Festival Ballet Providence a nice night of varied dance
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February 7
PROVIDENCE -- Give in to "Surrender." Once again an original piece of choreography by Viktor Plotnikov wins over the audience in a Festival Ballet Providence "Up Close on Hope" show. The production, which opened on Saturday and runs through Feb. 28 in the company's Hope Street studio, offers a medley of different dances by different choreographers. This show is called "Tudor and New Works." And the title is accurate. The production involves eight works, two by Antony Tudor, and five others that are premieres. There's "Fiesta Italiana" by guest choreographer Gianni DiMarco, a six-person piece featuring costumes and music you'd associate with the Italian Renaissance, and the movements, too. There's an enjoyable folk feel to the work, as though villagers have come together to celebrate. There's "Burden" by Karin Tremblay, an instructor at Festival, that involves harsh lighting, music with garbled voices and two dancers that roll, writhe and cling to each other. The piece is short, but Lauren Knightly and Erin Gildea are emotive and effective. There's "Beyond Words" by Tess Bernard, a Festival dancer. This piece also involves harsh light and two dancers, although not a clear message, though there's clearly some distress. And there's "The Passion of the Wind" by Mark Harootian, a Festival dancer. This makes nice use of props, where one dancer, Henry Montilla, swings rags on a rope, which accentuates the visual effect of his turns and underscores his role in the piece as "wind." Two other dancers, Christine Blanck and Erica Chipp, wear green silk - pants and tops, which expose their midriff and feature long sleeves, which suddenly become very long, about four feet, allowing them to do a sort of double-armed ribbon dance, and be "water" in the piece. Jennifer Ricci is "lotus," graceful, with a penchant to pull her legs up in the lotus position when she's lifted. The two Tudor works are "Continuo," featuring three couples, delicate classical music and movements, and a pleasing alternation and variation of featured dancers. The other is "The Leaves Are Fading" featuring Mark Harootian and Lauren Kennedy, who's especially fluid and flexible in the slower, more evocative second part of the piece. One of the best pieces in the program is one of the oldest: the "Grand Pas Hongrois" from Marius Petipa's "Raymonda" from 1898. This is serious classical work with five couples who when performing in unison in the small studio create a sense of spectacle. But ultimately it's a showcase for technical and artistic abilities. And the husband-and-wife pair of Mindaugus Bauzys and Vilia Putrius have plenty. Bauzys is so poised in his physically demanding dance, most notably performing a series of backward-landing leaps. And Putrius shows terrific en point range, pirouetting and prancing, and demonstrating very fast footwork. The program ends with the best of the bunch: "Surrender." As with most Plotnikov pieces, it's odd, and good. It's surreal and strange, and compelling in its peculiarity. The work features five dancers and two long pieces of white fabric that are used to wrap and pull people. But most memorable are the unusual and unexpected movements: a female dancer who repeatedly slaps a male dancer in the face, then immediately kisses him for a minute; and a male dancer who balances in a sexually suggestive push-up position and the female dancers who slide under him. "Surrender" is stimulating and engaging, but ultimately disappointing - because it ends. Festival Ballet presents its "Up Close on Hope" show, "Tudor and New Works," again Feb. 13 and 27 at 7:30 p.m., and Feb. 28 at 6 p.m., in its studio at 825 Hope St., Providence. For tickets, $45, which includes wine and hors d'oeuvres, call (401) 353-1129.
The quarters are a bit cramped and the story line is not always clear, but the hard-working, talented cast of "Rent" at the Courthouse Center for the Arts helps a lot with the show's shortcomings. Thankfully, Russell Maitland, the center's director, has brought in a group of singers to do the show, seeing that the focal point of "Rent" is the songs, all 39 of them. The trouble with the musical is the songs keep coming at you with little break to check in on what's going on with the characters. This made for a rather longish show, with a first half clocking in at nearly 90 minutes, in which very little happens other than getting acquainted with our band of misfits. "Rent," of course, is creator Jonathan Larson's contemporary take on the Puccini opera "La Boheme," about a group of struggling artists eking out a living in a Left Bank garret in the 1880s. In "Rent," the scene changes to the1980s and a lower Manhattan loft, where the inhabitants are dealing with drug abuse and AIDS. Think of "Rent" as "Friends" on AZT. The leads in the show come from around New England and New York, and it made a difference, for the singing was terrific, the acting solid. And no one shone more than Timothy A. Crepeau as Roger and Jason Hair-Wynn as his camera-totting buddy, Mark. They both had strong voices and a lot stage presence. And Crepeau was especially fine in his duet work in "Without You" with the show's Mimi, Lindsay Zaroogian. She has a nice habit of leaning into notes to put an expressive spin on the number. Joseph Catanzaro lit up the stage as the drag queen Angel, bringing a lot of energy to early scenes and some touching moments to later ones. Bethany Lynn Giammarco, as Maureen, nailed her big performance number "Over the Moon.'' Boy, can she belt. The set is pretty skimpy, though, just some scaffolding and a couple of tables that double as a bed for Angel. A very able four-piece band provided the back up. The main problem with the show is it's a little long. I found myself starting to count the remaining songs in the playbill, I was getting so antsy. That might not have been so bad had I had more of a plot to hang onto. But as it stands, the show is a little hard to follow. Perhaps clearer direction would have helped. But Rent-heads will no doubt want to catch this production, for it's a chance to see the show yet again and hear favorite songs like the signature "Seasons of Love" from the top of the second act." For others, though, this "Rent" might seem interminable and a little confusing at times. Rent runs through Feb. 20 at the Courthouse Center for the Arts in West Kingston, just down the road from URI. Tickets are $27, $24 for seniors and $18 for students. Call (401) 782-1018.
wrote, This reviewer gave reviews to people who did not deserve them, and had no clue about this show. Who the hell is this person, and... Read the rest, write another... February 5
OUR TIMES: The Age of Elizabeth II,
But Wilson loves perversity. And his acid tongue, sometimes in cheek, makes us collude in his gossipy digressions. His analysis of the last 60 years is both serious and entertaining. Just when you think he is off track, he slides into hilarious, impudent descriptions of people and events. The caustic humor is persuasive. After all the print on Charles and Diana, Wilson's take is fresh. ". . . the interest in the royal marriage both before and after Diana's death was as unwholesome as an eating disorder itself . . . almost retching as we turn the pages, we are unable to stop ourselves cramming in every last sordid detail." We were "binge-reading." Guilty as charged. Despite her failings, Wilson says the public was right to love Diana because she was a force for good. And he finds Charles fit to rule. Among other virtues, he was forthright in denouncing brutalist architecture, and farsighted in espousing local farming and attention to climate change. Still, Wilson includes vignettes in which Charles is surly and self-pitying.
February 4
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Yet another group with a Rhode Island connection takes to TV. The seven-member street dance group DraZtik will be competing tonight at 10 p.m. on the MTV program "America's Best Dance Crew." MTV's Web site describes the DraZtik's style as "an innovative combination of contemporary and ballet fused with popping and hop-hop." The group includes Gabriella Cruz, Christine Torres, Genesis Camacho, Jared Rivers, Joshua Perez, Kelvin Fabian and Marvin Horsely, according to the office of Mayor David N. Cicilline. Cicilline, Cruz's mother, Terry -- who works for the city's Recreation Department -- and other fans will be at Bar 101 at 1478 Atwood Ave. in Johnston to root for the Providence team.
Brian McEleney is at the top of his game in two pursuits -- acting Shakespeare and directing Shakespeare. So God bless Trinity Rep for allowing him to do both, as he is in the uproarious production of "Twelfth Night," now through March 7 in the upstairs theater. This is McEleney at his cleverest, spinning out a Twelfth Night that's packed with comic bits and off-the-wall routines. You can find him scolding party-goers dressed in a bathrobe and hair net, or singing at the top of his lungs while circling the balcony on a bicycle. No question about it, he's put together a fun show, the best offering from Trinity this season. It's true, this is a long play, about 2 hours and 40 minutes. But it's a fast-paced show that never drags. And it doesn't hurt that the cast is terrific, starting with consortium student Cherie Corinne Rice playing both Viola and her long-lost twin Sebastian. This leads to some ticklish moments when the two characters appear together on stage at the end of the play. But Rice pulled it off without a hitch. In fact, her twins were wonderful. She's one of those actors who speaks with her face as much as her voice, someone who can light up a stage. "Twelfth Night" might just be the perfect comedy. And like a lot of comic Shakespeare, it depends on mistaken identity. Viola is separated from her twin during a ship wreck, and disguises herself as a man to survive, calling herself Cesario. She becomes a servant in the court of Duke Orsino, who is in love with Lady Olivia. But Oliva has the hots for Cesario, who is in turn in love with the Duke. Chaos reigns when Sebastian shows up on the scene and is mistaken for Cesario. But much of the action is devoted to a comic subplot involving McEleney's Malvolio, the uptight butler who chews out Fred Sullivan's Toby Belch for late-night partying. To exact revenge, Sir Toby and his cohorts plant a letter for Malvolio that is supposedly from Olivia, professing her love. It asks that he dress in yellow stockings and smile constantly. For this, Malvolio is locked in a dungeon for the insane. All this is played out on a set by Eugene Lee that looks like a Victorian men's club that has seen better days. Bare plaster shows on the walls, and shades are missing on the light fixtures. There is also water pouring through the roof and a big puddle in the corner of the stage, that Stephen Berenson's Feste, the fool, dispatches with a plunger. This is the fourth time McEleney has played the part of Malvolio, and you can tell it is a role he has lived with. It's comedy painted with a broad brush, but that also retains a certain amount of snooty subtlety. But probably the funniest man on stage was Fred Sullivan Jr. as Sir Toby. There is just an ease with the way the language rolls off his tongue. And no one makes a better drunk, the way Sullivan staggered about the stage in a lobster bib. In other roles, another consortium student Annie Worden was fine as Olivia, but Joe Wilson Jr. was a little over-wrought as the Duke. There were times when he just seemed to be working too hard. And Stephen Thorne was almost as funny as Sullivan as his goofy sidekick, Andrew Aguecheek. "Twelfth Night" runs through March 7 at Trinity Rep, 201 Washington St., Providence. Tickets are $65-$20. Call (401) 351-4242, or log on to www.trinityrep.com.
NOAH’S COMPASS,
About Liam Pennywise, the 60-year-old protagonist: He is single, once widowed and now divorced. Losing his job at an elementary school, he decides to downsize his living arrangement by moving into a cheaply constructed condo off the highway. It has no appeal and Liam doesn't care. His first dreary night, an intruder enters through an unlocked door and knocks Liam unconscious. Nothing is taken. The next morning Liam awakes in the hospital with no memory of the incident.
February 3
Dracula bites back. After debuting its original dance-theater adaptation of "Dracula" last October in Newport's Belcourt Court on Bellevue Avenue, Island Moving Company is bringing it back. The Newport-based contemporary ballet troupe has announced it will restage the production in Belcourt Castle for six shows, March 25 to 28. The production tells the story of Dracula and sets that story not on a stage but in a castle, Belcourt Castle, with audience members walking room to room, following the action, and, in the process, getting a pretty impressive architectural tour. Tickets for the shows are $65 to $85. The March 25 show is a gala, with a masked ball, food and dancing. Tickets for that are $125. Visit Art Tix RI.
INTO THE STORY: A Writer’s Journey Through Life, Politics, Sports, and Loss,
The associate editor of the Washington Post, he has written about every conceivable subject with a simple élan for four decades. Here you have a chance to see a collection of his work that spans connected subjects and three decades, everything from mythologized athletes made human to warm but not maudlin tributes to family members and rivetingly taut reconstructions of 9/11 and the Virginia Tech massacre through the eyes of the people involved. As is always the case with writers whom you encounter one small piece at a time, this writing lives differently taken in total than if you were to read individual pieces weeks, months or years apart. Great journalism is great journalism, but when you have a chance to see a journalist's connecting threads of themes, ideas and style, the work resonates with much more meaning.
February 2
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Garrison Keillor, host and creator of public radio's "A Prairie Home Companion," will be entertaining local audiences Thursday, March 11, at 7:30 p.m. at the Providence Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $32 to $67. Call (401) 421-2787 or visit www.ppacri.org.
Michael Janusonis No one was surprised when Jeff Bridges was nominated for a best actor Academy Award Tuesday for his performance as a down-and-out country singer in "Crazy Heart," the film based on the book by Rhode Island College English professor Thomas Cobb. Bridges has already won the best actor awards from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Award given by the Broadcast Film Critics Association. It wasn't much of a surprise, either, when the song "The Weary Kind," written for the film by T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham got a best-song nomination. It had already won the best song award at the Golden Globes. But there were two major surprises surrounding "Crazy Heart" when the Oscar nominations were announced in Beverly Hills Tuesday. Maggie Gyllenhaal was nominated for best supporting actress in the film in which she plays a newspaper reporter who comes to interview the singer Bad Blake, but soon becomes an integral part of his life. Gyllenhaal was a long shot who was almost never mentioned among potential nominees. Cobb, reached shortly after the nominations were announced, said "I expected Jeff and 'The Weary Kind' to be nominated, but I was really, really pleased Maggie got it because I thought she was incredibly affecting. I thought she brought a genuine quality to the role." He said he was "kind of hoping ["Crazy Heart"] would also get a best picture nod. When it didn't, it was disappointing, but I can't say it was a shock." Perhaps a bigger surprise was that "Crazy Heart" director Scott Cooper, who found Cobb's book and shepherded it into production, was not nominated for his adapted screenplay. Cooper, making his debut as both director and screenwriter, wasn't expected to get a best director nomination, but it was widely assumed he had a good shot for the adapted screenplay award. Cobb and Cooper are in the running for the University of Southern California's Scripter Awards, which honors both the screenwriter who adapted a published work and the author of the original work, and will attend the awards ceremony Sunday in Los Angeles. On the broader Oscar front, poised for a head-to-head battle with nine nominations each are James Cameron's mega hit, "Avatar," reputedly the most expensive movie ever made, and Kathryn Bigelow's low-budget "The Hurt Locker," about soldiers who defuse bombs in Iraq. Cameron has already won the best director and best picture awards at the Golden Globes. Last weekend Bigelow, his ex-wife, took the best director award from the Director's Guild of America, the first time a woman has won the award in the group's 62-year history. The DGA award winner has gone on to take the Academy Award as best director 80 percent of the time. Bigelow is only the fourth female director to be nominated for an Oscar; none have won. The best actress race also looks tight with favorites being Meryl Streep for "Julie & Julia" and Sandra Bullock for "The Blind Side." This marks Streep's 16th Oscar nomination while it's the first for Bullock. Both actresses won best actress Golden Globes -- Streep in the comedy category and Bullock in the drama category. In an effort to increase TV ratings for the Academy Awards, which will be handed out March 7 for the 82nd time, there are 10 best picture nominees. The last time that happened was for the 1943 awards when "Casablanca" won. Since then, only five films have been nominated each year, although in earlier years it had been a sliding scale of nominees -- only two for 1928 and 1929, four for 1932 and 12 for 1935. The idea was to bring in films that a lot of people had actually seen beyond such arty films as "An Education," "The Hurt Locker," "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" and "A Serious Man," all of which are best picture nominees this year. But really the battle is expected to be between "Avatar" and "The Hurt Locker," with director Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" a dark horse candidate. The latter film has eight nominations, including best director, best supporting actor -- Christoph Waltz -- and original screenplay -- Tarantino. "Up," another best picture nominee, is also in the running for best animated film. Video: Crowd congratulates author, RIC professor at 'Crazy Heart' premiere Read the full list of nominations in the extended section.
Jeopardy! Productions, Inc.
Rebecca Maxfield, Brown '13, who will be competing on Jeopardy! this week, poses with show host Alex Trebek.
The answer is Rebecca Maxfield. The question is who's the Brown University freshman who could win $100,000 on the "Jeopardy! College Championship"? The tournament began Feb. 1 and runs through Feb. 12, involving 15 students from around the country. On Wednesday night at 7:30 on Channel 12 in Providence, Maxfield of New Rochelle, N.Y., makes her first move in the taped tournament. She competes against Robbie Berg of the University of Pennsylvania and James Hill 3rd of Santa Clara University. On the show's Web site (jeopardy.com), Maxfield says she has not declared a major at Brown but is interested in languages and literature. She performs in the university's Gilbert and Sullivan theater and plays in its Quizbowl team. To get to this point in the "Jeopardy!" competition, Maxfield took an online test and scored well enough to be invited to an audition in Boston, where she scored well enough to be invited to California last fall to take part in the taping of this tournament. To prepare, Maxfield, who says she's a lifelong "Jeopardy!" watcher, watched old episodes of the show and its college championships. "I haven't been studying, per se," Maxfield said in a post on the show's Web site, before the start of the tournament. "But I know what my weak spots are, so I'm playing trivia games."
TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION,
In this short chatty overview of detective fiction, James gives us Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, the Continental Op and Sam Spade, and her own Adam Dalgleish, "named after my English teacher at Cambridge High School." She also beings up lesser known mystery writers such as Josephine Tay, Cyril Hare, and Edmund Crispin as well as Colin Dexter, Michael Innes, Ruth Rendell and E. C. Bentley. But her love lies with the four women of the Golden Age between the wars, 1920-1940: Agatha Christie who presents clever puzzles in mundane prose; Dorothy Sayers who creates an intelligent and urbane style; Margery Allingham with her interest in social communities; and Ngaio Marsh and her social realism. Christie loved the nostalgic rural village with its clear social hierarchy and isolation, the kind of England James remembers apologetically as "a cohesive world, overwhelmingly white," where murder's more of an aberration and a faux pas than a violent act.
February 1
THE 13TH HOUR,
"You have twelve hours," a strange man, bearing a gold pocket watch, tells Quinn in the midst of his interrogation as a suspect in his wife's killing. "In the thirteenth hour all will be lost, her fate, your fate will be sealed." Such a delicious set-up may not be particularly new; after all, we've seen countless time travel stories on the big and little screen, most notably in Rod Serling's classic "The Twilight Zone." And for strange men delivering promises that seem too good to be true look no further than Richard Mathewson's short story "Button, Button," the basis for one of the finest tales from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" ever. But even though "The 13th Hour" feels retro in all the right ways, this devilishly original thriller also has a terrific modern take on its subject akin to the hit television series "24" and even the Christopher Nolan film "Memento."
Beyonce once again tied a record for most wins by a female performer at the Grammys by netting five trophies, including song of the year for "Single Ladies," but the Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" trumped her "Halo" to win record of the year Sunday night. Rhode Island's blues guitarist Duke Robillard's "Stomp! The Blues Tonight" was nominated in the Traditional Blues Album category, but lost to Ramblin' Jack Elliott's "A Stranger Here.'' This was Robillard's second nomination for a Grammy Award. He received a nomination for "Guitar Groove-A-Rama" in 2007.
wrote, Duke: Yes you got robbed. We're still very proud of you. Jerry L and Pat A... Read the rest, write another...
"Jersey Shore" is coming back for a second season, and returning with seven of its original eight cast members. This includes Pauly D, otherwise known as Paul Delvecchio, 28, of Johnston, who before his ride of reality TV fame was a DJ. MTV has announced that shooting for the second season would begin soon, but hasn't announced where the shooting would take place. Apparently the New Jersey shoreline isn't so conducive to the party life in winter. That's the show: Party. Eight scantily-clad 20-somethings, four men and four women, live together in a house. Cameras watch their every interaction, which centers on nightclub parties and a general pursuit of pleasure, which generally involves alcohol and sex. The second season will involve 12 episodes, up from 8 episodes the first season. And the reason for the expansion is the show's surprising popularity. When "Jersey Shore" first aired in December, about 1 million viewers tuned in. When it wrapped up its first season in January, 5 million tuned in, making it TV's top prime-time Thursday show for viewers age 12 to 34, and making it MTV's highest-rated show ever. Knowing that, the show's cast members, who were reportedly paid $200 an episode for the first season, negotiated themselves salaries of $10,000 an episode for the second season, which is expected to air sometime this summer.
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