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Friday, October 30, 2009
Dayton Ballet peers into the ‘Shadows’
There’s nothing pink about the Dayton Ballet’s program “Tales from the Shadows.”
Dark as a raven’s feathers is more like it.
The double dance-drama premiere that opened the company’s 72nd season Thursday, Oct. 29, took inspiration from literature — stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe and “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Both ballets depicted men battling dual identities.
Christopher Fleming’s hour-long “Myth and the Madness of Edgar Allan Poe” portrayed Poe (Justin Michael Koertgen) as increasingly ruled by his imagination and mental instability, elicited by the Raven (Keenan McLaren in a performance of sharp focus and attack).
Danced to a conglomeration of recorded music ranging from the sublime to the odd, harsh and grating, the ballet contained several strong sections and some that served little purpose but to repeat movements that didn’t contribute much to the narrative.
One segment clearly based on “The Tell-Tale Heart” showed a man “buried” under layers of cloth that represent the floorboards in Poe’s story. Another showed Poe being intentionally separated from his mother by the Raven and her ensemble, a necessary step in his evolution as a writer.
Other featured roles were done by Katie Keith (Poe’s mother), Christy Forehand (his wife), Erika Cole (his muse, a potentially fertile role usurped by the Raven), and Grant Dettling as Poe’s surrogate father and, later, as the title character in “The Masque of Red Death.”
Karen Russo Burke’s “Hyding Inside” was less ambitious, simpler and more consistent.
It featured Dettling as “Dr. J.” and Dillon Anthony as his primitive doppelganger, “Mr. H.” The two halves began to diverge after a quartet of drunks and harlots (Robert Morrow, Christy Forehand, Erica Lehman and Christian Delery) accosted Dr. J. for money on the street, then injected him with a hypodermic they found in his bag.
He then began to pull away from civilized behavior and his fiancee (Halliet Slack), who was left to worry and to glance longingly at her engagement ring.
Unlike Poe, who was drawn ever farther from his origins as Fleming’s ballet proceeded, Dr. J. did eventually fuse his split when the 30-minute piece to music by Mussorgsky, Janacek and Berners ended with a scene in the forest.
Dettling was all clarity in his portrayal. Anthony, perhaps inescapably, was more of a comic book character. Slack was a woman with few options. Choreography for the ensemble was well done and reinforced the telling of a well-known story.
At least for the Dayton Ballet, Halloween is a serious and literary holiday this season. Lighter, happier fare will have to wait until “Nutcracker.” . The company will present the program again at 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct 31, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, at the Victoria Theatre, First and Main streets. Tickets are $20-$70 Call (937) 228-3630 or order online at www.ticketcenterstage
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‘Wicked’ cracks half-million on 1st day
The Victoria Theatre Association did well over a half-million dollars in business Friday, Oct. 30, on the first day of ticket sales for the local premiere of the musical “Wicked.”
As of mid-afternoon, $425,000 worth of tickets had been sold since the Ticket Center Stage box office opened at 8 a.m.. Online and telephone transactions accounted for $254,000.
With online sales continuing until midnight and telephone orders through 9 p.m. Friday, a first-day total of $600,000 was expected.
Arriving as early as 1 a.m. to wait outside, 130 people were in line when walk-up sales began at 8 a.m. The first 100 customers through the doors received souvenir “Wicked” t-shirts.
Broadway’s most popular show will come to the 2,300-seat Schuster for three weeks beginning Feb. 17, 2010. All 24 performances are expected to sell out, adding up to $4.2 million in box office receipts.
Broadway series subscribers and group buyers had first choice. About half of the more than 55,000 total available tickets were left at the start of the day. Prices range from $37 to $120.
Jasmine Hill of Dayton, who was second in line for tickets, said she had tried to go to Chicago to see it previously. “I wasn’t able to, but I would rather see it here and support the arts in Dayton.”
“My wife and kids pushed me out of the house to come here,” said Marshall Weiss, editor of the Dayton Jewish Observer.
Joanna Tsai of Columbus was buying tickets for herself and her boyfriend. “All of my friends have already seen it. I feel like the last person who hasn’t.”
Sales will continue in person, by phone and online at Ticket Center Stage — (937) 228-3630, (888) 228-3630 or www.ticketcenterstage.com. For more information about the show visit www.wickedthemusical.com
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