Tag Archives: Marty Hughley

Bob Hicks, Film, General, Theater

Simek on Havel, Plummer on Plummer

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By Bob Hicks

At OregonLive, Marty Hughley has just posted a terrific interview with Stepan Simek about Vaclav Havel, the philosopher-playwright who became the unlikely leader of the Czech revolution and his nation’s first post-Soviet president. Havel died on Sunday at age 75.

Vaclav Havel in Prague, Nov. 14, 2009. Photo: Ondrej Siama/Wikimedia CommonsSimek, a native of Prague and chairman of the theater department at Lewis & Clark College, is also the English translator of Havel’s play The Increased Difficulty of Concentration. And although he met Havel just once, he had an intriguing connection with the legendary leader. “The funny thing is that my parents and grandparents were very good friends with his parents,” Simek tells Marty. “When I was born, the Havels gave my parents this cradle — a pink, wooden painted cradle — that Havel himself was cradled in. And I was cradled in it and it still is in my family’s possession.”

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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

Shakespeare and the measure of virtue

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Angelo (René Millán) will have his way with Isabela (Stephanie Beatriz). Photo: David Cooper/Oreon Shakespeare FestivalDavid Cooper/OSF

By Bob Hicks

The central problem for modern audiences in Shakespeare’s “problem play” Measure for Measure is this: Why doesn’t Isabella just give up her virginity to save her brother’s life? Offensive and transgressive as it would be — what the power-abusing Angelo essentially proposes is mercy at the price of rape — how, in a world of situational ethics, is that a greater harm than allowing her brother to be executed when she could have saved his life? And why, subsidiarily, is Isabella then looked on as such a paragon of virtue that Vincentio, the wise and just Duke of Vienna, proposes at the end of the play to marry her himself? Is she not, by valuing mere chastity over a supposedly beloved brother’s life, the play’s true monster?

Problem, indeed.

I find the suggestion of an answer in The Embarrassment of Riches, Simon Schama’s lauded 1987 investigation of Dutch character and culture during that country’s Golden Age, which overlapped and carried beyond Shakespeare’s own Elizabethan/Jacobean times. Schama calls his opening chapter The Mystery of the Drowning Cell, and recounts the story of a system of punishment that may have been used often, or only rarely, or not at all: perhaps it was just a rumor to keep the citizens in line. Prisoners who were too lazy to work, according to several historical reports, were placed in a dank room in Amsterdam that was slowly flooded with water. Their choice was stark: get busy pumping the water out, or drown. Schama casts the story as a crucial metaphor for the Dutch dilemma of the landscape, a physical space that demands constant vigilance if its inhabitants are to keep from being inundated by the waters of the sea: “To be wet was to be captive, idle and poor. To be dry was to be free, industrious and comfortable. This was the lesson of the drowning cell.”

In other words: sometimes extremes mean more than they mean.

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Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Journalism, Music, Theater, Visual Art

The first thing let’s do, let’s kill the critics

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By Bob Hicks

Bless me, reader, for I have sinned.

For 40 years Moses wandered in the wilderness. And for roughly the same amount of time I have stumbled through the landmines of contemporary culture, wearing the sackcloth of the most extreme form of penitent journalist.

Honore Daumier, "The Critic"I have been a critic.

Well, apparently I have. That’s what everyone tells me. Lord knows I’ve denied it over the years. For a long time, when people called me a critic, I’d correct them. “I’m a writer,” I’d gently explain, “and these days I happen to be writing about theater.”

It did no good. No one believed me. And “Writer Who Writes About Theater” doesn’t fit in a byline, anyway.

A few years ago I was chatting with Libby Appel, who at the time was artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. “You know, I’ve never really thought of myself as a critic,” I told her.

Libby’s eyebrow arched. (Sometimes eyebrows actually do that.) “Oh, you’re a critic,” she said emphatically.

I like to think she was delivering a description, not an accusation. I like her and respect her, even though I’ve sometimes argued in print with shows she’s directed, and I think the feeling’s been mutual. Still. There was no question in her mind. I was, without doubt, One of Those People. And Those People occupy a curious position in the artistic firmament. “Critics never worry me unless they are right,” Noel Coward once commented. “But that does not often occur.”

Then again, what exactly is right?

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Bob Hicks, General, Theater

Jim Caputo memorial gathering June 14

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Marty Hughley writes in The Oregonian that friends and family of Jim Caputo, the veteran Portland actor who died May 12 of a heart attack, have set his memorial service for Tuesday, June 14. It’ll be at Lincoln Performance Hall on the campus of Portland State University.

That’ll be the evening after the Drammy Awards, Portland’s annual celebration of the year’s best theater work, and Jimmy will be deeply missed at that party. We’re guessing more than a few words will be said on his behalf from the stage. The Drammys are at 7 p.m. (drinks and socializing from 6) in the Crystal Ballroom.

Pretty much everybody liked Jimmy a lot, and that included crusty old theater critics: He was one of those people who exuded the vitality and spirit and joy of the theater scene. We wrote this post about him after he died.

The June 14 memorial will start at 6:30 p.m., gathering a half-hour earlier. As his widow, Karen Voss, posted on pdxbackstage: “Please no somber dress – let’s fill the room with the bright colors of his light and laughter.”

Marty also notes that the theater community has set up a fund to benefit Jim’s family. You can make donations to the James M. Caputo Fund at any Key Bank branch.

Dance, General, Martha Ullman West

Martha Ullman West wins a big prize

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Excellent news has arrived: Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief corespondent, will be presented with the Senior Critics Award when the national Dance Critics Association holds its annual conference next month in Seattle.

Because Art Scatter World Headquarters has shifted temporarily nine hours east to Amsterdam, we got the word a little late — first, in an email from Martha declaring that she “was, frankly, stunned. And pleased”; then from checking Marty Hughley’s online story on the award at Oregon Live. Please look there for the details.

We’re thrilled that the dance critics have recognized Martha’s skills, and you should be able to see her use them again very soon. In her email from New York she mentioned that she’ll be seeing Balanchine’s Agon and Square Dance at New York City Ballet, and will be posting about them for us soon. Oregon Ballet Theatre has also recently performed Square Dance, so we’re looking forward to a little critical comparison.

All together, now, let’s give Martha a cheer: hip hip hurrah!

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Theater, Visual Art

Links: weaving, ‘BoomCrackleFly,’ more

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By Bob Hicks

A few Friday hot links to go with your early-weekend bagel and eggs:

Laurie Herrick, "Three Giraffes," 1970. Linen, cotton and wool, 72 x 32 inches. Collection of Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art, gift of Ken Shores; 2006.05.01. Photo: Dan Kvitka.

Leave ’em hanging: In this morning’s A&E section of The Oregonian I reviewed Laurie Herrick: Weaving Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, the new show at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. Herrick was a prominent loom weaver in Portland beginning in the late 1950s; she died in 1995. And she was well aware of art trends, as her ca. 1970 Op Art wall hanging Three Giraffes, shown here, attests. Teaser: “If Jackson Pollock created action painting, this is action weaving.” Read the review here.

Coolest-sounding show in town: Speaking trippingly on the tongue, that would be BoomCrackleFly, the brashly smooshed-together title of Charise Castro Smith‘s new play, which opens tonight at Miracle Theatre.

On Blogorrhea, Mr. Mead Hunter has a crackling-good interview of his own with Smith, in which he questions her, among other things, about how the theater is going to pull off the vision of “people bobbing in a world covered in water.” To which, in part, she replies: “I think one of the great things about theater is the fact that if an actor stands on stage and says something is true, then at that moment it’s true. It’s the huge imaginative possibility of theater to call all sorts of things into being with language.” Read the interview here.

Paper dance: What’s old is new. What’s outre is cool. We’re talking newspapers. The printed page. Good old-fashioned hold-it-in-your-hands-and-flip-the-page minimalism. Who’s reviving this retro craft? Why, Portland’s contemporary dance scene, that’s who (or what). We’ve been hearing rumors of the impending birth of a local dance newspaper, and now Marty Hughley has the inside scoop on Oregon Live (which is the not-printed version of the printed Oregonian). It’ll be called Front. Read the story here. And read Alison Hallett’s take on The Mercury’s Blogtown here.

Lanford Wilson, R.I.P.: The noted American playwright, whose many works were frequently staged in Portland, died on Thursday at age 73. Wilson‘s career spanned Off-Off, Off, and Broadway in addition to lots and lots of regional productions, and ranged from early hits such as The Hot l Baltimore to his Talley Trilogy (Talley & Son, Talley’s Folly, Fifth of July) and the high-octane Burn This. Several seasons ago he was the featured artist for Profile Theatre, the Portland company that spends each of its seasons exploring the works of a single playwright. At a time when household-name playwrights are pretty much a thing of the past (is Edward Albee the last of that breed?) Wilson was one of the noble practitioners who have kept the fabulous invalid alive and vigorously kicking. Read Margalit Fox’s obituary for the New York Times here.

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Laurie Herrick, “Three Giraffes,” 1970. Linen, cotton and wool, 72 x 32 inches. Collection of Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art, gift of Ken Shores; 2006.05.01. Photo: Dan Kvitka.

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Music, Theater, Visual Art

Pardon the interruption, s’il vous plait

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Confessionals, Church Gesu Nuovo, Naples. Photo: Heinz-Josef Lücking/Wikimedia Commons.

By Bob Hicks

Bless us, Father, for we have sinned. It’s been six days since we entered our last post here at Art Scatter, which is just … embarrassant. Pardon, if you please. It’s not that we haven’t been busy. In fact, that’s the point. We’ve been so busy we haven’t had time to keep the faith and commit good bloggery. We’ll try to do better.

pandercatalogSo let’s play catch-up.

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On Friday, having survived the Great February Blizzard of 2011, which dropped all of a third of an inch of snow on the Chez Scatter front lawn but managed to snarl the city and shut down its schools, Mr. Scatter took a tour down the valley to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem to catch Memory and Modern Life, an expansive retrospective of the oils, watercolors and drawings of Henk Pander, the Dutch-born Portland artist.

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Bob Hicks, General, Music, Theater

Singing for Haiti: a Portland benefit

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Seems like every time something cataclysmic happens, artists show up to help out. Like a lot of other people they know they can’t do much, but they also know they can do something. And often, because this is what they do best, they put on a show.

A painting by Leslie Ann Butler will be used as cover art for the benefit CD "Portland Sings for Haiti."Especially when you’re talking about the local artists who are the heart and soul of any city’s arts scene, that often means that people who barely have two dimes to rub together are among the ones who jump in and get something done. They raise awareness (pardon Mr. Scatter for employing that overused phrase) and they raise money. I’m not sure why performing artists and restaurant people so often take the lead on this sort of thing, but maybe it’s because both work in businesses where they become acutely aware that nothing gets done right unless everyone works together.

The Oregonian’s Marty Hughley has announced one such benefit project, a benefit CD called Portland Sings for Haiti. Marty’s story is interesting, especially in relating how actor Patty Price-Yates got the thing rolling from her own sickbed, so click on the link. The CD, which features cuts by such leading lights as Storm Large, Susannah Mars, Julianne Johnson and Isaac Lamb, will be available Feb. 22, and you can pre-order at cd baby. The money will go to Mercy Corps for its efforts to help Haiti dig out from the rubble of its massive earthquakes.

Singer-actor Corey Brunish, a participant and one of the project’s organizers, reminds me that you can get a sneak peek (or an early ear) at the music starting at 7 tomorrow night, Thursday the 11th, at Wilf’s. Several of the CD’s musicians will be on hand for a cabaret-style show, and it’s a two-fer benefit. Proceeds from the $20 admission will benefit the musical-theater company Stumptown Stages. Plus, you can be one of the first people to buy the CD, and that money goes to Mercy Corps.

Sounds like a good night out.

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ILLUSTRATION: This painting by Leslie Ann Butler is cover art for the benefit CD “Portland Sings for Haiti.”