Archives for July 25, 2003

Deaf West Theatre’s revival of Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opened last night on Broadway. Here’s the first paragraph of my review in this morning’s Wall Street Journal:

Why on earth–and how on earth–would a deaf theater company bring a musical to Broadway? Neither part of this question can be briefly answered, but in the case of Deaf West Theatre’s magical production of “Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which opened last night at the American Airlines Theatre, the results need no explaining. This stage version of Mark Twain’s novel, first seen on Broadway in 1985, is now being revived by a mixed cast of deaf and hearing actors who not only speak and sing their lines out loud but simultaneously “say” them in American Sign Language. Laborious as the process may sound, Jeff Calhoun, the director and choreographer, has shaped it into a miraculously fluid theatrical spectacle….

To read the rest of the review, you’ll have to fork out a dollar for the Journal, whose “Weekend Journal” section is worth at least that much in gold.

I had lunch the other day with a classical composer I know. He told me, perfectly seriously, “I just had the worst nightmare–I dreamed I was trapped inside an E minor chord.”

He also told me about attending a drunken dinner party of fellow composers, who clustered around the piano after dessert to sing funny songs. Did you know that every poem Emily Dickinson ever wrote can be sung to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme? “Beeeeee-cause I could not stop for death/He kind-ly stop-ped for me….” Or that all limericks can be sung to the tune of “It Ain’t Necessarily So”?

Think about this the next time you see a composer take a bow at a new-music concert. Don’t let appearances fool you–these people are kinky.

P.S. A reader writes:

I’ve only very recently overcome the unfortunate habit of singing Emily Dickinson’s poems. “Yellow Rose of Texas,” “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” “The Marine Corps Hymn,” and, perhaps worst of all, “Deep in the Heart of Texas” also work. But I warn you: That way madness lies.

“Boredom is one of the flattest, most self-evident, most self-justifying of all esthetic judgments. There is no appeal from boredom. Even when you tell yourself you like boredom, there the verdict is.”

Clement Greenberg, Homemade Esthetics