PREVIEW: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” at the Michigan Theater

Thor

Ni!

As King of the Britons, I order you to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail tonight at 7 PM at the Michigan Theater.

Remember: You don’t vote for kings.

You’ll learn a few things, such as the ASB velocity of an unladen swallow (African or European? I don’t know that!), how to identify a witch, or how to stop an English invasion. You have to know these things when you’re a king, you know.

Make sure you get your tickets, or I shall say “Ni!” to you again.

Note: This is a Passport to the Arts event! If you show your Passport, the event is free!

BONUS: How I Became King


REVIEW: A Little Night Music

csatter
Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s classic musical A Little Night Music is brought to life in a new production by the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. A Little Night Music presents the story of long lost lovers Desiree Armfelt and Fredrik Egerman, who, after 14 years, 2 children, and 1 new marriage find themselves together again. Of course life, and love, is never simple and this play seeks to discover what happens when the past and present collide during a summer weekend in the country.
Although slow to start, A Little Night Music found its stride during the very end of the first act and presented an interesting reflection on the nature of love and what can happen when love is lost but not forgotten. The strength of the production was the portrayal of the two leads, Desiree (Eleanor Todd) and Fredrik (Conor McGiffin), and the humourous supporting couple Count Carl-Magnus (Elias Wygodny)  and his wife Charlotte (Jordana Grolnick). Todd and McGiffin had great on-stage chemistry and the ease with which they bantered and laughed with each other made all of their scenes together extremely enjoyable. Although they represented a different kind of love, the characters of Carl-Magnus and Charlotte were similarly fun to watch. Wygodny’s portrayal of jealous lover and mostly proper soldier Carl-Magnus was intriguing and humorous, and Grolnick’s deadpanned depressive one-liners provided a hilarity that often stole the scene. Together Wygodny and Grolnick presented a wonderfully amusing couple who shone in every scene they were a part of.
While the music was mostly enjoyable and the bits of witty dialogue were definitely appreciated, the overall production was not completely compelling and oftentimes I found myself wishing we were at the closing number. The plot itself was rather predictable and there were moments full of exposition and almost no action, which made it hard to be fully invested in what was happening onstage. Although not all of the cast’s individual performances were as strong as the leads, they did perform well as an ensemble, which made up for some of the awkward and duller moments.
Overall A Little Night Music was an interesting production. Although somewhat predictable, it did have humourous moments and some well sung songs, including the most recognizable “Send in the Clowns.” I’m glad to have seen it once, and am looking forward to see what the School of Music, Theatre, & Dance do next.

The School of Music, Theatre & Dance, brings Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s classic musical A Little Night Music to life in a new production. A Little Night Music presents the story of long lost lovers Desiree Armfelt and Fredrik Egerman, who, after 14 years, 2 children, and 1 new marriage find themselves together again. Of course life, and love, is never simple and this play seeks to discover what happens when the past and present collide during a summer weekend in the country.

Although slow to start, A Little Night Music found its stride during the very end of the first act and presented an interesting reflection on the nature of love and what can happen when love is lost but not forgotten. The strength of the production was the portrayal of the two leads, Desiree (Eleanor Todd) and Fredrik (Conor McGiffin), and the humorous supporting couple Count Carl-Magnus (Elias Wygodny) and his wife Charlotte (Jordana Grolnick). Todd and McGiffin had great on-stage chemistry and the ease with which they bantered and laughed with each other made all of their scenes together extremely enjoyable. Although they represented a different kind of love, the characters of Carl-Magnus and Charlotte were similarly fun to watch. Wygodny’s portrayal of jealous lover and mostly proper soldier Carl-Magnus was intriguing and humorous, and Grolnick’s deadpanned depressive one-liners provided a hilarity that often stole the scene. Together Wygodny and Grolnick presented a wonderfully amusing couple who shone in every scene they were a part of.

While the music was mostly enjoyable and the bits of witty dialogue were definitely appreciated, the overall production was not completely compelling and oftentimes I found myself wishing we were at the closing number. The plot itself was rather predictable and there were moments full of exposition and almost no action, which made it hard to be fully invested in what was happening onstage. Although not all of the cast’s individual performances were as strong as the leads, they did perform well as an ensemble, which made up for some of the awkward and duller moments.

Overall A Little Night Music was an interesting production. Although somewhat predictable, it did have humorous moments and some well sung songs, including the most recognizable “Send in the Clowns.” I’m glad to have seen it once, and am looking forward to see what the School of Music, Theatre, & Dance does next.

Review–Erik Santos@UMMA: Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

keshav 2 Comments

After this Thursday, one of my biggest regrets over the past 3 years I’ve been at school here is not spending enough time at the UMMA. The UMMA is a great cultural resource not only because of its amazing collection of paintings and its innovative gallery setup, but also because it is frequently a live performance venue for artists of all types (and the shows are free!). The event I attended this Thursday had very little to do with any of the common connotations associated with a night at an art museum. The event was accessible and enjoyable even to people uninterested in esoteric art, most of the people in the audience didn’t have grey hair yet, and the audience was actually encouraged to be loud. The event also had nothing to do with paintings or sculptures, this was a live performance of the classic rock album Ziggy Stardust and a short animated film screening by University of Michigan composition professor Erik Santos and his co-performers Toko Shiiki Santos and Collin McRae.
Santos devoted the first half of his show to playing David Bowie’s classic Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars album in its entirety. Covering this album live is difficult, as much of its unique sound comes from the Bowie’s heavy studio experimentation with layering multiple guitar tracks with a multitude of distortion effects. Santos adapted the original music to play by himself on acoustic guitar. As a fan of Bowie, I admit I was pretty skeptical about such a stripped down adaptation. Nevertheless, I loved the performance. Rather than imitate the album’s instrumental variety, Santos’ focused, minimalist approach captured the raw energy of a live rock performance. I was particularly amazed by his vocal performance—critics often label Bowie the rock and roll chameleon due to his ability to seamlessly change the range, tone, and character of his vocals. The live cover presented me with a narrative—the story of a rockstar’s rise to fame followed by his tragic inability to cope with the pressures of stardom.

The highlight of the second half of the show was a screening of an animated short. Toko and Collin are responsible for design and animation, while Erik composed the video’s score. The video is a response to the suffering caused by the recent tsunami in Japan. Narrated in Japanese, the film chronicles the journey of a blue dragon, born from innocent and pure human sympathy, as it flies to Japan to comfort and inspire tsunami survivors. The dragon’s journey is harrowing, but as the blue dragon begins to falter, a panoply of colorful dragons come to its aid. The animation style of the video was striking and gorgeous. The lush color palette demonstrates the tangible effects of human emotions. At the outset, when characters are grief-stricken by the tragedy, the world is enveloped in shades of blue; nevertheless, people’s continuing optimism and good will unleash a hopeful rainbow of colors which illuminates the sky. (Watch the video here if interested)
Needless to say, I enjoyed my evening at the UMMA very much, and plan to go back soon for special events. For those interested in checking the UMMA out, consider attending UMMA After Hours on Friday, October 18th. I hear there’ll be free donuts and cider.

REVIEW: Some People fly by in a Helicopter 10/9

Zoe Marie

Some People fly by in a Helicopter was a concert held on October 9th at 412 N Thayer featuring The Suburban Piano Quartet.

Michigan Helicopter

Suburban Piano Quartet Facebook

The Suburban Piano Quartet is a contemporary classical ensemble made of several students from the School of Music: composers, Clay Gonzalez, Nadine Miller, Corey Smith, and oboist Perry Maddox. The concert technically started at 10 pm, but throughout the whole day various members of the Suburban Piano Quartet stood outside the Moore Music School building reciting records about the weather during October in the 1800’s. After each daily entry was read, a handbell was rung. This performance piece continued right up to the beginning of the concert.

I got to the concert a few minutes before 10 pm and the place was already packed. The SPQ had set up in the living room with a keyboard and drum placed on the stage side of the room while the audience sat on the floor in front of the instruments or on the couch against the back wall. It was a super casual arrangement, and the audience was told that clapping was okay at any time, a separation from the normal, rigid, classical atmosphere.

The night was made up of several different movements featuring a lot of improvisation, experimental instrumentation and performance setup. There were only two pieces where the performers actually played their principal instruments, the second and the last. During the second piece, one performer played an electronic drone via the keyboard while the others retreated to different rooms throughout the house and played independent melodies on their principle instruments from their room, creating a surround sound, meditative experience. The last movement was the most in-the-box movement with solo oboe, drones and drums. The two most interesting movements were the third and fourth. In the third, the group stood in a line and blew bubbles into glasses of water while humming. It was an interesting effect! In the fourth, Corey recited ambiguous motivational statements while Perry and Clay made kazoo noises to supplement the silly falsity of these commonly found BS lines.

All in all, the concert was a really enjoyable social experience, and a great way to hear and be inspired by an extreme variety of sounds and colors. The best part was that there wasn’t any piano played the whole evening. If you like surprises and adventurous musical performances, be sure to catch their next concert!

REVIEW: An Iliad

Nicholas Anastasia

John Manfredi’s role in An Iliad may claim him to be “the Poet”, but this play is a complex exercise in storytelling, and Manfredi is a master at the craft. In weaving the tale of the Trojan war, he also weaves an intensely layered web of emotions: grief, rage, bloodlust, and desperation. These build upon each other throughout the performance, wonderfully developing the narrator as a character, as well as steadily climbing to staggering climactic scenes. Though Manfredi is alone on the stage, one wouldn’t believe it by the end of the play, watching as he fills the set with motion, whipping the air into a maelstrom of words, feelings, and the ghosts of the fallen.

Helpful for those who haven’t read The Iliad, or slept through the lectures  for which they were supposed to have read The Iliad, is Manfredi’s friendly approach to the material. He eases the audience into the vast and tumultuous sea of unfamiliar names and characters, neglecting to name some as he argues it would take forever (and as anyone who’s ever read the works knows, it certainly feels like it does), and bringing the enormity of the armies home by naming American hometowns and cities in place of the ancient Greek locations. Later, Manfredi will pick his way through a battlefield that is resurrected in his mind, and demonstrates how they’re not just bodies by naming them, telling their stories, such as one who was going to go Oxford “first in his family to go to university…he’d won a scholarship for writing.”

It is here that the beauty of the piece comes through, for the purpose of this enactment of a tale known so well as to have lost all meaning, the tale of a wooden horse and a city foolish enough to bring it into their gates, is to plead with the audience to remember and to realize the implications that this story has on our modern day. The world is no less filled with strife and warfare as it was during the nine bloody years that the Greeks sieged Troy. We all know about the wooden horse, it’s a trope that’s been repeated endlessly, a particular favorite of mine is Sir Bedevere’s giant wooden rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Manfredi’s narrator is haunted by the horrors he witnessed in his time during the Trojan war, but also at the atrocities of war that have transpired since. He seems as though he has been cursed to bear witness to the cruel violence humans continue to commit against each other, while attempting to warn us through his tale but like Cassandra, the prophet of doom who was cursed to never be heard, his words fail to stop the fighting.

Thus, Manfredi’s approach is a direct appeal to the audience, he acknowledges and addresses us for we are the ones who have come to hear his tale, providing him with the chance to honor and bring to life once more, if only in his mind, the friends and good men who fought in those days. His tale is emphasized by his record player, which plays everything from Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” to the Forrest Gump soundtrack, though there are times when the Muses (or a faulty hand-cranked generator) cause the power to cut out. Several props and bouts of re-enactment move the story along as Manfredi dashes across the stage swinging a pipe to substitute Achilles’s spear. Manfredi’s story flows from Achilles to Hector to Patroclus, giving an intimate perspective of these incredible characters of myth, sweeping us up in the pain with which he recollects, for the focus on Manfredi allows us to examine the toll that war takes on the human mind and heart, even though Manfredi never discusses who he is or the role he specifically played in the battle. All we as the audience know is that he was there, that he knew the taste of blood, and that now he stands before us, broken and reaching out in desperation.

If you can, I recommend that you go, go to hear his tale and give an old soldier the audience and absolution he so dearly needs. Honestly, we all need it too.

PREVIEW: “An Iliad”

Nicholas Anastasia

Who: John Manfredi

What: One-Man Play

Where: 120 East Huron St.

When: September 26th through October 27th
(show times: Thursday 7:30pm, Friday-Saturday 8pm, Saturday 3pm, Sunday 2pm)

John Manfredi’s one-man reinterpretation of Homer’s “Iliad” takes the epic and hurls it into a time closer to our own, promising audiences an opportunity to reflect upon the original as well as explore its implications on war in the world today. Receiving four out of four stars by Detroit Free Press writer John Monaghan, I’m excited to see if Manfredi’s isolation on the stage will provide a hyper-focus into his character and the human mind that would not be as accessible with the distraction of multiple characters.