{"id":3652,"date":"2018-02-19T04:51:21","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T12:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=3652"},"modified":"2018-02-19T04:51:21","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T12:51:21","slug":"chess-and-wss-in-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2018\/02\/19\/chess-and-wss-in-dc\/","title":{"rendered":"Chess and WSS in DC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking of Chita, I zipped to our nation\u2019s capital to see a couple of special theatrical events.  The first was the National Symphony <\/em>performing a truncated concert version of West Side Story<\/em><\/strong>.  This almost nonsensical rendition decimated the story to the point that many people couldn\u2019t figure out what was happening!  But it did underline the genius of Leonard Bernstein<\/strong>\u2019s score and Stephen Sondheim<\/strong>\u2019s words.  One expected that an entire symphony orchestra and some of Broadway<\/em>\u2019s finest young talents would deliver a high-wattage evening, but everything was on a low simmer and never came to a boil.  It was West Side Story Lite<\/em> – although the staging by Francesca Zambello <\/strong>kept things moving.  In a typical production in a small house, these voices would likely have been fine.  But, given the sound mix, nobody quite rose to the level of the event.  A missed opportunity, indeed.<\/p>\n

The following night, I saw the latest revision of the musical Chess<\/em><\/strong>, with a new book by Danny Strong <\/strong>and direction by Michael Mayer<\/strong>.  And once again, an all-star cast was on hand, led with aplomb by Ra\u00fal Esparza <\/strong>playing Freddy.  While I missed his acerbic take as the Arbiter (the role he played in Seth Rudetsky\u2019s Broadway concert version in 2003), there\u2019s no denying he\u2019s a terrific Freddy, with rock star abandon and swagger balancing out the quieter bipolar moments.  It was a magnetic performance.  Ramin Karimloo <\/strong>may be the best all-around Anatoly I\u2019ve ever seen \u2013 complete with a consistent Russian accent!  As Florence, Karen Olivo <\/strong>showed us exactly what was missing from the previous night.  She\u2019s not lost any power, bite, or presence since her 2009 Tony<\/em>-winning Anita in WSS<\/em>.  For me, Ruthie Ann Miles <\/strong>was the weakest link.  Her Svetlana looked like a refugee from the mid-90s Moscow bus and truck tour of Miss Saigon<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 as the matinee cover for Kim!  Was she bad?  No \u2013 just not up to the standard of her colleagues.  The theatre had electricity in the air.  Every entrance, every number, every moment was met with a roar of applause, making it quite an \u201cevent\u201d.  Has Strong fixed the show?  Nope \u2013 he\u2019s solved some problems, but created others.  After seeing this, I\u2019m more certain than ever that a perfect Chess<\/em> is impossible.  But it\u2019s still a helluva great evening of theatre.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking of Chita, I zipped to our nation\u2019s capital to see a couple of special theatrical events.  The first was the National Symphony performing a truncated concert version of West Side Story.  This almost nonsensical rendition decimated the story to the point that many people couldn\u2019t figure out what was happening!  But it did underline the genius of Leonard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3653,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652\/revisions\/3653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}