Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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THE GAMECOCK ♦ Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7 CONTACT US TTTC MIX THEY SAID IT E-mail us at gamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com _L _L I J _L I 1 VICTOR HUGO: “Liberation is not deliverance.” Pianists dazzle Columbia BY BRIAN RAY THE (U1IEC0CK Professors from USC’s School of Music blew my socks off at the Southeastern Summer Piano Festival’s opening concert on Monday night. Working through the waterfall of sound I realized that Led Zeppelin’s latest release wouldn’t be the only music to flood my ears this week. Monday’s recital focused on the Romantic and post-Romantic works of Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg and the ever-somber Frederic Chopin. Music enthusi asts who could find seats at the concert also heard pieces com posed by Franz Liszt, Enrique Granados and Johannes Brahms. The School of Music Recital Hall was packed tighter than I had ever seen it. Staff members had to bring in extra chairs for about 30. Performers included USC pro fessors Scott Price, Charles Fugo, John Williams and Marina Lomazov. The performances were fine as far as I could see and hear. Music came across the recital hall in waves as musicians ham mered and massaged sound from the keyboard, uninterrupted b> whispers or cell phones. Lomazov stole the show. She came in, sat down, adjusted the bench to compensate for her height — she looks like she’s 7 feet tall — and made the walls rattle as she played Liszt’s “Hungariar Rhapsody No. 12 in C-Sharp Minor.” Monday’s program gave the au rnui us> iu mt Natalya Antonova and Alan Chow are guests at USC’s Southeastern Summer Piano Festival. dience a grab bag of Romantic composers. “You get a little nationalism with Grieg and Granados,” said recent USC graduate Joanne Kampiziones. Kampiziones said that it was impossible to talk about a single performer’s qualities because everyone brought his own sense of style to the stage. But she main tained that there are certain ele ments you should look for in any performance. “Pay attention to color,” she said. “You can make the piano sound like a variety of instru ments.” I was impressed with how every pianist brought a unique nuance to the evening, from Fugo’s sensi tivity to Price’s ability to weave a complex web of tone and color as he used the piano to mimic sounds of nature in pieces such as Grieg’s “The Brook, Opus 63, No. 4.” Despite the technical perfection of the performances on Monday I was disappointed to learn there will be no jazz or ragtime at any event this week. ♦ FESTIVAL, SEE PAGE 9 PLAY REVIEW ‘Reservoir Dogs’offers Columbia guerilla theater ■ nvjltj Ortv/lnL IU mEUHmcwvi' “RESERVOIR DOGS" High Voltage Theater ★★★★ out of BY GABRIELLE SINCLAIR THE GAMECOCK High Voltage Theater’s pro duction of “Reservoir Dogs” offer Columbia a refreshing play full o obscenities and guns. It’s some thing of a delight to witness a the atrical adaptation of “Reservoir Dogs.” It promises to indulge any guilty pleasure and give audiences the old childhood fear of watching "Rambo” or “Dirty Harry” with mom and dad walking in at any moment. “Reservoir Dogs” is the second production by High Voltage Theater, and this might be the closest thing to guerilla theater our unsuspecting city has seen in quite a while, perhaps ever. The entrance resembles the back door to a hide-out. In the dim confines s of the Columbia Music f Association Building, the covert - mise-en-scene immediately begins - to take hold. The play essentially retells Quentin Tarantino’s 1991 directo rial debut, relating the frantic sto ry of five anonymous ex-convicts and the immediate outcomes of a burglary gone wrong. The charac ters come across as mysterious— you hardly know anything about any of them. Personalities and in sights are realized throughout the play via flashbacks and misspoken truths. Screenwriter Michael J Alessandro left little room for dra matic interpretation in his adap tation, but the actors admirably throw themselves into the pro duction. Mr. Pink works his hail pick like a nervous tick. You car almost judge his level of neuroses by the growth of his Afro over the course of the play. The play has a more humorous feel to it than the movie, probably because of the intimacy involved in live theater. Comfort levels disap pear when you’re presented with unnerving situations, which the play exalts. Gordon Lunan has per haps the toughest role. Fresh out of prison, he plays Mr. Blonde, a man who walks a tightrope between ma nia and serenity. Lunan manages the character reasonably well but his performance leans toward the cartoonish. The play’s use of‘70s music is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. The standout role is Mr. White, performed by Jack Lunan, who gives the play its few quiet moments, which are undeniably its most effective. Surrounded by livid maniacs, Lunan’s Mr. White reveals the only glimpse of hu manity of the play. His interac tion with the young wounded Mr. Orange is heartbreaking. Working with a sparse set of beat-up car seats, a desk, the occa sional metal pipe and something resembling a busted up jungle gym, the play presents to us a warehouse, an office, a restaurant and a police headquarters. ♦ ‘DOGS’, SEE PAGE 8