PERUsing Lima

Limeño Weekend

George, a colleague and my original contact in Peru, took me to Teatro Segura to see Musical 2010, a review of Broadway hits translated into Spanish.  The troupe performed All That Jazz, West Side Story, The Wizard of Oz, Wicked, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rent, In the Heights, The Phantom of the Opera, Spring Awakening, and Hair.  The translations were not exact.  I doubt the translators typed the lyrics into Google translator.  Sometimes the lyrics were pretty close: Over the Rainbow became Detrás del Arco Iris.  Othertimes, they were extremely different:  Dancing Queen was Nadie ha bailado así (Nobody has dances like this).  They did a fabulous performance of Defying Gravity “Venciendo la gravedad”.  With some creative lighting and rope, they actually lifted “Elphaba” several feet in the air at the end of the song.  My only complaint was the representation of West Side Story.  The Jets (the white boys of the play) were singing in Spanish (the language of the Sharks).  That was confusing.  All of the dancing was fabulous!

On Saturday, Edrina “negotiated” a private tour of the Palacio Torre Tagle.  It was built in the early 1700s for a Spanish noble, Don Jose Bernando de Tagle y Bracho.  The building sports two large, covered balconies.  Lima (downtown) is called the City of Balconies because of the many 18th Century balconies near Plaza de Armas.  The balconies were a way for 18th Century women to participate in street life.  These balconies were encased in a wooden lattice design that allowed the women to see out without being seen themselves. 

Saturday night we went salsa dancing at a club, Kimbara, in La Victoria, a district of Lima.  The had a huge dancefloor overlooked by a stage set on the second floor.  There were about 15 musicians in the salsa band, all wearing shiny white shirts and sunglasses.  The dance floor was packed with men and women twirling, shaking their hips, sweating…you could tell that they didn’t care about anything except feeling the music.  I liked it so much that I signed up for a Salsa class at a school in San Isidro (another district of Lima).  Peruvians are such passionate people, and they show that passion in their speech, food, and clothes, and especially their dance.   

14 June 2010 · Comments

Phantom Phailure

I downloaded the extended album of Love Never Dies, the sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera.  It is important to note that Sir Lloyd Webber is a musical genius and even his B-efforts at composition would be A+ music.  The music is not bad.  In fact, the melodies are beautiful, at times haunting, and even moving.  There are six songs that I thought were good and one that I thought was great.  None, however, measured up to the original scores of The Phantom of the Opera.  Standing alone, free from the shadow of their predecessors, the songs have potential.  But you simply cannot separate the two musicals.  Especially, when the original harmonies (exact portions of the original pieces) creep in between the lesser melodies.  You cannot look at Love Never Dies as a stand-alone work.

The songs I like are the following:

“Till I Hear You Sing”—This song is a great piece especially when sung by Ramin Karimloo, as wonderful a second Phantom as an original.  It does not fit within the original chords, but it is gorgeous and moving. 

“Beneath a Moonless Sky”—The chords and melody are fantastic, but the lyrics are simply horrible.  It is a duet between Christine and the Phantom about a passionate night they spent together (conceiving son Gustave) somewhere between Phantom 1 and Phantom 2 which, given the original story, is a completely ridiculous notion.

“Once Upon Another Time”—Good.  Not great.

“The Beauty Underneath”—Good.  The scene setting for this song…ridiculous.

“Devil Take the Hindmost”—Good.  Scene setting…ridiculous.

“Love Never Dies”—Great.  A real Webber.  Not even a hint of “phantomness”though.

The following is a plot summary that I (unfortunately) did not write.  It was written by Ryan Dixon, an online theater critic (although please keep in mind that anyone—i.e. me—can be an online theater critic).

10 years after the events of The Phantom of the Opera, our eponymous hero, with the aid of Madame Giry and her now grown daughter Meg, has immigrated to Coney Island (yes, you read that right—Coney Island, known around the world for its mystery and romance) and opened up a Vaudevillian palace by the sea called…wait for it…wait for it… “Phantasma!” (Exclamation mark my own.)

While composing vaudeville ditties like “Bathing Beauty” by day, at night the Phantom works on a new “masterpiece,” much to the delight of Madame Giry (seemingly channeling Young Frankenstein’s “Frau Blücher”), who assumes that the Phantom will allow Meg to perform said “masterpiece.”

However, the Phantom still has a hankering for Christine Daaé (going so far as to build a robot version of her –No, I’m not kidding) and offers her LeBron James money to make her American singing debut at Coney Island (Once again, yes, thats Coney Island).

While Christine wants to turn down the offer, her husband Raoul — now a drunk, degenerate gambler with a severe mustache twirling habit — has managed to waste away their fortune in the down times when he isn’t busy going all “Precious” on their ten-year old son Gustave. So, much in the same way that Nicholas Cage signs on to movies like Bangkok Dangerous to help save his castles from foreclosure, Raoul, Christine and Gustave reluctantly make the trip to Coney Island in the hopes of avoiding financial ruin.

Soon after arriving, Christine is reunited with the Phantom, who realizes that Gustave is actually his son after the boy plays about three bars on the piano (while at the same time the actor who plays Gustave dreams longingly of being able to leave this show and join Billy Elliot).

Complications ensue and, despite vague threats from Raoul that I still don’t understand, Christine sings the Phantom’s “masterpiece.” Meg is so pissed off by this slight that she has a breakdown, morphs into Norma Desmond (by way of Glee) and kidnaps Gustave.

The Phantom and Christine race off to the pier to rescue Gustave (By this point Raoul has wisely gone back to Europe). At the pier, Meg accidentally shoots Christine. Christine dies and Gustave gets to live forever after with the Phantom, perfectly setting up Phantom III: Son of the Phantom.

The End.

Let’s see, I’m looking for a word….ridiculous.

8 June 2010 · Comments

PERUsing la Cultura Lima

After a busy week in the office, my companera de casa, Annie, our new friend, Edrina, and I decided to do some site-seeing in Lima.  Friday night we decided to check out Limeno nightlife in the bohemian district, Barranco.  We went to a retro-style club called Sergento Pimienta.  Yes, that means “Sergeant Pepper.”  We stumbled upon a live performance of a pretty famous Peruvian band, Autobus.  Rock and roll sounds the same in every language.  The party lasted until 4:00 am.

Yesterday (Saturday) we visted Huaca Pucllana, indigenous ruins dating back to 200 AD.  The site is situated in a residential district of Miraflores, 2 blocks from my house.  You can see my bedroom window from the top of the ruins.  Huaca Pucllana was a huge temple.  “Pucllana” is Quechuan for “Place of Play.”  “Play” meant religious ceremonies and rituals.  The anthropoligist that took us around explained that today we know very little about the people who built the temple.  Even their name is unknown so it is called la cultural lima.  The temple is a pyramid, ingeniously built to withstand the earthquakes that wrenched ancient Peru.  The primary god was el mar, the ocean.  Not unusual since the people depended on the sea for everything.  Archeologists uncovered pottery, jewelry, and the bodies of sacrificed women.  Only women between the ages of 12 and 24 were sacrificed, and were generally the shortest of the lima people.  That is saying a lot since the men were a little over 5 feet tall.

Next weekend we might go to Ica to see the Nazca Lines or Caral, a city of ruins from several hundred years B.C.  

6 June 2010 · Comments