Despite my personal family tragedy, I still had many wonderful experiences in 2015. I attended--and produced and/or presented--many thrilling performances throughout the year, and I offer here a recap of some of the highlights:
If you had told me a few years ago that I would be producing the U.S. premiere of Tony Award-nominated composer Frank Wildhorn's (Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel) new musical at BYU in 2015, I'm sure I wouldn't have believed you. Yet, that's exactly what happened. The show had all of Frank's hallmark traits: epic story, exotic locations, romance, and lush melodies. It was so fun to be able to connect our students and faculty with Frank and scriptwriter/lyricist Jack Murphy during their visits to campus for auditions, rehearsals, and performances. Born from a personal friendship with the composer sparked by Frank's visit to Provo for my BRAVO! concerts series in Oct. 2013, Monte Cristo became a labor of love for me. How grateful I am that my colleagues at BYU were willing to take the leap. Fortunately, the show was a huge success, selling out of the entire run (more than 11, 000 tickets) before the first performance had even taken place. Perhaps even more thrilling is the continued friendship and mentoring Frank has offered me. Not only did I attend his wedding in Hawaii in July, but he regularly teaches and inspires me when we get together on my trips to New York as I attempt to make my first foray into the sometimes overwhelming arena of commercial (Broadway) theatre producing. Next up for Monte Cristo: the professional regional premiere at Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, May 6-21, 2016, directed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge.
Truly one of the great arts festivals of the world, this professional, curated festival showcases music, theatre, and dance from across the globe. I've attended it three times, and this was by far the most rewarding visit. Not to be confused with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) features ambitious, genre-busting, fully-staged programming from exciting troupes from across the globe. In 2015, I saw several shows at the EIF, some of which were the most thrilling live theatre experiences I have had in all my life. These included a production called The Encounter, by Simon McBurney's London-based company, Complicite. This solo play utilized sound design to tell a story of one man's journey deep into the Amazon jungle many years ago to photograph a remote tribe untouched by the outside world. Each person in the audience donned a set of headphones for the duration of the performance, giving the show an immediacy and intimacy I have never before experienced in a play. 887 was also a solo play, this one by the Canadian actor Robert Lepage. The production, basically a memoir of Lepage's childhood, used puppetry and incredibly detailed small-scale stagecraft to tell its story. Moviestar Juliette Binoche played the title role in Antigone, directed by man-of-the-moment Ivo van Hove. This exciting production melded music, acting, contemporary design, and simple staging with an easily digestible translation of the Greek tragedy to create a powerful performance. Last, the National theatre of Scotland's co-production of Dragon with the Tianjin Children's Art Theatre was a wordless play about the adventures of a boy and a dragon imagined in his mind. A cross between War Horse (the play) with How to Train Your Dragon (the movie), this fun and engaging production created a memorable theatrical experience with its impressive puppetry and ability to tell a compelling story without any dialogue. With a hearty dose of luck and good fortune, I hope to bring this show to Provo in the next season or two for my BRAVO! series. (Fingers crossed!)
VIVALDI RECOMPOSED: THE FOUR SEASONS by MAX RICHTER | Edinburgh Playhouse/Edinburgh International Festival | Edinburgh, Scotland | August
In 2014 I fell in love with the music of British contemporary classical/minimalist composer Max Richter when the BYU Dance Dept. choreographed a couple of ballet pieces to music from Richter's modern re-imagining of Vivalid's Baroque classic. I was, of course, thrilled that he was performing the long-form work as part of the EIF during the time I was in Scotland in August. The live performance did not disappoint; it's modern and new, yet familiar enough to evoke the feelings I've long held for the Vivaldi classic. Richter played music from his laptop along with a chamber orchestra (standing, in proper Baroque style) and soloist Daniel Hope on the violin. A classical music concert unlike any I've attended in the past, it was an excellent showcase of the modern and the traditional at the same time.
I saw more than 40 productions at the Ed Fringe this year (a few of them great, many of the mediocre, and some of them purely awful) and thus find it hard to single any of them out, although I will say that there are a few that do come to mind. These include the post-modern docu-drama puppet retelling of the Jack and the Beanstalk story by Blind Summit in their irreverent production of Citizen Puppet. One of the funniest plays I have ever seen, the real star of this play was the detailed puppets and the incredible skill of the puppeteers, who, as the puppet manipulators and also their voices, must be great actors and skilled movers alike. Also, noteworthy at the festival was Temple Theatre's Unmythable, a 50-minute mash-up of Greek mythology with the story of Jason and the Argonauts at its core. I also thoroughly enjoyed the contemporary circus company Ockham's Razor and their aerial work in Arc and Every Action. I personally really enjoy contemporary circus and hope to be able to bring this type of work to BYU in the coming seasons.
BROADWAY MUSICALS | New York CityThe American musical is alive and well. 2015 saw a bumper crop of musicals of every size and scale open in New York. Fortunately, I saw several of them this year, something I have always enjoyed doing ever since I first saw Phantom in Los Angeles when I was a youngster. Some of the highlights for me included the beautiful choreography and scenic/projection design in An American in Paris at the Palace Theatre; stunning design and a lovely Tony-winning performance by Kelli O'Hara in Lincoln Center's epic revival of The King and I; Something Rotten!, probably the funniest and funnest musical I've ever seen, at the St. James, this bawdy musical is filled with over-the-top scene-chewing performances by a cast of Broadway regulars; a sturdy revival of Fiddler on the Roof at the Broadway Theatre at which I again came to realize why the music and message of this show has become so beloved by millions of people; powerful performances by Michael Cerveris and Judy Kuhn in Fun Home at Circle in the Square (a really charming, intimate theatre, especially from where I sat on the front row); The Last Ship, Sting's new musical, at the Neil Simon Theatre, had a very dynamic and exciting final few moments and some excellent music throughout. It was also fun to see Sting perform in the show for which he wrote the music.); I also thoroughly enjoyed Beautiful: The Carol King Musical, at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, not previously knowing where some of those classic tunes had come from.
In what has become an annual tradition since I first brought Brian Stokes Mitchell to BYU in 2010, a first-rate Broadway star has opened my BRAVO! series at BYU each autumn. For 2015, Kelli O'Hara, fresh off her Tony-winning performance in The King and I on Broadway, gave one of the greatest concert performances I've seen yet as part of this initiative. She sang all the songs a true fan of her work would want to hear but also sang several other showtunes and songs throughout the program to highlight her diverse repertoire and storytelling abilities. These annual concerts have come to be one of the great highlights of my entire year and she did not disappoint.
Overall, I'd say 2015 was rich with exciting, thoughtful music, theatre, and dance experiences. I look forward to the treasures 2016 will surely unfold!
