By Hedy Weiss, Theater Critic
The Chicago Sun-Times original link

'Pierrot' an inspired collaboration

Those in search of the finest model of cross-disciplinary artistic collaboration needed to look no farther than this weekend's program at the Museum of Contemporary Art Theater. On display was an inspired collaboration uniting the virtuosic talents of eighth blackbird (the altogether brilliant and fearless young sextet that champions both modern music and dramatic experimentation), Lucy Shelton (a singer who has led the charge of the avant-garde for decades) and Chicago-based master puppeteer Blair Thomas. The supreme mix of these artists -- who bring both intense discipline and free imagination to their work -- paid off at every turn.

The mood was set from the moment the audience entered the theater and found the stage decked out in an artful arrangement of musical instruments, bare-branched trees and silk-paneled screens. It was Beckett meets Japanese Bunraku by way of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Opening the program was Derek Bermel's 2004 work, "Tied Shifts," a fabulously multilayered piece commissioned by eighth blackbird and driven by the complex folk rhythms the composer explored in the wake of a trip to Bulgaria. The staggeringly difficult work was full of ingenious "conversations," with the musicians -- Molly Alicia Barth (flutes), Michael J. Maccaferri (clarinets), Matt Albert (violin and viola), Nicholas Photinos (cello), Lisa Kaplan (piano) and the phenomenal Matthew Duvall (on marimba and percussion of every sort) -- often walking around to create wonderfully theatrical closeup encounters with each other. And as with all the works on the program, the ensemble's memorization of the score gave them a freedom that those glued to their music stands can't possibly have.

The theatrical element was further heightened with a performance of Jacob Druckman's 1986 piece, "Reflections of the Nature of Water," a sort of extended haiku given philosophical weight by the addition of two gorgeously expressive Bunraku-style wood puppets designed by Thomas and exquisitely manipulated by two trios of puppeteers.

The work related the story of an old man who goes to a river to meditate on his life and who is met by a very young and energetic girl.

He rejects the child's overtures for connection, but then ironically meets his death while attempting to save her from drowning. Duvall, wearing a black sarong, was the stellar marimba soloist.

The focal point of the program was Arnold Schoenberg's modern masterwork of 1912, "Pierrot Lunaire," a song cycle in German, set to the surreal poetry of Albert Giraud, and performed by Shelton in its "sprechtstimme" (intoned speech) style. Here's where director-designer-puppeteer Thomas' magic took on full force, with a production of grand inventiveness, beauty and visual poetry. "Pierrot" is the story of a mad poetess who makes her way through a drunken night in which the sad clown, Pierrot, served as her muse and sacrificial victim.

Using a color palette of black, white, blood red and shocking pink -- with diaphanous sails setting the mood for this florid artistic voyage -- Thomas (who bears a striking resemblance to his own Pierrot puppet) has conjured a stage world that blends the harsher, more jagged aesthetic of the expressionists of Berlin and Vienna with the delicate, vulnerable acrobats and clowns of Picasso's pink and blue period.

Shelton made her way through the work with all the vocal fireworks at full force. And she threw herself happily into the equally grand theatrical flourishes, decked out in costume designer Tatjana Radisic's brilliantly deconstructed bohemian gown.

Meanwhile, the musicians, in futuristic-meets-cubist muslin clown costumes (with spectacular headwear, and a tubular casing for the clarinetist that virtually turns him into a full-body instrument), brought the cabaret to ghostly life, with puppeteers Diana Lawrence, Erica Mott, Barbara Whitney, Lisa Kaplan, Meredith Miller and Eric Wetz moving seamlessly through this dance of art and death and fiery inspiration.

Copyright © 2006 Chicago Sun-Times