Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/174813
HOTTEST TICKET "They were big characters onstage and offstage, but they came to favor through their voices," Dower says. "Bing Crosby became who he was through his 15-minute radio show. Within months he had 20 million listeners. He was larger than life as a person, but we found him through his voice." Unfortunately that's less likely to happen today. The show's creators argue that the rise of big-spectacle and jukebox musicals has negated the need for iconic baritone roles like Oklahoma! 's Curly. "It makes the point even stronger that [today's baritones] are not singing material from their generation but from their grandfather's generation because nobody's writing for them," Dower says. "In its own way, Baritone Unbound is like a baritone employment project until people start writing the big roles for them again." October 8–20, Paramount Center Mainstage, 559 Washington St., 617-8248400; paramountboston.org; artsemerson.org Jared Bowen hosts a weekly arts show, Open Studio with Jared Bowen, on WGBH. BC "The baritone voice is the embodiment of the common man's daily struggle." —MARC KUDISCH The three baritones perform tunes from opera to contemporary Broadway. 78 MIND MELD SpeakEasy Stage Company premieres a never-before-seen play by Kurt Vonnegut. BY JARED BOWEN ONE OF THE RELIABLY ARTFUL and avant-garde theater companies in Boston, SpeakEasy Stage Company is about to change its mind. For 22 seasons the venerable group has racked up awards by breathing fresh life into such works as this season's productions of The Color Purple and Carrie, the Musical. But now SpeakEasy also wants to be the theater of the new. "Plays get stuck in development hell and no one ever produces them," says Paul Daigneault, producing artistic director. "Our idea is to find the plays that are ready to produce and give them the last step." So for the month of November, SpeakEasy presents the world premiere of Kurt Vonnegut's Make Up Your Mind. Written (and rewritten 12 times) by the late Slaughterhouse-Five author (PICTURED ABOVE), Mind centers on Roland Stackhouse, a man so confounded by society's indecisiveness that he launches a business called Make Up Your Mind, Inc. "The methods Stackhouse uses to make sure people stick to their [decisions] are really wacked out and fun," Daigneault says. "It's just going to be crazy." Mindful that the little-known play required refining, the producers brought playwright Nicky Silver on board. Silver was given unfettered access to the writer's entire catalog, including essays, letters, and plays, to help rework the piece using Vonnegut's own words. "It's all what Kurt Vonnegut wrote, but you can see the unique, twisted, heightened reality of Nicky Silver in the play," Daigneault explains. "It's like he's working with this collaborator who's dead, and it's up to [Silver's] judgment to take the best of Vonnegut's work to highlight this play." It's a bold approach that is quite decisive indeed. November 1–30, SpeakEasy Stage Company, 539 Tremont St., 617-933-8600; speakeasystage.com PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL MAROTTA (BARITONES); JEAN-CHRISTIAN BOURCART/GETTY IMAGES (VONNEGUT) continued from page 76 the everyman—his hapless struggles unfolding in musicals like Oklahoma!, Carousel, and Bye Bye Birdie. They were struggles made resonant because they were sung in the most common and therefore most relatable voice. "Rodgers and Hammerstein said the formula for a great show is a baritone at the center and a soprano leading lady," says Kudisch, who conceived the show and performs it alongside fellow baritones Jeff Mattsey and Ben Davis. "The baritone was at their center because they wrote dark stories. They wrote stories about what was happening in the present world." The show unfolds as a lyrical romp through baritone history, with some talking and a whole lot of singing. "We've got three horses who can sing all night," Dower says. "It starts out as a more formal event à la The Three Tenors, then it slowly devolves into something like the common man in his basement singing his favorite songs." The show also looks at the personalities who were blockbuster baritones—men like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Bing Crosby. BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM 076-078_BC_SPR_C_HT_LateFall13.indd 78 9/16/13 10:48 AM