10 December 2009
Eighth blackbird flies high; Century-old piece gets the treatment it deserves
By Bryant Manning
The theatrically inclined music gang eighth blackbird pulled out one of its old-school specialties Tuesday night at the Harris Theater. The group delivered with dreamy rapture its Chicago premiere of the nearly century-old cabaret chamber piece "Pierrot Lunaire," (1912) written by modernist colossus Arnold Schoenberg.
Set to the terminally eerie and expressionistic poetry of the Belgian Albert Giraud, Schoenberg's work traces a wandering clown's journey through the weird and weirder of pre-Great War Europe.
Director Mark DeChiazza's spare, onstage tableau of constant movement allowed musicians and dancer Elyssa Dole to slither around at will in this surrealistic nightmare akin to a flickering silent film.
Ensemble percussionist Matthew Duvall mimed the role of Pierrot with perfect detachment, giving the old Frenchman a Mr. Bean-like demeanor. By designing sets to include only hanging light bulbs, chairs and a ladder, DeChiazza wisely let the drama emerge from Schoenberg's smoky atonal score.
The lusty New York-based soprano Lucy Shelton played the expressive poet, a role she has owned for 40 years. While she is as sure a bet for the role there is, it would have been fascinating to hear an up-and-comer grapple with such challenging material. (Shelton and eighth blackbird collaborated on this work just three years ago at the Museum of Contemporary Art.) Still, Shelton's time-tested mastery of this half-sung, half-spoken style makes the idea of an alternative singer seem unnecessarily risky. Her rapt handling of the German text was hindered only by the theater's supertitles that didn't want to translate it completely.
The popular cabaret song style belongs of course to Kurt Weill, and Shelton cunningly sung standards such as "Mack the Knife," "Alabama Song," "Solomon Song" and "Surabaya Johnny." These exaggerated arrangements from cellist Nicholas Photinos and pianist Lisa Kaplan gave the soprano ample opportunity to experiment with tempos in these Jazz Age chestnuts.
The lyrical adagio from Alban Berg's "Kammerkonzert" (1923), arranged here by the composer for violin, clarinet and piano, proved to be the Romantic fulfillment of the Schoenberg. Influenced by both of those men, the American composer George Perle, who passed away earlier this year at age 93, would have admired this Second Viennese School program. His "Critical Moments 2" (2001) was an eighth blackbird commission, and the nine minimovements offered abundant wit, charm and creativity. Living up to its title, "Paradoxes and parallels," this was one of eighth blackbird's smartest programs yet.
