Bob Hicks, General, Music, opera

Figaro, Figaro: from dread to wed

4 Comments

©Portland Opera/Cory Weaver. Daniel Mobbs (Figaro) and Jennifer Aylmer (Susanna)©Portland Opera/Cory Weaver

By Bob Hicks

Mr. Scatter is just getting around to letting you know that he and Mrs. Scatter joined the opening-night throng on Friday for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte‘s opera buffa The Marriage of Figaro, based on Pierre Beaumarchais‘ stage comedy of the same name, at Portland Opera. (It also happened to be opening night of PO’s 2011-12 season, which might have accounted for the slightly larger than usual sprinkling of formal dress amid the usual Oregon mackinaws and mucklucks. Mr. Scatter marked the occasion by changing out of his jeans into semi-creased khakis and slinging on a quilt-lined country walking sportjacket, much to the dazzlement of his eternal bride, whose comments on his sartorial attentiveness ordinarily run along the lines of “There’s a hole in your T-shirt.”)

Please forgive Mr. S’s sloth in filing his report. Could be he dilly-dallied because he didn’t really have much to add to the excellent summations of the mainline critics, James McQuillen in The Oregonian and James Bash at Oregon Music News. Mr. S agrees with McQuillen that this is very much a traditional production. It reminds him of the hoary theater joke: “Did you hear about the radical new Hamlet? They did it in Elizabethan dress.” He also concedes that the original satire (Beamarchais’ 1778 play was banned for several years for its biting depiction of the ruling classes, not reaching the stage until 1784, just two years before the opera) has lost a few of its teeth in the ensuing centuries. Still, if the guffaws of the twentysomethings sitting behind the Scatters are any indication, the comedy  remains fresh and ribald and (Mr. S hesitates to use this purportedly naughty word for fear of being drummed out of the League of Tough Guy Arts Observers) entertaining. While there can be and have been highly successful radical takes on The Marriage of Figaro, when what you’re dealing with happens to be a work of comic genius, traditional isn’t such a bad thing to be. This is known in some circles as If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It.

Continue reading Figaro, Figaro: from dread to wed →

Books, General, Laura Grimes

Hedgehogging our bets on book club

2 Comments

A European hedgehog, which is bigger than an African hedgehog./Wikimedia Commons

By Laura Grimes

Book Club is coming. Book Club is coming.

And it’s coming to my house.

I never thought I was a Book Club person. I love the idea of a gathering of people for the primary reason of discussing a book, but I chafe at the thought of being told what to read, spending hours on a book that I didn’t pick, and facing a deadline to finish reading something when I prefer to just enjoy it as a leisurely hobby. And then there’s the looming threat to be disciplined about finishing a book. The dreaded D word.

But a funny thing … I developed a liking for these people. I thought I would have Book Club Commitment Issues (like George Clooney), but I’ve grown so … so … attached.

Continue reading Hedgehogging our bets on book club →

Bob Hicks, General, Television

Andy Rooney, signing off one last time

1 Comment

By Bob Hicks

Andy RooneyOver at Splattworks, playwright Steve Patterson delivers this nice farewell to America’s second-most-famous Rooney, after Mickey. Professional television curmudgeon Andy Rooney is dead at 92, and he kept on keeping on with his 60 Minutes moments almost to the end. Patterson, an old newshound himself, appreciates Rooney’s old-fashioned reporting skills, and signs off this way:

Even when he didn’t have much to say, he found an entertaining way to tell you: “Today, I got nothin’.”

Today, we got nothin’. Or at least a little less. And I think Rooney would be okay with that. Anyway, he’s going to have to be. And so are we.

Bob Hicks, Film, General, Visual Art

Falling into a Bruegel painting, on film

Leave a comment

"The Mill and the Cross," directed by Lech Majewski. Kino Lorber, Inc.Kino Lorber, Inc.

By Bob Hicks

If you’re going to fall into a painting, choose carefully. Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie might be exciting, but after a while you’d start to feel like a mouse in a maze. Edvard Munch’s The Scream? You don’t want to go there. One of Henri Rousseau’s Edenic wild beasty scenes would be tempting, but how are your jungle survival skills? A Jackson Pollock action painting? It’d be an adventure, but a weirdly disorienting one. And do you really want to spend eternity slipping around Salvador Dali’s melted clocks in The Persistence of Memory?

No, better off to choose a painting with a broadly varied universe of its own, a place that gives you lots of room to roam. Pieter Bruegel the Elder‘s 1564 masterpiece The Way to Calvary, for instance, a painting of meticulous and painstaking vision that exists in a complex network of space, thought and time. Calvary forms the basis for Polish director Lech Majewski’s audacious film The Mill & the Cross, a visually breathtaking piece of moviemaking that opens Friday at Northwest Portland’s Cinema 21 and plays through November 10.

Continue reading Falling into a Bruegel painting, on film →

Bob Hicks, General, Visual Art

Art notes: 1st Thursday, Sitka Invitational

Leave a comment

Margot Voorheis Thompson at Sitka InvitationalMargot Voorheis Thompson/Sitka Invitational

By Bob Hicks

Tonight is First Thursday, Portland’s monthly gallery art walk. (We also have First Friday, Last Thursday and a few other gatherings, but this remains the big one.) Of course you don’t have to see the new exhibits tonight — most of them will be up all month — but if you like the party atmosphere and the thrill of being there first, tonight’s the night.

Fritz Liedtke, "April," from his show "Astra Velum" at Blue Sky.As always there’s a lot to see, more than any sane person can manage in a single evening. I have this roundup of highlights in this morning’s Oregonian, and as much as it covers, it leaves more out. Catch what you like, catch what you can, and remember: you have pretty much all of November to catch up with what you don’t catch tonight.

This weekend is the 18th annual Sitka Art Invitational at the World Forestry Center, just across from the Oregon Zoo. I covered the basics in this story on OregonLive. There are special events Friday night and Saturday after hours, but the big party is 10 a.m.-4 p.m.  Saturday and Sunday, and it’s a bargain: $5 (or free, if you’re younger than 18) gets you in the door, with unlimited return visits. About 120 artists, many of them leading regional names, will have roughly 450 works for sale, all to benefit the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology at Cascade Head on the northern Oregon coast. I’ve visited there, and it’s a very cool place, a haven for artists in residence and also a busy center for people wanting to take short-term art and nature courses.

Jim Neidhardt's "Atomic Fireball" at the Littman Gallery show "unGrounded."

ILLUSTRATIONS, from top:

  • Margot Voorheis Thompson at the Sitka Art Invitational.
  • Fritz Liedtke, “April,” from his show “Astra Velum” at Blue Sky.
  • Jim Neidhardt’s “Atomic Fireball” at the Littman Gallery show “foreGround,” curated by Jeff Jahn of PORT.
Bob Hicks, General, Poetry

Till death do us part: the junk’s in the mail

7 Comments

By Bob Hicks

Mr. Scatter is getting old.

"Grave-digger," Viktor Vasetsov, 1871. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow/Wikimedia Commons.At least, judging by his junk mail, the world seems to think so.

Rest homes (or “active senior residences”), pharmaceutical companies, retirement financial planners, purveyors of musical nostalgia in the Pat Boone mold have got their hands, if not on Mr. Scatter’s obituary, then certainly on the records of his birth date and semi-antique Social Security number. This even though Mr. Scatter is not now nor has he ever been a card-carrying member of the AARP.

Today’s mail brought one of the less welcome of these geezerly come-ons, from an outfit called Neptune Cremation Service. “FREE Pre-Paid Cremation!” it shouted on the envelope, which Mr. Scatter refused to open. Frankly, the offer burned him up. On the other hand, something called the University of Western States also sent an offer, this one on the perkier side: “Teen Back Pain? 12-18 Years Old?” Back pain, yes. Teen, thank the lord, no. (The two teens in residence at Chez Scatter are often pains, but not in the back.)

Mr. Scatter has no immediate plans to go gentle into that good night, although he recognizes the eventual inevitability. He asks only that the eager entrepreneurs of the world hold their horses and stop trying to push him prematurely into the abyss. Today has been a chilly but gloriously sunny day, and Mr. Scatter fully intends to enjoy such pleasures to the hilt before the eternal rains settle in.

Maybe it’s the inspiration of recently reading Charles Deemer’s poetry collection In My Old Age, but Mr. Scatter has decided to versify his thoughts on biting the big one in rainy Oregon:

Ashes to ashes

dust to dust

in Portland

we just

turn to rust.

*

ILLUSTRATION: “Grave-digger,” Viktor Vasetsov, 1871. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow/Wikimedia Commons.

Bob Hicks, Books, General, Poetry

In his old age: Deemer at 3:17 a.m.

Leave a comment

By Bob Hicks

So this is the way it gets.

Lying in bed awake

at 3:17 a.m.

my wife’s heavy breathing

the weight of the dog on my leg


I am visited by the ghosts

of past mistakes

and dance to a symphony

of regrets


I wouldn’t change a thing


This is who I am

counting my blessings

in the dark morning

320That’s Portland writer Charles Deemer’s poem The Bottom Line, from his new collection In My Old Age, just out from Round Bend Press. Those of you who follow Deemer’s bracing, political, personal, sometimes crotchety blog The Writing Life II will remember a while back when poems started poking out, almost on their own, as if demanding voice among the general background noise of sports rants and teaching woes and struggling with scripts and ramming one’s head against the broad national venality and extolling the virtues of a simple cup of coffee and a good plate of scrapple in the morning. Old men, Deemer has discovered to his delight, get to say and do pretty much what they like, or at least what they’re still capable of saying and doing. This book is the result of that irascible fit of creativity, and I, for one, am happy for it.

Continue reading In his old age: Deemer at 3:17 a.m. →

Bob Hicks, Cities, Food, General

Sour grapes: the Scatters in a pickle

3 Comments

By Bob Hicks

Keep Portland Pickled. Or maybe, in honor of a certain shape of preserved cucumber, Keep Portland Speared.

Imagine a city where something called the Portland Fermentation Festival is such a mind-boggling hit that you can’t get in the doors. It’s like reporting that the Iowa City Haggis Festival or the Twin Falls Ukelele and Bassoon Blowout are SRO.

Such is the city in which we live.

Grape-Shot: 1915 English magazine illustration of a lady riding a champagne cork From The Lordprice Collection This picture is the copyright of the Lordprice Collection and is reproduced on Wikipedia with their permissionMr. Scatter recalls being impressed as a child by the tale of Noah, who after steering his ark at long last into port dipped into the wine cellar and got so snozzled that he stumbled into his tent, stripped off all his clothes, and fell into a deep naked snooze. This caused considerable consternation once he woke up, and somehow Noah, who after all was “a just man and perfect,” pinned the blame on his son Canaan, who as winemaker had apparently amped up the alcohol content. (He might have been the same guy making all those head-thumping California zins in the 1970s.) It was a pioneering instance of better scapegoating through chemistry.

On Thursday evening Mr. and Mrs. Scatter parked the Scatter corporate ark on a side street near the Pearl District’s Ecotrust Building and headed in for what they assumed would be a quiet and congenial gathering of fellow fermentation geeks — lovers of the likes of pickles, kimchi, sauerkraut, sourdough, and of course, wine and beer. Imagine their surprise to see a line of pickle fanatics snaking down the stairway from the second-story event, through the lobby and almost out the door.

Continue reading Sour grapes: the Scatters in a pickle →

Dance, General, Martha Ullman West

Oklahoma! — the dance continues

1 Comment

Gregory J. Hanks, Timothy Ware, Jurran Muse and Don Kenneth Mason put some kick into "Oklahoma!" Photo: Patrick WeisenhampelPatrick Weishampel

By Martha Ullman West

I’ve already expressed my outrage at the comments posted on Marty Hughley’s preview of Oklahoma! in The Oregonian that confirmed what I already knew: We are decades away from a post-racial society, whatever that means. It will be a joyful day when we celebrate our differences rather than tolerating them, like a drug reaction.

So I thought I’d go see for myself whether Portland Center Stage‘s not-quite all-black cast (Jonathan Raviv, magnificent as the Persian peddler, isn’t African-American) would change the dramatic impact of a musical I grew up with. I still own the original cast album; I still know almost all the music and lyrics by heart, and I love the ground-breaking dances, which furthered the plot rather than stopping the drama.

Original Dances by Agnes de Mille, the program says.  Choreographer Joel Ferrell, it also says, whose dances for My Fair Lady I much enjoyed several years ago when Center Stage presented its pared-down version. For Oklahoma!, Ferrell’s choreography for the ensemble is just dandy: the clog/tap dancing of the men in Kansas City, the two-steps and waltzes for social occasions. But the cluttering-up of the Dream Ballet with, of all things, a bed and dance-hall girls of extreme vulgarity, is a huge disappointment. That’s picking up on Jud’s fascination with pornography, but it’s way over the top. And I wish Laurie’s dream double were actually a ballet dancer. Perhaps that wasn’t practical, but I suspect DeMille got that idea from Eugene Loring‘s Billy the Kid, in which Billy’s dream sweetheart is the only dancer on pointe.

Having said all that, I loved this Oklahoma! — the pace of Chris Coleman’s direction, the characterizations, the detail, the bits, the subtleties and the broadness we call dynamics. Its one flaw is the cluttered dream ballet, which I remember for its simplicity and stripped-down horror. And I especially loved Rodney Hicks’s Curly, Brianna Horne’s Laurey, and Justin Lee Miller’s Jud Fry.

*

Gregory J. Hanks, Timothy Ware, Jurran Muse and Don Kenneth Mason put some kick into “Oklahoma!” at Portland Center Stage. Photo: Patrick Weishampel.

Bob Hicks, General, Theater

No Man’s Land revisited: the podcast

2 Comments

By Bob Hicks

A few days ago my friend Barry Johnson, the guy behind the infant but swiftly growing online magazine Oregon Arts Watch, asked me to sit down with him and talk about Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and actor William Hurt’s starring performance in it at Artists Repertory Theatre. I said sure, and Barry brought his high-tech equipment over to Art Scatter World Headquarters, where we locked ourselves into the executive clubhouse for a half-hour and chewed the theatrical fat. The result, a 17-minute radio-style conversation, is now posted at Oregon Arts Watch. It nicely complements my own thoughts on the show in this post, and Barry’s here. If you’d like to hear the voices behind the bylines … well, there we are.

a Portland-centric arts and culture blog