I love this exchange on the Lobby today, love the fact that theater—live theater—can provoke such thought and passion, both pro and con. Isn’t that why we go? We could have all stayed home and enjoyed the balmy evening and kicked back in front of our TVs and saved the ticket money, but for whatever reasons we didn’t. Do I always like what UMS offers? Do I always feel I’ve gotten my money’s worth? (How do you even calculate that?) Of course not. But thank god they’re not serving up predictable fare. That’s when I’d stay home.
Was Trojan Women uneven? Sure. Did Jocelyn Clarke take questionable liberties with Euripides’ text? You bet. (Though it was interesting to hear Anne Bogart say today that one reason the company dispensed with a chorus was “we couldn’t afford it.” Ditto Athena, who in the original script engages in a long dialogue with Poseidon, but in this production doesn’t even show up. “We couldn’t afford two gods,” Bogart quipped.)
Did this production make me think twice about the play, make me reflect on its meaning and on my own preconceptions? Absolutely. I didn’t love all of it. I didn’t always get why the actors were hanging around instead of vanishing the way they do in Euripides’ text. (Bogart explained today she wanted an ensemble piece, Chekovian in nature, rather than a sequence of two-part dialogues. She wanted the women to serve as their own chorus.) I came home from the production and thumbed through my copy of The Trojan Woman looking for some reference to a hermaphrodite. Didn’t find it. Didn’t quite get what was up.
But were there moments onstage last night that ripped through me? Yes, yes, and yes. Andromache’s gorgeous, patiently rendered evocation of her love for her husband. The exquisite narrative in which the (single male) Chorus came downstage and with dancelike motions described the invasion of Troy by the horse-hidden Greeks. Hecuba’s howls. Hecuba’s one-liners. The riveting moment when Helen at last walks offstage and shadows first slice off her head and then cast her utterly in darkness while Cassandra plays in the light just beyond her. The way the viola came and went, shaping the action, hauling voices with it.
Theater exists in the moment. Euripides’ text will outlast this production. Another director will have her way with it. There’ll be more Helens—let’s hope another 2,500 years of them.
This afternoon, Bogart talked about the relationship between performers and audiences. She said a cast doesn’t “speak to just one kind of person. You speak to different parts of each person.” So this Trojan Women may not have clicked with some theatergoers. But it’s got us talking to one another. It’s got us going back to our copies of the play and thinking again about the issues Euripides addresses. It’s got me, at least, thinking not about the price of tickets but about the price of war, and about human nature, and about men and women, and about our drive to tell one another stories by acting them out in front of each other. May that process continue.

[submitted with the permission of the writer.]

Three Nights of Cacophony
Hearing the American Mavericks
by James Leonard
posted 3/26/2012 on arborweb.com
NIGHT TWO: March 23

The second night opened with what I’d call the worst piece of music I’ve ever heard if there were any real music in it.

But there wasn’t a note of music in John Cage’s Song Books – lots of gibberish, plenty of nonsense, and a whole lot of balderdash, but no music whatsoever. There were texts “sung” by three women to any random vocal noise that went through their heads. In the case of Jessye Norman, that’d be quasi-operatic howling. In the case of Joan La Barbara, that’d bleeps, bloops, and burps. In the case of Meredith Monk, that’d be screams, screeches. and shrikes. These noises were accompanied by a handful of musicians from the orchestra making occasional noises on their instruments or anything else that came to hand, including a basketball. And for all the work’s half-hour duration, the performers wandered aimlessly across an onstage set reminiscent of a very cheap off-off-Broadway production.

The first two minutes of this farrago was fairly funny – especially Monk’s chicken-imitation. But it was annoying after five minutes, irritating after ten minutes, infuriating after fifteen minutes, and it lasted half an hour. The Hill Auditorium audience gave it a standing ovation. I booed long and loud, the first time I’ve ever booed at a classical concert. Apparently, this cracked up Jessye Norman. I’m glad one of us was having a good time.

The second half of the concert was much better mostly because it featured real pieces of music. Henry Cowell’s Synchrony based on a theme familiar from Stravinsky was essentially a one-movement Russian symphony tarted up with tone clusters. It was no better than Cowell’s Piano Concerto performed the night before, but no worse, either.

John Adams’ Absolute Jest takes three themes from Beethoven – from the scherzo of the Ninth Symphony plus the scherzos of his Opus 131 and 135 string quartets — and puts them through the orchestral blender for 25 minutes. The first two minutes were relatively interesting though not particularly funny; the rest was full of sound and fury signifying nothing and not at all funny. Adams would do well to recall that the brevity is the soul of wit.

The best came last: Edgard Varese’s Ameriques, a brilliant, brutal, and beguiling work for very large orchestra augmented by sirens. Ameriques is literally bursting with everything missing from the rest of the concert’s works: intelligence, passion, soul, coherence, energy, wit, and an original but authentic voice

Long time reader, first time commenter (full disclosure: I work at UMS). The Thursday evening concert was amazing. MTT did an incredible job of encouraging the audience to jump down the rabbit hole with him – he spoke to us directly and wasn’t afraid to dish about the composers (knowing that Lou Harrison built his house out of hay bales honestly made Concerto for Organ with Percussion more enjoyable for me). Anyhow – I definitely felt like Alice traipsing about in a brand new Wonderland. If only every conductor on earth treated orchestral music — contemporary or not — with that same “jump right in, the water’s fine” attitude, perhaps we would see more “young people” (however you choose to quantify that) in the audience. Looking forward to more fantastically weird music this weekend. Like Alice, the first concert only made me curiouser and curiouser….

Long time reader, first time commenter (full disclosure: I work at UMS). The Thursday evening concert was amazing. MTT did an incredible job of encouraging the audience to jump down the rabbit hole with him – he spoke to us directly and wasn’t afraid to dish about the composers (knowing that Lou Harrison built his house out of hay bales honestly made Concerto for Organ with Percussion more enjoyable for me). Anyhow – I definitely felt like Alice traipsing about in a brand new Wonderland. If only every conductor on earth treated orchestral music — contemporary or not — with that same “jump right in, the water’s fine” attitude, perhaps we would see more “young people” (however you choose to quantify that) in the audience. Looking forward to more fantastically weird music this weekend. Like Alice, the first concert only made me curiouser and curiouser….