Tag Archives: Chris Coleman

Dance, General, Martha Ullman West

Oklahoma! — the dance continues

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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.

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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

A black day in the Indian Territory

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judcurlylaurey

By Bob Hicks

Over at Oregon Live, my friend Marty Hughley has been engaging in some unfair battle practices: He’s been using wit and logic against a slew of unarmed opponents.

The issue has been his story in The Oregonian about Portland Center Stage‘s new black-cast production of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! and the alternately angry and smirking comments by the story’s Web trolls that director Chris Coleman’s casting decision somehow encompasses all the accumulated sins of liberalism, racism, and probably godless commie-loving atheism to boot. Several have employed that oddly derisive phrase “reverse racism,” a designation that somehow reminds me of the reactionary right’s labeling as “class warfare” of poor and working class people’s attempts to shift a bit of the nation’s tax load back onto the wealthy, a fair share of whom have been busily divesting themselves of the concept of community responsibility for some time now. (It’s only fair and just to point out also that another good share of the wealthy are generous and committed to giving back to the communities that have helped them prosper.) Never mind that if we are in the middle of a class warfare, one side has sticks and stones and the other has heat-seeking missiles.

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Bob Hicks, General, Theater

Reviewing the review: a Moliere muddle

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By Bob Hicks

And so it came to pass that on the first night, Mr. Scatter went to the opening of Moliere‘s comedy The Imaginary Invalid at Portland Center Stage.

Nicolas Mignard, "Portrait of Molière as Julius Ceasar," 1658. Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.And on the second morning he got up, made coffee, and wrote his review, which was subsequently published (the review, not the coffee) in The Oregonian. And the review praised some and quibbled some, and was not, in the terminology of the great god Variety, boffo.

And lo, the director, Chris Coleman, took issue (firmly but very politely) in an email message to the reviewer. And Mr. Coleman made some worthy points.

And on the next day Mr. Scatter replied. And Mr. Coleman replied in return, “Mind if I run this exchange on my blog?” And Mr. Scatter said, “Good idea.” For indeed, it was.

So here you have it: three parts of an exchange that is really about the way we look at theater, and think about it, and write about it (about classic theater in particular), and about the different approaches that the people who make theater and the people who analyze it take to that process. Plus, as a bonus, some thoughts about what a reviewer should do when he senses that pretty much everyone else in the audience disagrees with him.

Chris has gathered the three parts together on his PCS blog, under the title Is My Review Your Review? To get you in the mood to wade into the fray, I’ve included a pertinent teaser from each of the three parts. Comment here, or on Chris’s blog, or preferably on both (that’s what the copy-block function’s for):

  • The original review, which ran in Monday editions of the paper and online here at Oregon Live: “(F)or all its surface frivolity, something’s missing from Center Stage’s ‘Invalid’ — the sense that what’s happening inside Argan’s anarchic household is connected to the larger culture outside its doors.”
  • Chris Coleman’s response: “… I have, of late, found myself impatient with reviewers (the world over) bringing so much of their own ‘expectations’ to a production of a classic, and judging its merits based on what they walked in hoping to see.”
  • My response to Chris’s response: “With any adaptation, a pertinent question to ask is whether it is faithful to the original. That’s not necessarily a question of traditionalist versus radical …”

Already our old sidekick Barry Johnson of Arts Dispatch, who put in considerable time in the theater critic’s chair at the Big O, has chipped in with some intriguing thoughts at Coleman’s blog. Give ‘er a look.

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Nicolas Mignard, “Portrait of Molière as Julius Ceasar,” 1658. Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Bob Hicks, Cities

Guvs duck art; pick a peck o’ PICA

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By Bob Hicks

Over at Oregon Live, Friend of Scatter D.K. Row reports that Oregon’s two major gubernatorial candidates, Demo John Kitzhaber and the GOP’s Chris Dudley, have pretty much nothing to say about how they would or wouldn’t approach statewide funding and other support for the arts. Both ducked a request by the statewide lobbying group Cultural Advocacy Coalition to talk it out in a town hall meeting before the election. And both ducked the chance to comment to D.K. for his story.

Timberline Lodge: the last word in Oregon cultural funding? Photo: Kelvin Kay/Wikimedia CommonsNo surprise here. With the state budget circling the toilet bowl and getting ready for the big flush, neither candidate is likely to come out promising anything to anyone about arts and culture. Remember last year, when the Democrat-dominated legislature raided the state’s supposedly sacrosanct Cultural Trust fund in an attempt to pay the bills.

Portland city commish Nick Fish, who’s also a board member of the Cultural Trust, called the candidates’ no-talk “a missed opportunity.” But even some arts leaders expressed sympathy for a pair of guys caught between a rock and a hard place. “When I think of the immense economic problems the next governor has to solve, my stomach hurts,” Chris Coleman told Row. “The notion of even advancing a cultural agenda would be hard right now. So I understand. If I was running for governor, it’d be hard for me to find time for the arts.” Coleman is artistic director of Portland Center Stage. He also happens to be board president of the Creative Advocacy Network, Portland’s coalition of arts boosters in the political ring.

Whoever wins the governor’s race, don’t be expecting a neo-WPA, folks. The feds are pretty much out of this picture, FDR’s kicked the bucket, and we already got our Timberline Lodge. Arts and culture will be looking at a lot of pay-as-you-go. Oops. That’s sort of what the Cultural Trust was before the big raid, wasn’t it?

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The trouble with TBA, the annual late summer/early fall festival thrown by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, is that it always hits town in late summer/early fall.

A lot of people set their annual calendars around this thing. Here at Art Scatter, it always sneaks up on us, and, too often, slips right past us. We tend to be traveling a lot this time of year, and preparing young heathens for schooling, and tending to such crucial matters as putting up the annual supplies of pickles and chutney.

All of which is to say that (like the guv guys on arts funding) we have pretty much nothing to say about TBA this year. Fortunately, several other keen observers do. Here are a few places to look for news and comment:

Arts Dispatch. Barry Johnson sees and extrapolates.

Urban Honking. PICA’s own site invites such luminaries as Mead Hunter of Blogorrhea to do the Monday morning quarterbacking.

Oregon Live. Expect steady updates from The Oregonian’s cultural squad.

Culturephile. Anne Adams and Claudia La Rocco have been pickin’ em and writin’ em for Portland Monthly’s blog.

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PHOTO: Timberline Lodge: the last word in Oregon cultural funding? Kelvin Kay/Wikimedia Commons