Something From Nothing

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Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, the couple better known to pop music fans as Over the Rhine, are suckers for Christmas music.

“Growing up in the Midwest, we both have a lot of vivid childhood memories about Christmas,” Detweiler said. “Christmas music evokes a child-like hope and wonder that gets squelched out of us as we grow older.

“Also, my dad was an avid Christmas music fan who liked to find the odd gems in his collection.”

This year sees the release of the second OTR Christmas album, “Snow Angel.” The first, “The Darkest Night of the Year,” was released in 1996 and precipitated what has become a tradition for the duo: An annual Christmas that includes a show at the hometown Taft Theatre.

“We have tried to write one or two Christmas songs a year to try out on our unsuspecting audience,” Detweiler said. “But we also want to apply the same standards to a Christmas record that we do to our other records, so we try to write songs that stand up on their own whether or not they are Christmas songs.”

And if that means delving into the darker side of the holidays, that’s what an Over the Rhine song would do.

“It’s not all jingly and jolly, so we honestly represent the broad spectrum of human experience during the holidays,” Detweiler said. “There are a lot of conflicting feelings, complicated family dynamics and all manner of little challenges that need to be dealt with during the holidays.”

The bluesy, piano-driven “All I Ever Get For Christmas Is Blue” kicks off the album, which closes with “We’re Gonna Pull Through,” a sparse, acoustic song about a struggling couple determined to survive, pausing to lift a glass in a moment of clarity.

“Snow Angels” also inlcudes adaptations of two traditional songs, including “O Little Town of Bethlehem” sung to a new melody and new lyrics, which imagine two lovers walking the prone-to-violence streets of modern-day Bethlehem.

“A fan recently mailed us a photograph of some Over the Rhine lyrics spray-painted on the apartheid wall in Bethlehem,” Bergquist said, “a sort of plea for peace. We were stunned by the photo, and felt it merited a response.”

• WHAT: Over the Rhine with Michelle Shocked
• WHERE: Taft Theatre, 317 E. Fifth St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday
• COST: $13-$28
• MORE INFO: (513) 562-4949; www.ticketmaster.com
   

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A Monroe photographer’s fictional scene of a “Backyard Tragedy” has been selected for the “Trick of the Light” exhibition at Cincinnati’s Manifest Gallery.

As part of a class project at the Antonelli Institute for Photography, Francis Michaels chose backyards as a location topic and sought to create something “dark and moody” and ironic.

“We think of backyards as safe places, where tragedies don’t usually happen,” he said. “I set the whole thing up. There are no bodies, no blood, but the photos give you the impression that there might have been a body or that something bad has happened.”

The series of photos, currently at four, can be seen at his web site, www.fjmphotography.com. Of the two he submitted, one titled “Spirit,” was chosen by curator Dennis Kiel, former curator of photography at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

The exhibition called for photographs that revealed “the power of light-based imagery to communicate, express, or evoke a visceral first-hand experience as strong as any painting or sculpture exhibit.”

Kiel, now Chief Curator at the Light Factory in Charlotte, N.C., said that “Spirit” was a good example of using light for a dramatic narrative effect.

“The mystery is there, that something has happened or just about to happen,” he said. “Even without the title, you’d be fascinated by it.”

Michaels also currently has photography on exhibit at the Sweet Art of Mine Gallery in West Chester, where he will be on hand at an open house, 4 to 8 p.m., Dec. 21.

• WHAT: “Trick of the Light: Contemporary Photography”
• WHERE: Manifest Gallery and Drawing Center, 2727 Woodburn Ave., Cincinnati
• WHEN: Opening reception 6 to 9 p.m. today; exhibition continues through Jan. 11
• COST: No charge
• MORE INFO: (513) 861-3638; www.manifestgallery.org

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The Man in Chair is feeling a little blue, so he drops the needle on his record player on “The Drowsy Chaperone,” one of his favorite Broadway musicals.

The play-within-a-play features some of the biggest stars from the 1920s in a romp that takes place in a swank hotel where a wedding is about to take place between a Broadway diva and a rich society boy, and the plot, more or less, revolves around the notion that it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride on the wedding day. But there’s also a cigar-chomping producer who doesn’t want her to leave his show and has to deal with two mob bagmen disguised as pastry chefs who are there to make sure the wedding doesn’t go off.

But plot is secondary to the splash and glamour of the production and the Man in Chair’s sardonic commentary. He loves musical theater, but also recognizes how silly, trite and over-the-top Broadway can be, especially considering his apartment is taken over by the colorful cast.

The music is more or less true to the era, and there are all the required elements: A big chorus number, a saucy tap number and even a heart-wrenching lament from the bride, although the lyrics,  having to do with monkeys and organ grinders, doesn’t quite fit in with the musical style.

The cast has some star power in Georgia Engel as Mrs. Tottendale, the hostess for the wedding, a role she originated on Broadway. Engel is probably best known to television audiences as Georgette, Ted Baxter’s wife in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a role that earned her two Emmy nominations. Here, her major contribution aside from her energy and distinctive voice, is her ability to do a spit take several times over.

Because it’s as much a parody of musical theater as it is a tribute, “The Drowsy Chaperone” gets away with using and over-using the all the cliches of the genre to great satirical effect, making it an enjoyable show for those who loathe musical theatre as well as those who love it as much as Man in Chair.

• WHAT: “The Drowsy Chaperone”
• WHERE: Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: Through Sunday
• COST: $22-$62
• MORE INFO: (513) 241-7469; www.drowsychaperone.com
   

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“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” is one of the most popular musicals from the team of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber for regional and community theaters, so director Richard Amelius wanted to freshen it up for the upcoming Jersey Productions version.

“This is my seventh production of ‘Joseph’ so I didn’t want get in the habit and get bored,” he said. “I wanted to give the actors something they’re responsible for creating themselves.”

One way to freshen it up, he said, was to make the children’s choir a more active part, not just observers on the sidelines, to cast the narrator as a teacher who helps the children weave in and out of the story.

Secondly, instead of costuming the characters in Biblical robes and desert wear, Amelius went for a more contemporary feel and dressed each of the brothers to reflect their individual characters. The brother with the country song, for instance, becomes a cowboy.

“And Joseph is just kind of ordinary, like an everyday man until you put the coat on him,” he said.

“But we still try to focus more on the story and not the production,” he said. “If you focus on the bigness, the characters begin to lose their humanity. There are some things that should strike us — the brothers hurting one of their own and Joseph being big enough to forgive them.”

• WHAT: “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”
• WHERE: Jersey Productions, Carnegie Center for the Arts, 1028 Scott St., Covington, Ky.
• WHEN: Through Dec. 23
• COST: $20-$25 adults; $18 students/seniors
• MORE INFO: (859) 957-1940; www.jerseyproductions.org

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Commentary

The New York Times reports that 15 people were injured by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo's installation "Shibboleth" during its first eight weeks at the Tate Modern museum in London.

The installation consists of a giant crack in the floor meant to address "a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world."

A "shibboleth," according to tate.org, is "a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group."

I suppose that means those who can't see a giant crack in the floor and trip on it should be excluded from the ranks of art patrons.

What I liked about the Times story, however, was a couple of quotes:

A kiwi woman who tripped and fell during the reporter's visit and suffered a couple of bruises:   “I just didn’t see it... I don’t think it should be there at all... It’s not America, so I won’t sue.”

And this from a 29-year-old businessman visiting from Serbia:  “Art is dangerous sometimes.”

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Who has time for television and theater this time of year? With all the beloved holiday classics on area stages and television screens, it’s difficult – nay, impossible – to see everything that’s out there.

That is, it was impossible until the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company began to offer “Every Christmas Story Ever Told,” a condensed version of every Christmas story ever told boiled down to the barest and most hilarious essentials.

Of course, it begins with the famous words: “Marley was dead to begin with.” But the young man playing the ghost objects to yet another version of “A Christmas Carol,” and so a a trio from the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company (Justin McCombs, Sara Clark and CSC founding member Nick Rose) embark on an exploration of the Christmas canon. The first act includes versions of “Frosty the Snowman,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Gustav the Green-Nosed Reingoat,” a version of a beloved holiday classic cleverly disguised so as to avoid any possible copyright infringement. O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” features a cross-dressing McCombs and Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” is presented with little more than a pose.

It’s all high-energy and not particularly tight, although the off-stage Santa, who also serves as a sort of warm-up act, is especially tight, if you know what I mean.

The second act, however, requires a lot of fast thinking and quick transitions from the team as they do a mash-up of “A Christmas Carol” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with Clark doing double duty as the curmudgeonly Scrooge and the humble George Bailey (gotta love her James Stewart impersonation), bringing out the hidden parallels to their respective stories.

It’s all very casual and fun, and perhaps the best thing that this production has going for it is that it takes place in a bar.

• WHAT: “Every Christmas Story Ever Told” By Michael Carleton, John Fitzgerald and Jim Alvarez
• WHERE: Arnold’s Bar & Grill, 210 E. Eighth St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: Seating at 6 p.m.; show 7:30 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday
• COST: $20 adults; $15 students, does not include meal
• MORE INFO: (513) 381-2273; www.cincyshakes.com

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With its mixture of courtly manners, fairies, love stories and the ever-popular play-within-a-play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is among Shakespeare’s most popular and most-produced works, and the current version at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company demonstrates why that is.

Indeed, if you’ve ever been curious about Shakespeare but intimidated by his reputation or the complexity of the language he used, this would be your chance for an easy introduction.

The characters are so rich and colorful that it’s obvious the cast is having a marvelous time chewing at the scenery.

Although it takes place in the summer, the set is a wintry greeting card because a conflict between the fairy king and queen (Oberon and Titania) has set the natural world into chaos. In order to teach his wife a lesson, the king enlists the aid of Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow, played by Kelly Mengelkock, to give the queen a potion to make her fall in love with the first person she sees. Puck takes it a step further by turning the bombastic Nick Bottom, who is rehearsing a play in the woods for an upcoming courtly wedding into an ass so that she will fall in love with him.

Meanwhile, back in the human world, the beautiful Hermia  is being pursued by Demetrius but is in love with Lysander. Her friend Helena (Hayley Clark, who recently turned in a marvelous Juliet and is equally engaging here) is smitten with Demetrius, but the imp Puck and her potions sets about to influence that story with hilarious results.

Director Brian Isaac Phillips enlisted the aid of the Exhale Dance Tribe to play the fairies, which turns out to be a nice touch as they perform transitional pieces to a be-bop soundtrack.

The script also has plenty of opportunities for great physical comedy, both in the Hermia/Demetrius/Lysander/Helena plot line and from the tradesmen who put on the love story of Pyramus and Thisbe with hilarious results.

• WHAT: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
• WHERE: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 719 Race St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: Through Jan. 6
• COST: $26, $22 seniors, $20 students
• MORE INFO: (513) 281-3373; www.cincyshakes.com

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• WHAT: “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” by Barbara Robinson
• WHERE: Fairfield Footlighters, Fairfield Community Arts Center, 411 Wessel Drive, Fairfield
• WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday through Dec. 15;
• 2 p.m. Dec. 16
• COST: $12 adults; $10 students/seniors
• MORE INFO: (513) 867-5348; www.fairfield-footlighters.org

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After a rough day’s work on the last day of the year, a grumpy young man eschews all of his party invitations to spend New Year’s Eve alone with a cold beer, a remote control and his recliner.

But an unexpected visitor, a young woman selling light bulbs designed to cure Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), reminds him of a Hans Christian Andersen story, “The Little Match Girl,” in  a book left behind by his ex-fiance.

Willfully stranded in his apartment, he delves into the book and finds empathy with the freezing little girl who can’t go home for fear of being beaten by her father for not having sold any matches that day, and rather than face him, she freezes to death in the snow.

Such is the story behind “Striking 12,” New Stage Collective’s part in the holiday roll-out.

More of a song cycle than a play, “Striking 12” takes place on a concert stage with a five-piece band with the musicians playing both themselves and the characters that crop up.

Singer Lara Courtney plays all the female bits, including the light bulb saleswoman, the match girl and various girlfriends of Alan Patrick Kenny, NSC’s artistic director and keyboard player, who is also the man with the book and the ex-fiance. Drummer Mikhail Roberts, who recently played in Know Theatre’s “Thrill Me” and NSC’s “Radiant Baby,” is the drummer and miscellaneous male characters. The dialogue doesn’t always seem to serve the narrative, at least directly, but the apparent jovial patter among the musicians also informs the parallel stories, adding yet another layer of context.

It might have all been a little too precious, however, if the music wasn’t really good, but the combination of pop, jazz and show-style tunes are cleverly written and expertly played, allowing these actors a chance to show another side of their musical talent.

• WHAT: “Striking 12” by GrooveLily
• WHERE: New Stage Collective, 1140 Main St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: Through Dec. 31
• COST: $20, general; $16, seniors; $12, students
• MORE INFO: (513) 621-3700; www.newstagecollective.com

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For this season’s holiday show for the family, the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati reprises the 1997 production of “The Frog Princess,” the first effort of the Cincinnati-based creative writing team Joseph McDonough (playwright), David Kisor (composer and lyricist).

“It’s been tweaked and streamlined,” said actor Michael G. Bath who reprises the roles of Boris and Baba Yaga, “but it’s not significantly different.”

In the tradition of ETC’s “fractured fairy tale” holiday productions, “The Frog Princess” is a modern spin on a classic Russian story about a tsar who commands his three sons to seek out their prospective brides by following arrows they have shot into the air. The two eldest sons find princesses; the other, a frog.

Boris, the eldest brother, is the arrogant heir-apparent, Bath said, who takes liberties with his status.

“He’s the kind of character you love to play because you get to say and do things you never could in real life,” he said.

Baba Yaga is also a fun character because of its roots in Russian lore.

“There are many different legends about her,” Bath said. “She’s a witch, a cannibal, the Russian version of the Boogeyman.

“She has chicken legs, her body is its own house and she has a tail of straw that wipes away her footprints so you’ll never know where she’s been.”

Although it’s based on a folk tale, the Kisor/McDonough team make it their own, Bath said.

“Joe has the ability to write clever dialogue that is accessible to children while still being entertaining for adults,” he said. “And David Kisor just vomits music. He gets a little idea one day and the next he’s back with a whole new song with tracks on a CD.”

The cast also includes newcomers Anna Kate Bocknek as the Frog Princess and Charlie Clark as the young prince Ivan, and ensemble players Annie Fitzpatrick, Sara Mackie and Deb G. Girdler, who will also reprise her role as Old Bones from the 1997 production.

• WHAT: “The Frog Princess” by Joseph McDonough and David Kisor
• WHERE: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: Dec. 12-Jan. 6
• COST: $27-$35 adults; $16 children 12 and younger
• MORE INFO: (513) 421-3555; www.cincyetc.com

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For a Christmas show of a different stripe — a lot of criss-crossing stripes, in fact — you can try “Forever Plaid: Plaid Tidings” at the Covedale Center for the Performing Arts.

“Plaid Tidings” offers the best of “Forever Plaid,” the cheeky tribute to the original “boy bands” of the 1940s and ‘50s,  all swirled together with Christmas standards.

“The Plaids were a (fictional) 1950s singing group who were on their way to their ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ debut when they were killed in a car accident and are now spirits,” said Matt Dentino, who plays Jinx. “In this show, they’ve been called back to earth by the spirit of Rosemary Clooney but they’re not sure why.”

So in the first part of the show, the boys — Jinx, Smudge (Chris Wyllie), Frankie (Brad Frost) and Sparky (John Detty) follow heavenly clues to find out why they’re back on earth.

“It appears they’ve come back to do a holiday concert,” Dentino said, “and they fumble around trying to figure out where the concert is and what songs they’re supposed to do.”

Sprinkled among the Christmas offerings are audience favorites like a riotous three minute and eleven second version of “The Ed Sullivan Show” - this time featuring the Rockettes, the Chipmunks and The Vienna Boys Choir — and a Caribbean-themed “Christmas Day-O.”

“We also do a psycho-Christmas that is a medley of tunes that transition without stopping,” Dentino said. “There’s a lot of slapstick and physical comedy, but there’s a real love of the music and the harmonies of the era.”

• WHAT: “Forever Plaid: Plaid Tidings”
• WHERE: The Covedale Center for the Performing Arts,
• 4990 Glenway Ave., Cincinnati
• WHEN: Dec. 13-23
• COST: $21 adults; $19 seniors/students
• MORE INFO: (513) 421-6550; www.cincinnatilandmarkproductions.com

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It’s been a good year for New York artist Omar Chacón. For the first time, he’s been able to live off of his art without a second job, due partly to a solo exhibition in Sarasota, Fla., a major group show in California, and the award of the $10,000 William and Dorothy Yeck Award as the winner of the Miami University Young Painters Competition.

In addition to the cash, the award includes an exhibition of his work, and 29 paintings will be part of the exhibition “Sancochos Casiqueños a la Cimabue,” opening next week at the Hiestand Galleries.

The title of the show refers in part to a traditional soup from his native Columbia that blends elements of Spanish dishes with indigenous ingredients, because like the soup, his work uses different elements to create something new.

“It’s a celebration of paint, but it’s driven by an investigation of culture, of the people coming together,” he said in a phone interview.

His signature motif — the layering of dots of paint on a canvas — was inspired by a visit to his grandfather in Colombia while he was in college.

“My grandfather in his life made a few paintings and when I went to visit him in Columbia he did a little dot painting,” Chacón said. “He told me, ‘I don’t want to paint like anybody else,’ he said, and it wasn’t. He just made the painting out of his own creative mind.

“I thought about all the people I went to school with, appropriating ideas from other artists, flipping through art magazines. So I thought, ‘I can rip off my own blood, can’t I?’”

The Miami University competition solicits works from U.S. residents ages 25-35 who have achieved “a significant degree of success as an emerging artist of noteworthy talent.”  

In addition to the purchase award, Chacón becomes a part of the Miami Best Young Painters of the 21st Century collection.

Winners of this year’s competition will be announced at a reception, 5:15 p.m. Friday, Jan. 18, at Hiestand.  Juror for the competition is Peter Plagens, art critic for Newsweek magazine.  Plagens, based in New York, is a Dayton native who also is an author, artist and educator.

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Oxford singer/songwriter Lisa Biales is taking her children’s show “Yellow Shoes” to New York City for her off-Broadway debut, but not before giving local fans a sneak peek on Sunday.

“It’s basically a collection of songs with a story about how I got interested in singing by singing for my mom,” Biales said. “All of the questions people ask me when I get off stage, I put into the show.”

Although it’s geared toward children with sing-alongs and audience interactions, it will also have some grown-up appeal, she said.

The title comes from a song she wrote about a boy who puts on a colorful costume — yellow shoes, purple suit, red hat — to catch a certain girl’s eye.

“When you’re in love, you let your defenses down,” Biales said.

The off-Broadway version will be staged at the Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village, where she and her husband went to see the musical “Gone Missing” last summer.

“I’ve known the producer there for about five years and we started talking after the show,” she said. “He said he was looking for new shows to get people, especially families, into the theater on dark days.”

When she got home and sat down to write a proposal, she said she was thinking she wasn’t worthy to do an off-Broadway show.

“But then I put on a wacky hat to write and all of a sudden I saw the whole show in my mind,” she said. “I wrote an eight-page proposal and put together a CD of songs and put it in the mail.”

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Since he joined the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company in 2001, Christopher Guthrie has been in five different versions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and the second time he’s been cast as Nick Bottom, the man who becomes a donkey and falls in love with a Fairy Queen.

The first time was under the direction of Giles Davies for  a Young Company production that toured area schools for 60 shows throughout the year.

“You get to know a play pretty well that way,” he said, “and I directed it the year after that.”

But, he said, he received the ultimate compliment that first year when Davies told him: “The Bottom you’ve created is quite an ass.”

“Bottom operates in a shame-free zone,” he said. “No matter what he’s doing, he comes at it 50 miles an hour. He’s sure he knows everything and  his 100 percent lack of doubt allows everything that happens to happen.”

As the sprite Puck, fourth-year company member Kelly Mengelkoch is playing one of her biggest roles.

“It takes a willingness to try anything and everything in rehearsal no matter how foolish it may feel,” she said about what makes a good Puck, “a complete willingness to trust the magic.”

The set features a wintry fairy world inhabited by members of the Exhale Dance Tribe playing the fairies. The Fairy King and Queen (Mark Douglas-Jones and Sherman Fracher) have a dispute that leads to chaos in the human world and she falls under a spell to fall in love with the first creature she sees. After Puck transforms Bottom in his donkey costume into a real donkey, he awakens the queen from her sleep and she falls in love with Bottom the ass.

“The heart and soul of the play is love and comedy,” Guthrie said. “The characters are so weird and wacky that it sets the stage for both slapstick and honest comedy.”

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Although Nancy Opel had been following the progress of “The Drowsy Chaperone” nearly from its inception, it wasn’t until the national tour that she jumped on board to take the title role.

“One of the producers lives next door to me and I read it even before he took it to L.A.” where it previewed, she said. “I was doing the revival of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and couldn’t do anything with it, but he’d always talked about it playfully. Both of us knew it was a good part for me.”

Opel has extensive Broadway (“Triumph of Love,” “Sunday in the Park with George,” “Evita,” “Anything Goes” and a Tony nomination for “Urinetown”) and off-Broadway (“My Deah,” ”All in the Timing” and “Polish Joke”) credits, but this is her first national tour. And it being a show making it’s first trek outside of New York (not counting the Los Angeles preview), not many people in the fly-over states have a clue what it’s about.

“We’ve been to a lot of places with strong subscription bases, so people come to the show not expecting what they’re about to see,” she said. “It’s a little surprise for all of us.”

Here’s the official synopsis: “To chase his blues away (Man in Chair) drops the needle on his favorite LP – the 1928 musical comedy, ‘The Drowsy Chaperone.’  From the crackle of his hi-fi, the musical magically bursts to life on-stage telling the tale of a pampered Broadway starlet who wants to give up show business to get married, her producer who sets out to sabotage the nuptials, her chaperone, the debonair groom, the dizzy chorine, the Latin lover and a pair of gangsters who double as pastry chefs.”

“The humor really comes as much from his commentary as from what’s happening in the play-within-the-play,” Opel said. “He’s not really cynical, but he has a good sense of humor about what people love and hate about musicals.”

Canadian actor Jonathan Crombie will take the stage as the Man in Chair.  Crombie is widely known for playing Gilbert Blythe in the popular “Anne of Green Gables” mini-series. As previously announced, Georgia Engel (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Everybody Loves Raymond”) will reprise her role of Mrs. Tottendale for the tour.

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Soprano Audrey Luna, a voice instructor at Miami University, will be the special guest of the renown Amernet String Quartet when it makes its Cincinnati debut next week.

She will perform Arnold Schoenberg’s Quartet No. 2, a rare piece of music in the canon of string quartets because it is one of the few that includes parts for a vocalist.

“Schoenberg’s groundbreaking Quartet No. 2 was the beginning of his adventure into atonality,” she said. “I’ve sung this piece dozens of times with the Hagen Quartet in Europe and look forward to performing it with the renowned Amernet String Quartet.”

Schoenberg wrote the quartet in 1908. The first two movements use traditional key signatures, but the final two movements uses poems by the German mystical poet Stefan George, not only breaks with previous string-quartet practice by incorporating a soprano vocal line but also ventures into atonality.

“The last line is 'I feel wind from another planet, combining the expressionistic style of poetry with the atonality of the music,” she said. “That is, rather than relying on the traditional style of chords based on three-note groups (or triads), the structure is more flexible and “each note is as significant as the next.

“It was a challenge when I first began to look at it because it’s a lot more dissonant than anything else I’d ever done,” she said. “It’s also a real tour de force for the string quartet.”

The audience is invited to learn more about the music at a pre-concert lecture with Bowling Green State University musicologist Effie Papanikolaou at 7 p.m.

“Interestingly, when they add another instrument to a string quartet, it becomes a something quintet,” she said. “For instance, if you add a piano, it’s a piano quintet. But only when its a vocalist that’s added does it remain a quartet.”

The program also includes two classical string quartets—Haydn’s Quartet, Opus 74, No.3, “Rider,” and Beethoven’s Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132.

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The world’s snarkiest elf comes to life as New Edgecliff Theatre re-mounts a production of “The Santaland Diaries” after a three-year absence.

Based on the real-life experience of humorist David Sedaris as a 33-year-old elf in Macy’s Department Store, the monologue recounts his encounters with an array of Elves, Santas, parents, children and the culture of the commercial epicenter of the holidays.

A chance to play the part put a point in the ears of Northern Kentucky artist Russell Ihrig, drafted into the role by director Nathan Gabriel, a high school chum.

“I’d never really been that interested in acting, but this play made me interested,” he said. “Sedaris has a drank sense of humor that I share, like imagining Santaland as Satanland. Those are the kinds of things I find funny as well.”

Ihrig said that he’s met David Sedaris and has heard him read twice, but has worked with the director to make the presentation less like David and more like Russell to bring a level of honesty to the role.

“I’ve listened to (Sedaris) do ‘The Santaland Diaries’ so much that I’ve had to break myself from doing a David Sedaris impersonation,” he said.

The second act of the program is “Season’s Greetings,” in which Ihrig plays another Sedaris character, the horrific yet acidly funny Mrs. Dunbar, also played by Ihrig, a pathological upper-middle-class housewife who delivers a  Christmas letter from the dark side.

“I’m attracted to those shady things under the surface of everyday life,” said Ihrig, who has previously been in productions of “Greater Tuna,” where he played a series of female characters, and was also an ugly stepsister in a production of “Cinderella.”

“I love playing female,” he said. “We want to make it as genuine as possible, so we’re actually going in the totally opposite direction from the first act.”

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