Tag Archives: jose gonzales

Theatre

Passing Strange Is At Least Two-Thirds Awesome

Don’t think of Passing Strange as a musical. Most people think they hate musicals—probably because most musicals are terrible, or at least not good enough to turn a profit—but when a show has great music that has a vital relationship with its story, musical theatre can be everything one wants in a performance. SideCountry Theatre’s current production of Passing Strange (at ACT through June 29) is undeniably musical theatre and undeniably flawed, but it is one of the better shows you’re going to see in Seattle.

Passing Strange’s 2008 Broadway production (created by the monomial Stew with Heidi Rodewald under the guidance of Annie Dorsen) was nominated for seven Tonys and won for Best Book. This says more about the Tony Awards than the musical, as the book is the weakest part of this show (the Drama Desk gave it Best Musical, Lyrics, and Music).

This story of a black man passing for a black man is a philosophical picaresque that sounds awfully autobiographical despite Stew’s insistence to the contrary. However the language is brilliant. It slips in and out of verse such that the words slide along a spectrum from dialogue to song with pit stops at singer-songwriter interstitial patter and spoken word performance.

His search for authenticity takes the Youth (as the script calls the main character) from the image-obsessed world of middle class black Los Angeles to avant-garde Europe only to get the pretense and narcissism slapped out of him (if tenuously) by life and family. The character and the music are sufficiently appealing that what should be a tiresome tale is charming, entertaining, and sometimes moving.

The end of the story is not satisfying, as it lives in a world of metaphysical ambiguity that suggests an unfinished journey, but the production wipes away these concerns by rocking out. In the words of Fozzie Bear, “Let’s jump up and down and wave our arms, and get off stage.” Only, the performers remain on stage and invite the audience to join their dance party. This is not your typical musical theatre.

Staging this show without Heidi Rodewald and Stew is tricky business and doesn’t entirely work. The Broadway production (which I saw) was heightened by the presence of Stew and Heidi on stage with their band and the knowledge that developing the show had broken up Stew and Heidi’s romantic relationship. This production casts the lead guitar (Kathy Moore—jaw-dropping as both instrumentalist and vocalist; invisible as a character) in the role of Heidi, which may not read for the uninitiated. Other detritus of the development process that lodged in the show and no longer makes sense includes a denouement centering on a NYC pretzel seller that barely worked in the original production.

LeRoy Bell is cast brilliantly as the Narrator (a role created by Stew). This is a musical that really wants to be a rock concert and Bell, a novice actor, occasionally looks like he regrets that it isn’t a rock concert. That fleeting awkwardness serves him and the show well and keeps the production very real.

Most of the time Bell does what he’s been doing for longer than his looks would suggest. He sings and plays catchy singer-songwriter pop songs and tells great stories between numbers. For much of the show he seems like a disinterested storyteller. When he and the Youth face one another directly it has the quality of a reveal.

Marlette Buchanan is Bell’s stylistic foil. In her performance as Mother she is all musical theatre grandeur with pipes and playing that dampen the eyes. Andrew Lee Creech (Buchanan’s fellow cast member from Intiman’s excellent Trouble In Mind) nail’s Youth’s immaturity without completely losing our sympathy.

There isn’t a weak link in the ensemble, but DeSean Halley stands out for his moves and his drumming. His character’s insistence that he has no rhythm is the phoniest moment in the show. Those characters lean more toward the disposable than the self-indulgent.

Shontina Vernon brings no-nonsense swagger to her roles. She’s loud and upfront in her most prominent character, the leader of a Berlin commune, but she finds the softness and humanity in the character too. The lack of chemistry she has with Creech is exacerbated by heavy foreshadowing that this relationship is doomed.

Yesenia Iglesias goes from a slightly overblown late 20th Century black take on Booth Tarkington’s “Seventeen” year old heartthrob to the posturing anger of an anti-capitalist feminist porn-maker. Her key role as the Dutch barista, Marianna, emphasizes the commonality in each of these sweet, seductive characters.

J Reese gets some of the best character bits—and, oddly, all overtly gay characters. He doesn’t go to the scenery-chewing extremes suggested by the cultured and cloistered rebellious reverend’s son, Franklin, or the riot cabaret drag queen, Mr. Venus, but he gets the vulnerable authenticity these heavy masks permit.

Technically the highlight is AJ Epstein’s lighting and Lara Kaminsky’s projections, which support the emotional and physical settings without overwhelming them. The band is also stellar under the direction of Jose Gonzales (Sandbox Radio). Candace Franks’s costumes do the job with a contemporary touch. Tyrone Brown’s direction is hit and miss with some clever choices in the staging and some less effective ones in the physical work and pacing.

Two thirds of this show is awesome and I’m pretty sure the rest is too but I couldn’t make out the words because the sound team was overwhelmed by the monumental challenges of this production. Much as one might wish Passing Strange had been staged at Washington Hall the Bullitt Cabaret does have the proper intimacy and informality for this show. However the big sound in the ¾ thrust is more than the sound team could handle. Just when things got really rocking on opening night the vocals would disappear. One hopes they’ll get that worked out with more practice. Another week and both the technical and artistic teams should be picking up their cues and making for a faster, more smoothly flowing show.

Arts & Entertainment, Music, Theatre

Adventuresome Forms Take Shape at Sandbox Radio Live!

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Since June 2011 Leslie Law has been leading a gang of musicians, actors, and technicians in producing a series of quarterly podcasts. The latest episode of Sandbox Radio Live! was recorded Monday evening before a live audience at West of Lenin. The meat of these shows is theatre but each episode also features music and poetry, though the lines between these get blurry.

172794-250The show is well rehearsed. The Sandbox Artists Collective makes the enormous technical difficulties of organizing actors, live sound effects, and music into one fluid and balanced recording seem easy.

Aside from the technical achievements the music is far and away the strongest piece of this collaboration. Music Director José “Juicy” Gonzales leads on piano with five-string bass, drums, and clarinet doubling on accordion. Ms. Law chimes in on keyboard while keeping the show on track as producer. The band provides the through line for the production with effective underscoring and an inclination for funk when the music is able to take the focus.

The acting, by a who’s who of the Seattle theatre insiders drama club, is more than adequate. However the live sound effects are more ambitious than effective. The cast does good footfalls, doors, and drawers but the more liquid sounds of air, water, and breaking glass lack nuanced fluidity.

The radio format offers both the production company and the audience some unique opportunities. The actors, many of whom are approaching a time of diminishing casting opportunities, are freed from types to play as widely as their voices will take them.

For the audience it’s a backstage pass. We watch the actors appear as themselves even as they deliver a vast array of characters into the microphones. We also get an inside view of the making of radio theatre. Occasional flubs in the show remind the audience that we are not watching a performance so much as participating in the creation of a performance. We have our part to play and the Episode 7 audience gamely laughed at the same jokes when they were repeated for a clean take to be spliced over the mistakes in post-production.

For the playwrights, the absence of visuals can slow pacing as one sound follows another instead of occurring simultaneously with visuals. For the most part the limitations seem to encourage experimentation with form and the scripts tend to live in a middle ground between polished text and the inventive free-for-all.

The prominence of integrated underscoring and the adventuresome approaches to text make the guest appearances in Episode 7 feel like integral parts of the show. This is especially true of The Girl Who Goes Alone written and performed by sometime actor and prominent local poet, Elizabeth Austen.

Elizabeth Heffron’s Evangeline is almost wholly exposition as a turn-of-the-19th-century Seattle prostitute writes home to her mother. Occasional flashbacks and interruptions create drama but mostly it is storytelling. The excerpts performed from Lisa Halpern’s stage play Flying Through Blue suggest that a stage production would take an unusual form in and of itself. The episodes create a Zen echo of Ionesco in exploring the interior changes in one half of a settled couple. As presented for radio Halpern occasionally resorts to narration where surtitles might be used on stage.

Paul Mullin’s Markheim has a gleeful disregard for audience comprehension, if you haven’t been following along (all the back episodes are available online). There are descriptions of actions and locations written in the voice of Raymond Chandler—often without feeling clichéd. However once the dialogue gets started much of the storytelling relies on sound effects and oblique references. This is all the more challenging for the audience given that the world of the play is a fantasy of angels and demons running rampant in Seattle according to rules of Mullin’s invention. Ultimately the style proves more attractive than any need for an easily understood plot and the project remains a crowd favorite, though its star may be eclipsed by a new series.

My Cousin Katie from Ketchikan is all irony and shine as its ingenuous heroine finds her way through Seattle, snatches of her jingly theme song ringing out at every mention of her name. Not only has Scot Augustson created a winningly silly icon but in this initial episode he gives Seattle what we’ve long desired: The chance to witness the blithe destruction of a Chihuly masterpiece. Sadly one fears the sound effects are no match for the demands of the situation, but it’s a delicious fantasy nonetheless and one of many reasons to check out the Sandbox either in person or by podcast. The next live recording is set for April 29.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

In Jazz News, a Charlie Brown Holiday Benefit at Strawshop

You think you have to start planning for Christmas early–Strawberry Theatre Workshop‘s Greg Carter was kicking around holiday-themed ideas back in June. The advance planning has paid off with a benefit performance by the Jose Gonzales Trio of the music from A Charlie Brown Christmas. The Peanuts-flavored magic happens at the Erickson Theatre Off Broadway on Monday, December 5, at 7:30 p.m. (tickets: $15).

Depending on how you feel about that trademark “alien visitors” line delivery you get on Peanuts specials, you may be happy to hear this particular evening is about the jazz music, rather than kid chorale. The trio was kind enough to post some samples from rehearsal: “Christmas Time Is Here” and “O Tannenbaum,” to get you into the spirit.

It’s music to remember childhood, with its heartaches and growing pains, by. I had a chance to talk a little with Gonzales about the enduring appeal of Vince Guaraldi‘s composition, which has to be notable in part for being Christmas music that’s not all that cheerful (the uptempo “Linus and Lucy” that everyone knows wasn’t written for holiday special), but like Charles Shulz’s kids, full of bittersweetness. The CBS executives of 1965  did not like jazz in their Peanuts, but Lee Mendelson, who had picked Guaraldi to soundtrack an unaired documentary on Shulz, stuck to his arranger.

Jose Gonzales

Vince Guaraldi played piano and Hammond organ with his trio, with drummer Jerry Granelli, and Fred Marshall on double bass. They were a West Coast jazz group from San Francisco, not Mendelson’s first choice, but when he heard their hit “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” on the radio, he was hooked.

Gonzales listed a few influences you can hear in Guaraldi’s piano: Satie, Ravel. As a performer, “he’s in that Bill Evans tradition,” he said, which Nat Hentoff agrees with in his appreciation of Guaraldi:

I had seen that total immersion before, and often, in a pianist of a different temperament, Bill Evans. His head coming very close to touching the piano keys, Bill Evans eventually was the piano. Bill, however, became an icon. But Vince Guaraldi, who died of a heart attack in 1976 at 47 between sets during a gig, has not become a legend.

It’s not that Guaraldi didn’t do well–look at his discography–but with the benefit of hindsight, we’re all CBS executives. Of course, Gonzales also says there’s a story about Guaraldi flashing a knife as a warning to chatterers during his performance–“he had a bit of a temper”–so that immersion made its own demands.

Gonzales and his trio can be seen and heard all around Seattle on jazz missions that don’t feature Snoopy dances. You can hear them at the Sip wine bars (both Seattle and Issaquah) on Thursdays. First Saturdays of the month, they play at Madrona’s St. Clouds restaurant; on second Saturdays, Serafina on Eastlake. Further afield, they’re at the Scotch and Vine in Des Moines every other Friday. Keep up with them on Facebook to hear about all their shows.