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Rave and Pan
April 23, 2010
A
Soldier's Tale, Cleveland Play House
By Christine Howey
Sometimes, a hearty stew
tastes like mush because all the individual flavors have melded together
into one incomprehensible blob. Then again, there's zesty fare like A
Soldier’s Tale, now part of Fusion Fest at the Cleveland Play House.
Employing a challenging
and intriguing composition by Igor Stravinsky, based on a Russian folk
tale, a septet from the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Tito Munoz sets
the musical stage. Then, four actors share the Baxter Theater space with
dancers from GroundWorks DanceTheater as they fashion a compelling story
of a real soldier from World War II, Private Eddie Slovik, who was
executed for desertion.
This historic
collaboration of three honored local arts institutions is reason enough
to see this remarkable production. But there are even more delights in
store than superbly rendered music and dance. The libretto written by
Kurt Vonnegut is wonderfully playful, featuring an impish use of rhyme,
but is also brutal and often profane in places. This is more than
appropriate for a wartime scenario that also involves a “ballet with
lice” as the dancers and actors, in uniform, itch as they hoof.
Under the direction of
Seth Gordon, this engrossing mélange also leverages some interesting and
amusing projections, including a WWII pin-up gal and a violin-playing
devil (a reference to the original tale of a soldier who loses his soul
to the devil in trade for his fiddle).
Justin Tatum is engaging
as Slovik, but almost pushes his character’s devil-may-care goofiness a
bit too far (after all, Slovik didn't want to die and eventually pleaded
for clemency, a fact not conveyed in this piece). Robert Ellis is nicely
conflicted as the General and Lindsay Iuen, steams things up as a sexy
Red Cross gal.
In the preceding work,
Catch and Release by Esa-Pekka Salonen, the dancers (Amy Miller, Felise
Bagley, Kelly Brunk, Damien Highfield and Sarah Perrett) perform to
music that in many ways echoes Stravinsky’s piece. Ranging from
lighthearted—there are faint flickers of Gershwin now and then—to more
somber, this 20-minute composition is accompanied by lighting effects
and videos thrown onto the dance floor.
As the only American
soldier to be executed by the U.S. military since the Civil War, Slovik
has been condemned for cowardice by some and honored for his courage by
others. And so goes humanity’s eternal struggle with just one of the
many horrors of war.
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