Ain’t Misbehavin’, Ailey II, Faust

“Ain’t Misbehavin'”

By Dany Margolies/Associate Editor

It had five talented performers and a wailing band, but the performance of “Ain’t Misbehavin'” Friday at Pepperdine’s Smothers Theatre was less about them, more about the warmth and musicianship and genius of Fats Waller.

The show is merely an evening of songs, a small selection from Waller’s immense output, beginning with the eponymous “Ain’t Misbehavin'” and ending with the reprised “Honeysuckle Rose.” Between are “Handful of Keys,” “This Joint is Jumpin’,” “Black and Blue,” “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and nearly 25 others. With so much to sing, filler is nonexistent, and this production is staged as a cabaret show with only two cafe tables and a few chairs onstage.

The success of the evening starts with the subtlty and sophistication of the band, a rhythm section that provided just that — no distracting embellishments, no wanderings to leave the audience wondering where the rhythm went. On piano: Darius Frowner, the company’s music director, providing support, humor and an easygoing stride style to delight. On drums: a silvery-handed Leroy Ball. On bass: a gently swinging Fred Dinkins.

Waller was known not only as a composer and pianist but also as an entertainer, sometimes a buffoon, sometimes dignified and attractive. Likewise the performers, comprising M. Martine Allard, Derrick L. Baker, Vivian Jett, Ron Lucas and Connie Reid. Even though the style was jazz and the vocals ranged from comic to torchy, their lyrics were clear and the communication with the audience obvious. Each had a many-colored voice and a full palette of styles, and the men showed off a few dance moves, from buck-and-wing to lyric jazz.

Oh your feet’s too big

Don’t want you cause your feet’s too big

Mad at you cause your feet’s too big

I hate you cause your feet’s too big

Oh your pedal extremities are colossal

To me you look just like a fossil.

Fats Waller was literally and figuratively a big man. It makes one wonder if maybe lately it’s the music that’s gotten small.

“Ailey II”

By Dany Margolies/Associate Editor

Offering four works ranging from Alvin Ailey’s signature energized jazz to mysterious unseen-world abstractions, Ailey’s training company, now known as Ailey II, bombarded the stage at Pepperdine’s Smothers Theatre Saturday night.

The evening’s most thought-provoking work, “Quintet,” is an Ailey work, “restaged” with “recreated” costumes. Under effective lighting by Nicola Cernovitch and to selected songs of Laura Nyro, dancers Tina Williams, Lanette Costas, Rosalyn Sanders, Odara Jabali-Nash and Yuka Fukuda begin as a quintet of female singers, la Motown.

Striking sultry poses in blonde wigs and slinky red evening dresses, they lip sync “Stoned Cold Picnic.” For subsequent songs, however, they reveal the real women under the repulsive, externally imposed “femininity.”

Each breaks out into a solo, tearing off wigs, flinging off stiletto-heeled shoes, shedding the evening gowns and dancing barefoot in simpler clothing, indicating woman’s inner strength, independence and tolerance for pain.

“Nightscape,” choreographed by Carmen Le Lavallade to a Ginastera harp concerto, offered a solo turn to Angelica Salazar. It required a charismatic, dramatic presence above its demanding choreography of floorwork, and Salazar did not disappoint.

Costuming by Geoffrey Holder included a harness effect in grays, but a twitchy red-feathered headdress gave the dancer a birdlike demeanor, played up by her crisp head movements. Clifton Taylor’s lighting design created an authentic, dramatic moonlight.

“Sensory Feast,” choreographed by Francesca Harper to music by Rolf Ellmer, showed the company in a millennial, pre-apocalyptic-looking work in which what appeared to be young gladiators (costumes by Elena Comendador) seem to show their anger toward everyone and everything, under intense lighting by Jeremy Barr.

The evening’s opening work was its most banal. “Escapades,” a 1983 Ailey work, which program notes indicate was restaged, introduces the company as multistyled, multiracial but uniformly exuberant.

To music of Max Roach, a lonely guy and a lonely gal meet and dance happily ever after. But Jabali-Nash has a stage presence that means business, and her pas de deux with Nelson Cabassa seems to take much from “Swan Lake’s” White Swan pas de deux.

The work is costumed by Carol Vollet-Kingston, and sunny lighting by Tim Hunter includes a turquoise sky filled with magenta clouds projected on the backdrop.

Touches of African and modern are blended with a pastiche of jazz dance styles from jitterbug to Latin for Ailey’s athletic style of jazz, but the occasionally ragged corps, many hopped turns and noticeably distended ribcages of some of the dancers marred the look.

Corps standout was Sanders for her clean technique and facility in the variety of styles. The company men included Anthony Burell, Samuel Deshauteurs, Edmond Giles and Bradley Shelver.

“Faust”

By Juliet Schoen

You have to give the Devil his due. Gounod’s “Faust” takes on life when bass Samuel Ramey is stealing the scenes as Mephistopheles. The opera, now being performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center, has been condensed from five acts to three but does bog down here and there. When Ramey is not in the action, you wish he would magically appear and jazz things up a little.

This is the celebrated bass’s debut appearance with the Los Angeles Opera and he promises to return very soon. This is very good news indeed. Although he has been performing for 30 years, he still has that beautifully resonant voice, with its remarkable range. And what a wonderful presence he has on stage! He has played the Devil in and with so many operas, he conveys a mischievous evil that is quite delightful.

While he is having fun, drinking and wenching, poor Faust is having a hard time finding an easy way to Marguerite’s heart, etc. Although Dr. Faust has exchanged his soul for youth, there is very little youthfulness in this Faust. Marcello Giordani has been touted as the Fourth Tenor, but based on this appearance, he doesn’t even make it to Fifth. He has a strong voice, with a warm quality, but the role eludes him. The romance simply isn’t there, especiallly, since he is doomed to wear a costume that would be more suitable for a bourgeois banker than a man bent on seduction.

The chaste Marguerite is played by a young Romanian soprano, Leontina Vaduva, who not only has a lovely voice but can also act. She manages to make Marguerite a most sympathetic figure and really wrings out the pathos in the final redemption scene.

Malcolm MacKenzie, who has come up through the ranks of the Los Angeles Opera, is excellent as Valentin, Marguerite’s brother, singing extremely well and dying most nobly.

The other singing members of the cast are Megan Dey-Toth in the trouser role of Siebel, Catherine Cook as Marthe and Cedric Berry as Wagner. They all do themselves proud.

The set, designed by Franco Colavecchia, was used in the opera company’s presentation of “Faust” in 1994. Although it is serviceable and allows for some dramatic effects, it exudes a Hellish sense of claustrophia. I felt that the backdrop could have been dropped for the opening scenes, to allow the villagers and soldiers to cavort in open spaces. I must also quibble about the unimaginative initial appearance of Marguerite who is supposed to be an ethereal vision but is all too human as she simply walks across the stage.

Christopher Harlan moves the action along as well as he can as director, and Philippe Auguin shows his feel for French music as he conducts the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and The Los Angeles Opera Chorale.

Gounod’s music is remarkable, with one golden aria followed by another. If you can’t remember the melodies of “The Jewel Song” or “The Flower Song,” you will recognize them when you hear them.

Of course, I will not reveal the plot, which is probably not a mystery to anybody. Poor Faust, relegated to Hell, can only apologize at the end by saying, “The Devil made me do it.”

Last performance Feb. 5.

This week the City Council will be putting the finishing touches on the permit streamlining program I first suggested in 1995 when I was on the Planning Commission. While I’ve been as frustrated as many of you at the slow pace of implementation, there has been one advantage: Improvements in technology now make on-line permitting a reality.

In December, on behalf of the city, I attended the National League of Cities 75th Annual Congress of Cities in Los Angeles. Over 4,000 mayors and councilmembers from across America attended and probably the hottest topic was the newest applications of technology to governing, called “comprehensive e-government.”

Advances in both hardware and software now allow for the use of computers and telecommunications technologies to make governing more efficient, effective and responsive. Online permitting is just one example and is already a reality in San Carlos, Calif. Other cities such as Kansas City, Mo., allow tax and fee payments (i.e. parking tickets) to be done online. Citizen input into the budgeting process and customer evaluation of city services is also underway in other cities. Webcasting of live city council meetings and special events (e.g. breaking disaster news) is yet another possibility now. And our Geographic Information System (GIS) has applications for almost every city program or service that involves geography, including land use planning, building roads, storm drains, economic development, and traffic management and safety.

Comprehensive e-government is a perfect fit for Malibu. The residents and businesspeople here are already extremely computer literate, well above the national average. Applications that can be done from your home or office computer will bring the city government directly to you, reducing car trips on PCH; creating a “e-paper” trail on city-citizen transactions (no more “he said/she said”); and bringing access to those citizens who don’t have the time or physical ability to visit City Hall in person.

The year 2000 will also mark the council’s adoption of a new cable television franchise in Malibu. In 1999, the city launched its own Government Access Channel 15, bringing you programming and information about your city government 24 hours a day. We also successfully challenged Falcon Cable’s Basic Rate increase before the FCC in Washington. This year our objectives in Telecommunications include premiering a new and expanded City Web Site; starting an upper tier (aka: channels 2-13) community/educational channel for Malibu to cablecast locally produced cable shows; and completing negotiations with the school district to jointly fund a fully equiped, shared-use cable TV studio at Malibu High School for use by the students during school hours and the community on evenings and weekends. Finally, the new franchise will have to incorporate the changes in technology that are merging phones, computers and cable television for the speedy transmission of voice, video and data.

It’s an exciting year ahead. By Jan. 1, 2001, if all goes as planned, the city of Malibu will be a leader in comprehensive e-government. The future is here and we’re ready.

Tom Hasse,

city councilmember

@normal:

A roomful of Malibu citizens packed the City Council chambers Monday night. Many had come to protest what they see as a very heavy-handed and ominous city code enforcement policy. They were there because they felt a regulatory noose closing in around them, because they had some contact with the code enforcement people or they were just there to show support for their neighbors.

I must tell you I think the council still doesn’t get it. It seems to have an appalling ignorance of the relationship between cause and effect. Here’s what I mean.

The council put a zoning code into law that virtually guarantees most of Malibu doesn’t conform. The idea is to downzone and upgrade the community, which is a noble purpose. Then they tell us not to worry, “You’re grandfathered.” It’s also no great secret there are lots of second units out there that serve as the low end of the Malibu rental market, and have for years.

In theory the grandfathering system should work. It should be the escape valve to protect people with unpermitted structures that were built years ago. The problem is, it doesn’t happen automatically.

It takes money to make it work, lots of money. It also takes political clout. You need a lawyer because frankly you get no respect from any city bureaucracy unless you go armed with a lawyer. You need to hire your own experts. You need to be able to sit down with the code enforcement people and work out some compromises, and then you have to have the money to make some changes and put those compromises into place. Then, if you still can’t work it out with the code enforcement people, you have to be able to pick up the phone and be on a first-name basis with your council members. That’s the way it works here in Malibu, that’s the way it works in the county of L.A., the state of California, the nation and probably most of the world.

But what happens if you don’t have the money to fight the good fight? What happens is, the system grinds you up and spits you out, and that’s just what it’s doing and just what these people are protesting.

I’ll give you a specific example. At the meeting Monday, I talked to a young woman named Debby Campbell, who is a single mom with three young children ages 13, 11 and 5 , all in Malibu schools. She rents a second unit on the Point upon which apparently there is no record of a permit. They’re fearful of being forced out, which, considering how little low- and moderate-income housing there is in Malibu, means if they have to move, they’re out of Malibu, the kids are out of local schools, and we’ve lost another family because the ante up to continue to live in Malibu has been raised.

I know the council tells us it cares, but you just have to look at its actions to see how it really feels. It knows it has a low-and moderate-income housing problem. So what does it do? It raises the penalty for nonpermit violations, so now there are heavy fines and jail to wave over people’s heads.

It also listens to its staff who of course spouts off about “health and safety” of the community. Somehow the unpermitted structure, many of which have been around for years, have suddenly become a danger.

The staff also talks about its lack of discretion as if somehow its authority to act turns them all into automatons, just following orders. This, of course, is sheer nonsense. Staff has all sorts of discretion, and if it’s uncertain, all it has to do is ask the city manager or the council for instructions. All the council has to do is act. The council made these rules and the council can unmake them or modify them, or issue a written policy as to how they’re to be enforced and not leave it all up to the discretion of the cop on the beat.

Then staff tells us it’s not really its fault because it only responds to complaints, which is a way of shifting the blame to the person making the complaint. Since staff insists it has no discretion, it insists it must act on a complaint. That also is simply untrue because staff does in fact drive around looking for violations, using binoculars, trying to ferret out the unpermitted. It also uses a system of snitches. That snitch may be your neighbor with whom you might not get along but he has an edge because he got to the enforcement people first. The rule I’ve been told is, apparently, whoever gets to the code enforcement people first wins.

Who rents those second unit places? It’s the single moms, it’s the waiter, the kid who works at MacDonalds, it’s someone’s kid back home after a divorce, it’s the new writer looking for a break and many other blue-collar and working stiffs and crafts people who apparently are no longer welcome in Malibu unless the council does something about it.

I do not know Barbra Streisand and James Brolin. But I work in the theatre, film and television. From my own experience and from what I have been told by my fellow workers, I know the worry and fear that being followed — or “stalked” — can cause.

Sometimes, hard though it may be for some noncelebrity Malibuites to imagine, that worry and fear is horribly justified. Being followed is no joke. Being followed can be fatal.

Mr. and Mrs. Brolin did exactly the right thing in notifying the police of their pursuer.

Yes, the young man only had a camera in his hand. But what if there were a gun in his pocket? John Lennon’s sweet-faced young murderer had “Catcher in the Rye” in his hand and a gun in his pocket. After only a week, have we already forgotten the violent attack on George Harrison by another young man?

I worked with a talented young woman, Rebecca Shaefer, on “My Sister Sam,” a television show. She opened her door one weekend and was shot by a man who had hounded her for over a year.

My older son, a musician, was stalked for a year and a half by a young man who, when finally arrested by police, was institutionalized as insane and psychotic. My younger son, an actor, was stalked for many months by a man who waited for him at his car, wrote obsessively, spied on him, unseen, during my son’s work hours. He was warned off finally by the theater staff.

To be sighted in a well-known person’s rear-view mirror, hot on his/her trail, is enough to justifiably set off warning alarms in their heads.

The father and lawyer of Wendell Wall should tell him that in today’s climate of violence, notoriety engenders caution. Above all, they should remind young Wendell of a primary American credo: the right to privacy.

Nan Martin

I enjoy going to the smaller live theaters on the Westside. I have seen wonderful productions — dramas, comedies and musicals — in West Los Angeles, Venice, Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades. I did see one fine production in the newly opened theater here in Malibu, but there is no sign of more productions. I am puzzled and disappointed.

Can’t Malibu meet the competition?

Bob Sullivan