pt at large

Pre-New Year Lafayette Festivities

December 28, 2013

Trying to find a place to dance in the Lafayette, LA area on the days preceeding New Year's Eve? Forget about going to all of them, reason having to do with some law of physics about not being able to be in the same place at the same time (unless you're a sub atomic particle). From December 28 when I arrived until New Year's Eve there were forty dances within a 20 mile radius of Lafayette. A ton of locals and carloads of dancers from all quarters of the cajun/zydeco universe descended upon La Poussiere in Breaux Bridge for their first stop on Saturday night, December 28.

The place is positively packed to the gills, the floor is undulating under the syncopated weight of hundreds of pairs of feet. If this were any other part of the world I'd be thinking earthquake. Here? Think "good time".  Two-step songs slow to fast and lovely waltzes, all sung in French, blast out from the bandstand. Most dancers don't leave the floor, they just turn around and find someone within tap on the shoulders distance and keep dancing.

A rare moment of sitting down for the King and Queen of the Krewe de Canaille Ball in 2011; some people enjoy listening, most dance.

 

 

Steve Riley and The Mamou Playboys singing traditional French cajun music. Always a good draw, they've been playing together 25 years. David Greeley and Steve Riley, two of the founders, above left.

My hosts Bernard Ussher and Rubia Solis of Lafayette. They know a ton of people and introduce me to them every place we go.

December 29, 2013

The only time you'll see anyone outside the dance hall at Vermilionville is during break. This dance,the weekly "Bal de Dimanche," is held from 1 PM to 4 PM. The happy guy above is yours truly.

The usual scene, wall to wall people. You learn to "dance small" in crowd like this - at 1 PM Saturday afternoon! Quite a delegation of dancers: from San Francisco, San Diego, Portland, OR, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Florida, Illinois, Connecticut, Rhode Island, to name some I met today. You'll see loads of cowboy boots and dancing shoes, some with high heels, along with the Nikes, work boots, loafers and lord knows what else. In summer, I've seen dancers in flip flops. How they manage to dance in them is beyond me.

Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble play today. Curley started playing drums in his father's band when he was 16. Music is a family business in southwest Louisiana. Nearly everyone in every band has a relative, living or dead, who played or is playing in a band.The two boys playing rubboards are getting a head start. (Boy at right is the son of Zydeco Mike who plays with Cedric Watson) This kind of music will evolve over time. Curley Taylor's style is different from his father Jude's. The youngsters playing alongside with him? They'll choose their paths later, either "old school" or urban style or another variation yet to be born.

Younger musicians like Curley Taylor sing an urban flavored zydeco influenced by hip hop. To me, it's less interesting, same lyrics repeated over and over, not as much emotional depth or 'pop' as the "old school" traditional zydeco. To my ears, there's a subtle difference in the backbeat; it's not the old school "chanky chank" beat that goes from your ears right down your spine and into your feet.

December 30, 2013

4th Annual Tribute to Roy Carrier, Slim's Yi Ki Ki, Route 182, Opelousas, LA

Organized by Dick Brainard and Troy "Dikki Du" Carrier, this event draws nearly every out of town dancer in Lafayette for New Year's Festivities. They love to dance and support anything that helps musicians who make this special brand of out-of-your-mind happy music. Proceeds will help re-open Roy Carrier's Offshore Lounge in Lawtell, LA, where musicians like Geno Delafose's father John played back in the day.

Troy "Dikki Du" Carrier and Roy "Chubby" Carrier and their sister Elaine are proud of their late dad, Roy Carrier.

Dexter Ardoin is in the lineage of the most storied families in Louisiana music. Bernard Ussher, my congenial all-around guide to what's happening in Lafayette, made it a point to arrive early enough to hear Dexter's set.

Dexter doesn't front a band right now. No problem. Dikki Du Carrier says, "Use mine!"

Ears perk up and people reach for iPhones and cameras when Dexter introduces Willis Prudhomme and asks him to play. At 82, Willis can trace his career back as far as the first musicians to make zydeco popular, men like Beau Jacques and Roy Carrier.

Raised in rural Louisiana in a farm family, he came to music when he began playing harmonica when he was 45, switching to accordion later and tutored by Cajun legend Nathan Abshire. Dexter Ardoin played drums in Prudhomme’s band (and sits at the drum kit after he introduces Prudhomme) and invited Prudhomme to this event. Both project a Creole flavor to their music.

“I haven’t played in five years,” Prudhomme says as he straps on his accordion, then reels off a couple of two steps and a lovely waltz. Once he begins, many dancers abandon the dance floor to watch a legend. Prudhomme played drums for John Delafose (Geno Delafose’s father) and Leo Thomas (Leroy Thomas’s father).

“I used to have so much fun playing on this stage,” he says after the second song. You can almost feel him standing in a time warp as he plays. For the next hour, men and women walk to his table to meet him and take photos of a major link to zydeco history. I am one of them.

This is the kind of treat that within a decade or so will vanish. But... trust me, they can still light up the joint.

Corey Ledet straddles "old school" zydeco and urban zydeco. He mixes hip hop influenced songs with pretty waltzes and two step songs in French. The urban songs feature less story telling, more "I want it - I  want it now..." lyrics with repeated over and over and the drum backbeat is not as pronounced as in "old school" songs. Creole music is driven by percussion - drums, rub board. Musicians like Geno Delafose and Dexter Ardoin started as kids playing drums or frattoir then when older were encouraged to find their instrument, fiddle, bass and, most often, accordion.

The old wooden dance floor at Slim's has been marinated in cigarette smoke, beer and sweat for several decades. It can feel like dancing on taffy but hell, the music is good and it's the day before New Year's Eve. Besides, once you've danced in Louisiana, anything other than a parking lot or a muddy field is a step up.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

 

Robin Hood: Lustrous Lollapalooza of a Play Part2

THE HEART OF ROBIN HOOD
Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge 617-547-8300.
Playwright : David Farr
Director: Gisli Örn Gardarsson
Set, Börkur Jónsson, Costumes, Emma Ryott, Lights, Björn Helgason, Sound, Jonathan Deans
Performing company: American Repertory Theater
Date closing: Jan. 19
Ticket price:  Starting at $25

Arrive early so you can appreciate the transformation of the theater space. Two steps in the door and it feels like you're under the canopy of an old-growth forest, the air is moist and chilly, the cascading set a rich mixture of browns and greens that stretches into the midst of the theater, and strains of music coming from somewhere.

Five young men, tall, skinny, bearded indie rockers in boots, baggy pants and funky hats dressed like extras in the film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" appear from a dimly lit grotto under a massive tree trunk at the way back corner of the set. They shuffle, ramble, and high step their way across the grassy set all the way up and down the theater aisles amongst bemused audience members trying to find their seats. "Poor Old Shine," (mandolin, guitar, standup bass, percussion, pump organ) sings a rollicking danceable ditty, "Don't Let Your Burden Touch the Ground" with fierce upbeat energy. For a while, I think the band must have taken a wrong turn on the way to Club Passim down the street. In the ten minutes before the play, they’ve got us jacked up considerably. The crowd is cheering even before the play begins. If this production doesn’t come out of the blocks strong, I’m thinking it could sink like a stone.

First scene: A simulated coach, servant acting as horse, a well-dressed couple on a daring ride through Sherwood Forest which we become aware is not the safest place for such travelers. Indeed they are stopped by Robin Hood and his Merry Men who leap from trees and bound with astonishing athletic tumbles, twists, and turns to surround the coach and relieve the frightened nobles of their pocketbooks then send them in their underwear to pull their own cart coach out of the woods. They are happy with their heist and add it to the riches they have already fleeced from travelers in their woods. And have no intention of desisting. Forget about that stone.

Robin Hood (Jordan Dean), tall, muscular, with six-pack abs, makes it clear that Sherwood Forest is a man's world. "Women cause cause tension in the heart of a man, they make us unreliable, we must make our heart a fortress." As the alpha dog in the ‘hood, what he says goes. No matter how much I rave about this, you will be astonished by the jaw dropping Olympic-style twisting turning tumbling gamboling the actors perform during their staged battles and thieveries.

Marion’s father, the Duke of York, is pressured by the villainous Prince John (Damian Young) for Marion’s hand in marriage. Marion loathes the lecherous prince. Marion (Christina Bennett Lind) learns of Robin Hood and his mercenary ways from her endearingly charming and effeminate attendant Pierre (Christopher Sieber), a scene-stealer of the first order. And thus sets up the story when Marion decides to disguise herself as Martin of Sherwood and rob and give to the poor as a proper Robin Hood should. Robin confronts and is impressed by the spirited Martin of Sherwood/Marion who persuades him to join forces to battle the rich and rescue two children kidnapped by the cruel Prince John.

Jeremy Crawford as Little John, Jordan Dean as Robin and Poor Old Shine. (Evgenia Eliseeva)

The first act loses traction from time to time but regains its footing, often thanks to Marion’s attendant Pierre, whose comic antics, double-entendres, and fey mannerisms never fail to tie together a plot element and draw guffaws from the audience. The casting, from the lowliest ruffian to the principals, is spot on. Robin Hood, Marion, Prince John and Pierre fill their roles with outsized energy.

Although you know the bad guys will receive their comeuppance, the lovers will be united and the kingdom will live happily ever after, there are one or two surprises that sweeten the foreknowledge. After witnessing “The Heart of Robin Hood,” it is clear that he’d never have found his heart were it not for the resourceful personality and strong willed nature of Marion, who brings enough civility to Robin so he retains his alpha status while adding a dimension of humanity and love.

Creative vision, writing, acting, set lighting, design, music, and start-to-finish entertainment, this is one of the most complete and satisfying productions I’ve seen in years.

++++++++++++++++

A Cheer to the Loeb Drama Center
The Loeb Drama Center was made for a production like this. In my humble opinion, the Loeb uses its arsenal of theatrical magic (apparatus to allow actors to fly, to descend from the sky using thick circus type rope and cables, to appear from portals under the stage, capacity to fabricate stunningly creative sets, to name a few) because it wants to keep them from gathering dust - they often upstage or overmatch the production on stage. In "The Heart of Robin Hood", they do it because it’s a perfect fit. 

Building the set...
No other theater in town could mount this production in such spectacular scale. The back of the set is a huge arc that looks like someone detached a wide forty foot high section of a grassy roller coaster and deposited it there. From it actors slide and tumble, drawbridges appear to allow scenes to take place in locales other than the forest, and several other things it would be shame to tell you and spoil surprises. The aerial ballet during the finale is ...oops, I'll let you find out for yourself.

The Heart of Robin Hood: Lustrous Lollapalooza of a Play

THE HEART OF ROBIN HOOD
Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge 617-547-8300.
Playwright : David Farr
Director: Gisli Örn Gardarsson
Set, Börkur Jónsson, Costumes, Emma Ryott, Lights, Björn Helgason, Sound, Jonathan Deans
Performing company: American Repertory Theater
Date closing: Jan. 19
Ticket price:  Starting at $25

I’m going to write more about this soon but I need to shout this out right now. Stop reading and get a ticket to this lollapalooza of a production – pronto.

If Cirque de Soleil got a hankering to put on a first rate piece of theater that smacked of Shakespeare it would display the visual oomph and playful spirit of "The Heart of Robin Hood." This thing is bigger than life. Actors appear from holes in the ground, a pond in the middle of the stage, tumble down from the tree canopy that overspreads the playground of a set, and appear from hidey holes and platforms built into the cascading backdrop of the set. I’ve never seen a playhouse so imaginatively transformed into a magical forest, Sherwood Forest to be exact.

I’m getting ahead of myself. There are so many things to rave about. Playwright David Farr has turned the legend inside out. By the final scenes of the play he retains the spirit of the original but turns it upside down and shakes it. Robin Hood is a bit of a thug, steals from the rich and shares it with his Merry Men. Poor peasants oppressed by the overlord? What poor peasants?

Then appears Marion, daughter of the Duke of York, allied with Richard The Lionhearted presently off crusading in distant lands. Marion, with her irrepressible attendant Pierre, heads for the forest to escape marriage to the villainous lecher Prince John and to teach a thug a lesson in civility.

From left: Jordan Dean, Christina Bennett Lind, and Christopher Sieber in American Repertory Theater’s production of “The Heart of Robin Hood.”

What follows is a merry mix of comedy, drama, and high jinx. Great dialogue, sight gags, an ingeniously designed set, sensationally choreographed slow motion fight scenes, a few gory scenes to leaven the broad humor, mistaken identities and a couple of vile characters representing the forces of evil.... a wonderful amalgamation of alchemy and imagination
 
Every one of the actors gloms onto their roles with zest you can feel all the way to the back of the theater. (Note: The Loeb, with a capacity of around 590 reduced the house to 530 seats to accommodate the sprawling set. No matter where you sit, you won’t be far from the action.)

Oh. Get there early.  The Connecticut roots band  “Poor Old Shine” adds a smashingly appealing musical element. Dressed like a bunch of extras in “O, Brother, Where Art Thou?” they rollick through the theater for about ten minutes amongst patrons trying to find their seats. Their singing and playing is seamlessly integrated, the musicians of Poor Old Shine even get into the acting. Ever seen a bass fiddler imitate a wild boar?

With a rousing finale, all's well that ends well.
TO BE  CONTINUED...

 

A Zillonaire In The Wings

December 15, 2013

I'm going to become a zillionaire tomorrow night…upwards of $585 million. I'm giddy thinking about it. I'll become the Croesus of Watertown.

I'm updating my bucket list so I can get a head start when my numbers on my MegaMillions ticket tumble out of the mixer. I'm undeterred that tens of thousands of others feel the same way. That's why we gamble. The possibility that we'll win the big one.

Until hearing otherwise, I'm reveling in deciding where to deposit the jackpot, how to break the news to my family and friends. Or maybe take the money anonymously and become The Phantom Philanthropist with the proceeds from my vast charitable trust.

Hordes of lottery bettors are in high spirits with the prospect of having a spectacularly green Christmas this year. We've got an extra spring in our steps with those little life altering scraps of paper in our pockets.

According to a Mass Lottery spokesman, the odds of winning are one in 258,890,850. The possibility of winning if you don't play? Zero.

Any way you look at it, one in 258,890,850 is better than zero.

Until tomorrow night, I'm feelin' it.

The Cocktail Hour: Predictable But Carefully Shaken

"The Cocktail Hour"
A play by A.R. Gurney
Huntington Theatre Company
Boston University Theatre
Director: Maria Aitken
Set, Allen Moyer, Costumes, Candice Donnelly, Lights, Paul Palazzo
November 15- December 15, 2013:


This play is a real hoot. Using the apt vehicle of the social ritual called “the cocktail hour’ playwright A.R. Gurney captures then surgically dissects the 1970s upper middle class milieu in which it was still thriving. The man of the house returns from work and the family gathers to talk about the travails of the day. The conversation is lightweight, argument is off limits, and olives for martinis are in far greater supply than emotional content. Dinner is often delayed. The alcohol keeps the illusion of family cohesiveness intact. Cocktail hour is actually a way to be alone together.

The best reason to see this warmly wrought comedy is watching Richard Poe as Bradley, the sublimely over-the-top pater familias. Bradley epitomizes Gurney’s upper class WASP male whose sense of noblesse oblige is big on patronizing, weak on compassion. A stuffed shirt non-pareil, he gleefully chomps upon every scene he’s in. Plastered down gray hair, barrel-chested in his tweed sport coat and slightly-too-short burgundy slacks, he has the stentorian pipes of a news reader who would be lost without the teleprompter.

John (James Waterston) now in his thirties, visits home to announce he’s written a play about the family. The father talks about how he and wife used to go to plays all the time. “They were over promptly then you go to bed." The examined life is not his forte.

“Am I in it?” Bradley asks.
“It cuts pretty close to home,” John answers.
"Write it after I'm dead, not now," his father demands.

The Cocktail Hour by A. R. Gurney, Huntington Theatre Company
Richard Poe (clockwise from left), James Waterston, Pamela J. Gray, and Maureen Anderman portray a New England WASP family in the Huntington Theatre Company production of A. R. Gurney’s comedy of manners The Cocktail Hour. Photos by T. Charles Erickson.
The set, lighting, and costumes are subtle underpinnings that evoke the upper class milieu in which the play takes place.

The setup complete, you know that by curtain time, the foment caused by son John’s play will unearth revelations, truths long buried, behaviors explained, and hurts salved. Then we’ll go home.

Bradley has his own version of events, whether family or history. “I’ll look it up,” John says as his dad tells a tall one explaining the origin of the clipper ship on the label of the bottle of scotch. “No, it will destroy the rhythm of the conversation,” he objects. In scene after scene, we see that Bradley doesn’t allow the truth to get in the way of a good story.

The rest of the family soon appears. Wife Ann (Maureen Anderman, in an exquisitely turned role as wife who’s learned to live with her husband’s spectacularly egotistical foibles, sensing a decent man underneath all that self-aggrandizing behavior), dressed in a pale silk blouse and finely tailored floor length skirt, enters for “Just a splash,” (one of several). She’s followed by daughter Nina (Pamela J. Gray) who brings her own dysfunctional life to the party.

John, who trades his soda water for scotch at the opening of Act 2, says there is something missing in his play (titled "The Cocktail Hour"), a narrative arc, a plot, that he has yet to figure out, that part of the reason he has written the play is to understand his place in the family constellation. By the end of the play, he finds a solution that satisfies all parties. Even Bradley manages to see something in life besides his own image.

Yes, it’s predictable, but so well performed, with so much lively dialogue, that it’s a good night at the theater. It won’t change the way you think about life (unless you need to write a play and bring it home when you visit your parents for the holidays). The play’s ending is too tidily wrapped up but, because it’s acted so damn well, I felt like I’d slugged down a splash myself.

 

A Handshake, plain and simple

It was a handshake. A social gesture in keeping with the moment. And the right thing to do. Period.


When President Barack Obama bounded up the steps to the podium to eulogize Nelson Mandela, the first dignitary he had to pass was Cuban President Raul Castro. He stopped, shook the man’s hand, spoke a few words, and greeted other dignitaries on his way to the podium.

All pundits and certain politicians talked about for the next days was “the handshake.” For some, you’d think Obama had said, “Yo, Raul, we’re gonna roll back the embargo on Cuba, I’ll have my people call your people so we can sign the deal!”

Who is going to be gauche enough to shun another man at the funeral the man whose concept of Ubuntu, roughly translated as “human kindness,” resulted in breaking down the racist Apartheid system in South Africa, a system that imprisoned him for 27 years, much of it on the remote Robben Island?  And a man who forgave his captors and asked them to join him as he was elected president of South Africa in 1994, served until 1999 and was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Nelson Mandela never forgot the men and nations who stood by him for the 27 years he was imprisoned. Fidel Castro was one of them. His brother Raul represented Fidel and the bond that Nelson Mandela never forgot.

Bigger news would have been the small mindedness of not greeting Raul Castro, a perceived enemy of the United States, at the funeral of one of the most powerful peacemakers of all time.

It was a handshake, a simple gesture of human kindness. Anyone who read anything sinister or appeasing about that gesture needs to take a boat ride to Robben Island and view the 7 foot by 7 foot cell in which Nelson Mandela was imprisoned during years of hard labor in a stone yard.

John Singer Sargent: The invisible gallery experience

John Singer Sargent Watercolors
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
October 13, 2013 - January 20, 2014
Ann and Graham Gund Galleryå

More than meets the eye...
All it took was one question to Anthony, a staff member patrolling the exhibit to be sure no one uses flash photography or gets too close to the artwork.

“How many paintings here?” I ask.
“97 paintings in 11 rooms,” he answers.
“The room felt different last time I was here,” says I.

“The room is reduced to rubble after each exhibit, the temporary walls that have been erected are torn down, moldings and all,” says Anthony.

“You mean they actually build walls inside this room?” I ask.

Happy for an audience, he goes on to say that designers and curators figure out the best way lay out the collection of art, factor in traffic patterns, viewing angles, specific location for each piece of art, illumination, informational panels, and the identifying labels for each painting. They choose how to sequence the art either chronologically of thematically.

Electricians, carpenters, and painters roll up their sleeves and get to work. Using tracks built into the ceiling, they hang walls, install ceiling moldings, and frame doors through which the traffic will flow. He points out the superstructures in the ceiling from which the temporary walls have been hung.

 

The curators and designers decide on a color scheme, colors for each room that complement whatever art is inside it. We’re talking people who are into detail. They even select door and ceiling moldings, and things I'm not even aware of yet...pretty impressive.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall watching all this happen. It would be great behind the scenes video for patrons to see, add another layer of appreciation of how the exhibit grows from a vision to a reality.

Voila! One empty, huge, rectangular space with all the allure of a warehouse space is transformed into an arresting visual experience.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

John Singer Sargent: Brilliant Command of Watercolor Painting

John Singer Sargent Watercolors
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
October 13, 2013 - January 20, 2014
Ann and Graham Gund Gallery

11 rooms, 97 works of art...

The huge rectangular Gund Gallery space has been divided into 11 rooms, thematically divided to showcase Sargent's wide ranging interests and spectacular skill at jolting the viewer with a sense of 'right now' freshness. Most widely known for his huge oil portraits, this exhibit explodes with scores of the brilliant, compact watercolors he painted in the last twenty years of his life.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925): inquisitive mind, creative urges. Sargent was the leading portrait artist for the last twenty years of the 1800s, his customers being wealthy American and British families. The canvasses were large format oil color paintings, classic compositions that displayed his mastery of color. He rendered a sense of mystery in his subject's faces. His "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" at the MFA Boston is a prime example. By 1900, he'd tired of the limitations of oil painting and looked to watercolors to extend his creative reach.

An avid traveler, it wasn't enough to witness moments in life, he became dedicated committing them to paper with his collection of brushes, crayons, paint trays. His way of relaxing was to work. Was he driven or was this just the way he breathed in the life around him? If he were an essayist or poet, his work wouldn’t have been as widely appreciated. You can’t walk into a gallery and get a visual sense of Thoreau’s descriptions of Walden Pond. Sargent’s watercolors hit you right between the eyes.

Born to American parents in Italy, the world was his playground. As he traveled through Spain, Portugal, Greece, Switzerland, Italy, Syria, Palestine in the early 1900s, he left a wake of brightly colored landscapes, architectural views, and figure drawings. His days of working indoors were done. He was the early 20th century version of blogger, recording impressions of every place he visited. He worked quickly. Sometimes he could capture a scene with a sense of completion, sometimes his watercolors had a looser sketchy appearance. What connected them was his deft use of translucent and opaque watercolors and the subtle way he could suggest movement. Sargent could make sunlight dance.

It must have taken him weeks or months to complete the massive oil portraits of the late 1800s. Give him a few hours in sunny Venice and he might have been able to complete a doozy.

"Venice: Under the Rialto Bridge" Translucent watercolor, touches of opaque watercolor,graphite underdrawing 1909  It features some of Sargent's trademark treatments of sun and shadow, along with a kinetic sense of movement and distinctive elements of Venetian architecture. My favorite watercolor in the show. You'll find your own favorites.

A close up shows Sargent's fine brush strokes and mastery of allowing the watercolor to bleed into wet linen paper to suggest shapes.

"The Bridge of Sighs" 1904  Sargent's use of opaque and translucent watercolors, graphite and red-pigmented underdrawing are visible to the discerning eye in lots of  his compositions. You have to be  observant to see some of the underdrawing on many of the watercolors.
"Gondoliers' Siesta" 1902 Watercolor with ink. What gives lots of his work such a sense of immediacy is where he sets up to paint. It looks like he painted this from another gondola on the water a few feet away.

"Bedouins"  Opaque and translucent watercolor 1905 Sargent visited "The Ottoman Levant" (Jerusalem, Beirut, parts of present day Syria), probably due to his fascination with the area after reading "Travels in Arabia Deserta" in 1888. He really piled on the opaque watercolors to make them pop against the pale sky.

"In Switzerland" Translucent and opaque watercolor and graphite underdrawing  1905 Sargent enjoyed painting pictures of figures in repose. To my mind, anyone who can paint a foreshortened composition this successfully is a genius.

"Simplon Pass: Reading" Opaque and translucent watercolors, wax resist, graphite underdrawing 1911 To most observers, this portrait that Sargent carefully orchestrated (see photo) is the star of the show. My bet is that this is the one that gets you in the door but you'll find others that appeal to you even more.

"A Tramp" Translucent watercolor and touches of opaque watercolor 1904 This is an astonishing portrait using watercolor. The man's face has great detail and the rest is far sketchier. The shades of blues, greens,  browns and blacks frame the man's face brilliantly.

"White Ships" Majorca. Translucent and opaque watercolor, wax resist, graphite underdrawing 1908 Sargent used a clear wax on the right side of the larger boat to repel the blue watercolor washes and create white highlights. You can almost feel the sun on your back as you view the boats from a little skiff bobbing on the water nearby.

"Carrara: A Quarry" Translucent and opaque watercolor, wax resist, graphite underdrawing 1911
"Carrara: A Quarry II" Translucent watercolor, touches of opaque watercolor, wax resist, graphite underdrawing 1911

Any artist who can make quarries an interesting subject has my vote. Sargent reveled in capturing sunlight in its infinite variations.

"Simplon Pass: The Lesson" Translucent watercolor, touches of opaque watercolor, wax resist, graphite underdrawing 1911 The artist's sister Emily at work: this is probably a clue  about how Sargent himself worked - brush clenched between teeth, other brushes and paint in tin paint trays in his lap, fierce concentration on his face.

"An Artist In His Studio" oil on canvas, 1904 Pretty tricky a portrait including a landscape painting. Sargent loved painting whites, the white reflecting off the sheets is a classic technique, difficult to master and wonderful to see captured in oil or watercolor, which you see below.

"La Biancheria" Translucent watercolor, touches of opaque watercolor, wax resist, graphite underdrawing 1910 As in most of the images here, my photos do not do justice to the original paintings. My jaw dropped when I saw this bravura scene of white sheets drying in sunlight, the whites framed by the nature's outdoor palette of greens, browns, orangey reds, and gray. The overall feel of the composition is quite impressionist.

"Genoa University" Translucent watercolor, touches of opaque watercolor, wax resist, graphite underdrawing 1911 Sargent must have lived to capture sunlight with his brushes. You can almost see him dropping everything to set up easel, grab brushes and tubes of paint to spread the watercolors on paper before the golden afternoon sunlight vanishes. Try to count the gradations of sunlight from the whites on the columns to the deep honeys in the vault...I gave up.

"Venice:La Dogana" Translucent opaque watercolor, graphite underdrawing 1911 I can almost feel my neck craning upwards to see the statue of Fortune on the cupola of the customs house in Venice. Don't you marvel at how Sargent subtlely tints the white architecture with reflected pure blue sky.

"Daphne" Translucent watercolor, touches of opaque watercolor, wax resist, graphite underdrawing 1910 This artist never picks the easy way out. He manages to show a silhouette without losing detail in the white against white upper section and give the statue warmth and marble texture at the same time. And those llttle dabs of red, yellow, orange and blue in the foreground pull it all together. You'll see.

The exhibit is divided by themes represented in John Singer Sargent's  work: In Venice; Figures Lying Down; Oil or Watercolor; Portraits at Hand; Water Craft; At Work; In Villa Gardens; Sunlight on Stone; Bedouin Encounter.

This was one of the best shows of 2013. It ends January 20. Start the new year with a call to arms from a master Sargent!

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Mies Julie: Updated Strindberg Packs Power

Paramount Center Mainstage, Tremont Street, Boston, MA
Writers: Yaël Farber, adapted from “Miss Julie” by August Strindberg
Performing company: Baxter Theatre Centre of South Africa
Presenting organizations: ArtsEmerson Boston, MA
Nov. 30- Dec. 8, 2013

It’s a good thing smoking is not allowed in theaters. With the tiniest of sparks, the Paramount Theater would have gone up in a fireball midway through “Mies Julie” tonight. The heat between Mies Julie (Hilde Cronje) and John (Bongile Mantsai), a laborer on her father’s estate in the rural East Cape region, is incandescent. Mies Julie is acting recklessly while her father is away from the farm. Young, sexually capricious, an entitled Mies Julie exudes a sense of a woman in heat.

PlaywrightYael Farber updated August Strindberg’s  “Miss Julie”, first produced in 1888, to take place in her homeland South Africa. To Strindberg’s original themes dwelling on tensions between class and the sexes, add tension between the races and ownership of land in post Apartheid South Africa. Powderkeg.

Julie flirts provocatively with John, her father’s young black servant whom she’s known since they were both children. John, aroused but aware of his social standing, keeps his distance. With Julie’s persistence, you know he will be sorely tested.

A storm is on the way. With heavy atmospherics, thunderous rumbling bass tones so deep that you feel them vibrating through the theater floor, the mist blowing over the set, you know something of awful Shakespearian scale is going to transpire. And the play has hardly begun.

It is impossible to understate Hilde Cronje’s ability to portray Julie’s raw sexual desire and the way she uses her power as a white woman to manipulate John, at one point saying, “Master is away, you eat here,” ordering John to sit at the wood plank kitchen table.

Bare gleaming legs, short skirt, loose red tunic, she glides with the sultry body awareness of a ballerina intent on seduction, not sure how far to take her precocious behavior. “Kiss my foot,” she demands, then pulls her foot away when he kneels before her.

Underneath the sexuality of this volatile relationship is the friction between white landowners and the black population on whom they depend for labor. The play takes place on the eve of the 18th anniversary of Freedom Day, the first in which citizens of all races were allowed to take part in 1994. Soon after, Nelson Mandela was named President. The right to vote and the assumption of political power by Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) did not immediately address the issue of land ownership. The problem of land ownership plagues South Africa to this day.

Hilda Cronje as Julie and Bongile Mantsai as John in Baxter Theatre Center of South Africa and ArtsEmerson’s production of “Mies Julie.”

The farmhouse kitchen takes up most of the stage. Its rustic worn wood planks, wooden table, chairs, cabinet give Julie, who stalks the stage like a cat, plenty of room to try to work out her demons. Her father is away but his presence is nearly spectral in the form of his black boots that John assiduously buffs while being tested by Julie.

The intermittent presence of John’s mother, who raised Julie after her mother committed suicide, seems to be the only person governing Julie’s behavior. Raised in the old tradition, John's mother knows that much has changed but much remains the same after universal right to vote became the law of the land.

She’s seen enough of her white masters’ behavior to know their faults and cruelty. As a church going servant, she tries to stifle her son’s fierce sense of entitlement to own some of the land on which he toils, land his family owned before their right to own it was abolished in the Bantu Land Act No. 27 of 1913 (described in the theater program). Land restitution was called for in the 1990s but it hasn’t gained much traction. John hasn’t been brave enough to openly defy his master but is becoming more militant in his views.

Sexual politics? Plenty here. Julie’s power as daughter of landowner gives her room to manipulate. The only thing she needs to fear is her own lust. Virile and robust, John knows he has what Julie wants, that it's a source of power for him. Carnal attraction pulls them together. A belief they are each entitled to the farmland pulls them apart. Three generations of Julie’s forebears are buried in the land. John’s relatives are buried under the floor of the kitchen built when the property changed hands.

Clearly, the playwright is a provocateur in her own right. Arguments over who has the right to the land isn’t usually involved in foreplay but here it makes sense. Both John and Julie know that land and who controls it shaped who they are and who they will become.

In a storm of intensity rarely portrayed on stage, John and Julie copulate violently on the kitchen table. John lays claim to Julie and the property she represents. Blood is spilled. Both lives have been destroyed. More bodies will be buried in the land. Who will own it? Farber lets us draw our own conclusions.

You're Welcome!

Please. Thank you. You’re welcome.

We teach these words to little kids to use at the appropriate times. You remember how you might have been prompted to say, “Please,” after you babbled, “Milk”? Apparently, when you join the ranks of NPR reporters and commentators, “You’re welcome” is expunged from the playbook.

A reporter finishes a short piece on the election, the economy, the World Series, whatever. The host says, “Thank you for speaking with us.” The reporter says, “Thank you.”

What? Did the host do the reporter a favor?

This sounds like one of those old Alphonse and Gaston routines in which both parties outdo each other in politeness. Said reporter did a good job. Said host says 
“Thank you.” Why the hell can’t the respondent say, “You’re welcome”?

The closest on-air response to a “Thank you” that approaches “You’re welcome” is, “My pleasure.” The respondent may as well say, “This what I’m paid to do, keeps food on the table, glad you liked it, you’re welcome.”

Answering “Thank you” with “Thank you” marginalizes what the reporter has just done -  given us a cogent report that sheds light on a newsworthy topic.

I love getting praise or acknowledgment. Someone tells me “Good job” or “Thank you” if I hold open a door, or let someone into a line and I say, “You’re welcome.” It feels like the natural completion of social transaction. For a couple of seconds, I just made the world a better place.

The next time someone says, “Thank you,” what will you say?  I want the truth now, so feel free to explain yourself .

Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.'s  "Pet Peeve Department"