Arts

Triumph of the will

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:37:32 GMT

2nd Story's stirring Miracle Worker
It's easy enough— unavoidable, actually — to admire and be amazed by the accomplishments of Helen Keller, but it took the account by playwright William Gibson for the remarkable work of her teacher, Annie Sullivan, to be so widely appreciated.

REACHING OUT: Thompson as Keller.

It's easy enough— unavoidable, actually — to admire and be amazed by the accomplishments of Helen Keller, but it took the account by playwright William Gibson for the remarkable work of her teacher, Annie Sullivan, to be so widely appreciated. The current 2nd Story Theatre production of The Miracle Worker (through December 14) manages as powerful and affecting a job with the play as we will ever see.

This is a brisk and skillfully told tale to work from, for the most part. We are plunged into the emotional plight of the Keller family in the first seconds, as Annie's mother, Kate (Erin Olsen), suddenly discovers that her infant, just having recovered from a deathly illness, cannot see or hear her. The drawn-out scream of her name blends into the sight of an older Helen (Amy Thompson) across the stage, isolated in a spotlight, disheveled and groping the air.

Helen is virtually feral. Not wanting to add to her misery, her genteel mother and lovingly hapless father, former Confederate officer Capt. Arthur Keller (Eric Behr), simply stand back and watch. The wild child does what she wants, snatching food off their plates instead of eating at her own place, throwing violent tantrums at any objection. Only her half-brother James (Jonathan Jacobs) keeps calling, futilely, for some discipline.

Into the maelstrom steps Annie Sullivan (Joanne Fayan). She has spent most of her life at the Perkins Institution for the Blind — operations have restored most of her vision — and her very first job has sent her to the Keller household as a governess and teacher.

The central scene is the drawn-out battle to teach Helen table manners. The rest of the family is sent out of the dining room, and away from their dinner, as Annie repeatedly forces Helen back into her seat. Helen's hand keeps being pulled away from her plate, and spoons arc over her shoulder like a succession of sheep being counted. By the end, not only is the child eating, but she also is folding her napkin, to the astonishment of her parents. Annie's concern that she discipline Helen without breaking her spirit is relieved. But Helen now flees at her touch, a bit of a problem when you're trying to spell words into someone's hand. Needless to say, Annie solves that with desperate ingenuity.

Live through this

GREG COOK — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:29:30 GMT

Printmakers consider sustainability
Sustainable living has, of course, long been a concern, but worries about global warming have pushed it to the forefront. And increasingly made it the subject of art.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: Stern's Sustainable.

Sustainable living has, of course, long been a concern, but worries about global warming have pushed it to the forefront. And increasingly made it the subject of art.

For "Sustainable: Visions for a Living Planet," at AS220's Main Gallery (115 Empire St, Providence, through November 30), show organizer Meredith Stern, program director at AS220 and a member of the Just Seeds Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative, wanted to see what sparks flashed when she rubbed the political bent of the Just Seeds printmakers against the Providence printmaking explosion experience (or whatever you like to call it). It's a nice pairing. Providence has created an international reputation as a center for awesome psychedelic rock concert posters over the past 15 years. But the fight over local real estate development (see in particular the razing of Fort Thunder in 2002) helped politicize the artwork.

Stern put out an open call this summer for an unjuried show. As you might expect, the prints here by some three dozen artists — mostly Rhode Islanders, but also a handful of Just Seeds folks — are a hit or miss community art hootenanny.

Some of the best stuff is Stern's own work, including the show's poster, a linocut-woodcut combo showing a clunky cute winged cat and bird holding up a feathery flowery banner inviting artists to participate. Stern also contributes Begin Again, a linocut showing a woman braiding strands into a flowing banner under the slogan "Weave radical transformation." Grow Together is a black-and-white print of two women digging in a field. I love the rugged, buzzing, scratchy style of her relief prints.

A SIMPLE MESSAGE: A detail of Fino-Radin’s
untitled work.

Caroline Paquita's color screen print We Will Not Hibernate. We Will Create New Traditions shows a cute critter couple embracing in a woodland cabin or tent. Ben Fino-Radin contributes an untitled piece featuring just blue letters on wood-grain contact paper that say "Nothing is sacred/Everything is holy." The messages throughout the show are mostly simple and earnest — protect family farms, save energy. But Mike Taylor and Mickey Colette's screenprint Collaboration Is Sustainable is a smart-alecky number. Three little manic cartoon figures say (in cartoon bubbles) "Righteous," "Wrongus," and "Where's my pant?" as they prance atop pink bubble letters proclaiming "Eat Some Shit."

Colette also contributes a loose, punky, cartoony screenprint in which red hands reach down from the sky toward a giant blue cat and gold dragon. These creatures are confronted by a blue ogre-man saying, "Hff." It crackles with energy — but who knows what it's about.

Wallowing

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:07:39 GMT

Lockerbie overdoes the melodrama
Playwright Deborah Brevoort looked at the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing, shook her head, and reduced the tragedy to its effect on one family and one town in The Women of Lockerbie , being staged by Roger Williams University Theatre (through November 22).

As affecting as hearing about the death of someone can be, the reaction doesn't scale up properly. Large numbers of dead draw attention to the numbers rather than to the individuals. Playwright Deborah Brevoort looked at the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing, shook her head, and reduced the tragedy to its effect on one family and one town in The Women of Lockerbie, being staged by Roger Williams University Theatre (through November 22).

Planned in Libya in retaliation for American military actions, the bombing took the lives of all 259 people onboard and 11 on the ground in the southern Scotland town. Brevoort didn't take on the challenge of writing about the incident until she saw a 1997 documentary about the Lockerbie laundry project. That involved women of the town washing the bloodstained clothing of the victims, which had been in storage for years, to return the items to the families.

The play focuses on the parents of one of the victims, who have traveled to Lockerbie to participate in a vigil on the seventh anniversary of the incident. Bill Livingston (Jesse Trimbach) has never fully grieved over the death of his 20-year-old son, Adam. He has been too busy trying to calm his wife Madeline (Mandie Hittleman), who has been in constant tears. Their friends back home have stopped calling or visiting. Being in Scotland, at the site of the crash, apparently has driven her mad, as she wanders the hills shouting her son's name and searching for evidence of him. Other parents had bodies returned to them, but he was too near the explosion. "The sky wasn't meant to be a burial ground," Madeline insists. "It's too big."

Since this is being presented as a tragedy, three townswoman serve as a Greek chorus (Stacey Mendyka, Elizabeth Before, and Rebecca Murphy), consoling and advising the couple. More directly helping them is Olive Allison (Amanda Jenkins), another woman of the town. She is the main person talking to Bill, drawing him out, since his wife is too absorbed in her own pain to communicate much beyond that. Madeline is choked with rage and self-pity. She was making a pie when news of the explosion interrupted her soap opera (All My Children, in which a character was considering having an abortion, no less). "I live in New Jersey," she sputters. "I have two cars in the driveway. This was not supposed to happen to me." Death visits briefly, the chorus agrees, but grief stays forever. But the chorus mainly offers truisms and bromides, such as that awful events are part of a divine plan "so that we may learn and grow." That notion angers the father, who points out that this would mean his son died so that he could learn a lesson.

Timeless treat

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:14:06 GMT

It's hard not to enjoy a rousing production of Oklahoma!, for more reasons than any musical needs in order to get audiences smiling and humming afterward. URI Theatre is pleasing those familiar with the classic and winning new fans with a production (through November 23) that just can't stop moving.
URI heads to Oklahoma!

FARM GIRL AND COWBOY Maynard and Hawver.

It's hard not to enjoy a rousing production of Oklahoma!, for more reasons than any musical needs in order to get audiences smiling and humming afterward. URI Theatre is pleasing those familiar with the classic and winning new fans with a production (through November 23) that just can't stop moving.

Directed by Paula McGlasson, its musical direction is by Lila Kane and choreography by Angelica Vessella.

Taking its cue from the production of Show Boat 15 years earlier, 1943's Oklahoma! taught subsequent musicals how to do their job. Oscar Hammerstein didn't just fit his lyrics to Richard Rodgers's music, he used the songs to integrate with and advance the plot. We take that for granted now in musicals — that the songs won't merely decorate the story.

Coming to Broadway in the midst of World War II, Oklahoma! was designed not only to make audiences feel good, but to feel proud about their country. Commendably, this isn't done with flag-waving but by harkening back to Oklahoma before it was a state. (It's a musical reprise of the 1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs, adhering closely to the turn-of-the-century characters and plot, but smoothing out Lynn Riggs's clunky, western-hillbilly dialogue.)

The feel-good part centers around a traditional love story, but with a difference. Plucky young cowboy Curly (Nile Hawver) hankers after sweet young farm girl Laurey (Lara Maynard), as she does in return. But these are independent sorts out there on the prairie, so both of them have too much pride to admit as much to the other. Their coy duet, "People Will Say We're in Love," continues in that tone.

The other romance is a comical triangle unmatched in musical theater. Ado Annie (Stephanie Morgan) is a lusty, giggling teenager whose hormones turn her head toward whichever boy is sweet-talking her at the moment, as she admits in "I Cain't Say No!" Her main boyfriend is Will Parker (Naysh Fox), a gangly, goodhearted simpleton. Her father promised that if Will ever managed to scrape together $50, they could get married. But that's too much detail for poor Will, who wins that much in a rodeo but spends it all on presents for Annie.

Her other admirer, of a sort, is Ali Hakim, a plaid-suited peddler from Persia, delightfully portrayed by Cory Crew with gulps and fidgets and a healthy aversion to shotgun-wielding fathers. Other men join him in singing "It's a Scandal! It's a Outrage!," which didn't make it into the movie version, though it should have. ("A rooster in a chicken coop is better off than men/He ain't the special property of just one hen!")

Man and Wife

GREG COOK — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:11:06 GMT

Harry Callahan’s photos of Eleanor at RISD
"I think I've photographed the same things all my life," Harry Callahan said in 1991. "Buildings and grasses and people walking." And, for a stretch running from about 1941 to 1963, that included his wife, Eleanor.

A WILLING MODEL: Eleanor, New York (1945).

"I think I've photographed the same things all my life," Harry Callahan said in 1991. "Buildings and grasses and people walking." And, for a stretch running from about 1941 to 1963, that included his wife, Eleanor.

From these modest subjects, Callahan (1912-1999) became one of the legendary American photographers who moved the field from the close observation and documentary photography of the '30s into post-World War II surrealism, abstraction, and process-oriented experimentation. And he's one of Providence's own legends because he founded the Rhode Island School of Design's photography department in 1961 and taught there until he retired in 1977.

"He just liked to take the pictures of me," Mrs. Callahan told me when she came up from her home in Atlanta last week to see "Harry Callahan: Eleanor," which is on view at the RISD Museum (224 Benefit Street, Providence, through February 15). "In every pose. Rain or shine. And whatever I was doing. If I was doing the dishes or if I was half asleep. And he knew that I never, never said no. I was always there for him. Because I knew that Harry would only do the right thing. I never had any fear. Harry could do whatever he wanted with me and my body."

The couple married in 1936. Eleanor didn't share her husband's passion for photographing, but she was a willing model. And though he began teaching photography at Chicago's Institute of Design in 1946, her secretarial work was the family's primary income for much of their life together and bankrolled his art.

The Chicago school followed a Bauhaus model — interested in the fundamentals of mediums and techniques. Callahan fit in well with his restless cool Modernist formal experimentation. His results are hit and miss.

The Eleanor photos that get most reprinted in history texts tend to have a tender, elegant, sensuous feel. A 1948 shot shows Eleanor, with eyes closed, topless in a lake, her long wavy hair floating in the water, like some 19th-century pre-Raphaelite birth of Venus. Another photo is a classical nude study of Eleanor seated in a dark room, lit by sun from a dormer window. A third shows Eleanor staring straight at us with her arms folded over her head. She seems boxed in by the tightly-framed composition. Elsewhere Callahan focuses closely on Eleanor's naked legs and behind, and bleaches out details, until her contours become an erotic abstracted line drawing.

Exploring Providence's real underground

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:52:33 GMT

Photographer Peter Goldberg documents the subterranean world of the Combined Sewage Overflow project
Photographer Peter Goldberg documents the subterranean world of the Combined Sewage Overflow project

ICONIC: Flinty workers, such as the sand hogs of "Providence Underground," are a staple of photojournalism.

It was September 2004 when Pawtucket photographer Peter Goldberg first descended into the sewer overflow tunnel that the Narragansett Bay Commission was digging under Providence to keep crap — literally — from overflowing city pipes during heavy storms.

At a construction trailer on Allens Avenue, he was given a half-hour safety orientation and issued a hard hat, goggles, ear plugs, tall rubber boots, and a backpack holding a breathing apparatus in case — heaven forbid — something went horribly wrong. And, of course, he was required to sign the usual waivers. Then he climbed into a metal cage and a crane lowered it down a circular shaft some 300 feet (30 stories) into the earth.

"It's just cement-lined most of the way, until you get down to the very bottom. Then it opens up into like the Batcave," Goldberg, 43, tells me. "It was September, so it was warm up top. And you go down there, I think it's always a constant 60 degrees. It's dark. It's damp. The sounds you hear are air-moving generators. There's all these industrial sounds. And then you hear the whistle of a train. You're like, 'Wait a minute, there's a train down here?' There's grinding. There's a conveyer belt that's carrying all the dirt up to the top."

The raw, exposed black sandstone and shale shined in what light there was. Off to the side, a concrete-lined tunnel ran horizontally away through the earth. Goldberg boarded a train that ran along tracks sitting in a foot of water at the bottom of the tunnel. It deposited him a mile off, where a 300-foot-long, 700-ton boring machine was chewing through rock. With his 35mm Nikon camera wrapped in plastic bags to protect it from drips, he snapped photos of the tunnel and the men digging it.

Prints of these photos — and shots Goldberg took on four subsequent trips to middle-earth — line the walls of his studio in an old mill complex on Pawtucket Avenue in Pawtucket when I visited.

And they'll be featured in his exhibit "Providence Underground" at the Gail Cahalan Gallery (200 Allens Avenue, Providence, gcgallery.net), through November 24. (The Narragansett Bay Commission chipped in $2000 toward the exhibit.) The scenes look like something teleported from another era — those iconic shots of manual laborers that worked in our factories and built this country's infrastructure in the first half of the 20th-century.

Higher calling

JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:01:13 GMT

Fusionworks contemplates spirituality
Although the annual fall concert by Fusionworks Dance Company has not been given a title that ties the dances together, director/choreographer Deb Meunier has noticed a theme emerging from the repertory pieces and premiere works that will be presented.

Although the annual fall concert by Fusionworks Dance Company (November 14 and 15 at Sapinsley Hall at Rhode Island College) has not been given a title that ties the dances together, artistic director/choreographer Deb Meunier has noticed a theme emerging from the repertory pieces and premiere works that will be presented.

"The whole program is contemplating spirituality," Meunier noted, in a recent conversation at the troupe's East Greenwich studio.

Whether it's Meunier's childhood in a Catholic church inspiring her to set a dance to Mozart's Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, or her earlier look at pre-Christian deities titled In Lieu of the Next Goddess, or more personal examinations of the ways in which human beings, particularly women, support and nurture each other, the pieces in this series are grounded in emotional and spiritual concerns.

The concert leads off with Fusionworks dancer-turned-choreographer Karen Swiatocha's Yoked, set to Barry Black and the Cowboy Junkies. The movement includes sequences of five women leaning, catching, and holding onto one another.

"I wanted to explore community," Swiatocha reflected. "It's about the burdens we carry as women. Do we give those burdens to other people? To God?"

Amy Burns, Melody Gamba, Anne Gehman, Donna McGuire, and Stephanie Stanford Shaw walk on, with Gehman carrying McGuire, who is curled up against her child-like. This lift is repeated in many combinations among the dancers, expressing so simply a universal need to be comforted. Another everyday gesture in this dance — a hand brushing hair back over one ear—might indicate a contemplative moment, as one listens to an inner voice, or it could be a prelude to asking to be listened to. In both senses, it's a meaningful nuance in an evocative piece.

Meunier's 1993 In Lieu of the Next Goddess grew out of her trips to Mexico, where she saw painted animal icons next to the Virgin of Guadalupe. At the same time that these images danced in her mind, she was reading about pre-Christian myths, which suggested other characters to her, including a Mother Earth goddess (Shauna Edson) and a "Messenger" (Gehman) who emerges from beneath the earth. In addition, four animal-like beings (Burns, Stanford Shaw, Amanda Del Prete, and Amy Bardenhagen) take part in this piece, in which their primal nature is expressed by digging paw-like in the ground, baring teeth, silent roars, walking on cloven-like tiptoes.

"In so many places in the world, one culture subsumed another," Meunier observed. "Christianity often took over part of the traditional rituals or stood side by side with them."

A 'beautiful life'

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:39:50 GMT

Center Stage's Cabaret is in top form
In the context of today's new political dawn, Cabaret , the Kander and Ebb musical about 1930 Berlin, is like one of those silly horror movies that couples go to for an excuse to cling together and shriek. Isn't it great that the mayhem isn't happening to us is the unspoken message.

In the context of today's new political dawn, Cabaret, the Kander and Ebb musical about 1930 Berlin, is like one of those silly horror movies that couples go to for an excuse to cling together and shriek. Isn't it great that the mayhem isn't happening to us is the unspoken message.

Center Stage is doing the 1966 Broadway musical made famous by the 1972 film, which starred Liza Minnelli, Michael York, and Joel Grey as the spooky emcee. The West Kingston company, directed and choreographed by Russell M. Maitland, is in top form with it — edgy and bawdy, not holding back.

Cabaret is based on Christopher Isherwood's The Berlin Stories, which also informed the 1951 play I Am a Camera. To convey the heedless hedonism of the time, which allowed the National Socialists to come to power, Joe Masteroff's book for the musical uses the metaphor — and explicit references — to a party. Everybody is just out for a good time and waiting for the inevitable moment when the parents return to break things up. In this case, the grown-ups are the Nazis, who were elected in sizable numbers to the Reichstag that year.

We are at the Kit Kat Club, with its name glowing hotly above running white lights. Barely clad young women, gartered and seductive, and men in garish makeup and suspendered shorts mill about and flirt in this den of decadence. Amplifying the tone is the emcee (Maitland): "Leave your troubles outside," he invites. "In here, life is beautiful!"

Wandering in is Clifford Bradshaw (Preston Lawhorne), a young American wannabe novelist who has drifted from London to Paris to Berlin in search of a life worth writing about. Befriending him is the amiable Ernst Ludwig (Brad W. Kirton), in need of English lessons, and thus begins Cliff's introduction to the seemingly innocent side of Berlin.

Cliff is passive, in search of his identity, like Germany itself after the humiliation of having to pay World War I reparations. Representing another aspect of this milieu is cabaret singer Sally Bowles (Emily Woo Zeller), a young English expat getting by on beauty and charm. She's learned to do whatever she needs to in order to survive, whether that's sleeping with the nightclub manager or, when she is fired, showing up at Cliff's cheap boardinghouse unasked, to move in with him.

Power play(1)

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:29:24 GMT

The Gamm's An Ideal Husband
At this time of renewed political idealism in the country, director Judith Swift has labeled the London setting of An Ideal Husband , at the Gamm through December 7, as "inspired by the 19th century, set in the 20th century, reflected in the 21st century."

MAKING A POINT: Hawkridge and Estrella.

At this time of renewed political idealism in the country, director Judith Swift has labeled the London setting of An Ideal Husband, at the Gamm through December 7, as "inspired by the 19th century, set in the 20th century, reflected in the 21st century."

The text hasn't been altered in this Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre production, just the context. The fallibility of our species — and accompanying defensive hypocrisy — is under comic examination by playwright Oscar Wilde. We get to apply it as we will to the results of the recent election.

As the play begins, we are at a dinner party given by Sir Robert Chiltern (Jim O'Brien) and his adoring wife Gertrude (Casey Seymour Kim). Also attending are his young sister Mabel (Karen Carpenter) and the witty perpetual bachelor Lord Goring (Tony Estrella), who is constantly spouting Wilde's trademark bon mots ("I always pass on good advice. It's the only thing to do with it.").

One of the other guests is unexpected and quite unwelcome. Mrs. Cheveley (Jeanine Kane) was a schoolmate of Lady Chiltern's, forced to leave the school because of thievery. She also was briefly engaged to Lord Goring. Mrs. Cheveley is there to make a deal with Sir Robert, when she finally gets him away from the others. She reveals to him that she knows of a scandal in his past. In government as a young man, he was privy to information that England was going to purchase the Suez Canal. Passing on that fact to an interested financier was the basis of his own fortune and thereby subsequent political success. Mrs. Cheveley was the mistress of the man that he sold the information to, and she has the letter that will reveal Sir Robert to be a scoundrel. He has a reputation as an honorable and influential member of Parliament, and he can have the letter only if he will speak in favor of a fraudulent scheme to build another canal in Argentina, in which Mrs. Cheveley has invested heavily.

As difficult as Sir Robert's disgrace would be if he refuses her, even worse is that he would lose the wife he adores. "We women worship when we love," Gertrude says. "I will love you always because you will always be worthy of love," she later adds, a ticking threat bomb wrapped lovingly in a compliment.

Life in Hell

GREG COOK — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:56:09 GMT

Entang Wiharso and Chris Forgues's harrowing visions
Wiharso, who lives in North Kingstown, fills 5 Traverse with a harrowing dance of demons in black silhouettes and ruddy flesh (well, charcoal, acrylic, enamel, and spray paint).

TOUR DE FORCE: A detail of Wiharso's Unspeakable Victim.

Since President-Elect Barack Obama's victory last week, I've been slowly, tentatively overcoming my usual skepticism and allowing myself to give in to hope. (Yes we can!) And even beginning to (sorta) enjoy it.

I mention this because of Entang Wiharso's "Black Goat Is My Last Defense" at 5 Traverse (5 Traverse Street, through November 22) and Christopher Forgues's "Hell" at Stairwell (504 Broadway, through November 23). When I saw the exhibits a couple of weeks back, they seemed to channel our dark late Bush era worries, traumas, and alienation. And surely they will feel perfectly suited to our time again one of these days. But this week, they feel so yesterday. Thank goodness. That's not to say I don't recommend both shows.

Wiharso, who lives in North Kingstown, fills 5 Traverse with a harrowing dance of demons in black silhouettes and ruddy flesh (well, charcoal, acrylic, enamel, and spray paint). The scenarios seem right out of 15th-century painter Hieronymus Bosch.

Threatened depicts a bald head in heavy fleshy pigment with four (walleyed) eyes and a thorny vine that wiggles disconcertingly toward his ear. Wiharso tells me that four eyes, for him, symbolizes multiple identities — in his case, American and his native Indonesian.

Upsidedown Landscape is a large tryptic featuring three figures in a white field below an upside-down landscape — two Batmen (one has a long penis with a lobster claw head) and a fleshy woman whose body is blurred and scrubbed away with solvent. Lots of little goblins scurry about. Wiharso says the topsy-turvy world symbolizes the contortions of self-censorship required when living under a dictator like the late Suharto of Indonesia.

Wiharo's tour de force is Unspeakable Victim: The Story Behind Superhero and Black Goat, Part 3, a mural filling three walls of the gallery's garage that he spent three days drawing and painting. He has a quick, ragged, urgent style well suited to his subjects. Most of the figures are tar black — as if burned, but also recalling traditional shadow puppets. A Batman has a long snaking neck. His penis is a wire or root or vein that plugs into a meaty red decapitated head. Wiharso says his surreal sexual symbolism addresses the pleasure people find in violence.

Exposures

GREG COOK — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:51:06 GMT

Photos from Yousuf Karsh, William Christenberry, and the PRC
In "Karsh 100: A Biography in Images," which is now up at the Museum of Fine Arts, his iconic shots of Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Ernest Hemingway are defining portraits of the men in all their crusty manliness.

OLD HOUSE, NEAR AKRON, ALABAMA (1964): The soul of Christenberry's photography is in his
Southern Gothic subjects, not his compositions.

Photos: Yousuf Karsh, William Christenberry, and the PRC

"Karsh 100: A Biography In Images" | Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave | Through January 19

"William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961-2005" | Massart, 621 Huntington Ave, Boston | Through December 6

"Keeping Time: Cycle And Duration In Contemporary Photography" | Photographic Resource Center, Boston University, 832 Comm Ave, Boston | Through January 25

You might say Yousuf Karsh was a one-man golden era of portrait photography. In "Karsh 100: A Biography in Images," which is now up at the Museum of Fine Arts, his iconic shots of Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Ernest Hemingway are defining portraits of the men in all their crusty manliness. And check out his willowy profile of Audrey Hepburn, the craggy face of Boris (Frankenstein's monster) Karloff, and a smoldering Anita Ekberg, eyes closed, smiling, hair blowing across her face, bosom thrust forward.

MFA photo curator Anne Havinga brings together more than 100 of Karsh's photos. The time line runs from his apprenticeship in Boston (1928-'31) to setting up his own business in Ottawa (1932) to his great success photographing for Life magazine and other major publications to his return to Boston (1997 until his death in 2002). It's a seductive star-studded show.

The development of photography in the 19th century made realist painting really, really uncool for a long time, and it cleared the way for photography to be the primary medium of portraiture in the 20th century. Karsh had the good luck to arrive on the scene just as advances in printing were fostering the birth of Life (founded in 1936) and other glossy photography-centered publications — and thus whole new markets for photos. He angled to become the court portraitist of the rich, famous, and powerful of this era.

His breakthrough was his 1941 photo of Winston Churchill as a great, grand, stately ruler. Churchill's head is spotlit while the rest falls into shadow; the result highlights a defiant expression that was read as his steadfastness during wartime. But what stands out in Karsh's oft-told account is his fawning before Churchill, who was grumpy about posing because his staff had not informed him of the sitting. Karsh wrote, "I timorously stepped forward and said, 'Sir, I hope I will be fortunate enough to make a portrait worthy of this historic occasion.' " Churchill granted him just two exposures. The British leader's expression seems to have been provoked by Karsh's politely plucking his cigar from his mouth.

Leviathan

PETER KEOUGH — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:54:21 GMT

Roberto Bolaño's 2666 may be the Great American Novel
Jorge Luis Borges wrote of the desert as a labyrinth without walls or center, unending and inescapable. That's a fair description of Roberto Bolaño's last work, the 912-page opus 2666 .

DIABOLICAL: Bolaño’s tantalizing, often unfinished digressions are part of his genius.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote of the desert as a labyrinth without walls or center, unending and inescapable. That's a fair description of Roberto Bolaño's last work (he died in 2003, age 50), the 912-page opus 2666. His book, however, does have a circumference of sorts, a circular narrative that begins, like his previous novel, The Savage Detectives, with academics (in Detectives they were poets) searching the wastelands of the Sonora province of Mexico for a legendary writer and ending . . . well, it's hard to say, somewhere in that general vicinity. It offers innumerable passages that cohere into a sense of immanent revelation, some of them contained in single multi-page run-on sentences, before dissolving like blowing sand. Like Moby Dick, it confronts the nature, the ubiquity, and the elusiveness of evil. And as such it can also make a claim for being the Great American Novel, both North and South.

The academics' story is told in the first of five sections, "The Part About the Critics." They include four literature professors from different European countries, three men and a woman, who share an obsession with Benno von Archimboldi, a mystery author who over the decades has turned out novels with titles like TheLeather Mask and Bifurcaria Bifurcata. Little is known about him except that he is Prussian and very tall and that he served on the Eastern Front in World War II. The quartet attend conferences on Archimboldi and engage in passionate discussion, and their bonds heat up into something more than Platonic. At last, following up a lead, they head to Mexico where a sighting of the octogenarian legend has been reported.

Sounds deadly? Not when every page veers off on a tantalizing, often unfinished digression — like the one about the painter whose masterpiece is a canvas adorned with his own severed hand — or includes tossed-off descriptions of the everyday like "It was raining in the quadrangle, and the quadrangular sky looked like the grimace of a robot or a god made in our own likeness." [9] Or when the quartet arrive at their destination, Santa Teresa, a fictional city where — as in the real city of Ciudad Juárez, on which it is based — hundreds of women, mostly workers in local factories, have turned up raped and brutally murdered, a serial-killing spree that's been going on since 1993.

Intimate moves

JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:21:52 GMT

Festival Ballet’s “Up CLOSE, on HOPE”
What began as a way to give audiences a closer look at its dancers and choreographers an opportunity to showcase new work has become an integral part of Festival Ballet Providence’s season: the “Up CLOSE, on HOPE” series.

GRAND GESTURES: Festival Ballet’s troupe soars in “Up CLOSE, on HOPE.”

What began as a way to give audiences a closer look at its dancers and choreographers an opportunity to showcase new work has become an integral part of Festival Ballet Providence’s season: the “Up CLOSE, on HOPE” series. The two programs that were presented recently will be repeated on November 8,9, 15, and 16, at Festival’s Black Box Theatre (825 Hope Street, Providence).

Among the nine pieces in the current series, there are two Rhode Island premieres, one by Festival favorite Viktor Plotnikov, the other by newcomer Boyko Dossev, and two world premieres, by local choreographers Colleen Cavanaugh and Mark Harootian (also a dancer with Festival).

Plotnikov’s work led off the evening, with six dancers in Moments (2007), set to the familiar piano strains of Erik Satie. Plotnikov’s choreography goes for the unexpected, in partnering and in poses, and that comes to the fore here. Particularly striking is his penchant for gesture — his use of hands and arms to express the emotional undercurrents in a work: palms held in front of the face; hands patting the top of the head; arms held straight out with hands perpendicular or swinging into wide arcs overhead; fingers fluttering or splayed.

After the sculptural look of Plotnikov, the slithery, sensual curves of Gianni DiMarco’s Amphibious Love (2002) are a captivating contrast. This duet (Lauren Menger and Roger Kilfoil) is danced to Buena Vista Social Club’s “Chan Chan,” and if the music doesn’t make you sway in your seat, the unfolding limbs and clasping arms, joyous leaps and rolling-on-the-floor embraces will draw you in like a love scene in a Latin film.

Another strong piece from Mark Harootian bookends the show. Identity is set to two numbers by Tool, arranged for piano by Ray Allen. Performed by eight dancers, the piece has ever-shifting duos and at least two “crowd” groupings, in which the dancers fling their arms (and eyes) upward in unison. Is each individual searching for who he or she is, in relation to friends, acquaintances, or a group of people? Whatever lies in the abstract movement of this dance, it’s hypnotic to watch.

In the first half of the program, Mihailo (“Misha”) Djuric and Cavanaugh reprise repertory work, he with Magnificat (1995, performed in ’99 at RIC), set to Bach, and she with Dawn of Departure (1998), set to Tchaikovsky. The latter duet is a romantic whirl of partnering, the two dancers almost never losing physical touch with each other until the very end. The former is a complex series of trios, duos, and ensemble work, featuring eight dancers.

Mixed Magic’s Moby Dick goes to DC

JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:38:08 GMT

Whale tale
In 2006, Pitts-Wiley wrote Moby Dick: Then and Now , a theatrical version of Herman Melville’s book, which joined the story of Captain Ahab chasing a great white whale to an urban tale of teenagers chasing “that Great White Thing” — cocaine.

When Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, co-founder and artistic director of Mixed Magic Theatre (mixedmagictheatre.org), taught Moby-Dick to young people at the Rhode Island Training School four years ago, he could not have predicted that this literary classic would lead him to MIT, Poland, New Bedford, and on November 15, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.

In 2006, Pitts-Wiley wrote Moby Dick: Then and Now, a theatrical version of Herman Melville’s book, which joined the story of Captain Ahab chasing a great white whale to an urban tale of teenagers chasing “that Great White Thing” — cocaine.

Under Pitts-Wiley’s direction, Moby Dick: Then and Now was given its first full production at his Pawtucket-based theater in spring 2007, as part of a three-day Moby-Dick symposium. It was reprised last year at the Providence Performing Arts Center, and it was showcased at MIT in August. A special kick-off-to-Washington performance is scheduled for November 7, at the Pawtucket Congregational Church.

What initially got the Moby Dick ball rolling was a connection to the Melville Society Cultural Project in New Bedford, one of whose members was on the faculty of MIT. The Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, which had just received a MacArthur grant to do New Literacy Projects, contacted Pitts-Wiley to support the development of the Moby Dick project. In turn, Pitts-Wiley has collaborated with them to create a nationwide strategy guide, Reading in a Participatory Culture.

Pitts-Wiley had dreamed of getting 10,000 people — “students, but also doctors, lawyers, regular people” — to read Moby-Dick, and although he doesn’t know how many have been inspired to do so, he has heard from many who have seen the show. “We wanted them to not only love the novel,” he says “but to have a thirst for a deeper understanding of things, through literature.”

Asked why he chose that particular book for the project, Pitts-Wiley has a quick response: “Because everybody was on the Pequod — it had every race represented, with a variety of cultures and economic levels.”

Being able (with help from US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy) to take this production to the Kennedy Center is particularly important for Mixed Magic, because, in Pitts-Wiley’s view: “Our ability to grow from a 90-seat theatre in Pawtucket had become very limited. We had to think bigger than Rhode Island.”

“We had to find a way to tap into the bigger river,” he adds. “Sometimes you can get caught into little thinking, and that’s where you will always stay, and we didn’t want to do that anymore. We wanted to build projects that we owned and could be done in any city in the country, as opposed to waiting for someone to discover us.”

Great escape

JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:24:33 GMT

Momix bring their best to FirstWorks
Writing about the dance troupe Momix is as tricky as describing effervescence

OVER THE MOON: Momix’s “movement illusionists” in Lunar Sea.

Writing about the dance troupe Momix is as tricky as describing effervescence: the bubbles make unexpected bounces and glides through their medium; there are quick bursts of movement, always surprising, constantly changing; and the whole phenomenon is gone in a matter of moments. Actually, the show that Momix brings to PPAC on November 8, in the wrap-up weekend of the FirstWorks Festival, will last a bit longer than carbonation (90 minutes), can be repeated (the group is on a multi-city tour), and takes place in air, not liquid.

The Best of Momix presentation will feature highlights from five programs from Momix's repertory: Orbit, Baseball, Passion, Opus Cactus, and Lunar Sea. Images from nature abound in Opus Cactus (desert flora and fauna) and in Lunar Sea (underwater creatures). The other three have different jumping-off points: space travel, America's pastime, and the passion of Christ.

"I think this show gives a nice crosssection of the Momix aesthetic," remarked founder/director/choreographer Moses Pendleton, in a recent phone conversation from company headquarters in Washington, Connecticut. "It has a nice balance of yin and yang, fast and slow, poetic and humorous and mysterious.

"Part of the fun of it is that you have no idea what's coming next," he continued. "It goes back to the old dynamic of a rock album — relatively short pieces, like cuts on an album, within a large theme, and the theme here is Momix, so it works."

Momix's initial show more than 20 years ago was made up of solos and duets and "small moments stitched together," in Pendleton's words, so this show hearkens back to that. Since those early days, the company has performed in more than 20 countries; made five Italian television features that were broadcast to 55 countries (including China and Russia); and has been featured in PBS' Dance in America series, as well as a 3D IMAX film.

The plant and animal worlds remain a primary inspiration for Pendleton — "How the body through props connects with the natural world." His childhood on a Vermont dairy farm gave the company its name — Momix is a milk supplement for field cows — and, combined with the fields of sunflowers he plants each year, still gives him a push toward subjects from nature.

It’s all relative

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:13:16 GMT

PC’s madcap Charley’s Aunt
There is something especially fascinating about a play that you know knocked the socks (or sandals) off its original audiences.

D-DAY IN A DRAWING ROOM: Keyes, Francis, Orlando, and Burns.

There is something especially fascinating about a play that you know knocked the socks (or sandals) off its original audiences. If we’re aware of what those first viewers brought to the experience, we can take away a lot, and the show becomes a time machine. The farcical Charley’s Aunt, by Brandon Thomas, is demonstrating that notion at a breakneck pace in the current Providence College Theatre production (through November 2).

The comedy was a hoot and a long-running hit in 1892 when it premiered in otherwise not-so-merry olde England, which had another decade to go before the dour Victorian era would end. As the informative theater program details, at the London premiere one prominent aristocrat laughed so hard that his seat collapsed, and the attending fireman toppled over, causing the curtain to come down mid-performance.

What could get those staid Victorians slapping their knees? Well, while vigorously denied at the time, the cross-dressed role of the title character bore an obvious resemblance, in mourning dress and diction, to Queen Victoria herself.

More to the point, what about the comedy’s success abroad at the time, when 20 companies were touring Europe and America by the end of the four-year London run? Obviously, there’s something about Charley’s Aunt that tickles the universal funnybone. It’s one of those plays that you can be sure is being staged somewhere in the world at any given time.

The PC production owes its success to director Brendan Byrnes, who has choreographed this like D-Day in a drawing room. Of course, the costume design by David Costa-Cabral ain’t too shabby, with more tassels on most of the billowing dresses than on a chorus line of Las Vegas showgirls. Patrick Lynch’s scenic design is simple and clever, with two doors, ready to be slammed, bracketing a floor as slanted as the off-balanced antics taking place upon it. Things start out with a chair in each corner, so symmetrical, so orderly. Byrnes destroys that order again and again, as those characters in their alliances form phalanxes, with chairs and without, against each other. With actors sometimes cheek-to-jowl, sometimes sprawled on the floor, at emotionally fraught moments the director quickly reconfigures them like a kid with toy soldiers.

The basic story is a simple one, although complication upon complication stretch it into 2-1/2 hours, as required by 19th-century audiences who wanted their evening’s worth.

Loud and clear

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:09:08 GMT

Center Stage Productions is branching out in South County
Things certainly changed dramatically at the Courthouse Center for the Arts in West Kingston when Russ Maitland signed on last December as executive director.

MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: Maitland at the Courthouse Center For the Arts.

"The joy of excess," by Bill Rodriguez

Things certainly changed dramatically at the Courthouse Center for the Arts in West Kingston when Russ Maitland signed on last December as executive director. The priorities had been renovation and the consequent fundraising from the time that the state had given the decommissioned Washington County Courthouse to an arts group in 1989. Now, finally, programming could be the main concern.

Theater and finance were Maitland’s dual academic trainings, with extensive background in both, so he wasn’t going to be just an arts administrator, he was also going to give them a producer and director. In only a month, he assembled a full year’s schedule, and Center Stage was born.

“I went crazy trying to pull things together and make things work,” he says, sitting over a cappuccino in his office. “The facility lends itself to becoming a full year-round production organization because it’s air-conditioned and heated. So that’s what I decided to do, a full subscription program.”

This year started with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in April and will continue with Cabaret in November and Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story in December.

“I don’t want to do the old Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals every time,” Maitland says. “I don’t want to do things that have been done every year.

“I’m doing a lot of things that are a little bit on the edge. Sweeney Todd is coming in November [2009],” he says. “We actually are putting together an opera company here that will be doing two operettas: Little Red Riding Hood and Amahl and the Night Visitors. But then the opera company will also be involved with the Sweeney Todd production.”

Speaking of edgy, he has also scheduled the offbeat off-Broadway musical Violet, about a journey by a disfigured young woman. For fun that’s a little more layered than Nunsense, there will be Dan Goggin’s Nunsense Ah-Men, a musical comedy with an all-male cast. And capping off next year, Center Stage will again be doing something family-oriented for the holiday season: Wonderful Life, which Maitland wrote. It’s an adaptation of the Frank Capra film classic It’s a Wonderful Life. He hopes that it will be become an annual family tradition with theatergoers, like Trinity Repertory Company’s A Christmas Carol.

A hidden gem: RISD’s Nature Lab

PHILIP EIL — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:19:41 GMT

Roving Eye
Spend a few minutes browsing RISD’s repository for shells, seeds, skins, and skeletons and you’ll see why — dead or alive — the Nature Lab is one of Providence’s most stimulating settings.

They say that inspiration lives at 13 Waterman St. in Providence. Well, that’s not entirely true. Aside from a few ferns, some goldfish, and Pedro, the fire-bellied toad, most of the items at the Edna Law-rence Nature Lab are dead. But spend a few minutes browsing RISD’s repository for shells, seeds, skins, and skeletons and you’ll see why — dead or alive — the Nature Lab is one of Providence’s most stimulating settings.

“People have told me that the Nature Lab was the main reason why they picked RISD,” says Abigail Karp, the lab’s assistant curator, pointing out giant tortoise shells, a wall-mounted sailfish, and, her favorite, a Rhode Island-bred, taxidermy-preserved coyote. “For any artist or visual person, it’s an inspiring place.”

Karp explains that, unlike other art-school libraries or natural history museums, which can be finicky about patrons handling their collections, the Nature Lab has always been about hands-on access.

Students are encouraged to take down, touch, and even borrow (so long as they return it — “You just cannot get a tamarin skull anymore.”) items from the Lawrence Lab. Whether it’s a preserved butterfly, a stuffed platypus, or a human skull, she explains, “We really try to keep it as hands-on as possible.”

Located across from First Baptist Church on College Hill, the lab was founded in 1937 by Edna W. Lawrence, a RISD alum and longtime faculty member, who hoped “to open students’ eyes to the marvels of beauty in nature . . . of form, space, color, texture, design, and structure.” What began as a modest collection of natural knick-knacks has since grown to a nationally recognized collection boasting 80,000 speci-mens.

“Someone will call us and say, ‘I’ve got a box of shells,’ ” says Karp, explaining how the collection continues to grow. “Or people will have old taxidermy to give. The bear we have was very nicely do-nated by people who didn’t want a bear in their living room anymore.”

Speaking with students 70 years after Edna Lawrence’s collection began, it’s clear they are still thrilled about the Nature Lab’s treasures.

“To any artist, it’s really invaluable,” says Kai, an illustration student and one of the Lab’s student monitors, gesturing to a nearby armadillo. “It’s like having an animal pose for you — forever.”

“It’s kinda like RISD’s little secret,” added Jackie, another student monitor who majors in painting. “It’s a good spot to be creative.”

And, thankfully for Providence residents, the Nature Lab is open to the public. Karp admits that RISD’s recently installed keycard system has hindered walk-in access.

Table of content

BILL BEUTTLER — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:11:17 GMT

Jim Harrison’s road trip
Jim Harrison’s fiction and essays are built from his particular blend of earthiness and erudition.

HARUMPH: Cellphones are as hated by Harrison’s protagonist as female behinds are adored.

The English Major | By Jim Harrison | Grove Press | 268 pages | $24

Jim Harrison’s fiction and essays are built from his particular blend of earthiness and erudition. He’ll quote Rilke, Neruda, Joyce, and other such heavyweights; he’ll also talk of less lofty passions: booze, food, hunting, fishing, dogs, long-distance driving, and naked women. He’ll ruminate on some philosophical conundrum or other, then bring you up short with a cockeyed laugh line.

Harrison’s new comic road novel, The English Major, isn’t as ambitious as the novella collection Legends of the Fall (1979) and the novel Dalva (1988), the books that earned him literary renown. But it’s worth spending time with.

It opens with Cliff, 60, preparing to depart from the Northern Michigan farm he has worked since giving up teaching high-school English more than 25 years earlier. Cliff’s wife of 38 years, Vivian, a late-blooming real-estate shark, has recently divorced him. His beloved bird dog, Lola, has just died. Cliff decides to drive out to visit his and Vivian’s gay only child, Robert, in San Francisco. Before setting out, he finds a childhood memento in an old trunk, a child’s jigsaw puzzle of the lower 48 states. He brings it along and begins discarding the corresponding puzzle pieces for the states he passes through en route.

In Morris, Minnesota, Cliff is joined by a favorite former student, Marybelle, now 43, who wears him out with frequent acrobatic sex over the next few days but does little to set his soul right. Cliff writes approvingly, or disapprovingly, of virtually every meal he has on the trip, works in a little fly fishing with his alcoholic doctor friend in Montana, and pays Sylvia, a young woman with an exquisite derriere, $300 to let him sketch her nude. When Sylvia finally disrobes, Cliff nearly passes out from forgetting to breathe.

Female butts come up a lot. Cliff is told twice that male monkeys will give up lunch to view photos of female monkey butts. His son informs him that his response to Vivian’s worrying about having a big butt — telling her “there’s nothing wrong about a big butt” — showed how out of synch their marriage had become. “Once I tried to detox the butt situation by saying that her butt was only big because her mother’s butt was big,” Cliff elaborates. “That didn’t work.”

An intriguing trio

BILL RODRIGUEZ — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:36:02 GMT

Perishable’s Women’s Playwriting Festival
There were 196 plays submitted to Perishable Theatre, and three were chosen for the 14th International Women’s Playwriting Festival.

LAUNDRY DAY: Harrison and Dersham in Lazarus Disposed.

There were 196 plays submitted to Perishable Theatre from around the country, and three were chosen for the 14th International Women’s Playwriting Festival. For three weeks, each of the one-act plays has been staged by itself, supplemented by local talent presenting film, hip-hop, fado, and other entertainment.

The trio of plays will now be presented at each performance through November 2.

Desi Moreno-Penson’s Lazarus Disposed is a wacky little romp, full of broad humor and larger-than-life emotions. The husband of Bethany (D’Arcy Dersham) is missing and presumed dead. A memorial service has been held that afternoon. She is shrieking with a grief that has streamed rivulets of mascara not just down her cheeks but into her décolletage. The target of her abuse is Ferdinand (Patrick Harrison), the best friend of the deceased, and her secret lover. His competitive wailing indicates an affection for his friend that is not on the straight and narrow, if you catch the drift.

The humor here is as black as their mourning apparel: for him a ruffled tux shirt (and a clown tie sticking out of his pocket); for her, a low-cut sexy-chic dress, offset by runs and holes in her stockings, to indicate how extremely distracted she is. But her dishabille is neat and tidy compared to that of her kitchen. Laundry is heaped everywhere — in baskets, in corners. It becomes another character in the play, as sullied and disordered as their lives, as does an eerie sound emanating from the kitchen sink drain.

Dersham takes slow, pornographic delight in showing how she rolled up his laundry and squeezed the water out of it. Harrison similarly, deliciously, milks Ferdinand’s torment for every ambiguous morsel of suffering. Director Beth F. Milles whips them into frenzies, but quickly settles them down when some fine-tuned emotion needs our attention. By the time late in the play that we meet the mysterious, silent Man (Luis Astudillo), who has been in the bathroom for several hours, we have become accustomed to a weird and wonderful world where anything can happen, so anything that does happen seems perfectly reasonable. The playwright has set us up to accept any concluding flight of fancy she can devise, and she doesn’t waste the opportunity to soar.

Playwright Moreno-Penson, based in New York City, has an MFA in dramaturgy and theater criticism from Brooklyn College.