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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 5, 2005)
Qifts for ‘Romance in an ‘Lieg ant Setting The Mothership of Yarn Shops Every Fiber, Every Color, Every Sense. Friendly, Creative Staff uke Ellington. The Gershwins. Cole Porter. D The 20th century teemed with leg endary American songwriters. But Irving Berlin just might take the cake as the most prolific and stylistically intrepid of all these great composers. Bom in Russia in 1888, Berlin immigrated to the United States at the age of 5. He sang on the streets of New York City’s Lower East Side until he scored a hit in 1911 with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” He wrote more than 1,000 songs, many of them flat-out classics like “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “White Christmas” and “God Bless America.” Not bad for a fellow who didn’t know how to read music. Now Berlin’s music and lite story get the deluxe treatment, cour tesy of Broa<lway Rose Theatre Company in ; Tigard. The Melody y;’y / does appreciate the nat ural environment and the political climate here. Alon^ w*th a danc ing role in Broadway Rose’s recent produc tion of Chicago, he’s appeared in Northwest Classical Theater Com pany’s Twelfth Night, and he worked on a Yarn Garden University - A Class for Every Reason - Open Knitting YARN GARDEN Kf i 10:00-9:00 Mon-Fri - 10:00-5:00 Sat ~ 12:00-4:00 Sun 1413 SE Hawthorne Blvd www.yarngarden.net | ...take respoasibility for their own erotic education, g: |^| learn about waking up and sustaining erotic energy, 9ivin9 affld receiviD9 pleasiire'and e,pressin9 Celebrating November Ji-6, 2005^«*^^ ■T^/J Electric School www.bodyelectric.org /ruing Berlin follows the : From 503-239-7950 Bod’i ' 7; I oigcrs ( >n: The Songs of lunesinifh through his Enjoy tasty food and drink at The Sipperie, while you knit. left, Barney Stein. Kirk Mouser and Amy Palomino star in The early career, his two mar- o Melody JQ... Lingers .. On: The Songs of Irving Berlin. riages and his later suc cess as a composer for production of Wade McCollum’s One. Fred Astaire movies and Though he’s a seasoned performer with a the Broadway smash Annie Get Your Gun. dance degree from Stanford University, Stein On loan from New York City', gay director threw in the performing arts towel while living Abe Reyhold helms The Melody Lingers On. in New York City. After switching to a 9-to-5 This marks his fourth time working with schedule and moving to Portland, he found Broadway Rose, including a 2004 gig directing that he couldn’t resist the limelight indefinite Jekyll & Hyde. ly. “I missed the sense of being seen and having “I’m a longtime fan of Irving Berlin," he an -impact on people,” he explains. says. “In school I studied the great American Stein has to memorize about 20 Berlin songbook. When I heard ‘What’ll 1 Do,’ songs for The Melody Lingers On, a task he finds 1 thought it was the greatest song I’d ever both daunting and exciting. “There’s a huge heard.” amount of music and some narration, starting The director credits Berlin for popularizing with Berlin’s earliest work.” dance crazes and helping dissolve class barriers A big Joni Mitchell fan, Stein started learn in the United States. “Before the song ‘Every ing American jazz standards on the piano at a body's Doin’ It Now,’ ” he says, “only lower- young age. “Irving Berlin is not a new acquisi class people danced in restaurants and saloons.” tion for me,” he says. “I will have to learn some Reyhold, who also admires songwriters Cole of his more arcane compositions for the show, Porter and Noël Coward, is a choreographer as though.” well as director. This combination, he hopes, Reyhold will leave it to the music to tell positions him to milk this musical revue for all Berlin’s life story in The Melody Lingers On. But it’s worth. will longtime fans learn anything new about “It’s going to be very theatrical,” he says. the crackerjack composer? “We’re using costumes to evoke the time peri- “The revue reveals a lot of historical materi od. I want the dancers to tell the story, not to al,” says Reyhold. “Berlin survived several rely on gimmicks or pnxluction values. The tragedies. He remained humble through it all, lighting will be beautiful.” and he was someone anyone could talk to. He Asked to respond to the oft-reported theory was a great American who entertained troops that Berlin was a plagiarizer, Reyhold says: “He and believed in this country. His music tells took music from the lower class and gave it the story.” JM words and liveliness. He turned out so many hits in so many different styles that people T he M elody L ingers O n : T he S ongs of I rving B erlin [days through Aug. 21 at Tigard accused him of keeping a black man in his closet to help him write. I think it boils down Deb Fennell Auditorium, 9000 S.W. Durham to people being jealous.” Road. Tickets are $l5-$24 from 503-620-5262 or www.broadwayrose.com. Barney Stein—a multitalented gay Port lander who works as an actor, a keyboardist, S tephen B ij MR, a Portland arts unter, thinks the a software developer and an astrologist—por new Harry Potter book really stinks. Take that, J.K.! trays Berlin in the production. He moved from Manhattan to Portland four years ago. Stump town is a bit small for his taste, he says, but he JBF f
