| re: Our Town - cd!!! | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 07:48 pm EDT 10/29/17 | |
| In reply to: re: Our Town - cd!!! - MFeingold 06:40 pm EDT 10/28/17 | |
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| I saw GROVERS CORNERS in its production at the Marriott Lincolnshire theatre outside of Chicago--the world premiere production and, for all I know, the only professional production (there may have been others). Jones played the Stage Manager and Schmidt was a pianist for the small pit band (the Marriott Lincolnshire is a small, dinner-theatre-like space, though without the dinner tables per se--if you want dinner, you dine before or after in their restaurant). It's as much a golf resort as anything--in a cushy northern suburb. I gather they do good to excellent work--I saw a fairly pointless CHORUS LINE there in the 80s--no proscenium, which defeats the point to me anyway. The score was eminently forgettable and kinda corny, if I remember right (and I'm a huge fan of 100 in the Shade and have a soft spot for The Fantasticks, so I am positively disposed towards the team). There was a big belty number for Emily's farewell to the world, which did nothing to enhance to natural lyricism of Wilder's spoken words. The actress playing Emily was decently trained (an NU student or alum), but brought little of the poignance or spiritedness really memorable Emily Webbs bring to the role. One of the fathers was played by then-chair of the Northwestern Theatre Department, Les Hinderyckx (I may have misspelled his last name--I never could keep the consonants straight). It was a novelty to see someone better known as a professor and director and he was quite competent. Jones was better than okay as the SM. I know there had been talk about trying to interest Mary Martin in the role at some point in the show's development--it may have been before this production. Martin would have made it an event and might have brought a kind of history--wouldn't we all have wanted to see her as a benevolent godlike figure, whatever she was like off-stage? I also think making the SM a woman would have been novel--I wonder if that is done with any frequency, particularly in school or community productions? No real reason why the character must be male, other than Stage Managers back then usually were and Frank Craven's performance was so indelible in the 1940 film, as were David Cromer and Michael Shannon in the production at Barrow Street (I saw both play the role). And, in the time period in which it is set, the "God" aspects of the SM may have seemed connected with a male "father" figure. But no reason why a female actor couldn't play the role today--whether playing it as a male or female or even genderless or androgynous figure. As The Skin of Our Teeth tells us, God (and Stage Managers) come in many guises in many cultures. I've always wanted to hear the Rorem opera. I like Rorem as a composer and he has done interesting work setting other great modernist writers, such as Stein and Marianne Moore's translations of La Fontaine. Is there a recording available. But my guess is that I would always prefer my OT without any added music--Wilder's own verbal music is potent enough for me. I also love the documentary OT, about the staging of the play in Compton. Wherever it's done, Wilder's tragic vision (and I think it is a kind of tragedy or tragicomedy, as it involved the gaining of knowledge through loss) makes it one of the great American plays--perhaps THE greatest, insofar as we play at such rankings. |
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| Previous: | re: Our Town - cd!!! - MFeingold 06:40 pm EDT 10/28/17 |
| Next: | re: Our Town - cd!!! - JohnDunlop 10:10 pm EDT 10/31/17 |
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