Hans Christian Andersen Tales Real and Imagined Reviews

"Calling Danny Kaye!"

Similar his British contemporary, Charles Dickens, Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen's oeuvre of fiction, much of it in the fairytale genre, remains function and parcel of the modern world, fifty-fifty to the point of beingness reimagined in numerous literary, motion-picture show, and theatre pieces, including Broadway musicals.

Jimmy Ray Bennett. Photo: Shirin Tinati.

His contributions to children'due south literature take made him the dear subject of famous sculptures, ane right here in New York's Key Park, another in Copenhagen, where the equally, if not more familiar statue of one of his near favorite characters, "The Niggling Mermaid" besides resides. Hans Christian Andersen: Tales Existent and Imagined, Eve Wolf's new Off-Broadway bear witness about his life, particularly the darker parts, however, does next to goose egg to farther burnish his retention.

Jimmy Ray Bennett. Photograph: Shirin Tinati.

Tv oft broadcasts reruns of the 1952 Hollywood musical, Hans Christian Andersen, starring Danny Kaye. For all its musical charms (with a hit list of long-lasting songs, like "Thumbelina," "The Inch Worm," and "Anywhere I Wander"), it'south actually a fictional story, not a biographical account.

The adorable version of Andersen in that film is nothing similar the ugly duckling revealed in Eve Wolf's new play with music, Hans Christian Andersen: Tales Real and Imagined. It presents him as a writer, built-in into poverty in 1805, who became a literary swan befriended by some of the about pregnant personages of his time. Nevertheless he endured much unhappiness, never marrying, possibly never losing his virginity, considering of his repressed homosexuality.

This is Wolf's latest work for the Ensemble for a Romantic Century, a company devoted to finding appropriate visual and musical elements with which to express the lives of famous but troubled writers, musicians, and visual artists. The scripts, like this one, are commonly stitched together from letters, memoirs, diaries, and other contemporary documents, and accompanied by chamber music played and sung by virtuoso artists.

Jimmy Ray Bennett. Photo: Shirin Tinati.

All of the previous Wolf plays for ERC I've seen, which were virtually Vincent Van Gogh, Arturo Toscanini, Emily Dickinson, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, were directed by Donald T. Sanders and designed by Vanessa James. None excited me in theatrical terms but aficionados (which I am not) of classical music take appreciated at least their orchestral components.

Carlos Avila, Max Barros. Photograph: Shirin Tinati.

I presume lovers of such music volition experience similarly about the considerable infusions here of anachronistic contributions by Benjamin Britten, Igor Stravinsky, Henry Purcell, Arvo Pärt, and Samuel Barber; music of Anderson'due south ain era is notably absent. The selections receive the impassioned performances of 2 pianists, Carlos Wila and Max Barros, a percussionist, Shiqi Zhong, and countertenor Daniel Moody (who alternates with Randall Scotting). Notwithstanding, those without an ear for these circuitous, hard, melodically unfamiliar pieces may be less than satisfied, especially as the dramatic sections they back-trail are so seriously lacking in anything comparable, either on the level of interim, writing, or staging.

Andersen'south life is presented via narrative sections in which the actor playing him, Jimmy Ray Bennett, whose sweet face in no way corresponds to Anderson'southward decidedly odd (may I say ugly?) one, shifts voices to indicate multiple characters, using an American accent for Andersen, and both British and Continental European ones for the others. He tries hard simply Laurence Olivier himself would struggle with this dramatically inert material. And Bennett is no Olivier.

Jimmy Ray Bennett. Photograph: Shirin Tinati.

Moody, when he's not singing in his falsetto vocalisation, speaks in a British accent, using a normal register, to occasionally play Andersen's wealthy friend, Edvard, to whom Hans (a name Edvard refrained from saying) often turned in times of need, and with whom he appears to have been in love.

Scenes betwixt two people talking directly to each other are rare; the narrative sections, which include the inane back and forth dialogues Bennett is forced to speak, are delivered by and large while vaguely looking toward the audition. And even when discourse is being conducted between Andersen and Edvard, they don't look at each other, their words originating not in conversation simply, apparently, correspondence.

Photo: Shirin Tinati.

The frequent appearance of puppets, voiced by their creators and manipulators, Craig Marin and Olga Felgemacher, or by Bennett, offers no surcease to the boring biography or its plodding presentation. A main component of Vanessa James's set, in fact, resembles a boob theatre, with cutouts of young kids watching at each downstage corner of its curtained, bogus, proscenium arch. (Cutout figures of adults too populate the stage. Perhaps this explains the potent performance of the actors.) This theatre unit, to one side of which is a bed of many mattresses (think The Princess and the Pea), and James's 19th-century costumes, offers what little visual charm the production possesses.

Craig Marin. Photo: Shirin Tinati.

A variety of puppets, including socks, Muppets, cord marionettes, bunraku-influenced dolls (admitting for a single operator), and so on appear. A small Pierrot marionette often dangles at Andersen'south side equally a sort of childlike avatar. In this day of advanced puppetry, though, with so many remarkable artists doing magical, sophisticated work, those on view here are former-fashioned throwbacks, unfunny, and dull.

Jimmy Ray Bennett, Randall Scotting. Photograph: Shirin Tinati.

The puppets sometimes participate, ordinarily wordlessly, in the enactment of Andersen's more than famous stories, The Ugly Duckling and The Little Mermaid, but they're never more than clumsy, and what they do is ordinarily too imprecise to capeesh; kids brought by their parents because of the puppets are probable to be both bewildered and disappointed.

And those who don't know the references will exist lost, every bit the play makes no endeavor to innovate them. Even when no puppet is involved, the performance tin exist disruptive. I can't imagine what someone who'due south never heard of The Footling Match Girl might think on seeing Andersen transition from one scene to another by wrapping himself in a blanket, and doing an awful pantomime of a trivial girl trying to low-cal matches to go on warm before falling victim to the cold. You may not fifty-fifty know he's supposed to be a kid, much less the one in Andersen's tale.

Randall Scotting,. Photo: Shirin Tinati.

There's little to commend in this misguided product, which has not the slightest iota of dramatic interest or conflict. That feeling plainly was shared past perhaps 1-third of the audience, which, at the preview I saw, took its exit between the two acts of the play'due south egregiously extended 2-hours. During the intermission, a lady who was squeezing past me with her friend on the fashion to the go out, shyly said to me: "We didn't understand what was going on." (I advise theatregoers to read the programme notes, which are superior to the play, beforehand, for a modicum of help.)

Jimmy Ray Bennett. Photograph: Shirin Tinati.

Duty requires I note the pocket-sized band of enthusiasts who whooped and clapped lengthily during the drape calls. Their pleasure at Hans Christian Andersen: Tales Real and Imagined may have been real merely I couldn't for the life of me imagine what they liked that I didn't. It'southward the kind of dilemma, in fact, at which Andersen, who wrote The Emperor's New Clothes, might take had a go.

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