Censorship in Somerville?
Kate Ledogar’s 108 gallery in Somerville has just opened and already, she reports, a performance has been closed by the police. Last Friday, at 6:30 p.m., "If You Lost Five Pounds, You’d Be Perfect" had performance artist Elaine Belsito in the 108 window "in red-striped boy shorts and a sports bra squeezing in and out of vintage clothes that were too small for her. A police officer ordered Belsito (in her underwear) out of the window, saying that otherwise she would be arrested."
Belsito’s performances are part of 108’s inaugural exhibit, "American Standard." She is scheduled to perform again on July 11 and 18, provided the gallery can secure a permit from the city of Somerville. According to Ledogar, ward alderman Maryann Heuston has already stated that she will not support 108’s application for a permit. Meanwhile, Belsito’s performance can be viewed on video in 108’s window during gallery hours. 108 is at 108 Beacon Street, and it’s open Wednesday through Friday from noon to 6 and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4; call (617) 441-3833.
Mel ticket
The Colonial Theatre was filled to its filigreed ceiling for the year-long-awaited Boston opening of The Producers, the most awarded show in Broadway history, winner of 12 Tonys, 11 Drama Desk Awards, the 2001 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical, and a partridge in a pear tree. And if the crowd hadn’t been so obviously wowed by the spectacular array of high stepping and low humor on stage, it could have entertained itself by rubbernecking at the mind behind the mishegas. Mel Brooks, who hatched the idea of a couple of shyster Broadway producers trying to get rich by overcapitalizing a flop, then turned it into a 1968 film and wrote or co-wrote the book, music, and lyrics for the megahit musical, was there. So were an elegant looking Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Brooks), Tony-winning co-librettist Thomas Meehan, and Tony-winning director/choreographer Susan Stroman.
Boston, where The Producers plays through September 13, marks the beginning of the second national-touring production, which was being unveiled for the first time. And the luminaries were there to see the latest results of their much-lauded handiwork, which features Boston University School of Theater grad Brad Oscar as Max Bialystock, disreputable producer of such fare as The Breaking Wind and King Leer, and Andy Taylor as terrified accountant Leopold Bloom. Brooks even took the stage at evening’s end, looking Hollywood-septuagenarian dapper in blue blazer and nattily arranged handkerchief and accompanied by Meehan and Stroman. The legendary comic turned filmmaker and now musical-theater triple threat (not to mention salesman), who appeared to be having the time of his life, pronounced himself "genuinely thrilled" and the cast "incredible." After which the ensemble sang the audience up the aisles with a ditty of Brooks’s creation, admonishing the crowd: "Goodbye, get lost, get out!"
Next up, Brooks is said to be planning a musical based on his 1974 film Young Frankenstein. And in the triumphant wake of Chicago, Hollywood is planning a new Producers movie based on the musical based on the movie.
Teaming up
Boston theater companies have been coupling of late, with, for example, Broadway in Boston and the Huntington Theatre Company doing several shows together at the Wilbur Theatre and the Theater Offensive and Wheelock Family Theatre teaming up to present the world premiere of Bel Canto. Now two of the Boston Center for the Arts’ resident non-profit professional troupes, SpeakEasy Stage Company and Súgán Theatre Company, have announced that they will share responsibilities for the New England premiere of A Man of No Importance next fall.
The show, which won the 2002-2003 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off Broadway Musical, is based on the 1994 film of the same name, which was written by Barry Devlin and directed by Suri Krishnamma. Set in the 1960s, the movie starred Albert Finney as Alfie Byrne, a middle-aged Dublin bus driver who puts on amateur theater at his local church hall. When Alfie decides to mount Oscar Wilde’s Salome, church authorities aren’t exactly thrilled. In the end, the timid thespian has to confront the truth of his own sexuality, an action that, we’re happy to report, does not involve ordering up the head of John the Baptist.
Music and lyrics are by the Tony-winning Ragtime team of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, who also wrote Once on This Island and Seussical. Book is by Tony winner Terrence McNally, who also collaborated with Flaherty and Ahrens on Ragtime. Súgán, of course, specializes in things Irish and Celtic; SpeakEasy is dedicated to staging the Boston premieres of "thought-provoking new plays and musicals."
A Man of No Importance starts a limited run at the BCA October 3; tickets go on sale in September. So now the question is: can Billy Meleady sing, or will Miguel (Bat Boy) Cervantes have to make the leap from a West Virginia cave to Dublin?
The Gardner’s ‘Open Air’ summer
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has announced its new summer program, "Open Air: Centennial Summer Celebrations," a line-up of concerts and films that will be presented in the museum’s outdoor gardens — previously inaccessible to visitors — under a specially designed tent. "Concerts Under the Canopy" includes nine concerts over three weeks, with jazz and Latin music on Friday and Saturday evenings and classical on Sunday afternoons. The films, presented in conjunction with the Harvard Film Archive, will include programs of silent film with live piano accompaniment by pianist Yakov Gubanov.
"A Cinema Centennial: Movies and Music" begins on July 22 with "Silents Please: 1903 Revisited," commemorating the year of the Gardner’s opening with the Lumière brothers’ "The Man in the Moon" as well as films by Georges Méliès, and Edwin Porter. Gubanov will accompany this program and also the July 29 screening of Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov’s 1929 portrait of cosmopolitan Moscow, Man with a Movie Camera. The July 23 program, "All Talking, All Singing, All Dancing," will include newsreels from the 1920s, animated cartoons, Movietone News shorts, and Busby Berkeley’s 42nd Street. On July 24, "Animating Music" will trace the evolution of the animated short, from early cartoons to later Hollywood productions and the experimental films of Norman McLaren and James Whitney. On July 30, the Museum will screen Orfeu negro/Black Orpheus, Marcel Camus’s Rio de Janeiro–set, samba-accompanied retelling of the Orpheus-and-Eurydice tale. The series concludes on July 31 with Latcho Drom, Tony Gatlif’s documentary about the hybrid "Gypsy" culture of the Rom people. All the film programs begin at 8:30 and are $7, or $5 for members, students, and seniors.
The jazz/Latin music program includes the duo of vocalist Luciana Souza and guitarist Romero Lubambo (July 18); the Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Quartet (July 19); Cyro Baptista’s percussion/dance troupe Beat the Donkey (July 25); pianist Aaron Goldberg’s quartet with saxophonist Michael Brecker (July 26); a "Tango Meets Jazz" concert with vibraphonist Dave Samuels, pianist Pablo Ziegler, bandoneon player Hector Del Curto, bassist Pablo Aslan, and guitarist Claudio Ragazzi (August 1); and the legendary jazz vocalist Jimmy Scott with his band the Jazz Expressions (August 2). The jazz/Latin shows begin at 8.
The classical series begins on July 20 with "The Ravinia Festival: Chicago, Illinois," which will include players from the Steans Institute for Young Artists from Ravinia (the summer home of the Chicago Symphony) under the direction of violinist Miriam Fried. The program, "Celebrating Mendelssohn," will include the Cello Sonata No. 2, the Piano Trio No. 2, and the Octet for Strings.
The July 27 program will feature the New Fromm Players, Tanglewood Music Institute alumni who focus on contemporary works. The program will comprise George Crumb’s Black Angels, Jennifer Higdon’s Light Refracted, and Peter Lieberson’s Ziji. On August 3, the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival players from that esteemed summer program in Blue Hill, Maine, present a Beethoven program under the direction of pianist Seymour Lipkin: the Andante and Ten Variations on "Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu," the String Quintet in C, and the Piano Trio No. 4 (Ghost). The classical programs all begin at 1:30.
Tickets for the jazz and classical programs are $15, or $10 for members, students, and seniors. Ticket prices for nighttime concerts and films include admission to the first floor of the museum and the exterior gardens, starting at 6:30 p.m. The gardens and all three floors of galleries are open to all for the Sunday-afternoon classical concerts. The Gardner is at 280 the Fenway. Call (617) 734-1359 or go to www.gardnermuseum.org.
Honors at the Provincetown Film Fest
At the fifth annual Provincetown International Film Festival, HBO awarded $1000 cash prizes to the top winners in each category of the HBO Audience Awards. The winners were director Todd Graff’s Camp for Best Feature; Judith Katz, Madeleine Gavin & Gary Sunshine’s What I Want My Words To Do to You and Joan E. Biren’s No Secret Any More: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon (tie) for Best Documentary, and Charley Lang’s "Gay Cops" for Best Short. Runners-up were Niki Caro’s Whale Rider and Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters for Best Feature; Nancy D. Kates & Bennett Singer’s Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin and Angela Christlieb & Stephen Kijak’s Cinemania for Best Documentary, and Sam Zolten’s "Just Call Me Kade" and Sharon Pellerin’s "Body: A Women’s Definition" for Best Short. And Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven) was honored with the festival’s "Filmmaker on the Edge" Award. For more on the Provincetown fest, see Gerald Peary’s "Film Culture."
