CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

Watch Polaris and BodyVox Practice!

Posted by: Anne Adams on Apr 26, 2012 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

Our local modern dance companies are kicking up a rehearsal ruckus, and they’re willing to let us watch!

MAY 3-19 BodyVox will present The Cutting Room , a unique pairing of dance, music, and Hollywood outtakes. In case that combo is hard to imagine, allow them to demonstrate with this 6-minute sequence set to snippets of When Harry Met Sally ’s love stories. Portraying a wide variety of boy-meets-girl scenarios and narrator personalities, artistic directors Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland seem to draw from their admitted influence of classic Warner Brothers cartoons, designing moves that hyperbolize human emotion with a somewhat self-effacing, goofy grace:

JUNE 6-16 Polaris will unveil X-Posed , and apparently company fans should expect surprises. “Unlike last year’s Lil’ Mo , we are not focusing on a single theme this time,” reports marketing director Natasha Kautsky. “This is emerging to be a really diverse repertory show.” Artistic director Robert Guitron is set to premier new work, while visiting choreographers contribute their own flair to the mix. Here’s a sneak peek at one featured guest collaborator, Lauren Edson of Boise’s Trey McIntyre Project, getting Polaris in step after just the first few hours of practice:

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Leigh Marble’s New Video

Posted by: Anne Adams on Apr 25, 2012 at 07:00PM 0 Comments

If you look at anything for long enough, it becomes fascinating—one might even say “trippy.” In case you doubt this truth, Leigh Marble’s latest video will demonstrate:

Leigh Marble’s latest video

Focusing on a pair of feet stepping in time to the beat for nearly its entire 4.5-minute span, this video is still somehow engaging, transforming a mundane sight into a stark black-and-white abstract texture field that constantly morphs and moves. Less a music video than a customized music visualizer, this sequence echoes the song’s relentless straightforward simplicity. And while sneaker-and-chainlink tableaus are an old standard of Seattle “grunge” aesthetic, now that the twee “bird on it” memes of Portland are blowing up to the brink of demolition, perhaps it’s time to revisit the mud-moshing no-frills northwest bad attitude of Cobain days.

Out yesterday on local label In Music We Trust, Marble’s album Where The Knives Meet Between The Rows can be purchased here.

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Orange Lining

TriMet wants your poetry to line the new Max line. Only catch: it can’t be longer than 50 characters.

By Camille Grigsby-Rocca

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Apr 25, 2012 at 05:30PM 0 Comments

As work on the new MAX Orange Line connecting Milwaukie with downtown Portland begins, TriMet has issued an open invitation for submissions of short, creative lines of text to be used in Orange Lining, a two-part public art installation planned to accompany the lengthy construction process. Calling upon Portland’s “ethic of civic engagement and creativity,” the project aims to jazz up a long-term construction project and leave a permanent reminder of time’s past under the feet of future transit riders.

Phase One of the project, Art Starts Now, will take place at construction zones along the future 7.3-mile MAX line. By printing selected lines on the orange silt fencing used during construction, TriMet hopes to keep the pedestrians and motorists who will pass the site—and sit through the resulting traffic— entertained and intrigued during the projected 3-year process. (In other words, they’re hoping the power of words will win out over the power of traffic-induced psychotic episodes). Phase Two of the Orange Lining project, Impressed Concrete, will stamp memorable selections from Art Starts Now into the sidewalks along the new route.

Project artist Buster Simpson and collaborator Peg Butler invite the public to submit original, poetic lines of text to be considered for use in Orange Lining, due by midnight on April 29. They must be 50 characters or less, including spaces, and should not include punctuation or symbols—and you thought Twitter was tough!

To get your creative juices flowing, we’ve been provided with a special preview of lines still under review by the TriMet Public Art Advisory Committee (note: these have yet to be approved):

UNDER A ZIPPER OF BRIDGES OUR GREEN CITY THRUMS
EVERYONE IS A LITTLE MORE FAMOUS ON THE TRAIN
SHE KNEW SHE WOULD GET THERE IN TIME

Lines may be submitted through the project website and via email or mail:

lines@orangelining.net
Orange Lining, P.O. Box 4693, Portland OR, 97208

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Review: Brother/Sister Plays Part II

Tarell Alvin McCraney’s theater-as-literature demands a deep read, and induces an equally deep trance.
ENDS MAY 20

Posted by: Anne Adams on Apr 25, 2012 at 02:00PM 1 Comments

Bobby Bermea, Damian Thompson, and Brian Demar Jones take lead roles in Portland Playhouse’s multigenerational masterpiece.

Here’s what you need to know about Portland Playhouse ‘s Brother/Sister Series: You won’t get the second part without seeing the first part, and you might not get the first part, either, without reading up. The first part is one play, while the second part is two plays, and the whole series is a two-part trilogy (yes, you read that correctly) across a multigenerational timeline. Moreover, symbols abound, connections are complex, and the narrative splits and rejoins in places you wouldn’t anticipate.

In fact, the series is so complicated that there’s a wall chart posted in the theater to delineate it, complete with codes for the three plays (“RBW” = "In The Red and Brown Water, and so on) and strings between characters bearing details of interpersonal connection (lover, child, etc). With so much study implicit in one’s appreciation, prodigy playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s work seems to reverse the usual literature-to-theater path, creating characters that instead leap from the stage onto the page.

As if to help their theoretical transcriber, the play’s characters self-narrate their actions in third person before demonstrating them. “Shaunta kisses her teeth,” says Shaunta (Lava Alapa’i), making a sucking sound. “Oshoosi Size smiles,” says Oshoosi (Damian Thompson), smiling. As a watcher, you’re caught off guard by the synesthesia of seeming to read what you’re actually physically seeing, and this sort of sensory confusion is the hallmark of another discipline: hypnosis.

As a piece of literature, the series could be shelved between the heady, epic complexity of John Updike’s In The Beauty of the Lilies and the black-vernacular slang poetry and close-knit community of Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. As a hypnotic induction, it flows alongside the conventions established by “father of hypnosis” Milton Erickson. Repetition, in this case of dreamlike and mutable motifs (water, deity presences, the moon and other universal icons), gesture (the “God poses” that characters repeatedly assume, especially in RBW), and sound (intermittent djembe drumbeats) gradually ply the audience open to pleasant disorientation and strong suggestibility—that is to say, you will have the intended experience, but once you snap out of your trance, you may be unable to remember or explain it.

Part I , In the Red and Brown Water, was reviewed last week by Aaron Scott .

Part II
The Brothers Size is perhaps the most traditional narrative of the three, a classic Cain-and-Able tale with a few personalizing details. Oshoosi (Damian Thompson) has been released from prison into the care of his salt-of-the-earth older brother, auto mechanic Ogun (Bobby Bermea). While Ogun tries to reform his younger brother, Oshoosi’s presumed prison lover Legba (Brian Demar Jones) tries to draw him back into the system. In what turns out to be a furlough rather than a fresh start, Ogun and Oshoosi wrestle, tease each other and even spring into an ardent performance of Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness,” as Ogun confesses that he’s always looked out for his little bro, and Oshoosi admits that yeah, he knows. Ogun and Legba are both carryover characters from RBW, in which Ogun was the longsuffering boyfriend of the charming but ineffable Oya, and little Elegba was a mysterious kid who haunted everyone’s lawn, manifested a foreshadowing sweet tooth (more on that later) and reported having strange dreams and visions.

Marcus; Or The Secret of Sweet, follows Legba’s legacy to a son, Marcus, who shares many of his father’s traits—most notably, being “sweet” (a black vernacular term for “gay,” and a variance of the common idiom “He’s got sugar in his back pocket.”) To cement their similarity, the roles of both father and son are played by the same actor: Brian Demar Jones. On the surface it’s a coming-out tale, but in the context of all three plays, perhaps it’s also a more profound demonstration of the general repetition of sociological cycles, with a note of hope about each new generation’s increased potential for crisis coping and self-actualization.

Marcus, it seems, finds a healthier outlet for his sexual preferences than his father did. Similarly, a group of young girls (played by the same cast members who portrayed the prior generation of women in RBW) seems more resilient and supportive than their foremothers, especially in the case of Osha (Ramona Lisa), Marcus’s would-be girlfriend, who’s slighted by his announcement but not brokenhearted. “I shoulda known,” she quips. “You the only one I can sing The Wiz straight through with.” Where Oya (also played by Ramona Lisa) was ultimately crushed by a failed romance while the women around her acted resentful and catty, these new characters from the next generation, far more self-possessed, take romantic disappointments in stride.

Though all portrayals are strong and many performances are more flamboyant, the unlikely keynote of the trilogy turns out to be shy, stuttering straight-man Ogun (Bobby Bermea, artistic director of Portland’s BaseRoots Theater). As the only character who appears in all three pieces, Bermea’s role becomes a stable center point around which the rest of the action hypnotically unfurls.

Like a good book, the Brother/Sister series demands an investment of time, energy, analysis and emotions in exchange for a journey into worlds you might not have otherwise seen, and lives you haven’t lived. Unlike a book, it’s only open for a limited time…so get cracking.

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Win Tickets to Radiolab + Interview with Jad and Robert

Radiolab performs two live shows Friday and Saturday at the Keller with Pilobolus Dance Company, comedian Demetri Martin, and musician Thao Nguyen. Co-hosts Robert Krulwich and Jad Abumrad tell us what it’s all about.

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Apr 24, 2012 at 04:00PM 11 Comments

Jad on stage with Pilobolus and Thao Nguyen in Berkeley. Photo by Jared Kelly

This contest is now closed. Please sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter to learn about future contests.

Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich co-host WNYC’s making-nerds-sexy program Radiolab (carried nationwide on public radio stations, including OPB), a show that combines storytelling, music, and unwavering curiosity into sonic adventures that explore science and the human experience. Its fans think it’s brilliant, and so does the MacArthur Foundation, which recently awarded Abumrad a genius grant. Lucky for Portland, we’re one of the few cities to which Radiolab is bringing its new live show, “In the Dark,” complete with a comedian host, live music, and a troupe of dancers. They’re performing this Friday and Saturday at the Keller Auditorium. Saturday is sold out, but tickets are still available for Friday and run from $35.50–$61. I asked if they’d be willing to give a pair to a Culturephile reader, and they kindly obliged.

Also, this just in: Radiolab added a student discount. Students with ID can get 50% off through the Box Office or online through Ticketmaster with the code EYEBALL.

On to the interview, which I should preface with the disclosure that I’ve reported a number of stories for the show.

For each episode, you pick a basic concept of life, like Laughter, Race, or Choice, and then lace together a tapestry of stories, interviews, sound effects, and music that delve into the science and philosophy of that concept. What’s the theme of the live show? And will you just sit on stage pushing buttons?

Robert: It’s called “In the Dark.” Jad: In the dark is where sexy time happens. It has that connotation. Robert: But we’re not doing that. What we’re doing is our fantasy idea. This will involve: a comedian, Demetri Martin, who is the host; a live score by Thao Nguyen; and a team of dancers from Pilobolus. We’re going to take you on three adventures with musical breaks and funny stuff. It’s a variety show.

Jad: The great thing about a live situation is we can make it into an experiment. The first part experiments with what it’s like to emerge out of darkness from a tiny primitive eye into a full-blown eyeball. The second experiments with what it’s like to be blind. And the third part experiments with what it’s like to float through space and almost get fried by the sun. Robert: Through inky darkness.

That’s a lot more ambitious than your first live show that you took to Seattle last year, which consisted of the two of you, a fancy sound box, and musical interludes by cellist Zoe Keating. What was it like to collaborate with musicians and dancers?

Jad: In the past our live shows have always been a derivative from the broadcast show. Like, come sit in a live theater and watch us mime the act of making radio. This is a different beast. We created it for the stage.

Robert: The collaboration was the fun part. For example, we tried to figure out how to show the audience what it was like to evolve an eye, how does an eye start, and why do eyes have different shapes? And the Pilobolus dancers were endlessly inventive. One of them went to a Japanese paper store and bought those spherical lampshades, put eyeballs on front, built carriages to put them on the dancers, and suddenly eyeballs were dancing around us. Jad: That’s never happened to us before. This felt like a big posse of people throwing ideas, and what emerges is a different Radiolab than anywhere else.

Robert: At one point somebody is dangling in space from a Russian spaceship, and the dancers actually create the image of someone dangling through light tricks and odd postures. You see what they’re doing, but you forget, and it’s like they’re in outer space. What they came up with was sophisticated and strangely beautiful. The ending we hope is gasp worthy. Jad: The first time we saw the ending, it was a gasp from Robert and I.

Normally, when you’re making the show, you’re in a little dark room with each other and a producer or two. What is it like to transition to a live audience of 2000 fans?

Robert: For me, this began as an adventure between two people, and it stayed small and particular for a very long time. When you go into these halls, it’s not small anymore. I keep looking out of the corner of my eye to make sure Jad’s there.

Jad: This is something I haven’t thought about, but a funny thing happens right before we go on and after we come off, when Krulwich and I are standing in semi darkness, and in that moment, it feels like it’s the beginning again. We’re two free-floating particles going out together against the universe. Then the next moment somehow our friendship is inhabited by 2000 people. It has this oscillating quality where it feels small, and then it expands to infinity, then we walk off and we’re back into the original point. If Krulwich sprains his ankle going on stage, we have no show. It’s us against the world, but also us with world.

And being live opens the door to shit going wrong. Like at the start of your Seattle show last year, your computer wouldn’t work, and you froze.

Jad: In that moment, I felt like Robert and I were floating through space. Robert: I couldn’t understand why Jad didn’t start to cry. Jad: It was a dissociation moment. There I am on stage, look at me, sitting there, pushing buttons, and nothing’s happen. What a funny little man. Robert looks to me and says, “we could just go away and pretend this wasn’t happening.” But at this point, short of one of us bursting into flames, we can handle it.

Robert: That’d be interesting; I’d just get a hose.

I was shocked by how rowdy your Seattle audience was. Every time you said the name of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the crowd erupted like Justin Bieber had walked onstage. Did you ever imagine going into radio that one day you’d be a rock star?

Jad: The first five years of the show, people heard it from time to time, but I felt largely ignored. That state of being ignored feels like the resting state, so it feels like walking on the moon when someone comes sprinting across the lawn to tell you they love the show.

Robert: If I told you, I have a great idea: let’s have two guys talking about biology, chemistry, and physics in dense ways, you’d say that sounds like a terrible idea. It’s a miracle that there’s an appetite for it, and a great honor to have started the conversation.

Off the top of my head, the stories you’ve done that involve the Pacific Northwest have been about transgender mayors, serial killers, and sperm. Is that all we are to you?

Robert: That’s all you’ve ever been. I remember sitting around talking about the Pacific Northwest with Jad and saying, ‘lets think of three things, and then we’re done with that part of the world.’ Two of them were by you by the way. You should branch out and look at tackle football players finding god or something.

Touché. I don’t know if it was your last time in Portland, Jad, but we did spend a weekend in Silverton hanging out with the transgender mayor, Stu Rasmussen. Was there a takeaway from Portland or Oregon for you that weekend?

Jad: Portland’s amazing. I remember we went and talked to one of the most inspirational people we’ve ever had on the show. We drank tons of amazing coffee. I did a singles event where I bumped into the people who so fit the people we talk to on Radiolab. Portland feels like some sort of weird utopia, which is also troubling. It’s like, when’s the other shoe going to drop, when’s the werewolf going to run out from behind the tree?

You mean Grimm?

Jad: That’s filmed in Portland?! That makes total sense.

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2012 Oregon Book Award Winners

Joe Sacco wins first graphic novel award

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Apr 24, 2012 at 12:00PM 1 Comments

Last night, Literary Arts announced the winners of the 25th annual Oregon Book Awards. Standouts include Joe Sacco’s meticulously reported and drawn Footnotes in Gaza winning OBA’s first ever graphic novel award (yes, it took them 25 years to acknowledge that graphic novelists deserve a seat at the literary adult table—the book also won a 2010 Eisner Award), and Patrick deWitt’s novel about two murderous brothers, The Sisters Brothers, winning the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction (it was also a finalist for the Booker Prize).

Eloise Jarvis Mcgraw Award for Children’s Literature
Graham Salisbury of Lake Oswego
Calvin Coconut: Hero Of Hawaii

Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature
Emily Whitman of Portland
Wildwing

Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction
Kenneth J. Ruoff of Portland
Imperial Japan At Its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration Of The Empire’s 2600th Anniversary

Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction
George Estreich of Corvallis
The Shape Of The Eye: Down Syndrome, Family, And The Stories We Inherit

Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry
Carl Adamshick of Portland
Curses And Wishes

Ken Kesey Award for Fiction
Patrick Dewitt of Portland
The Sisters Brothers

Pacific Northwest College of Art Graphic Literature Award
Joe Sacco of Portland
Footnotes In Gaza

Readers Choice Award
Lidia Yuknavitch of Portland
The Chronology Of Water

Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award
Dr. Ulrich Hardt of Portland

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It’s Official: Joe Haege = the Creepiest Guy in Town

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Apr 24, 2012 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Haege sniffing a wrestling onesie in the fantastically absurd Menomena video for Taos

In a message about Adam Arnold’s amazing costumes for OBT, Shop Talk chanteuse Eden Dawn innocuously sent me a link to a video starring members of Tu Fawning and 31 Knots, saying only that “It’s a little strange, but so are we.” It’s more than a little strange: it’s the creepiest thing I’ve seen in a long time. I’m never going to be able to shop at Cherry Sprout market again. Ever. It’s basically the Portland version of The Cable Guy, with Joe Haege as your local corner grocer Jim Carrey.

Of course, anyone who’s seen him perform or in a whole slew of music videos knows that Haege has a flair for the dramatic. And if you saw him in, say, the feature How the Fire Fell, where he played a polygamist cult leader, you know he can be creepy, or, as in the case of Menomena’s ‘Taos’ music video, slimy creepy. But this is a new level. It’s also kind of hilarious, so if you like the sensation of shivers running up your spine, and you don’t mind souring your future Cherry Sprout shopping experiences, by all means have a look.

Haege’s band Tu Fawning has a new album, A Monument, coming out in May and recently premiered a video for the song “Anchor." In it, the band members trek through a stormy Oregon coastal setting in neo-tribal outfits as an homage to ritual and the “otherwordly.” I wish I could say it was a palette cleanser—it’s certainly a beautifully shot video for a catchy wintry pop song (watch for our review of the album in the May issue)—but Haege is once again creepy. This time in an Arabian Nights dystopian disco getup. In a cave. And what the hell is that foam stuff?

For more about Portland arts, visit PoMo’s Arts & Entertainment Calendar, stream content with an RSS feed, or sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter!

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Review: OBT’s Chromatic Quartet

Four performances from contemporary to classical ballet, from dark-edged sexiness to sublime meditation. Through April 28

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Apr 21, 2012 at 10:00AM 1 Comments

Photo by Blaine Truitt Covert

Stage lights shine down with harsh, fractured, noir-like geometry on a ballerina in a gorgeous cocktail dress splayed on the stage like the victim of some glamorous nightclub murder. Male dancers in finely tailored shirts and ties roll and drag themselves across the floor. It would seem sacrilegious to see local high-end designer Adam Arnold’s hand tailored clothes put through such motions if the performance wasn’t so damn sexily brilliant.

Rarely do I watch something on stage and, upon its end, wish I could hit rewind and watch it at least two or three more times, but such was the case with The Lost Dance, the second performance in Oregon Ballet Theatre’s spring program, Chromatic Quartet, running through April 28 at the Newmark Theatre. Choreographed for OBT by the Canadian dancer Matjash Mrozewksi to original music by electronic composer Owen Belton and with classic, Mad Men-era costumes by Adam Arnold (see our interview and slideshow), the piece oozed elegance and grit, full of acrobatic choreography that mixed contemporary with Latin handclaps and a certain Bob Fosse flair to feel like an intoxicating nightclub dream. All of the dancers were exquisite, particularly soloist Lucas Threefoot, who opened the piece, and small-framed Javier Ubell, whose movement flowed like smoky bourbon swirled neat around a highball.

The four performances in Chromatic Quartet ran the gamut from cutting edge contemporary to classical ballet, from the dark edged sexiness to quietly contemplative, and showed that our home ballet company is just as skilled and provocative as any of the international companies that come through town.

The other stand out for me was Liturgy, created by “ballet’s golden boy” Christopher Wheeldon, who we were informed was just inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences “alongside Hilary Clinton and Clint Eastwood,” to music by Arvo Part performed live on violin and piano. Masterfully danced by Haiyan Wu and Brian Simcoe, the pas de deux shifted with the minimalist score from quick, athletic dance to slow, floating movements, some of the partner work hovering close to acrobalance. It was a sublime meditation that balanced out Lost Dance’s heady rush.

The show closed with an intriguing piece, Lambarena, choreographed to composer Tomas Gubitsch’s musical homage to the legendary missionary and Bach organist Albert Schweitzer. The score combined orderly Bach melodies with polyphonic, polyrhythmic music of Gabon, and it’s remarkable how well the two musical forms played together, violin progression underpinned by exuberant drums and singing, sometimes one fading out to let the other shine. And just as the music was a mashup, so too was the dance—orderly ballet and pointe mixing gracefully with the more free and ecstatic movements of African dance. The funny little powdered wig ponytails pinned to some of the male dancers aside, the piece was a joyous exploration of cultural collaboration and complementation, whose occasional solemn and almost foreboding moments even allowed room for some of the troubling colonial underpinnings.

Finally, the opening performance, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, was late Balanchine. Though well executed, I must admit that it was most interesting for me in the way that you could see his influence seep through in the other pieces. For instance, the way the dancers’ arms intertwined in Liturgy could likely trace its genesis back to Balanchine. But I imagine there might’ve been those in the audience who found Lost Dance too edgy, and for them there’s Balanchine, making for a well-rounded night of dance.

For more about Portland arts, visit PoMo’s Arts & Entertainment Calendar, stream content with an RSS feed, or sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter!

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Review: Portland Center Stage’s Anna Karenina

Portland Center Stage’s brisk, lush production captures the spirit of the book but, thankfully, not the length. Playing through May 6

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Apr 19, 2012 at 03:00PM 0 Comments

Kelley Curran in Kevin McKeon’s adaptation of Anna Karenina, playing through May 6 at Portland Center Stage. Photo by Patrick Weishampel

Just as every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, to quote the opening sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, every theatrical adaptation is unhappy in its own way, too. Not to say that there aren’t many wonderful adaptations, but just that the adaptation process is a struggle that, much like a family, involves fights, oversights, and sacrifices, from which few exit unscathed.

Which is why the success of Seattle writer Kevin McKeon’s adaptation of the classic at Portland Center Stage, directed by Chris Coleman and running through May 6, is no small feat. McKeon manages to condense Tolstoy’s sprawling masterpiece about a woman whose love rattles the prison of her social situation into a brisk, ensemble-based production that captures the tragedy of the original, adds a slightly anachronistic humor, and—the gargantuan length of the original be damned—does it all with intermission in under three hours. Whew!

As quick summary, Anna Karenina, considered one of the greatest novels of all time, tells the story of a married, aristocratic Russian woman who falls in love with another man, eventually abandons her husband for him, struggles with her consequent exile from high society and inability to visit her son, and ends tragically. Meanwhile, two contrasting couples serve almost as alternate endings: Anna’s brother’s wife accepts his philandering and they move past it in a mutually agreed upon ignorance of sorts, and that wife’s sister marries a painfully honest but existentially awkward man for love and the two come to respect each other.

In order to cover all the explication of the novel, McKeon uses a clever fix of ensemble narration: one character says one line and another says the next, often taken straight from the novel. Combined with Coleman’s incredibly tight blocking—they’re 89 costume changes between the 17 actors in Act One alone!—the story unfolds like clockwork.

Fascinatingly, McKeon’s method recalls another powerful ensemble performance currently running, Portland Playhouse’s Brother/Sister Plays. While Brother/Sister’s ensemble narration creates a sense of the mythological from the everyday (read our review here), Anna Karenina’s creates an overpowering sense of inevitability—Anna cannot escape the fate of her social position no matter what she does. And it has the same unfortunate side effect of somewhat distancing the play from its emotional impact. It’s not until the end, when Anna is on stage alone with no further narration, that the emotion of the story becomes truly palpable, building to crescendo with the force of a, well, steam engine.

The grand marble pillars of the set, the intricate costumes, and the evocative lighting (designed by G.W. Mercier, Miranda Hoffman, and Ann Wrightson, respectively) are utterly gorgeous. At points, the theater appears all the world like a Maxfield Parrish painting, if he’d romanticized his fellow Victorians instead of Grecian maidens. But though the costumes are period, McKeon doesn’t make the same overture with the language, which is surprisingly modern and adds a layer of humor to the tragedy that keeps the play fresh—although I think Downton Abbey has shown that you can include zingers while staying period appropriate, as opposed to taking McKeown’s at times almost Clueless route (e.g. “Fuck the privilege”).

The humor is amplified by Keith Jochim, who practically steals the show as Anna’s husband Karenin, playing him with the emotionless dryness of a bureaucrat who doubts nothing and schedules everything—even sex. Kelley Curran, who had to learn the role in less than a week after the original actress took ill, plays Anna with an inner steel that devolves to paranoid hysteria by the end. Michael Sharon plays her lover, Count Vronsky, with turns equally seductive and slimy, devoted and selfish. And R. Ward Duffy stands out from the ensemble with affable charisma as Anna’s cheating brother, Stiva.

All in all, under Coleman’s able direction, it’s an epic, entertaining journey through a classic. We can just be thankful that McKeon wasn’t paid the same way as Tolstoy: by the word.

For more about Portland arts, visit PoMo’s Arts & Entertainment Calendar, stream content with an RSS feed, or sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter!

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Tags: Theater, Review, Portland Center Stage

Marc Maron in Portland

The in-demand comic discusses comedy festivals v. solo shows, favorite Portland foods, and the impending demise of hipster culture.

by Sara Gates

Posted by: Anne Adams on Apr 18, 2012 at 08:30PM 0 Comments

APRIL 19–21 After performing stand-up comedy for decades, it seems like Marc Maron’s officially “blowing up.” Ubiquitous on late-night shows like Real Time with Bill Maher and Late Night with Conan O’Brien (which he’s visited 47 times), he signed a deal with IFC to produce a semi-autographical show amid anticipation of his forthcoming memoir, Attempting Normal.

As if that weren’t enough, Maron tapes two “WTF with Marc Maron” podcasts a week out of the garage in his Los Angeles home, hosting a different fellow comedian, writer, or performer each time and capturing intimate revelations (Louis CK, Robin Williams, Norm MacDonald) and tense confrontations (Dane Cook, Carlos Mencia). Loyal “WTF” listeners turn out in droves when he performs live, providing an enthusiastic and engaged atmosphere that’s usually reserved for marquee names in big theaters.

This weekend, Maron will bring that energy to Helium Comedy Club on SE Hawthorne, performing five shows between Thursday and Saturday. As a stand-up, Maron’s act is considerably more mature, cerebral, and brutally forthright about his inner struggles than many of today’s pop-culture-obsessed comics. In anticipation of his trip to Portland, Culturephile spoke with Maron by phone.

First off, congratulations on the recent announcement of your IFC show! You’ll be in good company with Portlandia. What can you tell us about your show?
Thanks. Well, it’s a single-camera, scripted comedy, with me as a guy who’s been divorced twice and who does a podcast in my garage and has a younger girlfriend and a crazy father with mental issues. So, basically, my life.

Comedy fans want to know: how much will the podcast itself feature in the show?
The podcast will be a part of it, as an opportunity to pull in guests to the show, but it’s not like we’ll be taping me recording the actual podcast. It’ll be a heightened version of reality, sort of like a Larry Sanders Show type of thing… if that’s possible to achieve within the confines of my garage.

So we just wrapped up Bridgetown Comedy Festival, but you were playing shows in New Jersey over the weekend. Was it an intentional choice to come to Portland the week after the festival?
No, not that I know of. It wasn’t intentional. Hopefully Portland isn’t too comedy-ed out by the time I get there….

As a comic who’s played at plenty of festivals, how would you say a large festival compares to doing your own thing at a comedy club?
Each festival is different, but you’re usually doing a shorter set and a lot of different kinds of performances and at different venues. You share the stage with a lot of people, and get to hang out with a lot of fellow comics, so that’s fun. But when it’s just me, doing my hour-and-change set, it’s just the Marc festival. Which, you know, is more fun for me.

You recently had Carrie Brownstein on the podcast, and talked a little about Portland. You mentioned feeling like an outsider when you come to visit … how so?
I think it’s just the culture there is so specific and so niche that it seems nearly impossible to come into that and not feel like an outsider. I’ve lived in cities like San Francisco and New York where this was this element of a really specific culture, and Portland seems to be made up entirely of that kind of thing. But I’m not judging. I like Portland. You guys have some really good food.

Any favorites?
Love Bunk Sandwiches, I usually end up there. And I’ve been to that biscuit place that’s really good.

It’s not unusual for your WTF listeners to bring you baked goods when you perform in their towns. So on behalf of Portland fans, I’ll ask: Any allergies? Do you do gluten-free? Vegan?
No, none of that. I’m not like that. I can be a little hard on vegans, although my girlfriend’s a vegetarian, so I’m not judging and I’m certainly not unfamiliar with it. I do know when it’s a vegan baked good, it sometimes tastes denser than it normally tends to be. When it’s a vegan entrée, there’s usually something mysteriously chewy.

Well, we also have the other Portland trend of putting bacon on everything.
You know, bacon’s one of those things that we love, but it’s always been horrible for us. Bacon has never been good for us. No one’s ever said, “Oh, a little bacon, a little pork belly is good for you.” But we’ve decided to say f*** it in the name of flavor. It just tastes too good, so we’re going to eat it even though it may kill us.

You know, our most famous food here in Portland is a bacon-maple doughnut—
—Then that may be the great undoing of the hipster culture. But yeah, I’ll eat it.

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Win Tickets to Grammy-Winning NYC Chanteuse Lady Rizo

The Oregon prodigal daughter returns for two blowout nights at the Star Theater on April 24 & 25

Posted by: Aaron Scott on Apr 18, 2012 at 02:00PM 4 Comments

I’ll say this as bluntly as I can: Lady Rizo is consistently one of NYC’s best night’s out. She’s got pipes that can go from a Nina Simone warble to a Janis Joplin belt, but just as entertaining is her wit—sharp as diamonds, dirty as coal, and all gussied up like glittering false lashes on a drag queen. And she’s got the chops to boot: a Grammy for her duet with legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma, appearances on Moby’s albums, choreography credits for Debbie Harry and others, and for the last couple years, she’s been the Mistress of Ceremonies for The Darby, a decadent West Village supper club where she regularly entertains folks like Prince, Beyonce & Jay-Z.

A native Oregonian, Rizo’s act shares some commonalities with Portland’s house songstress, Storm Large: both are bawdy, sexy gals mixing loungey covers of pop hits with some of their own songs. But whereas Storm veers to the grunge, punk, and rock and roll, Rizo goes classy and campy sophistication, mixing jazz standards and her own writing with hilarious, smokey reinterpretations of songs like “Blame it on the Alcohol” and “Toxic.”

She’s playing two shows at the Star Theater on April 24 & 25 at 9pm, $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

This contest is now over.

And if you’re lucky, she’ll invite you onstage to help with her costume change behind a screen while she asks you on mic how you lost your virginity. Contest closes Friday at 5pm.

One of her originals, Dominika:

A proper Portland mashup: “Poker Face” + polka beat = “Polka Face”

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Remembering Rhoda

A look back at 78-year-old Portland artist Rhoda London’s final installation at Place Gallery proves even more moving in retrospect.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Apr 18, 2012 at 12:00PM 0 Comments

A clinical twin bed bolstered by books, a table laden with objects that resembled apothecary goods, and a series of window-like abstracts were artist Rhoda London’s submissions to an installation simply titled and… at Place Gallery last summer. Paired with Harrison Higgs’ beautifully blurry projections of sunlit plants and accompanied by an artist statement about the uncertainty of the afterlife, the work as a whole hearkened O Henry’s touching short story The Last Leaf , a tale of hope in a setting of hospice.

Keeping her diagnosis of late-stage pancreatic cancer secret from all but her sons and close friends (including Place curator Gabe Flores) the much-beloved local artist and Washington State University teacher chose to translate her experience directly into the work, allowing her to explore a subtle emotional interplay between tension, resignation, and openhearted acceptance.

“I loved how rigorous she was in conversation and in her practice,” said Flores upon learning of London’s passing last week. “She will be greatly missed.” As the gallery plans a retrospective of London’s works, take a look back at her eloquent closing exhibition.

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