Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 48

24 Section 1 Chicago Tribune, Friday, March 25, 1994 OVERNIGHT Collin INC. Chung gives CS0 program a lively twist New era, new voice Tori Amos finding anguish, humor From the frying pan After press secretary Larry Speakes left his flak-catching post at the Reagan White House a few years back, it seemed like any job he eventually took would almost certainly be less stressful Wrong. On March 11, Speakes accepted the post of vice president of corporate relations for the U.S. Postal Service, where his responsibilities include "building customer and employee satisfaction." Talk about Ground Zero The princess Of politics: When Washington, D.C., celebrates the annual Cherry Blossom festival this year, the Illinois representative on the Cherry Blossom Princess court will be ta da! Elizabeth Edgar. The selection process? "It's usually a young woman who's politically well-connected," according to a Washington $ource in the princess arena.

"If the governor has a daughter, she's usually a shoo-in." Lookalikes Okay, this is for all you folks who keep swearing to INC. that gubernatorial candidate Dawn Clark Netsch and the "Northern Exposure" shopkeeper Tribune photo by John Bartley Tori Amos, who's emerging as a pivotal artist of the decade, plays the Vic. .4 Rock ByGregKot Tribune Rock Critic In between songs at the Vic on Thursday, Tori Amos was describing a bit of fan mail she once received from a 20-year-old admirer. "I don't know what you women want from me," the sensitive male sobbed. Amos was somewhat sympathetic.

"It's very interesting being a boy these days because we're taking over." Big cheer. "I know it's rough. No pity, though, guys." And on with the show. Amos is emerging as one of the decade's pivotal artists because she's wrestling with some crucial questions about femininity, identity, self-worth, sex and also with the anger, guilt and confusion that are part of the search. Her music could well be the soundtrack to the ground-breaking movie "Thelma and Louise." If Amos 1992 album, "Little Earthquakes'about defiled innocents and victims belonged to Geena Davis Thelma, then her new release, "Under the Pink," is from the perspective of the take-charge Louise, played by Susan Sarandon.

Her act also owes something to Madonna, a performer that Amos admires. But whereas Madonna is always the girl on top, controlling her destiny with a crack of the whip, Amos is still figuring things out, to the point where she can appear like a I' ing, tongue curling over her lips, crimson hair cascading down her face, Amos celebrated the erotic with her physical presence while ruminating over its complexities in song. From "Icicle," about the first stirrings of sexual awareness, to "Precious Things," in which the phrase "nice girl" was turned into a feral growl, the singer made her desires explicit without pandering. Even the harrowing rape vignette, "Me and a Gun," sung a cappella, was liberating in the way it confronted, and finally purged, the unthinkable. Opening was the Mohican folk singer Bill Miller, who blended tribal chants and traditional instruments with agitated acoustic guitar solos accompanied by an electric bassist.

His poignant tales of outsiders and survivors and low-key humor were warmly received. Netsch Phillips flake. "The fairies will take care of you," she told the audience, and some of her lyrics sound like they've been created under their influence. Yet her humor, most in evidence on "The Waitress," undercut the preciousness, and her fine soprano voice was understated so the songs seldom seemed overwrought The music veered from oblique, impressionistic prettiness to jaunty cabaret to voluptuous eruptions that recalled Keith Jarrett. A marvelous pianist Amos turned the 88 keys into an extension of her voice, but she's the antithesis of her conservatory-trained background.

Legs splayed, hips grind played by Peg Phillips look alike. Here they are. Still think so? By Alan G. Artner Tribune Staff Writer Myung Whun Chung, director of the Bastille Opera in Paris, returned to Orchestra Hall on Thursday night to begin his second set of concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a program that conveyed unusual ideas about symphonic form. As first announced, the concert would have included only the Third symphonies by Felix Mendelssohn and Camille Saint-Saens.

But a few weeks ago, Chung added Henri Dutilleux's "Metaboles," which gave a nice contemporary twist to the proceedings. Like Mendelssohn and Saint-Saens, Dutilleux is a born symphonist though Symphony after achieving success with two of them early on, he wanted to create pieces in more mobile and open forms. With the 1964 "Metaboles" he succeeded brilliantly, producing in essence a five-movement concerto for orchestra that has the large gestures of a symphony but is altogether personal in construction. Chung and the orchestra conveyed the lean, glinting Dutilleux sound to perfection, with the winds and brasses distinguishing themselves especially. It was a virtuoso performance that confirmed the 78-year-old composer as having at once an extraordinarily fine sense of proportion, fantasy and color.

Mendelssohn's Third Symphony, written more than a century before, was a notable contribution to the development of the symphony, being the first to link all four movements as if they were the continuously unfolding moods of a tone poem. Chung had the overall shape of the piece well in hand, partly because he observed the (rarely observed) first movement repeat However, he drove the music a bit more than is common, missing some of its pastoral delicacy of feeling though not the dignified expan-siveness of its closing pages. As noticed in the Dutilleux, Chung's slow tempi lacked an undercurrent of tension, continually seeming about to run down into an adagio. This made the andante sections of the Mendelssohn unduly grave and robbed the slow movement of the Saint-Saens of its ripely beautiful climax. The Saint-Saens Third was a good choice after the Mendelssohn, as it likewise has links between some of its movements and also takes off after a slow introduction in a six-eight tempo.

Still, the extravagantly scored work has not fared well in Chicago since the early 1960s, before Orchestra Hall renovations destroyed a first-rate organ. David Schrader did what he could on the tinny replacement and Chung generated more excitement than on his recent recording, but the account succeeded only fitfully, seldom achieving sustained elegance or grandeur. The program will be repeated at 1:30 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday. -itmtA Tribune photos by Brent Jones 7 School bands are here to play Lassie and LaSSe: Lassie turns 50 this year reason enough for PBS to gather June Lockhart, Roddy McDowall, Janet Leigh and others who shared billing with the dog legend for the TV spcial "The Story of Lassie," to be aired in August. Filmmaker Lasse Hallstrom and actress Lena Olin were married in Stockholm over the weekend with her 7-year-old son August as best man (boy). Lasse wore white tie and tails, Lena chose a plain white dress and tasteful cowboy boots. A COUple Of COUples: Burt Reynolds reportedly is moodily swinging between tears and rage after the breakup of his apres-Loni thing with waitress Pam Seals.

Who dumped whom depends on which tabloid you read, Charles Barkley's estranged wife, Maureen, is trying to forget the past with His Lordship's old basketball buddy, Jayson Williams. That's entertainment: Tom cruise will produce and star and Brian DePalma will direct the movie, version of "Mission: Impossible." Howard's beginning: A one-hour special on the movie "The Paper" will fill "Entertainment This Weekend," which sat director Ron Howard down to watch a retrospective of his work that included clips from his saccharine cinematic history but also a barely-heard-of 1968 film titled "Door to Door Maniac" with Johnny Cash Former Chrysler chief Lee Iacocca is part of a group that's converting the Mel Tillis Theater in Branson, into the Will Rogers Theater for an unlimited run of "The Will Rogers Follies." Curb your optimism: a poll of party officials and political consultants by Campaigns Elections magazine had some discouraging results: 51 percent of those surveyed said negative campaigning and attack advertising will increase in 1994. The same poll found that just a quarter of Democratic respondents think David Wilhelm is doing a good job as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, while his GOP counterpart Haley Barbour did only slightly better just over a third of the Republicans gave him an attaboy. INCIings: Friday birthdays: Hoyt Axton, 56; Diane Baker, 56; Anita Bryant 54; Aldo De Angelis, 63; Eileen Ford, 72; Aretha Franklin, 51; Paul Michael Glaser, 52; Mary Gross, 41; Gloria Steinem, 60; Bob Wallace, 53; Elton John, 47; Debi Thomas, 27. Saturday birthdays: Leeza Gibbons, 37; Martin Short, 44; Marcus Allen, 34; Alan Arkln, 60; James Caan, 55; Erica Jong, 52; Vicki Lawrence, 45; Leonard Nimoy, 63; Sandra Day O'Connor, 64; Teddy Pendergrass, 44; Diana Ross, 50; William Westmoreland, 80; Bob Woodward, 51; US99's Ken Cocker, 38; Jennifer Grey, 34.

Channel 7's Tracy Butler will fill in for "Good Morning America" weatherman Spencer Christian next week. "Brady Bunch" creator Sherwood Schwartz and Faith and Jill Soloway, creators of "The Real Live Brady Bunch" for theater, will be here for Tuesday's opening of "TRLBB" at Park West i Some of the nation's best high school ensembles have converged on Medinah Temple for the third annual Bands of America National Concert Band Festival Thirteen bands from eight states are playing in the three-day event that began Thursday. Above and right, members of the Honor Band of America, a select group of musicians under the direction of CoL Arnald Gabriel of Fairfax, rehearse for their Saturday concert. Call 800-848-BAND. 1 V--- i 'Carousel' rides again with high drama Theater Close to Home Newsmakers Eagles' reunion set i The much-rumored reunion tour of the Eagles will begin May 27 in Irvine, Calif.

No other dates and sites yet but the boys Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, Don Felder and Timothy B. Schmit will make stops in North America, Europe and Japan. Drew Barrymore weds There are enough actors already in Drew Barrymore's family. She wanted a husband who was different. Barrymore, 19, married Jeremy Thomas, a 31-year-old British bar owner she met only a few months ago.

It was the first marriage for each. "Thank God he's not an actor. He's a working man," Barrymore said. They exchanged vows Saturday during a private wedding in Hollywood, the actress told Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd. Barrymore, the youngest member of the Barrymore acting dynasty, has appeared in movies such as "E.T.

The Extraterrestrial" and "The Amy Fisher Story." Ironically, in the current issue of Movieline mag, Barrymore comments on her breakup with James Walters by calling herself "the ultimate cynic now." Goldwater and gays A lot of people were surprised when Barry Goldwater called for an end to the military's ban on gays. grandson was not "I think it was his way of saying that this is affecting me and my family, and he was offended that the right-wing Christian element is taking such a strong hold of people's feelings on this issue," said Ty Ross, who is gay and infected with the AIDS virus. Ross, a 31-year-old interior de- signer, posed nude and discussed life in a famous GOP family for the cover story of the first issue of POZ, a magazine about people infected with HTV. From Tribune Wires By Richard Christiansen Tribune Chief Critic NEW YORK In a remarkable reawakening, "Carousel" has returned to the stage here in a bold new production that infuses this American musical theater classic with a fresh and startling emotional power. Adapted from Ferenc Molnar's European drama, "Liliom," and first presented on Broadway almost 50 years ago, in 1945, "Carousel" represents a high-water mark of the songmaking of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.

"If I Loved You," "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" and "You'll Never Walk Alone" are only the most famous pieces in a score overflowing with beauty. Despite this, and despite a history of successful revivals and a 1956 movie version, "Carousel's" story, of the love between Billy Bigelow, a braggart carnival barker, and Julie Jordan, a shy factory worker in a New England village, has often been considered cloy-ingly sentimental. Two years ago, however, the Royal National Theatre presented the musical in a new London production, directed by Nicholas Hytner and designed by Bob Crowley, that strongly asserted the work's drama and adventurously mined its feelings. The result was an amazing rediscovery of a work of art one that found itant tentative way in which they whisper "if giving even more power to their outpouring of "I loved you." Hayden's voice is not up to the virtuoso vocal demands of Billy's climactic first-act "Soliloquy," but he compensates by stressing in his acting the poignant hope he expresses in the song for the child Julie will soon bear. The production has flaws: a and Juliet" pas de deux from MacMillan, a muffled sound from the orchestra pit and a shrill performance by the actress playing Billy's teenage daughter Louise in the second act But there is strong, steady supporting work from Kate Buddeke, as the lusty carousel owner who also loves Billy; Robert Breuler as the sleek capitalist owner of the grim woolen mill where Julie works; and Shirley Verrett as Nettie Fowler, the kindly older woman who leads the chorus in "June" and "A Real Nice Clambake." Other "Carousel" characters have been redefined for our time.

Julie's best friend Carrie, exuberantly portrayed by a black actress (Audra Ann Mac-Donald, in great voice), is matched with a white actor (Eddie Korbich) in the role of her prim, bald, fisherman suitor Mr. Snow, and their second-act brood of eight children is divided between black and white youngsters. This "Carousel" is not just changed on the surface, however. This is a deep, true revitalization of a masterpiece. what had always been in the show but had rarely been revealed.

It is this production, transferred to the Vivian Beaumont Theatre of Lincoln Center with a new, American cast, that reclaimed "Carousel" as a supreme work of music and drama. From the opening scenic explosion of the "Carousel" waltz to the closing view of an infinite, star-splashed heaven, this is a stunningly imagined view of the musical, realized to breathtaking effect in Crowley's monumental, minimalist designs on the vast depths of the Beaumont's open stage. The production is generally well-sung and well-danced (with choreography by Kenneth MacMillan still uncompleted at his death, before rehearsals for the London production were to begin.) But above all, this "Carousel" resonates with passion because of the depth of feeling that Hytner and the cast have unearthed in the story. Julie and Billy, as portrayed by Sally Murphy and Michael Hayden (the sole cast member imported from London), are terribly young and fragile creatures of society's underclass, he despite his abusive violence. Consequently, their "If I Loved You" duet comes across with smashing emotional force, the hes "Boy, thai was somcthlngl I donl know who was mor surpriMd, you or that dMrt".