The Great Yes, The Great No

The Great Yes, The Great No, William Kentridge's new multimedia mixture of actors, dancers, singers, instrumentalists, animated projections, films, masks, drawings and stagecraft, was presented by Cal Performances at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall last weekend. (All production photos are by Monika Rittershaus.)

The loose, wandering narrative depicts a real-life surreal Atlantic Ocean voyage in 1941 from Marseille, France to the colonial Caribbean island of Martinique, with refugees fleeing the Nazis and the collaborationist government of Vichy France. For good measure, other historical figures joined the transatlantic voyage, with everyone from Frantz Fanon to Josephine Bonaparte making appearances. The major presiding spirit was the French Surrealist poet Suzanne Césaire (embodied here by Nancy Nkusi reciting her poetry) and her husband Aimé Césaire who had taken an earlier voyage back to their native island.

There was a panel discussion before Friday night's premiere with the South African artist William Kentridge who conceived and directed the two-hour spectacle with a small army of collaborators. He spoke of his influences, ranging from a Mayakovsky play that he'd forgotten and unconsciously reproduced to an a capella lament he heard at a South African funeral that struck him deeply.

There were so many unfamiliar references and digressions that I found it impossible to make much sense of the theatrical work, but it did not matter because there was so much to absorb and enjoy.

A few of my favorite things included the flat, black-and-white masks that were miraculously enlivened by the dancers Thulani Chauke and Teresa Phuti Mojela. In the photo above, they are twin representations of the Surrealist poet Andre Breton, who was actually on this voyage of the cargo ship Capitaine Paul-Lemerle. My favorite of the cartoonish historical figures come to life were Diego Rivera dancing daintily while Frida Kahlo swings a sledge hammer next to him, an apter symbol of their respective impact than is usually offered onstage.

I also loved the musical backbone of the evening, a seven-woman chorus with music composed by Nhlanhla Mahlangu, along with the animated supertitles that were wittily integrated into the extraordinary animated projections of archival photos, Kentridge's drawings, and surrealist films.

The entire cast was superb without exception.

A quartet of instrumentalists played incidental and accompanying music onstage, with Music Director and percussionist Tlale Makhene brilliantly driving the score along.

The narrative was not only about the transatlantic refugees from World War II France, but the underlying history of transatlantic voyages from Africa to the colonial sugar slave plantations of Martinique. Though not explicitly underlined, the parallels between the present-day fascist takeover of the United States and its own history of slave plantations were everywhere.

Cal Performances was one of the many commissioners of The Great Yes, The Great No, and it felt like a rare honor to experience this show on its worldwide tour.

Beautifying the Neighborhood

Last Saturday morning we woke up to a small tent city being constructed in the parking lot of a school building on McAllister Street.

San Francisco's Department of Public Works was sponsoring the event which was being billed online as the "Arbor Day Fair," although national Arbor Day is actually April 25th.

Volunteers and city workers were joined for neighborhood tree planting events and spread themselves throughout the Civic Center neighborhood.

I didn't join them but continued on to Hayes Street instead for the Saturday morning trash pickup in Hayes Valley which has turned into quite a lively scene.

After completing my civic duty, I stopped by the "eco-fair," which was charming.

There were bucket rides being offered to kids and their guardians on two towering cherry pickers.

In the back of the schoolyard...

...there was a tiny petting zoo with grass-eating goats.

If you volunteered in the morning, there was a box lunch as reward...

..along with free ice cream.

My favorite giveaway was a make-your-own wooden planter tent...

...with helpful city carpenters showing you how to assemble a square planter box...

...and other city workers helping you transplant live herbs.

It was one of the sweetest city-sponsored events ever.

Handel's Alceste with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra

Maybe it was just because I was in the mood, but the Handel concert by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale last Friday at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre felt like an utter delight.

The organization has been auditioning various conductors this season to be their new Music Director, and last week's candidate was the 47-year-old Irishman Peter Whelan, an energetic live wire who introduced the program with warmth and wit. He was last seen here in 2022 conducting San Francisco Opera's production of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice and he is also the Artistic Director of the Irish Baroque Orchestra.

The concert opener was Handel's Concerto Grosso in G major, Op. 6, No. 1 which was a lovely 15-minute starter.

The was followed by the major work of the evening, Alceste, which was incidental music written by Handel in 1749 for a Smollett play turned extravaganza that was never produced. Most of the music was recycled by the composer for other works, but hearing the original music together is a rarity. As Whelan stated, we don't really know what the music is referring to, "so you can just make up your own drama in your head."

One of the joys of the Bay Area classical music scene is the deep roster of singers who have been performing early music choral pieces together for years.

Whether singing with the Philharmonia Baroque, the American Bach Soloists, the SF Symphony Chorus, or other early music groups, there is a level of professionalism and knowledge that has taken years to coalesce, something that exists in very few places in the world.

The 90-minute suite of sinfonias, arias, dances, and choral numbers were given expert performances.

The tenor soloist was Aaron Sheehan, a specialist in Baroque music who sings sweetly while looking like a movie star.

The real revelation for me was the soprano soloist, Lauren Snouffer, who created such delicate shadings in the ornamentation of her arias that it was transporting.

May she return to San Francisco again soon because she is special.

Beatlemania at the deYoung

Another dollop from the seemingly inexhaustible well of Beatlemania has arrived at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco for the next four months.

In 2020 Paul McCartney rediscovered old pictures he had taken as an amateur art photographer for three months that spanned December 1963 through February 1964.

The settings are Liverpool, Paris, New York, and Miami just when their international fame was exploding, much of which was featured in the 1964 Richard Lester movie A Hard Day's Night.

The photos are often prankish...

...when the quartet were in their early 20s.

It is also a reminder of the delicate beauty of John Lennon at that age.

There is a brief video of their epochal appearance on the weird old variety show hosted by Ed Sullivan...

...complete with shots of the screaming adolescent girls in the audience, a bizarre 20th century version of Euripedes's The Bacchae.

The exhibit is aptly titled "Eyes of the Storm" as the observed watch the observers...

...including mobs of fans rushing down a New York street.

The most poignant character among the photos is Brian Epstein, their closeted homosexual manager who died at age 32 in 1967 after getting sloppy with too many strong pills and liquor a la Valley of the Dolls.

The only color photos are from a Miami resort where they taped another appearance for the Ed Sullivan Show.

If you have a membership to the Fine Arts Museums, the exhibit is well worth a visit. Otherwise, the hefty single ticket price is probably not worth it unless you are a Beatlemaniac yourself.