Back to the Top

REVIEWS

Kentwood Revives WWII Memories
by Beverly Summo
The time: 1943, the place a very small town in Louisiana where three young sisters married to three brothers, off to the war, move in with their mother-in-law to make their government allotments go further.
Playwright R.T. Robinson's play, based loosely on life, is full of the nostalgia of the time, the loneliness of separation, eased only slightly by letters.
An item in a Louisiana newspaper about the two young couples catches the eye of an editor for Life Magazine, who decides on a big spread with the women's pictures on "The Cover of LIFE," the play's title.
Sent to Starlington, LA, much against her will is Kate Miller, a reporter treated, as she later remarks, "just like one of the boys." It's a roll well played by Susan Gordon, who loses a lot of her hard edge as she comes to know these women and face some of her own life choices.
Had the war not intervened, the three women would be settled down part of a family-owned bait and tackle business, raising their kids while their good-old-boy husbands ran around in their pickups, raising Cain on Saturday nights.
Their mother-in-law, known to everyone as Aunt Ola, knows how that is, married to a hard-drinking, skirt-chasing husband. Dawn Joyal gives the role unexpected warmth, getting along well with her new kin despite some talk about her boys being tied to her apron springs.
Director Sheldon Metz, to his credit, avoids stereotyping these women, making them real and retaining their southern roots. He also designed the set that gives the flavor of country with green vines all around.
The thought of having their pictures on the cover of LIFE sends them into a screaming frenzy of delight, but it also makes them think of their own lives, which they do in a series of monologues, revealing their inner thoughts, dreams and fears.
Tood (Jenny Rainwater), expecting a baby, washes other people's clothes to make some money, hoping when her Tommy comes home they can move away, open their own business, and he can cut his mother's apron springs and escape from his brothers' domination.
Weetsie (Mary Elizabeth Rafferty) seems the least self-assured, desperate to read the letters that were sent like a round-robin circular to be read by everyone, made personal only when marked with a red valentine heart on the envelope.
Sybil (Elena Olanson) shows off her drop-dead figure in a parade of pretty dresses, talking about a marriage that is "modern," her term, as she sashays out the door for the evening. Her carefully concocted carefree facade cracks in a shocking revelation that Ms. Olanson plays with heartbreaking reality.
Appearing ghost-like during the mini-monologues is Tommy (Eric Wrye), Time Magazine having pulled some strings to get the boys back home. He's there finally in person hearing Toodie's plans for them with little enthusiasm.
The other two, Johnny and Lloyd, do not materialize except as targets of a shouting match as they race by offstage in their pickup after a cruel trick.
Margie Bates plays the local reporter Addie Mae, an eccentric gossipy party who shares in the delight over the coming fame.
"The Cover of LIFE" will evoke many memories among those who lived during the turbulent years of World War II.
The Kentwood Players production at the Westchester Playhouse is well worth seeing. Ticket information: (310) 645-5156.

Concert Spotlights Black Composers
by Beverly Summo
In celebration of Black History Month, the Culver City-Marina del Rey-Westchester Symphony presented a pair of concerts of African American composers, conducted by Frank Fetta in the Sacred Heart Chapel at Loyola-Marymount and at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium.
In added celebration of the 100th birthday of the famed musician-composer Duke Ellington, the El Camino College Jazz Band joined with the orchestra. The band's leader is Kurt Festinger.
All four of the composers whose works were heard were classically trained and lived at a time when it was believed that Blacks could not work in the classical form.
The four are Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), Thaddeus Stebbins (1899-1954), Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899-1974), and William Grant Still (1895-1978).
Conductor Frank Fetta must be credited with rare foresight in bringing the music of such diversity, an amalgam of the best that is classical with the richness of African heritage. In so doing he created an evening that showcased each section of the orchestra as well as the ensemble itself and his firm and unwavering conducting skills.
Coleridge-Taylor's "Dance Negre," which opened the program, is aptly described as "an energetic piece, its two themes with their contrasting textures presented in a clear, disciplined structure." That it is, the whole beautifully melodic.
Noted organist David Hicken was heard with the orchestra in Introduction, Aria and Finale, by Thaddeus Stebbins, a work of some substance with its unusual structure from strings to brass to organ, its haunting second movement and its powerful finale.
After intermission the El Camino Jazz Band joined the orchestra in a blockbuster performance of Duke Ellington's Three Black Kings Concerto Grosso.
In three parts, King of the Magi, King Solomon and Martin Luther King, it was originally intended as a ballet but was arranged in its present form by Luther Henderson and edited by Ellington's son, Mercer. it's a spectacular work, exciting, moving, a kaleidoscope of mood swings from its opening blend of jazz band instruments and a tender sax solo to the orchestra's oboes, trombones, trumpets and strings. It's deeply classical with the added touch of the blues and a hint of a gospel tune in the Martin Luther King section.
William Grant Still is widely acknowledged as the dean of African American music and his Symphony No. 1 shows why. In the classic four-movement form, it's a work of singular charm and introspection. The composer titled each of the movements Longings, Sorrows, Humor, Aspirations, as in the poem by Paul Laurance Dunbar, expressing many moods and incorporating jazz tunes and spirituals.
Maestro Fetta in brief remarks spoke of his association with Still and his opera "Bayou Legend" and of extensive research hunting for and assembling works of other Black composers.
Still's Afro-American Symphony was premiered by Howard Hanson and the Rochester Philharmonic in 1931 and met with great success, the first time a major symphony orchestra had played a symphonic work by a Black composer. Three years later it was performed at Carnegie Hall.
William Grant Still spent the latter years of his life in Los Angeles, much in demand in Hollywood as a composer, orchestrator and musical advisor.

Back to the Top