bY jOHN fARRELL

Long Beach Opera Moscow Cherry Town; Golden State Pops A Tale Old as Time; Long Beach Playhouse Dog Sees God

By John Farrell

John Atkins, Vincent Chambers

Dmitri Shostakovich, probably the greatest classical composer of the 20th century, was in and out of favor with the Soviet government many times, especially under the capricious and violent Stalin, but when Khrushchev came to power he was still busy writing and felt safe enough to combine with two Russian comic writers, Vladimir Mass and Mikhail Chervinsky, to write a comic operetta about the Soviet bureaucracy as it developed “Moscow, Cherry Town,” a huge development of apartments built to ease the problems of homelessness. That was in 1959, and the operetta was a hit on stage and as a large film a few years later.

Fifty years after the fact the work has been slowly rediscovered across Europe and the U.S. It was given its west coast premier at the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach last Sunday by Long Beach Opera and there is one more performance in Santa Monica on Sunday, well worth the trouble if you want to see what Shostakovich could do in a lighter vein, and especially what LBO does in its thrilling and exciting performance with a large cast, mostly company alumni, all under the sure hand of director Isabel Milenski, herself the daughter of company founder Michael Milenski. Artistic and General Director Andreas Mitisek conducts the performance, which is sung in clear English with supertitles as well. Shostakovich was apparently ambivalent at best about his score, but audiences fifty years later see things in a very different light and enjoy all the jokes.

“Moscow, Cherry Town” is about the new building of apartment blocks in Moscow after the war, “...happiness in one thousand concrete rooms.” There are four couples involved, including a corrupt official and his lover, a young married pair who have to live in separate housing, and the bureaucrat who doesn't want to give out the keys to the apartments because then he'd just be a landlord without any power.

It is all sung to a lightweight but accessible score with musical references to everything from Tchaikovsky to Lehar's “Merry Widow,” with plenty of comic action, including a Soviet rock and roll number, a ballet dream sequence featuring the two male villains in tutus and a happy ending. The bad end badly, the good end well. That's how Lady Bracknell describes fiction in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” and it is true here too.

Tickets are $25-$115. The remaining performance is at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 22.
Venue: Barnum Hall
Address: 601 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica
Information: (562) 432-5934 or visit www.longbeachopera.org

Last Year the Golden State Pops gave the west coast premier of “A Tale as Old as Time,” a concert of Disney music licensed by the Disney Concert Library that sold well at two concerts. This year they reprised that performance with a single concert Saturday night and it proved just as popular, with just under 900 people coming to enjoy the music and the films clips, and a lot more.

There were maybe fifty Little Princess in the audience Saturday, one on a leash, all to compete in the costume contest at intermission. One actually won, as did a very small boy who had to be held up on stage but kept waving, dressed in a Tygger suit.

The audience was filled with kids, and plenty of adults, all to enjoy the music as the orchestra, under Artistic Director and Conductor Steven Allen Fox, played its way through selections from the newest film, “Up,” and from classics like “Sleeping Beauty” and half a dozen other films, represented in clips projected above the stage as the orchestra played arrangements prepared especially for professional orchestral groups.

There were differences this year, including “Up” and a medley from the newest in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, which opens this weekend and was represented by stills from the new movie. The audience cheered their favorite heroes, but it seemed that the villains, especially Cruella DeVille from the ”101 Dalmatians” movies had a special place in the hearts of the more adults members of the large audience. No announcement has been made of next year's concert season, but it does seem likely that this program will be back next year. Starting sewing those Little Princess costumes now.

“Dog Sees God” is a look at the Peanuts characters later in life, when bullying and homosexuality and the harsh realities of life begin to set in. It opens Friday, May 20 at the Long Beach Playhouse and continues there in the Studio Theatre through Saturday, June 18, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $22, $20 for students and seniors.

Venue: Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre
Address: 5021 East Anaheim, Long Beach
Information: (562) 494-1014 or visit www.lbplayhouse.org

Shostakovich's Moscow Cherry Town a hit in west coast premier by Long Beach Opera

 

John Atkins, Peabody Southwell, Valerie Vinzant, Andrew Fernando, Benito Galindo, Vincent Chambers

Moscow Cherry Town

What: Opera by Dmitri Shostakovich, presented by Long Beach Opera, sung in bEnglish with English supertitles
Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 6424 Campus Drive, Irvine; Barnum Hall, 601 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica
When: Tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre; Sunday at 2 p.m. at Barnum Hall.
Tickets: $25-$110
Information: (562) 432-5934, www.longbeachopera.org

By John Farrell

“Moscow, Cherry Town” came to Long Beach Sunday afternoon courtesy of Long Beach Opera for a hilarious, musical and lightweight two hours of bright tunes and silly situations.

Just once, unfortunately, but two more performances are scheduled, one tonight at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in Irvine and a second next Sunday afternoon at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica, and if you like your music light-weight and tuneful, or if you wonder what Dmitri Shostakovich, the heaviest of heavy-weight Soviet composers, could turn out when he was just having fun, you should go hear “Cherry Town.” You'll have a great time listening to parodies of everything from Lehar's “The Merry Widow” to nascent Soviet rock; the production, minimal but just enough for the action, the cast, funny, bright, and always charming and the orchestra, led by LBO's Artistic and General Director Andreas Mitisek provide a cheerful look at the USSR that is surprisingly biting and political.

Surprising because Shostakovich has a long history of difficulties with the Russian government. He was a successful composer in 1934 when his opera “Lady MacBeth of the Mtsensk District” ran afoul of Stalin, was back in a starring role in 1941 and then forced, in 1948, to publicly repent. By 1951 he was again back in favor, and when Khrushchev took power he apparently felt safe enough to collaborate with Soviet comic writers Vladimir Mass and Mikhail Chervinsky on “Cherry Town,” a comedy about the struggle of several couples and some typical Soviet bureaucrats over apartment space in the new Cherry Town apartment development, “happiness in a thousand concrete rooms.”

The staging by Jian Jung, Sunday on a modified thrust stage at the Long Beach Center Theater, is simple but effective: a sign that moves around, maps of the Soviet Union, and a large crane are center stage. Costume designer Leah Piehl uses overcoats, a mink stole and plenty of worker-style clothes to set the stage, and director Isabel Milenski uses a sure hand to keep things comically moving, using a large chorus and an equally large cast.

There are Sasha and Masha, (Andrew Fernando and Peabody Southwell,) a young married couple who live in separate dormitories because they can find nowhere to put a double bed, Lidochka the museum guide (Valerie Vinzant,) Semyon Semyonovich, Lidochka's father (Benito Galindo,) Boris the explosives expert (John Atkins,) Sergei the chauffeur (Vincent Chambers) and Liusia a construction worker (Jamie Chamberlin) all looking forward to their new apartments in Cherry Town. Fyodor Drebednev (Roberto Perlas Gomez) and Vava (Susan Hanson) are a rich apparatchik and his lover who want to get a double apartment by depriving someone else of their apartment, and Barabashkin (Robin Buck) is the apartment manager who doesn't want to give out the keys: that would turn the people who are begging him for favors into tenants he would have to serve.

All the action is set to some of the most tuneful music that Shostakovich ever wrote. Apparently he was at best ambivalent about the result, and though he composed more music for the 1963 film version “Moscow, Cherry Town” was allowed to sit on the shelf for twenty years, but has found a new audience which loves its raucous comedy, its exciting parodies and now looks, from the post-Soviet world, at the period with more than a little nostalgia.

The entire cast, mostly made up of LBO alumni, had a great time with their performances. Hanson was a delight as a blond bombshell on the Soviet make, Fernando and Southwell perfect as the love-starved young marrieds. Vinzant was a delight as the sexy but understated Lidochka, and Atkins was everywhere as Boris, romancing two women and singing with delight. But best of all, perhaps, was Buck as Barabashkin, the apartment manager afflicted with dreams of power. His villainy was always comic, especially when he and Perlas Gomez dressed up in tutus for a dream sequence that was a hoot. This wasn't grand opera by any means, but it was a whole lot of innocent fun, and at the end the good ended up happy and the villains were left sweeping the stage. What more could you ask?

 

Golden State Pops reprises Disney's Tale as Old as Time With Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean and UP as part of show

Disney in Concert: Tale as Old as Time

What: Concert by Golden State Pops Orchestra, Steven Allen Fox, music director
When: Saturday at 8 p.m., doors open at 7 p.m., stage-side chat at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25 in advance, $30 at the door, students and seniors $15 in advance, $20 at the door, VIP tickets $35 in advance, $40 at the door.
Information: (310) 433-8774, www.gspo.com

By John Farrell

Last year the Golden State Pops Orchestra teamed up with the Disney Concert Library to present “Disney in Concert: Tale as Old as Time,” a program of music, songs and video clips from the Disney film library that was nearly sold out the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro for the night, so this season they are repeating the performance, and this time they may actually fill the theater to its capacity.

The concert is tomorrow night at 8 p.m., with the beautiful theater opening its doors an hour beforehand, and with a stage-side chat with Disney composer Charles Rydlund moderated by Daily Breeze Features Editor Leo Smith set for 7:30 p.m.

“Tale as Old as Time” was created by the Disney Concert Library for local orchestras with professional level orchestrations and a theme that is developed by the music itself, with film excerpts and, this year new music, including themes from the film “UP” and a new segment of tunes from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. (It just happens that the latest installment of that Disney franchise will premier this spring.

Chase Masterson will be the narrator in the concert, with four vocalists, Araceli Applegate, Natalie Taylor, Drew Tablak and Stephen Van Dorn, and the GSPO playing the brilliant music, which will tell stories of love and friendship from the Disney catalog, including “The Little Mermaid” and “The Lion King.”

“A couple of pieces of music have been replaced for this concert” said Fox in a recent phone conversation. “We have included music from 'UP' which won the Academy Award last year and tunes from 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' because the new film will be released a week after our concert, but otherwise the show is exactly the same as the one we did last year.

“The show was the largest with a combined audience that we have ever had, and the response to it was amazing. We got calls, letters, e-mails, all saying that they would come again if we did the show. It wasn't surprising that we got a good response because the show itself was great. The Disney (Concert Library) put together a great show and asked us to premier it on the west coast and they agreed to let us do it again this year.”

One added advantage: Jonathan Heely of DCL has now become a member of the GSPO special advisory committee and will be working with the GSPO in the future.

And though plans for another performance of this concert aren't in place, the GSPO will be performing a Disney-themed concert for their first scheduled concert in the 2011-2012 season, which will begin this September. That concert will be a tribute to the Sherman brothers, the duo of composers who wrote many of Disney's greatest songs in their long career. “Disney has a rule that only 20 minutes of Disney music can be played at any concert,” Fox said, “but they have waived that rule for us and there will some surprises in the concert in September.”

 

Long Beach Opera gives west coast premier of Shostakovich's comic Moscow Cherry Town in three performances in Long Beach, Irvine and Santa Monica; Milenski directs, Mitisek conducts

Moscow, Cherry Town

What: West coast premier of opera by Dmitri Shostakovich, presented by Long Beach Opera
Where: Center Theatre, 300 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach; Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine; Barnum Hall. 601 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica
When: Sunday at 2 p.m. (Long Beach;) Wednesday at 8 p.m. (Irvine;) Sunday, May 22 at 2 p.m. (Santa Monica.)
Tickets: $25-$110
Information: (562) 432-5934, www.longbeachopera.org

By John Farrell

In the long, often frustrating and often glorious career of the man many consider the greatest composer, Russian or otherwise, of the 20th century, his operetta “Moscow, Cherry Town” is generally a historical foot note.

Shostakovich wrote the work, the longest of anything he ever wrote (and that is saying something) but apparently was ambivalent about it at its premiere in Moscow in 1959. That didn't stop it from being a hit at home, and a frequently replayed Soviet television special until it vanished from view in 1971, apparently the victim of the death of the operetta (a victim who has not surprisingly returned to vibrant life in the last 20 years.)

Called “Moskva, Cheryomushki” in Russian transliteration and boasting a libretto by Vladimir Mass and Mikhail Chervinky, noted Soviet humorists of the time, the story is one that would never had been told under the regime of the repressive Stalin, who loaded honors on Shostakovich but also twice (in 1936 and 1948) had his music denounced publicly. Indeed, his opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” from 1934, was sharply criticized by the local Soviet press apparently on Stalin's orders. (That didn't discourage Los Angeles Opera, nearly 70 years later, from producing a lively performance in October 2002.)

“Cherry Town” was as up-to-date as daily headlines, telling the story of newly-wed museum guide and his bride, an explosives expert, a government chauffeur and a construction worker, all assigned to the new apartment complex in Cherry Town, one of the most up-to-date residential districts in Moscow. But the problems begin when the new landlord refuses to hand over the keys, and get worse when the couple finally get into their apartment only to find that their next-door neighbor is cutting a hole through the wall to make two apartments into one to impress his would-be girlfriend. Russian bureaucracy and the housing problem that plagued Moscow in the decades after World War II are in sharp and ironic focus, and some critics find it surprising that Shostakovich was ever allowed, even in the somewhat relaxed Khrushchev era, to put the operetta on at all.

Not at all surprising, though, that Long Beach Opera is offering the west coast premier of the work in three performances at three different venues throughout the southland. It opens this Sunday with a performance at the Center Theater of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center at 2 p.m., then moves to the Irvine Barclay Theater for a performance at 8 p.m. next Wednesday and finishes with a third performance next Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica at 2 p.m.

The production is directed by Isabel Milenski, a company veteran who is the daughter of Long Beach Opera founder Michael Milenski, who has directed such LBO productions as Janacek's “Jenufa” and Richard Strauss' “Die schweigsame frau.” The company's Artistic and General Director Andreas Mitisek will conduct all three performances, which will be sung in English with supertitles. The cast includes Andrew Fernando as Sasha, Peabody Southwell as Masha, Valerie Vinzant as Lidochka, Benito Galindo as Semyon Semyonovich and John Atkins as Boris.

Left to Right: Roberto Gomez (Fyodor Drebednev- Russian bureacrat), Robin Buck (Barabashkin-Real Estate Manager), Suzan Hanson (Vava - Drebednev's lover)

Motivated teens use art to turn lives around; Fourth St., Bixby Knolls monthly art shows

What: Teen Motivational Art Exhibit
Where: Picture This Gallery and Custom Framing, 4130 Norse Way, Long Beach
When: June 1-June 30, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.-2 p.m., other times by appointment; artists' reception Saturday, June 4 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Tickets: Free admission
Information: (562) 425-4861, www.picturethisgallery.weebly.com

By John Farrell

For four years now Marisol Gomez has turned her art gallery in North Long Beach over to a bunch of teenagers. And she has had great success doing it.

This year she is once again soliciting applications from young people to produce paintings, drawings, even sculpture (though they haven't had any so far,) all of it original work from artists under 20, all of it for sale, and all of it giving at least a portion of the sale price to whatever charitable group or cause the artist personally selects.

Some of those charitable causes are pretty heartbreaking: two artists gave 100 per cent of their profits to a family which had a member killed in a drive-by gang shooting, another, herself victim of rape, gave the proceeds from her sales to a rape prevention service.

“The reason I started this exhibit is that I met Danny Flores, a young man who was a gang member and turned his life around and dedicated his life to helping others do the same through art,” Gomez said in a brief phone interview. “I want to continue what he has begun.”

The form for application can be found at the galleries web site, and the form must be submitted by May 21. All art works must be for sale, with a portion of the proceeds from the sale going to the charity the artist chooses. There is no fee to enter.

“All the art is for sale, and when someone buys a piece of art they get to take it away with them,” Gomez explained. “We have more works than we can display, and when one piece is bought and removed we can replace it with another immediately.”

Nor is there any difficulty in finding buyers for the student work, Gomez explained. “We get quite a bit of support from teachers whose students are exhibiting.”

In addition to the works on display, poetry is also accepted and demonstration art, works produced by artists at the moment, are a part of the show. Poetry and art demonstrations are scheduled for the Artist's Reception June 1.

First Fridays Art Walk

What: Monthly celebration of art, poetry, shopping and dining in Bixby Knolls
Where: Bixby Knolls (Around Carson Blvd. at Atlantic in Long Beach)
When: Today from mid-afternoon until 9 p.m. or later.
Information: (562) 595-0081, www.firstfridayslongbeach.com \
Last Saturdays on Fourth

What: Evening of arts, music, entertainment and shopping on Fourth Street's “Retro Row.”
Where: Fourth St. from Cherry Ave. To Junipero St.
When: Saturday, May 28th, 4-8 p.m.
Information: www.4thstreetlongbeach.com

No need for jealousy or questions of who was first. Both the Bixby Knolls First Fridays Art Walk and the newer Last Saturdays on Fourth Street are based on an idea years, maybe even centuries old. (Remember, this century isn't more than a decade old, after all.)

Certainly Bixby Knolls is older, and the neighborhood is much larger. This Friday, as for many years in the past, shoppers, art lovers and people out for a good time will gather on north Atlantic Ave. to shop, eat, listen to music and have a good time. They have the Big Red Bus there to transport people from one end of the party to the other: it stretches for more than a few blocks.

Retro Row, as it calls itself, is much smaller: just the stretch from Cherry Ave. to Junipero, mostly on the south side of the street, and the vibe is very different, more intense, perhaps (certainly more excitement per linear foot) and with a surprise every forty feet or so.

But you don't have to choose between the two events. You can go to Bixby Knolls tonight, eat, drink and be merry and have three weeks (and a day) to recover before doing it all again on Fourth Street. The only problem is that after the Last Saturday on Fourth, you've only got six days to recover before the next first Friday rolls around.

 

Tchaikovsky violin concerto, Glinka's “Russlan and Ludmilla,” Carmen suite fill LBSO March concert with Diemecke conducting, soloist Kaler

By John Farrell

Concert names have become the in thing across the land, and at the Long Beach Symphony, perhaps for marketing reasons, they are as exciting as anywhere else. That is, if you prefer your music with a seductive title.

The most recent LBSO concert, Saturday night at the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach, was subtitled
“The Seductress, the Prince and the Princess,” a nod to the “Carmen” Suite that took up much of the second half of the mostly but hardly all-Russian program, no doubt. A better title, if one was necessary at all, would have been “Tchaikovsky's violin concerto and a little more,” for it was the Tchaikovsky, in the more than capable hands of soloist Ilya Kaler, that was the centerpiece and even, if we must use French, the raison d'etre of the whole and often glorious concert, the fourth in what is Maestro Enrique Arturo Diemecke's tenth season with the symphony.

Speaking of titles, this entire season of concerts has been promulgated under the heading “From Russia with Love,” without even a nod of thanks to Ian Fleming. Most of the works this season are Russian (though “Carmen” is clearly not) and on this evening the music began with Glinka's lively and often-heard overture to “Russlan and Ludmilla.” Diemecke led at a breakneck pace, perhaps even a little too fast for his orchestra, but it was a cheerful and lively reading, with only one question: if Glinka wrote this often played and exciting work, why do we never hear of anything else from the first Russian nationalist composer? Just asking.

The Tchaikovsky in all its myriad glories took up the rest of the concert's first half, with Kaler and Diemecke, who have worked together for 20 years now, teaming up to make the work a true delight.

Kaler plays a Guarnerius violin and, like many an ancient instruments, it has a voice all its own. The Tchaikovsky is as well known as any violin concerto, and is usually played by an instrument of surpassing lightness of tone. Kaler's instrument sounded a bit like it had just a touch of gravel in it, if that were possible, throatier and richer than other fiddles, fighting a bit against the constraints of Tchaikovsky's music. Kaler had every trick in his hands, from double stops to lightning changes from bowed passages to quick pizzicato and back, all without seeing any effort at all on his part. There were moments when his instruments voice was overpowered by the orchestra, but they were brief, and his passion and depth of feeling kept pace with all the technical brilliance. Diemecke was nearly always in command of his forces and the works lyric and dramatic qualities were well-balanced. It was brilliant, but not just brilliant: technique was celebrated but not at the expense of musicality. The audience gave Kaler three standing ovations: Diemecke has won them over to serious and lengthy pieces.

The “Carmen,” in the transcription by Hoffman (and not the modern Russian Rodion Shchedrin) was bright, filled with plenty of energy and plenty of percussion. Diemecke dance his way though it with a deft hand that reminded everyone that he is also an opera conductor of note. The final work on the program, the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin's opera “Prince Igor” were even more exciting, with Diemecke emphasizing the bass drum with his foot and dancing his way to the powerful and dramatic ending.

Next year's concert schedule was announced that night to the orchestra-goers (it had been released a few days earlier) and has, yes, another name: “Vienna Nights,” a nod to the city where much of classical music was developed (though London, Rome, Leipzig and a few other towns deserve notice.) The programs include music by Beethoven, Schoenberg, Lehar and Johann Strauss, Jr. They also include the West Coast premier of Diemecke's Marimba Concerto and music by Brahms and Mendelssohn. And, no doubt to prove how accurate these title are, the first thing on the first performance next October 1 is Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. We can't forget Russia quite that fast.

Waiting for Godot

What: Play by Samuel Beckett, directed by Carl daSilva (cq), presented by Long Beach Playhouse
Where: Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre, 5021 East Anaheim, Long Beach, Ca.
When: This Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through May 7
Tickets:$22, $20 for seniors, $12 for students
Information: (562) 494-1014, www.lbplayhouse.org

By John Farrell

There are a couple of ways to think about “Waiting for Godot,” which opened last Friday at the Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre for a run through May 7.

It may not be the “most significant play of the 20th century” as it was once voted, but it is certainly one of the few in that category, and it marks the start of the new LB Playhouse Studio series with a note of high expectancy. It suggests pretty clearly that things are going to be different there this season, if the Alive Theatre production of “Four Clowns,” which preceded it in that space, hadn't already proved the same.

That's one way to look at it. Another is just to say that it is a great play, and nearly sixty years after its first production in France (it was originally written in French and translated later into English by its author, Samuel Beckett) though it is still as difficult as ever to figure out just what it means, the discussion is now civil and significant. It was often a lot more heated in the early days.

The play stars Anthony B. Cohen as Vladimir, short and slight and looking for the meaning of everything, and Karl Schott as Estragon, bigger and just as confused and hopeless. Both are dressed in clothes that are well past there thrift-store days, but with the black bowler hats that denote at least a more of respectability in their limited and at the same time wide-open world, dominated by a single and sparse tree.

In this production they are waiting for the appearance of Godot (pronounced “GOD-oh,” which suggests something which Beckett apparently didn't actually intend.) Whoever he is (and the controversy is as profound now as fifty and more years ago) Godot promised to meet them at the tree, but never shows up. Vladimir and Estragon wait and pass the time as best they can, discussing existence, the Bible, and a bad joke that neither of them remembers.

Into this lonely world come Pozzo (Steven Biggs) and Lucky (Kyle Bryan,) the former leading the latter on a length of rope as his slave. Pozzo is leading Lucky to the market to sell him. When they return in the second half of the play Pozzo is blind and doesn't remember anything of the day before.

“Godot” has been called many things in the discussion that have warred around the play in more than half a century, and one of them is that it is a vaudeville number. Certainly Vladimir and Estragon engage in vaudeville antics, patting each other on the buttocks, doing a routine with their bowler hats that is reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy. But theirs is, for all that, a world of day-to-day despair, always waiting for Godot, whom they have never seen, to meet them. When a boy (played by Terren Mueller is his playhouse debut) comes to tell them Godot is coming tomorrow, they quiz him on this mysterious character, to little avail.

The setting of all this is as evocative as it is sparse. Andrew Vonderschmitt puts a plain, leafless tree made of bent pipes on one side of the stage that is harshly lit and features a backdrop of an endless desert. A few pieces of carpet-covered rocks are all that Estragon and Vladimir have to face every day. (The nights they sleep in ditches nearby, apparently.) All they have is each other and endless waiting. Cohen and Schott are contrasts in size (Cohen is small and wiry, Schott big and lanky) and in style. Vladimir is always looking for something to do, Estragon is often sleepy. They both consider suicide, but it might not work.

Draw your own conclusions: Marx or Freud or a comedy routine gone wrong. But go see this brilliant, entertaining and thought-provoking play, and celebrate the new playhouse and its creative team.

Silent Sky

What: Play by Lauren Gunderson, directed by Anne Justine D'Zmura, presented by South Coast Repertory
Where: South Coast Repertory Segerstrom Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa,
When: Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Matinees at 2:30 p.m. through May 1.
Tickets: $28-$66
Information: (714) 708-5555, www.scr.org
Two and one-half stars

By John Farrell

“Silent Sky” is a great idea for a play: tell the story of a genuine astronomical pioneer who, in spite of sexism and a job that paid little for an impossibly big amount of work, discovered one of the vital facts of the universe by insight and sheer persistence.

South Coast Repertory certainly felt that way when they commissioned Lauren Gunderson to write “Silent Sky” for them, the second play Gunderson has written under commission for the playhouse. It is an exciting subject. Henrietta Leavitt, the play's central character, worked for more than a decade as one of Harvard University's “computers” (back when that meant somebody doing the work by hand) and discovered, through the data she personally mustered and cataloged, the relative luminosity of Cepheid variable stars, the so-called “standard candles”that allowed the universe to be mapped and Edwin Hubble (after whom the Hubble Telescope is named) to discover and catalog thousands of galaxies outside our own Milky Way.

The problem is, the explanation above is more detailed than any in the play, and the real story, of more than fifteen years of Leavitt's arduous work, is hidden in the background of a story that tells more about Levitt's love life than her intellectual one, leaves her inspiration largely to be guessed at and even lets the fatal cancer that took her early in life be no more than a simple pain in her stomach mentioned mildly in passing.

Perhaps it was playwright Gunderson's intention to focus on Leavitt's life instead of her work, but even that is often done in shorthand and without much notice: Leavitt worked for 16 years at Harvard before her ground-breaking work was published and no explanation is given for that publication. Meanwhile she has aged 16 years without much personal change in appearance (though one of her colleague's finally appears in a modern for 1910 pants suit.

Monette Magrath makes Henrietta a woman not really of the current (1890s) world (though her Phi Beta Kappa award and graduation from Radcliffe would suggest some worldly experience) and her fascination with the sky, and the telescopic pictures of the sky she works with are feebly suggested by the staging, which makes her offices no more than a desk and a chair, her home a sofa, and everything moveable and changeable. Better we should see her in the cluttered Victorian world that was her real life, and that designer John Iacovelli should have provided.

Magrath is supported by Amelia White as Williamina Fleming, a Scottish immigrant promoted to photographic work, and Colette Kilroy as Annie Cannon. Together the three of them work to catalog the sky, under the leadership of the never-seen Professor Pickering, who hired only women for the work and might have been an interesting character himself, if he was ever allowed on stage. Nick Toren is Peter Shaw, Leavitt's love interest from a distance and Erin Cottrell is Henrietta's sister Margaret Leavitt whose life, involving the birth of several children, is almost the only indicator we get of time passing.

Director Anne Justine D'Zmura stages all the action on a flat stage where the sky is viewed through the half-opened dome of a telescope, with the desks and furniture and rail of an ocean liner the only things on stage. They move easily from scene to scene and, with a bit more clutter, might tell more of the story. She makes it all work seamlessly but though some in the audience seemed to know what was going on, others were asking for explanations afterwards. Yes, Leavitt made an important, even crucial discovery, but perhaps there was more to it than the largely empty and blank scenery suggested.

“Silent Sky” tells an important story of science (and even a little feminism) but it does so with little of the anguish and terrible load of work Leavitt undertook to achieve her discovery. She deserves better.

 

VideoGame Soundtracks

 

What: Concert by the Golden State Pops Orchestra, Steven Allen Fox, artistic director, Southern California Master Chorale, Sheridan Ball, director.
Where: Warner Grand Theatre, 478 W. 6th St., San Pedro; art display at Arcade Bldg, 479 W. 6th St.
When: Tomorrow at 8 p.m., doors open at 7 p.m., pre-concert stageside chat at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25-$35, $15 for seniors, students and military members
Information: (310) 433-8774, www.gspo.com

By John Farrell

Classical music is largely a matter of dead musicians, but the Golden State Pops Orchestra has mined a rich load of classical music created by very-much alive composers, and ten of them will be the GSPO concert tomorrow when the orchestra offers its third installment of “VideoGame Soundtracks,” soaring orchestral music written by musical contemporaries for the games that need an entire environment: music as well as video graphics, to make their profound impact.

The concert is tomorrow at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro and includes not only new music from ten of the best video games composers but a related display, in the Arcade Building just down the street from the Warner's, of art associated with Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft.

This year's video game concert features music for various video games by ten of the top composers in their field. They include the two-time, 2011 Grammy winning composer Christopher Tin, Joey Newman, Russell Brower, Gerard Marino, Austin Wintory, Sean Murray, Greg Edmonson, Laura Karpman, Nobuo Uematsu, Wataru Hokoyama and Christopher Lennertz. The performance includes special video games visuals from “The Shattering” from the “World of Warcraft:Cataclysm” game with music by Browser. In addition there will be a premier of a suite from “Journey” composed by Wintory which is being especially prepared for the GSPO. It will be a sneak premier since the game for which it was written won't be out for several months, and features cello soloist Tina Guo, known for her solos in the films “Inception,” “Iron Man II” and “Sherlock Holmes.”

Tin won a Grammy this year for the song “Baba Yetu” from the game “Civilization,” which will be featured at Saturday's concert, and one for the album titled “Calling All Dawns.”

Those are only a few of the scores from video games that will be heard at tomorrow's concert. Also on tap is “Lineage,” by Emmy nominated composer Joey Newman. (Yes, Newman is part of the Hollywood musical dynasty that includes his great Uncle Lionel and cousins David, Thomas and Randy Newman.)

Two works by Marino are on the program as well: “City of Darkness/City of Light” from a soon to be released DC Universal online game and “The End Begins to Rock” from “Guitar Hero III.”
“Savanna” from “Afrika,” composed by Hokoyama, “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” by Murray, “Uncharted” by Edmonson, “Medal of Honor:Pacific Assault” by Lennertz, “One Winged Angel” from “Final Fantasy VII” by Uematsu and “Everquest” by Karpman round out the program. Most of the composers will be at Saturday's concert.

Joining Maestro Fox onstage will be the Southern California Master Chorale under the direction of Sheridan Ball, providing the vocal riffs for this complex music.

“I am always excited when VideoGanes Soundtracks is a part of our concert season,” Fox said. “I really enjoy piecing a show like this together and I know the audience will be thrilled with the music, video projections and special guests. Every email and phone call is another wonderful confirmation that we can perform a specific piece of music, show great imagery or welcome a special guest. Whether you play games or not, come and experience the sounds of VideoGame Soundtracks for yourself.”

Three more GSPO concerts are scheduled for the 2010-2011 season. On Saturday May 14 the orchestra will perform “Disney in Concert,” another special production in conjunction with the Disney Music organization. On Saturday, May 22 the orchestra will again be joined by soloists and the California Master Chorale for Brahm's Requiem. Finally, on Saturday June 11 the orchestra will finish its season with “Great Film Composers.” All concerts are at 8 p.m. in the Warner Grand.

 

LB Shakespeare brings Tampa of the 20's To Expo Backroom in Anna in the Tropics

Anna in the Tropics

What: Play by Nilo Cruz, directed by Denis McCourt, presented by Long Beach Shakespeare Company
Where: Expo Backroom Theatre, Expo Centre, 4321 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach
When: Tonight at 8 p.m., tomorrow at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Sunday at 2 p.m. through May 14.
Tickets: $20, $10 for students
Information: (562) 997-1494, www.lbshakespeare.org

By John Farrell

“Anna in the Tropics” is a Pulitzer-Prize winning look at the Cuban immigrant experience in 1920s Ybor City, the cigar-manufacturing suburb of Tampa, Florida where, for many years, the great majority of cigars for the entire United States market were made by hand by immigrant workers.

The company's Co-Artistic Director, Denis McCourt, premiers a production of that play tonight in the

Backroom Theater of the company's second home, the huge Expo Building on north Atlantic Blvd. A few blocks away from their permanent home at the Richard Goad Theatre and with a very different

set of artistic and logistic demands on the ever-creative company.

For one thing, as McCourt pointed out in a pre-rehearsal interview this week, the “backroom,” which he has used for several innovative productions, has what he calls “a lot of negatives,” but, as he said, the “one positive is that I can shift around in back and do things in an original way.” The “backroom” is just that, a back room in the Expo Center, which for many years was a furniture store in Bixby Knolls. Now owned by the City of Long Beach, the huge space is used for many things, including art exhibits, and LB Shakespeare has mounted a number of plays there, building sets specific to the production, sometimes large, sometimes small.

McCourt chose the play, as he has all he has produced for the company, with an eye to the community he serves, in this case an audience that is predominantly immigrant (Long Beach has a large immigrant population) and one that still remembers the struggles that immigrant experience entailed. “I've never seen “Anna” (produced),” McCourt said, “but I read it many years ago and I've been waiting to do this somewhere. I've been very careful to let the audience know that this is a story they can relate to.”

Not incidentally, McCourt has ties to the Tampa, Florida where the play is set. “I was born in New York City,” the director explained, “but I moved to Tampa when I was young. Ybor City is still there, with the cigar factories turned into night clubs. It still has a hot night life and even then I had a distinct feeling of going into these bars and feeling the atmosphere of workers and their impact on the city.”

The play is in part about how members of a different culture adapt when they come to the United States, and McCourt has the perfect cast for that adaptation. “Most of my cast members are first-generation Americans,” McCourt said. “They have a direct connection to the story the play tells.” McCourt's cast includes actors from families that came from Columbia, Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico and Cuba (the last is where everyone in the play comes from.)

The basic plot comes from the tradition in cigar factories of having a lector read aloud to the workers who were making the cigars while they were working. “That's why so many of the cigars are named for characters out of classic literature, like 'Romeo and Juliet,'” McCourt explained. The new lector in the factory where Conchita (actress Kesia Elwin) works decides to read from Russian novels and reads “Anna Karenina”' (the classic by Tolstoy.) “In the plot line of the classic novel we see many similarities between Conchita and Anna,” McCourt says. “She has a loveless marriage just like the novel's heroine.” The Russian story has a lot of meaning for Conchita, who is married to a black man who has a lover and little respect for her. She decides that she deserves some happiness, just as Anna in the Tolstoy novel does.

“Anna” tells a story of immigrants who want the same things that natives want: success, happiness, love and respect. Its an American story that tells of a time nearly a century ago, but it still resonates today.

“Anna in the Tropics” opens tonight for a run at the Expo Backstage Theatre through May 14.