Tag: best of 2015

Best of 2015: Live Music

“Every good thing we dared in winter
arrives by springtime: a whipporwill
among the pines, a colony of memories
like muscadine on a vine double-thick
as a boy’s arm, redemption reaching
into its roots before an afterthought
steals back the sweetness. Something
lost in the rearview mirror shifts,
& here we are again on the dance floor
at the Silver Shadow; the boys & girls
reeling out to the edge of fingertips.”
-Yusef Komunyakaa, “Always a Way”

I felt a little bit like I was stuck in neutral for big chunks of this year. Had a hard time getting out to see as much music as I would’ve liked. Part of that was balancing the demands of freelance writing and a day job that kicked up a gear but a lot of it was that devil ennui. My mission for next year is to work a little harder to get out, and especially try harder to take a chance on things. The rewards are worth it.

That said, I still saw over 100 shows in some of my favorite cities and – one of the best parts of doing this review ever year – I’m reminded of how exceptionally good so much of it was. I’ve been very lucky in very many respects – I just need to get better at reminding myself of that. Rambling thoughts about the scene follow the list. Left off Big Ears Festival in Knoxville and Hopscotch in Raleigh because I could have filled the list just with sets from both of those. I saw more great music in those combined six days than most people do all year – plus ate amazing food, drank beers that don’t come up here and saw great friends.

Like everything else, all shows are in Columbus unless otherwise mentioned.

Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Real Enemies (written by Argue and Isaac Butler), 11/18/15 (BAM Harvey Theater, Brooklyn) – By this time, pretty much any year I get to see Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society – along with Guillermo Klein Y Los Guachos and Orrin Evans’ Captain Black, one of the few wildly new big bands swinging for the fences – seems assured of a spot on this list. Argue’s writing is that strong and his team of players is a finely tuned machine. But even I didn’t expect this to wow me the way it did. A look at corrosive paranoia, and the very real roots of it, the way history will leave scars on all of us. This collaboration with writer Butler was the most successful multimedia work I saw this year and the music with some narration and fragmented video that broke my heart. As good as the other elements were, the music never ceded its primacy: from Ligeti-recalling wind quintets to intricate ’80s cocaine R&B to expansive works playing with country-inflected styling to the kind of propulsive, noir-drenched snapshots the band excels at, this was a dazzling tour of the dark corners, shattered windows, and dread-soaked cul de sacs of the last fifty years.
NOTS and Raw Pony, 08/15/15 (Dude Locker) – For their 7″ release, Raw Pony, rapidly cementing their status as one of the most exciting bands in town, brought in Memphis’ NOTS cresting the wave of deserved praise for their self-titled debut, in my favorite double bill of the whole year. Boiling-over deep grooves, scuzz-caked guitars, clipped but anthemic harmonies, this was everything I wanted from rock and roll to an attentive, enthusiastic crowd on a gorgeous summer night.
Robbie Fulks, 10/09/15 (Natalie’s Coal-Fired Pizza) – There’s some (I think) deserved gushing about Natalie’s in the round-up below but what I might have loved them most for this year was bringing Robbie Fulks back to town for the first time since Little Brothers (a private wedding gig notwithstanding). Fulks might be alt.country’s Balzac, training a razor-sharp eye on the intersection between classes and ways in which classes never get to intersect and boiling that down to the catchiest roots music you’ve ever heard. Bringing an acoustic quartet that orbited around violinist Shad Cobb, bassist Todd Phillips (founding member of the David Grisman Quintet) and a terrific young mandolin player whose name I can’t seem to find anywhere, this was one of the best, leanest sets I’ve seen in almost 15 years of seeing Fulks live. A consummate performer who will make you laugh and cry at indignity and rightly rage against shame and complacency.
Brett Burleson Quartet, 01/09/15 (Dick’s Den) – One of our finest guitarists and bandleaders, Burleson’s annual shows around his birthday are an oasis in the middle of winter. Because of the punishing cold, this year’s felt like an oasis for lots of people – it was the most crowded I remember and people came to party. His working quartet – saxophonist Eddie Bayard, bassist Roger Hines, and drummer Ryan Jewell – are a well-oiled machine and they worked intricate, complex material around a set full of long pieces that got an entire bar dancing to jazz that was never dumbed down, never pandering. One of those nights where having to squeeze through rows of people to get a drink felt like a blessing and the inch of sweat-condensation on the windows felt well-earned.
Maria Schneider with the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, 05/02/15 (Southern Theater) – I don’t see as much of the CJO as I should because – much like the Columbus Symphony – the repertoire usually isn’t to my taste. But bringing in the finest big band composer and conductor working today, Maria Schneider, shined light on what an amazing collection of musicians Columbus is lucky to boast and how lucky we are to have a leader like Byron Stripling in town. This was 90 minutes of exquisitely deployed color and rapturous tension that’s still echoing in my head.
Secret Keeper, 06/15/15 (Natalie’s Coal-Fired Pizza) – Mary Halvorson’s my favorite guitarist working these days, full-stop, and this duo with bassist Stephan Crump (who also appears on this list with the Vijay Iyer Trio) was full of intriguing, complex music that invited the audience to try, just try, to unpack it. Full of spidery melodies tearing and reshaping themselves, cubist looks at small gestures from every angle, hard flamenco over dry-wind arco playing, songs that feel like lava coalescing into earth. This was everything.
Six String Drag, 04/03/15 (Natalie’s Coal-Fired Pizza) – The resurrected Six String Drag, one of alt.country’s brightest lights when that kind of thing mattered, felt and sounded better than ever. Kenny Roby’s lead vocals and rhythm guitar still perfectly mesh with bassist Rob Keller in harmonies that could rival the Everly Brothers and a band that balances raunch and delicacy like the best rock and roll. As honest and heart-wrenching as your first love and as weighted with memory and portent as growing old, to a beat that begs you to dance, their live performance of “Kingdom of Getting it Wrong” might have been my favorite five minutes of music all year.
Antibalas with Guests, 11/18/15 (Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn) – I hadn’t checked in with the US’s reigning afrobeat kings in a while but something had to be good to make an impression after having my brain massaged by Darcy James Argue and they more than rose to the challenge. This final night of their Brooklyn Bowl residency found them without their usual lead singer so we were treated to a set heavier with raunch instrumentals, rarities and awesome guest singers including Quantic (leading the band on a righteous cumbia), Sarh Nguajah (from Broadway’s Fela!), and soul legend Lee Fields. If you didn’t dance until you were sore to this you should have your pulse checked.
Elysian Fields, 11/14/15 (The Owl, Brooklyn) – One of my favorite bands in a 20th anniversary residency. We caught them on the night they were doing Afterlife with Jennifer Charles and Oren Bloedow backed by Rob Jost, Glenn Patscha, and Max Johnson with an assist by Max Moston. Their textured, noir-pop made for an emotional, moving show in the wake of the Paris attack with the band’s deep ties to the city of light and a packed room in their new venue, The Owl, in Prospect-Lefferts that didn’t have its liquor license yet but the heady emotions (and strong tea) were more than transporting enough.
Deaf Wish with Unholy 2, 10/07/15 (Double Happiness) – Australia’s finest noise-punk band have morphed into one of the best live rock bands I’ve ever seen over a few years of constant touring. This appearance at Double Happiness was a grimy victory lap, loud and almost unhinged, and righteous. Perfect support by Unholy 2 who are going through another chrysalis period and coming out as a more three-dimensional band with interesting samples and a deeper line in syncopation.
Shamir, 11/16/15 (Bowery Ballroom, Manhattan) – Shamir, R&B wunderkind, proving the hype is more than deserved. A killer small band with a woman playing the best Bernie Worrell-style pop funk keys I’ve heard in a long time, a man who was a phenomenal drummer, and a female backing singer playing with gender roles and distortion. This was an epic, sexy, raunchy dance party across sticky floors.
The Bad Plus Joshua Redman, 10/20/15 (Wexner Center) – As good as straight-ahead jazz gets in the best-sounding room in town. Adding the x-factor of Joshua Redman’s burnished, warm tone and his melodic writing helped push the Bad Plus into orbit with particularly fine performances out of drummer Dave King. A night that sets the bar high for anyone wanting to push the boundaries of and dig deeper into genre at the same time.
Haynes Boys, 06/26/15 (Ace of Cups) – This Comfest bill – Haynes Boys, TJSA, and Poets of Heresy was geared toward a crowd a little older than I am but those were all some of the first local bands I saw when I was in High School and the Haynes Boys were the first local band I loved all the way. That too-young melancholy is given extra ballast to steer from the years that have gone past. These songs that try to make sense of that time as you leave your 20s and you realize some of your friends are sick, some of your friends are dying or already dead, where sometimes the world has a patina like a nicotine-stained encaustic, punch twice as hard now lyrics of disappointment like “I knew things were getting bad when I started to count on one of the blackouts you might have,” and “She drives me to work in the morning, I wash her dishes at night.” Catharsis never heals as long as you want it to but once in a while an hour’s enough to get you to the next place.
Vijay Iyer Trio, 04/16/15 (Wexner Center) – Iyer made maybe his best trio record this year and that’s saying something. This set with Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums encompassed everything from Thelonious Monk to a kaleidoscopic, gorgeously shuddering tribute to techno pioneer Robert Hood. Big tent, pulsing, quick witted jazz not hemmed in by any boundaries whatsoever.
Sleater-Kinney with Waxahatchee, 12/05/15 (Newport Music Hall) – There’s something eminently satisfying when a band you loved so much as a teenager and into your early 20s reform and deliver on every ounce of promise and memory. The backdrop looked like skin being shed or a slow-mo explosion behind the three players and the blistering almost two hour set felt like burning indifference off all our eyes. Fierce, wild joy.
Dave Douglas Quintet, 11/19/15 (Jazz Standard, Manhattan) – Douglas’ newer quintet finally hit a level of comfort where I no longer miss the old quintet at all. I was lucky enough to catch the first set of this victory lap at the Jazz Standard toward the end of the touring cycle for their beautiful new record, Brazen Heart, and it was everything I want straightforward jazz to be. Sexy and warm with an ease that never slipped into taking anything for granted. Douglas and tenor player Irabagon have a sense of harmony that bursts through the rafters and the rapport through the rhythm section of Matt Mitchell on piano, Linda Oh on bass and Rudy Royston on drums was like five undeniable heartbeats at once. Sublime.
Mountain Goats, 04/22/15 (Wexner Center) – Mountain Goats keep making great records with Darnielle’s uncommon empathy and bone-deep understanding of Blake’s world in a grain of sand. The record they were touring this cycle, Beat The Champ, might be the best Mountain Goats record yet and the selections they did this time, from the mood-piece “Luna” to the easy mourning of “Animal Mask” through unlikely sing-along “Foreign Object” meshed perfectly into a brilliantly chosen setlist. The juxtaposition of songs had an arc and a swell right through a cathartic finish about why people make art, why the desire to put your mark on the world is universal, and how that ties in with a need for community with set closer “Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1” through the anthemic encore of “Legend of Chavo Guerrero,” “This Year,” and “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton.”
Snakeoil, 05/09/15 (Constellation, Chicago) – In a great Chicago trip full of awesome friends, terrific food, good theatre, and great music, this was the cherry on the cake. Tim Berne’s riveting chamber-jazz quintet with thorny, twisting lines woven between his alto and Oscar Noriega’s clarinet over a shifting bedrock of Matt Mitchell’s piano and Ches Smith’s drums and percussion, lit up and shadowed by Ryan Ferreira’s guitar was like nothing else I heard all year.
Orgone, 08/27/15 (Woodlands Tavern) – West Coast funk band Orgone returned to Columbus to a pretty decent crowd this time who came to get down and in the five or so years since they last graced our stages they’ve only grown in power and confidence. After a great opening set by Chicago’s lean and mean funk outfit The Heard, Orgone came out with a set heavier on vocals but still a rich clinic in rhythm and power in one of the best live music bars for dancing like a moron.
Weyes Blood, 01/15/15 (Cafe Bourbon Street) – Weyes Blood went with a more streamlined, song-focused approach this time, almost more Joni Mitchell and Eric Andersen. The songs were so beautiful and her approach was so immediate, within three songs I didn’t miss some of the wildness that’s been stripped away. In a room I’ve seen swallow fragility with bar noise and nervous energy, she held us all in the palm of her hand and knew exactly when to twist the knife.

Across the Columbus scene, 2015 felt like a year of minor changes, regrouping, retrenching. The big thing in my little corner of town is Jeff Kleinman left Ace of Cups, somebody I personally like and consider a friend who booked some fantastic edgy bands that might otherwise never have come here. It’s good for Jeff to focus on his band, Nervosas, who made one of my favorite records this year, plus that kind of a move always brings new energy and new ideas. Into that steps Bobby Miller who booked great shows all around town when I was in college and has kept his hand in the game over the years with the Slum-B-Q, Megacity Music Marathon, and most recently 4th and 4th Fest. I can’t wait to see what Miller does with the infrastructure of Ace. A similar move at Cafe Bourbon Street with Kevin Failure stepping down to only book one-offs and local musician and artist Albert Gray taking the reins – it’s almost entirely to Kevin’s credit that Bobo reclaimed its crown as the bar for rock on the fringes and Gray’s taste means that shows no sign of abating soon.

A couple new (and new-ish) venues on the South end and near West side give reason to have additional hope for those new ideas and established ideas finally getting a chance to fly. Visual art collective MINT, on Jenkins St south of Greenlawn, have taken up the mantle of Skylab, Firexit, and BLD Warehouse which was much missed with booking a lot of interesting techno, noise (including heavy hitters like Wolf Eyes) and even free jazz. Kyle Sowash, hardest working man in Columbus rock, partnered with Justin Hemminger and independent rock radio CD1025 to turn their instudio live space Big Room into the fully operational Big Room Bar with a cool bar repurposed from the Veterans Memorial stage imprinted with bands that played that storied hall, good sound, and a vibe that pleasantly reminds me of an old VFW. Sowash is already using that stability of a home base to book the the cream of the more established local rock and touring heavy hitters like Helado Negro and Kelly Hogan. People living south of I-70 who want to hear some music now have a few options to complement the fully-come-into-its-own Double Happiness. Strongwater, in resurgent Franklinton, books interesting rock into its packed schedule of parties, receptions, etc. The Walrus on the south edge of Downtown is still feeling out its identity but they’ve got a terrific stage in a beautiful bar; I’ve heard some great jazz there and singer-songwriters like Matt Munhall and Talisha Holmes have packed people in.

On the roots spectrum, Rumba Cafe’s ownership change late last year booked less I’m personally interested in but when my path led me there it’s still one of my favorite rooms and there’s already stuff on the 2016 books I’m salivating over. Woodlands’ empire grew into the satellite rooms and they cemented themselves as a force to be reckoned with, well-staffed bars that are comfortable to hang out in with great sound and a firm booking identity.

Natalie’s continued to grow and thrive. It tied with the Wexner Center for the most shows to appear on my Top 20, with three, and there were another half-dozen in strong consideration. I got a little good-natured grief for my referring to them as “City Winery with some Midwestern ‘aw shucks,'” but I stand by that – they found a way to translate Dorf’s model to bring in a new audience that might not have seen live music in years and without alienating the core, and they did it with humility, hard work, and confidence. They also support the scene to a pretty great degree, I’ve seen their owners at other shows this year more often than I’ve seen owners/bookers outside their own bar (with the exception of the aforementioned Kyle Sowash). They’re a rare venue that does everything right – the food isn’t an afterthought, I start to crave that pizza if I haven’t had it in a few weeks, the cocktails are approachable and balanced, the staff is top-notch, and sound is always fantastic. Their relationship with Alec Wightman’s Zeppelin continued to bear fruit with countless sold-out shows and even more in the pipeline for ’16 as did their work with veteran Bruce Nutt. But what’s key is the way Natalie’s uses those outside bookers to complement their aesthetic, they use it to build instead of using it as a crutch. There was a well-heeled threat from Notes in the Brewery District which opened with a booking policy that struck several people I talked to, and myself, as Natalie’s South but without the good will, the skillful negotiation of the press, the depth of its bench, or its relationships with national booking agents. I’m rooting for Notes, I think this town could support another adult venue with a slightly more buttoned-up demeanor but the way they did it out of the gate honestly didn’t make me rush to go there.

Brothers Drake might have been the success story of the year with great music finding a bigger audience than they would have elsewhere in town because booker April Kulcsar understands the symbiosis between the bar’s audience and the kind of music they can be open to – I saw big crowds getting down to things as diverse as Chicago’s scrappy afrobeat up-and-comers Gramps the Vamp, Detroit’s riotous funk ensemble Third Coast Kings, and NYC torch-song rockabilly Miss Tess and the Talkbacks. Plus, bands that crystalized in part at BD like Angela Perley and the Howlin’ Moons and Playing to Vapors are rocking bigger stages and sending ripples through the national touring communities.

Wexner Center focused its booking with the strongest slate of jazz I can remember and almost no ephemeral blog-rock, as evidenced by tying with Natalie’s for most shows on this top 20. I can’t wait for the jazz shows in Winter and Spring, plus the first Yo La Tengo trip to town for a set of their own music in years (Little Brothers? The Factory?) and whatever else they bring.

So what I’m trying to say is, keep your ear to the ground. Go see some shit, Columbus. The bounty is rich and the cornucopia overflows.

Tags best of, best of 2015, live music, music, review

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Best of 2015: Theatre/Opera/Dance

Post author By rsanford614
Post date December 26, 2015
No Comments on Best of 2015: Theatre/Opera/Dance

“Sometimes
they grip each other with a cry
expand into lamentations
become mist on the windows of dead houses
crystallize into chips of grief on dead lips
attach themselves to a fallen star
dig their hole in nothingness
breathe our strayed souls

Words are rocky tears
the keys to first doors
they grumble in caverns
lend their ruckus to storms
their silence to bread that’s ovened alive.”

-Venus Khoury-Ghata, Les Mots (trans. Marilyn Hacker)

Notes on the overall scene are after the list. Where I reviewed something for another outlet, I’ve attached a link. Unless otherwise specified, everything is in Columbus.

Glory of the World by Charles L. Mee (Humana Festival, Louisville, KY) – Had a glorious day and night in Louisville with some dear friends on the way to Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival and the detour was mostly for the premier of this new Mee play, a riotous tribute to the naturalist Thomas Merton on his centennial. Glory of the World, gorgeously directed by Les Waters, uses the raw-flesh ambiguity of perception, the way we see what we’re looking for, and the way a person at the top of their game can embody all these things to different people. It’s a paean to male friendship, and the messy, beautiful complications of living in the world, full of joy and memory and mourning. The best thing I saw with a food fight and a fist fight on stage. NYC pals, BAM is presenting this staging in January right after APAP, if you can make it don’t miss it.
the theatre is a blank page by Ann Hamilton and Anne Bogart (SITI Company presented by Wexner Center for the Arts) – This was the first adaptation of Virginia Woolf (To The Lighthouse) I’ve ever seen that captured everything I love about Woolf and gave me the same finger-in-a-light-socket sensation as reading her work. Threaded through by Rena Cherlouche Fogel’s narration, this guided tour through the guts of Mershon Auditorium was also a guided tour through the bones of theatre, a look at why making art matters and what makes it stick its nails in your heart. Both the most sensual, erotic evening I spent in a theater all year and something that reduced me to mouth-breathing, stumbling, childlike joy. Review at Columbus Underground.
Don Quixote: A Pilgrimage by Jen Schlueter adapted from Miguel de Cervantes (Available Light) – As I chewed over the year, Jen Schlueter’s brilliant adaptation of Quixote with perfect direction by Matt Slaybaugh summed up everything I love about Available Light. An adaptation that recreates the pleasure of a text without being intimidated by it or trying to just retell the events in a way that elevates instead of diminishing the classic. It vibrates with the kind of whimsical seriousness that needed a cast this uniformly strong. Elena Perantoni dazzled doing double duty as a backpacker and as Rocinante, Sancho Panza’s donkey [the first draft of this misnamed Sancho’s companion], a very funny foil to Drew Eberly’s Panza. Her interplay with the very strong David Glover mirrored and echoed Eberly and Kim Garrison Hopcraft’s retired couple. But the core and the spine of this was Acacia Duncan’s heartbreaking character trying to reconnect with her father; without ever stating it, she gives us a look at the power of art to provide a roadmap and a toolbox to healing and the way stories change with the road you stumble down.
Sweat Baby Sweat by Jan Martens (Wexner Center for the Arts) – In a more literal way than the Hamilton/Bogart, this was one of the most erotic things I’ve ever seen on a stage. Two dancers, a man and a woman, grapple with the arc of a relationship, almost never leaving contact with one another’s skin. As a physical act, the torturous, delicate, drenched slowness was astonishing, the lack of momentum as positions shift seemed to defy gravity. As bodies, seeing the occasional strain,the clenching of an ass, the tightening of a back, that sweat glistening over these two perfect people was heart-stopping. Got a little tense in my seat – in the good way – just writing this paragraph. His Dog Days Are Over was also stunning and encompassed more of the world but this played in my dreams over and over.
A Little Night Music by Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim (Short North Stage) – Maybe my favorite Sondheim done better than I’ve ever seen it, this production directed by Michael Licata opened a very promising main-stage season at Short North Stage. It understands the way confined motions of a waltz echo the desperate search for love and the way that search tries to navigate our own neuroses, hangups, fuck-ups, lies and shame, with even a Pyrrhic victory being better than nothing. The cast is marvelous with standouts being Mark Harmon as Frederik, Marya Spring as Desiree and Kate Lingnofski, who damn near walks away with the whole show, as the Countess. Review at Columbus Underground.
The Grown-Up by Jordan Harrison (Available Light) – Available Light cemented their keen ear to the vibrations of the larger world of theatre this year with two productions (the other appears later). Jordan Harrison was the toast of NYC theatre with his new play Marjorie Prime almost simultaneously with AVLT bringing his recent work, The Grown-Up to open the 2015-2016 season in an exquisite production directed by Eleni Papaleonardos suffused with glowing wonder. Fragmented time-slippage follows Rudy Frias (as Actor A) through his life with family, lovers, co-workers played by the same handful of brilliant actors (standouts include Jordan Fehr and Michelle Schroeder) in a lean, cohesive look at how quickly life goes, how similar the people and circumstances we surround ourselves with are, and how easily lessons are learned and forgotten. Review at Columbus Underground.
Henry IV by William Shakespeare (Donmar Warehouse presented by St Ann’s Warehouse, NYC) – I missed Donmar’s previous all-female Julius Caesar so there was no chance I was going to miss this, much less miss my first chance to go to the new St Ann’s Warehouse (which is a marvelous improvement in every way, maybe the best theatre space in New York). Phylida Lloyd’s direction of this look at female prisoners staging, and finding echoes for their own lives, in an edit of the two Henry IV parts, had some issues – largely in the edit that cut a little too close to the bone getting down to two hours – but left my jaw on the floor again and again. Jade Anouka’s Hotspur is the best rendition of the character I’ve ever seen, someone who can freeze your blood with her eyes even in the back row. Sophie Stanton’s Falstaff is a fascinating, hilarious, deeply sad take on possibly my favorite character in all of Shakespeare. And Claire Dunne’s Prince Hal is a beacon of intense charisma and menace you can’t take your eyes off.
Lost Girls by John Pollono (MCC, NYC) – Pollono’s play, masterfully directed by Jo Bonney, plays with a surface-simple thriller premise where a missing girl brings up the uneasy détente between a divorced couple (a terrific Piper Perabo and Ebon Moss-Bachrach). As it flips back and forth to a hotel room off the interstate with a high school couple running away (a crackling Lizzy DeClement and Josh Green) the tension draws tighter and tighter, leavened with the kind of sharp one-liners that only characters who know each other that well could land. This is a textbook case in a play that transported me out of myself and literally had tears springing to my eyes after an hour and a half with a twist that’s perfectly set up but still made me gasp. A masterclass in how to love your characters and let that love come through to an audience.
Thrill Me by Stephen Dolginoff (Short North Stage) – As good as the wide-canvas musicals were at Short North Stage, I was most heartened at how they turned the Green Room side-space into a showcase for the kind of smaller, edgier musicals that, with a couple of exceptions (like Red Herring’s sumptuous take on Romance/Romance) don’t get any play in Columbus. My favorite of the lot was Dolginoff’s sexy and vicious Thrill Me. Edward Carignan (maybe SNS’s MVP of the year) directed this with an eye on paranoia and claustrophobia. Evan Hoffman’s Richard Loeb was a performance as sharp as a stiletto you should see coming but don’t and Luke Stewart’s heartbroken, desperate Nathan Leopold is a defining study in the corrosive quality of bad love. Review at Columbus Underground.
Standing on Ceremony by Various (OSU Theatre Department) – In a fascinating touch, OSU Theatre decided to perform this anthology of short plays by some of our finest writers (including Neil Labute, Jordan Harrison, Wendy MacLeod, and Jose Rivera) about gay marriage on a lower budget meant to mimic storefront theatre and using the entirety of Drake Union instead of proscenium stages. A beautiful, sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking, look at love and language directed by Jen Schlueter and Karie Miller, it was full of performances that belied their youth with standouts including Amanda Loch, Chorsie Calbert IV, and especially Bryan Arnold who broke me in the Moises Kaufman section. Review at Columbus Underground.
The Christians by Lucas Hnath (Available Light) – This is the other play I alluded to earlier about AVLT’s unerring sense in other people’s work of what’s new and what’s coming next. Lucas Hnath’s submersion into the murky depths of faith had an acclaimed run at Playwrights Horizons this fall after premiering at Humana last year, including feature articles in the New York Times, and it was given a perfect production here directed by Acacia Duncan. Underneath gorgeous semi-abstract projections standing in for the megachurch, The Christians featured heartbreaking performances from Matt Hermes as Pastor Paul and Jordan Fehr as Associate Pastor Joshua, at the heart of the schism of this church and with excellent supporting work from Ian Short, Michelle Schroeder, and especially Whitney Thomas Eads as the people caught in the middle, the real-world casualties of an idea being made real. Review at Columbus Underground.
[title of show] by Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen (CATCO) – In a similar move to Short North Stage, CATCO experimented this year with the smaller Studio Three for cabaret style performances that, to my mind, were largely successful. My favorite was the Bell/Bowen meta-theatrical [title of show] about why we make art and the roadblocks we run afoul of as we go on. Joe Bishara’s direction used the smaller space beautifully well and the combination of the four actors – Elisabeth Zimmerman, Bradley Johnson, Annie Huckaba and Jonathan Collura (who also dazzled in Peter and the Starcatcher) – meshed perfectly. Even with a too-long second act there was joy on that stage to spare that hung over me all day. Review at Columbus Underground.
The Object Lesson by Geoff Sobelle (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Sobelle’s one-man show was a look at memory, the way we let objects stand in for feelings and the way they conjure those feelings, set in a a huge room bedecked with boxes and boxes he hilariously and conspicuously unpacked. Scenes loop around on one another in hilarious and moving ways with the best use of audience participation I saw all year. Review at Columbus Underground.
In Old Age by Mfonsio Udofia (Page 73, NYC) – Page 73 is one of my favorite sources for brand new plays in NYC and I was lucky my November trip overlapped with a reading of my favorite new (to me) voice all year in a little rehearsal studio in Chelsea. In Old Age is about the purging of old demons and not letting them hang over us, as much as anyone ever can, brilliantly played out by one woman and one man. I’m sorry to say I misplaced the program sometime between then and now but this is a play and two actors you’ll be hearing about in the future.
Clowntime is Over by Joseph E Green (MadLab) – A cracked-mirror Christ analogue in the persona of a sad, drunk clown Max (a fantastic Andy Batt), Clowntime follows his adventure with his two funny animal sidekicks, Susie the Bunny (Shana Kramer) and Tidy the Llama (Chad Hewitt) on the day when Max realizes the audience – God? – is no longer watching. Slapstick and one-liners and pathos on a twisted mobius strip of daily routine, this was my favorite piece MadLab staged all year and the “guest appearance” of Stephen Woosley’s Paco the Mouse might have been the hardest I laughed. Review at Columbus Underground.

I could have easily gone with a shorter epigram, Leonard Cohen’s “God bless the continuous stutter of the word being made into flesh,” and almost gotten what I wanted to say. But the Khoury-Ghata came way closer to what I felt and what I went looking for this year. Theatre has a different grip on me than other art forms and, in a dark year like I alluded to in the visual art best of, its command of the physical and its dominion over time was a balm.

This was my first year as a freelance contributor for Columbus Underground. I’m grateful for the opportunity and hope, in some small way, I added to the conversation in town. What I’d ask of you as readers: if you see blind spots, let me know. I’m not going to like everything and I can’t see everything – I saw over 60 shows across four cities this year – but I want to shine light on corners I, and maybe local media as a whole, haven’t done a good job with yet. If you have a show I should know about, please email me at the contact information above.

The theatre scene in town feels like it’s at an interesting juncture, one of stability and flux. The new breed companies evolved into something akin to the establishment. Available Light celebrated its 10th year by changing their structure, bringing in Eleni Papaleonardos as fellow Artistic Director alongside founder Matt Slaybaugh, a decision which is already bearing fruit and I’m very excited to see the results of across the season. At MadLab, once the city’s enfant terrible, celebrating their 20th anniversary, longtime artistic director Andy Batt (whose podcast is already shaping up as essential listening for anyone taking the temperature of Columbus theatre) handed the reins to writer/director/actor Jim Azelvandre at a time they’re making some of riskiest, most exciting work I can remember. Shadowbox took some big risks this year with their massive Japanese collaboration The Tenshu (adapted from Kyoka Izumi) and while the play wasn’t a home-run it’s the kind of experiment I hope we see more of, along with their conceptual Pink Floyd history, Which One’s Pink? which I didn’t see but heard raves about. Warehouse Theatre made their return with a mix of edgy classics (including a great take on Lonergan’s This is Our Youth) and more contemporary work like Rajiv Joseph. Imagine had to relocate mid-season to the Northland Performing Arts Center and, while the Wall Street situation is depressing for several reasons, I’m excited to see what they do there and very excited to not sit on a barstool for a two-plus hour show.

In the recognized establishment there’s also some tectonic shifting. CATCO has a season loaded with new, interesting work, recently off the New York stage – accusations about playing it safe might still be apt but their higher production values are staging terrific plays no one else is doing and they look a lot more like the CATCO I knew and loved when I got introduced to theatre by old friend Doug Smith. Actors Theatre lost their Artistic Director and guiding light John Kuhn and found their season beseiged by some of the worst summer weather in a while but they came back swinging and made us all proud (and put on a great Richard III in the middle of a strong season).

I’ve had a few conversations lately about the lack of young, exciting companies making the last generation irrelevant – or at least making them work harder. I see a lot of promise in the college work in this town; Otterbein always stuns me and OSU (with their main stage productions and their fascinating Lab Series) is the strongest I ever remember it being, if a few of those folks stuck around town and made work it’d be a huge boon to this town. There are a few glimmers in that direction, most promising so far is Hollie Klem’s Haberdasher Theatre whose first production didn’t wow me but was one of the freshest voices I’ve seen in town in a while. To mangle Morton Feldman, show me that blank book, youngsters – astonish us and force us to astonish you.

I’m choosing excitement over worry, though don’t be surprised if the latter still creeps in. And I’m putting my money where my mouth is with tickets I’ve already purchased to Under the Radar and Prototype in NYC. I hope you do the same.

Tags best of, best of 2015, review, theatre

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Best of 2015: Visual Art

“God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day –
I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

Executioners near the woman at the window.
Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer
fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee.
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.”
-Agha Shahid Ali, “Tonight”

This year was so soaked enough in death you almost had to wring it out. There was a lot to be sick over. Personally: the other Grandfather, a dear friend Valerie, friends’ parents and lovers and best friends. And that’s all before the camera pulls back to look at the larger world – the larger world where terror hit closer to home than usual, people gunned down going to a show or the recent vandalism and suicide at the Wexner Center causing the After Picasso show to close early. That, of course, speaks to privilege because for much of the world death is never as far away as it, luckily, is for me, and my grey year doesn’t even move the needle on a larger scale.

For me, visual art has always been linked with the act of memory and the act of bearing witness. Its permanence (and in some cases, its deliberate eschewing of that permanence) gives it some of its meditative quality. My heart breaks for anyone there when the event happened in December and anyone who might have been there and, of course, the person who chose that place to end it. Even before the most recent event, the art that drew me to it, that made me want to tell somebody, that made me want to argue with it and wrestle with it, played right into the preoccupation with death I didn’t consciously realize I had this year. But more than that, it was a balm. It was fuck it, this matters. It was this is still standing. It was fight to remember. It’s a reminder to keep trying.

As with all of my Year End summations, everything is in Columbus unless stated otherwise.

Doris Salcedo, s/t (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago) – On a grey, unseasonably cold day in Chicago in the middle of a great trip, this Colombian artist made me feel like someone was standing on my chest in a room full of knives. From the opening piece, Plegaria Muda, with its wooden tables the audience has to squeeze between and growths of vegetation coming out of the tables like a field of gravestones but still shot through with fragile life, on, this took my breath away. Sculptures using silk and human hair, abandoned doors concrete. It was a death mask for the world and a shrine, apocalyptic and very, very beautiful.
Alberto Burri, The Trauma of Painting (Guggenheim, NYC) – This was the kind of show that left me kicking myself I didn’t know Burri’s artwork better beforehand. It gave me the same feeling as Giuseppe Ungaretti’s poetry, though his poet countryman is an earlier war, with its use of the surreal to crack open your chest and its fantasies about shipwrecks instead of the way you see you friends die. Molten plastic, welded metal leaving the seams obvious enough they look like blisters, burlap sacks as an indictment of capitalism. Everywhere I turned my mouth got dry and tears came to my eyes.
Jack Whitten, Five Decades of Painting (Wexner Center for the Arts) – There’s been a lot of talk about the Wexner not having a permanent curator in a while (they still have curator-at-large Bill Horrigan) but I have to say they’ve done a great job working around those limitations this year. This Jack Whitten retrospective showed a singular voice working through, challenging, and recombining every interesting art trend of the 20th century and stripping away what didn’t apply to what he wanted to say. My favorite pieces were the portraits/tributes that combined painting and mosaic and found objects in a way that made blood hot in my veins, especially the tribute to Amiri Baraka (a flawed, complicated guiding light for me, always). Memory writ appropriately large.
Elaine de Kooning, Portraits (National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC) – Knowing Elaine de Kooning’s work more by reputation (and a couple examples at MoMA), this series of portraits was revelatory. Obviously, especially for being at the National Portrait Gallery, this retrospective moved in tighter and tighter circles toward the famous JFK portrait but that gleams with sunlight and the way a beautiful sunny day throws the greens and yellows of the garden you’re in all around, fracturing what you see and what you can’t quite make out. These, all of them, are full of mystery and secrets and magic that gets closer, you think, to who the people being depicted were than maybe they’d ever shown.
Shirin Neshat, Facing History (Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC) – I’ve been a fan of Neshat’s work for a long time so this retrospective was like gorging myself on something almost too rich to consume. The way she grasps the macro elements of history, history’s pain and the way it disfigures people with the twinned fires of love and hate but also it’s beauty, and the way she understands people is a marvel. Gorgeous works you can get lost in, a lot to say about the way the world gets created with our creation of language (this theme also resonated with me in several things on my theatre list coming soon). This was a series of varying punches that left me staggered.
Walid Raad, s/t (Museum of Modern Art, NYC) – Walid Raad’s collections of photographs, videos, sculpture and fictional histories, gobsmacked me and left me babbling. It made me think a lot about the horrific situations in Lebanon over the years and how someone around my age would have processed that, and, weirdly, it made me think of the recent controversy in science fiction. This is a brilliant example of how fictionalizing and fabulism (for the latter, Raad’s “merged” sculptures from the middle east transported to the Louvre) can been tools (scalpels or daggers or stilettos or garrotes) to slice into your heart. And an example of how many stories those tools can be good for telling with emotional maturity and an eye to how big and fantastic (and sometimes fantastically horrible) the world really is.
Various Artists, Sitter: Portraiture in Contemporary Photography (CCAD Contemporary Arts Space) – The CCAD space has been killing it the last few years and this year, with this (before the renovation) and the work after the renovation to create a better flow for the galleries has made it a force to be reckoned with for modern art in Columbus. This group show of 27 photographers really dug deep into what portraiture means now and was full of alive, striking, political, rich, sexy, intense work.
Pablo Picasso, Picasso Sculpture (Museum of Modern Art, NYC) – I’m on the record as not being the biggest Picasso fan. All credit to his craft and his influence but most of his work I just don’t love. This was an exception. Seeing this many of his sculptures together had a delirious, vertiginous effect that actually made me want to go deeper and stay longer and talk about it more. This was also, by far, the best arranged and curated exhibit I saw, Ann Temkin and Anne Umland made this arrangement of sculpture both feel excavated and timeless and flow in a way that felt intensely personal and real.
Catherine Opie, Portraits and Landscapes (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Opie, long a favorite of mine (who also had work in Sitter), took a step into something almost resembling Renaissance painting with her photographs here. These rich, dark portraits of her social circle, often naked or half naked but with expressions and clean lines that summoned a deep distance encouraged me to look again and again. Just as intriguing are the blurred-almost-to-abstraction landscapes that break up the intensity of the gazes like a note of sensual dissonance. She’s not here to comment on the souls of these people and she’s not here to pass any judgment. There are no easy answers, no pat summations, in this body of her work and we’re richer having it.
Charles Atlas, The Waning of Justice (CCAD Contemporary Arts Space) – Atlas is another perennial for me but this doomsday clock over gorgeous landscapes and abstract concepts leading into a room where the larger-than-life figure of Lady Bunny gave a moving, hilarious monologue across a whole wall that periodically dropped out to silence was astonishing. Concern with a disappearing world turned into an aching dance.
Various, Open This End: Contemporary Art from the Collection of Brian Byrne (OSU Urban Arts Space) – In general I agree with the concerns about single-collector exhibitions. That said, my understanding was this was already donated to its final destination and I was blown away by this collection of art that wasn’t just blue-chip but was also violent, intense, irreverent and wise. The curation was really stunning with pictures about race facing off against each other, corners about death. This wasn’t easily digestible and with all the big names it didn’t make concessions to being palatable and we were all the better for it.
Archibald Motley, Jazz-Age Modernist (Whitney Museum, NYC) – Motley’s fascinating mix seems to obviously point toward Thomas Hart Benton, Hopper, and Toulouse-Lautrec. What I saw most was Chagall, with an assured willingness to discard any piece of a tradition he didn’t need and use exactly what of it he wanted. But his work’s in no way derivative, it shimmers and vibrates with an electricity that’s all his own and these portraits and large scenes got better and better seeing in a large group. Any fine artist working with the black experience, especially in those days, is to be considered seriously but beyond those serious concerns this was sensual, intense work, looking at an era as it started to tip over.
Anonymous, Mingering Mike’s Supersonic Greatest Hits (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC) – As with most good things I see, this was a suggestion of A., and it was astonishing. If you grew up a record nerd and a comic book nerd like me, this was an extra delight. Using the medium of painted record covers and show fliers, this fictional universe the artist known only as Mingering Mike created where the same songwriting credits popped up again and again and various musicians played with other groups fit together and was just off enough to have an interesting tension. Similarly to the Walid Raad, this secret history pointed toward an unknown pain with notes vaguely intimating draft dodging and the work drying up after the pardon when the artist could find a job, the characters going away when they aren’t needed anymore.
Louise Fishman, s/t (Cheim and Read Gallery, NYC) – This selection of paintings was the best thing I saw in a long day wandering around Chelsea. Vibrant and full of sensuous dissonance, like a landscape run through a distortion pedal on these big canvases.
Various, Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present (Wexner Center for the Arts) – This exhibit that came to the Wex after a run at Boston’s ICA opened my eyes to a whole new medium in a way that doesn’t happen much anymore. I marveled at seeing the way textile work embraces and pulls against easy connotations of domesticity and explodes into something political and angry, totemic and erotic; seeing the way it enfolds history and points toward the future. I visited this maybe a dozen times and I could have done a dozen more.

Tags art, best of, best of 2015, review, visual art