Category: Sarasota

Sarasota Scene: Music & Movies

JWF 3 Comments

HIGHBROW TO LOW BROW?

In the final year of their Verdi cycle (performing all of Verdi’s music over a period of more than 25 years), the Sarasota Opera presented a beautifully staged Aida.  No live elephants, but gorgeous music, colorful Egyptian sets, good singing, and some lovely dancers.  It was a most enjoyable evening and the time flew by, even with the lengthy intermissions.  We went with friends and beforehand had a convivial dinner at Roast, just down the street.  I like the intimacy of the Sarasota Opera House.  The stage is small, the theater not large, and I am more caught up in the unfolding drama than in larger venues.

Last evening we went very early (I won’t admit to how early or my friends will think I’ve become one of “those” senior citizens) to Cortez Kitchen, our favorite “biker bar.”  It does have a bar, but is really a semi-outdoor eatery that serves local grouper fresh from the boat, shrimp, the occasional burger, and even a few sushi rolls.  The spicy shrimp roll is one of our favorites.  It being the weekend, there was live music; hence a large crowd of diners who arrived early and hung on to their tables until Doug Deming and the Jewel Tones took to the stage.  The band was surprisingly good and obviously has a fan base.  We stuck to our table too!

OSCARS

The Chief Penguin and I have already seen most of the Academy Award nominated films with a few exceptions.  Having read the reviews and seen the trailer, I have no desire to see The Revenant.  I’m afraid that it will win the Best Picture award, but I’m rooting for Spotlight, an excellent film about an important topic, and would be satisfied if any of the other nominees besides The Revenant won.

In the interest of being comprehensive, we watched about 20 minutes of Room last evening on our small screen.  I thought the novel was excellent and Donoghue’s depiction of 5-year old Jack convincing.  But, the film was more painful and so we abandoned it in favor of Trumbo, which we viewed in its entirety.  I hadn’t realized that the blacklisting of screenwriters and movie stars went on for so many years, nor had I known anything about the role Dalton Trumbo played by continuing to write and to submit scripts under others’ names.  Only in the late 1970’s did he get recognition for some of his excellent earlier work.  This is a good film and Bryan Cranston (Trumbo) has been nominated for Best Actor.  You will also enjoy seeing Helen Mirren in elegant suits and large hats as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.

ORCHIDS

To round out our week, we took our Philadelphia friends to Selby Botanical Gardens and were wowed by the impressive orchid display in the conservatory.  Hanging orchids, orchid walls, and orchid vines—a kaleidoscope of colors.  These waxy blooms plus a yummy pink bromeliad made my day!

(All photos by JWFarrington)

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Tidy Tidbits: Stage & Page

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ON THE STAGE

The theater offerings in Sarasota are so well done and so polished that you almost don’t need to go to New York. This week we saw a stunningly good performance of Robert Schenkkan play, All the Way, at the Asolo.  I didn’t know of it before (not having followed Broadway closely in the past), but it was the Tony Award winning play of 2014.  It focuses on Lyndon Johnson’s presidency from immediately after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 to LBJ’s election 11 months later.  Detailing Johnson’s determination to get a Civil Rights bill enacted, it is a linguistically colorful and dramatic account of all of the bullying, badgering, flattering and dealing that was required with stakeholders  as various as Martin Luther King and J. Edgar Hoover to the Southern Democrats in the House and Senate.  It was a turbulent period and timely in light of today’s discussions of racial profiling and the Black Lives Matter initiative.

As as a pre-Valentine treat, we enjoyed Living on Love, a musical romp about two self-centered aging celebrities, a flamboyant maestro and an equally narcissistic diva, long married to each other. Enter their ghost writers, an aspiring male novelist and an equally ambitious (for 1957) female editor, and you have conflict, comedy, and love.  Added in are the two male house staff whose Tweedledee and Tweedledum routine is a hoot!  At the end, besides singing and dancing, they offer up a revelation of their own.  Sheer fun!

BOOK REPORT

I admire Lauren Groff’s craft.  She is a creative writer and her staccato prose is full of picturesque allusions.  I read the first half of Fates and Furies, the part that is from playwright Lotto’s perspective, but then I abandoned the book after a few pages of Mathilde’s side of things.  I just didn’t care enough about these two individuals and their friends or their marriage to persevere.  It wasn’t fun nor, for me, rewarding.

On the other hand, I’m finding Beryl Markham’s West with the Night fascinating.  It’s a memoir, but according to the 2013 introduction by Sara Wheeler, a highly selective, edited one.  Markham had three husbands, but there’s nary a mention of any of them, and Wheeler states some events didn’t happen or have been altered.

Although Markham was a pioneering aviator, the book is primarily about her unconventional life in British East Africa (now Kenya) as a young child, as a racehorse trainer, and later as a mail pilot and tracker of elephants for hunters.  She was raised by her father, roamed the wilds with the natives, and learned to ride and hunt.  Originally published in 1942, the book was somewhat lost due to the war; when it was re-issued in 1983, Markham was still alive and the book had a surge of popularity.  She’s a lovely writer and the attention it got is well deserved!  It could easily be paired with one of Alexandra Fuller’s memoirs about her own haphazard upbringing in Africa.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

Header image:  valentine2015s.blogspot.com

Tidy Tidbits: Brain Food

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The season is in full swing and that means lectures, plays, concerts and the like.  This week was packed with activity, all of it stimulating and enjoyable.

SARASOTA INSTITUTE OF LIFELONG LEARNING (SILL)

It’s time for my once a year plug for this marvelous organization.  For 40 years SILL has been presenting notable speakers on global issues and introducing or re-introducing audiences to music performers, creators and producers.  The two series, Music Mondays and Global Affairs, are each given in multiple locations and this past Monday morning, 800 people turned out at Church of the Palms for skilled interviewer June LaBell in conversation with the famous opera baritone, Sherrill Milnes, and his wife, Maria Zouves.  Now retired from performing, Milnes and his wife run a program to coach and nurture rising young singers.  On Wednesday, we joined an equally large crowd to hear Michael Pillsbury, a former defense policy advisor, on intelligence operations between the U.S. and China.  Given that I’m currently watching season 2 of The Americans, I found his stories of failed and successful intelligence efforts and agents especially fascinating.

FILM OF THE WEEK

The Danish Girl.  The opening scenes of Copenhagen’s port area and the rural landscapes are just gorgeous—appropriately lovely cinematography for a film about two artists, Einar and Gerda Wegener.  I think the film could have been more tightly edited, but it is certainly worth seeing and most notable for the stellar performances by its two leads, Eddie Redmayne as Einar, later Lili Elbe, and Alicia Vikander as Gerda.  Set in the 1920’s, it relates the story of a transgendered individual at a time when such a condition was generally unknown and unnamed; you were insane or just plain deluded.  Lili Elbe was a pioneer as this film makes clear, and  it’s an interesting companion piece to a 21st century account, Becoming Nicole, which I commented on in an earlier blog.

AUTHOR TALK

I have not attended that many author talks, but I thought Trompe L’oeil by Nancy Reisman was so beautifully written and such an intricately structured novel that I had to go hear her.  In college I got to hear author John Knowles on stage.  I was very disappointed.  He was shy and retiring in demeanor and so inarticulate I couldn’t imagine how he could have written the much-touted and much discussed, (particularly in high school English classes) novel, A Separate Peace.  I immediately revised my expectation that good writers must be good public speakers.nancyreisman

But Reisman did not disappoint.  Featured at Sarasota 1, our local independent bookstore, she read selected passages from the novel, offered some additional insights into how the work came about and noted that she was interested in the importance of place as well as family dynamics.  Because the work features descriptions of several Renaissance paintings, I asked if she herself painted.  She does not, but her mother is a visual artist and so she grew up surrounded by art.  A professor of creative writing at Vanderbilt, Reisman does most of her writing in the summer.  For devoted fans, like me, that means a longer wait until her next book.

 

 

 

Reisman photo:  www.parnassusbooks.net

Tidy Tidbits: Culture Notes

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Not the Season But

You soon learn when you move here, that everyone refers to “the season.” The season runs from after Christmas through April and perhaps into May. It’s when the snowbirds fly south, all of the part-time residents are back, and the cultural season is in full swing. That said, although the season has not yet arrived, the pace has picked up, and there is a seemingly endless parade of local festivals and fairs, everything from chalk in Venice to blues in Bradenton. Recently, we enjoyed our first Sarasota Orchestra concert for 2015-16, the Sarasota Opera’s very fine production of “La Boheme” and the South Florida Museum’s annual Snooty Gala. Pianist Marc Andre Hamelin and the orchestra presented a memorable performance of Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto along with two pieces by Shostakovich. An upcoming orchestra concert will feature violinist Leila Josefowicz whom we got to know during her years of study at the Curtis Institute.

On the Small Screen

These two TV series on PBS have ended or almost so, but I do think they are worth mentioning. In “Home Fires,” the focus is on the women in a small English town and their desire to help the war effort, but also on the rivalry for leadership of the Women’s Institute. Absorbing and convincing, it will immerse you in the daily lives of the villagers as tensions develop over the impending war.

The characters are many, the social and political alliances tangled and complex, and the accents sometimes thick, but “Indian Summers” is worth one’s time. Set in the early 1930’s at a summer retreat in the Himalayas, it depicts the waning power of the ruling British Colonials and the rising protest of the native classes. Both series are available on DVD.

On the Page

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.

Some of you may recall the stir that was caused when Ms. Clark died at age 104 in 2011, and it was discovered that she owned several sumptuous properties preserved, but not lived in for decades.  They included a chateau style house in Connecticut purchased as a safe house, but never furnished and never visited. Raised in luxury in elegant surroundings on Fifth Avenue, Huguette Clark ended up living the last twenty years in a small, spare hospital room.

While occasionally reading like a sales catalog of fancy goods and art, this is both a lively family history (the first quarter details her father’s creation of a business empire the equal of the Rockefellers and his colorful, questionable career as a U.S. senator) and a fascinating account of this eccentric, strange, and yet generous woman.  Most of the people who worked for her or advised her never met her and dealt with her through letters or phone calls or via the few trusted individuals in her employ. She purchased dolls and art for her own enjoyment while giving away millions of dollars to staff and friends. Dedman’s co-author is Ms. Clark’s grandson and the inclusion of his phone conversations with Huguette shows a more personal side to this very private, secretive woman.