ABC Reiew 
Yes, it's that time again, when we look back in a slight daze at roughly a quarter-year of the city's theatrical life, find some hot picture of a male model, and put together our personal list of the best of the local scene. So without further ado -
Best Acting EnsemblesHouse and Garden - Trinity Rep; Angela Brazil, Mary C. Davis, Janice Duclos, Catherine Dupont, Steven Jaehnert, Phyllis Kay, Barbara Meek, Ted Moller, Barry M. Press, Bridget Saracino, Anne Scurria, Fred Sullivan, Jr., Stephen Thorne, Joe Wilson, Jr., directed by Brian McElenyRapture, Blister Burn - Huntington Theatre; Nancy E. Carroll, Shannon Esper, Annie McNamara, Kate Shindle, Timothy John Smith, directed by Peter DuBoisSocial Creatures - Trinity Rep; Darien Battle, Timothy Crowe, D'Arcy Dersham, Janice Duclos,Rebecca Gibel, Alexander Platt, Nance Williamson, directed by Curt ColumbusGlengarry Glen Ross - Merrimack Rep; David Adkins, Joel Colodner, Charlie Kevin, Will LeBow, Todd Licea, Jim Ortlieb, Jeremiah Wiggins, directed by Charles TowersLebensraum - Hub Theatre Company; Jaime Carillo, Lauren Elias, Kevin Paquette, directed by John Geoffrion
David Adkins and Will LeBow in Merrimack Rep's Glengarry Glen Ross. Photo: Meghan Moore.
Best Individual PerformancesColin Hamell - Jimmy Titanic, New RepLisa O'Hare, David Andrew MacDonald, James Beaman, Jacquelynn Fontaine, Andrew Tighe - The Sound of Music, North Shore Music TheatreKaren MacDonald - M, Huntington TheatrePaula Plum, Marvelyn McFarlane, Michael Kaye, DeLance Minefee - Clybourne Park, SpeakEasy StageLindsay Allyn Cox, Terrell Donnell Sledge, Kris Sidberry, Gregory Balla - By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Lyric StageGabriel Graetz, Beth Pearson, William Schuller - Little Giants, Imaginary BeastsTim Spears, Russell Garret, Paula Langton, Jeffries Thais, Paul Farwell - Amadeus, New RepBobbie Steinbach, Paula Plum - Pericles, Actors' Shakespeare ProjectDaniel Jones - From Denmark with Love, Vaquero PlaygroundLorne Batman, Sam Tilles - The Skin of Our Teeth, Boston UniversityAimee Doherty, Phil Tayler, Michele A. DeLuca, J.T. Turner, Lauren Gemelli, Sarah deLima - On the Town, Lyric Stage
The set, costumes, and lighting of
Amadeus at the New Rep. Photo: Andrew Brilliant
Best DirectionBrian McEleny, House and Garden, Trinity RepCurt Columbus, Social Creatures, Trinity RepCharles Towers, Glengarry Glen Ross, Merrimack Rep
And now - see you at the beach!
Best (New) Plays House and Garden, Alan Ayckbourn - Trinity RepSocial Creatures, Jackie Sibblies Drury - Trinity Rep
Best DesignCourtney Nelson (set), Chelsea Kerl (costumes), Katy Atwell (lighting), and Yi-Chun Hung (sound) - The Skin of Our Teeth, Boston UniversityCristina Todesco (set), Frances Nelson McSherry (costumes), and Mary Ellen Stebbins (lighting) - Amadeus, New RepSeághan McKay, projections - On the Town, New RepJohnathan Carr, film production - By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Lyric StageBill Clarke, set - Glengarry Glen Ross, Merrimack RepCotton Talbot-Minkin, Jill Rogati, and Matthew Woods - Little Giants, Imaginary BeastsThe Hub Review, the guide to everything that matters in Boston and elsewhere.
2 | Southwestern Slot Canyons, United States Narrow fissures carved into rock by millenia of wind and water erosion. The longest, Bucksin Gulch, stretches for 12 miles. Wikipedia. 
3 | Tsingy of Bemaraha, Madagascar A forest made from limestone needles. It's so dense that it's virtually impenetrable to humans. Wikipedia. 
4 | Belize Barrier Reef, Belize The largest Barrier Reef in the Western hemisphere. It's thought 90% of its species remain undiscovered. Wikipedia. 
5 | Grand Prismatic Spring, United States The third-largest hot spring in the world. Its remarkable colors are produced by algae and bacteria. Wikipedia. 
6 | Wulingyuan National Park, China Home to over 3.000 gigantic sandstone columns, many over 200m high. Used to be an ancient tropical sea floor. Wikipedia. 
7 | Namib Desert, Namibia Thought to be the oldest desert in the world. It's home to huge sand dunes, some measured 380m high. Wikipedia. 
8 | Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia Measuring 4000 square miles, this is the world's biggest salt flat. Difficult to reach, it sits 3.7km high in the Andes. When it rains, it becomes the earth's largest mirror. Wikipedia. 
9 | Richat Structure, Mauritania A mysterious 50km-wide geological feature in the Sahara desert. Believed to be caused by uplift and erosion rather than a meteor. It's known as the "Eye of the Sahara." Wikipedia. 
10 | Socotra Archipelago, Yemen An extremely isolated landform- around 33% of its plant life is found nowhere else on earth. Wikipedia. 
Colin Hamell in Jimmy Titanic - photo: Michael and Suz Karchmer.We live, it seems, in an age of theatrical vehicles. Playwrights are short on vision these days, and the culture is far from coherent; but actors still need work - hence Jimmy Titanic, at the New Rep through this weekend, a bemused and bemusing one-man show, starring the versatile Colin Hamell, as a lost passenger on that famous ocean liner (another vehicle!) that vanished beneath the waves one night to remember in 1912.Yes, you read that right - this is a light comedy about the sinking of the Titanic; something rather improbable about the supposedly unsinkable. And no, Jimmy didn't survive - the play is (mostly) a wry reminiscence from the heights of Heaven - sometimes leavened with moments of true pathos. That the evening comes off as comedy at all (and it does come off) is a testament to the skills of both actor Hamell and the script's author, Bernard McMullan. I can't pretend that the play is more than a mildly entertaining way to while away about an hour and a half of your life. But these days - maybe that ain't bad.Mr. McMullan basically keeps Jimmy Titanic afloat by throwing out all sorts of dramatic material, and then seeing what sticks (at least for a while). And luckily, it turns out he is a skillful sketch writer - there are all sorts of good ideas bobbing around on the surface of his script; but mostly they're all tip, no iceberg. You could argue the playwright thus cannily avoids capsizing his wry tone - but as we watch seemingly a dozen good dramatic ideas drift by, a certain sense of thematic vacuum sets in, and we wonder at the long-term wisdom of his seeming stance.Still, many of McMullan's gambits are beguiling. He conjures a heaven that's a bit like a down-and-out neighborhood in Belfast (Jimmy's hometown); the Archangel Gabriel shakes down new arrivals for spare change, and the Almighty himself is a grizzled old chain-smoker; there's even a disco (and sex, apparently). This shanty paradise struck me as quite a good idea - but it didn't really lead anywhere. Likewise, the playwright crafts a striking scene in which Jimmy spends his last moments on earth drinking with the Astors, as the water rises around them - another inspired gambit, but we never meet these avatars of the upper crust on the "other side," and indeed the whole question of how heaven might level the social differences that meant so much on earth (and determined who lived and died on the Titanic) never really surfaces.Other themes can be glimpsed on the edges of the script, passing like strangers in the night. Why did God command that iceberg to drift into the Titanic's path? And what role did human error - or dishonesty - play in the tragedy? Jimmy himself was one of the laborers who innocently built the flawed vessel - but he never wrestles with his own role in its creation. And what does it mean for those who caused the disaster to be in heaven along with their victims? In many plays, we sense the playwright groping for a compelling theme; here, we feel McMullan all but pushing them aside in the quest for his next one-liner.Still, if you're in the mood for a light evening that dips occasionally into rueful recollection, shot through with Irish feeling - or if you like pointed little skits that never sharpen their points too far - then Jimmy Titanic is all but guaranteed to please you. Certainly this production, which originated with the Tir Na theatre company, and has already toured extensively, has been buffed to a high sheen by director Carmel O'Reilly (who seems to specialize these days in light reiterations of older, deeper Irish drama). I'd even argue McMullan could be a talent to watch, if he can harness his skills to some larger artistic purpose. And Hamell's performance is surely a focused, precise tour de force - buoyantly secure and skillful - unsinkable, even.The Hub Review, the guide to everything that matters in Boston and elsewhere.
Dame Emma KirkbyI looked at my partner about halfway through Dame Emma Kirkby's concert at the Boston Early Music Festival last week and had to deadpan, "Are we sad yet?"He could only chuckle; for rarely has an artist risked a set as downbeat as this one - devoted in its entirety to the lachrymose John Dowland, and what's more, skirting for the most part his early, lively stuff. To be fair, we knew what we were getting into - Dowland is notorious for his dolor; his motto was actually "Semper Dowland, semer dolens" ("Always Dowland, always grieving") - and I don't think he was being ironic.The composer, a close contemporary of Shakespeare, never achieved a post in Elizabeth I's court (he was Catholic, somewhat on the down low - and even a sometime spy), but his wildly popular music played heavily to the unique taste of the Elizabethan moment: the worship of virginity was at its height when he published his "First Book of Songs," and Elizabeth's subsequent death soon brought even a deeper note of mourning to the cult of love denied. Dowland's output likewise tilted toward the funereal; his early lyrics hoped that his tears might "sweetly weepe into my Ladies brest"; but later songs command Time to actually stop, so that he may be "bedded to my Tombe;" centuries before Wagner's Liebestod, Dowland was obsessed with the idea of "Love-death."It goes without saying that Kirkby, a beloved doyenne of the early music scene, at this point in her career can program anything she likes - and so virtually a full house showed up to hear a concert all but designed to make you want to open a vein (or at least live forever with the knife poised over your wrist). The draw, of course, was the hand-in-glove fit between her voice and this material. Kirkby doesn't boast a large sound, nor is she a particularly agile vocalist (in fact I believe she never trained to be a professional singer), but in its vibrato-free purity, her voice comes close to the early-music ideal, and her stage presence is open, frank, and sweetly appealing.She approached the Dowland songbook as a source of comfort and solace - which worked quite well at first; Kirkby was moving, but never maudlin, in the heart-breaking "Flow my tears," and brought a rush of sweet immediacy to the imploring "Wilt thou unkind thus reave me." And interspersed among her vocal selections were peerless lute solos (including the famous, foundational "Lachrimae") rendered delicately by Paul O'Dette.Still, a program this repetitious demands some sense of exploration - or explication - but Kirkby didn't supply either; the first lament sounded much like the last. And perhaps there's a touch of stylistic naïveté to an approach that holds back from the underside of Dowland's obsessive erotic melancholy - that takes him at his own weepy word over and over and over again. His lyrics may not quite be Shakespearean sonnets, but their poetry is memorable, and they have their own subtexts and intrigues, that purity alone cannot limn. Still, the concert did end on a paired note of devastatingly simple beauty, in Kirkby's take on "Thou mighty God," Dowland's heartfelt prayer for deliverance, and O'Dette's tender rendition of the haunting "Farewell."
The Hilliard Ensemble.Another mainstay of the early music scene also made a visit to BEMF this year - but with far less satisfactory results. Indeed, I confess I hesitated before writing anything at all about the Hilliard Ensemble (at left), as their performance at Emmanuel Church on Friday night was among the weakest I have ever heard on a professional stage. Given the group's illustrious history, this of course was startling; at first I couldn't quite believe my ears, in fact. Were they under-prepared? Were they exhausted? Ill? Energy and volume were low, intonation was insecure (countertenor David James missed some pitches completely), phrasing was tentative - as one acquaintance put it during intermission, it sounded more like a first rehearsal than a full performance.This was really too bad, because the program was certainly of interest - it opened with a suite of obscure songs inspired by Petrarch's poems to the famous Laura, then segued into hymns to the Virgin Mary (an interesting curatorial idea). Things did move slightly uphill as the concert progressed - a later set of songs by Pisano more or less hung together, and after intermission (during which the audience was audibly restive), the Hilliards came back with more power, at least, on three hymns by St. Godric of Finchale which are among the oldest surviving scores of vocal music. These proved compelling, and there were further sparks of feeling, and some coherence, in the English song "Ah! Gentle Jesu," as well as "Otche nasch," an anonymous rendering of the Lord's Prayer. Alas, things did begin to drift once more, even though a set of Armenian hymns, or "Sharakans," was quite intriguing harmonically; the final piece, however, Perotin's "Viderunt omnes" proved a disappointment. Sigh. An encore by Arvo Pärt, written specially for the Ensemble years ago, only gave a reminder of how high a profile they once enjoyed; but again, the music intrigued, the performance did not.After these two concerts it was hard for me not to ponder the profound shift in professionalism, and the concomitant expansion in artistic scope, which the early music scene has enjoyed over the past few decades. Today the replication of a period style is not nearly enough to pass muster - and academic indulgence of inconsistent skill is completely a thing of a past. Indeed, the high points of the Boston Early Music Festival, such as Gilbert Blin's double bill of Charpentier, made fresh intellectual points about the music in question (and its period) while maintaining the highest technical standards in terms of performance. Is it enough to say that "early music" has itself left its "early" phase? These concerts made me think that might be the case.The Hub Review, the guide to everything that matters in Boston and elsewhere.
