I have to sing I have to dance


My sister, the Railroad Baroness (not to be confused with Sister Disco) and Nana (not to be confused with the dog from Peter Pan) are heading to St. Paul tonight to see my nephew, Ryan, take the stage in La Bohème. Ryan was supposed to come to Austin to play in a few weeks, but the opera is doing really well and its run has been extended, so we are now looking to something like Memorial Day for his trip. I was really looking forward to him coming down this month, before it gets too hot, but as it turns out I am going to be in Ireland the day he was supposed to arrive in Austin, anyway. and who can be miffed when your nephew is getting reviews like this?

A few tricks in Rothstein's staging contribute further to that intimacy. He uses a small boy (11-year-old Children's Theatre Company vet Ryan Howell in a tender, vulnerable performance) as a sort of wordless emotional narrator.

When Rodolfo and Mimi first fall in love and walk off arm in arm, Howell suggests the romance — and the doom — of their journey by sprinkling handfuls of artificial snow on a small, sculpted Parisian cityscape. Later, he uses children's toys to suggest a political march and the rise of Hitler. And he literally draws the curtain on the final scene. They're small, subtle touches, but they, too, help to engage the audience in the story.

I wish I still had an earlier picture of Ryan that made me very very happy to think he had found the theater, but I found this one on the internet. Scary that it is this easy! Thank God I am relatively anonymous yet. Yet.

Posted: Sat - March 5, 2005 at 11:00 AM        

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