Tag Archives: Todd Van Voris

Bob Hicks, General, Theater

Trikes, gnomes, and boating for love

4 Comments

By Bob Hicks

While Mrs. Scatter is off in the creeping undergrowth of the northern rainforest hunting gnomes, Mr. Scatter is sitting at home pondering the plausibility of the electric bicycle.

Could this be the Mr. Scattermobile of the future?Nay, nay, not just a bicycle. An electric three-wheeler, with neat little wire basket in the rear, a vehicle fit for the odd grocery trek and the regular coffee-shop run. Could it be? Might Mr. Scatter don a plaid neck scarf and houndstooth riding cap and sport about town at a dashing 17 mph, shouting wild-eyed imprecations at crows and chihuahuas to clear out of his path if they value wing and limb? Might this be fitting familial payback for a garden suddenly lurking with warty-nosed painted gnomes?

... and could this become Chez Scatter's new Large Smelly Gnome? Photo: Ioannes.baptista, Wikimedia Commons.Ah, one can dream, as Jack does in the play Jack Goes Boating, just opened at Artists Repertory Theatre. And sometimes, if a person dreams a dream that is simultaneously quite large and very small, that dream might come true.

Mr. Scatter is not speaking of Mrs. Scatter’s dream of being featured in an eight-page pictorial splash in Better Gnomes and Gardens. He is speaking of Jack’s simple yearning for his one true love, which, after all, is a common enough dream, if not one all that commonly fulfilled. And that Jack must endure unlikely trips to the hospital, a marital catfight by his two best friends and some excruciating swimming lessons with little relief other than a sturdy patience and the occasional hit off a mighty bong only goes to show that when grace arrives, it’s a good idea to be ready and willing to receive it.

Continue reading Trikes, gnomes, and boating for love →

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Music, Theater

A Japan benefit; theater & dance tips

Leave a comment

UPDATE: On OregonLive, Ryan White has just posted this announcement of a big-name benefit for Japanese disaster relief at the Aladdin Theatre on March 27. So far, the list of performers includes pianist/bandleader Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini, singers Holcombe Waller and Storm Large, dancers from Oregon Ballet Theatre, new-music adventurers fEARnoMUSIC, the Pacific Youth Choir, PHAME Academy, the Shanghai Woolies, and singers Ida Rae Cahana and Carl Halvorson. Check Ryan’s post for details.

© Rich Iwasaki 2008© Rich Iwasaki 2008

By Bob Hicks

You’ll be hearing about a lot of benefit performances and emergency fund-raising drives to help the victims of Japan’s triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. Perhaps you’ve already dug deep.

picture-1One performance coming up is particularly close to me, because I serve on the board of Portland Taiko, the outstanding Asian drumming and movement ensemble. At 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 22, PT and the Portland State University Department of Music will host a performance at PSU’s Lincoln Hall Room 175. A lot of people in Portland Taiko have family in Japan. As artistic director Michelle Fujii puts it, “Seeing the tragedy in Japan unfold was difficult for many of us in Portland Taiko on a personal and visceral level.”

Among others, the performance will include Portland Taiko, Takohachi (Japanese taiko and dance), Mexica Tiahui (Aztec drum and dance), Mike Barber (Ten Tiny Dances), Natya Leela Academy (traditional South Indian classical dance), Carla Mann and Jim McGinn (leading Portland contemporary dancers), and Hanzaburo Araki (shakuhachi, the traditional Japanese end-blown flute).

The performance is free, but volunteers from Mercy Corps and other organizations will be on hand to take donations. Hope to see you there.

Continue reading A Japan benefit; theater & dance tips →

Bob Hicks, General, Theater

Long night’s journey into day

1 Comment

Robyn Nevin, Luke Mullins, Todd Van Voris and William Hurt in "Long Day's Journey Into Night." Photo: Brett Boardman

By Bob Hicks

It was a long, long night, and by daylight its shadows were still playing tricks.

Saturday night’s opening of the eagerly anticipated Long Day’s Journey Into Night was more than a social event, although it was that. The Newmark Theatre was packed to its two-balcony gills. A post-show spread of food and drink sprawled out over two levels of lobby. The chatter was more clamorous than at a free-for-brawl with Alvin and the Chipmunks, and first-nighters arrived resplendent in a liberal smattering of dress-up Hawaiian shirts (Mr. Scatter’s attire), leopard-skin party dresses, silk jackets and loose-neck ties, even though the temperature was in the high 90s — or, by Puddletown standards, dangerously close to the hubs of Hell.

It was also one of those moments of coalescence when a particular piece of art mattered, whether individual people happened to “like” it or not. One way or another, people were thinking, and arguing, about it — some of them, I imagine, into the wee hours of the morning, when they may or may not have been wearing off a Tyrone-size hangover.

Continue reading Long night’s journey into day →

Bob Hicks, General, Theater

Long Day’s Journey: It’s boffo in Sydney

Leave a comment

The coolest thing about the boffo reviews for the new Australian production of Long Day’s Journey into Night is that it gives Mr. Scatter the chance to type the word “boffo.”

Photo Credit: Jez Smith The cast of Long Day's Journey Into Night pictured from left: William Hurt, Todd Van Voris, Robyn Nevin, Luke Mullins. Boffo. There it is. He loves that word. It makes him feel so, so … Variety-ish. As in, “Sticks Nix Hick Pix” (improved to the more rat-a-tat “Stix Nix Hix Pix” in the 1942 movie musical Yankee Doodle Dandy.) Please hand Mr. Scatter his wide-brimmed hat with the “Press” card sticking out from the band. He’ll spring for drinks, giggles and gossip at the Cocoanut Grove if you’ll bring him the lowdown for his next juicy Hollywoodland scoop. Wait: Is that Gloria Swanson in the next booth?

In brief: Sydney Theatre Company‘s production of Eugene O’Neill’s harrowing masterpiece has been knocking ’em dead Down Under, as critic John McCallum writes in The Australian. Starring William Hurt, Robyn Nevin, Luke Mullins and Portlander Todd Van Voris, it’s a co-production with Portland’s Artists Repertory Theatre. It continues in Sydney through Aug. 1, then comes stateside for its run at Artists Rep Aug. 13-29.

Praising the cast across the board, McCallum calls it “a stunning, absorbing production, full of emotional complexity.” Here’s what he has to say about Van Voris, who plays the sozzled son Jamie:

“Van Voris’s Jamie, rotund and strutting self-confidently at first, has degenerated into an alcoholic wreck by the time he returns at the end from the bars and whorehouses to which he has tried to escape. In a powerful long scene he drunkenly reveals something of his scary true nature. But here too, as well as the hate and selfishness, we can see the love underneath, a love that he has been so assiduously trying to drown in whisky for so long.”

Of more than passing interest: Artists Rep will follow up on Long Day’s Journey with a new production of the rarely revived Ah, Wilderness!, a warmly nostalgic play that’s the closest O’Neill ever came to writing a flat-out comedy. It’ll run Sept. 7-Oct. 10.

Boffo. Boffo. Boffo.

Mr. Scatter just can’t help himself.

*

PICTURED: The cast of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” from left: William Hurt, Todd Van Voris, Robyn Nevin, Luke Mullins. Photo: Jez Smith

Bob Hicks, Film, General, Music, Theater

Late scatter: All hail the Devil and Rudolph Valentino

3 Comments

Tobias Andersen, Bill Geisslinger, Todd Van Voris, The Seafarer

What with arts politics and scratchy throat and other everyday interruptions I’ve avoided actually writing about any art since talking about Portland Opera’s The Turn of the Screw and the finale of the Fertile Ground new-plays festival a couple of weeks ago.

But I don’t want Artists Repertory Theatre‘s brilliant version of The Seafarer and Opera Theater Oregon‘s campy but gorgeous Camille/La Traviata to get any farther in the rear view mirror without picking up my virtual pen. Both shows have ended their runs, which turns this into something more of an afterglow than what’s sometimes known in the biz as a “money review.”

Still, darned near everything in The Seafarer was pretty much right on the money, beginning with Irishman Conor McPherson‘s multiply layered script and extending to Allen Nause’s precise yet lively direction of one of the best ensemble casts you’re likely to see in a long while.

McPherson broke on the scene in 1999 with The Weir, when he was still in his late 20s, and although he’s become a leading voice in contemporary theater he’s something of a classicist: The Seafarer, which was first produced in 2006, is an old-fashioned play in a lot of good ways. It revels in language (the way McPherson lobs curses is much funnier and, dare I say, humanitarian than the way Mamet usually does). It’s a “well-made play,” a form that’s fallen out of fashion but has historical staying power. It plays with checks and balances and dramatic weight, encouraging you to shift your view now and again about who the “central” character in this cosmic-showdown drama really is. It’s — hold your breath here — entertaining, a basic value that all too often gets lost in the name of cultural relevance and Art.

Continue reading Late scatter: All hail the Devil and Rudolph Valentino →