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Show | D2 TheSalt Lake Tribune ARTS Sunday, August 13, 2000 _ Sounds of Another Ageaat ShakespeareFestival Revels musicians must master exotic instruments and ham it up for greenshows, Royal Feaste __BY CELIA BAKER Musicforthe show includesfamiliar tunes from Wales like “The Ash Grove” and the militaristic “Men of Harlech,” and also au- THESALT LAKE TRIBUNE Ona summer day in Cedar City whenshe was10 years old, Sherry Throop heard a sound thatstill resonates through her summers. “I was wandering around the campus [now Southern Utah UniVersity] and came across someone thentic music such as “Can y Ffon,” sung in Welsh. Instruments for Welsh nightinclude recorders, violins, a harp and a group of quaintly practicing the recorder[a vertical eval times]. I was fascinated. I thought it was the prettiest thing I'd ever heard. That experience set me onto early music.” Fora younggirlin love with the soundsof another age, Cedar City to grow up. Each summerevening, the lawns(or “greens”)of the campus echoed with merry music played on recorders, shawms,fiddies, cornettos, sackbuts anda host of other instruments more com- sizes and ranges — and she does a lot more. Throopand the other musicians of the Revels company — the performers whoentertain at the festival's nightly greenshows, and at Broadway epics such as “Show Boat” often undergo cast and scenery reductions whenthey take the show on the road. Irish drum. Hard-shoe dancing(it resembles clogging) is performed ona woodenbox that amplifies the click of the dancers’ steps. The tunes are lively and have names like “Whack for the Diddle” and “I'ma Rover and Seldom Sober.” Greenshowsare a marathon for Revels musicians in CedarCity. participation and this year — the Loch Ness monster.(That's on Scottish guessed.) night: Maybe you Virginia Stitt, musical director of the Revels company, says the greenshowsare meantforfun, but also serve a purpose. “Weget people who've comeoff theinterstate in the 21st century,” “We have to have bagpipes for the Scottish shows,” says Stitt of the quintessential outdoor instrument. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, highlandpipersare joined by Kendall Hall, assistant director of the Revels musicians,is also a performing memberof the troupe. He says manyof the musiciansare shocked when theyare thrust into drummers in a showthat includes a sword dance, and sword fighting the spotlight doing things they are unaccustomed to. He knowshowit feels. “The director knows'I sing, and asked me to sing on someof the Scottish style — with medieval broadswordsof frankly intimidating appearance. the Royal Feaste — play multiple says Stitt. “They've been driving, instruments. Unlike most musi- eating fast food. The greenshowis songs. Three weeks later,I find out I'm supposed to be dancingas well. cians, these players are not rele- that intermediate step taking them It can be disconcerting to *musi- back in time and preparing them for the [Shakespearean] shows. It’s that halfway point, with some Re- cians who comefrom traditional The greenshowsare a marathon for the performers, who alternate among three performance areas on the green.Hall saysit can bea bit of a reliefto play for the Royal Feaste, setting where you walk onstage, sit down, play, take a bow and you're more accustomed to. gated to somedraftyorchestra pit or lonely platform. They get right into the action on the three green- showstages. Their duties include some singing and dancing,and also speaking onstage and in impromptu mo- ments of mingling with the crowd. Preparation for this year’s shows included learning three spoken di- alects — Scottish, Irish and Welsh — and memorizing more than 80 musicalselections. Each musician plays several instuments. The musicians perform as part of a company ofversatile actors in the popular outdoor shows, which offer a lively mixture of songs, sto- naissance and some modern sounds.I see it asa transitionto the showsfromtheinterstate.” The greenshows have evolved over the years from rather sedate concerts of Renaissance musicinto lively interactive performancesfocusing on early folk music rather than the dignified music of the Renaissance-era courts. “It's livelier and more fun- ries, dancing, fighting, magic, loving now,” says Stitt. “And the musiciansare actually a part of the company. They're finally integrated to the point that they are singers, dancers and musicians. stunts, comedysketches, audience That's the folk influence.” done. Here we're expected totalk to the patrons.It’s a different world. T'm nowto the pointthatI likeit. T'll take any chance I can to be a ham onstage.” Mondays and Thursdays are Welsh night on the greens anew addition to the lineup. Stitt says Fred Adams,festival founder and producer, has long wanted to do a Welsh evening because so many of the old families in Cedar City have a Welsh heritage. Stitt’s challenge wasto:adapt the Welshfolk tradi- tion, which leans toward male vocal music, to include instruments and dancing. in the type of setting musicians are “We get to breathe easier, because wenot expected to go about sounding like an Irishman,” says Kendall. “And we have moreleein selecting music we wantto lay.” The Feaste is designed to be a total immersion Renaissance experience, and includes the art mu- sic of composers such as Orlando Gibbons and John Dowland. “In that respect we like it better,” says Hall. “It's more challengingartistically. The downside is that you get to sit and watch people eating really good food, and you get to smell it.” Festival Composer’s Music Sets the Emotional Tone for Plays Composing music for plays has tried her hand at writing a score made Christine Frezza, resident for a play, “The Bacchae,” andfelt eomposer—for the Utah Shakes- shefinally was getting to use music according to her own inclination pearean Festival, a musical jackof-all-trades. Sheis able to compose in practically. any style, Frezza’s profession has given her something else. too — something her degree in composition didn’t. As a composerof incidental music, she gets to write melodious, tuneful music. jor “WhenI was a composition main the ‘60s, my professors wanted me to write what I call ‘itchy-scratchy music,” says Frezza. “But I kept writing tunes.” While an undergraduate, Frezza Big Broadway Shows Squeeze Utah Stages — to create emotional effect. She then pursued advanced degrees in theater rather than music so she would have a thorough understanding of the way theater works. Frezza has become a masterat writing music that distills the es- sence of time, place and mood. She has written scores for musi but most of her composingi: cidental music” — the music that sets the emotional climatebefore a nonmusical play, then returns be- tween scenes. Her work must reflect accurately the setting and atmosphereof the onstage action, yet mustnever elbow its way to the forefront of the audience’s consciousness.Incidental music must be “filtered through the director's vision,” says Frezza. It also must be tailored to the exacting schedule of scene changes and entr’actes (music between act). Most of us don’t realize how much music we have heard during a play. This year’s epic production of“The War of the Roses” at USF contains 91 brief selections, making 45 minutes of music, muchofit militaristic brass fanfares. Frezza does much of her musical research at squat-and-go travel schedule. Butwith the British megamusi- BY SCOTT C. MORGAN withfiddle, tin whistles in various sizes, and bodhran,the traditional mon to the 15th century than the festival, she plays recordersin all in- Reels, hornpipesandjigs fill out the Irish evenings on Tuesdays and Fridays. The popular Irish dances are played Chieftain-style, — homeof the Utah Shakespearean Festival — was a perfect place cian in the Revels companyat the percussion scribes it as a “baby timpani”), ta- bor (a hand-drum) and tambourine. And the sackbut, speaking of quaint names. It looks like a smaller, skinnier version of the trombone, which descended from the sackbut. wooden flute, played since medi- 20th, and Throopattended thefree greenshowsagain andagain. Nowsheis an adult, and when the plaintive voice of a recorder floats across the quad, Throop is the one whoblowsit. As a musi- named struments:-the-naker (Stitt -de- ‘THE SALT LAKETRIBUNE cal invasion of Broadwaystarting During the 1991 Tony Awards telecast, Broadway and film star Julie Andrews proclaimed, “Broadway is more than a New York street, because wherever a Broadway show “Broadway.’” plays is Asa lead-in toa musical number from a touring production of “Bye Bye, Birdie,” Andrewshighlighted how touring companies can bring Broadwaytheater to people across the country who mightnever takea trip to the Great White Way. While this notion has a romanceto it, theater connoisseurs and professionals often pointoutthe practical and financial reasons that can pre- vent traveling shows from fully measuring up to the Broadway originals. A close examination of the Theater League of Utah’s 2000-01 season. points upthisfact, since alterations have been made to the upcoming tours of “Ragtime,” “Show Boat,” “Annie Get Your Gun” and “The Civil War” from their recent Broadwayincarnations. With. NetWorks as the producerof the tours of “Show Boat” and “The Civil War,”different creative teams have been assembled to create productions that differ from recent highprofile touring and Broadway engagements. Some economic trimming has been done on scenery effects and castsize for the tour of “Ragtime,” while Graciella Danielle, the director/ choreographer of the 1999 Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of “Annie Get Your Gun,”has dele- the listening lab at CarnegieMellon University_in-Pittsburgh, where shelives for the half of the gated the tour directing duties to her co-choreographerJeff Calhoun. yearthat sheisn’t in Cedar City. “I listen to music in the style According to John Ballard, CEO of the Salt Lake City office of SFX Theatrical Group (which operates and booksproductionsfor the The- until I'm saturated with the tempos, rhythms and melodic arcs,” ater League of Utah'sseason), touring companies have historically she says. For “The Merry Wives of been scaled-back versions of the Windsor,” that meantlistening to Broadway originals. For produc- - the English country dances of John Playford. Frezza says the advantage of working on six showsat once, as tions to criss-cross the country, touring shows must be able to easily load in andout ofdifferent theaters for weekly multiple-city en- she does for the Utah Shakespearean Festival, is that if the well of gagements. Without the luxury ofa single Broadway theater to ideas for one show runs dry, she custom-build a production, touring companiesfrequently make reduc- can switch to oneofthe others. Celia Baker tions to accommodate a harried in the 1980s, the bar was raised for spectacle-filled productions on Broadway — and on tour. Road companies like “Les Misérables,” “Phantom”and “Miss Saigon” duplicated most of the scenery and stage effects from their Broadway incarnations, narrowing the differences between Broadway and productions on the road and increasing audience expectations of getting “the real thing” in their hometown. Ballard likens this demandfor spectacle-heavy theater to America’s current obsession with sport utility vehicles. “They just keep on getting bigger and bigger, until changes in the economy force things to turn around.” In the pastfew years, Broadway and its touring market have been. feeling growingpains,particularly with the closing of some highprofile tours that used big, complicated scenery. Ballard says the 1996 tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Blvd.” burst the growing bubble of big touring companies, since many markets couldn’t commit the time and moneytostage it. “We would have hadto put in between $50,000 to $100,000 just to reinforce the Capitol Theatre stage {to accommodatethefirst ‘Sunset Blvd.’ tour],” Ballard said, pointing out that the cost would have appeared in the price of tickets. After Lloyd Webber’s producing companyReally Useful Group Ltd. lost around$10 million to $15 million on the tour, “Sunset Blvd.” eventually did tour Salt Lake last September in a newly conceived andscaled-down production. But even successful large tour- ing productions present booking problems, especially for smaller markets. In the eight years it toured North America, “Miss Saigon” never madeit to Salt Lake before it closed last Sundayin Buffalo, N.Y. 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