Hits: 0

WPCNR THE POWER NEWS.By John F. Bailey. March 17, 2009 UPDATED March 18, 2009 9:30 A.M. E.D.T.: The Superintendent of Schools office reports this morning that School District computers are now up and running thorughout the district, and electric power has been restored to the high school after Tuesday’s power outage.

The North Street Community, owners of the 311 North Street property in a statement today attributed the cause of the White Plains High School power outage Tuesday morning to a mystery wire not shown on any Con Edison, Verizon or Cablevision utility maps.  In a statement issued today to WPCNR from Geoffrey Thompson, spokesperson for  the organization,  North Street Community reports:

Hits: 0

WPCNR CITY HALL CIRCUIT. March 17, 2009: The Mayor’s Office announced today that Mayor Joseph Delfino has called a meeting of the Mayor’s Budget and Management Advisory Committee for 7:30 P.M. Wednesday evening. The Committee currently is made up of  Councilman  Benjamin Boykin, Chairman, Larry Delgado, Timothy Sheehan, Eleanor McDonald, Patrick Austin, David J. Corcoran, Joseph Lenchner and Councilman Glen Hockley.

 

Speculation is that the current anticipated $9 Million or more “shortfall” in budget revenues due to soft sales tax, drop in mortgage tax, building and license fees, and declines in fines and forfeiture,  and ways to deal with this year’s budget shortfall and how the revenue will be replaced in the 2009-2010 budget.

 

Hits: 0

WPCNR COUNTY CLARION-LEDGER. March 17, 2009: County Board Chair Bill Ryan announced Friday the creation of the Westchester Economic Recovery Task Force.  In announcing the group, Ryan said that, like the rest of the country, Westchester is feeling the effects of the recession. To get the local economy back on track and stronger, the task force has two objectives. 

Chairman of the Board of Legislators, Bill Ryan.

It will focus on ensuring the county is taking maximum advantage of the billions of dollars of funding that will soon flow to the states and directly to counties from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and other stimulus legislation. It will also work with local governments, business groups, non-profits and the public on other ideas and initiatives to boost the economy on the local front.  WPCNR has a call in to Chairman Ryan’s office to see how the country government group will coordinate with the Westchester County Association task force that has already mobilized banks, energy companies and other businesses to stimulate business money-saving and continued economic progress during the Westchester recession.

“Pumping billions of federal dollars into local economies across the country will create jobs and boost consumer spending, breaking up the recession cycle we’re in. Our goal is to secure as much of that funding for Westchester as possible,”  said County Board Chair Bill Ryan. “The task force will help ensure the county takes full advantage of the enormous number of funding opportunities that will be rolled out in the weeks and months ahead.”

At the National Association of Counties (NACO) legislative conference held this past week in Washington, DC, Ryan and his legislative colleagues were briefed by White House staff and Obama administration officials who are spearheading the federal economic recovery program.  Ryan said the meetings provided legislators with quite an education on program objectives and just how quickly the stimulus measures would move.”

“These meetings over a period of five days laid out the magnitude of federal funding and programs that federal agencies and departments will be rolling out in the weeks and months ahead. The task force will ensure that the legislature is fully engaged in this process. The guidelines and regulations for many of the programs are still being written. We have to be ready and attentive to what in many cases will be small windows of opportunity to get in on some of these federal programs, ” said Ryan.  

Ryan said that the legislative task force will collaborate with the county executive’s office which has been at work pursuing various channels of assistance.

“We see the task force as adding more depth to the county’s team,” said Ryan.  “This is a colossal undertaking involving billions of dollars. The more hands we have on deck getting program details, understanding criteria and submitting the county’s priorities, the more successful we will be.”

Ryan has appointed to the task force the four county legislators who went to Washington and had the benefit of the national economic recovery briefings and workshops. Ryan has asked County Legislator Tom Abinanti to chair the task force. He’s appointed County Legislators Peter Harckham and Ken Jenkins as well as Majority Leader Martin Rogowsky to serve on it.

Abinanti said that in addition to working with the county executive’s office, the task force would reach out to the business community, local governments, non-profits and the public to explore other more local opportunities to boost the economy.  

“It’s important that we harness the creativity and energy of leaders from every sector of our community to develop local initiatives that supplement and complement the federal stimulus effort to boost the economy,” said Abinanti.

 

Hits: 0

 

 

WPCNR County Clarion-Ledger. March 16, 2009: She has been a County Legislator from District 8 since 1993. She was instrumental in establishing the Westchester County Human Rights Commission. She’s been a math teacher and much more to the County of Westchester being a strong advocate for housing, preservation of open space and crusader against domestic violence..  Her office confirmed to WPCNR today that she would not be running for a fifth four-year term on the Board of Legislators in 2009.

 

 

 

Lois Bronz — long a representative of the Battle Hill neighborhood of White Plains at a recent ceremony honoring the Mamaroneck Avenue School Chess Team. Westchester County Photograph.

 

Bronz was raised in New Orleans, the ninth of ten children, and credits her father, who could not read, with stirring an interest in her in politics. She read the newspaper nightly to him as a child. She became a community organizer and founded the League of Good Government in New Orleans. She received her bachelor’s Degree at Xavier University and a Master’s Degree in Education from Wayne State University.

 

Widowed with three children, she met and married Chuck Bronz of New York and moved to Greenburgh, where she taught math in the public schools. She ran for the Town Board in 1973 and served as a boardmember for 16 years, prior to being elected to the County Board of Legislators.

 

She holds the distinction of being the first African-American to be Chairperson of the County Board of Legislators from 2002-2004.

 

 

Speculation is that Town Clerk Judy Beville of Greenburgh may run for the seat.

Hits: 0

WPCNR ON THE AISLE. Theater Review by John F. Bailey.  March 13, 2009:  The third production in the sixth season of the  White Plains Performing Arts Center, continued its subscription series of  Broadway history lessons when A Little Night Music, the 6-Tony Award, 661-performance Stephen J. Sondheim Greatest  Hit of 1973 debuted last week.

 

Rivals for Desiree (Penny Fuller) Arrive at Desiree’s mother’s mansion by motorcar unexpectedly. Mark Jacoby plays Fredrik Edgerman, left and the pompous Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, Stephen R. Buntrock in the WPPAC production of A Little Night Music now playing.  Photography, Courtesy White Plains Performing Arts Center by  Carlos Gustovos Monroy

 

The Performing Arts Center delivered what you get from a Sondheim show – wonderfully performed self-introspection, clichéd views of  “truisms,” more  personal reality checks than you ever want from a musical.  WPPAC’s fine talents commissioned for this revival admirably strive for all the feelings ALNM explores.  However, you will leave, feeling appreciative of the art, but melancholy, thinking maybe you didn’t really need to feel this way.

 

My  standard Sondheim disclaimer  now delivered, A Little Night Music succeeds for what it is: a crisp, seamless and workmanlike production by professionals of what has been called Mr. Sondheim’s greatest work. 

 

 The show opens with a “Greek Chorus” of black tie and tails professionals  precisionally performed and elegantly danced by  Jonathan Gabriel Michie, Leah Jennings, Christy Morton and Branch Woodman, who bridge the rapidly changing scenes with musical interludes throughout.  Their demeanor sets the tone: you are in for an evening with the swells going back into time. But, it could be any time, really. The human overture is classic Cole Porter-like style, a very unique opening at the time when this musical was first introduced.

 

We meet the Egermans, father  Fredrik Egerman (played  by veteran Broadway light Mark Jacoby with Len Cariou/ Leo G. Carroll panache – (Mr. Sondheim once wrote the Topper series in the 1950s)  and son Henrik, (Eddie Egan) who duet on the unique Sondheim trick of  weaving three songs together to make a point.

 

Henrik is  a divinity student afflicted with conflict between his holy calling and his being smitten with his father’s teen wife. His father Fredrick, married eleven months to the ingénue Ann Egerman (played with silliness by Erin Davie) half his age, has yet to consummate his marriage, singing “Now as the sweet imbecilities Tumble so lavishly onto her lap, now there are two possibilities: A. I could ravish her, B. I could nap..”

 

Henrik after his father decides to nap, answers, singing “How can I wait around for later? I’ll be ninety on my death bed, and the late, or rather later, Henrik Egerman! Doesn’t anything begin?”

 

ALNM is made up of series of these statement-and-answer duets, which originally were mostly done in ¾ waltz time, lending a lilting feel. But I heard no waltz time Saturday night. The songs were done pretty straightforwardly without the glide of waltz time.

 

Clive Barnes in his review of the original show said “the music is a celebration of ¾ time, an orgy of plaintively memorable waltzes, all talking of past loves and lost worlds.” Again, I got none of this treatment of the music from the ALNM ensemble Sunday afternoon. They laid a professional “bed” for the singers, but I did not sway in my seat as you do with the lilt of the waltz. With a little more lilt and sway, the melancholy would have brimmed to a level of measured mirth.

 

Shiela Smith as Madame Armfeldt — raising Fredricka with “Lessons of Life.” Ms. Smith is hilarious!

 

A douse of the lights and we meet the wheelchair bound  Madame Armfeldt played with solid comic timing  by Sheila Smith, the wheelchair-bound mother of the actress, Desiree, who is taking care of Desiree’s daughter Fredricka  of an uncertain liaison  Smith plays the role created originally by Hermione Gingold with the best lines.

 

She giving Fredricka life lesson of the day, and talking to the audience, laments “Most mothers have daughters who become mothers, mine became an actress.” Another life lesson: “Never take up with a Scandinavian.”  I think I got that line right. Smith has one solid laugh line after another, and though the lines are funny, they serve to underscore the regrets of old age at the end of life, in a most amusing way of course.

 

The entourage of  Desiree is introduced and the chorus combines with Ms. Fuller to sing The Glamorous Life  the highlight of act one.

 

Lights dim and we are whisked to the theater where Fredrick and Ann, his bride observe Desiree played with the elegance of a doyenne of the footlights, Penny Fuller, voluptuously grand and attractive, and looking very much like Glynis Johns who created the role 35 years ago. Fredrick and Desiree are transfixed, and you know they still got it goin’ on, as the young people say.  Ann notices it too, and is immediately jealous.

 

Fredrick decides to go backstage a little later.  He and Desiree strike up like old times, only to be encountered by the blustery Count Carl Magnus-Malcom, Desiree’s current lover. He is suspicious of Fredrick’s presence. In this reuniting moment, Jacoby and Fuller team on the very clever song You Must Meet My Wife that pokes fun of Fredrick’s young wife’s youth. It’s very funny if you’re a person my age remembering how teens act. Not so funny if you’re a teen.

 

We’re still in the first act and we meet another great comic couple, the stuffy, misogynic Count, whose putting down of women, (feminism was in her heyday in 1973) and comic double-standard towards his  wife, Countess Charlotte Malcolm, is rollickingly earnestly portrayed in his song in Desiree’s dressing room, In Praise of Women.

 

 

Best of Friends? Rachel de Benedet as the Countess right, plots with Ann Egerman (Erin Davie) left,  to win back Fredrick’s affections in this comedy of manners and immoralities.

 

Stephen Buntrock as the Count is marvelously pompous, a cartoon, a riot. Rachel de Benedet as his wife the Countess has a precisely exasperated roll-your-eyes delivery that keeps the audience chuckling, with lines like  “or shall I slit my throat on the tram,” when she follows the Count’s orders. Ms. de Benedet has the timing of the classic comedienne, Eve Arden. She also delights the house with Die a Little Death, an analysis of marriage .(“Every Day is a Little Sting in the heart and in the head. Every move and every breath. And you hardly feel a thing, brings a perfect little death.”)

 

Desiree has it in her head that she can win Fredric back from his silly young wife. She has her mother plan a party in the country. The Count has his wife talk Ann into plotting how to keep her husband by going to the country and the song A Weekend in the Country wraps up the first act. This is another waltz executed as one big chorus song. It does not achieve its full affect. But if you don’t  know A Weekend in the Country is supposed to be a waltz you probably won’t notice. (You can’t deliver a waltz temp with a 6-piece orchestra. Maybe that’s why the big songs were not compelling. Good, but not showstoppers.)

 

 

 

The Second Act  descends into a madcap dinner scene (without a table) where the Count’s wife (fourth from left, played with exquisite tipsiness by  Rachel de Benedet ) in an attempt to flirt with Fredrick gets tipsy and says outrageous things.  As Fredrick and the Count each try to liaison with hostess Desiree, they encounter each other, a duel is arranged, and the denouement of this farcical is reached.

 

 

Ms. Fuller as Desiree  delivers the signature song Send in the Clowns splendidly with schmaltz, velvet, pathos, making the audience really feel again every romantic setback in their life. They are all just as she sings about them. And they all come back to you as you’re watching.

 

 

 

I must mention Petra – the engaging maid of Fredrick’s household. Played by the darkly attractive Laura D’Andre she represents the spirit of lust and romance.

 

She succeeds in seducing Henrik, and vividly brings out the pathos and regret of  the  poignant  The Miller’s Son in Act II. Her voice is deep and full of range, her stage presence vivid.   she sings “There are mouths to be kissed Before mouths to be fed, and there’s many a tryst and there’s many a bed. There’s a lot I’ll have missed but I’ll not have been dead when I die! And a person should celebrate everything passing by.”

 

Ms. D’Andre makes this song really work. ALNM  is her New York theatrical debut. She’s a recent graduate of UC Irvine with a BA in drama. Welcome to New York kid, I think you’re going to be around a long, long time.

 

 

The troupers in this revival do an admirable job. And now I can show you them. Previously publicity stills requested by WPCNR,  though sent according to internet records, were not received by this reporter. Perhaps Effie Perrine,  my secretary recently of Spade & Archer, deleted them from my e-mail queue by mistake — she does so try to tydy up. However they are here now, so I can show them to you! Thanks to H. Bruce Harris for resending them along.

 

The production is executed with minimalist touches, very minimalist.  The distinct lack of production values, (perhaps forced due to WPPAC’s apparently sharply reduced production budget) hurts the fine effort of the actors. There are excellent performances that are not supported by the production values we have come to expect from Mr. Batman.

 

A Little Night Music is an officially anointed classic – that the audience if they have not seen it before or know Sondheim will not be used to. It’s funny. It’s sad. It’s touching. It’s entertaining, Before the next production, (Hello, Dolly!) the “few people who have money left, or know corporations who have money” as Jack Batman pleaded when he welcomed the audience Sunday afternoon, had better step up and support the theater.

 

 

This  musical is one of the great lies  spun by the Broadway historians: Sondheim musicals are breakthroughs, yes, he is a musical giant yes, and West Side Story (he wrote the lyrics) broke new ground in the musical (an unhappy ending, what a great thing!), with songs of cleverness and virtuosity.  But like the novel  Tolstoy’s War and Peace ( magnificent work, yes, but poorly plotted, plodding and too much character changes)  “Sondheims” are hard to sit through.

 

But, you’ve paid your $75 or whatever on Broadway and well, you sat through it because the critics and tastemakers said it was good, so it must be good. The laughs ring hollow and nasty, the shock of self-recognition just a little too painful personally.  Even the good lines you laugh at hurt you a little inside. No one likes to feel like a fool and that’s how Sondheim musicals, and especially this one, make you feel. But that’s the way art was on Broadway in the late 60s and 70s, they wanted to shock you, tear down values. Break ground. Sondheim did. And the critics recognized the artistry the talent and the breakthroughs. At least they said they were breakthroughs.

 

Forget taking the children. But, then I am old-fashioned.  Even though WPPAC’s A Little Night Music is a trouper like effort with intriguing leads, Penny Fuller as the actress of a certain age, Desiree, and Mark Jacopy as the aging lawyer once her lover are similar in looks and demeanor to the original stars Len Cariou and Glynis Johns in 1973 – you cannot change what the musical is.  By the way,  a question for you etymologists out there, if Desiree played by Ms. Fuller  is a cougar, what is Fredrick Egerman played by Mr. Jacoby, a “panther?”

 

Clive Barnes’ original review of the  A Little Night Music  Opening in 1973 called it “heady, sophisticated and enchanting…a mixture of Cole Porter, Gustav Mahler, Antony Tudor, and just a little of Ingmar Bergman…more fun than any tango in a Parisian suburb.”

 

 I don’t know what Clive was looking at that opening night in 1973, but A Little Night Music even when it opened was not all that.

 

When I left the original ALNM when I saw it in its first run, I did not have that “rompy” feeling. This is not a gay romp. It’s an edgy musical comedy of human frailty, with the premise as Sondheim said, but in striving to be the Shakespeare of the musical and to bring reality to the musical stage,  Sondheim’s music and lyrics does not achieve the uplifting effects of Shakespeare’s farces and comedies, nor Moliere’s for that matter.   

 

Hugh Wheeler, the book writer, wrote of his own very funny material, said he was inspired by the Shakespeare line by Puck, “Lord, what fools these mortals be.”  Larry Brown writing Sondheim Notes  describes the musical as portraying the themes of action versus inaction, man versus woman, and dignity versus folly.

 

Well it is fun, it’s done as well as can be by the WPPAC  company working without scenery which on the original Broadway stage created multiple changes of scene with the trademark birches used for transitions. (Not one birch in this show that I recall). The birches added to a dreamlike quality of the movie (Smiles of a Summer  Night) from which it was adopted. The original Broadway version created a remarkable villa on the stage. There are no painted sets in this show. The production is minimalist, which in my definition means “the sophisticated, politically correct word for cheap.”

 

But then there is that segment of the theatre going public that thinks an empty stage is great. Well then, this is your show. There were none of the usual lighting magic that made Man of La Mancha and other WPPAC productions so affecting.

 

There is no scenery in the WPPAC production. It is minimalist.  WPPAC which did such a lavish stage treatment for Man of La Mancha and an amazing series of sets for  How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying last season,  and Oliver! this season uses a screen,  and  has actors simply roll furniture on and off the stage. The villa scene has one white gate drop down. There is not even a table in for the dining scene. Costumes were excellent though for the time of the musical: turn-of-the-century Sweden.

 

Sondheim musicals (products of his absolutely miserable childhood) make you think a little too much and  examine your own life, and laced through his works (with the exception of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) is that existential ennui that was the chic art style of the 60s and 70s (the free love, anti-establishment, feminism, anti-war, anti-tradition era – not that there is anything wrong with feminism, mind you.).

 

Well that’s not how I want to feel when I go to a musical. I want to believe everything is possible. I want to believe in real love, that romance can work out, I want to believe the decisions I make can work out right. I want to believe in moral codes, but I am, as I say old-fashioned.  

 

Sondheim’s works turn that notion on its head. He says you never can win.  I saw Company when I was first married and it really depressed me. I saw Sweeney Todd, seeing it on reputation, and could not understand what in the world was entertaining about it. I saw A Little Night Music on Broadway when it first opened, and I had the same feeling when I walked out  after the performance Sunday afternoon as I did then. It made me cranky. It made me depressed. I recognize the opus of the Sondheim artistry, but you have to have a stomach for it.

 

“Sondheims”  are striking great art.  A Little Night Music, acclaimed as his greatest success is clever, it was in keeping with the women’s liberation, anti-romantic, cynical nature of the times. But like most Sondheims, clever and wonderfully talented as he is,  it takes a very bitter person to want to make a young couple feel foolish about romance being real, to make a married couple see the flaws in their own marriage, and to remind the elderly how many missed opportunities for happiness this musical lets go by.  

 

Cole Porter’s sad songs soothed rather than made you want to slit your wrists.

 

Which brings us to the White Plains Performing Arts Center situation pointed up by this musical.

 

 It was classic musicals that producer Jack Batman felt were the formula for reviving the White Plains Performing Arts Center which was comatose in January 2007 when Batman took it over.  White Plains Performing Arts Center, now in its second year with Mr. Batman , when he took over the theatre from the previous Executive Director.  The ensemble assembled by Mr. Batman and Director Sidney J. Burgoyne delivers the clever and amusing score of Broadway legend with workmanlike professionalism.

 

This third effort by the WPPAC poses the question, is the unsatisfying feeling you get walking out because of the production or the material?  It’s a little of both.

 

But, it is great history, diligently, doggedly delivered. Mr. Batman, as he said at the opening of the show, “I beg of you to come and support us. We need you to support live theater.” He described WPPAC as a training ground for young actors as well as a vehicle for you to see productions such as this. Batman sounded very pessimistic in his pleas for monetary support. There was none of his usual optimism about how the theater was going. The Cappelli Foundation underwrote the season this year. They will need the Foundation again in a much bigger way.

 

Batman’s plea to me, was not a good sign.

 

White Plains Performing Arts Center needs a stimulus.

 

The Common Council refused to provide it with funding last spring, and that may be related to why Mr. Batman’s production of A Little Night Music  seemed spare compared to his mountings of Camelot  and Oliver!, the first two shows of the season.

 

A Little Night Music shows Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. And Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday next week.

 

For more current information contact 914-328-1600, or go to their website at www.wppac.com where you can purchase tickets.