Arts & Culture
Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse
“I am Lilly. I am Queen. I like everything,” says Lilly as she roller skates on stage to the surprise of her two mouse friends, Chester and Wilson. In Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, which opened May 4 at First Stage Children’s Theater, Lilly is indeed queen of this enchanting, eye-catching production. Kevin Kling, who adapted the play from award-winning author Kevin Henke’s popular book of the same name, has blended timeless pre-school tales into one 90-minute play of Lilly’s mishaps and adventures. In this retelling, a carousel of cotton candy colors and a spectrum of patterns, shapes and textures surround Lilly and the large children’s cast of mice. Stars, checks, polka dots and ribbons fall from the ceiling and saturate the stage. Sarah Hunt Frank and Kristina L. Van Slyke, scene designer and costume designer, respectively, breathe life into Henke’s mice. The children in the audience were mesmerized by the visual array, attentively keeping eyes and ears on the show. Kurt Schnabel, lighting designer of Suessical fame, again delights with technical details and special effects. When Henke’s illustrations are added to some of the sequences, the results affectionately remind the audience of Lilly’s artistic beginnings. But the queen of the performance is Lilly herself, Clarise White, an 11-year-old from the Colby Cast that performed opening night. White bursts on to the stage, making believable this Lilly who likes everything, with charm and chutzpah. Thaddeus Bruno as Chester and Henry Ballesteros as Wilson are credit worthy as Lilly’s friends, forming the central three-some. The entire ensemble creates an animated world that plays like a merry-go-round as Lilly lives through all the missteps and fears of a child, yet continually inspires the viewer with her bravery. Such tribulations include surviving a new baby brother, bullies and a mishap at school with her infamous purple plastic purse. Mr. Slinger, her favorite teacher, helps Lilly overcome her misguided feelings and saves the day, even though Lilly saves Mr. Slinger in her imagination. The script is sprinkled with lovely lines and situations from a child’s point of view, dealing with their often unspoken feelings, that Lilly gives voice to and helps them identify. Children repeated these special phrases very softly, showing that the characters truly connected with them. First Stage Theater’s Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse continues through June 17 and is recommended for those over 3, although anyone who is a fan of Henke’s books will appreciate this entertaining real life version of their favorite stories. Adults will also enjoy some of the layered references used throughout the performance. But the true star is Henke’s little mouse Lilly, undoubtedly Queen of the production, bringing a bit of childlike magic to the stage. And to quote Lilly’s favorite teacher, Mr. Slinger, “All I can say is WOW.” VS Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse continues at the Todd Wehr Theater in the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts through June 17. For tickets and information call 414-273-7206 or visit www.firststage.org.
Jun 1st, 2007 by Peggy Sue Dunigan
June 2007
June 5th The Aggrolites Reggae Hit L.A. Hellcat/Epitaph Belly The Revolution CP Marilyn Manson Eat Me, Drink Me Nothing/Interscope Paul McCartney Memory Almost Full Hear Music/Concord O.A.R. Life From Madison Square Garden Atlantic Rihanna Good Girl Gone Bad Def Jam Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen With the Seeger Sessions Band Live in Dublin Columbia Swizz Beatz One Man Band Universal Motown Tiger Army Music From Regions Beyond Hellcat/Epitaph Various Artists We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady Of Song Verve June 12th John Doe A Year in the Wilderness Yep Roc The Mission, U.K. God is a Bullet Cooking Vinyl Sinéad O’Connor Theology Koch Mark Olson The Salvation Blues HackTone Queens of the Stone Age Era Vulgaris Interscope Mark Ronson Version RCA June 19th The Chemical Brothers We Are the Night Astralwerks Maps We Can Create Mute The Mooney Suzuki Have Mercy Elixia The Polyphonic Spree The Fragile Army TVT Two Gallants The Scenery of Farewell Saddle Creek The Unseen Internal Salvation Hellcat/Epitpah Matt White Do You Believe Geffen The White Stripes Icky Thump Third Man/Warner June 26th Ryan Adams Easy Tiger Lost Highway The Automatic, Automatic Not Accepted Anywhere Columbia Bad Brains Build a Nation Megaforce Beastie Boys The Mix-Up Capitol Marc Broussard S.O.S.: Save Our Soul Vanguard The Click Five Modern Minds and Pastimes Lava/Atlantic Editors An End Has a Start Kitchenware Nick Lowe At My Age Yep Roc Meat Puppets Rise to Your Knees Anodyne M.I.A. Kala Interscope Mya Liberation Motown Steve Vai Sound Theories Vols. 1 & 2 Epic
Jun 1st, 2007 by Erin Wolf
Great Lakes Myth Society
“Girlfriends are leaving/new girls arrive/you open the circle/to be blinded by light.” This lyric from “Heydays,” the opening track to Compass Rose Bouquet, the sophomore offering from Michigan “northern rock” music “collective” Great Lakes Myth Society, perfectly summarizes the thesis being defended throughout – melancholy is meaningless unless it’s tempered by good spirits in the heart and in hand. When guitarist Timothy Monger sings “Uncertain the future/nostalgic the past/unable to recognize/moments that last,” there’s more sun in his voice than rain. That springtime disposition carries into all aspects, from production to songwriting. The tunes crackle with energy and spark, from the cavernous drums to the silvery trumpets on the psychedelic-via-”Crimson-and-Clover” tune “Raindrops and Roses.” The band isn’t afraid to explore the myriad folk influences available to their collective, either; “Queen of the Barley Fool” and “Debutante” incorporate Irish pub choruses without slipping into affectation. “Debutante” even throws indie-rock distortion into the guitars, giving the up-tempo jig some teeth. They accompany accordion-driven waltz “The Gales of 1838,” which closes the record with a slow, six-minute build that sways like the bow of a wind-blown pirate ship complete with refrains proclaiming that we’ll have “wine, wine, wine, more wine tonight.” This is Americana anyone can get behind. Great Lakes Myth Society takes the folk-infused sound with which we’ve all become intimately familiar and polish it with a pop sheen, producing earthy, heartfelt waltzes and jigs that manage to be introspective and fun at the same time. Pass the Jameson; who wouldn’t drink to that?
Jun 1st, 2007 by DJ Hostettler
The Baker’s Wife
By Tracy Doyle Opening night of Windfall Theatre’s staging of The Baker’s Wife, I was warmly ushered into the intimate and awkward venue and the best of the remaining seating was pointed out to me. The space, which must double as a meeting room of some sort for the Village Church Arts, was perfectly suited for this cluttered musical fable, music and lyrics by Steven Schwartz and book by Joseph Stein. The play is set in a very small town, where everybody knows everybody and no one can stand anyone but themselves. The everyday grind is thrown off when the town’s sole baker dies and a replacement shows up along with his beautiful and much younger wife. A typical Schwartz musical, the songs are long and boring, never striving for anything other than ordinary and the plot follows suit. The show opened with the sound of a man shooting himself in the foot. The first lines of “Chanson” are in French and I really wish a dialect doctor had been called because I was in pain. (Ba dum ching) But seriously, since this show started at such a low point the only way it had to go was up and it did. The lead roles of the baker and the baker’s wife, played by Larry Birkett and Linda Steiber, were beautifully constructed and developed. Both possess outstanding singing and acting abilities, which in local musical productions is a rare treat. The baker, Aimable, who struggles with the knowledge that his wife will eventually leave him, captures a real innocence and love of life that is all the more poignant she finally does leave him. Genevieve leaves Aimable for the young and charismatic Dominique, charmingly played by Thomas Rosenthal, whose lack of musical genius is made up in energy and comic timing. Highlights of the show include a hysterical Freudian orgy of bread and song, in which long loaves of fresh bread baked by Milwaukee’s own Wild Flour Bakery are acrobatically tossed and gnawed and shared between townspeople. Musically, Genevieve’s touching “Meadowlark” stood out as an honest rendition of a woman’s struggle to figure out just what to do with her life, and reminded me of many a night singing to myself in the privacy of my own home. My favorite part of the whole night coincided with the appearance of Albus Rosenthal as Pompom, who is (SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!) the very first real live cat I’ve ever seen on stage, something I’ve been waiting for my entire life. I make an open suggestion for a new byline, Windfall Theatre: Making dreams come true. Props to Windfall for a show full of energy and performances worthy of a much better script. VS Windfall Theatre’s Production of The Baker’s Wife runs now through May 19th at Village Church Arts. For more info, call 414-332-3963 or visit Windfall online at www.windfalltheatre.com.
May 8th, 2007 by Vital Archives
Colin Hay, May 3 @ The Miramar Theatre
By Erin Landry Dropping in at Bay View’s local watering hole, the Palomino, you might have had the pleasure to be served a drink by Colin Hay’s opening act Thursday night: the talented Davey von Bohlen (of Cap’n Jazz, Promise Ring and Vermont fame), a regal name he says that was given to him at birth, which after the first few songs you realize is in direct contrast to his humble disposition. Starting off a set with “songs that preamble” by his own admission, he covered material from his “younger days” as well as songs recorded by his current band, Maritime. His voice warbles then cracks at one point, he misses notes, he stops then starts when he forgets lyrics, he laughs and chides himself, all of which just add to the spontaneous feel of his music. The imperfections and mistakes, instead of being distracting, conveyed the creative process and created an intimate performance. It was less of a concert, more of an impromptu experimental venture, music in its most raw form. And, though no explanation was necessary, after a youthful chirp from his two-year-old at the back of the crowd, he confesses that instead of practicing before the show, he “slacked off” and took his son to the children’s museum. How can you not forgive that? During intermission, the ladies room titters with rumors that Colin Hay’s live performances include his wife who does interpretive dance. Back inside the theatre, the lights dim and a rousing backstage introduction, which sets the tone for the rest of the night, describes Colin as a multi-platinum performer who “believes football is played with a round ball, enjoys sunsets, walks on the beach, and ladies, if you’re wondering, he’s a cancer.” Let’s get this right out of the way; Colin Hay is so much more than a blip on the ‘80s pop icon MTV screen (Men at Work). Since that time he has assembled an enviable body of work that has been touted through television via “Scrubs” and film via the indie hit “Garden State.” He is an artist that withstands the changing times, providing a new body of work of evocative and bittersweet songs and contemplations on life. In any case, the night’s performance is less pop concert more all-inclusive variety show (in the best possible sense) with song, poetry, comedy, storytelling and, true to rumor, an array of vocals, kazoo playing and interpretive dance by his gorgeous wife, Cecilia. The first hour was a sprinkling of newer songs overshadowed mostly by Mr. Hay talking about youth, life lessons and other musings including an admission that, while he recently wrote a song about the infamous Bob Dylan (his opening song: What Would Bob Do?), he’s never actually met the man in person. But instead of working on an album or song with Dylan, he says how he’d prefer to work on a car together, talk about alternators and transmissions…or maybe walk around a Costco in search for toilet paper, all the while […]
May 7th, 2007 by Vital Archives
Aqualung, May 3 @ The Pabst
Photo by CJ Foeckler/Pabst Theater It’s difficult to write a music review these days without drawing an inevitable comparison to a predecessor or contemporary. The case in evidence: Matt Hales’ Aqualung, which took the stage Thursday night as part of the Milwaukee Pabst Theater’s fairly priced series of talented but mostly underground and underrated national acts. What’s important about mentioning this last part has to due with some intimacy issues in the venue, which will come up again later. Matt Hales appears to be in his early 20s, which is probably important in light of the recent new flood of Britpop artists who have given us boatloads of sensitive rock in the past few years. If we follow a family tree, then Blur begat Verve and Suede, who begat Oasis and Radiohead, who begat Coldplay and Travis, which gave us (and drawing the wannabe label) Aqualung…and Keane, James Blunt, Snow Patrol, the Feeling, and…well, just insert your own VH1 You Oughta Know find – where Hales got his first American-side break. But the 35-year-old piano rock singer/songwriter is a bit older than most on the tree, and did not find success until landing a successful tune for the new Volkswagen Beetle in 2002. It’s hard to quantify a sound when in the middle of it. When synthpop was at its height, did music fans say, “Oh, that Erasure. They’re just a Depeche Mode wannabe.” At the time, there was room for everybody. Shouldn’t it be fair to just claim Aqualung as an overall part of a new movement deeply entrenched in mood and angst? Hales does not make it easy. To sit back in the demure and refined darkness of the Pabst and enjoy his obvious and highly-trained musical talent, there has to be a suspension of disbelief. This would mean in musical terms that the audience member would forgive the lapse in organic flow and just be entertained. But just close your eyes as the four-piece band plays, and suddenly you’re listening to the sound of Ben Folds. Then in another song, Chris Martin. Then another, Damon Albarn. Another, Thom Yorke. The music eloquently meanders like this as you try and guess the influence, like a gourmand attempting to guess the subtle flavors as they emerge in a complex dish. When Aqualung launches into “Pressure Suit,” off his newest studio album Memory Man, suddenly you are hearing Jeff Tweedy and Wilco circa A Ghost is Born. Hales goes so far as to admit a personal infatuation with the band during one of his cheeky bantering with the audience. From there, Hales (now seated at a baby grand instead of standing up front at a Yamaha keyboard) and company attempt to cover Wilco’s “Muzzle of Bees.” “Attempt” is used as the operative word here since it seems like something the guys rehearsed on the tour bus ride into town. Also, the lowdown desperation of Tweedy’s version is missing and replaced with something more harmonious. To his credit, Hales voice often […]
May 4th, 2007 by Brian Jacobson
A little bit indie, a little bit classical
Photo by Lenny Gilmore They may have a cute name, cute merch and cute alternating boy/girl vocals, but the nine-month-old Kid, You’ll Move Mountains aren’t aiming to charm, though frontman Jim Hanke does admit the five-piece has had “great luck fall in [their] lap.” This luxury has allowed a somewhat lax approach to promotion and recording – but don’t think the band lacks a smidge of motivation or enthusiasm. “Our ages and personal situations require us to be pretty focused,” says drummer Nate Lanthrum, with a subtle air of experience. From 2001 to 2005, Lanthrum and his brother, bassist Andrew, toured six months a year with Chicago’s Troubled Hubble, as Hanke sang for El Oso across the northerly state line. Ultimately, it was Hubble’s showcase for Latest Flame Records in Hanke’s hometown of Milwaukee that crossed the musicians’ paths. After being “blown away” by their performance and “overall humility,” Hanke and Lanthrum’s bands formed a “family-like union,” booking and networking together throughout the Midwest. As both projects wound down from current to former, Hanke and the Lanthrums, still eager to “bring something new and creative to [their] respective local scenes,” appended guitarist Corey Wills and classically trained pianist Nina Jones – whose background contributes a more traditional perspective – to complete the group. “Nina is a phenomenal musician,” says Lanthrum, in awe of Jones’s comprehension of “notes and keys” instead of his more-familiar “deep, guttural sounds and sweeping arm gestures.” Nevertheless, he’s learning, and is convinced that with her dynamic, KYMM has “a whole new range of places to go.” In August of 2006, the band was in the downtown WMSE studio playing a set for the Local/Live program. “We weren’t sure that having a radio show as our documented first recording was the best idea, but the sound was perfect for what we were looking for,” Lanthrum says of the convenient, minimal production. Hanke adds, “It was a good opportunity to record our first six songs together for nothing.” Further boosting the grassroots appeal of the EP, a Polaroid photo taken the day of purchase satisfies both the need for album art and a “slightly different” execution. At live shows, the instant camera is omnipresent and fans can opt to be photographed for their own CD jacket. “The only downside,” says Hanke, is “when people refuse the picture because they think they look pudgy or they have red eye. We have a stack of those.” Clearly, photo discards should be incorporated into the packaging of KYMM’s upcoming glossy debut, which the band is currently in the process of home recording, somewhere between Milwaukee and Geneva, Illinois. “We definitely want to get an official record out there, but we are also anxious to take our time and tool around with different ideas and make the entire process a fun adventure,” says Hanke. In the meantime, Hanke intends to “play as many shows as possible” as Lanthrum scratches his itch to return to the road. KYMM has already opened for a […]
May 2nd, 2007 by Amber Herzog
Who I Was Yesterday
Moct Bar sits in an area just south of downtown that is rapidly being carved into an upscale, trendy haunt for the young, wealthy and reasonably hip. Amidst shiny new condos and expensive restaurants, nestled in a space that apparently is a converted machine shop, Kurt Hartwig’s theatre outfit Bad Soviet Habits is staging a trippy little show involving stilts, puppets, the number 93 and quite a few other things. Who I Was Yesterday is a dreamlike neo-mythic fairy tale that touches on quite a few things without much regard for depth or coherence. To be fair to Writer/Director Kurt Hartwig, Who I Was Yesterday is a very ambitious project. The story goes a little something like this – twin humanoid sons of a Manticore (face of a woman, body of a lion, tail of a scorpion) are being raised by their towering humanoid grandparents. Their fate as offspring of an evil monster is to be hunted by it until they reach the age of 18. Apparently Manticores are quite insistent about eating their children. It’s a mythic coming of age story fitting somewhere between the age of fairy tales and the contemporary world. A story such as this could be produced for the stage in a variety of different ways. Hartwig’s vision as realized here is incredibly complex. The twins are whimsically presented as Andy North wearing one mask and holding another, occasionally switching them for effect, which is simple enough but there’s a lot more going on here. The twins’ grandparents are played by Amie Segal and Kurt Hartwig himself. On stilts. In makeup. Susan Currie plays Mother Manticore by wearing a huge, bulky metal mask complete with glowing eyes. While this probably takes a great deal of focus and concentration, it may be the single greatest waste of acting talent to make it to the local stage this season. Currie is a remarkable actress; she can do a lot more than serve as support for a metal mask onstage. Aside from the main characters, there are a lot of puppets. Some of them are effective. Some of them aren’t. And some of them meet with mixed results. The bedbugs that haunt the twins, for instance, make a clever rattling, scratching sound as their thin metal bodies scrape across the bar’s stage, but they don’t offer much of a visual impact. For the most part, all we’re seeing of them is the puppeteer pushing them across the floor. It looks a bit silly unless you make a conscious effort to focus on the puppets. One of the more effective puppets in the show is The Marionette, a character which acts as sort of a narrator who sometimes interacts with the twins. A puppet sits high above a curtain that covers the puppeteer. The apparatus holding the curtain and the puppet are harnessed to the puppeteer (Tom Thoreson) who is free to walk around the stage. It’s a lot more effective than it sounds, even if the puppet itself […]
May 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Patti Smith
The word “mulatto” jumps from Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the National Anthem for the blanker than blank generation. And until all the kids memorized the lyrics and drove Kurt Cobain over the edge it was that one word that hung like cool, moist ground fog on a hot summer night. But before Nirvana there was Big Joe Turner. In fact before just about everything there was Big Joe Turner. One might even argue plausibly that Big Joe was the real nirvana when it came to rock & roll. In his book Where Dead Voices Gather Nick Tosches writes: But enough of color. I tire of every race. I shall, however, here glance for a moment in this context of color and auditory evidence and speculation, to the bellowed words of Big Joe Turner’s “Tell Me, Pretty Baby” of 1948: They say brown-skinned women are evil. And yellow girls are worse. I got myself a mulatta, boy; I’m playin’ it safety first. Or is there no comma intended between the penultimate and ultimate words of the third line of this quatrain? – I got myself a mulatta boy Has the question of a solitary punctuation mark…, ever before or since presented an ambiguity of momentousness such as this? Get thee, then, a mulatto, regardless of gender, punctuation or pronunciation; and proceed, then, behind me, together as one. While the Cobain saga proves once again, sadly, that rock & roll eats its young, what is more vexing is just how many generations it took for mulatto to resurface in a lyric. Twelve, then, is Patti Smith’s twelfth album. (Longtime collaborators Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty are still riding shotgun.) It is an album of cover tunes. She has earned the right to coast, pay tribute, have fun – whatever the explanation of this album may be. She is the ultimate case of the fan who made the leap of faith to the stage. (She behaved admirably when she was recently inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame because her late husband Fred Sonic requested she do so.) Twelve gives us an even dozen snapshots paying tribute to The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the folky Neil Young, Jefferson Airplane and The Doors. Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder, too. The most interesting tune is an odd old- timey take on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” itself, with playwright Sam Shepherd on banjo. We may never know Smith’s reason for covering Gregg Allman’s “Midnight Rider,” but Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” always sounded to me like it was writ for Muzak from the gitgo. Friends, we are currently living in modern times. Some Old Testament types may even vehemently suggest the end is near. So what better time to sidestep the laws of The Man and track down bootleg recordings of Patti Smith’s real covers. Her first single was turning “Hey Joe” into a heavy liquid ballad, and along the way she’s covered The Velvet […]
May 1st, 2007 by Blaine Schultz
1 Henry IV
Sometimes theatre hurts. Milwaukee Shakespeare’s production of 1 Henry IV can attest to this, having suffered a few minor injuries early in its run. When Jeffrey Withers sustained a show-stopping injury to his lower back, it was only a short while until someone else had suffered a minor broadsword wound to the hand. After a few days, however, the show was back on its feet to start the second weekend with a flourish. Milwaukee Shakespeare continues its multi-season staging of The Henriad, closing its 2006-2007 season with 1 Henry IV. Jeff Allin stars as King Henry IV, the consummate politician who has taken over a tumultuous empire. Allin’s performance echoes that of any contemporary politician in poise and presence. As the play opens, the audience is made aware of an uprising against him in the south lead by Welshman Owen Glendower (an intense Lawrnce O’Dwyer). Meanwhile, supposed Henry loyalist Henry Percy (a charismatic Brian J. Gill) is refusing to send reinforcements from the north that Henry had requested. As the play opens, the King is summoning Percy back to the court to explain his actions. The play’s center rests with Henry’s son, Prince Hal (Jeffrey Withers), who has taken in with bandits and highwaymen. Some of the production’s most intense moments happen at a tavern between Hal and the thieves. Hal is caught somewhere between royalty and thievery as he associates himself with the likes of the rotund rogue Sir John Falstaff (Richard Ziman). Hal and Falstaff play an intricate game of subtle wits at the tavern that plays out particularly well in the intimate space of the studio theatre. Shakespearian subtleties that don’t normally get rendered in all that much detail burst with texture here. Milwaukee Shakespeare further ratchets up the intensity by having the audience flank the stage. Actors play between halves of the audience in a captivating 3-dimensional space that lends the play a very accessible earthiness. Action is particularly intense in the tiny space. The fight scenes are meticulously choreographed with painstaking attention to detail. Careful thought was put into the psychology and motivations behind aggression and it all comes through with a remarkable degree of clarity. Fights are played out in epic slow motion, which runs the risk of seeming silly in such close quarters were it not all so well executed. The interaction between Withers and Ziman is particularly captivating. Both perform with a style and poise that serve as a memorable high point of the production. The production leads directly into part two without much of a feeling of finality. Local theater audiences will have to wait until next season to see Henry IV wrap up at the Broadway Theatre center. It’s a bit of a strange experience sitting through something like three hours of Shakespeare and not having it reach a final conclusion, but there’s more than enough that reaches some form of resolution to satiate audiences until next season. VS Milwaukee Shakespeare’s production of 1 Henry IV runs through May 20th […]
May 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Feist
Leslie Feist has all the makings of a classic indie girl – completely indecipherable, yet at the same time completely able to be pigeonholed. For one not familiar with Feist, the Canadian has some pretty ridiculous credits racked up: from the electro-shock value of Peaches to the pretty indie-pop of the Broken Social Scene (not to mention stints with By Divine Right and Kings of Convenience). She seems comfortable with and suited to each place she ventures. Her newest album, The Reminder, sees her travel right from writing in the tour bus and creating in the studio to finishing up a tour stint in Berlin and capping it off with a recording session with pals Mocky, [Chilly] Gonzales and Jaime Lidell in la Frette Studios outside of Paris. Feist’s previous releases, Let it Die and Open Season, made Canada and Europe take notice of her youthful but classic jazz vocals and guitar playing that lent a punchy yet wispy quality to her pop, half penned by her, half lent by others. This time around, Feist is writing more, collaborating with her recording pals Mocky and Gonzales as well as Ron Sexsmith. If Feist was arresting before doing other people’s songs, she is even more so singing her own. The lone cover song, “Sea Lion Woman,” was originally written by George Bass and made famous by Nina Simone. Feist revamps it by pairing light-stepping vocals with energetic and full handclaps. Feist also tries her hand at gospel, country-twinged pop in “Past in Present,” brooding piano dynamics in “My Moon My Man,” haunting ethereality in the chilling “The Water” and upbeat with “I Feel it All.” Versatility is the mark of a great songwriter, and Feist is writing with such fluidity on The Reminder that it will be interesting to see which direction Feist will travel next. VS
May 1st, 2007 by Erin Wolf
Lady Day
By Jill Gilmer It’s hard not to have a great evening at the Stackner Cabaret. The nightclub-style setting creates a relaxed and festive atmosphere and the well-heeled crowd doesn’t seem to mind sharing tables with strangers and chit-chatting over cocktails or coffee and dessert. Add to this backdrop the wonderful music of Billie Holiday performed by Grammy award-winning singer Regina Marie Williams and you have the recipe for a string of sell-out performances, which Lady Day has enjoyed since it opened on March 16. But theatre-goers hoping to learn more about the life and legacy of this jazz icon may leave the Cabaret disappointed. Like many theatrical productions that examine a celebrity figure, Lady Day focuses less on Ms. Holiday’s life and career and more on her personality. While this in itself is a worthy endeavor, director David Hunter Koch’s obsession with her surprising dark side nearly overshadows both her story and her talent. The story takes place at the Emerson Bar & Grill, a hole-in-the-wall jazz club in Philadelphia and the actual site of one of Holiday’s last performances before her death in 1959, at age 44. Emerson was, apparently, one of the few clubs in the U.S. where she was still welcomed. A series of temperamental incidents – most likely exacerbated by alcohol and heroin abuse – had tarnished her reputation and limited her performance venues. Regina Marie Williams delivers a riveting enactment of Ms. Holiday’s descent into a drunken trance over the course of her 1-hour and 15 minute performance. At least, we can only hope it was alcohol that fueled the seemingly-endless string of expletives that dotted her performance and the insults she hurled at her unsuspecting audience. This drunken rant was a stark contrast from the image of graciousness suggested by her strapless white satin gown, elbow-length gloves and trademark gardenia in her hair. Leaving the show, audience members who are unfamiliar with her contributions to jazz might even question whether the accolades history has bestowed on her are justified. These thoughts were sufficiently disturbing to send this writer surfing the in search of “the real Billie Holiday.” The artist I read about online seemed to bear little resemblance to the obnoxious faded starlet portrayed in Lady Day. The lack of balance in this portrayal of Ms. Holiday leaves an unwarranted black eye on this great artist. Despite her unbalanced portrait of Ms. Holiday, Regina Marie Williams does a superb job capturing the emotional intensity and famed uniqueness of Ms. Holiday’s voice, if not its exact tone quality. A highlight is a soul-stirring rendition of “Strange Fruit,” her classic song about Jim Crow-era lynchings. The song is a fitting conclusion to Ms. Holiday’s account of a racist incident she experienced while touring with Artie Shaw. That story reminds us of the difficult era (the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s) during which she succeeded in establishing herself as an African-American singer with a ground-breaking sound. The enormous obstacles she had to overcome are proof that this lady […]
May 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
