Seeing a world premiere play about Bill Gates at age 20 and a satiric 1960s Broadway musical about Superman in the same week was an interesting experience. First, by Evelyn Jean Pine, is a two-act, one-set naturalistic play that takes place at an Albuquerque coffee shop adjoining the First World Altair Computer Conference in 1976. The birth of the personal computer age is a fascinating subject and a young Bill Gates is a great choice for a complex antihero.
The cast was uniformly good, particularly Rinabeth Apostol in a cliched role as a tough, heart-of-gold waitress and Jeremy Kahn as the wildly driven Gates. The history discussed and explained in the play is consistently interesting, but the personal relationships read as phony and slightly off. The play is still resonating in my head, though, which is a good sign and it's worth checking out at the small Stage Werx theatre on Valencia between 15th and 16th.
For the last month at the Eureka Theatre in the Embarcadero Center, 42nd Street Moon has been presenting the 1966 musical, It's A Bird...It's A Plane...It's Superman. Written by the Bye Bye Birdie team of Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, the music is holding up surprisingly well though it's burdened with a silly, satiric book by David Newman and Robert Benton who would soon become famous for their Bonnie and Clyde screenplay the following year.
The production is closing after this Sunday's matinee, but it's worth catching too, mostly for Lucas Coleman as Superman / Clark Kent, where he uses his tall, rubbery body to charming effect as both characters. He's supported by one of the best casts the company has presented, including Jen Brooks above as Lois Lane. Brooks is also the Dance Captain for the show, and the Swinging Sixties choreography by Staci Arriaga is amusing and very well done.
Last week's San Francisco Symphony program was devoted to fairies, magicians, witches, Druid priests, and pagans outwitting murderous Christians. The scruffy young Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado above started with Mendelssohn's Suite from A Midsummer Night's Dream, that golden oldie which includes the famous Wedding March.
Unfortunately, the performance was rather dull, but it was probably programmed because the rest of the evening was so unusual. It was followed by scenes from British composer Thomas Ades' 2004 opera of The Tempest, with Shakespeare's English translated by Meredith Oakes into leaner poetry, which seems a bit cheeky and self-defeating. The first three excerpts were between baritone Rod Gilfry as Prospero and soprano Audrey Luna as Ariel above, and you could feel the audience jump when Ms. Luna started singing her stratospheric lines that were so piercing they sounded like music for dogwalkers.
This was followed by a couple scenes for the young lovers, tenor Alek Shrader as Ferdinand and mezzo Isabel Leonard as Miranda above. The four soloists have sung the same roles at a recent production of the opera at the Met, and they were all in excellent voice, with honors going to Audrey Luna just for surviving her high-wire feat. I am still not a fan of Ades as a composer, but enough people I respect do seem to appreciate his music, so the fault may be mine.
The real treat came after intermission with the first Symphony performance of Mendelssohn's 1832 cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht from a poem by Goethe about pagans celebrating their Gods on April 30th high in the Harz Mountains in the face of Christian oppression. The chorus was tremendous throughout the 40-minute cantata and the music extraordinary, which makes it odd that it's the first time most people in the audience had even heard of the piece, let alone actually listened to it. What other treasures are hiding out there?
Rod Gilfry and Alek Shrader returned as soloists singing the parts of Druids and Christians, along with mezzo Charlotte Hellekant in a cameo as "An Old Lady of The People." They filled the house with their voices easily, and it was a joy to hear the Heathens successfully fending off the intolerant Christians, at least for one Spring night.
There are three very good reasons to see Verdi's final opera, Falstaff, at the San Francisco Opera this month, and two of them are in the photo above by Cory Weaver. Bryn Terfel in the title role gives one of the greatest acting and singing performances in the world as the fat, old, delusional English knight. Meredith Arwady as Mistress Quickly, the fixer for the Merry Wives of Windsor, has a mezzo-soprano that turns into a low contralto so deep and powerful it sounds like she's channeling the incomparable Ewa Podles. The final reason to attend is for the gorgeous orchestra playing under Music Director Luisotti, who clarifies a host of details in the unusually complex score.
The only drawback is a dull, unimaginative production by Frank Philipp Schlossmann borrowed from the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and even clunkier direction by Olivier Tambosi. The finale of the opera is supposed to be funny and magical and overwhelmingly beautiful but is instead a confused mess where you can't tell what's happening to anyone and could care less even if it was comprehensible. The production isn't fatal, though, and the rest of the cast is very good. Click here to check out tickets for the final five performances.
