Spoletoblog

Spoku

An e-mail Spoku from Jean:

Too much for tickets
where is all the free fun stuff?
my purse is empty.

[Editor's note: after an exchange of e-mails to clarify the order of the lines, Jean also provides this one:

Dahhling, oooo, kiss-kiss
(slide the knife between her ribs)
you look fabulous

Sounds like Jean has been to a few parties over the years...]

First daughter in Charleston?

A reliable source (yes, I know, everybody hates anonymous sources these days, but trust me: this is a reliable source) contacted the newsroom late Sunday night from Grill 225 to pass along that first daughter "Jenna Bush was in the restaurant with a crowd of people and about 10 secret service agents."

Just passing it on.

 

Parking woes

From an e-mail received Monday:

The parking garage dilemma could be easily solved by charging a flat fee upon entering the garage.  This would allow an easy exit flow, as you would not have to stop at the window to pay on your way out. Both exit lanes should also be open. The garage would make more money and patrons would be happy to get out of there.

It is an extremely dangerous situation if you have a medical emergency while in a garage, or heaven forbid, if there was an auto fire. I am surprised the fire marshall would allow such a situation to continue when a solution is so very simple. My family has been in the garage as long as two hours after a late night Symphony concert a couple years ago. Tempers were flaring and there was much honking of horns, etc.

I also was in aother garage and a young women got a cell phone call that her father had a medical emergency and was taken to the hospital. She could not get out of the garage and was panicking.  We were able to move over for her to get in fr ont of our car but she still could not get to the exit.

The City of Charleston needs to correct this potentially hazardous situation immediately.

Shortfall a "good thing?"

From Dottie Ashley's story this morning on Monday's Spoleto board meeting:

Spoleto Festival USA board members were told Monday they needed to raise $183,118 to balance the 2005 budget.

Chairman Eric Friberg gave the good news at the board's annual spring meeting, saying the figure is only 2.5 percent of Spoleto's $7.2 million budget.

Hey, being short that much cash is a relative predicament. Easy if it's Spoleto... tough if it's your mortgage...

Patrick Sharbaugh blogs it

Critic Patrick Sharbaugh has been "keeping it real" over at The City Paper's "Spoleto Buzz Blog:"

• On Emio Greco/PC: "I’m sure I saw something remarkable at Emi Greco | PC’s performance last night of Rimasta Orfano in the Sottile Theatre, but I’m still not certain what. It’s been said of dancer and choreographer Emio Greco that he mines everyday movements for his work. I don’t know about that, but I can tell you if I saw anyone moving in the manner he and his troupe of five other dancers moved that night, I’d be calling 911."
• On Don Giovanni: "I’m a middling opera fan – by nature more theatrically oriented than music oriented – and so librettos like Don Giovanni’s in which the principals sing the same lines for ten minutes while one short line of English translation sits gathering dust on the superscript screen (is there a word for this?) generally drives me nuts. I’m sitting there thinking, Can we get the freakin’ narrative going again? But Kramer’s production had me mesmerized, because there was as much theatre going on as there was opera."

The Puppeteers Party

There's was only one party to attend on a rainy Memorial Day and luckily the rain took a break for the La Bella Dormente Nel Bosco (Sleeping Beauty in the Forest) cast party at the home of John and Shea Kuhn.

The mood was quite festive in part, I think, because the cast are all such nice, friendly people. And all of the party guests had nothing but kudos for the show.

I got trapped in the kitchen for awhile but it was not a bad place to be. There was an awesome red Aga and photos drawn by the children adorn the walls all around. It was very cute.

La Bella puppeteers Eric Wright, Anne Psluzny
Erin Orr, Carol Binion, Chris Green and Deana Acheson.

Tuesday reviews

Blair Tindall does Don Giovanni..."I won't spoil the surprise of the finale's staging here. As Giovanni sealed his pact with destiny, I felt devastated and empty, an emotion that continued into this afternoon as I recalled the performance."

Lindsay Koob weighs in: "Could it be that the operatic establishment has been taking Mozart's greatest opera entirely too seriously for centuries?"

Aslo in today's update: William Gudger on Vivaldi at the Chamber Music Series... William Furtwangler on Intermezzi... and Jeff Johnson on the Upright Citizens Brigade...

cell phones

Antonio Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" was on the bill at Tuesday morning's Chamber concert at the Dock Street and the ensemble (headed by flutist extraordinaire Paula Robison) was just about to launch into "Summer" when a cell phone began to ring in the audience. Paula would have had every right to be furious but she handled it with grace and humor by pretending to hold a phone up to her ear and saying "Hello, Antonio. It's going  well."   Why can't people remember to turn their cell phones off when entering a theater? Maybe we need something like a metal detector at the entrance to make sure all phones are off! 

Mike Daisey

It was quite the crowd at the Monday matinee of "Ugly American." Looking around the sold-out crowd I saw a number of Spoleto luminaries including Nigel Redden, Nunally Kersh, Maria Jacinto and Julia Forester. I also spied Timmy Finch of The Have Nots, our own Christine Randall and Esther Ferguson.

I would say I had mixed feelings about Daisey's show but since he himself says in his monologue that no one is on the fence, it's always either thumbs up or thumbs down, I have to give him thumbs down.

Don't get me wrong. I laughed quite a bit. Daisey is a good storyteller and he is funny but he just went on a little too long. His story would have benefited from a good editor.

I'd heard the show was 1 hour and 45 minutes but it clocked in at 2 hours and 15. They say you should leave them wanting more and Daisey should take that to heart.

Hey, where's the cool stuff?

Most locals won't go to a festival performance, but in previous years even the most disconnected resident could get a taste of the Spoleto/Piccolo experience thanks to their often-panned "site-specific art"  installations... stuff that would go up around town and alternately delight and/or freak-out spectators.

Last year we had rice growing in pans at Memminger Elementary... people were all excited about it, but I never understood why... we had a sod maze at Waterfront Park ... and a very strange thing at Marion Square in which one participated in a childlike mythical quest, moving from plywood installation to plywood installation, eventually being rewarded with a glimpse of something attached to a parking garage, viewed through a hole in a piece of wood.

And yes, it was strange. But here's a clue: We like strange.