Jay Harvey Upstage

"Something to Point To" the cast indicates in the finale Chicago radio guru Studs Terkel could talk to anybody, and just about anybody seemed to pour secrets and out-loud perspectives into his tape recorder. His receptivity and shrewd selection of the results generated several books, one of which is bluntly called "Working." How do Americans earn their livings, and how do they feel about it? he wanted to know. An updated musical version with the same title concludes Actors Theatre of Indiana 's 2021-22 season at the Center for the Performing Arts ' intimate Studio Theater. With a host of  mostly well-known songwriters underlining his perspectives, the show makes clear that Terkel's sympathies, though they covered the spectrum, could fairly be described as left-of-center. He cast a jaundiced eye at the upper crust and tended to find virtue, often wrung from necessity, in the lives of the working class and those struggling to climb the social ladder as whi...

  At home with bright decor, the Moderator scrutinizes her prospects. The questions that "No AIDS, No Maids" raises create a kind of pre-echo  that anticipates the personal issues raised by Dee Dee Batteast, the playwright.  Society's current irritations about race and sexuality are percolating in our minds from the start; how they are handled in this one-woman show follows closely behind. The new Phoenix Theatre production  reflects the show's origins in a fringe festival (Washington, D.C.'s). Befitting the one-hour limit of the format and each show's need to register quickly with potentially distracted audiences, there's a message, pointed and definitive, to match the fringe-theater vibe. The title signals it in absolute terms. The author underlines it in censorable fashion with the subtitle: "Stories I Can't F*ckin' Hear No More."  Performed by LaKesha Lorene at the Phoenix, "No AIDS, No Maids" is explicit and forceful in ...

Musical theater steeped in rock and soul genres seems a natural way to adapt 'Twelfth Night." Southbank Theatre Company 's new production enters lustily into this version of Shakespeare's manic Illyria , the setting of a comedy of mistaken identities, both deliberate and accidental.  With music and lyrics by Shaina Taub, based on the conception she forged with Kwame Kwei-Armah, the show is a surprisingly successful adaptation of a mature Shakespeare comedy far from the two-dimensional framework of the early "T wo Gentlemen of Verona," which received successful musical treatment a half-century ago . In a preview performance Wednesday night on the Playground at Indy Fringe , the cast directed by Max McCreary had the momentum right for the frantic action, with the ancient mask of comedy firmly in place. The catchy songs help the story float along and conveniently keep the play from going too deep into the verbal weeds.  Failing suitor Sir Andrew confronts skep...

 The subtitle "Revolutionary Works for Oboe and Piano" could be slightly misleading, but it's in the good cause of showing how different composers respond to threats at the micro and macro levels. "When There Are No Words..." ( Cedille Records ) gathers 20th-century pieces that deserve a hearing not because they are in themselves revolutionary, but because they seem to upset any pristine apple carts that purport to advance music in some kind of pure, self-referential condition. Alex Klein works well with pianist Phillip Bush.    Alex Klein, principal oboist emeritus with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and now holding down the first chair in the oboe section of the Calgary Philharmonic, teams once again with pianist Phillip Bush to put across a program of music by Paul Hindemith, William Bolcom, Pavel Haas, Benjamin Britten, Jose Siqueira, and Klement Slavicky. In addition to the wide spectrum their styles cover, the six composers faced challenges from the world...

Harry Chin uses talismans of his heritage to learn from its ghosts. We've all become used to documentation for the sake of safety and access. Since the pandemic, proof of vaccination has become the "open sesame" to let us into many places we could formerly enter for the price of admission or without charge. Ever more official credentials are required to allow us to vote. Only the arena of guns seems to have been cleared of most legal obstacles in recent years. Imagine the attempt to live securely as an immigrant when your right to be in this country was subject to close interrogation, with wrong answers  speeding you toward deportation. This is the odd legacy that, in the form of the Chinese Exclusion Act, complicated the already fraught adjustments  that immigrants from China had to make here between 1882 and 1943. Legal requirements to admit getting around the law prevailed until 1966. Family life was subjected to sanctioned disruption as it had not been since the day...

Music produced out of despair at wartime destruction with an overlay of shame made the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra' s performance of Richard Strauss' "Metamorphosen" timely Saturday night. World War II was more of a cataclysm than Russia's current assault on Ukraine, so analogies must be tentatively applied. Strauss' reputation, long under a bit of an unjustified shadow because he remained in his native Germany throughout the Third Reich, has always had the benefit of reconciliation with the civilized world, thanks to this expansive showcase for 23 strings. Charles Conrad's program note sets Strauss' lack of complicity with the Nazi regime in a true light, without forced special pleadings. ICO music director Matthew Kraemer capped a program featuring an excellent soloist – cellist Sterling Elliott — with the late Strauss work, the long-honored composer's response to the devastation both caused and endured by his homeland. The variation of textur...

  Ruth Reinhardt impressive in warhorse and  exotic pieces For all the comfort food Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" provides to the appetite for music that stimulates the pictorial imagination, it is also an exhibition of genius in orchestration. The Russian composer wrote a book on that subject, a kind of inside-baseball landmark of the craft he put on public view so often.  The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra' s return to this masterpiece Friday night, under the guidance of guest conductor Ruth Reinhardt, painted its essence in vivid colors. Conspicuous excellence in the solos threaded throughout the 50-minute expanse lifted the Hilbert Circle Theatre performance to the cheering ovation it deserved at the end.  Chief among them, of course, is the concertmaster's impersonation of the title character, the sultana who spins tale after tale to forestall her fated execution by a jealous husband.  In that role, Kevin Lin shone throughout. His initial solo was a bl...