Sparr who has the looks and hair to be a rock star of the new music scene played his program of Steve Reich, Paul Lansky, Derek Bermel, and Sparr with such understatement that the Dresser wondered if he was too shy to be on stage or didn't care much that there was a sizeable audience eager to share his well-thought-out program.

What the Dresser loved best in this six-part program was Sparr's "Superstring Serenade," a composition that included CounterPoint, an ensemble of five string players whose credentials come from well known organizations such as the National Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, and Washington National Opera. "Superstring" opens passionately, moderates into a peaceful lullaby that breaks into grandeur and authority and ends whimsically in a fizzle. The strings enhance the riffs of the electric guitar in a confident marriage of sound.

Sparr's program began with two compositions played by the charming Levine Advanced Guitar Ensemble, a group of five 13-15 year-old acoustic guitarists under the guidance of the Risa Carlson, the Levine School of Music Guitar Department Chair. They played Sparr's "Mare arpeggi di Mauro," a difficult counterpoint composition that required careful counting, and Gilbert Clamens "Tango Amigo," a milonga piece which the group was more at ease with.

Showing a video interview with Steve Reich, Sparr introduced Reich's "Electric Counterpoint," a piece which features harmonic stasis or what the Dresser would call a "Gertrude Stein guitar composition" (very subtle changes that sound like repetition). As the piece was performed, it was historically interesting to think about what Reich explained to Sparr, and by extension the Atlas audience, that Reich drew on such influences as Ravi Shankar and Bob Dylan and without this rich environment there would not have been Terry Riley's "In C" or Reich's "Electric Counterpoint." The Dresser has actually heard Riley live taking credit for influencing Reich. Riley's "In C," said to be the first Minimalist composition, was composed in 1964. Reich's "Electric Counterpoint" was first recorded in 1987.

Paul Lansky's "Dance Tracks" was the piece in which the Dresser thought Sparr should have shaken loose. While playing in front of a psychedelic video where fragments floated and ribbons of color spiraled, Sparr's improvisation took on a Jimi Hendrix soundscape. It was a trance-inducing production where the light show-like video only served to make the Dresser zone out. Perhaps the Dresser is jaded because she saw an early light show in the fall of 1966 done by the Jefferson Airplane and Grace Slick at the unlikely place of Franklin & Marshall College. Nothing wrong with the video, Sparr just needed to move a little and connect with the audience.

Derek Bermel made a live introduction to Sparr's performance of Bermel's "Ritornello." The Dresser loved this composition that included the CounterPoint strings. Especially engaging was the counter play between strings and electric guitar in a passage that Bermel said was Corelli-Vivaldi meets King Crimson. This passage also made the Dresser think of the Argentine milonga--slow at points and moody.

In Meredith Davies Hadaway's poem "Afterthought," the reader is asked to consider the vibration music leaves in the room after the bow leaves the strings of the violin and then one step further, the silence. This is about impressions marked in the brain after the concert ends and how to extend those impressions without letting everyday noise of birdcall and traffic interfere. The Dresser will apply Hadaway's stream of thought to hold onto Sparr's "Superstring Serenade" and the thought he invested in shaping his Atlas program.

AFTERTHOUGHT

Like the ringing after cadence
when the bow lifts off the violin

and the room holds one last
breath of spruce and rosin--

silence makes its own music, louder
than the brush of fingertips, a sudden swell.

"Longing," in its origin means "to make long."

Turn out the light, and let us see
if we can stretch the dark until the morning din of

bird call and traffic fails
to wake us.

Meredith Davies Hadaway
from The River Is a Reason

Copyright © 2011 Meredith Davies Hadaway

Synetic's retelling of Romeo and Juliet cuts out more than half of Shakespeare's cast and moves from dream sequence to the Capulet Family masked ball crashed by Romeo and his friend Mercutio. Romeo and Juliet meet, fall for each other, pledge their love in the moonlit balcony scene though Juliet is betrothed to Paris. Friar Laurence ties the knot on their secret marriage. Juliet's cousin Tybalt kills Mercutio and Romeo slays Tybalt to avenge his friend's death. Then things get messy when the Friar gives Juliet a sleeping potion that feigns her death. The Friar's letter telling Romeo about the plan to set them free of their familys' feud and Juliet's betrothal goes missing (the letter is stuck to the pendulum of time) and Romeo believe Juliet is dead so he drinks poison. When Juliet awakes, Romeo is dead beside her, so she kills herself with his knife.

The first thought in the Dresser's head about Synetic's Romeo and Juliet was steampunk based on Anastasia Simes' set of clock wheels and pendulum. Added to the physical set, the players spin their own clockwork wheels and become cogs in the system of time so that the audience sees only the wheels and not the people. In this day of digital clocks and watches, the analog clockworks of Synetic's set are the appropriate throwback in time for a Shakespearian play. Like steampunk, the Synetic interpretation suggests that people are trapped by man-made inventions and technology.

The Dresser doesn't think of Shakespearean characters as automatons obsessed by clocks, but an electronic search for the word time within the Elizabethan bard's script of Romeo and Juliet yielded 43 hits and the word hour yielded 26. Then toss in phrases like "The curfew-bell hath rung" and "this sight of death is as a bell," the alarm of time, punctuated by original music by Konstantine Lortkipanidze, is clearly present in Shakespeare's play about the young lovers who will meet untimely deaths.

Of course, steampunk is not the source of Tsikurishvili's inspiration. Georgians have an exoticism that might come from Byzantine, Persian, and Romani (gypsy) influence. However, the Dresser guesses, based on her brief look at Huntly Carter's ‪The new spirit in the Russian theatre, 1917-1928, that much of Synetic's large world vision and physical theater stems from Russian theatrical influences, including Constantin Stanislavski, that emphasize how the Industrial Revolution changed culture and mankind. But that change was not accomplished in the same way it changed Europe, because Russia missed out on the Renaissance and went from the oppression of medieval serfdom to the oppression of factory life during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Therefore in Synetic's world, the characters and the actors creating these rough-and-ready characters are not as burdened by the societal limitations on behavior as those created by in European theater. Two Synetic characters that stand out in this way are Romeo's friend Mercutio (played by Philip Fletcher) and Juliet's Nurse (Irina Tsikurishvili).

The Dresser continues to walk around with two scenes in her head, one involving Mercutio rolling up from the floor to stand face-to-face in uncomfortable close proximity to Juliet's hostile cousin Tybalt (Ryan Sellers) and the other when Nurse has a bawdy encounter with the lascivious Mercutio and she ends up shoving him and then riding him like a horse. In both scenes, these characters seem more sprung from a wild circus environment versus a sophisticated society where rules of etiquette and politics prevail. Still, both of these characters participate in social graces. Nurse, especially, as she grooms Juliet to look her best and helps her with politically fraught issues involving Juliet's parents and Paris, the man the Capulets want their daughter to marry. Mercutio knows the consequences of brawling and Montegues treading on Capulet territory, but he wants his best friend Romeo to be happy.

Particularly appealing are the interactions between Romeo (Alex Mills) and Juliet (Natalie Berk). They make it clear that this is an unusual attraction between them in that they are both scared in what seems a very innocent way having nothing to do with the feuding of their families. Their hands become birds or butterflies in expressing the airiness of how they feel toward one another.

In a stream of action completed without intermission, Synetic's Romeo and Juliet is a great way to see Shakespeare pared down to its essence. The Dresser would go out of her way to see this show again.

In "The Verbs of Desiring," Renée Ashley talks about a "tongue that speaks body," the "kettle-of-fish-that-turned-your-heart," the "body's dead-end," and the "noun of circumstance" illustrated as "where-is-she-now." These phrases catch the essence of Synetic's Romeo and Juliet, which is about what the heart desires--the action of love.

THE VERBS OF DESIRING

How tired the self is of self, its earth twirling in the air and
not-air and I know a woman who ate only bread until
..........................................................................................she died
of bread. Oh the where-is-she-now. Which is not a question.
Which is a noun of circumstance.
.........................................................And disquietude: lovely
word. And hairsbreadth. Stupor mundi. Kettle-of-fish-that-
turned-your-heart.
.................................You are returning from an alphabet ran-
sacked by thirst, by the gamut of implication neatly sung:
a tongue that speaks
.......................................body. A punctuated earth. You who are
resolute of hungry brutes and fooled by the beggar's bowl of
moon, tide of scat, of pellet and flop
..............................................................and the body's dead-
end is an assured apostrophe.
....................................................There are more ways to mean
than you can make note of.
.................................................Look! Something is pretty in the sky
-- it might just be the sky -- though installation's been askant.
Or what it sits upon is opposed to the level eye.
.................................................................................A panoply of
possibilities --
.............................all those bears pirouetting in your penthouse!
Oh if it or they were only.
...............................................Or if you. And, or if I.

Renée Ashley
from The Verbs of Desiring

Copyright © 2010 Renée Ashley

Photo credit: Graeme B. Shaw

The assembly of musicians and singers for this work was awesome, a huge job for any conductor and stage director (James Robinson) to manage. However, it was apparent that Maestro Alsop loved the challenge and conducted an orderly and exciting concert. To understand the richness of musical texture, have a look at the orchestral makeup. The composition calls for an orchestra consisting of two flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes, E flat clarinet, B flat clarinet, bass clarinet, three E flat saxophones, three bassoons, contrabassoon, D trumpet, three B flat trumpets, three trombones, bass trombone or tuba, two pianos, celesta, timpani, two percussion players (bass drum, cymbals, rattle, side drum, tamtam, tenor drum, triangle, woodblock), ondes Martenot (played by guest artist Cynthia Millar) and strings. Add to this array of exotic sound the Morgan State University Choir, the Peabody-Hopkins Chorus, the Peabody Children's Chorus, and the Concert Artists of Baltimore. The finishing figures were actors Caroline Dhavernas (as Jeanne d'Arc--Joan of Arc) and Ronald Guttman (Brother Dominic) and featured singers soprano Tamara Wilson (The Virgin), soprano Hae Ji Chang (Marguerite), mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor (Catherine), tenor Timothy Fallon (Porcus), and bass Morris Robinson.

The libretto, which is in French but included English surtitles, is organized in eleven scenes. It follows a cinematic flashback path that includes a fantastic trial conducted by barnyard animals and a royal card game for the possession of Joan. Although the audience knows the terrible outcome of the story--that Joan will be burned at the stake, the tension builds throughout the scenes. Poetic lines that caught the Dresser's attention: "I myself will be a pretty candle." "This great flame is to be my bridal gown." "Is not Joan a great flame?" Lighting effects add to Joan's final scenes where she seems to be on fire and a transcendent spirit.

This program, which only had two performances in Baltimore, was also performed once at New York City's Carnegie Hall on November 19. Because of the successful blend of musical styles, poetry, and storytelling, the Dresser pronounces this concert the most compelling voice and music production she has seen in 2011.

In Yoko Danno's book trilogy & Hagoromo: A Celestial Robe, the emphasis is on a captured female figure who, unlike Joan of Arc, is not human, but forced to dwell among humans on earth. These fragmentary excerpts resonate with the emotional load delivered by the music of Arthur Honegger and the poetry of Paul Claudel in Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher.

SCENE SIX: A STONE

through
the
tight

air,

burning
and
glowing,

a stone falls

to
the
earth

at
rending

speed

SCENE SEVEN: A TREMBLING SHADOW

the wind
tears

the willow's
slender branches off

its trunk:

the ruffled
lake

reflects

a trembling
shadow
of

fear

SCENE EIGHT: A FLASH OF LIGHTNING

pregnant

clouds
gather round

the sun:

the darkening
sky

is split

by
a flash
of lightning

at birth

of
a bird

Yoko Danno
from trilogy & Hagoromo: A Celestial Robe

Copyright © 2010 Yoko Danno

What pleased? What displeased the Washington, DC audience that is usually too eager to show their appreciation? The cast pleased, especially and rightly so, the singing of Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu playing Lucia's lover Edgardo and American soprano Sarah Coburn playing Lucia, but apparently the director's interpretation, which made Lucia a girl toy to her cruel, maybe incestuously attracted, brother Enrico played by American baritone Michael Chioldi, angered a large portion of the audience.

For the Dresser's part, since her preference is for contemporary opera, everything about this Donizetti opera originally premiered in 1835 drew her in. The cast was outstanding. Take note that this casts sings only three more times November 13 matinee, 15, and 18. The black and white sets and costumes make an impressive metaphoric statement--something is horribly wrong with the landscape and people who populate it. Most importantly the direction added a new layer of attention.

Librettist Salvadore Cammarano based his libretto on Sir Walter Scott's novel The Bride of Lammermoor that depicts a brother in debt forcing his sister to forsake her true love to marry for money but she loses her mind and kills the unwanted groom with a knife. To the foundation story, Alden magnifies the brother-sister relationship. The most telling scene is where the brother, in her bedroom--a room stilled filled with toys, sits on her bed stroking a doll and says to his sister she must marry Lord Arturo Buklaw (American tenor Corey Evan Rotz). What cinches the concept of the brother-as-predator is that he helps put Lucia in her wedding dress and he does this with another man.

How Alden frames the story is masterful. As the curtain goes up and the overture plays under the baton of Philippe Auguin, Lucia sleeps fitfully in a narrow bed whose railed head- and footboards look like a prison. Pretty soon the huge windows of her sleeping chamber are framed with men peering in and eventually prying open the windows and entering in this unorthodox fashion. Alden uses framing in another way too. He puts Lucia on a curtained stage high above the floor where initially she dangles her feet as she sits on the edge talking to her companion Alisa (American mezzo-soprano Sarah Mesko) and waiting for Edgardo to appear for a late night secret meeting. When she jumps down from the stage landing on all four limbs, one notices she is dressed as a child. Her skirt does not cover her ankles like Alisa's. Later this stage, with curtains pulled aside, becomes the matrimonial bedroom where Lucia has murdered Arturo.

Did Alden get this angry reception when he premiered this production in London for the English National Opera? The Dresser wasn't in London in 2008 to know.

The bottom line for the Dresser is anything David Alden directs would be worth experiencing, because she is bound not to like what those booing in the Kennedy Center's opera house prefer.

Like Alden's Lucia, the woman in B. K. Fischer's poem "Paperweight Museum" is a sex toy who lives in a world she does not seem able to escape.

PAPERWEIGHT MUSEUM

The girl goes walking in the city
and the storm begins, snow settling
on garlanded façades, taxicabs,
her coat. A world full of water
with a teaspoon of air at the top.
Bubbles blown in with syringes
while glass is still molten, a knife
plunged into multi-colored sand.

She has a bunny tail and bustier,
Tweety Bird eyes. If you shake her,
she disrobes; when the sediment
settles, the catsuit's on again. She
lives in a place where there are no
cypress trees, no Roman ramparts.
Interior figures are acrylic, lit
from a bulb in the melamine base.

The girl stays in bed long after
the lover has left. Props herself
against the cheap veneer. Lamps
are brass and bolted down, curtains
drawn with a cord on a pulley
that swings free. In the last gasp,
the lover looked away from her
flesh, as from a needle stick.

The girl is getting up now, opens
the window. Papers blow across
the bureau--map, take-out menu,
missive to herself on waking. Heavy
odor of workshirt, menthol cigarettes.
She looks around for something to
hold it all down--lead-crystal apple,
bronzed baby shoes, a rock from

the grave of Elvis. Just not a globe,
please not a globe, a little world.

B. K. Fischer
from Mutiny Gallery

Copyright © 2011 B. K. Fischer

From these panelists, the Dresser gathered these words and phrases to define the musical predilections of Ives: fixed on textures and tempos, obsessed with improvisation and revision, love of fragments and unfinished music, liking massive chords and complex sonorities, inspired by literature (e.g. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau), dealing with subliminal music. The Dresser believes the reference to subliminal music is wrapped up with the term sonic exuvation, an expression Nicolas Slonimsky, an early interpreter of Ives, used to describe how Ives overlays a tranquil passage of music with a temporary outburst of sound that may be dissonant and unexpected. Ives used this technique in "The Unanswered Question."

What continues to surprise audiences about "The Unanswered Question" is the separation of the four flutes and trumpet from the orchestra on stage, which plays a lyrical passage. In the Strathmore concert hall and in keeping with what Ives intended, the flutes played their shrill lines from the balcony positioned close to the orchestra while the trumpet, adding another layer of dissonance, played from a balcony at the back of the auditorium. A possible interpretation of the instrument separation is the voice of nature in the lyric lines of the instruments on stage, the questioning voices of mankind in the flutes, and the voice of God in the trumpet. Ives called this work a "cosmic drama."

To the Dresser's mind, the point of the Project was to answer as many questions as possible about Charles Ives (1874-1954), a composer whose work speaks to contemporary classical music, but was under appreciated in its time and still is. Before the Dresser loses sight of this comparison, Ives to classical music seems to beg comparison with Gertrude Stein to literature. Both born in the Northeast United Sates in 1874 and schooled in New England (she studied with Harvard professors and he with Yale), they each broke significant ground with experimentation that combined elements of high and low art and each were marginalized by their critics. Both had to self promote but both have come into the 21st century as major influencers on 20th century and contemporary experimental artists. Undoubtedly, Stein was better at getting the public to pay attention to her, though what she got was notoriety and not appreciation. Joseph Horowitz, inspired by a letter written by the composer's daughter Edith Ives, realized that it was important to present "Ives the man and Ives the composer," which Horowitz accomplished by putting actors on stage during his Ives Project. During the "Life in Music" concert, actors Carolyn Goetzer and Floyd King both narrated and assumed the voices of the composer and his beloved wife Harmony Twitchell. The audience heard their voices through these actors--Harmony addressing Charles as "My Dearest Anything-Everything" and Charles calling her his "Best Beloved."

Ives wrote over 175 songs and so the introductory Project concert offered songs that were both accessible and challenging. Some of the songs sport words by the composer and seem like compositions typical of the early American musical except the music often follows a complicated rhythmic pattern or some other quirkiness. For example is his text to "The Circus Band," which seems to offer contemporary turns of phrase in the last two lines.

THE CIRCUS BAND (1894)

All summer long, we boys
Dreamed 'bout big circus joys!
Down Main Street, comes the band,

Oh! Ain't it a grand and glorious noise!


Horses are prancing, knights advancing,
Helmets gleaming, pennants streaming,

Cleopatra's on her throne! 

That golden hair is all her own. 


Where is the lady all in pink? 

Last year she waved to me I think, 

Can she have died? Can that rot! 

She is passing but she sees me not.

With the confident piano accompaniment of Jeremy Denk, Baritone William Sharp was fun to hear and watch as he gave musical and dramatic interpretation to such songs as "The Circus Band" and "Memories," a composition that includes whistling and quickly delivered and repeated tongue-twisting words as "expectancy and ecstasy." Included in these accessible songs was "Feldeinsamkeit," (1897) a rather Romantically-inspired song with exuberant arpeggios where the young Ives was trying to best Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) who also wrote a song of this title based on the words of Herman Almers. The programming included the Brahms version (1878) allowing the Strathmore audience to compare the two compositions. The Dresser was surprised at how conservative the Brahms song sounded relative to the free flowing emotionality of the Ives version. However, the Dresser assumes that the difference in their ages (Brahms was 45 to Ives' 26 years) at the time of composing these songs played heavily into their respective approaches.

In addition to the songs, "Majority" (1921) brought on stage the Georgetown University Concert Choir along with its director, Professor Frederick Binkholder and a pianist playing a baby grand located behind the immense concert grand that Denk played. To add to the uniqueness of this choral piece that made the Dresser think of intergalactic space travel (think sci-fi film soundtrack), the pianist played a series of tone clusters. At first the Dresser thought the pianist was suddenly switching from fingers to elbows, but when the Dresser got into position to see across the crowded stage, she realized the pianist was using her forearm to make this jarring sound. The Dresser also admires the strength of the composer's words in this text, which shows his democratic and Transcendental view of the world.

MAJORITY (1921)

The Masses! The Masses!
The Masses have toiled, 

Behold the works of the World! 

The Masses are thinking, 

Whence comes the thought of the World! 

The Masses are singing, 

Whence comes the Art of the World! 

The Masses are yearning, 

Whence comes the hope of the World! 

The Masses are dreaming, 

Whence comes the visions of God!
God's in His Heaven, 

All will be well with the World!

The balance of the program was instrumental pieces that included: "In the Inn," "The Housatonic at Stockbridge," "Largo Cantabile," "Over the Pavements," "General Booth Enters into Heaven," and "The Alcotts" (from the Concord Piano Sonata). What's always remarkable about Ives is his variety of sound. The Dresser while engaged in hearing all the concert selections, particularly enjoyed "Over the Pavements" for its rhythmic richness and "The Alcotts" for the virtuosity of Jeremy Denk's performance of this sweet lyric composition. It was also a great pleasure to hear once again "The Unanswered Question" in its entirety as the closing piece. The Dresser looks forward to hearing more Ives and better understanding the music of those like John Adams touched by the extraordinary range of Charles Ives.

So how is a frog in goggles, never mind a super frog, involved in a play called after the quake. The quick answer is that Frog has broken into the apartment of a banker named Katagiri (played by Maboud Ebrahimzadeh) to enlist his help in stopping an earthquake in Tokyo that will be bigger than the one that has already occurred in Kobe. Frog's story is based on Murakami's short story "super-frog saves tokyo." The Dresser assures you, Dear Reader, that Murakami does not use capitalization for his titles.

Where does Frog fit into the other story, "honey pie"? Actually, "honey pie" is the anchoring story. It revolves around Junpei (Daniel J. Corey), a man with two dominant loves: writing fictional stories and Sayoko (Jennifer Ayn Knight), the woman with whom he and Takatsuki, his best friend from college became inseparable college buds. Much to Junpei's silent dismay, Takatsuki makes the first move on Sayoko. She becomes his wife and the mother their child Sala (Megan Graves). The play opens with Junpei telling Sala a bedtime story about a honey bear that makes pies. Four years old, Sala has problems getting to sleep and she is often visited by an imaginary character she calls the Earthquake Man. Earthquake Man in the Dresser's mind is the opposite of save-Tokyo Frog. Sala says Earthquake Man has a small box for everyone and he is waiting with the lid open.

Cleverly, Galati has one actor play Takatsuki and Katagiri. Both of these characters are at heart loners with tough-as-nails emotional hides. In the Rorschach Theatre production, director Randy Baker emphasizes this dual role-playing in the list of Cast and Characters written in the theater's printed program. He omits noting that Frog also plays Narrator and Sayoko also plays Nurse, the nurse who attends Katagiri at the end of the super frog story.

By this time, you might have guessed that Takatsuki is not around when Sayoko and Sala need him so Sayoko calls on Junpei, who is willing to put aside his writing and help out the only woman he really loves. Another thing you might have guessed is that the super frog story is one that Junpei is writing.

What doesn't always work so well with Galati's tight-to-the-original-texts adaption is that there is a bit too much narration. This slows down the action. A challenge for this story-within-a story play is how to effectively stage the stories so that the audience knows when the stories are alternating. It seems right that Baker uses a theater-in-the-round setup so that Frog and Katagiri don't get mixed up with Narrator and Takatsuki. However, the Dresser kept falling out of the story magic because of the bright lighting that kept her aware of the audience surrounding the players.

Nonetheless, the Dresser was pleased to be introduced to Rorschach Theatre housed at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, the work of Rorschach's artistic director Randy Baker (his hanging props were an inspired way to bring new interest to ordinary things like making tea), and the writing of Haruki Murakami. After the play, the Dresser read Murakami's short story collection of the same name. These thematically linked stories (all are set after the 1995 Kobe earthquake) with recurring things like bears, frogs, odd trios of friends, and people and boxes with empty centers enhanced the experience of Galati's adaption.

While still attending to the things of this world, Margo Stever's poem "Entering the Box" magnifies the terror little Sala has over Earthquake Man's box.

ENTERING THE BOX

The mind can fill a dank
four-sided darkness
with ticks and sighs.
Nothing turns to something.
Breath knocks against hollow walls
like the hunched unveiled women
who gossip at the open market
and bat their canes at flies.

All my life I've worked
to rid this box of heat,
cold, light, sound,
to have no sense
but bacteria multiply
and anoint dark bread.
Green spores spread
an infected kingdom
over the floorboards.

Even with nothing here,
the telephone next door
rings on and on.
Tennis balls chop
on an asphalt court.
Hammers strike wood
again and again.
An electric saw
alarms mockingbirds into silence.

Margo Stever
from Frozen Spring

Copyright © 2002 Margo Stever

Photo of Sala: C. Stanley Photography

The quick profile: Mabou Mines DollHouse, complete with an oversized piano keyboard and live pianist at the front of the stage, is like avant-gardist Laurie Anderson meets Harriet Beecher Stowe's Simon Legree whipping Uncle Tom. The Habit of Art is Alan Bennett meets Monty Python.

As to the serious--the living doll of DollHouse--Nora (Maude Mitchell)--throws off the shackles of a husband (Kristopher Medina as Torvald Helmer) who has minimized her (the last scene is a whopper opera spectacle that makes Nora's rejection of her husband nakedly literal) while the known and unknown artists of Bennett's play, poet W. H. Auden and composer Benjamin Britten and the thespians who play these roles, confront end-of-life issues as they try to continue to do their creative work.

Both plays live in the Post-Modern consciousness--or should the Dresser say self-consciousness--of plays that keep reminding the audience that they are watching a play. DollHouse works on a fantastic (as in fantasia) version of the 19th century melodrama where characters lack psychological depth. For director-playwright Lee Breuer, the brains behind this masterful adaptation of Ibsen, the two-dimensional landscape of this storytelling is ratcheted up by the women being twice the height of the men who are real life dwarves (the preferred term is little people) and by pervasive traditional and non-traditional puppetry. Nontraditional puppetry included the lowering of beautifully sculpted curtains set to a musical score, the lowering and release of large white panels with written messages, a cuckoo in a clock, the balletic lifting of little people and children by stage hands dressed in black.

The Habit of Art is a play within a play where the lines blur between the old actor Fitz (Ted van Griethuysen) and his part as the elderly poet Auden in a play entitled Caliban's Day. Separate stage realities show Fitz rehearsing the role of Auden versus Henry (Paxton Whitehead) as an initially unintroduced, still youthful Britten working with a boy soprano (Sam O'Brien) on the composer's last opera Death in Venice. On top of this are the visits of Auden's biographer (Cameron Folmar as Donald who plays Humphrey Carpenter) and Auden's rent boy (Randy Harrison) as well as the struggles going on between the stage manager Kay (Margaret Daly), the assistant stage Manager George (Matt Dewberry), the playwright of Caliban's Day and the actors, who have gathered in a rehearsal room of London's National Theatre.

Both plays present their challenges for American audiences in understanding the lines that are being delivered. DollHouse goes for a patois that mixes in a few simple Norwegian words: takk (thank you), nei (no), and ja (yes) along with broken English with a Norwegian inflection. Also, Nora effects high and low voices (reminiscent of what Laurie Anderson does with her electronically altered voices). Nora's voices indicate her submissive wife personality versus her awakened self. Although a subtitles marquee was operating on one side of the stage, the Dresser could not make out the words from her rear orchestra seat and was happy enough with her own ability to hear and understand the words. The Habit of Art, being a drawing room comedy suitable for a small theater like Studio's Metheny Theatre, indulges in that British repartee that goes by fast and includes references that are unfortunately unfamiliar to most Americans. Take, for example, the mention of Spitting Images, a British television show running 1984 to 1996 that used puppets to satirize British and American politics. The Dresser would have missed this reference had not her seatmate brought it to her attention. However, these kind of references inhibited understanding and while there were people laughing at what the Dresser's seatmate called secret code for the in-crowd, there were those who tipped-toed out of the theater or did not return after the intermission. And by the way, this happened in the Eisenhower Theater too where many seats previously occupied for DollHouse were empty after the intermission.

In Philip Metres poem "Oil Rig Origami," the poet constructs a paper model of an oil rig that fell down. In both Mabou Mines DollHouse and The Habit of Art, things put on paper cause the protagonists much angst. In DollHouse, Nora is being driven crazy by the promissory note that her lender holds. She borrowed money to take her husband on a life-saving vacation and she forged her father's signature. The lender Nils Krogstad (Nic Novicki) who works for Nora's husband threatens to reveal her indiscretion if she does not help him keep his job. In The Habit of Art, Fitz is having trouble remembering his lines and suggests to the stage manager that he would like to hold a book while he talks. Kay says she knows he just wants a crib sheet, but she assures him that he can learn his lines. Then there is that blank page that both Auden and Britten face as writers.

OIL RIG ORIGAMI

[On February 15, 1982, the supposedly unsinkable
oil rig Ocean Ranger came down in the Grand
Banks off Newfoundland when a wave punctured
a porthole killing all 84 crew members.]

Its platform twice the size of a football field,
[fold here] solid as the Parthenon, held
by eight massive supporting columns [fold here],
still could not save it in the storm [fold here].

One who survived a different rig collapse:
"I felt my insides were made of paper,
very white paper. I would walk slow, in case
in case something might rip inside." [Fold here]

Warning: this is only a paper model.
In Galveston TX, [fold here], you can go aboard
and see what it's like to work on a real

drilling rig. You can visit the living quarters,
mess and rec rooms, [fold here], control board,
engine room [fold here] [fold here] [fold here]

Philip Metres
from Ode to Oil

Copyright © 2011 Philip Metres






Photo of Maude Mitchell and Kristopher Medina in Mabou Mines DollHouse by Richard Termine

Photo of Ted van Griethuysen and Randy Harrison in The Habit of Art
 by Scott Suchman

Having accrued 79 Helen Hayes nominations and received 21 Helen Hayes awards, Synetic has forged alliances with the Kennedy Center (in 2006, Synetic began its five-year partnership with The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to produce one show per season) and The Shakespeare Theatre Company (producing an adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra at STC's Lansburgh Theatre). It also offers a number of its productions for touring engagements. In 2010, Synetic secured permanent space in Crystal City, Virginia.

So far, the Dresser has seen Synetic's productions of The Master and Margarita, King Lear, and on October 2, 2011, Macbeth, which is part of Synetic's Speak No More Silent Shakespeare Festival. Macbeth ran September 14 to October 2, Othello runs October 19 to November 6, and Romeo and Juliet runs November 25 to December 23.

Synetic's Macbeth, which premiered in January 2007, was nominated for 11 Helen Hayes awards and received 5 in 2008 including:
Outstanding Resident Play

Outstanding Director, Paata Tsikurishvili

Outstanding Choreography, Irina Tsikurishvili

Outstanding Sound Design, Irakli Kavsadze and Paata Tsikurishvili

Outstanding Supporting Actor, Philip Fletcher













This current production, which just closed, featured Irakli Kavsadze as Macbeth, Irina Tsikurishvili as Lady Macbeth, and Philip Fletcher as the male witch. Each brought tremendous energy and power to their performances. What's interesting about Synetic's interpretation of Macbeth is that you did not have to know Shakespeare's extensive list of players (Macduff, his lady, their children, Banquo, Duncan, Malcolm, Ross -and Tsikurishvili and his writing partner Nathan Weinberger have cut out some of the more minor characters) to enjoy this ninety-minute show. The five acts, without intermission, go by seamlessly in one remarkable scenario after the other.

Perhaps, one could argue that the first scene with three clerics--Jewish, Muslim, and Christian--holding aloft a large globe of our planet sets the bar of excellence for the entire production. Of course it helps if you know Shakespeare's play, especially if one knows the witches chant, which reveals why the clerics preside in the opening scene.

Otherwise what you, Dear Reader missed, was the breath-taking entrances and exits of the witches from their manholes, an army with flashlights that the Dresser associates with the Gestapo in WWII (this must be some film or nightmare influence), the crown tango between Macbeth and his Lady, Lady Macbeth and the long knives she hid in her boots, the fluid but brutal fight scenes and murders, the puppet banquet that Macbeth as king conducts, Lady Macbeth gone mad. The photos say it best.

WITCHES CHANT

Round about the cauldron go:
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first I' the charmed pot.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blindworm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing.
For charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd I' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangl'd babe,
Ditch-deliver'd by the drab,--
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For ingrediants of our cauldron.
Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron, bubble.

William Shakespeare
from Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1

Nellie McKay opened. Thirty minutes, eight and a quarter songs mixing her originals (e.g. "I Wanna Get Married" and "Adios") with oldies like "Don't Fence Me In" and "If I Had You." She entered, curtsied in a dimly lit corner of the stage, and seated herself between an organ and piano with her back to the audience--this keyboard arrangement was set up for Peyroux's keyboard man Gary Versace. Before she started to set the keys on fire with "Toto Dies"--she's a remarkably outstanding pianist, she turned to the audience and said deadpan, "I hope the back of my hair looks OK." By the second song, it was clear when the audience laughed at her Danielle Steele line from satiric "I Wanna Get Married" in Get Away from Me, a standout double album released in 2004 as her first album

I wanna get married
Yes, I need a spouse
I want a nice Leave it to Beaverish
Golden retriever and a little white house
I wanna get married
I need to cook meals
I wanna pack you cute little lunches
For my Brady bunches
Then read Danielle Steele

that this audience had never paid attention to her lyrics before or possibly did not know her work.

At song three, "Mother of Pearl," she emerged from the shadows to stand in a spot at a mic. She played her ukulele. Then the Dresser could see her bouffant black skirt and greenish sparkly top, but also her dance antics, which she has honed for this particular song of social criticism. Here's a video of this song done live at the 92nd Street in New York City.

Most folks who have heard her music--and maybe unaware that they did so on such TV shows as Weeds, Grey's Anatomy, NCIS, and Nurse Jackie--probably don't know she is or has been a sometimes actor and stand-up comedian. In 2006, McKay played Polly Peachum in the Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera and she won a Theatre World Award for that role.

In song four "Adios" from her latest album Home Sweet Mobile Home, she turned serious, but how she delivers serious borders on hysterics in her giddy language of "hypocrite heathens," "rinky-dink Eden," and "Frankenstein lady," an allusion the Dresser guesses to be the gothic novel's author Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley.

If time runs like a river
I saw my people bathed in blood
And if the faithful find the sinners
I'll have to leave all I loved

(Adios)
Goodbye, O hypocrite heathens
(Adios)
Goodbye, O false paradise
(Adios)
Goodbye, O rinky-dink Eden
And may you lie yourselves to sleep
Tonight

We're marching through the madness
With not a soul about to see
We're moving through the fortress
Chasing the ghosts of anarchy

(Adios)
Goodbye, my Frankenstein lady
(Adios)
Goodbye, O pagan delights
(Adios)
Goodbye, and good riddance, baby
And may you lie yourselves to sleep
Tonight

She also performed "Beneath the Underdog," (also from Home Sweet Mobile Home) which is dedicated to Troy Davis, the convicted killer of a police officer and the man recently executed by the state of Georgia. The song, which includes the lines "I found a kind of friend in you/It wasn't pleasant all the time," seems to refer not to the man who was on death row, but to her interest in animals, especially her own dog. "So settin' off from this hill camp / I'd rather be her little tramp / My own companion / Or maybe with one whose tail is waggin' "

In ending her concert with "The Dog Song," she reaffirmed how her pet gives stability to her life. However, she also did something else to cap her performance and that was to answer a request for "Happy Flower" from an audience member (presumably not a ringer). Her first reaction was to say comically, that she didn't know her own music and therefore couldn't do the song spontaneously, but she rethought the request and worked in a couple of stanzas as an impromptu introduction to "The Dog Song."

Then without fanfare and taking a little bow, again in the same dimly lit corner of the stage without any spotlight, she left the stage. Had the Dresser not heard Nellie McKay at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, January 23, 2006, the Dresser would suspect the authenticity of this performance. The Dresser would also be furious with Madeleine Peyroux for trying to diminish her warm up act who should have been given more time on stage. However, McKay knew what she was doing and most of what she does is part of her act.

As the featured artist taking 90 minutes, Madeleine Peyroux performed something over a dozen songs with Gary Versace on keyboards, Barak Mori on bass, and Darren Beckett on drums. She said upfront that she intended to have fun with this group of musicians and intimated that she would be jamming with them. Like McKay, she sang a mix of original songs new and old but also a couple of songs in French. She opened with a signature Bessie Smith song "Don't Cry Baby" and closed with Alfred Newman's "Smile though your heart is aching." Her encore was Josephine Baker's "J'ai Deux Amours." For the Dresser, Peyroux hit the arc of her performance when Gary Versace with a melodica and the other musicians formed a semi-circle with her to do a song one could imagine hearing on a corner in France (singing on street corners in Paris is how she started) followed by "Don't Pick a Fight with Poet," a catchy song with a Latin beat from her latest album Standing on the Rooftop.

Overall, Peyroux's stylized bluesy singing that features emotionally charged glissandos paired with clarity of enunciation was consistently evident in this concert but lacked a vital spark of energy. Therefore her performance of Elliott Smith's "Drink up Baby," Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain," and her own songs "Standing on the Roof Top," "The Things I've Seen Today," and "Don't Wait Too Long" (these songs preceded Newman's "Smile," the last song of the performance) all seemed to be at the same level of intensity and without differentiating verve.

Don't get the Dresser wrong, she would drop everything and run the next time the opportunity comes up to hear Madeleine Peyroux--only not in a big place, maybe a dark cramped club would be so much better for this singer-songwriter who puts on no airs, except in the way she breathes.

DON'T PICK A FIGHT WITH A POET

'When you're walking on the street,
and the people that you meet,
make you want to start a big fight,
'cause they talk as if they're so right.
There is one thing to remember,
in case you haven't heard:
You can kill a mighty emperor,
but you cannot smite a word.

So, don't pick a fight with a poet.
Don't raise your hand on a whim.
Whether it's wrong or it's right,
there's a lesson in life,
and to learn it, you have to give in,
cause the poet knows you can't win.

When you're twitching at the bar,
No one knows who you are,
and you want to prove them all wrong,
you think you are so strong.
You can try to make them listen.
You can try to be the boss,
but the storyteller is the one
who calls the toss.

So, don't pick a fight with a poet.
Don't raise your hand on a whim.
Whether it is wrong or it's right,
Whether it's wrong or it's right
there'll be a lesson tonight,
and to learn it you'll have to give in,
'cause a poet knows you can't win.

Over there in the corner with a Cheshire grin
making rhyme out of broken hearts
cryin' the hymn.
And two tokes from a good time,
a toast away from fist flying,
congregating the world
with a paper and pen.

Don't pick a fight with a poet.
Don't raise your hand on a whim.
Whether it's wrong or right,
there's a lesson in life,
and to learn it, you'll have to give in,
cause a poet knows, you can't win.'

Lyrics by Madeleine Peyroux & Andy Scott Rosen

Copyright © 2011 Pennywell Productions, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Nellie McKay

WHEN COMEDY IS FRAUGHT

This particular short makes the Dresser think of a story her friend Madam Mayo tells about Paul Bowles who wanted her to understand that he got the meaning of her expletive use of the word gross! Oh, he said, would gross be like the time I was eating in some dark hut only to find I had maggots crawling off the food onto my face? The Dresser thinks there should be a new film category called grossmedy, which might warn people like the Dresser to forego this so-called comic opportunity.

Of the eight films making up the DCS Showcase 3, there were two other comedies--first-time director Heather Scobie's Twisted Proverbs: Candle and Marc Carlini's Worn. Though carefully placed in the lineup of films to neutralize the horror of two particularly heavy stories--Leonids Geshichte and Tattoo (more on these two film soon), these comic shorts are what the Dresser would call fraught. Both films are loaded against a female player, which cranks up the emotional payload of the seventh Showcase 3 film Tattoo.

Probably if the two-minute Twisted Proverbs was played by itself, the Dresser would not give much thought to this tiny film where the punch line about the face of a Chinese man's wife looking like "the south end of a north-bound donkey" had more staying power than her actual face. On the other hand, the sixteen-minute Worn is the last film and in it a young woman agonizes over her promiscuous encounters with men as she stands in her closet trying to find a party dress that does not remind her what a wanton she is. Although the Dresser found the conceit of Worn interesting and realistic--women often have emotional behaviors about their clothing and shoes, the end of film was confusing. Wearing every day clothes, Emma tries to redeem the one good relationship she had only to find out that the ex-BF has moved on. He tells her to do what he did after she left him and that was to get in the car and drive away from the life in L.A. As the credits roll, Emma, all dressed up, is at the party her friend urged her to come to as a way to forget her bad feelings about herself. Or at least that's what the Dresser assumes, meaning the protagonist had not changed, that if she can't hook up again with the good boy friend, she'll continue to be a bad girl.

While labeled a drama, TGIF by Australian Brian Lien borders on comedy and seems companionable with Carlini's Worn. The story is about a young woman, out with her women friends, who is made aware that her new flame is in the same bar with her, but she is reluctant to let him know that. The Dresser sees this story as a reverse stalking tale. The young woman doesn't want the new BF to think she is stalking him, but as she leaves he starts texting her until she realizes he sees her. At ten minutes, the Dresser thought this pretty effective short not quite short enough.

OF RADIATION & ANGEL MONSTERS

Leonids Geshichte (Leonid's Story) by German directors Rainer Ludwigs and Tetyana Chernyavska and Os anjos do meio da praça (The Angels in the Middle of the Square) by Brazilian directors Alé Camargo and Camila Carrossine are animations. However Leonids Geshichte mixes real people and scenery with drawings that shimmer the characters into action. Leonid's story concerns the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. While the nineteen-minute film starts like a happily-ever-after story about a man and wife who want a better life for themselves and their family, it becomes a painful account of what happens to their health as they were exposed to the radiation. The Dresser found the animation format an effective way to tell this modern-day calamity.

Os anjos do meio da praça is a colorful fairy tale that has a Harry Potter feel to it. Three angels in one, or one angel with three faces, (take your pick) fights with a fiery flying dragon and is wounded. The angel falls to earth and splits into three beings. The people of the town where the trinity angel falls build a cage over this set of creatures. On the sideline is a little boy with a conscience who watches all of this. While the angels won't eat human food, they accept boxes of the townspeople's unrealized dreams and in consuming these festering wants and desires, the angels become monsters. The boy grows up and bravely frees the trinity. Magically he becomes a boy again. This film feeds the stories of Tattoo and La Dernière Rondelle.

In first time director David Tomassini's La Dernière Rondelle, an older man who has been honored with a hockey award, possibly a lifetime award--the trophy reads "Une vie de Hockey"--goes out on the ice after all his teammates have left the arena to hit a line of pucks into the net. Standing outside the locker room door, his wife is wished good luck by one of her husband's teammates but she stops the man from saying more. Here the audience has been alerted that something is terribly wrong with the man who ends his lonely game naked in the shower crying. Fully clothed, his wife embraces him as the water continues to rain down on them and the film ends. The title of this Canadian film is translated into English as "The Last Time Around." Rondelle also means "puck." What's troubling about this ten-minute film is the program description, which reads, "After being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, an elderly man's wife offers him one last chance to be a great hockey player." No where could the Dresser discern any statement about a diagnosis for anything, let alone Alzheimer's, and the wife merely supports the husband who does not skate like an elderly man. Probably the Dresser would not have selected Showcase 3 without the interest in this particular film's descriptive notes. However, the film could have stood without such an introduction, though it might have been puzzling to some - raising questions about why he was crying in the shower and why his wife was so simpatico.

TATTOO HORROR SHOW

Tattoo by Finnish director Paul Helin pushed the Dresser right over the edge. She had intended to stay in the theater to see Showcase 4, but the shocking outcome of Tattoo created such a disconnect that beyond seeing the concluding short Worn, the Dresser was eager to put miles between herself and any more cinematic surprises as well as try to understand why the entire set of short films were so disturbing. While the DCS program guide called this sixteen-minute film a thriller, the description gave no clue about the dark nature of this story. Compare the DCS précis "Sometimes the tattoo you desperately want looks better on someone else" to what the LA Shorts Festival guide said, "An under-aged girl goes to a tattoo parlor to get her first tattoo from a shady skin-artist." The Dresser thinks that what the oral-surgeon-turned-tattoo-artist does to this young girl's back is in the same category of horror as the scene where Stieg Larsson's girl with the dragon tattoo exacts a tattoo revenge on the sadistic social worker under whose supervision she has been forced by the Swedish government. Wow, are those Scandinavians always so full of dark stories?

If the object of Festival Director Jon Gann was to create a reactive collection of shorts that would stay indelibly etched in memory, the Dresser will absolutely acknowledge that the goal was met and venture to say that there are filmgoers who like this kind of edgy mix. As for the Dresser, this set of films caused the same kind of reaction for her that her, so far, only visit to the Washington, DC Holocaust Museum caused--she was so glad to leave the traumatic experience behind.

In Jason Schneiderman's poem "Proposals for a Holocaust Memorial, on Display at MoMA," he attempts to get into the heads of the dead Holocaust victims. It is a poem that is both sensitive and outrageous. For the Dresser, this poem makes her feel exposed in the same way most of the DCS Showcase 3 films affected her.

PROPOSALS FOR A HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL,
ON DISPLAY AT MOMA
...At The Exhibit of Socially Conscious Art at MoMA,
...Spring 2001

I.
Is that my dead you speak of,
because I wish you'd stop.

I want it to be quiet now,
and not because they are speaking to me

(we don't even speak
the same language)

but because I want to think
about what they felt

and what they thought
when they were dying.

What would you think
if you were dying?

What would you say
if you were dying

like they did (so famously),
naked, starving?

You don't have
to have an answer.

II.
Blow up the Reichstag. Pave the Autobahn with cobblestone. Project images of the dead onto the retinas of the living and make them live with the dull scrim of death forever obscuring their vision. Have numbers tattooed onto the wrists of all the children born on a certain date, to be determined by lottery. Give them the number of a survivor--make that someone their godparent. Interrupt television to read the names of the dead. Read the names of the dead. Love the names of the dead.

by Jason Schneiderman
from Sublimation Point

Copyright © 2004 Jason Schneiderman

So as the Dresser thought more about the various elements of this performance that brought extensive cheers and clapping from the sellout crowd and how the featured and choral singers were moved interestingly and efficiently around the orchestra, which filled most of Lisner Auditorium's stage, she realized how much credit goes to Anthony Walker, who was not only the energetic conductor but also the artistic director. In other words, Walker was the lynchpin for all aspects of the production and he chose stand-out singers like bass-baritone John Relyea to play Attila and soprano Brenda Harris to play Odabella (the woman who kills Attila in this fictitious story about the notorious barbarian who sacked Rome).

Moreover, Maestro Walker is fascinating to watch. His passion is apparent as his left hand conveys a quivering shake or clenches into a fist to emphasize his direction. He also seems to care about every detail and was quite interactive with his singers, turning to them to make sure they were together with the orchestra. Of the twenty-five years that Washington Concert Opera has been presenting programs to Washington, DC audiences, Walker has been in his leadership role for ten. It shows and he attracts an audience every bit as passionate as he is.

Verdi's librettist for Attila was Temistocle Solera, who based the libretto on the play Attila, König der Hunnen by Zacharias Werner. Solera, who wrote libretti for five of Verdi's first nine operas, including Nabucco was known for his anti-Austrian resistance that manifests metaphorically in the story of Attila. The opera with a runtime of approximately two and a half hours includes a prologue and three acts totaling seven scenes. It is set in 454 A.D. in Northern Italy and opens after Attila and his Huns have conquered and plundered the town of Aquilea. In the ruins of the city, Attila meets and falls in love with the fearless Odabella. While he knows she is inhabitant of this town, he does not know she is the daughter of the Lord of Aquilea, whom Attila has slain. She, or course, is out for revenge, but she will play along with Attila's interest in her and even marry him to gain access.

Vocally, Brenda Harris gave a breath-taking performance as Odabella. The vocal gymnastics required of this role are demanding, but Harris seemed at ease and quite able to move between opposing emotional terrains requiring power or gentler reflective contrition. Harris seems to be the old school soprano who has perfected the vocal skills necessary for projection that requires no electronic support. Beyond her voice modulations, this performance gave no indication of her acting ability.

John Relyea's performance of Attila was notable for his ability to show the audience that he was in character. The way he held his entire body with his head thrown back gave force to his deep voice and satisfying performance. Compared to the other featured male singers who wore cutaway tuxedos, Relyea's longish brushed-back hair and dark suit with black shirt made him standout as the barbarian leader. What Relyea did to project Attila made a significant difference since all the other featured singers are male and most (except Uldino, played by tenor James Flora) belong to Odabella's camp or political way of thinking.

In John Bradley's poem "The Song of Judas," the story of love and betrayal pivot on uncontainable human desire. When Odabella tells Attila she wants her sword back, the smitten Hun gives her his, certainly a metaphoric symbol of his sexual desire for her.

THE SONG OF JUDAS

The laws of the desert
are such: we do not trust
the wakefulness of the owl,
the goat loose in the granary.
Here, let me sharpen your knife.
Have you seen that cockroach
your grandmother carved
from soap? The one who cuts
lilacs enters your beloved
on the riverbank, a towel
wrapped around her wet hair.
All night, Adeema and I
breathed the darkness in
and out through one another.
It hurts, but it only hurts
when I look up, to see
a small thing, a grasshopper,
a dirt road, fleeing us.

To be loved. Not by one.
And not by everyone.
On what does a doorframe
depend? A bit of tortoise
shell fell from the heights
of the cedar. What is it,
friend, you lost, there
in the tall grass? Judas,
someone calls, and he wakes,
and I with him. Whatever
the heart is, so is it
not the heart. A needle
clings to a certain stone.
Then, in a moment, lets go.

She was peeling a grape,
pregnant. For some reason
I bent down, and kissed her
belly. Through the cotton
of her blouse, I could feel her
breasts watching me. Passion
has but one cure. The stillness
after passion. A heated blade
laid on a cyst. Here. I
wanted, and I wanted, and
I want.

by John Bradley
from Love-in-idleness

Copyright © 1989 John Bradley

Photo credit: (head shot of Brenda Harris) Lisa Kohler
Photo credit: (shot of John Relyea) Dario Acosta

The as-yet untitled opera comes as a result of the largest single commissioning grant to a Canadian opera company by the Annenberg Foundation in connection with the philanthropic multimedia organization Explore. This grant of $250,000 was awarded to City Opera Vancouver, which in turn commissioned Canadian composer Tobin Stokes and Iraqi-American playwright and performance artist Heather Raffo. Both Stokes and Raffo have considerable success records. Stokes has had all kinds of commissions, writing not only for traditional music forums but also for television, film, and sporting events. Raffo is particularly known for her performance piece 9 Parts of Desire in which Raffo, both as author and performer, explores the lives of nine women who are either Iraqi or American Iraqi. The play has had multiple productions in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The untitled play--Raffo currently favors the title "Lose the Boy"--is based on the real life story of the American soldier Christian Ellis who returned from the Battle of Fallujah with a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The play has nine characters--five are American soldiers, three are Iraqis, and one is the protagonist's adopted mother Colleen. In Raffo's poetic rendition of Ellis' story, USMC Lance Corporal Philip Houston comes to know an Iraqi mother and her son Wissam. This mother and son play counterpoint to Philip's strained relationship with his adopted mother. The playwright's dilemma aired in the Georgetown University Gonda Theatre was whether to end the play with Philip killing Wissam or Wissam's mother. As audience members pointed out in the talkback session after hearing both endings, if Philip kills the son (the more expected action) than the opportunity for the mothers to sing a lamenting duet exists. If Philips kills Wissam's mother, the opera loses its only soprano. However, the death of the mother reverberates more strongly with the difficulty Philip experiences in communicating with his adopted mother after he comes home from Fallujah.

The Dresser does not know if the playwright resolved which ending suited her libretto best, but the process was quite interesting to watch and certainly whetted the Dresser's curiosity about the opera. Raffo said she expects the opera, which is slated for its world premiere in June 2012, will eventually have a United States premiere. The Dresser also notes that there seems to be an uptick in new operas about war. In September, San Francisco Opera presents the world premiere of Heart of a Soldier and in November, Minnesota Opera presents the world premiere of Silent Night.

In Jehanne Dubrow's poem "VJ Day in Times Square," a husband returned from a modern day war has the same kind of problems relating to his wife as Philip Houston has relating to his adopted mother who is eager to welcome him home.

VJ DAY IN TIMES SQUARE

This is how distances begin--we two,
who hurry like a pair of travelers through
our home, each room a city block,
and often we are miles from talking.
I could wave at you from a kitchen chair
as though in a cafeteria. Upstairs
becomes its own municipality.
Sometimes there is the cordiality
of namelessness, the way one passerby
might intersect then hold another's eye,
smiling before the traffic light turns green.

But opening an art book, I've seen
us in that shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt.
Remember? A sailor holds a nurse, his hat
askew so that it seems about to fall,
forever tilting on his head. She's small,
although her body curves like steel, a bridge
suspended in that kiss. There's courage
in collision. Two pedestrians tough,
embracing in a photograph with such
quick ease it's hard to know why when we meet
we're cold as strangers passing on the street.

by Jehanne Dubrow
from Stateside

Copyright © 2010 Jehanne Dubrow

There are 145 films and six screenplays from 23 different countries presented in 17 shows of 90-minute duration. This translates to eight or nine films running three to under 20 minutes each. Show 17 is a free set of films presented for family viewing. What the Dresser was interested to hear is that the films picked for each showcase intend to create a balanced landscape of mood and variety while emphasizing what would interest a DC audience. A special feature of the 2011 Festival is the inclusion of thirteen shorts from Brazil that range from the joys of Brazilian music and dance ("No Baque--Soatá," an animation) to an examination of the ethical and social ramifications of wasting food ("Insustentável").

While there aren't any operas in this film festival, there is a quirky musical in Showcase 6 entitled "Sudden Death" and to the Dresser's mind, it has some of the same appeal as "God of Love" and guess what? Poetry gets blamed in part for the fact that everyone is dying, while a lab of scientists are trying to find the antidote. What the Dresser loves about this film is the nerdy dance scenes, especially those with a flash mob which seems somewhat lame but not. How did the choreographer get those dancers to almost look like they didn't know what they were doing?

Many of the filmmakers will be on hand to answer questions at designated shows, so now is the time to go to the website and spend serious time there with their film sorter. Other bonuses include several parties--one is a Brazilian Carnival party at the Artisphere, free lunch shows at E Street Cinema, one-night stands on specific thematic threads (LGBT--Pink Shorts, Naughty--Sexy Shorts, comic--Funny Shorts), free seminars for budding filmmakers, and a live script competition using in-the-flesh actors--five plays and the audience helps pick the winner who will get money and a guaranteed slot in a future DC Shorts Festival.

Serena Fox's poem "Nightshift" nails the love story taking place between two research scientists in "Sudden Death" who are having a hard time seeing each other clearly. Of course, part of the problem is that both scientists are infected with Sudden Death Syndrome that manifests in singing and dancing.

BELLADONNA

Mad as a hatter, hot as a hare, red as a beet,
Dry as a bone--pupils dilated as meteorites,
The stranger with the perfect pleats looked deep
Into your eyes, man to man, and slipped you some.

You went berserk, alone in your room, until José
The super, swaggered back from bingo and called
The cops. Bella Donna--Beauties of Rome, tincture
Of Deadly Nightshade: one drop in the marketplace,

And pupils become the Discus, an iris-less magnet
To a Hero's hand. To him, she is worthy of wielding
In any game, an object more desirable. To her, he is
A mydriatic blur, overexposed beyond recognition.

For him, definition is not an issue. Skin anointed,
Stance youthful, eyes wide and black as a stabled
Beast. Bella Donna! She reinterprets: this doesn't
Look so bad. He is not so bad. What can happen, if

He takes me? It's broad daylight; my eyes will
Accommodate, before night catches up.

Serena Fox
Nightshift

Copyright © 2009 Serena Fox

While accompanied by Nicklausse, Hoffmann's muse-in-disguise (mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin), the poet recounts to a bar crowd his pursuit of three women while trying to decide whether to reunite with his former lover, the opera diva Stella (soprano Claudia Rosenthal). First there is Olympia (soprano Jamie-Rose Guarrine) who turns out to be a wind-up doll. Next, there is the gravely ill singer Antonia (dramatic soprano Marcy Stonikas). Finally, there is Giulietta (mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti) who steals his reflected image. This narrative without significant psychological insight (e.g. why is Hoffmann so addicted to love and, therefore, why should the audience care about him?) is not exactly what the Dresser would call a compelling story for a 21st century woman--or man.

This version of Jacques Offenbach's last opera with a libretto in French by Jules Barbier was a special production. Director Dan Rigazzi used the libretto painstakingly restored by Michael Kaye and Jean-Christophe Keck. The Kaye-Keck version is believed to honor Offenbach's original intentions. What it does is restore a number of lost scenes and musical numbers. Certainly, the Dresser is no expert on such musical scholarship and not a huge fan of 19th century opera but she finds opening up an old work for further scrutiny interesting. That said, the Dresser thought the Prologue and Act I eye-glazingly long. While the drinking music for these two sections is listenable and the singing by Nathaniel Peake is impressive, the Dresser wanted less repetition and quicker access to Hoffmann's first love, the spectacular but not flesh-and-bone Olympia.

Perhaps the Dresser's inability to more fully enjoy the Prologue and the lead into Act I is that she found the pronunciation of the French text rather muddy and therefore distracting. This was made more apparent by Peake's ability to more carefully emphasize the consonants, which is apparently hard to do in French. However, once Olympia appeared on stage, the Dresser ceased to be annoyed about the delivery of language. Why? Because the action, the visuals, and the music became more interesting.

From Coppélius (bass-baritone Craig Irvin), one of Olympia's creators, Hoffmann acquires magic glasses that make Olympia seem human. Mattie Ullrich's costume for Olympia is a confection of visual pleasure, marrying old with new fashion. Olympia wears an elegant modern sheath but the dress has a cloud of crinoline attached on either side of her hips. Like some exotic bird, Olympia preens by fluffing the crinoline. Even Olympia's disheveled nest of blond hair oddly fascinated the Dresser. Add this to Guarrine's notable coloratura clarity in "The Doll's Song" and the Dresser was utterly hooked. Yes, the Dresser, even without the magic glasses, could truly empathize with Hoffman who immediately fell in love with a doll who danced like she was wearing those devil-possessed red shoes.

Moreover, the Dresser really perked up when Coppélius got angry that Spalanzani (tenor Edward Mout),his partner in creating Olympia, tried to buy him out with a bad check. Oh, the Dresser thought incorrectly, here is where the opera connects with today's world that is filled with financial fraud. However, that reaction had no time to settle into disappointment because the next scene revealed Coppélius carrying Olympia's dismantled legs and arms into the party where Hoffmann is still sprawled on the floor trying to recover from his dance with the out-of-control robot. And, by the way, Olympia's story is connected to Coppélia, the comic ballet with choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon and music by Léo Delibes. This is the ballet the Dresser has special affection for since her son was born on the night she held tickets for this favorite work of ballet theater.

Act II brought more visual enchantment and more interesting music. The set transformed from walls to showcases. In one of these showcases hung light-catching violins. This was the new home of Hoffmann's second love Antonia. It seems that Antonia's father Crespel (bass Kenneth Kellogg) had moved Antonia to a new place to hide her from Hoffmann. Crespel says she is too sick to sing (the Dresser guesses she has tuberculosis) but, in addition, the audience gets the idea from all the emphasis on Antonia's midsection that she is pregnant. Here the story escapes from male emphasis to allow Antonia to meditate on whether she will defy first her father and then Hoffman about her career as a singer. Egging her on is the diabolical Dr. Miracle played by the same bass-baritone Craig Irvin who was Coppélius in Act I. Director Rigazzi casts Antonia as a 19th century diva--she is a large woman with powerful lungs (despite her illness) who eventually succumbs in a swoon to her disease.

Act III brought the musical reward of Offfenbach's well known love song the "Barcarole," which in this production was enhanced by the intertwining voices of the two mezzo-sopranos Catherine Martin as Nicklausse and Eve Gigliotti as Giulietta. The richness of their voices was enough to make the Dresser breathe deeply in total surrender. The complication of this love story is that Giulietta is surrounded by men--her scheming partner Dapertutto (another evil role for Craig Irvin), Giulietta's servant Pitichinaccio (Kenneth Kellogg), and her customer Peter Schlémil (Edward Mount). Giulietta seduces Hoffmann and tells him to get the key to her room from Schlémil. Dissed, Schlémil challenges Hoffman to a dual that ends in Schlémil's death. Nicklausse pleads with Hoffmann to leave Venice before the police arrest him, but he says he will never leave Giulietta. However, Giulietta convinces Hoffman to surrender his reflection and he blacks out. When he awakes he knows he has been had so he goes after Giulietta with a knife only to mortally wound Pitichinaccio, who Giulietta gathers to her breast as her one true love.

If the Dresser has an overall criticism that would be that The Tales of Hoffmann with the powerful voices of singers like Peake, Kellogg, Stonikas, and Gigliotti is too big an opera for the Barnes of Wolf Trap. However, the Dresser guarantees everyone on that steamy summer's day preferred the air-conditioning of the Barnes to the open air of the main stage. The overall praise extends larger than this well-done production--the Wolf Trap opera productions deserve the highest praise for excellent selection of singers, musicians and supporting design artists and directors as well as for the remarkable sets and costumes.

Certainly Hoffmann is a lover much punished for his bad choices. Stuart Bartow's poem "What the Sirens Sang" echoes strongly with The Tales of Hoffmann in that Odysseus is lashed to the mast of his ship like a punished lover. Also, the poem's narrator speaks of a mirror that becomes a blue vortex that he is dropped into and then he is fished out of this danger by a woman fishing, not unlike what happens to Hoffmann who is saved by his muse.

WHAT THE SIRENS SANG

Cradled in wind the sirens' breath
made warm, their chorus took a shape
that drew Odysseus, lashed
like a punished lover,
melded him to madness.
Their voices merged to one
slender song
rung in liquid tongues
and a language that rose
before words were born,
voices of fish slime
and salt, the wings
of terns and drenched rocks
made smooth as skin,
beckoning, Come to us.

Falls and spray live
in my memory, a woman pleading,
Bring him back. My father
gripped me firmly under the arms,
dangled me over the rail,
over the foam and roar
that sang softer
as I gazed
into Niagara's white infinity.

Did Odysseus say the sirens sang
of a green mirror?
The one I saw was blue.
Sang of homesickness
like lovesickness, endless
war, how no one's life
is concealed from their hunger?
In another life I am dropped
into the blue vortex,
survive, discovered
by a woman fishing on the bank.

Home, she teaches me
the mathematics of space
and terror. In another life
the sirens sing, their lyrics
indistinct. The secret is
there are no words.

Stuart Bartow
Reasons to Hate the Sky

Copyright © 2008 Stuart Bartow

Photo Credit: Carol Pratt

The Dresser is well aware that the Fringe Fest seeks over-the-top productions, but, in truth, use of the F-word does not an out-there production make. What F#@king Up Everything with music & lyrics by David Eric Davis, book by Sam Forman & David Eric Davis, has going for it is two young people who both majored in gender studies though neither of them belong to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered (LGBT) community. If Forman and Davis had better developed this theme, then F-ing Up would stand out from the mosh pit of Fringe productions.

So while the show opened with a skinny-jeaned rocker named Jake (John Fritz) putting his junk into the faces of those foolish enough to sit in the front row as he crooned the song from which the show draws its title, the stars of the show are a dorky but loveable puppeteer named Christian Mohammed Schwartzelberg (Lee August Praley) and a ukulele-playing blond-knockout babe named Juliana (Crystal Mosser). As with most musical comedies, a series of miscommunications occur. Juliana's good friend Ivy (Dani Stoller), while involved with the affable stoner and electric base player Tony (Jason Wilson), is in love with Jake. Jake, to put it into the facile rhyming schema of F-ing Up, is always on the make and though he considers Ivy his best friend, Juliana becomes his next hit.

Of course, things backfire and Jake lures the disappointed-in-love Christian, who is his childhood friend, into the too-hot-to-handle arms of a booking agent named Arielle (Crystal Arnette). Like Juliana, Arielle recognizes the genuineness of Christian, but only after she makes Jake and Christian part of her "fuck-it list." She's up to the letter M and that means ménage à trois. There is a hilarious song for this sexpot sung by Jake and Christian with the repeated phrase "Arielle's areolas."

The best part of this musical is when Christian pulls out his hand puppets and talks to them to work out how he is feeling. Lee August Praley as Christian does a great job with his role both as singer and actor. He knows how be the dork without overdoing the character. Among Christian's intellectual puppets is the linguist Noam Chomsky. If the Dresser heard correctly, there is also a puppet named Michel Foucault (the Twentieth century French philosopher). There isn't much time to develop the characters of these puppets so the names aren't much more than other names that are casually dropped into the script (e.g. Burning Man Festival). However, the intellectual puppets are countered with the likes of the one-armed puppet Rick Allen (drummer Allen is an amputee who continued to play with Def Leppard after losing one of his arms) and the punk rock guitarist-songwriter Robert Smith.

In Mark Bibbins' poem "Redemption," the reader is almost lulled into the blissful state of flying when out of the blue, comes a line about "kicking the crap out of someone" and then a Gertrude Stein quote ending "no chance to misunderstand pansies." The poem goes on to compare the we in the poem to "tranny hookers under the Manhattan Bridge." F#@king Up Everything, which is, by the by, set in Brooklyn, also has this kind of bomb laid on the unsuspecting audience--the straight college kids who are invested in studies involving the LGBT community and the sudden emergence of male-on-male attraction. (The Dresser will leave that relationship to your imagination.) What is love all about? Bibbins stabs at it when he talks about "the great corporate slideshow of the heart" where "the bullet points are blanks." The Dresser thinks F#@king Up Everything has a lot of unrealized passion to explore and that includes the wider universe of who we are as women and men.

REDEMPTION

Here's another rack on which to hang
your critical coat: a flight over the plain

states keeps going and no one notices, the ride
is so smooth; even the inevitable drop

into the Pacific is of no more moment
than the twitch of a sleeping cat's ear.

There's a pack of kids on a nearby
aircraft carrier, talking about

kicking the crap out of someone,
though all I keep hearing is,

.....I can't [activity] with you when I'm [adjective].
"He likes it that there is no chance to misunderstand pansies."
........................................................................................--G. Stein

That was ages ago, when everyone's predilections
could spread unchecked and without consequence.

We flourished, all dirty and dazzling
as tranny hookers under the Manhattan Bridge.

.....Yes, but can you [activity] when you're not [adjective]?
.....What if you were slightly [adjective]?

Today, in the great corporate slideshow
of the heart, the bullet points are blanks.

Today, though I am feeling positively artisanal,
I'm letting you do the work, like you

like to: I'm letting you pretend you're still
the sun, drawing an infernal line through every thing.

Mark Bibbins
The Dance of No Hard Feelings

Copyright © 2009 Mark Bibbins

Photo credit: Karren L. Alenier