The Human Race, Dayton’s own professional theatre company, opens its 25th Anniversary Season with the wickedly funny God of Carnage, winner of the 2009 Tony Award for Best Play.

Written by Yasmina Reza in French and originally set in Paris, this comedy of absolutely no manners was translated by Christopher Hampton and set in London (where it won the Olivier Award for Best Play), then Americanized and set in Brooklyn for its Broadway run. Its success in three countries shows that bizarre parents who behave worse than their children are instantly recognizable and worthy of raucous laughter in all of them.

God of Carnage begins as two sets of parents get together to talk about their 11-year old sons’ schoolyard scuffle. It is all very civil. At first.  For a moment or two. Then civilization disappears.

The Human Race production, directed by Margarett Perry (last in Dayton for Painting Churches), is sure to provide what the NY Times called “laughter that comes from the gut.” The cast is composed of four local favorites – Human Race Resident Artists Jennifer Joplin (Doubt, Proof) and Tim Lile (Twelfth Night, Lend Me a Tenor) and real-life Indianapolis couple Jennifer (Twelfth Night, A Christmas Carol) and Rob (Wait Until Dark, A Christmas Carol) Johansen.

To put a little twist on relationships – which is very much in the spirit of the play – the Johansens aren’t married to each other in the show. Instead, Jennifer Johansen is married to Lile, to whom she was about to be wed at the end of the recent production of Twelfth Night. “In the next production, maybe we’ll be divorced,” says Lile.

The Broadway production was very much a star vehicle, with four big names, as is the upcoming movie version, just titled Carnage – in the Broadway case Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden and James Gandolfini; in the movie, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet.

Perhaps the most instantly recognizable of the bunch, thanks to “The Sopranos,” is Gandolfini, and Lile has the challenge of taking over his role. He says the character has a little Tony Soprano in him, but “it would be a pitfall to think of James Gandolfini as the character. I’ll be more influenced by the other three people on the stage, and they’re a powerhouse group.”

The entire play takes place in a living room. That makes the intimate Loft Theatre a perfect venue, with every seat close enough that the audience feels right at home.

For its 25th Anniversary, The Human Race commissioned five prominent local artists to each create a piece for one of the shows of The Eichelberger Loft Season. Marsha Pippenger created a collage for God of Carnage, one depicting the characters as collapsed paper dolls.

God of Carnage opens with a preview night September 8, with opening night September 9 and performances through September 25. Tickets are available via humanracetheatre.org, by calling Ticket Center Stage at (937) 228-3630, or at the Schuster Center Box Office.

As part of the celebration of its 25th season, The Human Race has created a “25-for-25” ticket option, with the 25 seats at each end of The Loft available for just $25 at every performance.

Production sponsors for God of Carnage are Marion’s Piazza, Morris Home Furnishings, Maryann & Jack Bernstein, Penny Profitt and Rand Oliver, and The Flower Shoppe.

The Human Race Theatre Company was founded in 1986 and moved into the Metropolitan Arts Center in 1991, taking up residence at the 219-seat Loft Theatre. In addition to the Eichelberger Loft Season, The Human Race produces for the Victoria Theatre’s Broadway Series, the Musical Theatre Workshop series, and special event programming. The Human Race, under the direction of Producing Artistic Director Kevin Moore, also maintains education and outreach programs for children, teens and adults, as well as artist residencies in area schools, The Muse Machine In-School Tour, and summer youth programs. Human Race organizational support is provided by Culture Works, Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District, Shubert Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council. The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this organization with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. The Human Race’s 25th Anniversary Season is sponsored by the Miriam Rosenthal Memorial Trust Fund.

DPO to help audiences find hidden, treasonous meaning in major symphonic work

Say one thing, mean another. It’s a trait of human nature. Fess up; we’ve all done it ourselves, or had others do it to us. Mostly, it’s innocent enough stuff.

But consider what would happen if we did it on a national or even international scale, risked pissing off the powers that be, and by doing so put our lives in danger.

In one of the darkest years of Communism’s long and bloody history of political suppression, a twenties-something Russian pianist and composer did just that. He composed music that seemed to say one thing, but that many believed to have held a completely different – and treasonous – meaning. Long before the Beatles popularized the concept of the backward recording technique known as backmasking with their 1966 album Revolver and the single Rain, Dmitri Shostakovich created a monumental work with a hidden meaning that didn’t require a recording of it to be played backward to be heard.

The music itself was the hidden meaning.

It was 1936, and Stalin’s Soviet Russia was awash in –isms: Communism, Totalitarianism, Bolshevism. The State had forbidden composition of traditional music, except music of – or in the style of – Ludwig von Beethoven. That’s like saying “No more Kings of Leon or Eminem; it’s Bill Haley or nothing.”

Why? Because the Soviet leaders saw artistic standards as political, ideological tools. Suddenly artistic freedom disappeared: books were banned from publication, authors dropped off the face of the earth, theaters were shut down, and musical composers found Big Brother looking over their shoulders at every note they put on paper. It was the State’s way or the highway (often to a gulag or graveyard).

For Dmitri Shostakovich, the handwriting was on the wall.  He had fallen from official favor far enough to see 1936 begin with a series of attacks by the Soviet Party newspaper Pravda, best characterized by an article entitled Muddle Instead of Music. He stopped the premiere of his in-your-face Fourth Symphony, a work doubtless to cause a late-night knock on his door by the KGB. 25 years would pass before the Fourth would see the light of day and be performed.

It became clear to Shostakovich: he had to write for his very life. And his get-out-of-jail-free card was his Symphony No. 5.

It saved his butt….literally.

The Soviet government loved it. It met all their stern requirements for conforming to the Party Line. Or did it? Musical scholars (and many a Russian man on the street) have always wondered if the music contains hidden meanings?”

In and of itself, it begs a conspiracy theory.

“His cat-and-mouse game with Soviet authorities makes him one of the most controversial composers,” Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra Musical Director Neal Gittleman writes in his Classical Connections Program Notes. “Was Shostakovich a loyal communist or a closet dissident? Did his music reflect the politics of his era? Who do we believe when a composer’s words seem to say one thing and his music seems to say another? How does political interpretation affect musical interpretation?”

“The Fifth Symphony was a change for Shostakovich,” Gittleman notes. “It was less experimental than his earlier music, with soaring lyrical melodies, vigorous march tunes, and powerful emotions. But it was hardly the kind of bright, optimistic music that Stalin wanted. The music is by turns dark, angry, sarcastic, elegiac, and, in the end, defiant. When the Fifth was met with thunderous applause in both Leningrad and Moscow, there was nothing the authorities could do but declare victory and say that Shostakovich had learned his lesson.” The people got it; the party bosses didn’t have a clue.

But does it contain a secret massage? If so, what is it? Contempt for an oppressive, unfeeling government? Hopelessness? Censure? Can we, when we listen to it today, understand what Shostakovich intended it to mean when he wrote it?

There are clues. The markings used to indicate the type of expression he wanted given to the music aren’t much help to the conductor or musicians. All he wrote was “play expressively.” It points toward the conclusion that Shostakovich didn’t want anything on the paper that would provide insight into what he was thinking other than the notes themselves. Musical cloak-and-dagger, nez pas?

And he might have just started an artistic trend.

Jean Anouilh’s Antigone is a play based on Greek mythology first performed in Paris on February 6, 1944 during the Nazi occupation. It apes Shostakovich in that it is deliberately unclear with regard to Antigone’s rejection of the authority of Creon, the former a reference to the French Resistance and the latter to the Nazi occupation. The irony here? It was produced under, and with the blessing of, Nazi censorship! The French people in the audiences got that it was a deliberate slap in Hitler’s face; the Nazis didn’t!

Benjamin George writing in The Musical Times in 1994 believed that Maurice Ravel’s 1920 composition La Valse was intended as a metaphor for the predicament of European civilization in the aftermath of the Great War. Its one-movement design plots the birth, decay, and destruction of a musical genre: the waltz. Concertgoers in occupied Paris in World War Two, however, heard the music as a chilling indictment of the greed, cruelty, and inhumanity of their Nazi captors. Again, the Nazis didn’t get it!

But you can.

On Friday evening September 23 at 8 pm in the Schuster Center, you can join Neal Gittleman and the DPO as they present Shostakovich and Stalin in the 2011-2012 Season premiere of the Demirjian Classical Connections Series. The DPO will perform Shostakovich’s Festive Overture and his Symphony No. 5, and Neal will explain how Shostakovich managed to create a work that sent different messages to two different audiences.

Without having to play it in reverse….

Philharmonic offers successful romantic formula

There are two ways to plan a date night: the smart, successful way and…uh….

Face it – coming up with the perfect date night is no small feat. So, what exactly are the elements that make up a great date night. Flowers? Okay. Candy? Sure. Why not? Drinks? Dinner? Definitely.

Now what? Head over to the Gridiron Bar for a round of brews and darts with the gang…again? A movie…again? A ballgame? All good under normal circumstances. But ultimate? Hardly. And all the others, the flowers/candy/drinks/dinner? In and of themselves, they’re like a group of cruise ships stranded on the floor of a desert. And the water it will take to get them afloat on the ocean of love? The missing ingredient?

Romance.

Romance is passion, emotional – not physical – passion. Something that stirs the soul before it ever gets to stirring any body parts. So, unless you want your ultimate date night leaving you and your date looking like Steve Carell and Tina Fey facing some fairly dire and unforeseen consequences, you better have a plan that includes romance…real romance.

Your grandparents had a plan. It involved listening to Frank Sinatra crooning Full Moon and Empty Arms, I Think of You, or Ever and Forever. Or the background music in films such as Brief Encounter and The Seven Year Itch. And your parents doubtless listened to Eric Carmen’s All By Myself. These works of former generations share a pedigree with a lot of today’s music performed by such notables as Muse (Space Dementia, Butterflies and Hurricanes, Megalomania, Ruled by Secrecy, and Neutron Star Collision [Love Is Forever]). Amici Forever (Nostalgia). It’s even used in Clint Eastwood’s 2010 film, Hereafter.

What is this musical aphrodisiac that spawned all of the tunes and film scores I just mentioned? It was a singular work by a composer who hailed from Czarist Russia. His name was Sergey Rachmaninoff (Sayr-Gay-Eee Rock-Mawn-In-Nawf). The work was his Second Piano Concerto. And everywhere in it there is passion:

Bell-like ringings on the piano that build tension. A Russian-character melody. The notes of chords played in succession.  A lyrical second theme. Agitated and unstable development. A switch to a march-like theme. Then to slow chords. A short climax . Fast tempo. Musical drama. A lyrical theme leads to a long period of development tension. A loud, strong restatement of the second theme ending quickly, ecstatically.

Was it good for you?

All this came from a poor little rich kid, a Russian who became “one of the most formidable pianists of all time and the last truly great composer in the Russian Romantic tradition.” (from allmusic.com)   Born in 1873 and conservatory-trained, Rachmaninoff wrote the Second Piano Concerto in 1901. Following the Russian Revolution he left for the U.S. in 1917, living between there and Switzerland while making American and European concert tours. He died in Beverly Hills in 1943 shortly after becoming an American citizen leaving behind a treasure trove of musical compositions.

Passion was the hallmark of Rachmaninoff’s playing and composing. And none of his works are more passionate than Rach 2, the codename touring pianists use when referring to his Second Piano Concerto. Playing Rach 2 is one thing. Playing it with the intensity, passion, and drive required of it by its composer and first performer requires exceptional talent, skill, and game.

And the DPO has just the pianist for the task. His name is Yakov Kasman. Since his debut in America in 1997 as Silver Medalist in the Tenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, he has performed concerts in the U.S., Russia, Europe, and Asia and appeared as soloist with more than 40 orchestras. Did I mention that he is Russian? Can’t hurt, right?

Power, eloquence, a virile technique, and a compelling artistic vision mark Kasman’s playing. In praise of Kasman, the Los Angeles Times wrote: “Kasman’s style glimmers with the best of Russian schooling: the unabashed caressing of a line, the tempo liberties that dance around a solid beat, the virile technique and voluptuous sound ….”

In other words, game.

Romance. Passion. These are the elements that make up a truly great date night. An ultimate date night. And this season, the DPO has a choice of two nights for your ultimate date, Thursday September 22 and Saturday September 24 at 8 pm in the Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center. Two nights on either (or both!) of which you can enjoy Yakov Kasman and the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. The program opens with Gian Carlo Menotti’s Lewisohn Stadium Fanfare and ends with the über-powerful Shostakovich Fifth Symphony. In between the two, you and your date will experience all the romance and passion of one of the most widely performed and certainly most prolific sources of musical compositions ever created, “Rach 2”, the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto.

After that, it only remains to say Bonsoir et Bonne Chance!

Keyboard Thunder – Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra
September 22 & 24 at Schuster Center, 8 pm
Take Note at Mead ­Theatre, 7pm
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