EVENING WITH AUDRA
Trained in classical vocal technique at the Juilliard
School and born into a musical family, 29-year-old
Audra McDonald has achieved remarkable success in
her brief career. She starred in three Broadway shows
— Ragtime, Master Class and Carousel — winning
Tony Awards for each performance.
This season, she took the lead role in the Lincoln
Center Theatre production of Marie Christine, a
new musical retelling of the Medea myth, and
starred as Grace, Daddy Warbuck's secretary and
love interest, in the Walt Disney Television produc-
tion of Annie. Her debut solo recording, Way Back
to Paradise, featured five composer/lyricists of her
own generation, and was named Adult Record of
the Year for 1998 by the New York Times.
Audra McDonald takes the stage 8 p.m. Sunday,
March 5, in Ann Arbor's Power Center in a
University Musical Society-sponsored concert mark-
ing her regional debut. She will appear with a jazz
trio and will perform an evening of American song
standards and original new songs.
As a warm-up to the concert, Detroit Public
Television-Channel 56 airs Audra McDonald in
Concert, a program taped in August 1999 at
London's Donmar Warehouse Theatre, Covent
Garden, at 1 p.m. Sunday.
Tickets for the Power Center concert are $24-$32.
Call (734) 764-2538.
that chronicled the brothers' misadven-
"There is something magical in the
tures in Ireland and America.
way hate crosses the ocean and lands in
McCourt's latest effort for the stage is The
their bedroom," says Miller about
Irish and How They Got They Way, which
Broken Glass. "It's as if these grains of
comes to Detroit's Music Hall for the
dust come through the window."
Performing Arts March 7-12. A humorous
Jewish Ensemble Theatre (JET) pre-
and irreverent look at the Irish in America
sents Broken Glass March 8-April 9 in the
through song, dance and storytelling, this
Aaron DeRoy Theatre, in the lower level
tribute to McCourt's Irish-American kins-
of the West Bloomfield JCC. JET Artistic
men spans a period between the 1840s
Director. Evelyn Orbach directs a cast led
GAIL
ZI
M
ERMAN
Irish
potato famine and John F. Kennedy's
by Joe Haynes and Chris Ann Voudoulis
Arts & Entertainment
historical
ascension to the White House
as Phillip and Sylvia Gellburg and Mark
Editor
and subsequent assassination.
Rademacher as Dr. Harry Hyman. Ann
"It is light, but there is a lot of revela-
Arbor composer William Bolcom created
tion," says McCourt of The Irish and How They Got
original music for this production, which will be per-
That Way. The production includes 32 songs, rang-
formed by cellist Mifa Vortsman.
ing
from the traditional "Danny Boy" and "Wild
Show times are 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays
Irish
Rose" to Broadway legend George M. Cohan's
and Sundays and 8 p.m. Saturdays, with matinees at
"Give
My Regards to Broadway" and the music of
2 p.m. Sundays and Wednesdays. Tickets are $15-
Irish
rockers
U-2.
$25, with discounts for seniors and students. To
Call for show times. Tickets are $15-835 (all opening
purchase tickets, call (248) 788-2900.
night tickets on March 7 are $15). (248) 645-6666.
IRISH EYES
Author Frank McCourt taught in New York
City public schools for 27 years before penning
Angela's Ashes, and winning the Pulitzer Prize. He
has another literary hit on his hands with Tis: A
Memoir, and enjoyed success on the stage with his
brother Malachy in A Couple of Blaguards, a play
`GLASS' ACT
Last year, the Royal National Theatre in
London, England, asked all the writers, actors and
directors affiliated with it to vote on who they
thought was the greatest playwright of the 20th
century. It was expected they would choose a
British writer, or at least a European one. But the
playwright they selected as the greatest writer of
the century was a Jewish American: Arthur Miller.
It might be argued that Miller's most distinct-
ly Jewish play is 1994's Broken Glass, winner of
Britain's prestigious Olivier Award for Best Play.
In this work, Miller employs the juxtaposition of
a troubled marriage against events occurring in
Germany to examine the anatomy of denial and
the impossibility of intimacy in a relationship
without equality.
Set in 1938 Brooklyn, Broken Glass tells the
story of a woman stricken with a mysterious ill-
ness that prevents her from walking soon after
reading about Kristnallnacht in the newspaper.
Her husband is the only Jew in an otherwise
exclusively WASP real estate firm. Her doctor is
an eminent scientist, but even with ample
resources and the best medical care, nothing
seems to work.
rba
16N
3/3
2000
74
Clockwise from top left:
Audra McDonald makes
her Michigan debut
Sunday in Ann Arbon
Beth Katleman: "Bacchus
Fountain," at Royal O _ aks
Sybaris Ga
Arthur Miller: JET will
- peforn his 1994play,
"Broken Glass."
CULTURAL COLLISIONS
Since graduating from Cranbrook Academy of Art
in 1999, Manhattan-based artist Beth Katleman has
become known for her exuberant, often humorous,
ceramic sculptures that incorporate trinkets, icons of
popular culture and rococo decoration.
Baroque elements abound in Katleman's art:
opulence, excess, artifice and grotesque ornamenta-
don are all part of her work. From a distance her
sculptures are simply beautiful works of art, but
closer examination reveals that the adorning ele-
ments depict social taboos, peculiar hybrid creatures
and distorted cartoon characters. The artist, who is
Jewish, flirts with the boundaries between high and
low art, linking historical forms with contemporary
icons, creating beautiful cultural collisions full of
attitude, social commentary and dark humor.
Her latest work explores the feminine notion of
having it all. In a series of highly decorated wall
panels, Katleman morphs her own image with
those of famous women like Marilyn Monroe,
Audrey Hepburn, Marie Antoinette and Princess
Diana, trying on the role each has come to be asso-
ciated with — from sex kitten to fairy-tale bride.
Her teapots and working fountains, benign
objects in themselves, turn ironic with adornments
of nymphs clutching American Express cards,
cherubs with prescription bottles of Valium, mer-
maids devouring slices of cream pie.
A one-woman exhibition of Katleman's ceramic
sculpture runs through April 8 at Royal Oak's
Sybaris Gallery, and opens with an artist's reception
5-7 p.m. Saturday; March 4. For more information,
call (248) 544-3388.
ticket prices and publishable phone number,
FYI: For Arts and Entertainment related events that you wish to have considered for Out & About, please send the item, with a detailed description of the event, times, dates, place,
Notice must be received at least three weeks before
to: Gail Zimmerman, JN Out & About, The Jewish News, 27676 Franklin Road, Southfield, MI 48034; fax us at (248) 354-6069: or e-mail to gzimmermangthejewishnews.com
the scheduled event. Photos are appreciated but cannot be returned. All events and dates listed in the Out & About column are subject to change.