YOU’RE CORDIALLY INVITED
to an evening at XYZ & CPT to benefit GSAD
in the heart of the Gordon Square Arts District
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2010
The evening kicks off at the District’s newest establishment:
5:30 p.m. XYZ Tavern
6421 Detroit Avenue (next to CPT)
Cocktails & hors’ d’oeuvres
and continues to Cleveland Public Theatre
6:30 p.m. More cocktails and seating at CPT
7:00 p.m. “Connie’s Avant Garde Restaurant”
for a five-course dinner and theatre
This uproarious musical performance is a unique theatrical-culinary event mixing the ingredients of fine food, wine and ensemble theatre together in a hilarious parody of avant garde grandiosity. Comedy, death, violence and a five-course meal!
Individual tickets: $75
Reservations: Call Maria Asher @ 216.961.4242 x222 or masher@gordonsquare.org
RSVP: by Friday, December 3, 2010
Five-Course Menu
(With local produce subject to availability)
Roasted chestnuts and mushroom tartine
Curried butternut squash soup
Herbed apple and fennel salad
Maple-glazed ham with cranberry compote
Brown-buttered radishes
Sage-roasted sweet potatoes
Drunken chocolate Bundt cake
Dietary restrictions: Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant is able to accommodate food allergies and vegetarian needs. Please contact the box office to communicate dietary restrictions in your party. (216) 631-2727 or rcole@cptonline.org.
Roger MastroianniPinchas Steinberg conducts a 2005 performance with the Cleveland Orchestra. The maestro returns to Severance Hall this week to lead a program featuring Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto.
A few days ago, Pinchas Steinberg was Turin, Italy, conducting a popular production of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly.” So successful was the run, in fact, that the presenter, Teatro Regio, added a performance to satisfy demand.
Something similar is about to befall Steinberg this weekend at the Cleveland Orchestra. Concerts haven’t yet sold out, but a special arrangement surrounding his concert Friday already has prompted the rental of an additional bus to transport patrons back and forth between Severance Hall and a West-side establishment known as Happy Dog.
“This is the kind of thing that happens when you get excited about an area,” said Joy Roller, executive director of Cleveland’s Gordon Square Arts District, a partner in the project. “We’re knitting the city together.”
The arrangement centers on the orchestra’s upcoming “Fridays @ 7″ concert, featuring Steinberg conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 — one of the composer’s most readily accessible symphonies — and the overture to Nicolai’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”
That night, there’s also pre-concert music by bansuri bamboo flutist Steve Gorn and tabla player Hom Nath Upadhyaya, and a post-concert show by the New York Gypsy All-Stars, led by clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski.
PREVIEW
Cleveland Orchestra
What: Pinchas Steinberg conducts works by Nicolai, Nielsen, and Mahler
When: 8 p.m. Dec. 2 and Dec. 4, and 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 3.
Tickets:: $25-$117. 216-231-1111 or the orchestra’s Web site.
Concerts Thursday and Saturday follow a traditional format, without the post-concert show, and include another clarinet virtuoso, principal clarinetist Franklin Cohen, performing Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, a work he described in a written program note as“a portrait of a very complete person, someone who’s lived and experienced all that life has to offer.”
Essentially, the Happy Dog arrangement is an audience exchange, through which patrons who buy in (for $25, using promo code 8795) can begin or end their evenings at Happy Dog or Severance Hall. Either way, they’ll be transported back and forth between destinations, and they’ll experience both classical and rock music.
Bus service to Severance leaves Happy Dog (5801 Detroit Ave., Cleveland) at 6 p.m., and after the 7 p.m. orchestra concert, patrons can be shuttled back to Happy Dog to hear the Tadpoles and reclusive singer-songwriter Bill Fox. The last bus back to Severance leaves at midnight.
View full sizeJoshua Gunter, The PDA happy crowd at the Happy Dog, courtesy of musicians from the Cleveland Orchestra. This Friday, listeners are being encouraged to attend concerts at both Severance Hall and Happy Dog in the same evening.
“Bill’s sound is more accessible, but it’s still amazing rock-n-roll, and it’s Cleveland,” said Sean Watterson, co-owner of Happy Dog and author of the exchange, explaining his selection of Fox. “It’s a combination of being accessible and the best of what we’ve got to offer.”
Watterson didn’t come up with the exchange out of nowhere. The arrangement stems from the still-blossoming relationship between the orchestra and Happy Dog through which members of the orchestra have been performing classical music in the laid-back setting of the bar.
The idea also builds on Watterson’s often-expressed desire to link the institutions of University Circle with those of his neighborhood, Gordon Square.
“We just sat at the bar and talked about how we can keep innovating,” he said. “We wanted to keep the momentum going, and this kind of jelled.”
For his part, Steinberg said he’s glad to be back in Northeast Ohio, whatever the circumstances, even after the success in Turin. “Every time I say the same thing,” he said. “Cleveland is my favorite orchestra. And I mean it. They are the Rolls-Royce of orchestras.”
But it’s not just the prospect of driving a powerful musical vehicle that’s got Steinberg excited. A devotee of Mahler, he’s looking forward to re-entering the composer’s fastidiously detailed world and especially to re-exploring Symphony No. 1, a work steeped in vocal and folk music.
As for the occasion of “Fridays @ 7″ and the partnership with Happy Dog, Steinberg said he’s delighted not only to be involved but to have an opportunity to hook new listeners on Mahler.
“You have to get the people close to you, so they open their ears and their hearts,” he said. “The only thing you can do is give such a convincing performance that they cannot not listen to it. You grab them and they say ‘Wow.’ Then I win.”
View full sizeGus Chan/The Plain DealerCars line up to be valet parked at the Capitol Theater for a “Sex and the City” Girls Night Out party and screening in May. The Gordon Square Arts District is being recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National League of Cities.
Gordon Square, the emerging art district in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood on Cleveland’s West Side, has won big time kudos from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National League of Cities.It has also pulled down $2.7 million in recent federal, state and local grants, which will be used to build or renovate community theaters that are central to its vision of using the arts to revive a city neighborhood. “Lots of good stuff is happening,” said Joy Roller, the district’s executive director. “To me, it’s an acknowledgement that what we’re doing is not only successful, but is a novel approach, a unique approach on how to revitalize an urban core.”
The NEA announced earlier this month that Gordon Square is one of 14 case studies in a new publication, “Creative Placemaking.”
Co-authored by arts advocates Ann Markusen and Ann Gadwa, the document is a project of the NEA’s Mayor’s Institute on City Design. The mission of the agency is to educate U.S. mayors to become the “chief urban designers” of their cities.
The case studies are intended to encourage mayors to think creatively about how everything from loft housing to art galleries can build economic value and encourage investment.
The chapter in the case study on Gordon Square praises the project for helping to leverage an estimated $500 million in related investments on the West Side of Cleveland over the past eight years, much of it in housing, even though Gordon Square is only halfway through a $30 million revitalization.
The goal of the district is to renovate two historic theaters — Cleveland Public and the Capitol — and to build a new home for Near West. By using the arts as an anchor for related retail, restaurant and housing development, the district is sparking new life in a 15-block corridor from W. 58th Street to West 73rd St., with Detroit Avenue as the spine.
The Capitol Theatre, located in the historic Gordon Square Arcade at W. 65th Street and Detroit Avenue, reopened in 2009 as a movie theater after a renovation. Work on Cleveland Public Theatre is ongoing. And the arts district has raised roughly half of the $6.5 million it needs to build a new Near West Theater, designed by Cleveland architect Richard Fleischman, Roller said.
“Creative Placemaking” said the district has ” revitalizing the area’s commercial core with arts offerings and new retail businesses while preserving and adding low-income housing units.”
Echoing the praise from the NEA, the National League of Cities has invited Roller to represent Gordon Square as one of 26 programs from the across the country that will be showcased in its upcoming National Congress of Cities in Denver, starting Tuesday.
In addition to the outside attention, Gordon Square announced it has received a $1 million matching grant from the Fowler Family Foundation and a $500,000 matching grant from the Gund Foundation, both for the Near West Theatre project. Roller said her organization has another $3.5 million to raise before it can build the theater.
“With Near West, we are inching closer to realizing our dream of building a new home for that theater,” Roller said.
A separate grant of $1 million in federal stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s State Energy Program will be used immediately to air condition Cleveland Public Theatre for the first time, which means it can be used year round, Roller said.
The State of Ohio has also kicked in $200,000 for asbestos removal at Cleveland Public, which will make the theater safer to use, Roller said.
The national attention focused on Gordon Square shouldn’t create the impression that the project has gone unnoticed locally. In June, the district won a Cleveland Arts Prize.
The national recognition for the district offers more proof that “Cleveland should be very proud of this model we’ve created in the Gordon Square Arts District,” Roller said. “It’s good news for Cleveland.”
Brutal and beautiful might appear to be strange bedfellows, but they are apt descriptors for Suzan-Lori Parks‘ engrossing play “The Book of Grace” and the stunning production of it that opened over the weekend at Cleveland Public Theatre.
Parks, who won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for “Top Dog/Underdog,” has a gift for capturing humanity, in our brutality and beauty, with her glancing dialogue, people talking to each other by talking past each other.
Less cryptic and more narrative than “Top Dog,” “The Book of Grace” turns on the dynamics of a family so dysfunctional and estranged it’s barely a family.
Vet, a veteran of the first war against Iraq and now a U.S. Border Patrol guard, is a brute who says he’s “on the good foot” with his second wife, Grace, but he’s dug a grave in the back yard as a reminder who’s in charge.
Grace is by all appearances his doormat, but she slowly reveals herself to be person of desires and of substance, longing for a red dress in a department store window, and having a voracious sexual appetite and a secret volume of rebelliously poetic observations under the floorboards.
Into this little world enters Buddy, who unlike Grace and Vet, is black. He returns after 15 years, and after serving in Persian Gulf II, with vengeance in mind and a grenade in pocket, to a set right some ancient wrong — but whether real or perceived is never made clear.
What: Cleveland Public Theatre presents the play by Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Sheffia Randall Dooley. When: Through Saturday, Oct. 16. Where: 6415 Detroit Ave. Tickets: $10-$25; cptonline.org or call 216-631-2727.
These characters are meant to be real people, but they are also symbols for America and its boundaries. Vet sees borders everywhere, on his TV, in the creases he irons in his uniform trousers, and even in that hole.
The CPT production, the first since the play premiered in New York earlier this year, is directed with a haunting touch, but with both feet planted firmly in reality, by Sheffia Randall Dooley.
She gets assists from set and lighting designer Trad A Burns, who encloses everything in fencing and provides a functional utlities, and from a cast that performs as if intent on outdoing each other and eliciting from each other their best work.
Rod Lawrence quivers with pent-up rage as the literally ready-to-explode Buddy. He gets his chance to shine when he faces his own camcorder to document, mass murderer style, what he believes to be his final words before setting off to claim fame and infamy and revenge.
As Vet, veteran Cleveland area actor Chuck Kartali — in a role at polar opposites with the dad in the Cleveland Play House’s long-running “A Christmas Story” — expresses his own rage with simple acts. Kartali tells us more with the spray button on an electric iron and few clipped words than many another actor could with wild gestures and paragraphs of prose.
As fine as those two performances are, Sally Groth’s Grace mesmerizing presence here. Seductive, poetic, trembling to make her escape, she is both spell-binding and liberating, completely lost in the moment and yet able to transport us miles from this world to the great beyond of human experience. This is wow time.
The play occasionally makes its argument too neatly (and life is never neat). And the ending, both in the writing and staging, verges toward the mawkish.
But “The Book of Grace” is one of those rare theatrical experiences — a rare experiences of any kind — that leave one forever changed for having had it.
Join us for the 4th Annual West Clinton Historic Haunts Walking Tour
Friday October 1st and Saturday October 2nd
Cleveland’s original family friendly guided tour by latern through the storied past of Cleveland’s cool Gordon Square Arts District in the historic Detroit Shoreway Neighborhood.
Now Departing from Parish Hall 6205 Detroit Ave, Cleveland 44102
Published: Friday, September 24, 2010, 1:24 PM Updated: Friday, September 24, 2010, 1:42 PM
Into the freshened night life of Cleveland’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood alights Roseangel, an upscale taco place calling itself “A Moderne Tacqueria.” The vintage storefront has been redone in a Fashion Week version of a Mexican “Day of the Dead” palette. The room dances in orange and cherry walls in alligator-skin textures and white tabletops with black polka dots. It’s serious, candy-colored fun.
The menu? Tacos. Mostly tacos. And why not? Across the street is Happy Dog, the hot-dog emporium. A few blocks away are notable spots for Vietnamese (Minh Anh), Hispanic (Rincon Criollo) and Irish pub food (Stone Mad). New American joints (Luxe, Gypsy Bean, Latitude 41 N) attract their own loyal crowds.
If any neighborhood can handle fancy tacos, this one can, especially as a dinner-and-a-show stop for Cleveland Public Theatre, the refurbished Capitol Theatre or any one of the downtown venues several minutes away.
It helps that these are out-of-the-ordinary tacos. Chef and co-owner Marlin Kaplan, an artful conceptualist in Cleveland’s dining scene, already is in the neighborhood with Luxe. Portion-size options are one of Luxe’s draws, something tacos wrap around easily, too. Not too hungry? Order one taco. Really hungry? Go for more. Roseangel offers bread-plate sizes of these hand-held specialties, most at $4.25 each, and in slightly discounted trios ($11.75) or a platter of four pairs ($30). It’s up to you and your merry band to mix and match flavors from more than 12 well-selected versions.
WE WANT YOUR REVIEW
Have you been to Roseangel in Cleveland? E-mail us your review of the food, service and atmosphere. Include your full name and where you live. We’ll publish a sampling on Cleveland.com and in The Plain Dealer. E-mail food@plaind.com to sound off.
Tacos come with soft or hard shells, with soft recommended for the neatest sharing. That’s the easy part. The list of fillings is long and sometimes frustrating. We’d go back in a second for the hanger steak taco with crispy onions and chipotle mayo, or the spicy lobster with cucumber and green chile cream (add $2.50). Everything we had was fabulously fresh and nicely matched in texture, making us think the kitchen turns on a dime. Witness the bronzed edges of fried eggplant, plushly crisp breading on the perch and just the right chew for the steak and the grilled pork. Taco choices also include duck confit, potato-crusted chicken and tofu, among others.
What was sometimes missing was a vibrancy implied by the word taco. We don’t mean chile-pepper hot. (When they say spicy on the menu here, they hardly mean it.) But more of a pungent, pepper or herbal counterpoint would do for a younger or more adventurous palate. It’s all there on the menu, with nine different salsas offered. An extra dab of the right one on the plate — or at least a recommendation from the menu — would give an option to customers wanting complexity, not just comfort. That’s true, too, for side dishes of rice and beans, which tasted a little more reserved than necessary.
Nothing is missing from the guacamole, a must-order appetizer with avocado, onions, cilantro, lime and jalapenos in just the right balance. Among salsas, we loved the zesty red picante and enjoyed the sweet aftertaste of the pineapple and roasted chile. To finish, don’t miss the house caramel custard, a cumulus cloud of creamy sweetness ($7).
One confession here. Kaplan knows us and spotted us on the first visit — even when we arrived at the end of the trailing group, wearing sunglasses. Service that night seemed to be provided by a seemingly stressed-out staff. Kaplan wasn’t there for our second try, when everything worked at a fine pace but was marred by a promise of fresh-squeezed lemonade. That substance turned out, we were later told, to be a “mix” that the bartender “dumped” after we complained of an off-flavor. The offending drinks were taken from the bill.
Roseangel has a staggeringly long list of margaritas, specialty drinks, wine and beer. We can testify only to the Rosita, a hibiscus-infused Rosangel tequila with pomegranate, lemon and a great need to be sipped slowly. It was a $9.50 pleasure. And easier than asking for lemonade.
Prices: Starters, $5.50-$12.50; salsas, $2.50; tacos, $4.25 (with discounts for three or eight); desserts, $7.
Reservations: Taken for parties of six or more.
Credit cards: Most major cards accepted.
Cuisine: New American, Mexican
Kid-friendliness: Taco onesies will do it.
Bar service: Full.
Accessibility: Full.
Grade: **
Ratings: One star means fair; 2 stars, good; 3 stars, very good; 4 stars, ex ceptional. Zero stars: not recom mended.) Plain Dealer reviewers make at least two anonymous visits to each restaurant and do not accept complimentary meals. Read past reviews at cleveland.com/dining.
November 19- December 5, 2010 Auditions*: September 7-9, 2010 (Ages 7- up)
Music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley
Adapted for the stage by Leslie Bricusse and Tim McDonald
Based on the book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl’s timeless cautionary indictment of greed, the story of the world-famous candy man and his quest to find an heir comes to life in this musical stage adaptation of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.
One evening, the village paper’s headline states that Wonka is holding a contest, in which five Golden Tickets are hidden under the wrappers of his candy bars. The contest becomes a worldwide mania, with people resorting to increasingly desperate and unscrupulous measures, to find the tickets. The first four are found by four hard-to-like children: the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, spoiled Veruca Salt, gum-addicted Violet Beauregarde, and television-obsessed Mike Teavee. Our hero, Charlie, one cold night in the snow, magically, finds the 5th! This tale is a frothy, thoughtful blend of scary and fun for children and adults.
Hit songs include “Pure Imagination” and “The Candy Man” and featured, of course, are those mysterious factory workers known as… the Oompa Loompas!
A two week winter Musical Theatre Camp
January 16-28, 2010
Ages 9-12 Fee: $50
Spring Older Teen & Adult Musical
May 6-22, 2011 Auditions*: February 22-24, 2011 (Ages 16 & Up)
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by James Lapine
Originally directed on Broadway by James Lapine
Orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick
An ambivalent Cinderella? A blood-thirsty Little Red Riding Hood? A Prince Charming with a roving eye? A Witch…who raps? They’re all among the cockeyed characters in James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s fractured fairy tale. When a Baker and his Wife learn they’ve been cursed with childlessness by the Witch next door, they embark on a quest for the special objects required to break the spell, swindling, lying to and stealing from Cinderella, Little Red, Rapunzel and Jack (the one who climbed the beanstalk). Everyone’s wish is finally granted, but the consequences of their actions return to haunt them later, with disastrous results. What begins as a lively irreverent fantasy becomes a moving lesson about community responsibility and the stories we tell our children.
Summer Youth Theatre
July 22-August 7, 2011 Auditions*: May 24-26, 2011 (Ages 13 entering high school - 19) Music by Claude-Michel Schonberg Lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr. and Alain Boublil Adapted from the original French lyrics by Alain Boublil Additional material by Richard Maltby Jr. Orchestrations by William D. Brohn Originally produced on the stage by Cameron Mackintosh *This production licensed by Josef Weinberger Ltd. on behalf of Music Theatre International and Cameron Mackintosh Ltd.*
Miss Saigon brings Puccini’s Madame Butterfly to post-millennium America in a moving testament to the resiliency of the human spirit. In the final chaos of the Vietnam War, an American soldier and a Vietnamese girl fall in love, only to be separated during the fall of Saigon. This is an intimate story of love, war, loyalty, survival and a mother’s drive to give her child a future of promise. Raw and uncompromising, Miss Saigon is an intense experience of the losses suffered and the sacrifices made in a fearful world using violence to achieve peace. Songs include: “The Movie In My Mind,” “Sun & Moon” and “The Last Night of the World.”
*= Auditions for Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka & Miss Saigon will be held at
Near West Theatre’s performance location:
St. Patrick’s Club Building, 3606 Bridge Ave., 3rd Fl.** in Ohio City.
Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka, Into The Woods and Miss Saigon are presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI. 421 West 54th Street, New York, NY 10019 Phone: 212-541-4684 Fax: 212-397-4684 www.MTIShows.com
Restaurateur Marlin Kaplan insisted that his latest restaurant would open in July. Apparently, skepticism crept into my voice when I pressed the point — remodeling and openings are capricious undertakings — because Kaplan was all “No, no, watch me.” You win, Marlin. His Roseangel — the down-priced reinvention of partner Rosita Kutkut’s former La Boca, not only opened close to target, it pretty much hits the bull’s-eye. It’s at 5800 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, on the edge of Cleveland’s Gordon Square area, across from Happy Dog, if you need a cool landmark.
Tacos, salsas and a modest selection of sides are the big deals here. Order one of each and it’ll set you back under $11 (though you’ll probably want seconds, and maybe a beer; brews range from $2 to $5.50). Tacos, built on hand-shaped and griddled tortillas, are heaped with tasty fillings, including a hauntingly delicious seared tuna with artichoke hearts and a just-fiery-enough grilled hanger steak version topped with crisp onions and a smoky chipotle mayo — to name just two of the 17 varieties. They are small but hefty hand-to-mouth fare, $4.25 each, but bring along friends and order a platter of eight for $30. There are good chips and really good salsas (one evening a cunning cantaloupe-and-cucumber combo) plus fine guacamole (at $7, a splurge). Oh, and very seductive Sauza and triple sec margaritas.
The rooms are equally seductive, from the sexy bar to the center room tarted up in magenta croc-print wallpaper, and the expanded patio. Tacos, grandparents to today’s “wraps,” are eminently tactile, and Kaplan wanted to carry that sensuous style into the environment.
“I feel there should be a seamlessness between where you eat and what you eat,” he says. “And I was going for a way different feeling here. I wasn’t really building a restaurant, per se. This is a hybrid, a lot like Happy Dog isn’t your usual neighborhood bar.”
True on both counts. Here’s to fitting neighbors. Coolness now reigns at West 58th Street and Detroit Avenue. 216-961-5800.
Performed entirely by students
Book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson
Musical arrangements Steve Skinner
Original concept/additional lyrics Billy Aronson
Music supervision and additional arrangements Tim Weil
Dramaturg Lynn Thomson
RENT was originally produced in New York by New York Theatre Workshop and on Broadway by Jeffrey Seller, Kevin McCollum, Allan S. Gordon and New York Theatre Workshop
July 23 – August 8, 2010
“There’s only us, there’s only this.
Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.
No other road, no other way. No day, but today.” – Mimi
Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway musical based loosely on Puccini’s opera La Bohème. In its examination of the lifestyles of the young men and women who inhabit the slums of the Village, the play becomes a celebration of life and the heroic struggle to survive.
The day Jonathan Larson (creator of Rent) died….
“The audience was reaching out to the cast. They were crying and cheering. By the second act, it was no longer contained. It was the full show run full-out. If emotion could have become a physical force, the roof would have blown off, the weather would have changed. The second act ended. There was a huge ovation, the cast slowly left the stage, and the audience stayed in the theater. No one was sure what to do. The cast returned and sat down in the front row. Finally, a single voice called from the audience, ‘Thank you, Jonathan Larson,’ which brought the evening’s loudest, final burst of applause.”
Roger MastroianniPinchas Steinberg conducts a 2005 performance with the Cleveland Orchestra. The maestro returns to Severance Hall this week to lead a program featuring Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto.
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