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Yahoo!Valentine’s Day is perfect for falling in love again, and that’s what happened at Love Love Love at the Granada on Saturday night. Some already well-loved music, including Felix Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Beatles songbook, and some of our favorite people, like JoAnne Wasserman and the Santa Barbara Choral Society, the State Street Ballet Company, and Beatles’ producer George Martin, all got together, and the result was like falling in love again.
The evening began with Mendelssohn’s gloriously airy music for Shakespeare’s comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with dance, rather than words, telling the story. José Edwin Gonzalez made a muscular, yet impish Puck, dispensing love potion with graceful abandon, while Ryan Camou’s dignified Oberon, King of the Faeries, radiated otherworldly power. Jennifer Rowe, as Titania, his Queen, made us believe in her infatuation with Bottom (Sergei Domrachev), the joiner who has been turned into an ass by fairy magic. The entire cast floated and skipped through this ballet segment with ethereal delight.
The real magician arrived next. After a short video clip showing him with the Beatles as they recorded their first album, George Martin, now ninety-one, took the stage as if 1962 were yesterday. He first conducted a chorale and orchestra version of “Eleanor Rigby”; with the SB Choral Society’s refined voices filling in for Paul McCartney’s casual artistry, it felt eerie and mysterious. He then led the Chorale in a performance of “The Mission Chorales,” his fascinating recreation of a moment in the seventeenth century when Jesuit missionaries answered the chants of Amazonian warriors with messages of peace and love.
After the intermission, the State Street Ballet and the SB Choral Society shone in “Love Love Love.” William Soleau’s choreography and Stephen Dombek’s arrangement of seven Beatles songs brought out new dimensions in some of the more thoughtful moments in the music. No room for “Love Me Do” or “I Want To Hold Your Hand” here—instead, it was “Something” and “For No One,” all against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Protestors with signs marched, and the chorale looked on as if they were the judgment of history. A soldier’s letters home fluttered through the air, until a final letter arrived and struck his fiancé to the floor in grief. In lighter moments, the dancers did the pony, the swim, and the monkey to “The Word,” and when the finale came—you guessed, it was “All You Need Is Love”—we remembered which word John Lennon was thinking of in “The Word,” and why. Maybe love is all you need.
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Nice review, it was a terrific show. I think George Martin is 84, actually... he was not introduced as Sir George, as I think he could have been.
The entire `protest' portion of Love Love Love, including the opening slide show, omitted all mention of local protest. Isla Vista is still too hot to handle in polite company... The slide show did include a few photos of local stuff, like, an aerial photo of the harbor, some anti-oil protestors.
But our own cauldron of the sixties, IV, fell down the memory hole.
pardallchewinggumspot (anonymous profile)
February 16, 2010 at 8:24 a.m. (Suggest removal)
It was an interesting show, but weird. For those who came because they read the ad: LOVE, LOVE, LOVE - a tribute to the Beatles" were bewildered by the program. The Midsummer Night's Dream ballet was lovely and enjoyable, but unexpected. The choral piece about the the Jesuit missionaries coming up the Amazon towards the angry natives on the shore -- very puzzling for a Valentine's Day Love Love Love Beatles Tribute. There was no announcement about an intermission and my party was not sure whether the show was over after that or what. We eventually found a tiny 6-pt type line buried in the program that said there would be an intermission so we waited. The second half was interesting, esp. the ballet about the soldier sending letters home to his sweetheart from Vietnam, but together with the soldiers marching in slo-mo across stage, I wondered, why this focus? As I remember the Beatles music, it had nothing to do with the war that was going on simultaneously. (And I was a war protester.) The songs selected for this program were all good with an interesting take on them (the choral and ballet interpretations). But if anyone bought tickets to this show for a romantic and/or nostalgic evening of Beatles love music for Valentine's Day, they were surely in the wrong theatre. (Fortunately, I went with an old friend for a lark and bought the cheap ($28) tickets.)
ChrisG (anonymous profile)
February 16, 2010 at 9:12 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I'd have to agree with ChrisG here. The show was WAY over-promised and under-delivered. Yes, the orchestral performance of Elanor Rigby was moving, but the debut piece that George Martin conducted, while interesting, had no place in the show and the soprano soloist was hopelessly flat. I was left frustrated by the soulless choral arrangements of Beatles songs and overtly literal dance interpretation. The bigger question I have is whether the State Street ballet or their creative directors rather, are actually capable of pulling together an original show that revolves around an abstract theme. They seem more inclined to tell us rather than show us, which is a poison pill for any art and an insult to the intelligence of their audience (in my book). Anyone who saw the Motown show at the end of 2009 may see some similarities between the failure to connect around theme there (and that wasn't even abstract), and the abysmal failure to deliver on the "love love love" promise.
swedefinger (anonymous profile)
February 16, 2010 at 1:01 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Also, as it happens, the hyped billing of a former Beach Boy brought in to sing the Beatles solos in the second half did not come to fruition. But due to an accidental, or purposeful, oversight this was not announced, and the performer who was brought in for the last dress rehearsal and both performances was never announced on Saturday night! He is also not mentioned here at all, possibly because the reviewer was not given ANY information about him either. The NEWSPRESS actually reviewed it as if it WAS the Beach Boy! That blew me away, as the soloist is 28 year old Adam Phillips, a local favorite who has sung with many of the area's better known vocal groups, and also happens to be the husband of State St Ballet dancer Jen Rowe, who is mentioned in the second paragraph! How the Newspress could mistake a 28 year old with an aging Beach Boy is beyond me, but I suppose I really should not be surprised by now. At any rate, Adam was beautiful as always, well-prepared on very short notice, and deserves kudos for stepping in and accomplishing what the much-hyped-then-completely-absent Beach Boy could not.
SBres (anonymous profile)
February 17, 2010 at 2:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)