Jay Harvey Upstage

The rude thump of a heavy walking stick interrupts a flash-mob-like rendition of a Christmas carol to start off Indiana Repertory Theatre 's production of "A Christmas Carol." On opening night Saturday, it had the intended startling effect — a real one for the audience and me, a well-rehearsed one for the carolers divided by the frosty approach of Ebenezer Scrooge. He strides without speaking through the stunned singers on the way to his office. Bah! Humbug!: Scrooge casts a disdainful eye at Christmas. The arresting opening scene places the mean-spirited miser in a social context, where we will not see him again in his real self until his conversion near the end, after guided visions by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. Scrooge famously learns from those visits — a posthumous gift thrust upon him by a miserable ghost, his deceased business partner — the personal benefits of charity. Among our traditional carols, the interrupted "Good

The Phoenix Theatre has used the tried-and-true total of ten to wax lightly nostalgic in "A Very Phoenix Xmas X." Gayle Steigerwald ornaments the show. A decade ago, its holiday variety show with a bit of an edge debuted at 749 North Park Avenue. As narrator Gayle Steigerwald pointed out at the new production's preview Wednesday, what began life as a jibe at Christmas-season traditions has itself become a Christmas-season tradition. Just as consumers supplement shopping lists with goodies for themselves, "Phoenix Xmas X" is a blend of self-tribute and genuine holiday spirit. The audience is adequately warned by the show's subtitle (modestly clad in lower case): "oh come, let us adore us." Steigerwald's narration reminisces, and there's no more fitting Phoenix stalwart to do so. Her repeat appearances, which serve to smooth the way between set changes, include fanciful costumes celebrating the season's decorative mania and her

This one day devoted to Gratitude May not be enough to establish the mood, Especially since sages are sure it's allied With all the insatiable urgings of Pride. We turn now to one of them, dear Robert Frost, Who never rejoiced without counting the cost: The ambivalence of his "The Road Not Taken" Pride and gratitude contend when we sit down to this. Can leave almost anyone's confidence shaken. How grateful was he for the choice of two ways? How deep were his sighs for unknowable days That might have been happy, or perhaps not so much? Who rightly decides for the best in the clutch? It's certain that thankfulness had little chance To trip the fantastic in this doubtful dance As, near poem's end, "I" gets up twice alone To declare that his Pride can cavort on its own: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — "I took the one less traveled by." The chest swells just slightly, all doubt set aside, And the hike throu

The "Spotlight" principals in a rare moment of inaction. I'm not a movie critic, and I try not to play one on this blog, to paraphrase a commercial cliche. But I found "Spotlight," the current movie focusing on the Boston Globe's exposure of widespread sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, worth a brief note. In addition to its riveting story, crisp dialogue, focused acting, and — of course — realistic scrutiny of the perils and rewards of newspaper work, where I spent my career, "Spotlight" is remarkable to me for never having a wasted scene. There's no fluff or filler material. Even the shortest scenes unfailingly contribute something vital to the whole. Two of them in particular seem to me to exemplify on the big screen an old lit-crit notion first put forward by T.S. Eliot nearly a century ago in an essay on "Hamlet": what he called the "objective correlative," which the young poet-critic claimed was "

Generation gap bridged: Carter and Barron Busy schedules keep the compatible duo of Kenny Barron and Regina Carter apart, so they understandably launch their concert appearances upon the solid foundation of (ironically) "Freefall," their 2001 collaboration on Verve. So it was Saturday night at the Tarkington, Center for the Performing Arts, in Carmel. The pianist and the violinist closed the generation gap effortlessly once again (he's 72, she's 49), in a trim program of pieces mainly from that recording. They respond seamlessly to each other and come up with one effective moment after another. Carter has brought to jazz violin a sensibility deeply rooted in the blues. Her instrument is ideal for bending pitches as adeptly as the best slide guitarist, and she knows all the tricks. The violin's keening tone and variety of articulation can approach the expressive range, from plaintive to exuberant, of the classic blues singers. Her technical adroitness mat

An overview of Wisdom Tooth Theatre Project's season Neil LaBute specializes in comedy that makes us squirm about how easily we fall in with tribal thinking. In "Fat Pig," he is blunt from the title on about the way overweight people, particularly women, are pushed to the margins of social life among singles. Wisdom Tooth Theatre Project, a resident company of IndyFringe Basile Theatre, opened a production of the 2004 play Thursday night that sailed confidently through the rough waters of 21st-century romance. The confidence displayed did not always deliver the insights buried in the rapid-fire dialogue, which was keyed to an intensity that seemed partly the fault of the script. Callie Hartz directs the cast of four, who also handled the movement of set elements and props throughout the two-act play. Office, restaurant, and apartment settings were efficiently if minimally suggested; bathing suits and beach chairs did the trick for the finale, a pool party where

Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott displayed fine partnership. To make for a provocative tweet (and who doesn't do that from time to time?), I previewed Yo-Yo Ma's Palladium recital Wednesday night by noting that he and pianist Kathryn Stott would be playing the Cesar Franck Sonata in A major, which cellists like to "steal" from violinists. Of course, that facetious dig concealed the fact that the composer approved an arrangement for cello and piano. Thus, the tradition that Ma and Stott followed, thrilling a capacity audience, is both legitimate and well-established. Even better, the duo interpreted the piece in such a way that showcased advantages of this version. Master of soft playing that he is, Ma held the audience spellbound whenever he moved into that end of the dynamic spectrum. He launched the cello's first-movement theme as an insinuation more than a declaration. Subsequently, with like-minded dynamics from the pianist, the performance walked back th

Michael Schelle: At 65, still elfin with an edge. Mark Twain once quipped that some German words are so long they have perspective. The perspective offered by "Schellekammermusikonzert" at Butler University Tuesday night was indeed lengthy, ranging over chamber music by Michael Schelle written between 1998 and last year. Unsurprisingly, the perspective was also manic, for the most part. The "Schelle chamber music concert" traversed a post-modernist Moebius strip along which the ghost of George Antheil shook hands with the ghost of Spike Jones. The spirits were willing, the flesh was wack in such pieces as the tenor-saxophone duet "Red Herring" and the climactic "Heartland," a mordant tour of the Midwest culminating in "Threnody for the Victims of Indiana." Not many composers are given to Penderecki punning, but that title is just the start for Schelle. The movement opened with the composer conducting the instrumental septet, a

Bombastic? Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" setting (last movement, Symphony No. 9 in D minor) is bombastic ?! Elias Quartet: Program notes for its concert here contained a shocker. The word leaped from the page of Nicholas Johnson's program notes for the Elias Quartet concert of Ensemble Music Society. Before the string quartet entered the Indiana History Center stage Nov. 11, I read the Butler University musicologist's notes with great interest, as I usually do, since I admire their clarity and evident knowledge of the subject. The tone is usually calm; there's obviously a person behind them, but normally they don't tear down, even obliquely. And this seemed an oblique swipe (if that's what it was): The "Ode to Joy" reference occurs in an introduction to a note on the String Quartet in F major, op. 18, no. 1. It's useful to separate opinion from description when we read about music, but it isn't always easy to do. That the word &

I ndianapolis Symphony Orchestra patrons rarely get a chance to hear the same soloist in closely related repertoire two weeks in the row. The last two weekends of programs at Hilbert Circle Theatre have been an exception, in which music Dejan Lazic: More masterful than masterly. director Krzysztof Urbanski and guest soloist Dejan Lazic could confirm their affinity in the two piano concertos of Johannes Brahms — a rapport already honed by a precedent collaboration they undertook with Urbanski's other orchestra, in Trondheim, Norway. Evidence that conductor and soloist share similar thoughts on this music and can meld them smoothly in performance was clear last week. My mixed response last week to Lazic's interpretation of the D minor concerto (No. 1) continued Friday night as he and the orchestra played Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major. This much different work  — mellower yet still substantial — has had more than a few concert pianists declaring that it is a harder te

The Elias Quartet opened doors to Beethoven and traditional Scottish music. Wrapping up what has been an inevitable project for many well-established string quartets, the Elias Quartet this year finished recording its complete Beethoven 16, according to its website . The United Kingdom-based ensemble presented two of them Wednesday night at the Indiana History Center under the auspices of the Ensemble Music Society . The pairing of Op. 18, no. 1 in F major with Op. 132 in A minor is an inspired choice. The ambitious nature of what its number inaccurately suggests was Beethoven's first quartet  looks forward in a way the composer couldn't have foreseen. The most autobiographical of the late quartets, the A minor, embraces simplicity and complexity in a manner governed by Beethoven's host of maladies, among which his eventually total deafness isolated him most. It was evident from the way the quartet — sisters Sara and Marie Bitlloch (first violin and cello, respect

"We need more welders and less philosophers."      -- Marco Rubio in Republican candidates' debate, Nov. 10, 2015 Sen. Rubio didn't realize welding and philosophy are not in contention Why ask for more or less (or fewer) of either specialty when you can have both? Consider the following lost Platonic dialogue: Socrates: Why, good morning, Welton. Where have you come from? I haven't seen you around Athens recently. Welton the Welder: I've been in Ephesus, checking on some of my recent work there. Socrates: And what did you find?  Do your welds in Ephesus hold? Socrates attempted to resolve the matter. Welton the Welder: Couldn't be firmer. Each one is still as certain as a sophist's fee. Socrates: That's a sure thing, all right. So, good for you. But, Welton, have you still found time to search after wisdom? Welton the Welder: Indeed I have, Socrates. But the more I work at welding, the more I seem preoccupied by the searc

Since Gregory Martin was taken into the Ronen Chamber Ensemble 's artistic direction by founders David Bellman and Ingrid Fischer-Bellman, thematic programming has been the norm. British composer Robert Saxton (1953-    ) The tradition continued Tuesday night with "Time and the Seasons," the Ronen's musically dappled inauguration of the 2015-16 season.  Hilbert Circle Theatre's Wood Room was nearly filled to capacity for a program of British and American music around the theme. (The Ronen season as a whole celebrates the centenary of Albert Einstein's "General Theory of Relativity" — certainly the ne plus ultra of possible thematic links to mere music.) The concert's centerpiece, distributed evenly in four parts over its course, was a composition called "Time and the Seasons" by Robert Saxton, an Oxford professor and musician whom Martin considers a mentor. The song cycle came across particularly well as interpreted by Norwegian

Scenes of the city: Dan Kaufman visits familiar places. On "Familiar Places" ( Red Piano Records ), Dan Kaufman's gently impelled small-group jazz moves toward some assertiveness and sass at the end of the set on "farmington," a churning bluesy piece set to a kind of New Orleans shuffle beat. You hang on to any indication that this bandleader has anything that needs to be said, and the certainty of that wavers in the course of these eight original tunes. Keyboardist Kaufman  heads a group that's essentially a quintet (piano-bass-drums-guitar-saxophone) with percussionist Keita Ogawa adding color now and then. The musicians work well together; individually, they sometimes even sound three-dimensional. You have to be patient with the first two tunes, which have the anodyne quality of what you can pick up in the background at Starbucks while you're scrawling Merry Christmas on your red cup. You'll perk up as Kaufman puts out some rollicking,

"The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go, doesn't it?" -- Stage Manager, opening speech, Our Town Life's fleeting quality, so much part of our consciousness that we become suspicious of it when it recurs in works of art, has never been had a more beloved exposition on the American stage than Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," which opens Butler University Theatre's season this week. Sean Caron as Simon Stimson addresses townsfolk in a scene from Butler's "Our Town." Its minimalist style, nostalgic small-town setting, and its folksiness have commended it to high-school and community-theater treatment, as well as professional productions, throughout its history. We all grew up knowing Grover's Corners and the amiable guidance we got around town from the Stage Manager. Wilder based his concept on one of the verse self-portraits in Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology," in

Joined at the hip, or the head, in the two piano concertos of Johannes Brahms, Krzysztof Urbanski and Dejan Lazic began their two-week collaboration Friday night. It would take a Dr. Ben Carson to disconnect the two artists in this effort, so well-knit was their partnership in Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor in Hilbert Circle Theatre. Dejan Lazic: The hypnotist's gaze is no accident. The conductor had the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra covering the full range of the young Brahms' mix of thorny and tender inspirations in this imposing work. The guest soloist projected a similar breadth of understanding — a little too highly colored here and there, but overall suitably emphatic and sensitive. The orchestra launched the first movement with  unrestrained vigor, enunciating those seismic trills and D-centered rumbling with daunting conviction. The delayed piano entrance was invitingly set out. There was an unshakable unanimity of concept. The heavenly hush o

Garrick Ohlsson played Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin here Sunday. My first memory of Garrick Ohlsson is of a very tall young man entering the stage of Rackham Auditorium at the University of Michigan, resplendent in a white suit, complete with vest. It was summertime in the early 1970s, and the attire seemed seasonally appropriate and also reflective of his radiance as a recitalist. Then and now, the superficially incongruous image of Mark Twain came to mind; the celebrated author favored white suits in the last decade or so of his life, and was often photographed in one. Sunday afternoon's American Pianists Association recital by Ohlsson, who this time was more soberly clad, spurred a mental connection: The 67-year-old pianist, like Twain, is a master storyteller. The narrative thread in his interpretations, particularly of Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G minor, was remarkably sturdy and inviting. The Ballade performance suggested the literary analogues to Chopin'