Carolina Voices, nee the Charlotte Choral Society, would have us know that they’ve outgrown that Singing Christmas Tree — though it’s doubtful they’ll ever give it up. Two of their offshoots were on display last week spreading the word. On Monday evening, the Festival Singers were at Temple Beth El commemorating Yom Hashoah with Bondage to Brotherhood, a sacred concert featuring works by Donald McCullough and Leonard Bernstein. Then over the weekend the MainStage Choir invaded the Center City, performing Club Carolina: A Choral Musical at Spirit Square.
Personally, I found the sacred side of the Voices far more agreeable than the profane. Under the direction of Donna Hill, the Festival outfit gave a fine account of McCullough’s Holocaust Cantata: Songs of the Camps, accompanied by cellist Nick Lampo and pianist Diann Clark. Pronunciation was not at all the catastrophe I feared when the ensemble switched to the Hebrew of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, accompanied by Clark, percussionist Patrick McGinty and harpist Christine VanArsdale. I doubt that 11-year-old Max Singleton has spent any more time in Hebrew school than the Festival regulars, but his solo on Psalm 23 had a soprano purity that might slay Goliath.
The only aspects of the concert that lacked professional polish were the readings interspersed between the six songs of the Cantata. Instead of hiring professional actors — or even auditioning amateurs — the impression left by the readers was that their key roles were tossed out to them like pulpit honors. It was somewhat jarring at times to transition from these homely elocution efforts to the true eloquence of Lampo’s cello, perhaps most affecting in his solo intro to “In Buchenwald.”
As we’ve seen with increasing frequency in recent years, McGlohon Theatre was decked out with cocktail tables for Club Carolina. Some uncredited scribe even penned a skeletal scenario for the evening, introducing us to Johnny Johnson, one-time song-and-dance man on the verge of closing down the storied club in his old age.
But the Girls — alias Red, Hot & Blue — show up to give us a farewell performance and talk Johnny into reviving the withered carcass. With the MainStage Choir and a seven-piece band strewn across the upstage, all under the direction David Tang, that’s sufficient excuse for an evening-long stroll down memory lane. Beginning in the midst of The Great Depression, we get a cavalcade of hits from the ’30s through the ’70s.
All this would be sweet musical ambrosia were the MainStagers as hip as the pickup band, which included such noteworthies as Tim Gordon on reeds, Jon Thornton on trumpet, Ron Brendle on bass, and Jim Brock wielding percussion. Red, Hot & Blue were fine enough in an Andrews Sisters radio hour kind of way, but when they were asked to shake it, two-thirds of the trio were exposed as urgently needing remedial sass. Jonavan Adams tapped a wicked cane in the role of Johnny but bombed as a swing singer.
If you saw Quentin “Q” Talley recently at Actor’s Theatre in Blue, you would have been as frustrated as I was by his limited role here as Bert the bartender. Best voice on the stage and all Tang gave him was two measly fills in “On Broadway.” What a waste.
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 5, 2009.
