Rabbit Hole at the Chapel Street Players

(Photo of Kate Brennan and Jason Fawcett by David Sokolowski)

What incredible risks Anthony Bosco took for the new Chapel Street Players production of Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire! First of all, the cast were almost all new to CSP. Secondly, he was taking on a play which the playwright himself had just adapted for a movie with Nicole Kidman. And thirdly, he is the father of two small children taking on a play about how a couple deals with the death of their child.

But on opening night on February 25, his willingness to take risks paid off. Kate Brennan as Becca and Jessica Rowland-Eppler as her sister Izzie had the audience so involved one lady couldn’t resist mumbling in response to their rants. And when it became clear that the clothing that Becca was folding so carefully had belonged to her four-year-old son who had died months earlier– it was hard to decide whether to laugh or cry.

Howie, Becca’s husband, played by Jason Fawcett, seems to be cool, collected and ready to kiss his wife back to normal. But even he has a limit to his patience. It is easy to empathize with him until Izzie raises suspicions about just how he might be coping.

Performances by Marlene Hummel, who plays Becca’s unrestrained mother, and Neil Redfield, who plays the hapless youth Jason, are catalytic. They force Howie and Becca to break their controlled postures and vent their grief.

The play presents each character against contrasting personalities. Becca’s neurotic quelling of her grief is highlighted by her exchanges with her carefree and shockingly direct sister Izzie -- Howie’s calm control is upset gradually by his warm but outspoken mother-in-law and all four of them react intensely to Jason’s apologetic entry into their lives.

In spite of all the grief and ranting, the play ends with a note of hope. The actors were so good that it is hard to resist the urge to call and see how they are doing. Performances are 8:00 p.m. on February 25, 26, March 4, 5, 11, 12. Matinee 2:00 p.m. March 6 and 12.

See www.chapelstreetplayers.org

Tendrils ascend with Mélomanie

Peter Flint gave center stage to each of the instruments of Mélomanie in his piece, Ascending Tendrils, which premiered on February 19. The piece begins with a call for spring on modern flute (Kimberly Reighley) – haunting and inviting at the same time. The gamba (Donna Fournier) responds calling to mind a bullfrog and when the cello (Douglas McNames) joins in and the violin (Linda Kistler) makes a grasshopper’s entrance with the harpsichord (Tracy Richardson) buzzing like a swarm of insects – the pandemonium of spring and growth continues until…pause…unstructured measures tell the audience not to predict how growth works. The listener waits for the next cue - the flute tweets hesitantly, then more insistently-- the fledgling trying to fly. The piece builds up to a dancing, running pace and ends with a jaunty halt. Flint has inventiveness and can change style completely. The last work he premiered in Delaware (in November 2009) was Double-speaking for guitar and flute, had a gypsy, Vallanato style. And, now that he has covered birds with his Avian Orchestra, he has moved on to insects. Shall we call his new music group the Etymological Orchestra from now on?

Ascending Tendrils was preceded by Kimberly Reighley’s performance of the Bach Suite in A Minor for Solo Flute (BWV 1013). Reighley is so deft at the baroque flute (and what a treat to have that in our area) that she commands the flute through arpeggiated passages with no hesitation – running the gamut of tone color in the baroque flute – with soft but sonorous low notes and whisper-gentle higher notes in fast succession – resounding in the fairly live church acoustics.

The two Telemann quartets were played almost contemplatively – with the gentlest of tempi and extremely graceful ornamentation. The musicians have changed places, putting flute and violin on the audience’s right and cello and gamba on the left. The balance is good both ways.

Mélomanie treated us to an unusually romantic item in the Duo for violin and cello by Bohuslav Martinù. Linda Kistler and Douglas McNames pulled no punches on either tempo or expressiveness and the acoustics made the lush romantic prelude reverberate richly while the rhapsodic rondo seemed like a raucous round of dueling fiddles.

See www.melomanie.org

See www.peterflintmusic.com

The Emperor’s new photographs

Had you found the photographs currently on exhibit at the Old College Gallery in a shoebox at your house, you may have tossed them out.

But if you noticed the photos were of Farah Diba, Empress Consort of Iran and Marella Agnelli, you might have kept a few after all. And then you would have puzzled about those faces you did not recognize.

Curator Stephen Petersen spent three entire days examining contact sheets to identify some of the people in the Warhol photographs given to the University of Delaware by the Warhol Legacy Program (run by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts). His dedication paid off – he identified 40 out of 50 famous (and not-so) visages after his exhausting hours of staring at contact sheets. (I did, however, recognize Christopher O’Riley – a past a soloist with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra.)

Mr. Petersen was ebullient in his gallery talk at Old College on February 17. His knowledge of Warhol and the collection imbued his note-free speech with zest, and his background in photography made him perfect for the job. He has an MFA in photography, but his attention for detail meant that he had researched every aspect of each camera – down to details like the use of the “magic cube” flash bulb, the mention of which had some members of the audience nodding as they remembered using them. His excitement was contagious and made the visit to the gallery a much deeper experience.

Mr. Petersen displayed cameras exactly like the ones Warhol had used for his photographs and he talked to the crowd about how the cameras were innovative at the time -- intended to be the perfect family portrait machine. He spoke about the irony of using a twenty-dollar Polaroid Bigshot to prepare portraits of the glitterati and nobility willing to pay him a $25,000 commission for his work. He also spoke of Warhol’s life and work: Warhol reveled in the underground of the New York art world until he was shot and seriously wounded. He then tried to slow down and live life a bit (but not too much) more staidly.

Petersen arranged the photographs in chronological order so that you can see the polaroids and move on to the black and white gelatin silver prints which have more experimentation and spark to them. You also see models of the ‘point and shoot’ cameras which Warhol used: a Minox with synchronized flash, a Chinon autofocus and an Olympus QuickFlash.

Thanks to Stephen Petersen, the Old College Gallery exhibit will give you an insight into the private Andy Warhol – so different from the one we conjure up when contemplating Brillo boxes, Campbell’s soup cans and blocky silkscreen images of Marilyn Monroe.

http://www.udel.edu/museums/exhibitions/2011/warhol.html