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Posted on 08/10/2011 11:00:40 AM PDT by Borges
There’s a spanking new version of “Porgy and Bess” on the way, one that seeks to transform the classic 1935 opera into a commercial Broadway musical. To that end, the director Diane Paulus and the playwright Suzan-Lori Parks have added new scenes, punched up some dialogue, invented biographical details and — most radically — added a more upbeat ending. Such tinkering with the iconic Gershwin work was bound to draw fire from some quarters, and indeed it has, following the publication of an Arts & Leisure article by Patrick Healy about the production, which stars Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis. It begins performances at the American Repertory Theater on Aug. 17 in Cambridge, Mass., with plans to transfer to Broadway next winter.
Nearly all the readers who responded expressed some degree of concern over this effort to refresh this landmark of American culture for modern audiences. (Michael Musto in The Village Voice even had a little fun with it.)
Among those most rankled was the composer Stephen Sondheim, himself no stranger to bold re-interpretations of his own work, who sent in this letter to the editor on Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Bravo, Mr. Sondheim!
Cab Calloway did a brilliant Sporting Life. He sang *his* version of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” on the Nat King Cole Show, which used to play in rerun on BET. Absolutely wonderful. And he was in his fifties at the time, and performed it vigorously and actively.
There have been several “Rock” covers of Summertime. But of the two that I most know of, both have tried to sign the song in the vein it was meant to be done. Not over the top.
At worst--so what? It'll just die on the vine.
On the other hand, I can't help groaning at the thought of
Greer Garson strutting around in that horrible revision of Pride and Prejudice (Lady Catherine was a kindly old sweetheart who just wanted to make sure her dear nephew was really in love--that sort of thing)
or the various shouldabeenaborted movie versions of Moby Dick
or that horrible, politically correct verson of The Scarlet Letter
or the luducrous London musical version of Gone with the Wind (they got it mixed up with Uncle Tom's Cabin).
As for sitting through long productions--anybody ever sat through Die Götterdämmerung???
The comments of the people who are planning this are not encouraging.
You read my mind. I always saw O as the Emperor Jones.
Ha! I was too late...
It is one thing to stage a production in a new and unusual way; quite another to actually rewrite the show. The Porgy and Bess with Willard White as Porgy broke with tradition by portraying Porgy on crutches rather than his little cart; but they did not add new dialog and "flesh out" the characters. People flock to the "same old" operas year after year. Yes, the music is the same; but they go to see different stagings and hear different voices.
Ooopsie...”Possibility!” not “possibilities”.
Hoisted on my own petard. :-)
You can, but without content changes what you can tweak becomes limited to tempo, key, and staging. Which is why there’s this big wave of content changing going on now. In this day and age of owned media they need, or at least feel they need, more difference to draw people away from the media they already own.
>>>Oh boy! After this maybe they can punch up Rhapsody in Blue with some awesome synthesizers! /s
Then you’d be sure not to like the album “Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin” — I like it :) (It’s on iTunes)
Different staging and different voices aren’t necessarily a big enough draw. Especially when there’s versions out there with voices and staging that are extremely good. How many actors out there today are really on par with White or Poitier, if I’m going to a production of Porgy and Bess I pretty much know walking in that the performance of Porgy will not be as good as the performance I can buy and own for cheaper on DVD.
People DON’T flock to see the same old operas every year, that’s part of the problem. They’re steadily and constantly losing audience, partly because they aren’t drawing in new people, and also because they aren’t drawing in all the same old people. If it’s going to be the exact same show as last year why go again. Rock bands encounter the same problem, if they play the same songs the same way over and over again they tend not to get the same audience over and over. With the cost of shows going up and the content of people’s bank account going down they need to differentiate this wave of shows from the past.
Stage shows didn’t used to be as set in stone as they are now, variations used to be quite constant, deep significant changes. We didn’t used to worship the artifact, there was an understanding that with a different cast and different director you were going to put on a different show, keeping the main structure and dramatic premise, but past that changes ran far and wide. Then we developed an audience that wanted it the same over and over. Now they’re all past 70 and dieing off and we’re getting back to the way things used to be.
There already is such an album: “Rhapsody in Electric Blue” no less. http://www.amazon.com/Rhapsody-Electric-Blue-Jeffrey-Baker/dp/B000008D54 I have it in my collection. I sort of like his version of American in Paris but the RiB is simply awful.
Janis Joplin totally rocked her version of “Summertime”.
I like it too, except for the song that should only be sung by a woman...My Man’s Gone Now, I think.
Never post from faulty memory: the song is "I Loves You Porgy". Performance is certainly okay technically, but the gender issues make it really creepy and not something I expected from Brian ever.
Romantic pianists like Franz Liszt would alter the music they were playing to the point where it was barely recognizable.
Changing the ending of a work of drama goes well beyond any
interpretive license. It’s not the “main structure and dramatic premise” that keeps a work alive it’s the details that separate it from other works with the same “main structure and dramatic premise”. Tasteful changes here and there have always been there. Take as an example that Schumann’s symphonies are badly orchestrated and conductors are constantly trying to spruce them up.
"Who? Franz Liszt? Never heard of him. Wrong number."
Everybody’s got their own idea about how far is too far. But of course the punchline is if they take it too far you can still stay home and watch the DVDs.
I love Audra! I know she would never do anything tacky to ruin “Porgy and Bess.”
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