WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

Hits: 0

WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. By John F. Bailey. September 13 & 28, 2005: The City School District Director of  Research, Testing and Evaluation, Larry Kilian, giving a report September 12 to the Board of Education on how White Plains is using its Federal No Child Left Behind money, announced New York State will be administering new English Language Arts  and Math State Achievement Tests to elementary and middle school grades previously not tested by the state in January and March. He also noted that approximately 30% of White Plains students are receiving some form of Academic Intervention Services in the last year for which figures were available.

 

Larry Kilian, Director of Research, Testing, and Evaluation for White Plains City School District, addressing the Board of Education, September 12. Photo by WPCNR News.

Kilian reported the District will be spending a total of $12,675,853 to uplift academically challenged students not achieving state academic standards (Levels 3 and 4 on state achievement tests) in school year 2005-2006. $1.6 Million of these funds come from the federal government. The balance of $11.1 Million is paid for directly by White Plains taxpayers.

 

29% Received Academic Intervention Services in 2003-04.

 

WPCNR  in the last week asked Kilian how many students were receiving Academic Intervention Services. Kilian reported Monday,  that in the most recent academic year in which  figures on the number of students receiving Academic Intervention Services were available, 2003-2004, 1,930 students (29%)  out of 6, 618 students in the City School District, were receiving some form of Academic Intervention Services.  Kilian said that disabled students are included in that figure, but did not have a percentage of how many made up the total, or what the overall figure was for this year.

 

In 2003-2004, the last year where figures are available,  of the 1,930 White Plains students receiving intervention services, 1,442 were in Grades K through 8, and 488 were enrolled in grades 9 through 12.  The projected enrollment for the 2005-2006 year in the White Plains Schools is 6, 935 students.

 

He told WPCNR the figures for 2004-2005 had not been determined yet, and was in process.

 

ELA – Math Tests to test new grades in Jan/March

 

Kilian reminded the District that the State Board of Regents is preparing ELA and Math tests to measure the year-to-year progress of elementary schoolers in 3^rd, 5^th, 6^th and 7^th grades.  Up until this year, elementary school students were tested for Math and English achievement only in 4^th Grade, and Middle School Students were tested for Math and English in 8^th Grade, with results posted statewide by district, to provide the School District Report Cards measuring how good a job each district statewide is doing.

 

The district has not seen the tests for these grades yet,  Kilian added. The new Math and ELA tests were being developed for those four new grades by CTB/McGraw-Hill, conceivers of the Math and ELA 4^th and 8^th grade tests. According to Kilian the new ELA tests would be administered in January to the five grades, 3,4,5,6,7,8, and the Math tests in March. Previously they had been administered later in the year, now Killian said the state is moving them up.

 

Though  the tests have not yet been created, sample test questions for the new grades to be tested could be found on the New York State Education Department website.

 

Using Federal Monies on Academic Intervention Services in White Plains

 

Kilian’s written report presented at the Board of Education detailed how the City School District is spending the $1,575,853 the district is receiving for the 2004-2005 School Year under the terms of the No Child Left Behind Act. Kilian told me that not all of the monies are spent exclusively on teaching students who receive Academic Intervention Services, that some is spent on teaching clinics and other services dedicated to improving overall instruction and curriculum.

 

Title I Funds totaling $1,050,419 are being used to hire 7 full-time teachers to provide direct instructional support to students identified as needed Academic Intervention Services. The funds also support extended day and summer programs and Project Early Read. $10,000 is reserved for services to homeless children. $60,000 is devoted to professional development through university programs and consultants.

 

Title IIA funds coming to $273,292 have hired 4 additional teachers to reduce class size in early grades.

 

Title IID funds of $19,047 are being used to purchase technology to support staff development efforts in technology.

 

Title III funds totaling $180,959 will be spent to deliver instruction for Limited English Proficient students, allowing  assignment of a teacher parttime in the Newcomer Center plus after-school tutoring, bilingual testing, parent involvement programs, summer school, summer screening , Regrents prep courses, and additional use of a Bilingual Social Worker and teaching assistants and professional development. A portion is also used to support the PACE Centro Hispano Outreach Program where college students tutor Limited English Proficient Students at the high school during the school day.

 

Title IV Funds in the amount of  $43,161 support programs to promote safe schools and prevent drug and alcohol abuse. Title V monies totaling $8,975 support the Arts-In-General-Education programs, allowing professional artists to work with classroom teachers to enrich instruction.

 

Killian’s report said the District uses local funding of an additional $3.4 Million in direct teaching support in literacy; $3.1 Million more for instructional support for Limited English Proficient Students; $900,000 for the Summer School program, and $3.7 Million more dollars for “implementation of our instructional technology plan this year.”

 

The local funds, his report said, “support the backbone of our professional development efforts – 7 instructional specialists who provide direct assistance to the classroom teachers.” No figure was given for the expense of those 7 instructional specialists.

 

In his preamble paragraph, Killian wrote:

 

 “The White Plains City School  District will use the funds allocated under the No Child Left Behind Act to provide direct instructional support to students who are not yet achieving State academic standards, and high quality professional development to their teachers and administrators. Our efforts are guided by the (federal) required needs assessment process that involves reviewing the achievement data for racial/ethnic groups, economically disadvantaged, disabled and limited English Proficient students. Instructional strategies and programs are selected considering scientifically-based research. Our elementary and middle schools prepare school-wide plans to coordinate all activities (regardless of funding source) to improve achievement.

Hits: 0

WPCNR POLICE GAZETTE. By John F. Bailey. September 27, 2005: A visitor from Ossining to the city lost control of her vehicle heading eastbound on Main Street, and swerved across the triangle island at the junction of Mamaroneck Avenue and Main Street at 1: 15 Monday. Her car struck two teenage pedestrians, student aids whose names were not released by police because they were under the age of eighteen.

Walk Carefully: Scene of SUV-pedestrians accident Monday afternoon, about 2 P.M. Light pole and pedestrian signal had been toppled, and two pedestrian standing in the middle of the triangle at Mamaroneck and Main were hit by a car which police said had swerved across the triangle. Photo by WPCNR News.

 

 

One injured student was taken to White Plains Hospital Center, the other to Westchester County Medical Center for treatment of injuries that Chief of Police James Bradley described as not life threatening.

 

Chief Bradley said the vehicle knocked down the pedestrian crossing light, a street light, and a monument in the middle of the triangular island. He said the driver of the car and her passenger were being interviewed by police this afternoon to determine what caused the loss of control. He said there does not appear to be anything criminal involved.

Hits: 0

WPCNR POLL. September 25, 2005: In view of the Democratic Party in White Plains token opposition to Mayor Joseph Delfino in the current Mayoral race, as well as the perpetual almost assured reelection of Democrat incumbent councilpersons, who have shown tendencies to endorse strong Mayor policy initiatives rather than take responsibility for setting policy limits, the question comes to mind as to whether the City of White Plains should amend its charter to set a limit on the number of terms Mayors and councilpersons should serve. What does Mr. & Mrs. and Ms. White Plains think? Register your opinions and thoughts in the poll at the right.

Hits: 0

WPCNR Gallery Observer. From Historical Society of Greenwich. September  25, 2005: A groundbreaking exhibition exploring the career of Cos Cob artist Henry Fitch Taylor (1853-1925) opens at The Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich, Bush-Holley Historic Site, on Friday, September 30, 2005.  

Cos Cob’s Surprising Modernist: Henry Fitch Taylor, brings together many of Taylor’s works, some which have never been exhibited before, and is the first scholarly attempt to recapture portions of Taylor’s fascinating life and career.  Taylor’s art is dramatically different from other artists that stayed and worked at the Holley House between 1890 and 1920 when the Holley boarding house was home to the first Impressionist art colony in Connecticut.  

Although he was an accomplished Impressionist painter, several years into the beginning of the twentieth century, Taylor began experimenting with radical new themes and techniques originating from Europe, such as cubism and orphism.  The exhibition at Bush-Holley Historic Site, Cos Cob’s Surprising Modernist: Henry Fitch Taylor, is guest curated by Dr. Christine I. Oaklander, Director of Collections and Exhibitions with the Allentown Art Museum.  

The exhibition is open to the public from September 30 through December 31, 2005 (closed Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day); gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 12:00 – 4:00 p.m. Museum admission is $6 for adults, $4 for students and seniors; children under 12 and Historical Society members are free.  Museum admission includes entrance to the exhibition and a tour of Bush-Holley House.  Bush-Holley Historic Site is located at 39 Strickland Road, Cos Cob, Conn. Call 203-869-6899 for more information or visit www.hstg.org <http://www.hstg.org/> .

Hits: 0

WPCNR ON THE AISLE. Review by John F. Bailey. September 23, 2005:  Gilbert & Sullivan In Brief (s) opened the White Plains Performing Arts Center crucial third season Friday evening for a one week run, (before the traditional WPPAC  “small for opening night but enthusiastic” audience), featuring a troupe of talented, engaging comic singing performers working earnestly with a concept in search of a good book and an identity.

 

WPPAC’s Fab Four: Left to Right, John Dewar, Deborah Jean Templin, Carolann Sanita, Matt Castle. Photo by Paul Undersinger , Courtesy White Plains Performing Arts Center.

 

 

This was opening night according to the WPPAC four color 2005-2006 Brochure. Raymond Cullom, the new Managing Director of the WPPAC and the Helen Hayes Theatre Company in Nyack,  welcomed the audience, saying that the WPPAC had these missions:  to provide a venue for local community group performances, (he invited members of the audience to inquire), “search the world” for entertainment, and “four times a year stage our own productions and nurture new shows.” He described this evening’s show as “the first and only preview performance,” and encouraged the audience to interact with the actors.

 

Then the fastidious Charles Czarnecki, the Musical Director/pianist entered stage right, to begin his 90 minutes of virtuoso plunking, up-and-down-the-keyboard soaring, and pounding breathless musical contrapuntiality that chases the Gilbert & Sullivan librettos. Mr. Czarnecki took fussy exacting measurements placing his piano seat, drawing some laughs, loosening up the “I-do-not-know-what-to-expect” audience in the mood for laughter. Mr. Czarnecki could embellish this bit, and he should consider it, play the sensitive, exacting artist to the hilt.

 

Then I saw  a clever concept that jauntily sampled 14 Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas that cannot make up its mind what it wants to be:

 

The actors come on to taped applause and introduce themselves.

 

Is it a group of actors in a throwaway gig in summerstock?  

A troupe of actors doing a Gilbert & Sullivan Revue in vaudeville?

Actors doing an unwitting expose of the formula art of musical making?

Actors doing a Gilbert & Sullivan night club act kibitzing the audience?

An evening of Mr. Gilbert & Mr. Sullivan themselves reminiscing their greatest hits and how they made them?

Or  about the cutthroat relationship between actors and actresses, a subplot played for laughs?

 

G&SIB  is all of these,  but like any work being “nurtured,” parts of it work better than others and should be built upon. Others discarded. When a shocker occurs after the parody of Ruddigore, the lines are said too fast for the audience to understand what just happened. At a moment in the performance that wakes you up, you don’t know what has happened. You only assume, that’s script failure or failure to enunciate the script, or an obscurity only “Gilbert & Sullivan” buffs could know.

 

The whole piece is done very fast and will please and amuse the Gilbert & Sullivan buff. But, you have to know the material to enjoy the satirical side of it. The clipped speed the English accents, and the rush, rush, rush burrows along like a London Underground Express with unexplained local stops.

 

There are some breathers, when the actors coalesce and segue to the next scene, portrayed with the vaudeville gimmick of placards. I confess I was getting uneasy towards the end. There are laughs at the antics and Marx Brothers-like running around stage, but  the 90 minutes do you in. The actors cleverly synopsisize each opera giving you a crash course in G & S.

 

The Genre Trap–Sturdy Book Needed.

 

 Since I do not know G & S except from high school chorus classes at Pleasantville High School, I see G&SIB and ask,is it entertaining me? G&SIB follows the current rage of building a weak book around a series of popular groups’ songs and calling it a musical.

 

G & SIB could be a lot more than that. You have personal elements of rivalry from the actors working against what they are doing in the same script, and part of the audience, at least I did,  wanted the show to explore that, younger woman older woman triangle with leading man and I wanted to know how these performer a performer dramas play out. The audience struggles for its emotional center (is there a romance here or not? then it disappears).

 

When Mr. Castle and Mr. Dewar  assume the personas of Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan, complete with pipes and mutton chop sideburns, really droll, wonderfully comic discussing their shows, you want more of that bit – that is good writing and portraying. I thought Gilbert and Sullivan being interviewed with the modern actors in some sort of fantasy could be elaborated on – that was when the script was really working and engaging me. Writers are such interesting people, anyway, don’t you think?

 

The audience took to the actors right away

 

The show tries hard to be liked, but like every Saturday Night Live skit it is a one joke script, draws polite laughs, an occasional hoot, a few belly laughs and much appreciation for the four virtuoso voices and personalities cavorting, pushing, driving themselves madly through this marathon:

 

The perky little beltzy soprano, Carolann Sanita, a little Gilda Radner, a giddy Goldie Hawn,  mugs in ingenue coyness and sings like Sarah Brightman in voice and demeanor.  The bombastic John Belushi-like comic tenor, Matt Castle, never lets go a laugh when he can work one.  The Jane Curtin type mezzo, Deborah Jean Templin, and the Tony Randallesque John Dewar neatly blended and I think were great casts by Mr. Cullom to do this Gilbert & Sullivan marathon.

 

Where are We?

 

The actors start the show, reading from cards as if they were doing a casting call. The venue is unclear. Their assignment is to do all 14 operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan and that is what they do. Matt Castle, the blonde robust tall tenor sets the comic tone with A Lovesick Boy, he also is wonderful in drag playing Buttercup complete with lipstick, and this is the most comical, entertaining mini-opera of the evening thanks to Mr. Castle’s rambunctious absurdity, he is a great soprano by the way. Mr. Castle is the comic star of the evening prancing and posturing and playing the segues with excellent timing, a Drew Carey big lovable lug.

 

The brunette Ms. Sanita the soprano voice fills the hall with genuinely pretty trills and high drama as befits the over-the-top Gilbert & Sullivan satire of opera that all of these mini-operas represent. Her solo in breastplate with sword as Princess Ida is her high moment in the show backed by her “Ah Ah Ah Ah” trills that reduce the other actors into submission.

 

Mr.  Dewar’s fine moment comes as he “auditions” for the part of “The Sorceror” swirling his cape and enunciating he is “John Wellington Wells who creates spells.” G & S were the Cole Porter of their day.

 

 Ms. Templin creates an intriguing rivalry with her soprano counterpart through the show fighting her for roles, providing good laughs. But it goes nowhere, it’s paralel without a connection.

 

All four actors singing He is an Englishman was very nobly done. In fact a gentleman next to your reviewer started singing along to “He’s an Englishman,” very audibly during the H.M.S. Pinafore mini-performance. (He was the only member of the audience who sang along. That has never happened to me in a theatre before.)

 

G&SIB packs in all-Gilbert-and-Sullivan all the time, including a synopsis of three acts of The Mikado.

 

By far the most interesting parts of this show are the interplay of the actors playing Gilbert and Sullivan discussing their writing formulas, which are remarkably still in use in many hit musicals of most of the last century. The formula: 4 characters, a virtuous young woman,  a handsome leading man, a mother and “a patter man” providing comic relief and scene-stealing. All the actors steal scenes in this show in a most believable way.

 

 (The program notes do not list the songs each of the actors sing, which is unforgivable from an actors’ standpoint. If I have to sing a gazillion Gilbert & Sullivan Songs, I want the critic to get my name and parts I sang right. The critic and the audience has no way of remembering who sung what there are so many songs in the show. )

 

A Celebrity Show

 

With all respect to the actors, this is a celebrity show, because it is a one-trick-pony, with fourteen different saddles, which shows you that successful shows are formula. If you had Faith Hill, Brittany Spears, John O’Herly, and Nathan Lane starring in this show,  they could carry it to success on their celebrity draw. A few pies in the face and seltzer bottles wouldn’t hurt either. There is much silliness in the show which would amuse children, but the one act is too long.

 

At nearly the end of the 90-minute show one of the actors says “only 6 minutes to go.” You should never write a line like that because it elicits a sigh of relief from the audience.

 

There is  a lag then and an actor says, “we need a brutal epic” end and there is some futzing about until they get going on doing all fourteen finales from all fourteen operas, with rapid fire costume changes. A classic finale, but they have to get to it quicker, since they said there were six minutes to go. When you go to a great entertainment you do not want it to end. You always want something more, the end needs a better setup.

 

A Last Minute Show

 

The audience applauded for a minute and a half. Liked it. In fact, the crowd, which numbered only 75 persons at curtain time, on opening night, despite a full-page ad in The Journal News yesterday underscore Mr. Cullom’s problem next year: the White Plains Performing Arts Center is running out of good will and support, when they do not sell out their opening night. It also points out the faux pas of not running in a blockbuster show to start the season. Gilbert & Sullivan is a genre, and the 75 persons on opening night are not a good sign.

 

 

One gets the feeling the new Managing Director needed a show for September since the original show was pulled from the schedule. The original show scheduled for September at WPPAC, Joan’s Other Kitchen, by Brian McConnachie was pulled. Helen Hayes Theatre Company got A Mother, A Daughter, and A Gun for September, a full-length play.

 

Mr. Cullom needed a show, so he put in his own, casting it about three weeks ago and pulling it off this evening.  Cullom originally wrote and performed the G&SIB show as a review with the Washington based theatre group, The Savoyards (a group that performs G & S exclusively) as a free warmup show in the lobby of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last fall.

 

 

 Mr. Cullom cast it a month ago in New York and pulled it off this evening, showing off his renowned stage director talents and working with four stalwart Broadway veterans. Mr. Cullom pulls it off nicely as do his actors but the show has holes. But, Mr. Cullom is a problem-solver.  He received high marks from Vincent Hughes, Chief Operations Officer of Citizens Services of Frederick Maryland, Mr. Hughes telling WPCNR Mr. Cullom was responsible for staffing up and programming that community’s theatre for a new season and presiding over a successful season as a consultant, in 2004 when the entire staff had just quit. He fixes problems and I will say he got this show on in less than a month from casting to design and that is an achievement.

 

 Mr. Cullom also serves as Managing Director of the Helen Hayes Theatre  Company in Nyack, splitting his time with WPPAC. To be fair, G&SIB would probably not have been Mr. Cullom’s first choice to open the rapidly-running-out-of-time-to-win-an-audience Performing Arts Center if he were programming this season.

 

It is short for the $40 price. It runs 90 minutes straight which is a lot of G & S back to back to back. It’s an earnest clever little warm up revue, which is what it was scheduled to be at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival in Scotland in August where it was booked for a one month run of free matinees and cancelled at the last minute two days before its first performance– but  an Open Night evening’s blockbuster entertainment for $35-$40 it is not.

 

 

This is  WPPAC’s Artistic Director Tony Stimac’s walk year, and Saving Aimee, or Aimee, (the title not quite certain)  the next production has got to come through for the theatre and start generating some community interest. It is the new Kathie Lee Gifford-created musical, and that will be followed by A Christmas Carol in December, and Phyllis Newman in Girl’s Room and a black musical called Charlie’s Place in the spring.

 

Gilbert & Sullivan In Brief(s)  is a good show to educate young persons into the cult of Gilbert & Sullivan. But it is an acquired taste..

 

G & SIB is “coming along” but it is not ready for Broadway.

 

More book. More bones.

 

As Gabby sang in City of Angels:

It needs work.

 

It needs Gilbert & Sullivan.

 

Gilbert & Sullivan In Brief plays through October 2, 2005. For information on showtimes, call 1-888-977-2250, or 328-1600.