{"id":2738,"date":"2014-08-11T18:57:53","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T22:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=2738"},"modified":"2014-08-11T19:00:31","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T23:00:31","slug":"a-playwright-and-a-composer-meet-in-a-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2014\/08\/a-playwright-and-a-composer-meet-in-a-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"A Playwright and a Composer Meet in a Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher Caines directs and choreographs Purcell’s<\/em> Fairy Queen for the Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Purcell's<\/a>

Purcell’s The Fairy Queen<\/em> and Shakespeare’s midsummer immortals.
L to R: Peter Thoresen, Julian Whitley, Tamra Paselk, John Collison. Above the seated pair: Raymond Storms. Photo: Brian E. Long<\/p><\/div>\n

If I had looked carefully at the program for The Fairy Queen<\/em> before the Dell\u2019Arte Opera Ensemble\u2019s ambitious conflation of Henry Purcell\u2019s opera and Shakespeare\u2019s A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em> had begun, I might have been tempted to make a run for it. Here, for example, are the roles that actor Zach Libresco is listed as playing: Demetrius<\/strong>: Dalton \u201914, Harvard \u201918, Helena\u2019s ex-boyfriend; Tom \u201cSnug\u201d Snout<\/strong>: cabaret singer, proofreader.<\/p>\n

But I stayed, luckily, for this raucous, outrageous, giddy, and mostly delightful downtown production, that the Dell\u2019Arte Ensemble is presenting as part of its \u201cA Summer of Shakespeare.\u201d (See: http:\/\/www.dellarteopera.org\/season.php5?p=58<\/a>). Christopher Caines directed and choreographed The Fairy Queen<\/em>, in addition to choosing and adapting elements of both texts. The night before, I had seen Handel\u2019s Acis and Galatea<\/em>, staged and choreographed by Mark Morris and performed at Lincoln Center. To see The Fairy Queen<\/em> (on view through August 23), you head for the East Village, enter the tiny Everyman Caf\u00e9, locate the box office, and five or six steps later, you\u2019re in the East 13th<\/sup> Street Theatre\u2019s black box, with the audience seated on three sides.<\/p>\n

Not exactly culture shock, but a more intimate and far less grand setting, in addition to a great deal of imagination at work. Intimacy is not just an overall concept in this case. The eight skillful players in the early-music ensemble, The Sebastians, along with their harpsichordist and musical director, Jeff Grossman, sit so close together at the edge of one bank of seats that when Charles Weaver lays down his lute and picks up his long-necked theorbo, you fear for violinist Daniel S. Lee\u2019s music stand, and a few members of the audience will hear cellist Ezra Seltzer as dominant. He\u2019s that close to them.<\/p>\n

\"Drew<\/a>

Drew Paramore as Puck and Seth Shirley as Lysander in Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble’s The Fairy Queen<\/em>. Photo: Brian E. Long<\/p><\/div>\n

The songs and interludes (possibly intended for dancing) that make up The Fairy Queen <\/em>allude to, and embroider upon the plot of Shakespeare\u2019s play without making use of its text; presumably those who attended Purcell\u2019s semi-opera around 1692 were familiar with the play that Shakespeare had written a hundred years before. Purcell\u2019s work was divided into five masques that could be interpolated between scenes drawn from the play and serve as a final wedding celebration (it would have made for a very long evening in the theater).<\/p>\n

You know what you\u2019re in for on East 13th<\/sup> Street when Puck (the endearing, hyper-active Drew Paramore) makes his welcoming speech. Oberon\u2019s agile henchsprite manages to shoehorn information about exits and cell phones into the Bard\u2019s chosen iambic pentameter. Hermia (Amanda Goble) arrives dragging a little orange wheelie. Apparently this is no English forest but Central Park, where the four mixed-up lovers\u2014Hermia, Lysander (Seth Shirley) Helena (Cassandra Stokes Wylie), and Demetrius (Libresco)\u2014arrive for a reunion and perhaps an elopement (they were schoolmates at Dalton. A park bench is part of the minimal scenery. The little pageboy that Oberon and Titania squabble over is a child (Gabriel Griselj) kidnapped by Puck, whose distraught Spanish-speaking nanny (Elisa Toro Franky) keeps passing through in search of him.<\/p>\n

\"Shakespeare's<\/a>

Shakespeare’s lovers: Lysander (Seth Shirley) and Hermia (Amanda Goble). Photo: Brian E. Long<\/p><\/div>\n

I could do without some of the mischievous inserted updates to the text, such as references to a Brooks Brothers suit, but these are minimal, and the fragmentary rap routine tossed off gleefully by Bottom (Andrew Gelles) when he is transformed back from an ass to his human self (apparently he\u2019s a word processor by day) is an engaging little surprise.<\/p>\n

What with the double-casting and the present-to-past switches, it\u2019s easy to get confused, but, bar a few moments when I want to wince, I\u2019m easy with that. Caines even brings in, for a few seconds, another theatrical quartet arguing about identity and who loves whom; suddenly Shakespeare\u2019s lovers become Gwendolyn, Cecily, Algernon, and Jack from Oscar Wilde\u2019s The Importance of Being Earnest<\/em> \u2014that is, the actors playing their presumed Shakespearean roles find themselves in another drama (surely a nightmare that many actors have).<\/p>\n

All the actors perform convincingly. Shirley, Libresco, and Stokes Wylie modulate their voices more skillfully than do Imani Jade Powers (Titania and Athena) and Goble (whose diction sometimes makes her words unclear). It\u2019s easy for the women to become shrill, and sometimes one actor or another seems more intent on coloring individual words than shaping the sense of a line. But they\u2019re all lively, and they work wittily together.<\/p>\n

\"Titania<\/a>

Titania (Imani Jade Powers) and Oberon (Jason Duvernau) of A Midsummer Night’s Dream<\/em>. Photo: Brian E. Long<\/p><\/div>\n

Eleven singers of the Dell\u2019Arte Opera Ensemble (three sopranos, three countertenors, two tenors, two baritones, and a bass) fill all the roles in The Fairy Queen.<\/em> They get a workout. Four of the men (Andy Berry, John Collison, Nathan L\u00e9tourneau, and Brennan Hall) are Shakespeare\u2019s four fairies, but, for example, Berry (a bass) also plays Purcell\u2019s drunken, stammering poet (a take-off on a rival on the composer\u2019s part?), Sleep, Hymen, and the dopey shepherd Corydon (with be-wigged countertenor Peter Thorsen as shepherdess Mopsa fending him off with \u201cNo kissing! No, no!\u201d ).<\/p>\n

Purcell wrote all manner of arias\u2014summoning ones, frolicking ones, joyous ones, lovelorn ones, and somber ones (like the ravishing \u201cNow let me weep,\u201d sung eloquently by Tamra Paselk at the performance I attended). The composer plays with sudden dramatic stops and, in one song, with echoes. Each of the very gifted singers\u2014including Raymond Storms, Julian Whitley, Leslie Tay, Noelle McMurtry, and Elizabeth Westerman\u2014has at least one aria to deliver. Purcell wrote songs for each of the fours seasons; for Night, Mystery, Secrecy, and Sleep; for Apollo, Juno, Daphnis, Chloe, and Hymen. These are beautiful, lilting pieces of music, with large amounts of fioritura<\/em>. The singers\u2019 task of keeping their tone pure and tremolo at bay, in order to contrast \u201csimple\u201d singing with these virtuosic embellishments, is a demanding one (among the women, McMurtry is especially skilled at this).<\/p>\n

\"Tenor<\/a>

Tenor Leslie Tay singing one of Purcell’s arias. Photo: Brian E. Long<\/p><\/div>\n

Caines has made intriguing choices that affect how we experience this complex work. In a sense, he is working in miniature, trying to create musical and dramatic richness with minimal means. The choices involved making all the singers first and foremost be fairies in Oberon and Titania\u2019s kingdom, onstage almost constantly. Watching them, you may or may not know, say, that Tay is being<\/em> Autumn when he sings of many-colored fields and some singers form a tree from which others gather apples; he\u2019s just one in the band of imaginative sprites with silvery voices who is taking charge for a while.<\/p>\n

\u201cSprites\u201d is possibly the wrong word. \u201cFairies\u201d too. Nina Bova has attired the denizons of the woods in skimpy assemblages of clothing. Flannel, leather, fur, and belts randomly arranged, plus cockeyed flower garlands on their heads and odd touches of makeup give them the look of uninhibited homeless people making the best of what they can find. Oberon (Jason Duvernau) is the somewhat thuggish guardian of their world. Caines has given them animal manners, which they\u2019ve taken on with impressive zeal. When not singing (and sometimes while<\/em> singing), they crawl around, crouch, nuzzle one another, and snuggle together like a pack of puppies. They\u2019re rowdy, sensual verging on sexual, and alert to every change of mood or character. That the beautiful voices emerge from these ardent rag-tag creatures is itself moving. No wonder the little boy that Puck has brought into the magic world seems delighted to be there.<\/p>\n

\"Aynsley<\/a>

Aynsley Inglis and Luke Tucker as “Fairy Dancers” in The Fairy Queen<\/em>.
Photo: Brian E. Long<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, there are awkward moments, devices that don\u2019t quite work, and behavior that goes against your (well. . .my) idea of Shakespeare\u2019s created world. No matter how much I try to justify the five inserted pas de deux that are performed\u2014apparently to entertain the fairy court\u2014by Aynsley Inglis and Luke Tucker, I can\u2019t manage it. The nicely made duets are too conventionally balletic, and everything comes to a halt when the two dancers appear, except for one brief interaction between them and little Griselj. All but one of their short numbers, as I recall, involve pointe shoes, and for the final one, Inglis sports a tutu. What\u2019s the deal? Did they get lost trying to find Lincoln Center? Still the flaws don\u2019t detract significantly from the artful, brave, and highly entertaining production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Caines directs and choreographs Purcell’s Fairy Queen for the Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble. If I had looked carefully at the program for The Fairy Queen before the Dell\u2019Arte Opera Ensemble\u2019s ambitious conflation of Henry Purcell\u2019s opera and Shakespeare\u2019s A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream had begun, I might have been tempted to make a run for it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893,417],"tags":[356,1260,1262,895,1261],"class_list":{"0":"post-2738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music-and-dance","8":"category-opera","9":"tag-a-midsummer-nights-dream","10":"tag-christopher-caines","11":"tag-dellarte-opera-ensemble","12":"tag-henry-purcell","13":"tag-the-fairy-queen","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}