Tweet Washington may soon be the seventh state to legalize gay marriage and Starbucks is supporting it 100 percent. But if Christian Pastor Steven Andrew of the USA Christian Ministries has anythi
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Tweet by Jonathan Warman I have never seen Porgy & Bess before this production, I’m only familiar with it through the songs from it that have become standards, as sung by the likes of Ella F
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Washington may soon be the seventh state to legalize gay marriage and Starbucks is supporting it 100 percent. But if Christian Pastor Steven Andrew of the USA Christian Ministries has anything to do with it, people will soon be purchasing their morning cup of Joe somewhere else .
For me, New York City at night remains electric; I just wish our bars and nightclubs had better batteries. Their lack of juice stems from the WKTU-worthy soundtrack that echoes past whatever drunken state I may be in depending upon where I’m headed for the night with Demanda Dahling and the crew. Vodka handles the job that the music so often abdicates. I used to be intoxicated by a hot song I had never heard before or a clever remix of one I knew that complemented the DJ’s taste in late-night thump.
The fault for our musical homogenization lies not with any individual or group or even with any particular kind of nightlife worker. Still, I am going to rank on managers a bit. As a DJ who has worked across the city in a variety of New York City venues these past five years, I can attest that more than one manager whom no one would call a music fan has given me specific notes to play “pop” or “Top 40,” as if those words meant one thing — particularly the one definition of those terms that presides in their heads.
They rarely even know what they’re asking for, anyway. For example, I have worked for more than one manager who compliments my music then asks when I am going to “play some pop.” Typically, this question comes after a set with a liberal sprinkling of expected tracks by the usual suspects like Lady Gaga and Britney Spears. (I understand that part of my job is to inspire the crowd to stick around and buy more drinks. I watch the crowd carefully and make sure that I play more of the kind of music they respond to. Plus, I find nothing wrong with good pop music).
by Jonathan Warman
I have never seen Porgy & Bess before this production, I’m only familiar with it through the songs from it that have become standards, as sung by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Christine Ebersole. Many purists have been carping over how much smaller director Diane Paulus’s adaptation is than the full-blown version done by opera houses, but I just don’t have that to compare it to. Even if this version is diminished, the stunning ambition of composer George Gershwin’s musical vision still takes my breath away.
Based on a novel by DuBose Heyward (who also contributed to the opera’s libretto) Porgy & Bess is set in the run-down neighborhood of Catfish Row, Charleston, South Carolina, where the beautiful Bess struggles to live in a community that shuns her, and the only one who truly, selflessly loves her is the crippled but courageous Porgy.
As a matter of fact the biggest problem I have with the show doesn’t have anything to do with the music or the approach to the story, but with Riccardo Hernandez’s willfully ugly set. I’m a big fan of successful abstraction, but this is far from successful. It neglects the specifics of a poverty-stricken South Carolina neighborhood, for no good reason, replacing those specifics with nothing evocative or even artistically interesting. Just dreary and unwieldy.
As for those wonderful songs, they live all the more vibrantly when you hear them in context – when Norm Lewis, as Porgy, sings “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’” it’s like the sun coming out after a grimly cloudy day. Audra McDonald is a vocally thrilling Bess, though for some reason she plays much of the role tentatively. Lewis is a deeply humane Porgy, and David Alan Grier brings out all the colors, light and dark, in the seductively slick Sportin’ Life. This Porgy & Bess doesn’t succeed on every point, but it’s a strong representation of a fascinating, flawed, ambitious work of art. Worth seeing.
For tickets, click here.
For more reviews and interviews by Jonathan Warman, see his blog Drama Queen.
