Word: spoof
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...perhaps the major charm of the show comes from minor characters involved in incidental routines. Particularly good is Henry Holmes, as Harold Steadfast, the indefatiguable buddy of Truman Pendennis. Preston Brown's spoof of New England economy and conservatism is touching with his flawless Marlborough Street accent. Timothy Gates, as the angel child's aged mother, has little opportunity to extemporize, though his exit song is delightfully dead-pan and relaxed...
Brass Bite. Prawy began by putting Sam and Bella Spewack's slangy, sprightly spoof of Shakespeare and show business into sprightly, slangy German. Then, to give the Cole Porter score bite, he put an edge on the staid Volksoper orchestra in the form of a dozen Viennese axmen, most of whom cut up in brass. To keep the musicians jumping, he imported Conductor Julius Rudel of Manhattan's City Opera Co. He also imported his key principals from the U.S.: handsome Brenda Lewis of the Metropolitan Opera (Kate), and two relative unknowns, both Negroes, Olive Moorefield (Bianca...
...operatic spoof called Apollo and Persephone, staged by the adventurous After Dinner Opera Company. Gayest of the week's premieres, it was written and composed by 40-year-old English Composer Gerald Cockshott (pronounced kosher), who originally dreamed up his libretto for his mentor, Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, but liked it so much that he set it to music himself. The story is a salty, zany rewrite of the Persephone legend. The young goddess is hoping for a man to come along before she gets "broad in the beam and saggy"; first Pluto catches her, then is talked...
...Empathy, the Drumbeats and Song production for 1956, is almost a small theatrical miracle. While it manages to be a sophisticated spoof of subjects ranging from modern poetry to Wall Street, it still remains a pleasant and friendly musical. And though the production has all the appealing high spirits of an amateur show, there is nothing amateurish about its music and staging. Fortunately too, just about all the actors make good use of their fine material...
...divergent contemporary operas were presented this weekend at Harvard and B.U. The first was The Man in The Man-Made Moon, by Joel Mandelbaum '53, given its world premier Saturday night. For the hour-long opera Mandelbaum wrote both the music and the libretto. His work is mostly a spoof on the conventional opera form, although in the course of an hour he also parodies Freud, 12-tone composers, science, and the self-made man. The music enlivened the parody, especially in a romantic mock-Brahmsian chorus to the text "The complete and utter destruction of the universe." Saturday night...