A MULTI-LAYERED POLYPHONIC MIX OF HARMONIZING
VOICES AND BOLD, FREQUENTLY PERCUSSIVE, INSTRUMENTALS…A
SHIMMERING MUSICAL CHARM THAT AT TIMES SEEMS NEARLY HYPNOTIC.
New York stage review
IN THE GREEN a new musical
by GRACE MCLEAN
Hildegard Von Bingen– (c. 1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by a number of scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
In the Green is a fictionalized origin story about Hildegard. At the musical’s opening, Hildegard is delivered to the convent at age 8 because she has stopped speaking after the death of her sister. There we find out that Hildegard has become broken. She is played by three women– Hildegard Mouth, Hildegard Eye, and Hildegard Hand. Jutta, the “anchoress” in charge of the convent, teaches Hildegard that to become whole again she must watch, wait, and dig while giving up all other connections to the world. Jutta herself has embraced living as if she were dead. Through the passage of time Jutta gives Hildegard advice such as to stop eating so that her periods will cease, to not sleep so she can continue to be ever watchful, and to continue to dig a hole which Hildegard discovers is to be her own grave.
Though Hildegard strives to comply, she cannot help but question Jutta’s teachings. Through questioning Hildegard finds herself in an underground place where she meets Shadow whom she discovers is a part of Jutta that she has broken off and buried away. Shadow helps Hildegard remember and tell the story surrounding her sister’s death, helping her reunite the parts of herself she had blamed for what happened. Hildegard brings Shadow up to Jutta and tries to get her to accept her and tell her story, Jutta remembers and tells what happened to her but then rejects the shadowed part of herself and chooses death.
Hildegard has learned that the dark parts of herself must be recognized to be able to see sunlight again. At the end of the musical, Hildegard has taken over for Jutta and when a young girl, Sigwize, is brought to her for training. As the show ends, it is unclear whether Hildegard will choose Jutta’s way or a different path with Sigwize.
In the Green draws from St. Hildegard’s music and writings bringing them into the 21st century with extensive vocal looping, complex rhythms, and beautiful harmonies.
The story is conveyed through imaginative movement, puppetry, animated projections, and beautiful, complex, and highly creative music sung both acapella and with a live cohort of musicians.
stitch-in-your-side funny
the New York times
THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE
BY MATTHEW LOPEZ
Casey is a husband who bounces rent checks to buy pizza and new jumpsuits. Jo, his wife, is tired of being the heavy and things look even more dire when she discovers she’s pregnant and parenthood and eviction both loom ahead.
Though Casey is a talented Elvis impersonator complete with rhinestone jumpsuits, no one ever goes to the bar where he performs. When the bar’s owner brings in his cousin Bobby, better known as Miss Tracy Mills and her drag queen sidekick, Rexy (Miss Anorexia Nervosa) to replace Casey, it seems his performing career is over. He accepts a job behind the bar until one night Rexy goes on a bender and cannot go on with her Edith Piaf number. Casey volunteers to bring back Elvis but is instead talked into going on for Rexy as Edith Piaf. He’s a mess but the performer in him takes over and he manages to survive the evening. Soon under Miss Tracy’s expert tutelage Georgia McBride becomes a huge hit. Meanwhile though, super heteronormative southern boy Casey is feeling conflicted about his growing success as Georgia and is keeping his new gig secret from the ever more pregnant Jo. Also Rexy shows back up and is pissed to have been replaced by Casey who is not gay and does not appreciate the history or culture of drag performance. But the money flowing in is the grease keeping everything spinning along and Miss Anorexia Nervosa rejoins the act with Tracy and Georgia. The now crowded bar patrons can’t get enough and all is humming along.
This is until Jo unexpectedly shows up at a performance one night.
All roles in the show are played by 5 actors featuring multiple lip sync and dance drag performances with the “backstage/onstage” transformations happening in front of the audience. It is laugh out loud funny and heartwarming. Written by gay Puerto Rican American playwright Matthew Lopez. The show runs 90 minutes without intermission.
By the end the musical arrives at a clearing in the woods illuminated by autumnal shafts of wisdom, but not before it has followed a path strewn with wit and the beguiling songs we’ve come to expect from Sondheim.
Newsday
INTO THE WOODS
MUSIC AND LYRICS BY STEPHEN SONDHEIM, BOOK BY JAMES LAPINE
A film version of Into the Woods was released by Disney in 2014 starring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Christine Baranski, and Johnny Depp.
Into the Woods is presented through a special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI. www.mtishows.com
Haunting, horrible and thrilling, the show harmonizes its penny dreadful origins with a dense, operatic score that elevates the grand guignol into something grander and more terrifying, with beauty and horror and screeching comedy fighting it out from one song to the next. It’s a nightmare of a show and in some ways a dream, pushing at the boundaries of what a musical might say and do and be….It might seem funny to see all of this timbre and largesse deployed for a story of barbarous barbering and related cannibalism. But once that last note sounds, you’ll likely be moved to do what the rest of frenzied crowd does: lift your hands high. And applaud.
The Guardian
SWEENEY TODD THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET-A MUSICAL THRILLER!
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Book by Hugh Wheeler from an adaptation by Christopher Bond
Originally directed on Broadway by Harold Prince.
Sweeney Todd has become a bloody, worldwide success since being awarded eight Tony’s, (including Best Musical), for its Broadway premiere. Stephen Sondheim’s and Hugh Wheeler’s (A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures) tasty, thrilling, theatrical treat has simultaneously shocked, awed and delighted audiences across the world.
An infamous tale, Sweeney Todd, an unjustly exiled barber, returns to nineteenth century London, seeking vengeance against the lecherous judge who framed him and ravaged his young wife. The road to revenge leads Todd to Mrs. Lovett, a resourceful proprietress of a failing pie shop, above which, he opens a new barber practice. Mrs. Lovett’s luck sharply shifts when Todd’s thirst for blood inspires the integration of an ingredient into her meat pies that has the people of London lining up… and the carnage has only just begun!
SWEENEY TODD is presented through a special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI. www.mtishows.com