10.27.07: La Boheme at the Southern Theater

“Opera as theater” has been a major buzz phrase for the last several decades. It refers to the idea of doing away with all the exaggerated gestures and stereotypical posing that had made opera an object of ridicule. Theatre Latte Da’s La Boheme embodies that ideal. Even with reduced forces, like a minimal chorus, the production beautifully communicates the tragedy of Puccini’s young bohemians.

This production at the Southern Theater is a remounting of a show originally staged in 2005 at the Loring Playhouse. I did not see the original, but I can't imagine that the larger Southern doesn’t improve the staging and provide more resonant acoustics.

Michael Hoover’s set makes innovative use of the space, creating a sumptuous environment in which the story can unfold. This was unmistakably Paris, but not the Paris of travelogues—the Paris of dreams.

Peter Rothstein’s direction follows the same principle. The action is essentially naturalistic, but not limited by reality. It is realism, but an enhanced, romanticized realism. The character’s actions are those of normal human beings, but with a heightened theatricality and passion that allowed my heart to soar. At its best, such emotional flights are what opera can inspire better than any other art form.

Music director Joseph Schlefke has re-orchestrated the opera for piano, guitar, accordion, flute/clarinet and violin. It is hard not to miss the lush Puccini orchestra, but this unique sound contributes to the creation of the unique environment.

Successful as this production is, it makes painfully clear just how difficult it is to balance operatic singing with naturalistic acting. In the opening scene, the poet Rodolfo (tenor James Howes) and the painter Marcello (baritone Nathan Brian) are the embodiment of young bohemians. They have fresh, natural voices and cavort about the stage with antic enthusiasm. Their musical performances are not entirely suave or polished, and they tend to sing unsubtly loud throughout, but their vigor and energy sweeps away all reservations and they end up creating utterly believable characters.

When Mimi (soprano Meghann Schmidt) enters, she seems part of another production altogether. Hers is a voice of true elegance and refinement, but it seemed mannered by comparison. However, in the tragic scenes of Acts Three and Four, she came into her own, her rich instrument taking the drama to a whole other level. Her death scene actually moved me to tears. Howes, on the other hand, was in over his head at this point, both vocally and emotionally. It’s hard to have it all.

There is only one major misstep in the production. Rothstein moves the time period from the late nineteenth century to the 1940s, which is not really significant (this story of young love is universal) until he introduces a Nazi element. This was an unnecessary addition that detracted from the real story. For instance, baritone Bryan Boyce's moving performance of Colline's coat aria was upstaged by the presence of a Star of David on the lapel. The fact that there was no real payoff for the political intrusions just made them all the more extraneous.

Rothstein’s direction masterfully balances the rapidly shifting moods of comedy and tragedy. The bohemians Howes, Brian, and Boyce, along with bass Roy Kallemeyn as the musician Schaunard, made a strong vocal quartet as well as a genuinely funny comic team. Mention must also be made of soprano Jill Sandager, who plays an exceptional Musetta, with a sexy voice and persona to match.

Clearly, the dramatic (and musical) values of this production were heightened by the intimacy of the Southern Theater. I look forward to the day when Rothstein has a large company and a big budget at his disposal to work his magic writ large.

La Boheme plays through November 18 at the Southern Theater.

10.26.07: James Sewell Ballet at The O’Shaughnessy

This fall marks the start of James Sewell Ballet’s fifteenth season in the Twin Cities. (The company was established three years before that in New York City.) In honor of the anniversary, JSB put on an ambitious concert, more rigorous and less sentimental than any I’ve seen previously, and more clearly marking the origins and current direction of Sewell’s talent.

The evening began with two dances from the 1898 Petipa ballet Raymonda—a short, elegant pas de trios and the famous wedding variation. While the guest dancers of the pas de trios performed well, it was Emily Tyra’s wedding variation that clearly showed the appeal of the classical. A variation is a short dance, generally a solo, in which a character—in this case a vain and beautiful princess—is developed through a few characteristic steps (here, light hand claps and a vivacious pose with one hand supporting the back of the head), the rest of the dance being classical (and difficult enough to command applause). The variation gives us a brief glimpse into a world of nobility, beauty, wit, and eternal youth; this view into a higher world is the endless appeal of classical ballet. Tyra’s only flaw is in her musicality, but as she showed spot-on timing elsewhere in the concert, this seems more a matter of confidence than of ability. In a brief greeting after the piece, Sewell promised to give us our “tutu fix” regularly; I hope we’ll see Tyra try on more variations in the future.

From this beginning, Sewell took two different directions in the other two pieces (both his own choreography). In Schoenberg Serenade, Sewell pursues the steps and positions of classical ballet but takes, as a variation does, a few liberties in order to show character and reflect the music. The music is all-important here: Schoenberg Serenade is the type of dance known as “music visualization,” in which the choreographer recreates the music through the dance (rather than using the music as backdrop for a story or theme). “Music visualization” is generally a derogative term, but there’s no shame here; we must all be grateful to a choreographer who will illustrate Schoenberg’s formidable composition, bringing out both its overall form and its wit. I loved Sewell’s inventions here—particularly an arabesque that begins ecstatically but then crumples, just as the music does.

Kinetic Head, the only premiere of the evening, goes after a more technical concern (the inside of ballet): complex coordination, which is what allows you to pat your head and rub your belly (if you can), or play the piano with different rhythms for each hand, or (in dance) execute slow and generous arm movements over rapid footwork. Sewell pushes this in various directions in Kinetic Head—a crazy difficult solo for himself, two duets involving video doubles of the dancers, and complex ensemble work, sometimes in the dark with lit-up costumes. All of this doesn’t quite add up to one ballet. I enjoyed the two duets the most; the rest of Kinetic Head feels more like an exercise than an emotional experience. I find it a little hard to appreciate complex coordination from the audience. I know that it’s difficult to jump and drop your arms down at the same time, but the knowledge doesn’t translate to feeling. Still, I admire the dancers’ abilities and Sewell’s willingness to explore this strange territory.

Throughout, the dancers shine. Distinct—from Tyra’s long elegant lines to Penelope Freeh’s uncompromisingly sharp edges to Chris Hannon’s easy flow and more—yet uniformly excellent, Sewell’s dancers make a diverse, fun, and knowable company; by the end of the concert I felt attached to them all. From the company and dances he’s created, I see Sewell as a humanist, a lover of humanity and human possibility. We are lucky to have him here in the Twin Cities.

James Sewell Ballet performs at The O'Shaughnessy through October 28.

10.25.07: Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation at the Weisman Art Museum

Changing Hands fills four rooms—about half of the Weisman’s gallery space. The show, the second in a series organized by the Museum of Arts & Design in New York, features about 150 words by 130 artists. It’s a dense and highly diverse snapshot of contemporary Native American art.

All of the artists are from west of the Mississippi, including Alaska and Hawaii. Most of the work is recent (produced within the last seven years). The show is organized around four broad themes that touch on ideas, materials, and practices in contemporary Native art. But that’s where easy characterization of the exhibit ends. The show verges on overwhelming with its sheer variety of styles and statements. The upside is that while not every piece will resonate with every person, you’re unlikely to walk away without at least a handful of images in mind.

One of the pieces still swirling round in my own is Sonya Kelliher-Combs’ Guarded Secrets. Composed of walrus stomach and porcupine quills, the piece looks a little like a menacing pile of discarded paper lanterns artfully heaped in a pile, or maybe the outer layer of a cactus that’s shed its skin. Kelliher-Combs’ piece falls into the category of “Material Evidence,” which spotlights the relationship of artist and materials, and specifically those linked to the visual heritage of Native North Americans.

Another standout for me: Teri Greeves’ Khoiye-Goo Mah, a pair of beaded Converse sneakers that suggests a mix of whimsy, nostalgia, reinvention, and adaptation. The piece, part of the “Beyond Function” section of the exhibit, turns attention to cultural meaning and status in recent Native American art. The shoe is an apt metaphor for a journey, and Greeves’ Converses offer us a chance the opportunity to “walk” in another’s shoes.

Two other memorable pieces were Marcus Codman’s Kachina: Bingo Sheet ‘Please God Let Me Win’ and Judy Marchand’s Metis Soup. The latter echoes Warhol’s famous print of Campbell’s soup cans, except Marchand’s are ceramics painted half red, half white with names in English and Cree. Instead of Chicken Noodle, the cans bear labels such as “Elk” and “Turtle” and “Antelope” as well as “Indian Agent” and “Hangover.” Codman’s three-dimensional collage evokes a Hopi kachina doll plastered with dollar bills, bingo sheets, and topped with a small plume of feathers.

It feels highly unfair to mention only four of the pieces in this show, but there it is.

Changing Hands continues through January 13 at the Weisman Art Museum.

10.24.07: Van Halen at Target Center

After twenty-two years, there's no better time for Van Halen's original lead singer, David Lee Roth, to tour with the band again. Every aspect of our current pop culture has been influenced by the decade that, until two years ago, we all wanted to forget: skinny pants and leggings fill our closets, synthesizer-driven music has reemerged in rock, hipsters are the new yuppies.

There weren’t many hipsters at last night's concert at Target Center, however. The crowd was full of die-hard, thirty-plus Van Halen fans wearing double-denim (light-wash jeans and jean jacket/shirt), singing along to every tune, and playing lots of air guitar.

The band played what felt like their entire catalog in the two-and-a-half-hour set, opening with "You Really Got Me" and barreling through hit after hit, including "Running with the Devil," "Beautiful Girls," "Dance the Night Away," "I'll Wait," and "Jamie's Cryin'."

A month into this tour, Diamond Dave and the Van Halens—Eddie on guitar, Alex on drums, and Eddie's sixteen-year-old (!) son, Wolfgang, on bass—were nothing short of manic. Roth and Wolfgang took turns climbing the ramp that swirled behind and above the drum kit, Eddie and Roth strutted on the semi-circle catwalk that extended from the stage and created an unbeatable, 360-degree show for the select crowd seated up front. Roth was a spectacle with countless high kicks, three wardrobe changes featuring three different top hats, and the campiest grin I've ever seen on an arena stage. Eddie, shirtless for the entire show, with no wardrobe changes, was all smiles too, jumping around stage left while screaming on the guitar.

All of them were on their game, musically, except for a hilarious guffaw during "And the Cradle Will Rock," when Roth declared, "I forgot the f**king words!" and joined the band again at the chorus.

A cranked-up rendition of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" led into the first solo, on drums. Roth picked up the next solo, prefaced by a long segue of strumming an acoustic guitar during which he shared fond recollections of his pothead days in the seventies. Eddie's solo started with him perched on the edge of the stage with a melodramatic spotlight shining on him, then he teased the crowd with a little help from Wolfgang and Alex, sped up, slowed down, then finally gave the crowd the intense shredding we were waiting for.

The show that had us on our feet the whole time ended, fittingly, with us off our feet and in the air throughout the predictable one-song encore, "Jump." The stage antics increased as confetti rained upon us and Roth retrieved a ten-foot inflatable microphone from his roadies, which he then dragged across the catwalk, rode across the stage, and retired. I can't tell you how many people whipped out their cell phones to take a picture of that display, including the two security guards standing behind us.

Aging bands on reunion tours don’t always live up to the glory of their heyday. But almost thirty years after the original Van Halen formed, the current lineup that Roth called "three-quarters original, one-quarter inevitable" was 100 percent unstoppable.

10.19.07: The Clean House at Mixed Blood Theatre

Sometime in the first five seconds of Mixed Blood’s The Clean House, it hits you: Oh, the house Matilde the maid has been hired to clean is metaphorical. No one’s house is that white, unless it’s in their head, in which case it suggests that we are in the presence of a monumental control freak—someone who eats routine for breakfast, demands order for lunch, and washes dinner down with a cupful of bleach.

The house is Lane’s, and the “lane” in life she has chosen is to become a doctor. And marry a doctor. And try to grab the brass ring of happiness by working eighty-four hours a week while her husband works the other eighty-four.

It’s not working out: Her life is as sterile as her house.

Enter Matilde, a Brazilian maid who hates cleaning and who would rather spend her time thinking up jokes. Fittingly, Matilde is dressed in black, because remember, we’re dealing in metaphors here. So when, amid all this symbolic purity, a pair of red lacy underwear is found, you know it portends something either very good or very bad.

The strength of The Clean House, written by Sarah Ruhl and short-listed for a Pulitzer in 2005, is that despite this stark and rather obvious black-and-white setup, the end result is not so clear-cut. As Lane’s life comes unraveled, some interesting ideas about different philosophies of life and methods of coping come burbling to the surface, and when they do, they tend to be very funny.

Under the direction of Stan Wojewodski Jr., the production takes a while to hit its stride, but when it does, the result is a charming, thoughtful, and often hilarious play that has a light touch with such heavy subjects as love, death, fidelity, friendship, and—of course—the eternal question that faces all of womankind: to clean or not to clean.

The cast is excellent and delivers a strong ensemble performance, particularly Lisa Rafaela Clair as the strong-willed maid Matilde, Hollis Resnik as Lane, and ex–Guthrie regular Stephen Yoakam as Lane’s husband, Charles. Joe Stanley’s all-white set is both arresting and attractive, and the setup inside Mixed Blood’s Alan Page auditorium puts the audience practically onstage with the actors.

Which is good, because after the last five seconds of the play have ended, you’ll want the cast to hear your applause.

The Clean House continues through November 18 at Mixed Blood Theatre.

10.18.07: Annie Lennox at the State Theatre

When the announcement came some weeks ago that Annie Lennox was playing the State, I took pause. This was a show I would not miss. I had the distinct pleasure of seeing her open for Sting a few years ago at Target Center. Even Sting acted as if the billing should have been reversed. The truth was, we had paid for good seats that night to see Annie. We knew what a rare opportunity it was to see her in Minneapolis. That show will go down in my musical history books as one of my favorite performances.

Last night’s show was a different experience. The first show was a surprise. I didn’t expect her to grab my very soul the way she did. I also wasn’t sure if everyone else in the Target Center realized how special that night was—until the crowd went absolutely crazy at the end of her set.

Last night’s performance wasn’t the same. But it was lovely, engaging, and memorable nonetheless. Yes, this was a much more intimate venue. (Even Annie spoke of the beautiful venue and intimate setting.) And this time I was confident everyone there knew exactly why they were there. Before I talk about Annie, I feel compelled to talk about the audience. As one gay man I spoke to said, “I expected adult contemporary. Who knew it would be every homo in town?” Even before hearing his comment I had written in my notebook “Bohemian. Artsy. Over 40. Gay.”  If you fall into one of these camps, you were probably at the show. (I should have added "Wear glasses.")

When we walked into the State the air was filled with the smell of incense. It reminded my husband and I of a Brian Ferry concert nearly twenty years ago at Northrop. We made way to our seats in the eleventh row, center stage. Annie and her band (two keyboards, a bass, drums, guitar, and two backup singers) immediately had us on our feet with “No More 'I Love You's' ” followed by “Little Bird” and “Walking on Broken Glass.” She jumped into the big hits a little too soon for me. Starting with songs that are so etched in my brain with the production behind them from her albums Diva and Medusa took some adjusting on my part.

Annie was front and center, dressed in a black, shift mini-dress with a graphic pattern of black sequins, over black denims, and low-heeled black boots. She was cool, confident, and casual, striking her theatrical poses and moving her arms in a style more modern dance than pop. Pure Annie. Behind her, a large screen played vintage Annie Lennox videos complete with all of the theatrics, drama, costumes, and makeup we’ve seen on MTV and VH1. The Diva was definitely in the house—and her audience was hanging on every note her beautiful, soulful, pure voice projected.

Annie seemed to soak up our adoration, telling us that this is the kind of audience they enjoy playing for. The first part of the seventeen-song set was the full band, followed by three Eurythmics songs performed by just Annie and her piano. She started with “Here Comes the Rain” that she led in with a commentary on our current Minneapolis weather. She followed that with “A Thousand Beautiful Things,” and the popular chic anthem “Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves.”

The band joined her again and she prompted us to all stand, though many of us had been on our feet often already. Perhaps because she knew we would no doubt be on our toes with “Sweet Dreams,” complete with Eurythmics video. (Hello, Dave Stewart, how ya been?)

Another unexpected (or should it have been?) moment was Annie’s PSA for HIV. Statistics, video, and video commentary from Annie about the troubles in Africa was followed by Annie coming to the stage to perform “Sing” (from her new album, Songs of Mass Destruction) and to talk about her recent trips to Africa and how deeply they've affected her. I felt like I was back in the eighties and the genuine concern that artists of her time were pleading from stages at that time. This audience was her audience for her music—and message.

She closed with “Why” her mega hit from Diva. Reminding us, not that she needed to, why we were all there.

10.18.07: Arena Dances' "Ugly" at the Walker

“Ugly,” choreographed by Arena Dances leader Mathew Janczewski, with a new score by electronic-music star Morton Subotnik, is an ambitious piece. One hour long, with no intermission, “Ugly” screams big work, and not just because it’s a Walker commission. “Ugly” has a big theme—our obsession with set standards of beauty—which Janczewski develops in three sections, one of Elizabethan restraint and courtly moves, one of disco abandon and internet-dating frenzy, and one of Edenic near-nudity; elaborate costumes (the work of Angie Vo) and inventive sets (by Daniel Spencer) accompany each change. Unfortunately, “Ugly” isn’t as big as its desire. The show is certainly watchable, but it has few big moments, few chances for the audience to get caught up in the work.

“Ugly” begins well. The Elizabethan section, all brocade and bone, is icily orderly, but with the promise of passion in a few angry lifts and rucked-up taffeta skirts. Vo’s stiffly rustling costumes and Subotnik’s tinkly faux-baroque score add to the mood. Most importantly, Janczewski gives us characters here: a fierce and frustrated woman, a distant man, and a second woman, the light twin of the first or perhaps her soul. But this fascinating setup is discarded as Janczewski moves into the disco section.

“Ugly” is the first dance I’ve seen take on the seedy side of the internet-dating scene. With its degrading requests, its deceitful self-descriptions, and its porno approach to the body, internet sex provides an interesting counterpoint to the usual purity and purposefulness of the dancer’s body. Janczewski works this contrast. But he underlines what he’s trying to do a bit too much; the dance becomes too literal. The craft of the dance breaks down in this section as well. In trying to give us something ugly to look at, something perverse, Janczewski gets only as far as stilted, awkward, stamping moves—neither easy on the eyes nor fascinatingly wrong. A few solos and a strong male duet bring focus, but Janczewski relies mostly on his ensemble—an unfortunate choice, since the ensemble work feels vague and atmospheric.

This same fault harms the last section of the piece as well. Give Janczewski one or two brilliant dancers and he’s riveting. All his choreography for Amy Behm-Thomson (who always appears solo) is evocative, mysterious, and stellar. But give Janczewski an ensemble and he becomes dull, plot-oriented without the specificity necessary to carry a plot. (Some of the blame for this may belong to the dancers, few of whom have Behm-Thomson’s assured presence.) There are some nice moments in the last section. While three dancers sit on squares of turf, three other dancers leap into nasty sideways falls; later, one dancer starts the same jump, but lands softly, bruiselessly. Altogether, though, too little is carried forward from the first two sections to give Janczewski much to do or the audience much to look for in this last section.

Known for beautiful, floating, soulful dance, Janczewski plays against type in “Ugly,” trying to push his art in new directions. It’s a smart and brave idea. But rather than pushing his talent, Janczewski seems to have suppressed it. He can do a lot better than this; I’ve seen great work from him in the past, and I expect more in the future. This coming May Janczewski will remount an earlier work, “waterBRIDGE,” at the Southern Theater. With the pressure of “Ugly” gone, perhaps Janczewski will show us what he can do.

"Ugly" runs through Saturday at the Walker.

For more on "Ugly," read Lightsey Darst's preview of the work from the October issue of Mpls.St.Paul.

10.17.08: Jimmy Pardo at Acme Comedy Co.

Jimmy Pardo is an animal—a small, five-foot-three-inch male who grew up in Chicago and migrated to Los Angeles. He has a podcast, and a digitally recorded CD entitled Pompous Clown, but really, he’s an old-school entertainer, a classic standup who would have fit nicely on Johnny’s Tonight Show. His hair is cut Joey Bishop–short and he always wears a suit on stage. He refers to the audience as “ladies and gentlemen,” but you’re not sure he means it. He’s got that Vince Vaughn wiseass Chicago thing where he could make fun of you all night and you would feel sort of flattered.

In fact, that’s exactly what he is—he’s a mini–Vince Vaughn. A likeable prick. He greeted us by saying, “Hey, Minneapolis, great to be here!” and then muttered, “If I keep saying that, maybe I’ll convince myself this isn’t a s*#t gig.” He did a joke and then he looked up and asked, “What do I have to do to rock this toilet bowl tonight?!?”

Last night, he was clearly bored with “doing the act.” He screwed around with the crowd for half his hour, touching their knees, asking their names, asking how long they had been married or dating. He had a bunch of canned lines for this that were funny only because of his delivery.

“How long you been married?”

“A little over two years.”

“What is that, like twenty-five, twenty-six months?”

And then he seemed to make up a bunch of stuff off the top of his head: He compared the muscle groups to the Brat Pack, he referenced the rock group Material Issue, he told the audience to check out RedTube, “the porn YouTube,” when they got home. When he liked an improvised joke, he asked somebody in the crowd to write it down. “That’s a good piece of business,” he said. “I’ll use that later.”

Halfway through, he divided the crowd into two halves: the side that got it, and the “S*#t side.” He did a voice from the s%^t side: “Hey, this guy has a [penis], when’s he going to talk about it?” At which point, Pardo nailed a couple of choice [penis] jokes. “That’s a good piece of business,” he said. “Comedy gold!”

10.16.07: Flim Flam Man script reading at the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio

I swear I’m not a snob, but with the exception of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I always like the book more than the movie. Knowing this is a good thing—because when they announce that a famous book is becoming a movie, it forces me to read something I’ve always meant to read. I procrastinate though, so I’m usually rushing out and buying the book the week before the movie comes out. By then, it’s too late. The trailers have ruined it for me, intruding on my in-brained movie camera with Hollywood stunt casting. By the time I finished The Iliad, there was still a month to go before Troy, but Achilles was already Brad Pitt in my head. When I finally committed to In Cold Blood, Philip Seymour Hoffman was visiting prisons in Kansas. I’ve waited so long on No Country for Old Men, I’m pretty sure that Javier Bardem’s bad haircut is going to get a starring role in my imagination.

Last night, I went to the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio for a cast reading of the script to Jennifer Vogel’s memoir. Jennifer’s book, Flim Flam Man, was about growing up with John Vogel, a notorious counterfeiting con-artist who was busted by U.S. Marshals in 1995. Flim Flam Man came out in 2004, and it got great reviews both nationally and locally. As if that wasn’t enough to motivate me, Jen edited a couple of my stories at City Pages back in the day, and she was really great to work with. She’s a talented editor—funny, and thoughtful, and just generally more generous than what I expected from an editor for a freelance assignment. I remember she made me read David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and let me expense it to the paper. I consider her a friend.

Anyway, I never read her book.

But I had to go to this reading. It’s part of the Guthrie’s new ScriptNight Reading Series put on by the Screenwriters Workshop. The Workshop hired twelve local actors to read a Dreamworks SKG–commissioned screenplay adaptation of Flim Flam Man, entitled Flag Day, written by a British screenwriter, Jez Butterworth. Jen was there, with her husband, Mike, another former City Pages writer, and the Hollywood producer who’s still shopping the script around, Bill Horberg. The twelve actors were all sitting on folding chairs with black folio stands in front of them.

The main reason that I like books better than movies is, of course, because I have the time. A book can go into more detail because it demands more of your time. Film only has a couple hours to reach you, so it has to cheat: films rely on exploitive visual symbols loaded with all sorts of cultural associations in order to advance the story quickly. A book can have a whole chapter of mythology on the fall of man; a film has a shot of an apple, then cuts to the shot of a woman, then cuts to the shot of a snake.

One of the problems with attending a reading of a screenplay, then, is that the visuals aren’t there. Sure, they’re described, but they’re described in a kind of technical film-school shorthand that can be powerful if brought to the screen by the right hands, but can sound cliché when you’re sitting in a theater watching a bunch of actors read off their folio stands and sip bottled water.

That said, the screenplay was cast perfectly. They might eventually get somebody like Kevin Costner to play John Vogel, but Stephen Pelinski was perfect as the dashing conman who drives a Cadillac and keeps a nickel-plated .38 in his waistband but doesn’t like to hear his children cuss. The rest of the cast looked and sounded right too: Linda Kelsey as Jennifer’s mom, both Raven Maizy Bellefluer and Tracey Maloney as young Jen and older Jen, respectively. So the cast looked right and sounded right, and there were even some sound effects that helped give the evening a kind of radio-play feel, but a lot of the imagery just whipped by faster than my ears could digest it, and there were a couple hackneyed Lifetime Network scenes that frankly didn’t much sound like Jennifer Vogel.

So I came home and ripped through the first 100 pages of Flim Flam Man. And then I finished it this morning. And yup, I liked the book better. In the book, Stephen Pelinski was starring as John Vogel, but the female characters, Jen’s mom, and especially Jen herself, are much more three-dimensional. Jen’s writing is so clear-eyed and humble and painfully honest in the book that I ended up liking Jen Vogel the character much more than I liked the movie version of Jen Vogel. Maybe it’s because John Vogel as written by Jez Butterworth and read by Stephen Pelinski was so likeable, it was difficult to understand why Jen was so bitter and angry towards him by the third act. The book, with time for a full accounting of both John and Jen’s faults, doesn’t have that problem.

10.14.07: Pat Metheny Trio at Orchestra Hall

The first thing you notice about guitarist Pat Metheny is the hair. Long and frizzy, it shoots out from his head in every conceivable direction, as if he didn’t just stick his finger in a light socket but somehow grabbed a live power cable and held onto it for about thirty years. This would explain why Metheny doesn’t appear to have cut his hair since the mid-1970s, and why his hair isn’t just hair anymore—it’s a full-blown metaphor for his entire career, a thirty-year period of constant growth that has spun off in so many different directions it’s all but impossible to keep track.

To be sure, Metheny is one of those musicians who has been around so long that his music has had time to go in and out of fashion at least four or five times. His signature brand of lyrical, melodious noodling is currently out of fashion, but judging from the ingenuity of the material presented by the current Pat Metheny Trio (which has had many incarnations) at Orchestra Hall last night, listening to him may soon be cool again.

Metheny’s star power couldn’t quite fill Orchestra Hall, but his fans turned out. In fact, he got a partial standing ovation last night just for walking onstage. He started the show on a mellow note, playing a couple of solo acoustic numbers on his baritone guitar. He then kicked it up a notch with a piece called “The Sound of Water,” which he played on his custom-made Pikasso, an instrument that combines a six-string guitar, lute, oud, bass, and zither, and looks like some sort of medieval weapon.

After these meditative journeys, Metheny welcomed to the stage his bandmates, drummer Antonio Sanchez and bassist Christian McBride, two of the most in-demand artists of the moment in the rarefied universe of jazz genius. Once Sanchez’s drumsticks started flying, the trio produced an energetic set of tight, thoughtful jazz, some of it from Day Trip, a CD scheduled for release in January, and some reaching all the way back to Metheny’s 1976 album, Bright Size Life.

Metheny isn’t the fastest guitarist around, or the most intense. What makes him great, though, is that every phrase he plays has an interesting melodic idea behind it. There are no gratuitous runs or fills, no stock licks, no safe musical harbors; Metheny is a jazz purist who believes in the value of an evolving musical conversation, and he surrounds himself with musicians who have equally interesting things to say.

Bassist Christian McBride, for instance, can make his bass talk like a cello, and he weaves through every piece intricate, unconventional lines that complement Metheny and Sanchez perfectly. On drums, Sanchez is a wizard who opens up nooks and crannies that Metheny loves to dive into and bounce off of. During a duet that did not include McBride, Metheny and Sanchez went at it so furiously that they left jazz and fusion behind and ended up somewhere in post-apocalyptic metal territory, with Metheny employing pick scrapes and distortion, and Sanchez summoning the ear-crunching gods of percussive chaos.

The trio strayed so far away from the smooth and familiar that some older folks in the crowd (who doubtless got their tickets through a package with the orchestra) decided they’d had enough and walked out.

Those of us who stayed saw a great show by three seasoned jazz musicians at the top of their game. When their new CD comes out in January, I’ll be first in line.

10.13.07: Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's Wild Cursive at Northrop Auditorium

For several years choreographer Lin Hwai-min and his company, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, have been exploring Chinese calligraphy as a source for a trilogy of dance pieces. The latest, Wild Cursive, draws on “wild calligraphy,” in which the artist is freed of the set shapes of the characters. Wild calligraphy, the program notes explain, “exposes the spiritual state of the writer in its expressive abstraction.”

With such an inspiration, I could easily imagine a choreographer filling the stage with unrelieved prettiness, one sweeping arabesque after another. But Lin envisions wild calligraphy not as arranged beauty but as virtuoso struggle: each line on the paper, each sustained sequence of movement (broken off with a sudden stop, as if the calligrapher has just lifted the brush from the paper) is a victory of artistic integrity over the contrary forces of the world—distraction, gravity, grief, applause. Not that Wild Cursive isn’t beautiful: it’s breath-taking, with the dancers winding sinuously as the tentacles of a sea anemone or driving into explosive leaps like the attack of a cheetah. But beauty is a byproduct of Lin and his dancers’ fierce devotion to following the path of each breath. True to its inspiration, Wild Cursive shows no stories, no characters, no meaning. But its continual ambition evokes thousands of stories and situations. Marathon runners or mothers, we all project ourselves into the world, all feel the struggle to be true to what moves inside us.

Without virtuoso dancers Wild Cursive would lose the suspense, the high-wire act of each pathway through space. Luckily, Lin has plenty of virtuosos on hand. He deploys them at first in loose, seemingly incidental groupings, twos and threes, and then arranges them with increasing specificity, consolidating from the improvised look of the first half of the piece to decided choreography, even occasional unison, in the second half of the piece. Throughout, the dancers not only glide smoothly, hold exceptional balances in difficult positions, and leap high, but they maintain mindfulness about the movement phrase, so that the audience never loses track of the drama of the brush curving over the page. Even in unison the dancers don’t lose their individual sense of breath. The standing ovation was richly deserved.

Lin’s work is also supported by stunning design. The stage is bare, except for long scrolls of rice paper that lower from above, creating at times a spare trio, at other times a forest. So slowly that at first I couldn’t be sure it was happening, ink drips down, following curvilinear patterns in the crinkled paper as the dancers do in space. White lights illuminate the dancers flatly, highlighting their whirling limbs, and sometimes sharpen the dancers into silhouettes as they stand or move behind the paper scrolls. A spare score of wind, waves, percussion, and night-sounds acts as the meter the dancers move with or stunningly against.

At the end of Wild Cursive, when only one dancer is left on stage, her arms winding slowly and without pause as if the calligrapher is using up the leftover ink on her brush, two blades of black ink spill fiercely down the central scroll. In Lin’s brilliant view, the drive to be—for the artist, the drive to create—is unrepentant and unsatisfied, no matter what beauty it makes in its constant struggle.

10.10.07: Bob Mould at Bryant-Lake Bowl

When the Bryant-Lake Bowl announced that ex–Hüsker Dü, ex-Sugar frontman Bob Mould was playing a solo show in the venue's ninety-seat theater, his fans collectively furrowed their brows, cocked their heads, and said, Huh? We then rejoiced at the idea of seeing Mould, a historical figure in local music, playing in such an intimate setting.

The evening was a DVD-release party for his first fully authorized live concert video, Circle of Friends.

Though Mould hasn't lived in Minnesota for years (he currently resides in Washington, D.C.), his Twin Cities fan base spans from longtime Hüsker Dü followers (now forty-something), to Sugar listeners (thirty-something), and newer fans of his solo work and Blowoff, his house-music venture (twenty-something).

All of these groups were represented at last night's show, which started off with an interview by Current DJ Mary Lucia, followed by a brief round of audience questions. With such a long and varied history, there was a lot of ground to cover.

Mould almost directly referenced his Hüsker roots when Lucia asked him this loaded question: "How important is it for you to shape the chemistry of those people [with whom you play]?" To which he answered, "Well, I have done that before." Lucia came back with, "You have?" and everyone shared a slightly uncomfortable laugh.

Mould was upbeat and relaxed, and clearly enjoyed appearing at such a small venue, one that allowed him to connect with the audience both during the Q&A and the performance that followed.

He talked about the importance of reconciling his past in order to play some of his old music. "I don't want to try to sound like that," he said. "The beauty of the band [on the DVD] was not trying to sound like what those other bands were. It sounds like what the four of us sound like."

Likewise, the fifty-minute solo set he performed between the Q&A and the DVD screening didn't sound like those other bands, it sounded like Bob Mould. The setlist was a mix of songs Mould originally wrote for Hüsker, Sugar, and his subsequent solo work—all played on acoustic guitar, turned way up.

Clearly, taking a song written for a punk rock trio and arranging it for a solo performance with acoustic guitar ensures that it's not going to sound like the original. Every song was beautifully performed, from Sugar's "Hoover Dam," originally released in 1992 on Copper Blue, to a song he said he wrote last Wednesday called "I'm Sorry Baby, But You Can't Stand In My Light Anymore." However, because it was one man onstage singing and playing one guitar, there wasn't much variety in how the songs sounded. His tempos and vocal range were similar from song to song, translating into a solid show that plateaued, but didn't have a strong peak, per se. That said, the highlight of the evening, and the song that we in the audience hollered about the most—in turn feeding him energy—was his spirited "I Apologize," from Hüsker's 1985 New Day Rising.

After an enthusiastic set of twelve songs, the DVD, which was released the day before, was screened in the theater. Meanwhile, Mould retired to the BLB's bowling alley, where he signed posters and DVDs, and posed for pictures with fans.

Setlist:
Wishing Well
See A Little Light
Hoover Dam
Hear Me Calling
No Reservations
I Apologize
Hardly Getting Over It
Again and Again
Circles
A new one that Mould said will appear on the record after 2008's District Line. Lyrics included "It's a lonely road." Anyone know the title?
I'm Sorry Baby, But You Can't Stand In My Light Anymore
If I Can't Change Your Mind

10.8.07: Royal Shakespeare Company at the Guthrie

My girlfriend and I are going to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s King Lear on Wednesday. But we’re going alone. My buddy and his wife scalped their tickets for $1,200.

So, yeah, Gandalf in the Most Prestigious Role for Any Actor Too Old to Play Hamlet? I get that it’s a big deal.

In fact, I was at the RSC press conference at the Guthrie last week, and even if I couldn’t tell Ian McKellen from Christopher Lee, I can tell you that these British dudes are baaaad. Granted, the assembled press consisted of three newspaper theater critics, a couple of photographers, and two Guthrie PR people, but when Sir Ian walked in with the rest of his band of Stratford gypsies, it felt like the ’27 Yankees were sitting down to answer a few questions before their improbable exhibition against our hometown beer league squad.

(The Strib has video of the press conference here. I’m the one in the audience squinting and nodding my head like an enthusiastic sophomore suck-up.)   

Sir Ian is sixty-nine, but he strutted in like the freakiest theater student in school. He wore amber John Lennon glasses and a heavy, dark-green leather jacket over what looked like white Wimbledon attire from the '20s. His yellowish-gray hair was feathered up like a rooster. His Learbeard was Moses-thick. His shoes were impeccable.

The rest of the actors looked their part as well. Cordelia was lovely in that pale, English rose way. The Fool was short and bald, and acted foolish (he used his water bottle as a microphone). The Duke of Gloucester had that superior, heavy-lidded look of royalty. But at the press conference, the only actor with enough dark charisma to rival Sir Ian was Gerald Kyd. Bearded, raven-haired, Kyd hid under his fedora and slumped back in his chair as if he had someplace else to be.

Kyd’s only a soldier in Lear, but he plays Trigorin, the self-involved short-story writer in The Seagull, the Chekhov play that the troupe is alternating with Lear this week. He’s way too good-looking to be a writer—he’s got that hirsute Colin Farrell thing going on—but I saw him in The Seagull on Saturday night and he killed, even though the Strib said something about how he underplayed his role.

Predictably, the critics are treating The Seagull as little more than a palate cleanser for the main course of Sir Ian in the much meatier role of Lear. Not so. The Seagull is perfectly cast, and devastating in its execution. There’s all that Russian gnashing of teeth and scene chewing, and sometimes the troupe’s controlled London accents can seem out of place, but it was still the best play I’ve ever seen. The language came out of the actors in such a natural way, as if they were living in real time right in front of you. They tear at their breasts and commit suicide and tremble in the rain, but they don’t just do these things because they read them in a script—there is a deeper purpose behind every detail.

Sure, The Seagull can be dreary (it’s about how meaningless life as a member of the human species can be), but Chekhov’s characters are funny, and when the actors are this confident, they don’t have to grandstand. The words come out naturally, and the characters’ insane, cruel actions speak not only for themselves but to all of us. It’s three and a half hours of nihilism performed by nineteenth-century “Russians” who all talk like Julie Andrews, but you can relate to it. Extraordinary, right?

Sure, I know we have an incredible local theater scene with fabulous actors and world-class facilities, blah, blah, blah. And judging from the fact that at least four cell phones went off during the performance on Saturday, Ian McKellan and his team are bringing some folks to the Guthrie who haven’t been to the theater in a while, if ever.

But that’s not such a bad situation. I mean, I probably sound star-struck right now myself, but so did the papers’ nitpicky reviews of The Seagull. Don’t let anyone tell you different: The Seagull was great. Lear is gonna be great. And their collective greatness does not diminish any of our local artistic accomplishments. After all, acting’s Murderers Row is at the Guthrie because we built a theater out here on the prairie that the RSC had to come see for themselves—and they brought their A-game. These guys are good, and we deserve them. 

So, whoever is sitting with us tomorrow night—you can come to the Guthrie secure in the knowledge that those $1,200 tickets are going to be worth it. 

10.6.07: Georgia O’Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction at the MIA

Waiting in lines ranks high on my list of un-fun activities. But if you're going to wait, you could do worse than standing feet away from ancient Roman marble sculptures and mosaics. The line at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to see the new Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at last night’s member preview stretched half the length of the second-floor corridor. Interest in the artists appears to be alive and well.

I’ll admit I’m not one of O'Keeffe’s most ardent admirers. My opinion of the artist, though, derives as much from the popularization of her work as from the work itself. Circling Around Abstraction, which is organized by a theme—the circular motif in O'Keeffe’s work—implicitly counters assumptions about the artist’s intentions and explicitly underscores the premise that she was first and foremost interested in abstraction. The show asks viewers to look at O'Keeffe’s work as an abstraction first and a thing (flower, bone, etc.) second.

The circle motif makes sense as a portal to a view of O'Keeffe’s work that is as much abstract as it is realistic. “Nothing is less real than realism,” O'Keeffe said, and when you take a good long look at, say, White Rose Abstraction (1927), one of the flower compositions for which O'Keeffe has gained so much acclaim in recent years, it makes perfect sense. Suddenly, it's less a flower and more a spiral of white and grays and bluish green that embodies the essence of a flower.

Certain shapes cut across decades. Blue II, from the 1920s, is a whorl of varying shades of azure in a shape resembling the rounded crest of a wave. In an untitled work from the 1970s (the first image above), that same whorl pops up in shades of red and orange (still with a streak of blue). It’s interesting to make those connections. While not every piece in the show is as compelling as the next, the net effect is to recast O'Keeffe a bit; to give her an enigmatic edge that mass marketing had dulled considerably.

Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction opens today and runs through January 6 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

10.6.07: Minneapolis Musical Theatre's Jerry Springer: The Opera at Hennepin Stages

Minneapolis Musical Theatre’s area premiere production of Jerry Springer: The Opera is trashy, brash, and loud. In short, it’s exactly like watching The Jerry Springer Show, and for the most part, it’s great. The Jerry Springer Show has all but disappeared from quotidian consciousness, and it’s a pleasure to have the show's namesake back.

The show, as its title suggests, is through-sung, beginning with a song that sounds more appropriate for a church choir and digressing into gutter-language arias and faux-lieder that only classically trained singers could pull off. Of course, not all the characters get pretty ballads, and there are plenty of pop-inspired chords. Songs like “Talk to the Hand”—sung by a transvestite caught in a love triangle with Peaches, Peaches’ best friend, and her insensitive fiancé—and “Mamma Gimme Smack” (imagine two adults, one dressed in a diaper, the other, Baby Jane, in a Shirley Temple-esque wig, begging to be spanked) bring out the best Middle America has to offer.

Kim Kivens, who plays both Peaches and Baby Jane, lends her lyric soprano and wide-eyed comic timing to her roles. Christine Karki plays Shawntel, a wannabe stripper with a booty deadly enough to demolish U-boats. Her performance is a leopard-print wearing tour de force. Director/choreographer Steven J. Meerdink revels in the raucousness of it all, encouraging his performers to sing well but otherwise behave like amateurs, the kind one might find, say, on a lowbrow talk show. The sets, designed by Andrea Heilman, are both plain—four nondescript chairs on a small platform—and over-the-top. Satan’s lair (where act two takes place) features those same chairs burnt to a crisp and skull graffiti galore.

The plot is flimsy, but that’s neither here nor there. The first act serves as an excuse to have a bunch of white trash sing their woes. The second act, which finds a recently shot Jerry caught between Satan’s personal drama and Jesus’s petulant stubbornness, is pointless and a little boring, even with a climactic scene featuring a Satan-Jesus-Mother Mary-Adam-Eve-God smackdown.

The only other thing to know ahead of time is that the f-word is used merrily and copiously, with the “c” word thrown in about six times for good measure. How long does it take to tire of the shocking language and repeated references to cocaine? Exactly twenty-three minutes. The authors of the show could have used urbandictionary.com to come up with some raunchier rhymes. Other than these minor complaints, there’s not a night at the opera that gets grander than this.

Jerry Springer: The Opera runs through October 28 at Hennepin Stages.

10.5.07: Trying at Park Square Theatre

Trying, a two-person play based on playwright Joanna McClelland Glass’s time as personal secretary to judge Francis Biddle, is an innocuous play. Biddle was the former secretary of state for president Franklin D. Roosevelt and the chief justice of the Nuremburg Trials from 1941–1945. In Trying, he’s eighty-two and approaching death in the surliest of ways.

The play takes place in 1967, in the Georgetown, Washington, D.C. office of Biddle. The room says as much about Biddle’s mental state as it does about his physical ailments (astute yet forgetful, occasionally bitter, debilitating arthritis). There’s not a modern object in sight save for a typewriter, the provenance of which is not discussed. Biddle is trying to finish his memoirs but needs an aide to help him.

When his new hire, Sarah Schorr (Emily Gunyou Halaas), enters Biddle’s office for the first time on a snowy winter morning, he warns her that he’s impossible to work for and that he’s made all his other secretaries quit. Sarah, a self-possessed twenty-five-year-old, is undeterred, and the play, predictable and often trite, begins.

Biddle is played by Richard Ooms, a tall man with a glowing presence and the face of a pussycat. If you see him around town, you automatically start to grin and want to hug the man. He keeps his innate incandescence mostly under wraps throughout the first act, where the script gives him nothing more to do than be cranky, limp about, and quip one-liners into the cold Georgetown air.

Sarah is a “bugger for work” who takes on her formidable task with stony determination. Trying to get Biddle to finish transcribing his memoirs before he passes away is a task, made even harder by his deliberate attempts to make her miserable. Ooms does a nice job of playing Biddle not as a monster, but rather the opposite—the closer Biddle gets to death, the more he wants to distance himself from other people.

The rest of the play is as one would expect, with Sarah taking the reigns at the end of act one, the pair becoming close friends by the start of act two, and the inevitable death of Biddle by the end of it.

True to conventional-play form, there are endless wordplays on the title (the multiple meanings of the verb/adverb “trying” shall haunt me all weekend) and the overt symbols are not particularly graceful. Sarah is pregnant by the end of the play—and Glass’s metaphor is plain as day. As one life ends, another begins. It’s not a new sentiment, and the actors save it from being theatrically dead on arrival. In the hands of another pair, Trying would be trying indeed.

Trying closes tomorrow at Park Square Theatre.

10.5.07: Mozart and Salieri, The SPCO at the Orpheum

There aren’t many murder mysteries in the classical music world. Perhaps that’s why the legend of Mozart and Salieri—absurdly magnified and distorted by Peter Shaeffer’s play Amadeus and the subsequent hit movie—refuses to die. The idea that Antonio Salieri, insanely jealous of Mozart’s seemingly effortless genius, poisoned Mozart in the prime of his creative life, is one of those apocryphal parables that ought to be true even if it isn’t.

After all, if The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra stuck strictly to the facts of the case, it wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun as it did last night. In an entertaining program put together by visiting conductor Hans Graf, The SPCO played Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, written in 1773 when Mozart was seventeen, then followed it with Antonio Salieri’s Piano Concert in C, written that same year when Salieri was twenty-two years old. (One of the most egregious distortions of fact in Amadeus is that Salieri was significantly older than Mozart; he wasn’t.)

This side-by-side comparison was revealing mostly because it showed how comparatively well Salieri’s concerto holds up to Mozart’s adolescent effort, and how tight a grip their mutual mentor Joseph Haydn still had on both composers at that time.

Salieri’s Piano Concerto in C is one of the few Salieri works that has stood the test of time, partly because it sounds so remarkably Mozart-like. (If you think you can tell the difference, try taking this Mozart/Salieri quiz.) It is a competent, well-written piece of Viennese nostalgia, full of the lively trills and cascading scales one typically associates with Mozart and Haydn, and in the hands of Japanese pianist Rieko Aizawa, it got an extremely thoughtful and passionate airing.

The highlight of the evening came after intermission, however, with a humorous performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s mini-opera, Mozart and Salieri, featuring tenor Daniil Shtoda in the role of Mozart, and Russian bass extraordinaire Mikhail Svetlov as the envious, scheming Salieri.

It was the Russian poet Pushkin who first came up with the Salieri-killed-Mozart conceit, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s little opera is essentially a thirty-five-minute riff on the same idea.

Last night’s standout performance was turned in by Mikhail Svetlov, whose voice is so thick and rich that it ought to come with a calorie-warning label. Shtoda is an equally gifted tenor and, as the audience found out last night, he can play a mean piano too. (During the opera, Mozart plays some piano for Salieri, which leads Salieri to conclude that Mozart needs to die, albeit for the opposite reasons most people want to kill the piano player.)

All in all, it was an extremely entertaining evening of classical music, which is something one can’t always say. Tickets are still available for tonight’s show. 

9.30.07: The Arcade Fire at Roy Wilkins

The Arcade Fire's signature sound is a triumphant marching beat backed by synthesizers and horns that are a throwback to such iconic groups as Talking Heads, U2, and Bruce Springsteen. The cathartic, fist-pumping boom of bass and percussion fills every molecule of the surrounding air, but the sound also strikes a comfortable balance between complexity and simplicity. In an era overrun with ironic indie rockers, this Canadian group stands out for its ability to rock the house the old-fashioned way—with infectious percussion, eclectic instrumentation, and biting lyrics.

There are bands whose live shows are identical to their recordings, and bands that like to improvise and experiment with their songs in concert. Alas, Arcade Fire falls into the first category. Last night the group played almost every tune identically to the recordings on Funeral and Neon Bible.

Of course, this tactic has its place in both small clubs (where Arcade Fire is used to playing) and large arenas (where the band is destined to play). However, last night I felt like the band missed an opportunity to blast the hell out of Roy Wilkins auditorium, a venue that has a distinct high school–auditorium feel.

Everything was in place—neon lights, five circular video screens showcasing the band members as they played, a packed floor crowd of enthusiastic and artsy youngsters, and an opening band (LCD Soundsystem) with just enough buzzworthiness to add to the grandiosity of the show, but not enough to detract from the headliner.

Then there was The Arcade Fire touring band—ten strong, with at least twice that many instruments onstage—a spectacle even when they weren't playing.

Yet despite all of this musical firepower and crowd energy, last night’s performance somehow felt anticlimactic. There were far too many awkward pauses between songs, which killed the show’s overall momentum. At first, it was refreshing—even novel—to see a band retuning and changing instruments and positions between songs, and sometimes in the middle of songs. (It’s one of the things they’re known for.) But having that gap between every song was like slamming on the brakes while you’re trying get on the freeway. It was disconcerting, because if there’s one thing these guys know how to do, it’s build momentum.

This inertia-killing awkwardness plagued the show right up to the very end. Between the first and second songs of the encore, frontman Win Butler said, "Drive safely. Bye." Then they played another song.

What?

So much for not being an ironic indie rock band.

At first, the constant rotation of musicians playing different instruments for each song was intriguing. But by the end of the show, this literal game of musical chairs felt gratuitous—like, what can we have player X do during this song to keep him onstage?

Even though the overall show wasn't spectacular, the performers brimmed with energy—always dancing, at times running around in a manic frenzy, throwing tambourines and drums in the air.

And the setlist was an undeniable crowd-pleaser. The majority of the songs were from the überpopular 2007 release, Neon Bible, mixed with Funeral selections that had the audience singing and clapping along. 

Setlist:
Black Mirror
Keep the Car Running
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
No Cars Go
Haiti
Cold Wind
Intervention
(Antichrist Television Blues)
Ocean of Noise
Windowsill
The Well and the Lighthouse
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion (Lies)

Encore:
Headlights Look Like Diamonds
Wake Up