Arts news: ‘Shrek’ drama deepens; important internment play in Brighton; John Irving salutes Olympic grandkids

The Colorado Symphony is still floating on an apex after last weekend’s historic tour gave 15,000 New Yorkers a listen to the best our state has to offer the orchestra world.

Team Colorado played two instantly sold-out concerts with Boulder folk-rock superstar Gregory Alan Isakov at Radio City Music Hall, followed by an evening with legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman at Carnegie Hall.

“This has been a dream come true,” said a tired but “super-happy” President and CEO Daniel Wachter, who would win by acclamation if “Ambassador of Colorado” were an actual thing.

After Music Director Peter Oundjian and his crew tore through the New York premiere of John Adams’ 20-minute burner “Frenzy,” followed by works for violin from Antonín Dvorak, Fritz Kreisler and John Williams featuring Perlman (including his haunting solo from “Schindler’s List”), the Carnegie crowd gave up a standing ovation with three curtain calls.

And that was only intermission.

After the Coloradans returned to perform Russian conductor Modest Mussorgsky’s iconic “Pictures at an Exhibition” without the world’s most famous violinist, Wachter said, “they gave another standing ovation and three more curtain calls.

Read more: Colorado Symphony to turn New York into classic country

“You don’t know really what happens after such an important person leaves the stage,” the German-born Wachter said of Perlman. “Some people sometimes leave. But, I am telling you: The people stayed, and they celebrated the Colorado Symphony at the end of the second half just as much as they celebrated us with Itzhak Perlman at the end of the first.

“I think we surprised a very spoiled classical music audience with John Adams’ ‘Frenzy.’ This is such a compelling new one-movement symphony – very energetic, a lot of momentum, almost confusing, and so beautiful – like our times. And it all happens in 20 minutes. And we kind of liked the idea that we intrigued a very educated classical music crowd to stay for the second half to more fully experience the Colorado Symphony.”

The biggest epiphany to Wachter was not that the Colorado Symphony played at Carnegie Hall. “It was to experience the sound of our orchestra in that hall,” he said. And to consider what that means for the organization after it gets back home to Boettcher Concert Hall, which is in need of $120 million in upgrades.

“The orchestra sounded amazing,” said Wachter, underlining each word for emphasis. “I’m still stunned and wowed. So it’s very inspiring to now really focus in on improving the acoustics in Boettcher Concert Hall. I mean, your hall is the instrument of your orchestra, and the way we heard our orchestra sound in Carnegie was very inspiring. And that is very much fueling our ambitions for the renovation of Boettcher.”

Isakov played mostly the same 20-song set (with slight variations) for his two nights at Radio City. That’s a practical necessity when you are backed by 80 orchestra players. He opened both nights with “She Always Takes it Black” and “Amsterdam.” He finished Friday night with “Caves,” “Time Will Tell” and “Feed Your Horses,” while Saturday ended with “Caves,” “Feed Your Horses” and “Saint Valentine.”

“Endless thanks,” Isakov posted after what he called an epic double-header. To the Colorado Symphony. To Radio City. To CoSym Resident Conductor Christopher Dragon. To his band and crew. “I’ll be thinking of those shows for a long time,” he said.

A random attendee posted that it was “a truly stunning and spectacular show. I kept wanting to close my eyes to fully take in the music, but the lighting design was such a beautiful part of the show, I couldn’t, and I was so deeply mesmerized by the whole experience. I was almost overwhelmed by the beauty of it, in the best possible way.”

(If you’re feeling a bit left out, Isakov will play two nights at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony next Labor Day weekend (Sept. 6-7). Pre-sale begins at 10 a.m. Feb. 11 (password: SYMPHONY).

Wachter knows there was at least some crossover audience at both of the Symphony’s two very different NYC programs – at the very least, the 40 Colorado Symphony subscribers who made the trip.

“I felt like this tour was a bit of a catalyst moment to increase the awareness of this treasure of an orchestra we have in town,” Wachter said.

Important production in Brighton

You can’t watch Platte Valley Theatre Arts’ “Hold These Truths,” a timely one-man play by Jeanne Sakata about the true story of Gordon Hirabayashi, without an eye on the headlines and the history books.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government forcibly incarcerated approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans — two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens — for the remainder of World War II.

Hirabayashi was an American-born student who, in 1942 – his senior year at the University of Washington – was ordered to report to a prison camp in northern California. He not only refused, he challenged the constitutionality of the U.S. government’s internment of Japanese Americans, demonstrating the kind of moral courage that seems in such short supply in our world today.

Hirabayashi’s refusal to abide led to the landmark 1987 Supreme Court reversal that overturned his convictions and declared that the U.S. government’s internment policy was based on racial bias rather than necessity.

The play now being staged in Brighton stars Denver actor Rob Payo and is directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. Three remaining performances: 7:30 p.m. Friday; and 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Brighton Armory, 300 Strong St. Info at plattevalleyplayers.org.

More tumult for ‘Shrek’ in Parker

Director Kelly McAllister admits his production of “Shrek the Musical” is “probably cursed,” and the scandal that will not die deepened on a few fronts this week.

The show made international news after an actor stopped a performance and told the crowd that the show had been threatened with closure if the creators refused to remove the use of two Pride flags in the song “Freak Flag,” after an unspecified number of audience complaints.

There was no overt threat of closure – which is the part of the story almost everyone has been getting wrong in the telling. But after the creators decided against making alterations, and Lutheran High School heard about the speech, the school pulled its fiscal sponsorship of the show.

Still, no demand was made. The artists were vindicated. They were not censored. The Town of Parker will have to eat the financial loss. And the show goes on, unchanged and unabated.

End of story? Of course not.

Sunday’s matinee performance had to be canceled after a mid-show, city-wide power outage in Parker and other parts of Douglas County. With no way to re-seat 500 ticket-buyers in the few shows that remain, the town had to issue refunds or offer rain checks to future programming at the PACE Center.

Now, both tonight’s (Thursday) performance and Friday’s student matinee have been canceled as well because of what McAllister is calling a widespread run of COVID moving through the cast. No decisions have been made yet about the final four scheduled performances Friday night through Sunday.

“I’m like, come on,” McAllister told the Denver Gazette on Wednesday.

The cancellations will surely obliterate the show’s anticipated final overall profit, but it is too soon to tell how bad the final numbers will be. Parker officials can’t yet offer specific figures, but it’s a safe assumption that the three canceled performances, representing 1,500 tickets sold, will cost Parker Arts and Sasquatch at least $45,000 in refunded revenue. And that doesn’t include lost concessions and ticketing transfer charges absorbed by Parker Arts.

That’s an especially tough hit given that the upcoming final weekend, like most previous performances, is essentially sold out. That’s another estimated $80,000 in potentially lost revenue if those shows are canceled as well.

Then came the surprise social post on Tuesday from Sasquatch Productions announcing the launch of a GoFundMe campaign with a goal of raising $11,000 “to support Sasquatch’s creative freedom.”

The campaign thanks the community for its support over the past few weeks and says the best way to help the moving forward would be with cash so that Sasquatch would “be able to put on our own shows – the way we want to, in other communities … without the fear of creative freedom being taken away from the show, creative team and actors.”

Which, to this observer, sounded a bit like the company was promoting the dubious narrative that their creative freedom had been threatened – when it was not. Possible alternatives were discussed. That’s it.

To McAllister’s credit, when I contacted him to talk about how the campaign might be seen as opportunism, he quickly moved to rewrite the message. The campaign is now titled simply “Support Sasquatch Productions,” and the pitch reads:

“We love working at PACE, and hope to continue to do so into the future. But we also want to do shows that are independent. With your support, Sasquatch Productions will be in a position to produce shows on our own, which opens the door to opportunities and venues across Colorado, while also allowing us the ability to better compensate the creative team, actors, orchestra and stage crew for their hard work and dedication to our productions moving forward.”

As of late Wednesday, the campaign had raised $205.

McAllister told us he has no conflict with Parker Arts, and especially not with Parker Cultural Director Carrie Glassburn. He does question whether it is appropriate for a government agency like Parker Arts to have a fiscal arrangement with a religious entity like Lutheran High School.

“I don’t think religion and state should mix that way,” he said.

But the prevailing tragedy of the story (to date) is the anger and indignation it has triggered among bystanders who do not have the story straight. McAlister admits that “the vitriol coming from (both sides) has been nasty and inaccurate.” But Glassburn, he said, is not to blame. “She has been put in an untenable position,” he said.

At this point, pretty much all anyone wants is for the show to end on Sunday without any additional kerosene added. But let it be stated for the record: No one is saying the Town of Parker won’t have Sasquatch Productions back to stage future musicals. And McAllister is definitely not saying his company won’t be back, if allowed.

“I love working at Parker Arts,” he said.

Irving salutes Olympic grandsons

Renowned author John Irving (“The Cider House Rules”) has some skin in the Olympics game. Specifically, grandchildren Birk and Svea Irving, who grew up in Winter Park with their father, Winter Park Ski Patrol Director Brendan Irving. Birk and Svea are members of the U.S. freestyle team specializing in the halfpipe.

“I’m very proud of them,” John Irving wrote on social of his two favorite Olympians. “You don’t get to be Olympians overnight. I know how hard they have worked for this.”

John admits to being the weakest skier in the family. Which in that family, come on – is probably pretty great.