GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE December 6, 2002

eveningsout

Another Handel in December, this one with body builders

by Richard Berrong

It's December again, and with it come innumerable performances of Handel's Messiah. This weekend, however, Cleveland Opera offers northeast Ohio music and theater lovers a chance to experience another of Handel's masterpieces, Julius Caesar, in a production that should be of particular interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender music lovers.

There is, of course, the eye candy: Cleveland Opera recruited a corps of body builders to cast as spear carriers, bodyguards,

The

etc. throughout the opera. One of them just came in fifth at the International Natural Body Builders Foundation.

There is also gender realignment. As was typical of baroque serious opera, most of the male leads in Julius Caesar were originally written for castrati, male singers who had been castrated while still boys so that their voices would not change. Since there are no castrati today, director David Bamberger chose to exercise all three modern options of alternative casting. He assigned Achilles to a male baritone, Grant Youngblood, Sextus to a female mezzo-soprano, Layna Chianakas,

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and Ptolomy to a male counter-tenor, Matthew White. The result is a fascinating breakdown and rearrangement of links between sex and conventional gender traits, such as voice and clothing.

Julius Caesar first became popular in this country when it was revived by the New York City Opera in a production that launched the career of Beverly Sills. Cleveland Opera has purchased the sets from that production, this time featuring Sandra Moon as Cleopatra, who seduces as much with her vocal as with her intellectual agility. In fact, as was true of baroque opera in general, the emphasis in Julius Caesar is on beautiful and sometimes very pyrotechnic singing.

As Achilles, gay baritone Grant Youngblood is making his third appearance with Cleveland Opera. He has sung previously to strong Plain Dealer reviews in The Marriage of Figaro as the Count and Lucia di Lammermoor as Henry Ashton.

One recent landmark occurred for Youngblood earlier this year, when he sang his first Rigoletto, a role that he will repeat shortly with Virginia Opera. Such parts provide him with an opportunity to draw on his experience as a gay man in our still-homophobic world. He presented the jester as a victim of the society around him, a man who, though mistreated because he was born different, has nonetheless managed to maintain his nobility and an inner core of belief in himself.

Other roles that he continues to perform include the sadistic Scarpia, the moralistic Sharpless, the dashing Escamillo, and the carefree Marcello. As a gay man, Grant would also like to find an opera that "tells the truth about gay relationships," one with a baritone-tenor duet as passionate as any of opera's many male-female love scenes.

While waiting for such an opera to be written, Grant is interested by the role of Redburn in gay composer Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd, an operatic version of Herman Melville's highly homoerotic novella. He would also like to do another John Proctor in Robert Ward's operatic treatment of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, a work about the dangers of prejudice and persecution.

Other American operas also interest him. Merry Mount, Howard Hanson's work about the Pilgrims, very much attracts him. Grant would also like to find a production of Carlyle Floyd's more recent The Passion of Jonathan Wade, the story of a Union colonel set after the Civil War. This summer he will have a chance at another social outcast, Tonio in Pagliacci, at the Center City Opera, coupled with Granados' seldom-performed Goyescas.

Meanwhile, northeast Ohio can enjoy Grant's vocal and dramatic art as the legendary warrior Achilles in Cleveland Opera's production of Handel's Julius Caesar, December 6 and 7 at 8 p.m. and December 8 at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 216-241-6000, or 800-766-6048.

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For Pearl Burras (Chuck Richie, left) and Dixie Deberry (Dana Snyder, right) the Christmas Phantom is the best part of Christmas, although using a sling shot to shoot marbles at blue jays is a close second. They are in A Tuna Christmas, running November 26 through December 22, 2002, in the Drury Theatre at The Cleveland Play House.

Something fishy is under the Christmas tree

by Anthony Glassman

Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays. A white Christmas, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, a little drummer boy riding on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer while Burl Ives gets snockered on eggnog.

If any of that seems a little weird, perhaps a touch off-kilter, just wait. It gets far more bizarre than an off-hand opening paragraph, because it's not time for just any normal Christmas, it's time for A Tuna Christmas.

Now, before anyone starts having visions of tuna fish dancing in their heads, Tuna is the third-smallest town in Texas, at least according to the trilogy of Tuna plays which include Greater Tuna and Red, White and Tuna.

Written by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard, A Tuna Christmas consists of two actors doing the Shakespeare thing, portraying all of the characters, men, women and children. Quick costume changes abound in this tale of a small town at Christmas time, with gun-totin' grannies picking off their opponents' holiday decorations and Christ-

mas carols all have a country twang, where UFOs land, leading one to wonder why an advanced species capable of interstellar travel would want to go to Texas.

There are two, count 'em, two productions of A Funa Christmas livening up the holiday season in the Buckeye State this year.

In Columbus, the Contemporary American Theater Company's production features Jonathan Putnam and Jon Farris, who is chair of Denison University's theater department, and is directed by CATCO founder and artistic director Geoffrey Nelson.

The show runs through Dec. 29 at the Capitol Theatre, 77 S. High Street, Columbus, and tickets are available through CATCO's box office, 614-461-0010.

On the North Coast, the Cleveland Play House will be staging A Tuna Christmas as well.

The Play House's Tuna features Chuck Richie and Dana Snyder, along with the direction of William Hoffman. It runs through Dec. 22 in the Drury Theatre, 8500 Euclid Ave, Cleveland; box office 216-795-7000.