Jay Harvey Upstage

I have too many books — too many for the available shelf space, too many to read in the likely amount of time I have left. So I'm more motivated than ever before to reread. A large collection of recordings, which I  also have, begs for lots of relistening, so why wouldn't too many books call for rereading? Another motivation: To see how books read long ago might hold up upon rereading. This incentive, when obeyed, dredges up some surprises, the latest of which is my discovery that Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" isn't very good. And it wasn't much fun to read the second time around. It's tedious, overwrought, sophomoric. Dust jacket of the book that made a name for its author I remember acquiring my hard-cover copy ("seventh printing") not long after the book came out in 1961. I recall being shocked and stimulated by its vigorous nose-thumbing humor, the wildness and sheer abundance of its characters and incidents. Heller's moment c...

The flippancy, fluency, and observant wit of Cole Porter, always fused in music and words from the same fertile mind, gave David Hochoy a running start when a Dance Kaleidoscope patron suggested long ago that he choreograph some Porter songs for the troupe. The result was "Cole!," revived now and then since its 1997 premiere — I last saw it at Carmel's Tarkington in 2014. It's a two-part piece that centers its tribute to Porter's popularity first on his songs' appeal when they were new ("Ol' King Cole"), then on their adaptability in terms closer to today ("Cole Soul"). A madcap bit of comic relief: "Miss Otis Regrets" A lift of infatuation, or perhaps love, in "It's All Right With Me" Porter's characteristic stance on the malleability of romantic love had a lot to do with the huge impression he made in the early-middle decades of 20th-century America.  Social mores got a little looser, and youn...

By the time most of us outgrew the Disney version, life itself and further acquaintance with Grimm's Energetic dancing is a key element of "Zirkus Grimm." fairy tales diluted the sweetness we'd acquired a taste for. You can't wish that away, but "Zirkus Grimm" puts something else in its place. The harshness of the originals comes through in Ben Asaykee's mordant, yet spectacular interpretation, a Q Artistry production playing through next weekend at Circle City Industrial Complex . To make up for the lost sweetness, the show presents tableaux of "life coaching," tough love for the 21st-century spirit in a dynamic expenditure of coordinated energy. The moralizing is tricked out in traveling-circus style, the large company garbed in schmattes, with steampunk and vintage-shop notes. There are touches of goth, mime, and commedia dell'arte in the stylish makeup. A glum makeshift tent is suspended over the playing area, strands of ...

Cavaradossi interrupts work on his painting of Mary Magdalene to talk with the watchful Sacristan. When Puccini's "Tosca" was just over 50 years old, the musicologist Joseph Kerman wrote a well-regarded book called "Opera as Drama," which is most often cited for one dismissive phrase about the opera. He called it a "shabby little shocker." Those who overthink opera tend to find encouragement in the dismissal. But decades of audience acclaim have shown them to be off base. There's a little irony that a book with such a title disparages a composition that "as drama" needn't take a back seat to anything in the repertoire. That was evident in the enraptured reception opening night Saturday of a new Cincinnati Opera production. "Tosca" succeeds as drama and as theater. Those are two different things. Its interplay of forces both political and romantic proceeds with an unparalleled efficiency and intensity. That's the...

The universe of expanded consciousness, as rendered in "Acid Dolphin Experiment.". Beaded and berobed, Timothy Leary strolled onstage at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor nearly 50 years ago, placed a mat close to the audience, sat down upon it cross-legged, and proceeded to lecture freely on his invariable theme: Turn on, tune in, drop out. He had barely started when a friendly shout came from the balcony: "Dr. Leary, please move back a few feet, We can't see you from up here." The apostle of LSD enlightenment readily complied. The choice was automatic: Sacrifice a little intimacy with those in good seats in order to accommodate all 4,000 favorably disposed attendees. When you're in the business of marketing personal transformation, no corner of the market should be snubbed. Like (I'm guessing) nearly everyone in that audience, I had no intention of following the Leary path. In a cultural milieu thick with gurus, the eccentric professor registered as...

You don't need stage realism to evoke emotions that are joltingly real, and though Shakespeare  anticipated realism, we can dependably return to many of his plays and see how implausible situations requiring a drastic suspension of disbelief can still awaken our most fundamental sense of reality. Before the storm breaks: The happy royal couple implore a king to extend his visit. "The Winter's Tale," whether read silently or seen performed, never fails to move me when Leontes' wronged wife Hermione, unbelievably hidden away for 16 years from her husband and self-deluded accuser, turns from the likeness in which the loyal Paulina artfully presents her into a living queen ready for reconciliation with her contrite husband. All of a sudden, any sense that this is a far-fetched device becomes irrelevant. How often it's true that ill-founded, unreasoned judgments, particularly around the issue of sexual fidelity, really destroy relationships! And how crucial...

As the world tries to get used to Mike Pence as running mate for Donald Trump — and get past that "T" penetrating that "P" on the original logo — this song imagines what unsettled thoughts may have been going through the Indiana governor's mind.