New blood pumps vigor to arts in 2017
It has been a banner year, 2017 has, for performances in classical music, theater and ballet, all of which have shown growth in numbers and artistic quality.
The Arkansas Symphony kicked off its 2017-18 season with violinist Jennifer Frautschi doing double duty, soloing in the Violin Concerto by Jean Sibelius in Masterworks concerts Sept. 30-Oct. 1 at Robinson Center Performance Hall, then staying over, as this season’s Richard M. Arnold Artist of Distinction, to play the first violin part in the Souvenir de Florence sextet by Peter Tchaikovsky, with five orchestra members, on the subsequent Tuesday at the Clinton Presidential Center. The orchestra’s subsequent concerts Oct. 21-22, with one-name pianist Ji acing Maurice Ravel’s G-major Piano Concerto, was also the successful Masterworks debut for longtime Associate Conductor Geoffrey Robson.
The orchestra is continuing to tinker with stage placement to take advantage of the state-of-theart acoustical revamp of the new performance hall, which opened to the public in November 2016 — one of the prime reasons behind the need to rebuild it instead of renovate it. Touring productions have had varying degrees of success with the hall’s also-new sound system.
And speaking of touring productions, the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, in selling the “hamburger” sales tax extension and repurposing to fund the rebuilding of what was then Robinson Center Music Hall in 2014, promised that the successful result would finally make it possible for Celebrity Attractions to bring in some really big touring shows on which area audiences had been missing out. It did. The two they specifically mentioned at the time: The Phantom of the Opera, which had a triumphant March 8-19 run at the new Robinson, and The Lion King, coming up April 18-May 6.
Praeclara, a multidisciplinary performing arts company based at Little Rock’s Second Presbyterian Church, bridging the “gap” between music and theater, with
performances of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in April and John Rutter’s Mass of the Children in November and stagings at Wildwood Park for the Arts of Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance over the weekend between March and April (characterized by, among other things, the complete transformation from bare stage to a pirate ship in the first 45 seconds of the show) and the popular musical Annie in October. Busy artistic director Bevan Keating is also the church’s music director and also now artistic director at Wildwood (oh, and he’s also associate professor of music and director of conducting and choral studies at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he also conducts the university’s Concert Choir, Chamber Choir and Community Chorus).
The Arkansas Repertory Theatre started off its 201718 season, the first for John Miller-Stephany as its new producing artistic director (he replaced Bob Hupp, who had taken a job with Syracuse Stage in Syracuse, N.Y.; Rep founder Cliff Baker filled in for a couple of months). Miller-Stephany’s directorial debut, onstage Aug. 23-Sept. 10, was a sensitive (with deaf actors playing deaf characters) and very ably done production of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Rebecca Gilman’s theatrical version of the Carson McCullers classic. The Rep’s second production of the season, The School for Lies, David Ives’ poetic adaptation of Moliere’s The Misanthrope, directed by Giovanna Sardelli, was the most hilarious thing to grace a local stage in a long, long time.
Miller-Stephany also directed the Rep’s recent world premiere of a musical version of O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi and will also take charge of the forthcoming production, March 16-April 8, of the musical Mamma Mia!
Ballet Arkansas also started off its 2017-18 season with new folks at the helm, the husbandand-wife team of Michael Fothergill as artistic director and Catherine Garratt Fothergill as assistant artistic director, both formerly with the Birmingham (Ala.) Ballet. They immediately put into place an ambitious agenda, including a new children’s series augmenting their three annual productions, increasing the company’s presence in Northwest Arkansas and adding new choreography, new designs and a Saturday matinee performance for the company’s annual mainstay (artistically and financially) production of The Nutcracker at Robinson Center Performance Hall.
Praeclara’s Annie wasn’t the only production of the musical in the area this year, by the way; Little Rock’s Weekend Theater also put on a highly praised version, June 22-July 16. (Russellville’s River Valley Arts Center also hosted a production in the same time frame.)
The other two Little Rock theaters that pay their actors — Murry’s Dinner Playhouse (which wraps up its production of Harvey tonight with a big New Year’s Eve extravaganza) and the Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre — were prolifically busy throughout the year. So were the area’s other community theaters, including the Community Theatre of Little Rock (David Mamet’s satirical November), the Studio Theatre (most recently, the musical Meet Me in St. Louis), the Argenta Community Theatre in North Little Rock (Sweet Charity, A Christmas Carol), the Community Theatre of Jacksonville (most recently, It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play) and the Royal Players in Benton (Oliver!), were all very busy putting on shows big and small throughout the year.
By the way, the first quarter of 2018 will see what might be categorized as a Stephen Sondheim festival, as four groups stage Sondheim musicals — the Royal Players’ Young Players troupe performing Sweeney Todd Jan. 4-14; Follies, March 7-17 at Argenta Community Theater; Praeclara performing Into the Woods, April 13-14 at Wildwood; and Assassins, April 6-22 at the Weekend Theater.
In Northwest Arkansas, professional company Theatre Squared opened its 2017-18 season in September with the funereal Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home, followed by The Champion by Amy Evans, based on true events in the life of Nina Simone. And touring productions visiting Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center included The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime, Dirty Dancing, Motown the Musical and The King and I.