Billy Blythe
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Billy Blythe Bonnie Montgomery's Clinton opera gets more national attention
Former Democrat-Gazette columnist Kyle Brazzel, who wrote a preview and a review of "Billy Blythe" for the Times in recent weeks, has a great "Talk of the Town" piece in this week's New Yorker on the opera and its creator, Bonnie Montgomery.
I haven't talked to Bonnie since the debut, but Kyle said that he'd heard a Russian TV station was interested in an interview. I'll look out for footage.
Just about every major news outlet picked up a story Suzi Parker wrote for Reuters in advance of the premiere, but aside from the "Talk" piece, the only other reporting on the show itself I've found was in the New York Observer.
Some 20 minutes into the play, a sultry, Rubinesque Virginia Blythe (Jessica Bowers) beckons her son to “come visit,” and to bring her a cup of coffee while he’s at it. Bright eyed, the eponymous hero (Alex Krasser), rushes over with a mug and sits at her feet.“Did you know you make your coffee just the way I like it best?” Virginia sings as the piano accompaniment drops an octave. “Your father was the only other one who seemed to get it riiiight.” She sips. “Thiiick as syuuuuurrrppp. Oooo yeahhh this coffee oozes of your father’s zest for liiiiife.”
It was the most risqué moment in reading, but it put one in mind of another theatrical prince faced with his widowed mother’s sexuality. Unlike Hamlet, Billy accepts his greatness readily.
Posted by Lindsey Millar on | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Billy Blythe Review: 'Billy Blythe'
- Jessica Wurst
- Alex Krasser as 'Billy Blythe'
"Billy Blythe"
Medicine Show Theater, New York City, June 19
Spoiled theatergoers accustomed to well-funded spectacle might arch an eyebrow whenever they hear that a production is foregoing distractions like costumes and props so that "the focus is on the material." Just like real-estate-speak heralding an undesirable location as mere "minutes away" from a destination, black-box theatrical readings — typically script-in-hand, half-baked recitations to interest investors — have a way of driving home the feeling that you're not where you want to be, but you can almost see it from there.
Thanks to powerful singing and credible emoting, the Metropolis Opera Project's development reading of "Billy Blythe," by now short-handed by most Arkansans as the Bill Clinton opera, emerged as a destination rather than a way-station when the fledgling company brought it to life in Manhattan earlier this week (after billing it as — that's right — a developmental reading where "the focus is on the material."). If the 11-member cast did not meticulously summon Hope and Hot Springs as the towns awaited their share of America's postwar boom cycle and the agitation of the Civil Rights movement, the performers at least executed a quick and vivid sepia-tinged sketch, the most that can be asked of a one-act play — which the work, crafted by onetime Ouachita Baptist University classmates Bonnie Montgomery and Britt Barber, essentially is.
Posted by Kyle Brazzel on | Permalink | Comments (1)
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Music / Theater / Billy Blythe 'Billy Blythe' to premiere in NYC
The Medicine Show Theatre is set to host Bonnie Montgomery's opera about Kid Bill for a two-night stand on June 19-20.
The theater is in Hell's Kitchen, specifically in the—how's this for apropos?—the Clinton district.
Metropolis Opera Project, a like-minded group dedicated to "developing and presenting new opera in an intimate setting," takes the reins.
Posted by John Tarpley on | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Reviews / Theater / Billy Blythe 'Billy Blythe' preview shows promise
"Billy Blythe" represents an "opportunity to bring opera back to the people," director Jeremy Franklin told a near-capacity crowd at its premiere Friday night at the Women's City Club. The production, Franklin reminded the audience, is "by, for and about Arkansans" — by natives Bonnie Montgomery and Brit Barber, composer and librettist, respectively; for Arkansans but also, implicitly, regular folks who don’t know Verdi from verismo and about the man who, more than anyone else, has come to represent what Arkansas means to the world abroad, Bill Clinton.
Of course, as the title suggests, "Billy Blythe" is not a familiar Bill Clinton story. Rather, Montgomery and Barber look to Clinton’s childhood, specifically to 1959, the last year kept his birth surname Blythe.
But those on Friday hoping for a story that captures that pivotal time in the future president’s life only got a tease. Because that’s all the performance was — not a true premiere, but rather a costumed workshop production of four scenes, only about half of the full opera.
Posted by Lindsey Millar on | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, March 27, 2009
Billy Blythe The best crazy idea of the year
Bonnie Montgomery, a Searcy native currently living in Nashville, is putting the finishing touches on "Billy Blythe," a one-act opera on the young life of Bill Clinton. The name comes from the former pres' birth name, which he changed at 12.
Montgomery, who in full disclosure is an old friend (White County!), went to undergrad at Ouachita and grad school at the University of Missouri in Kansas City Conservatory of Music. She says that after she read "My Life," she couldn't lose the vision Virgina (Clinton) Kelly and Billy Blythe singing an aria together onstage.
She's composing the opera with help from librettist Britt Barber, another Ouachita grad.
Here's an overview from the opera's website:
The story portrays Clinton’s vivacious mother, Virginia, and her coming to terms with the death of Bill’s father and her new marriage and life. Also portrayed is Roger Clinton’s love for his family, but his uncontrollable drinking-related temper. And then, of course, Billy, who discovers within himself how to fit into this construct of family, culture and truth.
When she's not composing opera's, Montgomery writes really awesome folk songs. Listen here.
Posted by Lindsey Millar on | Permalink | Comments (0)
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