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Review: “˜War Music’ a fine-tuned production

By Alex Wen

Feb. 4, 2004 9:00 p.m.

Play it again, Sam.

Returning to the stage after a successful 2002 debut at the Los
Angeles Theatre Center, and currently playing at the Geffen
Playhouse through Feb. 22, Bryan Davidson’s classy “War
Music” exudes all the ease and quiet assuredness of a
production embarking on its sophomore run.

The current production of Davidson’s Ovation Award-winning
three-act, anti-war concerto survives with its original cast and
crew largely intact. The pay-off is apparent in the sheer attention
to detail displayed, both in the performance and the
production.

This is ensemble acting at its most outstanding ““ an even
and finely tempered cast, with each actor seamlessly segueing into
the different roles in each of the play’s three acts. The
cast was evenly tuned, especially Nancy Bell and Jeremy Maxwell,
who shined and moved in their respective roles.

Michael Gilliam’s lighting design was also a highlight of
the production. Gilliam turns each act into a showcase in stunning
set lighting, evoking the ambience and nostalgia of 1940s wartime
perfectly. Each movement is imbued with its own unique feel,
peppered with quick-fire effects or rapid mood changes as called
for in the script. The lighting certainly complements and enhances
the spartan but gritty and effective scenery design by Susan
Gratch.

For a play centered around classical music, John
Zalewski’s sound design manages to pack a punch while
simultaneously ceding to the lilting piano pieces, snippets of the
actual work of the three composers featured in each act. Attention
to detail is evident down to the chamber-echo effect employed in
the scenes taking place inside the church during the last act. A
minor quibble, though: the symphonic dissonance that opens each act
is a tad too jarring, even if it is deliberate.

Overall, the play moves with elegant grace, though the pace is
sometimes too languid. The first two acts lack the urgency of the
last, but the pay-off for surviving the pace is a third act that,
despite smacking of Scrooge’s ghost of Christmas past, is
positively bursting with spiritual imagination, despair driven by
desperation, and dollops of good humor (conspicuously missing from
the first two acts, apart from a penile erection stab in the
first).

Orchestrated with poise and delicate precision by director
Jessica Kubzansky, “War Music” is a piano-driven paean
to saving grace and the triumph of the human spirit in the face of
adversity and self-doubt. The healing music of the play, its
anti-war theme and religious overtones combine to form a powerful
overriding arc that connects the three movements into a resonant
whole. Kubzansky handles each element deftly so that the message
hits home, and on just the right note.

““Alex Wen

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