HCT and Gypsy in Hickory, NC

"That was great!" "What a wonderful show!" "Isn’t it marvelous!" "Hickory has a LOT of talent! "

Not my words, but what I overheard between the two acts and on the way out of the theatre after the final curtain fall.

The play was well received by its audience and it still makes a strong impression the day after seeing it. The main thing I remember was the great enjoyment of the actors who presented the play. They were having fun and enjoying the work they were doing.

Viki Ryan played Rose, the main character. She played it well and she seemed to get better as the play progressed. This is a demanding role requiring a powerful voice, agility, visual expressions and gestures. From a photographer’s point of view I would say that Viki Ryan displayed a wide dynamic range. I really look forward to her next performance.

I had never seen Gypsy before, not as a play, not as a movie, not even on TV. It actually did apparently take place pretty much as presented on stage, a quick search on internet revealing, beginning back almost eighty years ago. The songs of the play began coming out across the country in the late 1950s and we have all grown up with them.

Best clip? Easy. The three strippers. Bold, brassy, BIG, beautiful in their brazen boisterousness. Not that I ever thought for a moment they might strip down, no indeed, but that they might come out into the audience and strip down the house. But they were having too much fun for that.

The play’s power drives from its contrast. A ruthlessly arrogant/defenseless mother/trainer drives/leads her praised/persecuted daughters/performers to perform exquisite/pitiful performances/ displays on stage as Vaudeville dies. She thinks she has a magic that she can’t use for herself and she forces it on to her daughters and the men and boys in her life. In the end she is the only person remaining still under her own dominion. And then she loses control of herself. Or does she? You will have to see what she does then!

The play is mainly a vehicle for its famous songs. From a writer’s point of view, I felt it dragged a bit in two or three places. Not that I could do it, but I felt a longing for someone to write an updated version of "Gypsy". Go wilder, a little more lusty like "Carmen", push the telling points together and collapse the story into a magnificent swirl of effort, blame, agony, joy and triumph.

Carol Anne Hartman, as Louise, seemed playing well within her ability. She did her part well, and I think we all will look forward to her next performance. You can’t help but feel she is ready to liftoff.

Herbie had a hard role to play. He is very important to the development of the story but he can’t ever take charge or even spread his own wings beyond an occasional flap or two. Eric Stafford did him well.

Afterward we wandered around the corner to the Olde Hickory Taproom for a Brown Mountain Light and a Dopplebock along with a serving of their famous Pub Chips and rehashed the high and low points of “Gypsy” in the newly smoke-free atmosphere. This will probably become a Hickory tradition in the very near future.

Lenten Music Corinth Reformed Church in Hickory, NC

A gray, overcast and rainy day became became a background for this recital, number three of six, and when we came out the rain was falling harder than before but birds were singing and daffodils were blooming.

The first presentation was a raucous (to my very untrained ear) piece played seemingly at full capacity. Perhaps part of that was due to the fact that it was written by the amazing Felix Mendelssohn, who, according to the bulletin handed out by the members of the church, had actually died before he was born. Or maybe he was one of those born-again composers.

The performance, played by Joby Bell, organist at First Presbyterian Church in Lenoir, was ably done. An organist is an amazing person. It certainly must be a hard hobby to follow. Organs don’t fit well into most homes - or neighborhoods - and the organist has a lot of keyboards and pedals to press and operate. Also the organist has to play the audience as well as his wonderful machine.

The second piece, “Oh Man, Bewail thy Grievous Fall” by J. S. Bach was considerably less than full throttle and seemed a well paced tune with lots of different tones. Next came a tribute to Master Tallis which was a sweet piece that seemed to invoke memories, perhaps of the first two pieces.

Most of the members of the audience seemed suspended somewhere between ecstasy and stoicism. Some were clearly lost in thought, far from the church, others had on their involuntary bored expressions, which would turn briefly into raised eyebrows as the cadence changed, then you could almost see welcome Thoughts occur again to them. Me too.

Finally came the beautiful Prelude, Fugue and Variation from Cesar Franck. It seemed to begin as a solitary figure, dancing on a small stage which then appeared becoming larger, and the dancer then became transformed into a wanderer dancing through a vast architectural wonder. Then came the fugue and confrontation and transformation. Finally the last part ended in the variations as a spiritually matured dancer demonstrated a sense of perfection.

About sixty heads rose above the walnut-rose pews. Forty of them were gray scale, shades from ivory to medium gray. About twelve of them were without appreciable hair of any kind except around the fringes. Two were kind of an ordinary mousy brown, the rest were perfect shades of red and blond.

Afterwards we went to Backstreets for a magnificent lunch. Delicious. I had a Bruchetta Melt. It looked pretty grim but was so good that I ate it all and enjoyed every bite. First time we have been there in well over a year. Last time the cigarette smoke was a problem. This time, in a newly rebuilt building, there was no trace of smoke. Beautiful.

Footcandle Film Society. "An Education"

Took in “An Education” last night at the Footcandle Film Society last night. I thought the movie was fine, and that's coming from a person who really doesn’t care for movies. A LOT of the photography was excellent, with beautiful shading of color values rising out of blackness, sharp close-up images revealing the smoothness of finely arranged skin tones next to a vibrant golden red siennaistic waterfall of hair, then on the same frame, but fading into a more abstract perspective with a mottled arrangement of old brick with its red, brown, grayness,and between that and the dark green of old trees you could see a fresh flash of flowers rising out of the darkness. And that’s just one of many pictures I took away from the show. Other abstract patterns of light and color devoid of name and form flickered across the reflections of polished cars and windows, and often from those windows would come the face of a girl looking out through that window even as a new awareness of "womanness" also peered out of her own girlish countenance. The only part badly done, from my viewpoint, was the Paris bit which was overexposed. That led me to expect an ephipany to leap from the screen like the dog-race did, but no.

Again, from my viewpoint, and without revealing the story, there was a LOT of suspension of belief required on the part of the audience. The writer filled all that in very ably, and glibly too I thought, and it wound up OK I guess. I thought it dragged for about ten minutes at about the one-hour point, but that was where it was changing cadence. Either that or I began missing some of the subtle points. So should you go see it or not? Hmmmmmmm. Well, yeah. Why not? You'll enjoy it.