by Karen Tortora-Lee on May 18, 2009
Tommy ... Can You Hear Me?
I don’t think I took a breath for a full five minutes as I watched the first scene of The Gallery Player’s production of The Who’s Tommy (original book, music and lyrics by Pete Townshend). I’m not kidding, I literally sat there, stunned … amazed really, at what I was seeing, hearing … feeling. Between the orchestra booming out the amazing score, the lighting (designed by Chris Walsh) which convincingly transformed Michael Kramer’s set into a hatch through which men parachuted down to uncertainty, and the wonderful projection screens that held images of war, destruction, and carnage … well it was all I could do to blink. No doubt about it, Tommy starts with the velocity of a pinball released from the chute … and is the definition of breathtaking.
Thankfully, after an opening that large, the musical soon gently lands you back down in your seat where you’re able to breathe again, and take in the surroundings. For those who don’t know the story, it’s easy enough for me to quote one of Tommy’s most famous songs … That deaf, dumb, blind kid sure plays a mean pinball. But of course … there’s more.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on March 25, 2009
William Inge’s classic Bus Stop was written in the mid-fifties and at The Gallery Players’ production everything right down to set designer Edward Morris’ bread box and costume designer Meredith Neal’s use of horn-rimmed glasses reflect that awww-shucks time period. But even if director Heather Siobhan Curran had decided to take a little creative license and move the whole thing up to 2009, the plot wouldn’t allow it … for one very simple reason. In the middle of the night when a bus must pull into a roadside diner due to bad weather, instead of people sitting off to the side, watching Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on hulu.com, checking their emailing from their Android, updating their FaceBook profiles, Twittering about how boring it is to be stuck in the middle of nowhere, or even just (yawn) listening to their iPod, they actually talk to each other. Sooooooo last century.
The last time I had all the time in the world to tell my life story in a no-distractions-allowed environment was when I was on a jury back in 1992; after 3 weeks I knew all about how Con Edison worked, the entire contents of a bachelor’s refrigerator, heard Vietnam War stories from a vet, and discussed the Torah with a rabbinical student. These were fascinating stories; but they came out slowly and over the course of weeks. The characters of Bus Stop just have the one night …
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