Three Pianos
Dec. 29th, 2011 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rscLast night, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jwg and I went to the American Repertory Theater production of Three Pianos, written, arranged, and performed by Rick Burkhardt, Alec Duffy, and Dave Malloy. It's a rather unusual play. The idea for it apparently arose when these three guys found themselves playing and singing through the entirety of Schubert's Winterreise at a post-concert party...
...and came up with the idea of a theatrical representation of a modern-day "Schubertiade" -- a gathering of Schubert's friends and fellow-artists involving a lot of drinking and the performance of whatever he was currently working on, among other things. The play is built around the 24 songs of the cycle, some of which they perform more-or-less straight, some of which are excerpted in the background, some of which they do some strange things with (Die Krähe with jazz saxophone, for instance), and a few of which they just decided to skip.
The stage action is a mixture of lectures on music history and some specifics of Schubert's life and the songs themselves, a rather fanciful representation of an actual Schubertiade, and some interactions among the actor/authors as themselves, all accompanied by an ever-increasing flow of alcohol. (The audience actually gets to participate in the latter, as glasses of wine are offered before and during the show, up to a possible total of three -- we contented ourselves with one each -- but nobody in the audience is likely to get as drunk as the characters are by the end of the play.)
It's a lot of fun, and well-performed -- if it's not always immediately obvious which character the guys are in at any given moment, that's mostly because the characters aren't always sure either -- but I found it ultimately somewhat unsatisfying. I think the problem is that it's stamped all too plainly with its origins as a drunken "hey, wouldn't this be a great idea?", and never really quite coheres. Worth seeing anyway, I'd think. If you're in the Boston area, it's playing through next week, but there aren't a whole lot of seats left.
John liked it somewhat better than I did.
jwg and I went to the American Repertory Theater production of Three Pianos, written, arranged, and performed by Rick Burkhardt, Alec Duffy, and Dave Malloy. It's a rather unusual play. The idea for it apparently arose when these three guys found themselves playing and singing through the entirety of Schubert's Winterreise at a post-concert party......and came up with the idea of a theatrical representation of a modern-day "Schubertiade" -- a gathering of Schubert's friends and fellow-artists involving a lot of drinking and the performance of whatever he was currently working on, among other things. The play is built around the 24 songs of the cycle, some of which they perform more-or-less straight, some of which are excerpted in the background, some of which they do some strange things with (Die Krähe with jazz saxophone, for instance), and a few of which they just decided to skip.
The stage action is a mixture of lectures on music history and some specifics of Schubert's life and the songs themselves, a rather fanciful representation of an actual Schubertiade, and some interactions among the actor/authors as themselves, all accompanied by an ever-increasing flow of alcohol. (The audience actually gets to participate in the latter, as glasses of wine are offered before and during the show, up to a possible total of three -- we contented ourselves with one each -- but nobody in the audience is likely to get as drunk as the characters are by the end of the play.)
It's a lot of fun, and well-performed -- if it's not always immediately obvious which character the guys are in at any given moment, that's mostly because the characters aren't always sure either -- but I found it ultimately somewhat unsatisfying. I think the problem is that it's stamped all too plainly with its origins as a drunken "hey, wouldn't this be a great idea?", and never really quite coheres. Worth seeing anyway, I'd think. If you're in the Boston area, it's playing through next week, but there aren't a whole lot of seats left.
John liked it somewhat better than I did.
