Sugar Plum Fairy
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SC 54th Season • 514th Production JULIANNE ARGYROS STAGE / DECEMBER 3-24, 2017 Marc Masterson Paula Tomei ARTISTIC DIRECTOR MANAGING DIRECTOR David Emmes & Martin Benson FOUNDING ARTISTIC DIRECTORS presents SUGAR PLUM FAIRY by Sandra Tsing Loh Keith Mitchell Angela Balogh Calin Jared A. Sayeg John Ballinger SCENIC DESIGN COSTUME DESIGN LIGHTING DESIGN SOUND DESIGN Jerry Patch Frier McCollister Joshua Marchesi Joanne DeNaut, CSa Kathryn Davies DRAMATURG ASSOCIATE PRODUCER PRODUCTION MANAGER CASTING STAGE MANAGER Directed by Bart DeLorenzo The Slutzky Family Honorary Producers Sugar Plum Fairy • South CoaSt RepeRtoRy • P1 CAST (In order of appearance) Sandra Tsing Loh Shannon Holt Tony Abatemarco LENGTH Approximately 75 minutes, with no intermission. PRODUCTION STAFF Production Assistant ............................................................... Ruben Bolivar Costume Design Assistant ................................................. Kaitlyn Kaufman Stage Management Intern .......................................................... Lydia Runge Light Board Operator ................................................................... Sean Deuel Sound Board Operator ................................................................. Jim Busker Automation Operator ............................................................. Latania Brown Dresser ................................................................................. Rebecca Clayton Additional Costume Staff ............................. Megan Knowles, Melissa Meza The Actors and Stage Managers employed in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. Please refrain from unwrapping candy or making other noises that may disturb surrounding patrons. Videotaping and/or recording of this performance by any means whatsoever are strictly prohibited. Electronic devices should be turned off or set to non-audible mode during the performance. Smoking is not permitted anywhere in the theatre. Photos may be taken before and after the show, and during intermission, but not during the performance. Show your appreciation for the play and scenic designer: #SugarPlumSCR @Keithellism Media Partner P2 • South CoaSt RepeRtoRy • Sugar Plum Fairy Two Critical Views of The Nutcracker, The Nutcracker: the Most Popular Ballet in America: “That warm and welcoming veneer of A Tale of Hoffman domestic bliss in The Nutcracker gives the appearance that all is just plummy by Jerry Patch Hoffman’s story was adapted, in the ballet world….Cautious com- reinvented and otherwise messed panies have reduced an art form to a rnst Theodor Wilhelm Hoff- with for the next century and be- rotation of over-roasted chestnuts, man dropped Wilhelm as a yond. It was adapted and revised by marking…how dull and risk-averse middle name in favor of Ama- Alexandre Dumas (père), author of deus, becoming E.T.A. Hoff- The Three Musketeers and The Count American ballet has become. man, out of admiration for Mo- of Monte Christo, who softened the “Ballet was brave…with works Ezart about whom he had written. He monsters and violence in Hoffman’s such as Michel Fokine’s sexy Schehe- gained some measure of early fame original. When librettist/choreog- razade (1910), Massine’s Cubist Parade for an insightful review he wrote of rapher Marius Petipa adapted it for (1917), and Nijinsky’s rough-hewn Rite Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, one The Nutcracker, he defanged it even of Spring (1913). Has ballet…forgotten he wrote after reading the score—he more: Marie became Klara, and what how eye-opening and ultimately nour- hadn’t heard it played. A polymath, she lived with—the mice, nutcracker ishing creative destruction can be?” Hoffman also composed music, drew, and others—was more easily resolved – Sarah Kaufman painted and (trained as a lawyer) as a child’s dream. Upon waking, she Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic, made his living as a judge. He was a rejoined her happy family. Washington Post (2009) prominent literary figure during the Revisions continued. A 1919 19th century in Europe who faded in production eliminated the Sugar “Over the last 70 years this ballet—con- the 1900s. Plum Fairy and her Cavalier. Abridged ceived in the Old World—has become He also wrote stories, wild and versions of The Nutcracker were an American institution. Its amalgam imaginative tales of fantasy and ex- staged with other modifications. of children, parents, toys, a Christmas tended reality, set in worlds other The first U.S. production was tree, snow, sweets and Tchaikovksy’s than the one he lived in. A product staged by the San Francisco Ballet in astounding score is integral to the sea- of The Enlightenment and rationalist 1944. A huge Christmas hit for the son of good will that runs from Thanks- thinking, Hoffman believed his soci- company, it was revived annually, giving to New Year….The importance ety stifled imagination, an essential with new productions going into their of this ballet to America has become a element to creativity. His stories were repertory in 1954, 1967 and 2004. phenomenon that surely says as much sources for composers and choreog- But what put The Nutcracker about this country as it does about this raphers. Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of on ballet’s front burner was the New work of art.” Hoffman became an opera; his story York production mounted by George –Alastair “The Sandman” was the basis for Leo Balanchine in 1954, which immedi- Macauley, Delibes’ ballet, Coppelia, wherein a ately became an annual event. Chore- New York man falls in love with a large dancing ographers, including Rudolf Nureyev, Times dance doll. Yuri Grigorovich, Mikhail Barysh- critic (2010) His story “Nutcracker and nikov and Peter Wright, continued Mouse King” told of a girl, Marie, who to shuffle the order of the music, and in her all too proper household won- to cut and/or expand aspects of the ders about a nutcracker broken that original. Recent, more radical pro- day. She goes to inspect it at night ductions from Mark Morris and Mat- and finds it’s alive, about to lead toy thew Bourne, to name two, were soldiers in a battle against canine- introduced. Over time, Christ- toothed mice led by a Mouse King. mas productions of The Nut- By story’s end, she’s gone off with the cracker spread throughout the help of her strange godfather, Dros- U.S. Today Nutcracker produc- selmeier—either in a dream or some tions provide 40% of the annual alternative reality—into another ticket sales for major American world. dance companies. Sugar Plum Fairy • South CoaSt RepeRtoRy • P3 THE CAST: Christian Barillas, Kim Staunton, Larry Powell and Allan Miller. Suite on a Ballet Girl by Jerry Patch accounting for the half-century lag in subse- quent productions outside Russia, even here’s plenty of music underscoring Sandra while Tchaikovsky’s Suite flourished in Tsing Loh’s Sugar Plum Fairy and most of it concert halls. is by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Like the liberties taken by cho- Choreographer Marius Petipa, who reographers staging Nutcracker over wrote the Nutcracker libretto adaptation the decades (see previous article), mu- Tthat premiered in St. Petersburg in 1892, had sicians have had their way with Tchai- given his composer explicit scoring instruc- kovsky’s music. Besides the many re- tions—down to the tempi used and the cordings of the entire ballet, many classical number of bars in each section. Even recordings exist of just the Suite and sections more confining, Tchaikovsky in- from the ballet. Some cite conductor Antol cluded a piece written in response Dorati’s 1975 recording of the complete to a colleague’s betting challenge: score with the Royal Concertgebouw Or- could he write a melody from the chestra (Amsterdam) as perhaps the best sequence of a one-octave scale? He of the many traditional recordings. did so, using an octave scale in de- Additionally, pop artists like Fred scending order, that became the Waring (1947) and his Pennsylvanians Adagio from the Grand pas de recorded the Suite, while jazz artists deux. from Freddy Martin to Shorty Rogers, to Duke The Nutcracker was commis- Ellington and Billy Strayhorn made their own sioned following the 1890 success of interpretations. the two authors’ The Sleeping Beauty. Other more recent covers in- From the entire 85-minute original ballet cluded comic verses composed by score, Tchaikovsky selected eight of its 23 sec- Ogden Nash and read by Peter tions to be played in concert performance: The Ustinov; a boogie piano arrange- Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a. First performed ment of the Marche called “Nut separately eight months before the ballet’s Rocker” by top Los Angeles premiere, it proved immediately popular studio musicians Al Hazan (piano), and was subsequently played on concert Earl Palmer (drums) Tommy Te- stages around the world—as well as used in desco (guitar) and Red Callen- the Walt Disney film Fantasia. The Suite in- der (bass); a humorous version cludes: as selected by the composer, by Spike Jones; “Klezmer Nut- cracker” by the Shirim Klezmer I. Miniature Overture Orchestra; and Belgian rapper Lu- II. Danses caracteristiques naman’s “Nutcracka” that quotes a. March “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” To b. Dance of the Sugar Plum name but a few. Fairy A dozen films (with more c. Tarantella planned) have used some or all of The d. Intermezzo (Journey Nutcracker’s score, as well as TV shows through the Snow) played by characters from Mickey e. Russian Trepak Mouse to Beavis and Butt-head. f. Chinese dance And it also inspired a 12-year- g. Andante maestoso (Pas de Deux) old Sandra in Malibu to imagine a dif- III. Waltz of the Flowers ferent life in a snowy clime and, four de- cades later, to imagine Sugar Plum Fairy. The premiere was a long evening of two separate It’s protean—music for the ages. offerings: a Tchaikovsky opera, Iolanta, and the new ballet. Both were met with critical indifference, perhaps From top to bottom: E.T.A. Hoffman; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; and Sandra Tsing Loh. P4 • South CoaSt RepeRtoRy • Sugar Plum Fairy Artist Biographies TONY ABATEMARCO atre Company, Los Angeles Theatre Center, East West Players and The Antaeus Company, where she is a mem- is co-artistic director at Skylight ber.