Word: regalness
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Stephen Wolpe's Oboc Sonata seemed to me the only disappointment of the concert, though Marx's sprightly staccato attacks of the first movement, and a regal unison with Wuorinen which opened the third, were among the evening's most exciting moments. The piece is too long, however, and redundant; too frequently Marx seemed to shriek in the high register or growl in the vulgar buzzsaw sound for which he has been criticized...
Director Guzzetti is fortunate in his minor characters, for their performances range from passable to very good. Ellery Akers plays Helen as an empty-headed Fanny Hill, rather than a regal queen whose face launches a thousand ships, and plays her well. David Evett's Menelaus is properly unctuous and opportunistic. And Michael Nach's frenetic sing-song servility as a Phyrigian slave introduces the comic tone which diminishes the tragedy of Orestes...
George Ortman spent five years making a chess set. He took time because he wanted the playing pieces to be symbols of themselves. The bishop was simple to design-a cross. The rook was square for solidity; the king was a diamond for a regal quality; the queen was a circle for femininity; the pawns were arrows for their singleness of direction. Ortman gave the knight the shape of a heart, for "it is impulsive and moves erratically...
Tony, played beautifully by James Fox (and beautiful is the right word for both Fox and the performance), is the degenerate endpoint of a noble line. His clothes are from Saville Row, his scotch Chivas Regal, his monogram everpresent. But the manorial estate has given way to a small, though stylish, townhouse in Chelsea; imperial conquests in India to idleness and empty dreams of developments in Brazil; and martial valor to frustrating skirmishes of lust. On every wall hang pictures of distinguished forebears; father against the Germans, grandfather in the Great War, great to the nth degree grandfather at Waterloo...
...after all, not a Count Basie or a Duke Ellington, but an honest-to-God Baroness; seeing her pull up in her Bentley with a purse crammed with Chivas Regal, the musicians took enormous pride in her friendship...