Thursday, June 30, 2005

Redgrave and Euripedes

It's always pretty hard to get excited about a 2,500 year old play.

That doesn't mean that I haven't made my students read Hecuba, Medea, the satyr play The Cyclops, and other plays by the 5th century B.C. Athenian playwright, Euripides, or his buddies Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Aeschylus. After all, going to plays used to be one of the ways that the ancient Greeks worshipped the gods. Gotta keep Dionysus happy, you know (especially since he's the god of wine!). Hecuba is one of those plays which has managed to weather the millennia pretty well, though, and the Royal Shakespeare Company in England commissioned a new translation which received its premiere last March. They brought the production to the United States for a three-week run at the Kennedy Center, and my friend Scott and I managed to catch a performance on June 9 (and, yes, I know, I'm somewhat late writing this commentary) before the run closed on the 12th. Dear Scott didn't believe me that Shakespeare didn't write this play until I made him read the program. Alas, his Ph.D. is in psychology, so I guess he can't be expected to be literate and aware of ancient Greek drama however important tragedies like Oedipus Rex and Electra are to the fundamental foundations of Freudian and Jungian psychology.

Our primary reason for going to see the play wasn't worshipping Dionysus, or a rush to see the RSC, or even being great fans of Euripides (or Will Shakespeare, in Scott's case), but because the title character was being played by the venerable Vanessa Redgrave. She got rave reviews in all the area newspapers, and I was certainly looking forward to seeing her performance. It's a big role, since Hecuba is on stage almost the entire hour and forty minute duration of the play. And, while I wasn't wowwed, I think she handled the role sufficiently well to keep the play alive and moving, even with the ponderous verse of the new Tony Harrison translation.

This show took place in the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center, a rather spare auditorium that only seats 1,100. The four-tiered set had Army tents arranged side by side and stacked as though we were looking at a hillside packed with tents. They were treated with various dreary grey, brown, and green pigments, but I thought it rather amusing that a few of the tents had Army stencils painted on the flaps, and on the main stage level, a series of Army foot lockers arranged so each floor level tent had a locker out front also had contemporary stencil markings. A nearly naked "dead" Polydorus in full-body marblizing white and grey paint stood center stage for the opening soliloquy as the curtain rose. I was worried that this was going to be another depressing all-grey set with all-grey costumes, much like the "Soviet" Boris Godunov I saw at the K.C. last January, but once the "living" actors appeared, I was relieved to see vibrant colors. In fact, the women's costumes were actually quite pretty. As you are probably aware, this play is set in heroic era outside Troy immediately after its fall (remember The Iliad and the Trojan horse?). Queen Hecuba and the other royal ladies of the court have been enslaved and are being taken back to Greece by Agamemnon. Since all the ladies are "new" slaves, they were still dressed in some semblance of finery, and the costume designers clad them in flowing gowns with beautiful hues of turquoise, teal, and purple.

The women were also barefoot. I happened to have my opera glasses with me (our seats were way back on row T!), and they allowed me to make two observations: 1) Miss Redgrave's toenails are quite yellowed, and 2) for a woman, she has really big feet!

Miss Redgrave had been a member of the RSC company over forty-five years ago. Her classical technique blended in well with the other RSC actors, but one of the things about her performance which bothered my "modern" dramatic sensibilities was her use of the classical arm gestures and actions which are used to demonstrate extreme emotion in a large house without really very much corresponding facial expression and body language. Nevertheless, she does have an excellent command of her voice and the use of pacing, rhythm, and inflection to create an aural mood.

In addition to Miss Redgrave's performance, Malcolm Tierney as a paternal Agamemnon (do you remember him in Braveheart and In the Name of the Father?) and Darrell D'Silva doubly cast as a slimy Odysseus and an over-the-top Polymestor both put in noteworthy performances.

Greek tragedies were the inspiration for the Renaissance invention of what we know today as opera, so the chorus of twelve woman slaves had music for their choral interjections. Unfortunately, none of the ancient music from Euripidean plays has survived, so a modern composer, Mick Sands, created music for setting the moods and for the chorus. It didn't sound a bit ancient Greek at all to me (there is a tiny body of music from the era), and rather reminded me at times of some of the stock modern Broadway harmonic progressions. I'm sure there aren't many people like me who would know the difference, and I don't suppose it bothered me that much, but it did come up two or three times during the performance. And, Euripide's plot is a bit untenable, but who am I, a mere opera singer, to criticize untenable and fantastical story lines?

All in all, I suppose, it was a good evening at the theater, though my Oklahoma pocketbook still reels at paying $70 for a mediocre seat. But, that's the Kennedy Center.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Black and white

Have you seen the new stamps from the post office which are a tribute to the late sculptor Isamu Noguchi? They are so cool! It's a sheet of twenty stamps featuring photographs of his sculptures and a side panel with a photo of Noguchi and one of his quotes, all printed in stark black and white.

Most modern art—especially performance art, multimedia, "installations," and a lot of paintings—is total trash, but I like modern sculptural forms. The stylized metamorphosization and the sleek surfaces and forms actually seem to mean something to me. I don't know what it is. Perhaps it's the fact that one has to study the work to "see" it, and after looking at something, if one then hears the title of the work, one can go "ohhhhhhhh," and reach a deeper appreciation of the work.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Backstage for Don Quixote

Well, as expected, I didn't get cast.

It was exciting, though, to get to be backstage at the Opera House in the Kennedy Center for the first time. They gathered the fourteen potential candidates in the Hall of Nations to fill out forms and get assigned audition numbers. I was number 68, and the tallest one there. Precisely at 2:00, they escorted the group through the Opera House stage door, up the freight elevator, and into a large rehearsal hall with a wall that was mirrored from floor to ceiling. Once there, everyone was arranged in a straight line in front of the artistic director, stage manager, and costume designer. The artistic director paired me up a couple of times with different guys, but the costume designer didn't want me. This ballet opens Wednesday night, and there isn't a lot of time to remake costumes, so they really were trying to find people to fit existing costumes. Oh, well. So it goes, though, for supernumeraries in ballets and operas. They often cast based on who fits the costumes, and they only wanted eight guys for this show. I may get another chance in July, though, since a couple of the Kennedy Center staffers asked me to come "audition" for a supernumerary role in Le Corsaire, being done by the Kirov Ballet. That could be fun.

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Auditions?

The weekend is finally here! I thought yesterday was never going to end at work. The one bright spot at the office yesterday, though, was a call from the Kennedy Center. They've asked me to come audition next weekend as a supernumerary for a ballet. Now, I just have to diet down real quickly this week so I can fit in my dance belt again! Of course, I don't expect to get chosen, because I don't fit the existing costumes. I talked to another guy who'd applied (and didn't get chosen) and he said he'd been told they were looking for guys who were 5'11" to 6'1" and who have a 40" to 42" chest......that counts me out, since I'm 6'3" and haven't worn a 42 since high school! However, I did disclose my sizes on my resume, so I don't know....maybe I'm just spay-shul.

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Upcoming plans

Tomorrow, we're going to the Kennedy Center to see Vanessa Redgrave starring in Hecuba. I'm looking forward to it on many fronts, not least of which is spending more time with this guy, but also seeing Miss Redgrave, who has gotten rave reviews in all the Washington papers. I may be getting to work at the Kennedy Center soon, too. I applied today for a job as a supernumerary for a ballet company doing Don Quixote later this month. Don't know what they are looking for in supers, though. If they are just seeking "spear carriers" who fit existing costumes, I'll probably be overlooked, since most male danseurs are tiny little things half my height......and, the "extra large" men's dance belt is only a 34-36 inch waist!!!