Performance 2007: The Year of the Diva

[December 26th, 2007]

Across Portland stages in 2007, commanding women commanded stages from the Keller to the Schnitz to, uh, Darcelle’s.

It was there the singular performance artiste known simply as Meow Meow gave one of the year’s most unforgettable diva turns, purring through an international song album (with Pink Martini’s Thomas Lauderdale at the piano) while crawling into the laps of unsuspecting audience members. It was a tour de force performance burning bright with genius, and one of the year’s best.

From the forceful personality of actress and impresario Mary MacDonald-Lewis (Portland’s unofficial mayor of the theater scene) to the force of nature that is White Bird Dance, bigger was definitely better in Portland performance in 2007. And strong women ruled.

This was the year of the diva.

STAGE

The first strong woman to come to mind is Storm Large , the rock-’n’-roll valkyrie whose turn as Sally Bowles in Cabaret this past fall turned into the highest-grossing show in Portland Center Stage’s 20-year history. Sure, her shaky English accent sometimes disappeared altogether, and that back tattoo seemed a little out of place even for Weimar-era Berlin, but Storm’s solos were stunning, and she enjoyed the experience enough to follow the production when it moves to Rochester in ’08. Fortunately for everyone involved, co-star Wade McCollum ditched the diva attitude he displayed during last year’s production of I Am My Own Wife (Nov. 8-Dec. 23 2006), when he stopped the show to chide an amorous couple.

There’s another local cabaret singer who’s turned her name into a killer brand—Susannah Mars , the contagiously cheerful star of Mars on Life: Holiday Edition (it runs through Dec. 30). Now in its second year, the show is well on its way to becoming a holiday institution for Portlanders looking for something halfway between Santacon and the Singing Christmas Tree. Mars does serious theater, too. You can see her in Rabbit Hole at Artists Rep, opening Feb. 12.

Speaking of cheerful, I’m happy to report that not a word has been heard from Aussie starlet Krista Vendy since the close of Vanya , the otherwise excellent Chekhov adaptation she starred in (and spoiled) last spring. I shouldn’t pick on poor Krista, though. The real diva in that show was her co-star and boyfriend, William Hurt, who (it is rumored) got her the gig. For shame, Bill!

Finally, non-blond locals Vana and Eleanor O’Brien took their mother-daughter shtick to a new level in CoHo’s production of Collected Stories this past October. Although we’re sure the director (Maureen Towey, a veteran of Soho Rep and SITI Company) had something to do with it, watching these two lock horns onstage was thrilling. BEN WATERHOUSE.

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Angela Niederloh is likely the best opera singer ever raised and trained in Portland. So it’s with a certain civic pride that I write this: Niederloh gave one of 2007’s most indelible opera performances, in the title role of Rossini’s Cinderella with Portland Opera in November. In her first Portland principal role, the hometown mezzo shined in a beautifully calibrated performance, singing better than most of the divas Portland Opera imports from around the world. The former MetOpera National Auditions winner has decided to retain Portland as her current home base (for now), and the city’s musical life is the richer for it.

While we’re talking opera, there were two exceptional productions of the year: In March we had Portland Opera’s Flying Dutchman , a chilling interpretation of Wagner’s meta-masterpiece, reduced to 140 spine-tingling intermissionless minutes, and newbie company Opera Theater Oregon ’s inspired live music and film showing of the Cecil B. DeMille i]Carmen[/i] in July, with a gutsy performance from another standout mezzo, Beth Madsen Bradford . When Portland Opera mounted their tepid staging of the work in September, Jossie Pérez’s over-sexed Carmen made less of an impression than did the promising voice of Studio Artist Hannah Sharene Penn , stepping into one performance of the title role (for an ailing Pérez) on short notice.

A conducting diva already sorely missed is Portland Youth Philharmonic’s former music director Mei-Ann Chen , who offered the type of inventive programming and firebrand musical leadership often lacking in the city’s elder ensembles.

A divo in the absolute best sense of the word, the fabulous English keyboard player Richard Egarr in November coaxed the best performance I’ve heard yet from Portland Baroque Orchestra in a wild and flamboyant program of Haydn and Mozart.

There were other divas: the luminescent singing of visiting sopranos Heidi Grant Murphy, Dawn Upshaw and Hyunah Yu; promising work from new vocal ensembles like Portland Vocal Consort and In Mulieribus; and maybe the most unlikely moving performance of the year, from warbling drag artist Taylor Mac at PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival. STEPHEN MARC BEAUDOIN.

DANCE

If divas are bigger, bolder and brighter than most, then we’ve met our share this year. Take Olivia Ancona , a recent Jefferson Dance grad and former Polaris member who stood out in an already high-level lineup at August’s Northwest Professional Dance Project. Ancona brought liquid lines and a cool dramatic intensity to her roles in Sarah Slipper’s The Nuisance of Being and Luca Viggetti’s Ensemble for Sonambulists . She hightailed it to Juilliard this fall, but we haven’t seen the last of her yet.

Great dance isn’t solely the province of youth, of course. To mark a decade of presenting local and global companies of all sizes and styles, White Bird founders Paul King and Walter Jaffe staged a welcome return engagement of the Paul Taylor Dance Company on Oct. 3, 10 years after PTDC danced at White Bird’s debut. Meanwhile, another company that White Bird presented early on—BodyVox —celebrated its own 10-year anniversary in November. What becomes a diva most? Longevity.

And let’s hope to see more of Canadian choreographer James Kudelka ’s impeccable craftsmanship. Oregon Ballet Theatre (which is itself getting better and bolder over time), staged an encore presentation Oct. 13-20 of Kudelka’s Almost Mozart . Then on Nov. 14, Montreal’s Coleman Lemieux&Compagnie brought us an all-Kudelka program with Fifteen Heterosexual Duets; Soudain, l’hiver dernier; and In Paradisum . Kudelka has a diva-like tendency to give heavy themes like love and death inventive technical twists, leaving everyone breathless in his wake.

But as much as we love our divas, we’re still a bunch of friendly goofballs ourselves. How else to explain the following call-and-response, which took place during the Solo Flamenco/Arte Pureza show Maestría , held Sept. 26 at the Aladdin Theater with Spanish guest artists?

Viewer: ¡Viva España! ¡Viva Andalucía!

Guitarist (gravely): Olé. Viva Portland.

Viewer (enthusiastically): Yay!! HEATHER WISNER.