CLEVELAND ARTS & CULTURE

Cleveland Orchestra, Dance, Theater and other Ohio Arts and Culture news

Roger MastroianniBehind her hag's mask, Jessica L. Cope gives the Witch human qualities with her outsized gestures, her cutting stares and her big voice in Great Lakes Theater Festival's "Into the Woods."

Into the Woods

What: Great Lakes Theater Festival presents the musical by Stephen Sondheim, directed by Victoria Bussert.

When: Runs in repertory with "Macbeth" through Saturday, Nov. 8. For performance times, click here.

Where: Hanna Theatre, PlayhouseSquare, Cleveland.

Tickets: $15-$89. Call 216-241-6000.

It's a good, solid production of "Into the Woods" that Great Lakes Theater Festival opened Saturday, to go along with an even better "Macbeth."

But we'll just have to wait a little longer to see what the high-tech goodies at Great Lakes' new, $14.7 million renovated Hanna Theatre can do.

In fact, the one cool stage trick that was supposed to happen at Friday's press preview and Saturday's opening -- the disappearance of the Witch -- didn't.

The hydraulic system that makes the Hanna's stage go up and down in a matter of seconds -- which performs so admirably and so often in "Macbeth" -- leaked fluid and was inoperable until repairs were made Sunday.

Great Lakes recovered admirably, and director Victoria Bussert and her company of actors deliver up a decently sung and well-acted "Into the Woods."

It is easy to appreciate the durability of the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company from the performance aesthetic alone. The troupe's dancers are exemplars of controlled physicality, combining poise, strength and a fearless command of intricate movement ideas.

As part of its 40th anniversary season, the Dayton company made a stop at the Ohio Theatre in PlayhouseSquare on Friday under the auspices of Cuyahoga Community College Performing Arts. The evening contained three works that reflect various aspects of African-American experience.

The theme of the 40th anniversary season is "Engraving Our Legacy," which summons the vital contributions that Jeraldyne Blunden, the company's late founder, and her creative and performance successors have made to dance in Dayton and beyond. Their repertoire comprises creations by African-American choreographers with a bold grasp of contemporary and African dance styles.

Chris Stephens/The Pain Dealer

Autumn in the Alcazar courtyard -- this is the view from one of four suites with a balcony. Like the building itself, the courtyard is an irregular pentagon.

Read more:

The Alcazar through the years

ELEGANT CLEVELAND / This ongoing series looks back at the finest elements of Cleveland's stylish history, as shown in architecture, fashion and other cultural touchstones.

It has stories, maybe a few ghosts, and a whole lot of old-fashioned refinement. Cole Porter and George Gershwin visited. So did Mary Martin, Bob Hope and Jack Benny. One story has Porter writing "Night and Day" here -- though a book on the composer's lyrics says he got the idea in Morocco.

Moroccan or Moorish? Moorish, as in the Alcazar Hotel, Cleveland Heights' bit of old Palm Beach, Fla., or silent-era Hollywood, both of which reveled in the romance of Spain.

When the Alcazar opened in 1923, a story in Cleveland Town Topics, the high-society newsletter, announced: "Picture yourself living in a castle of sun-blessed Spain . . . dreams of architectural perfection have come true; the tiles used in the floors and walls imported directly from Spain. The beautiful fireplace and the wonderful stairs are exact duplicates of those in the famous Casa del Greco in Old Spain."

Joan MarcusAllie Trimm (left) and Graham Phillips get to know each other in Jason Robert Brown's "13," a new musical tour of the pitfalls of adolescent angst.

NEW YORK -- Broadway, that fabulous senior citizen of the entertainment business, might have finally gotten the news about the youth culture.

As traditional audiences grow older, shows with appeal to young adults (as opposed to staged Disney cartoons for kids and their parents) have been gaining some traction along the Rialto.

"Rent" and "Brooklyn" came and went, and "Wicked," "Spring Awakening" and "Legally Blonde" continue on Broadway and come to Cleveland this season. More will follow: "Billy Elliott" opens next month in New York, and a revival of "Hair" is scheduled for spring.

On a recent Big Apple fly-by, three shows -- "13," "Equus" and "South Pacific" -- indicate that Broadway is taking the youth thing seriously, from the onset of adolescence to the brutality of becoming war's cannon fodder.

'13'

If you're an adult, you were 13 at some point in your life, whether you'd like to remember it or not. If you're a pre-adolescent, you have something to look forward to (not!). And if you are 13, well, God help you.

Gus Chan/The Plain Dealer

John Motian works on "Karen's New Dress," a painting he made over an old junk-shop canvas. Behind him are some of the hundreds of paintings he has done since the mid-1980s.

Karen St. John-Vincent, a fine-art photographer, answered the call and soon found herself parked outside the Union Avenue home of John Motian. She figured she'd stop in for an hour and see what the job looked like.

St. John-Vincent was greeted by Motian's outgoing daughter, Rachel, and by Motian himself, humble and a little introverted. She stayed five hours. And it wasn't just one world she fell into. There were scores of worlds, drawn on paper and painted on canvases.

Roger MastroianniFrederick Fellowes (actor Donald Carrier) suffers an embarrassing moment in "Nothing On," the farce-within-a-farce in the Cleveland Play House's "Noises Off."

Noises Off

What: The Cleveland Play House presents the comedy by Michael Frayn, directed by David H. Bell.

When: Through Sunday, Oct. 26.

Where: The Play House's Bolton Theatre, 8500 Euclid Ave., Cleveland.

Tickets: $10-$64. Call 216-795-7000, or simply click here.

Bad farce is easy to perform but hard to watch, and there's plenty of it out there in this political season.

Great farce, on the other hand, requires precise skills, painful physical sacrifice and lots and lots of practice. But it can be one of life's true joys to witness.

"Noises Off," a backstage farce about a bad stage farce going awry, might be the pinnacle of this pratfall-laden genre. With just a little bit more practice, the new Cleveland Play House production might be the ultimate respite from all that bad farce we've been getting lately.

Michael Frayn's play (written in 1982 and updated by the author several times since) concerns a group of loopy British thespians trying to hold their dysfunctional lives together during a 10-week tour of the provinces with a bad bedroom farce called "Nothing On."

"Noises Off" came to New York from London in 1983 and was hailed by New York Times critic Frank "The Butcher of Broadway" Rich, who said it "is, was, and probably always will be the funniest play written in my lifetime."

Written being the key word. Its actually being such a funny play depends entirely on the people performing it.

Ensemble TheatreJoel Hammer (second from left) in a production of "The Price" at Ensemble Theatre.

Dobama Theatre will restructure its management after the Dec. 31 retirement of longtime artistic director Joyce Casey, the theater announced Friday.

Casey, 63, announced her departure Thursday. She ran Cleveland's oldest alternative theater virtually single-handedly for 17 years as a full-time employee. Her history with Dobama goes back more than 30 years.

She will be replaced by a full-time managing director, Dianne Boduszek, and a part-time artistic director, Joel Hammer, Dobama board Chairman William Newby said.

Clair Huxtable, Louise Jefferson and other favorite black television characters come to life in the one-act play, "TV Divas: Sistahs and Their Mistahs."
Local actresses Maxine Brown, Eva Withers-Evans, Jean "Granny" Hawkins, Norma Powell and Angela Winborn appear in "TV Divas," written by Wake Up and Live playwright-in-residence Gary Webster.

Private CollectionRene Lalique's "Cattleya Orchid Hair Ornament,'' 1903-4, made of ivory, horn, gold and enamel, will soon visit the Cleveland Museum of Art for the "Artistic Luxury'' exhibition.

ON VIEW
"Artistic Luxury: Faberge, Tiffany, Lalique''
What: Jewelry and decorative items by three great 20th century designers.
When: Sunday, Oct. 19 through Sunday, Jan. 18.
Where: Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Blvd., Cleveland.
Admission: $17 adult general admission. Call 216-421-7340.

The Cleveland Museum of art's resurgence as a force in the region's cultural life took a major leap in June when it reopened its 1916 galleries as the first completed phase of a vast renovation and expansion. Now it's ready for the next big move.

A week from Sunday, the museum will debut what promises to be a sumptuous exhibition of jewelry and luxurious decorative objects by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Rene Lalique and Peter Carl Faberge.

Yet the experience is also hugely uneven, with heat from the Cleveland Orchestra, music director Franz Welser-Most and a phenomenal soloist setting one important score on fire and leaving another in ashes. A third comes off with a singe.

A majority of the credit for the former goes to superstar pianist Lang Lang, whose brilliant performance of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 dazzles on both technical and expressive levels.