Musicals Go 'Bootless' in Wilmington

By Guest Blogger, Christine Facciolo
Christine holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Music and continues to apply her voice to all genres of music.  An arts lover since childhood, she currently works as a freelance writer.

Take two hip writers, four zany characters and a theatre company notorious for its quirky productions, and what do you get?  A whole lotta fun.  Bootless Stageworks opened its 2013-2014 season with a production of Rockwell and Bogart’s The Musical of Musicals: The Musical which is a parody on — what else? — the musical.  

This side-splitting satire romps through 70 years of musical theatre history taking affectionate pokes at various masters of the genre.  The basic plot: June (Elizabeth Holmes) can’t pay her rent and is threatened by her evil landlord Jitter (Michael Gamache).  She turns for advice to Abby (Roseanne DellAversano). But will the handsome leading man Willy/Billy (Mark Dixon) save the day?

The concept is summed up on the front page of the program: Five musicals, one plot.  The variations are a Rogers & Hammerstein version set in Kansas in August — complete with a dream ballet; a Sondheim version featuring the landlord as a tortured artist who slashes the throats of tenants who fail to appreciate his genius; a splashy star vehicle a la Jerry Herman; an Andrew Lloyd Weber rock-musical featuring themes “borrowed” from Puccini; and a Kander & Ebb speakeasy set in Chicago.

The jokes are clever and continuous. The Rogers & Hammerstein segment opens Act I with a strapping cowhand singing “Oh, what beautiful corn!” and declaring “I’m in love with a wonderful hoe.”  The Sondheim segment follows, taking aim at songs like Green Finch and Linnet Bird, The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, and No One is Alone, punning several song titles as well. In Dear Abby — the Jerry Herman parody — an overly optimistic protagonist descends a staircase while her co-stars offer send-ups of Hello, Dolly!, If He Walked Into My Life and It’s Today.  

Act II opens with the Andrew Lloyd Weber takeoff, Aspects of Junita, which allows the cast to caricature some of the stars of his works.  Finally there’s the Kander & Ebb parody, where the host encourages patrons to “Drink up, ‘cause life’s a cabernet.”  The actors slink and strut in Bob Fosse-style singing takeoffs like Cell Block Tango, Liza with a Z and My Coloring Book.

The staging is efficient and the performances spot on.  Holmes is a versatile singer who can seamlessly transition from Broadway belter to operatic soprano.  DellAversano’s Abby delivers just the right amount of world-weary cynicism and a lusty singing style.  Mark Dixon is as charming a leading man as any ingénue could want.  Michael Gamache’s comedic talents fit nicely into the role of the bumbling — and sometimes demented — landlord.

Rockwell and Bogart are skillful writers and if you get the jokes, the show is funny.  Problem is some of the puns are so “inside,” that they can go over the heads of even the most ardent devotee of musical theatre.  And the constant cleverness does weary after a while.  Still a great evening of family entertainment. The show runs through October 19 at The Black Box at OperaDelaware Studios.

See www.bootless.org.  

Changes in venue for Mélomanie

Mélomanie is opening their twentieth season with great fanfare at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts.  This local ensemble has been commissioning new works and pairing them with baroque music for two decades and they are just about to launch a pairing with a hip arts center.  After playing for many years in historic Wilmington churches with great resonance and reverberation, the group is going to play in a venue which is more like a public center – a place to meet and greet.  This will present a less formal side of the ensemble and will draw attention to the fact that this group has been a prime mover in commissioning music in this area – an itinerant Delaware center for contemporary music.

The concert on Friday was at the Gore Recital Hall at the Roselle Center for the Arts – an intermediate-sized hall with a modicum of reverberation and, unfortunately, a very powerful and resonant air conditioning system.  Some of the audience who had been used to hearing the group play in stone churches felt that something was missing, yet the clear sounds of the articulation and ornaments in Tracy Richardson’s harpsichord playing was enhanced by the reduction of echo.  Her pristine performance of the Chaconne from Henry Purcell’s opera Dioclesian and the rapid ornaments in the French Suite in B Minor, BWV 814 provided a smooth beginning to introduce the world premiere Michael Stambaugh’s The machine comes to life for solo harpsichord, which Stambaugh introduced with comments on how the harpsichord differs from the piano in both mechanism and sound quality.  He did indeed do his homework for his harpsichord piece,  showing many features, including the harshness of the buff stop on Richardson’s Kingston harpsichord.

Kim Reighley, modern flute and Doug McNames, cello played Michael Colquhoun’s Three for two as one: a suite for flute and cello.  The use of percussive sounds, multiphonics, whistle tones and the weaving of parallel movement made this work particularly striking. 

And if there were any doubts about the acoustical possibilities in Gore Hall, they were dispelled after the intermission with the incredibly wide range of dynamics Christof Richter could produce on baroque violin.  At the beginning of a phrase, the sound was so soft that Mr. Richter’s bow moved before the audience could hear the sound swell in the Sonata in B Minor, BWV 1014 for violin and harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach.  And the colors of the sound Donna Fournier produced in the Carl Friedrich Abel Prelude and Allegro from the Suite in D Minor for viola da gamba were so rich and varied that a more resounding hall may have hidden some of those subtleties. 

Jennifer Margaret Barker introduced her world premiere of Le Passage du Temps as a re-composition of the third Bach French Suite which we heard in the first half of the program.  Her inventiveness in weaving the themes of Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue into an intricately orchestrated re-voicing of the beautiful solo keyboard work was a treat and an exemplary work by one of our local composition professors.  

Let us see what the sound at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts does to recast this concert on Sunday afternoon.   

See www.melomanie.org.

The DSO is back…and kicking!

The Delaware Symphony Orchestra boldly began their new 2013-2014 season with a new piece and three exciting works from the standard orchestral repertoire. But nothing is standard about the analysis and pre-concert lectures by Maestro David Amado. His wit, vocabulary and inquisitive mind make his talks on music well worth a hurried supper. He did not disappoint with his thesis that Igor Stravinsky took the theme from Debussy’s Prelude to the afternoon of a faun for his Firebird Suite. The audience and I were perplexed by this comparison of a raucous ritualistic dance being the same as an impressionistic daydream, but on closer examination one can see it. Would that the Maestro had once again let the orchestra open their season with the version of the Star Spangled Banner for which the composer was arrested, but the audience happily sang along for the standard version from the Arthur Luck collection. 

The DSO’s  Music Committee was courageous in choosing a new piece to begin the concert and they made a safe choice: Robert Ward’s Festive Ode is a marvelous mix of extremely well-orchestrated American music which allowed each section of the orchestra to be highlighted and it was a fun homecoming experience. 

Misha Dichter took command of a beautiful Steinway grand which had so much horsepower that he managed to overshadow the orchestra for a while, but pulled back with his sensitive yet untrammeled version of the famous Variation 18.  The percussion section was magically energetic with the dies irae theme, hats off to the glockenspiel! 

Mr. Dichter played a clean, but quietly expressive Claire de Lune as an encore and Maestro Amado and the orchestra surprised him after that by playing Happy Birthday to honor the day.  (Mr. Dichter seemed pleased and surprised by the gesture.)

Mr. Amado had the orchestra illustrate the themes of the Prelude to the afternoon of a faun by Claude Debussy. The soft colors of the orchestra told us that none of the players had lost any luster in the rough and uncertain past year.  The dynamics were so soft, especially with Katy Ambrose’s delicate horn entrance on a whisper. What a woodwind section the DSO has as well!

After the impressionistic pastels came the thunderous Firebird Suite.  The strings outdid themselves with a super soft beginning and eerie harmonics.  The clarinets took the magic jazzy, klezmer lines and played them as if they were easy as pie.  The Infernal dance had that unleashed wildness led by  Donna Battista on piano and some great percussion on xylophone.  Jon Gaarder played a smooth and controlled lullaby solo before the thunderous finale. 

Welcome back to the Grand, Delaware Symphony Orchestra!

See www.delawaresymphony.org.