Jay Harvey Upstage

Two veterans of Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre play the title roles in "The Odd Couple" to open the company's 2015 season. Neil Simon's comedy turns 50 next year, and the offstage friendship of Eddie Curry and Jeff Stockberger is already half that age. Oscar (Jeff Stockberger) and the poker gang endure Felix's (Eddie Curry) cleanliness obsession. Thus, the joys of familiarity are fully on display in the show, which opened Tuesday night. They bubble up according to the company's time-tested "louder, faster, funnier" formula,  shared with me years ago by Curry in an interview. In this production, directed by Douglas E. Stark, B&B's executive director, Curry plays Felix Unger, a fastidious worrywart distressed by the recent breakup of his marriage. His friend and fellow B&B old-timer, Jeff Stockberger, portrays Felix's poker-playing buddy Oscar Madison, a loutish, well-paid sportswriter rattling around in spacious bachelor di...

Mainstream English usage is getting looser and coarser, and I may be guilty of elitism just to suggest that NPR is my notion of "mainstream." But here's the immediate provocation: I am disturbed that "piss(ed) off" is no longer bleeped out of NPR interviews, nor is "ass" as in "pain in the...."  As far as I'm aware, on-air staffers don't go there, but interviewees seem to be free to express themselves that way unbleeped. In addition to vulgarity creep,  such looseness is disturbing because vulgar slang – and words that are neither vulgar nor slang but come into vogue, like "awesome" — is characterized by vagueness. You can't tell what is meant by the slapdash application of "awesome," for instance. Overuse (and this includes vulgarisms) leaches away meaning. During my newspaper career, I once handed in a self-evaluation as a required part of the annual performance review. The boss received the submission ...

The infamous hack of Sony Pictures, which the U.S. government has concluded was the clandestine North Korea's ruler casts a dim view on challenges from any quarter. work of North Korea, just before Christmas, opens up speculation as to how dictators of past eras might have wished for the technology to interfere with stories hostile to them and their family line. The line of kings called Herod began with the post-Maccabee monarch known as Herod the Great, the ruler at the time of Jesus' birth, and included Herod Antipas, one of his sons, who turned the decision over the adult Jesus' fate to the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, a figure also afflicted with indecision bordering on irresponsibility.  Obviously, the Herods are not favorably viewed in the New Testament — the first looking both bloodthirsty and foolish in his futile attempt to wipe out any eventual rival for kingship, the second appearing to truckle to his Roman supervisor.  Neither king quite fits the Kim Jong-...

Eyes on the prize: Don't bother about style.  Mousetrap Blues  (The most memorable blues songs are seamless blends of autobiography and art. About half of what follows really happened, half is made up. You can decide which is which, and sing it to any blues tune that seems to fit.) When you go out shopping, better stick to the task at hand When you go out shopping, better stick to the task at hand       Don't set a person's talk right, as long as you understand. Went to the hardware store, looking to win a fight Went to the hardware store, looking to win a fight       To rid our old house of the mice that come at night.    Chose my mousetrap wisely, was walking down the aisle to pay Chose my mousetrap wisely, was walking down the aisle to pay       When a man who worked there said in a friendly way: “That trap works good, I’ve been using them m...

Tracking well: Zach Bartholomew, Miles Bozeman, and Brandon Robertson played the Jazz Kitchen. It was a short second set during which to gauge the fresh rapport between saxophonist Matt Pivec, director of jazz studies at Butler University, and the Zach Bartholomew Trio from Tallahassee, Florida. But I had a good feeling about the contributions of each party to this get-together Monday night at the Jazz Kitchen . Maybe a half-dozen numbers (with Pivec sitting out the trio's traversal of Kenny Barron's "Voyage") are sufficient when you're savoring the kind of musical empathy that's an indelible part of jazz tradition. Either it happens or you get something akin to the parallel play of toddlers. Pivec told me he'd met Zach Bartholomew, Brandon Robertson, and Miles Bozeman for the first time that afternoon. A former Pivec student had contacted him to ask for help getting ZBT (as it likes to be known) an Indianapolis gig to fill out the trio's sho...

Definitions of the nature and function of poetry sometimes seem to weigh as heavy as the poems themselves. No one needs another, but perhaps I can be excused for bringing back an old one that's germane to the present moment. E.A. Robinson told Joyce Kilmer (of all people!) what poetry is. Something Edwin Arlington Robinson once said prophetically addresses the overabundance of contemporary poems that regard bare statement, viewpoint, and observation as sufficient. We hear this kind of verse in Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac," and such poems are the first choice for speakers in nonliturgical religious services and other self-consciously solemn occasions. If the poem draws attention to our duty to perceive more sensitively, and is winsome about it, it goes to the head of the class. It is shared on Facebook, and goes over well at poetry readings and in some anthologies. These days, poetry that relies only on imagery, and otherwise tells us just what w...

A significant number of 20th-century American composers came into their own through study in Paris, chiefly with Nadia Boulanger. Earlier in the 1900s, a composer from a geographically closer but still culturally distant milieu acquired his own voice in the French capital. Like the Americans — including Virgil Thomson, Elliott Carter, and Aaron Copland — Joaquin Turina benefited during his foreign sojourn (1905-1914) from exposure to his Spanish The Lincoln Trio probes the chamber music of Joaquin Turina. countrymen. In Turina's case,  these were the eminent creative figures of Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albeniz. What they urged upon him, according to Andrea Lamoreaux's program notes for a new Cedille Records CD set by the Lincoln Trio and guests, was cultivation of his homegrown musical traditions, bringing his sophisticated education to bear upon it. Returning to Madrid with the onset of World War I, Turina made his mark as a composer and conductor. The new recordin...

Jostling for space amidst the wealth of local holiday entertainment options, Actors Theatre of Indiana has made a tradition of "A Year With Frog and Toad." On Friday night at the Center for the Performing Arts' Studio Theater, the company opened its 2014 production of Robert and Willie Reale's musical adaptation of Arnold Lobel's beloved "Frog and Toad" books. A fixture on ATI's schedule — this is the company's seventh annual presentation of the show — "A Year With Frog and Toad"  runs blithely around the seasonal cycle in the fanciful pond-and-woodland setting of Lobel's whimsical series. The affectionate, uproarious tone of the original books is preserved in both the Reales' Broadway show and this peppy, well-designed production. Visually, from the inspired costumes  on through the homey ambiance embodied in Bernie Killian's scenic and technical design, "A Year With Frog and Toad" makes every twist and turn...

A number of years have elapsed since I last saw "Yuletide Celebration," though its origin coincided with mine as the Indianapolis Star's arts reporter. Angela Brown knows how to blend glamour and down-to-earth warmth. Unlike me, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 's holiday variety show seems to have gotten more energetic, stylish and refined with age, judging from Saturday night's performance of the 29th annual production in Hilbert Circle Theatre. Angela Brown, the effervescent operatic soprano who calls Indianapolis home, is reunited as host with Broadway baritone Ben Crawford . The couple revives its 2012 partnership. They engagingly manage the patter (with Brown owing more than a little to the style of the sainted Pearl Bailey), and a few apt remarks are contributed from the podium by pops maestro Jack Everly. Of course, Brown and Crawford get plenty of exposure in vocal solos and duets as well. A special feature of the 2014 show is the magnetism an...

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in full cry. It's hard to escape the most hackneyed music of the season these days, usually done in predictable ways. That's the kind of comfort food many people expect, but Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra offered something more bracing and satisfying Friday night at the Palladium . It's hard to put up with egg nog unless it's been suitably spiked, after all. With Marsalis as featured trumpet soloist and master of ceremonies, the most eminent American big band now working presented a program neatly divided into six numbers in each of two sets. A notable standout among those dozen performances was guest vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant . Salvant personalized "What Child Is This?," restoring a sense of wonder to the text on the age-old melody "Greensleeves." The arrangement opened with a chordal onslaught by the J@LC's stellar sax section, then quickly settled into something more ...

"Broadway Meets Motown" is a title that suggests a contest of some kind, possibly a friendly one. Taking it in that spirit, I would have to judge Broadway the winner in Dance Kaleidoscope's current production. As seen in a preview Thursday evening on Indiana Repertory Theatre' s Upperstage, DK's two-part show recalls two popular pieces of the recent past. "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Super Soul: Motown and More." The anatomy of "Super Soul" was different, but its heart was in the right place. In what way does the current program's "Best of  Super Soul" come up short?  Mainly in that it has the feeling of a patchwork quilt of tributes to the landmark Detroit record label and other hits by black performers in the 1970s, before popular music was subject to micromanaged marketing. My recollection of the full show from January 2012 brings forward a production with more of an arc. It had a lauda...

Emmet Cohen of Miami made a strong impression as the youngest finalist four years ago in the Jazz Fellowship Awards competition of the American Pianists Association. Performing Tuesday afternoon at Eskenazi Health as part of the Marianne Tobias Music Program, Cohen showed that his return as a finalist this year is more than adequate confirmation of the promise he showed in 2010. Emmet Cohen brings solo virtuosity to Eskenazi Health. The format of the APA's participation is solo piano in the lobby of the new hospital building, and Cohen is the third of the five jazz finalists to present an hourlong unaccompanied program there. (That comes in the midst of a week of residency at a local high school; Cohen is at Lawrence Central this week.) The piano (a Tobias gift) is a marvelously responsive instrument, though rather too bright up high. Cohen is a gifted improviser as well as a young master of piano textures and articulation at all dynamic levels. He tried out different a...

"Flashing Through the Snow" is a title that promises more naughtiness than this version of Phoenix Theatre's annual Christmas pastiche delivers, but that's OK: The show's niceness is edgy enough. Seen Saturday on its opening weekend, the production is loaded with fresh amounts of wit, savvy and elan both technical and performative. Holiday joy doesn't come without work, so if it's true the elaborate finale seems too effortful, that is part of the Christmas season's bounty as well. There's a fine balance of anticipation and surfeit, in other words, of the kind dependably embedded in this time of year. It's also a time of feverish planning and plans gone awry. "Flashing Through the Snow" tries to connect with that feeling of spontaneity-bumping-up-against-organization from the open welcome to the audience on through the show. Ryan O'Shea launches into hearty greetings, checks herself as she realizes she's doing it alone, and...

Garry Clarke, director of Baroque Band Light shed upon the environments in which major composers made their mark is always welcome. And that's what Chicago's Baroque Band, under the direction of Garry Clarke, has done with  the release of "Maurice Greene Overtures" ( Cedille Records ). Greene (1696-1755) was a Londoner from cradle to grave, a friend of George Frideric Handel until a permanent breach between the two men intervened, and an organist whose muse was most often aroused to compose church anthems. According to Grove's Dictionary, Greene's posthumous reputation has been marred by the hostility of the two preeminent music historians of his day, John Hawkins and Charles Burney. The Baroque Band's program consists  mainly of "Six Overtures in Seven Parts," multimovement pieces whose seven parts encompass strings, flute, oboe, and harpsichord. Filling out the new CD are three sets of harpsichord "lessons," performed by David...

When Gary Varvel's regular cartoon feature in The Indianapolis Star depicted his response to President Obama's executive order on immigration , I was farther away in this hemisphere than I've ever been: Argentina. a Cropping focuses on the cartoon's controversial elements; a Norman Rockwell inspired grandma (gray hair in a bun, etc.) is not shown here, but the multigenerational whiteness of the family strikes a familiar chord. It was a good place to confirm my perspective on the historic establishment and movement of cultures in North and South America. The takeaway message for this monolingual WASP: Rule, Hispania! Western Hemisphere history is overwhelmingly the result of conquest directed from the Iberian peninsula long before the first permanent settlements by the Northern Europeans whose descendants are about to begin their Thanksgiving feast in Varvel's cartoon. The midsized inland city — San Juan — where my wife and I were visiting our son was founded ...