothers, who were possibly the most financially sucessful of the 20th century composers. The challenge lies in picking the material – the Gershwin’s wrote hundreds of songs before George died in 1937. The cast did a bouncy conga version of “Fascinating Rhythm” and ‘The Real American Folk Song is A Rag” as well as a catch all “Favorites Medley” to wrap up the first act. Individual highlights include Todd Long and Laura Hodos singing “I Have a Crush on You”. Hodos returns with one of those great abuse songs “Treat Me Rough” and a duet with a drunken Roy Alan “Do It Again.” Heather Alexander put on her best pink boa for “Naughty Baby” and Todd Mummert performed a nice jazzy “Oh, Lady Be Good.”

What striking about this music is how modern is sounds. The jazz and rag influences that the Gershwin’s absorbed became the musical standard of the ’50s and pre rock and roll ’60s. The sheer volume of material available means that no one short of a music major is likely to ever hear or play every Gershwin tune, but this crew gives it a fair shot. The musty sheet music they downloaded off the internet contains some real gems – when’s the last time you heard “The Back Bay Polka” or “What Causes That?”? Here’s the creepy aspect of this show – you go in expecting to have a good time, and you come out educated. Good thing they don’t make you take a test.

For more information on Winter Park Playhouse, please visit http://www.winterparkplayhouse.org

Bach At Leipzig
By Itamar Moses
Directed by Kevin G. Becker
Empty Spaces Theatre Company at the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre

Lutheran church music should praise of God and edify the congregation, but the politics behind it would overwhelm the Doge of Venice. It’s Tuesday, 1722, and Johann Kuhnau dies unexpectedly. He was the lead organist atthe biggest, baddest church in Leipzig, and his job made him as close to a rock star as the Protestants allow. Still, a job opening is a job opening, and the city council of Leipzig is interviewing qualified applicants. A half dozen show up – J. F. Fasch (Mark Edward Smith) was once Kuhnau’s favorite pupil, G. B. Schott (Tommy Keesling) assisted him in his last years, G. Lenck (Josh Geoghagan) is too broke to afford a middle name, G. F. Kaufmann (Stephen Lima) can’t find the call board, J. M. Steindorf (John Bateman) would prefer to dance, and J. C. Grainer (Kevin Sigman) knows he has the job, so long as someone better like Telemann or J. S. Bach doesn’t spoil things by showing up. As the applicants connive and scheme to either get rid of their competition or do a deal that involves running a boys school, the engage in a theatrical fugue of exposition, countersubject, and stretto. People are drugged, outrageous promises are made and broken, and a wealth of jokes that are only accessible to those schooled in the history of the Counter Reformation fill the room.

OK, so most of the jokes didn’t draw laughs, but it was a small, secular crowd the night I caught this intellectual gem of a show. Still, the backstabbing machinations are enough to make a great comedy, and Mark Edward Smith might be the best intellectual of the lot. He’s sober, confident, and determined to outmaneuver the officious Keesling. John Bateman did the best broad comedy in his whiteface and tights, and closely competed with Geoghagan and his milkmaid’s dress. Sigman’s perpetual number two status and knack for being upstaged by the scene worked in his favor, and I actually rooted for him to get the job. Mr. Lima played a much nicer, gentler role than usual, and he’s most likely to get his house burned for incorrect views on predestination and original sin.

With a set that looked like a pipe organ and well presented music, you might take this as a farce, but I’ve been around church meetings and can assure you that salvation is wrought by committees, and you do NOT want to get appointed chairman to one of them. Director Becker pulled nice, tight show out of this complex script, and even at the most complicated points the thrust and parry of argument stays with you.

For more information on Empty Spaces Theater Company, visit http://www.emptyspacestheatre.org

Carmen
By Georges Bizet
Directed by Alan Bruun
Musical Direction by Christopher Wilkins
Starring Kirstin Chávez, Luis Ledesma, Richard Troxell
Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra at The Bob Carr Performing Arts Center, Orlando, FL
February 26, 2010

Chivalry is dead – when’s the last time a woman told you: “I’m through with you – kill me if you must”? Iberian romance was lustier, deadlier, and more tuneful in the old days, and even with the recent demise of the Orlando Opera Company, it’s good to see that melodrama sung in foreign tongues is still available in Orlando. I parked my car in an ethnically diverse area and briskly walked the half mile or so past the reserved parking for the yawner of the George Straight / Reba McEntire concert, arriving in time to catch a preshow talk by directors Alan Bruun and Christopher Wilkins. They explained the plot of this about this classic opera (ranked number 5 in the Top Operas produced in America) , gushing over the glories of the book, the emotional depth of the music, and relating the late night cell phone calls made to cast the show. Since sets are non-existent they left us to imaging the Carmen of our innermost dreams, so I took the easy path and closed my eyes to imagine post modern post meltdown minimalism. There was no amplification, but with the orchestra behind the action instead of in the pit the actor’s voices project where they count. It worked well; the large platform rising over a foot above the stage held most of the cast of gypsies, supernumeraries and garrison soldiers.

The story of Carmen follows the extremes of operatic melodrama, but Bizet abandons the high ideals of Gods and Titans and takes us into the world of common people, and acknowledges that raw lust sells more tickets than moral lectures. Carmen (Chávez) flirts with the soldiers, her cleavage heaving as she pole dances with a bentwood chair. After she gets in a minor brawl in the cigarette factory, Don Jose (Troxell) takes a two month fall for her after she promises him a wild night of love. She was thinking one night stand and he was thinking engagement ring from Zale’s, but he latches on to her and she leads him in to a life of crime. Things complicate when the erotically charged toreador Escamillo (Ledesma) enters. It’s not just his tight pants, sequins and probably early, bloody death that makes him attractive – it’s the fact that Escamillo gets “The Toreador Song” and poor Don Juan barely gets decent leif motif. Carmen shames him into deserting, and won’t let him visit his dying mother when she’s done with him. When Carmen and her friends Frasquita (Susan Diaz) and Mercédès (Sarah Limper) throw tarot, they see lusty or moneyed men in their future while Carmen sees only death for her and her man, who may or may not be Don José.

Everyone’s big boogey man at the Carr is its reputation for dead acoustics. I lucked out; Orchestra Right in Row L has a nice even sound with everyone on stage coming across distinctly if not with gut wrenching power. The orchestra sounded bright and crisp, my only complaint a weak kettle drum in the overture, but that cleared up as the show rolled along. Both Carman and Don José were in fine voice and they captured the essence of impetuous love and utter disregard for Judeo – Christian morality. Escamillo was a bit throaty, although I enjoyed his reunion with Don Jose in the mountain pass – “Oh, you’re still seeing her? She should be done with you about now. So, sorry, old chap, I’ll wait over there” is the subtext, and the relative values of sex vs. chivalric love are never more clear cut. Don José’s true blue girlfriend Micaëla (Janette Zilioli) had here great aria at the end of the show – I likes the song, but by the time she sang Don José was beyond redemption. There were upwards of 40 people on stage at times, and Bruun’s direction kept them in line and, even the flock of young children helping change the guard at the beginning were cute and funny and never icky heartwarming.

So, Opera with big sets and big spectacle may be gone from Central Florida until Arena Ex Machina fixes the local economy, but as a cost effective stop gap, the Semi-Staged Concert Opera is a worthwhile experience for the classically cultured. The parking may be a pain, but the sound was much better than I hoped and I can truly say I followed the whole story and never got lost in the French.

For more information on the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra Concert Opera Series, please visit http://www.OrlandoPhil.org.