Rappahannock County

The Virginia Arts Festival highlights its 15th season with this song cycle in collaboration with the Virginia Opera.  In keeping with the 150th anniversary of the onset of the Civil War, and in the manner of the Broadway presentation The Civil War, this thought-provoking, emotionally wrenching production has much to offer.

Five superb singers, backed by seventeen musicians, deserved the standing ovation that followed. Conducting was New York resident, Norfolk native, world-class pianist Rob Fisher, who founded the Encores! series. A regular participant in Lyrics and Lyricists at New York’s 92nd Street Y, he has dueted with the awesome Dick Hyman.

Ricky Ian Gordon’s score is adventurous and handsomely married to the marvelous lyrics of Mark Campbell.  Appropriately, the latter came first, following exhaustive research by Campbell.

The actor-singers were equally impressive; hence, I list them alphabetically.

Aundi Marie Moore (Porgy and Bess; Salzburg Festival; Messiah with the Virginia Symphony; Holiday Pops with the National Symphony) handled several of the roles for a female slave, being especially strong as she sang with her baby dying in her arms.  Kevin Moreno (Europe and Japan with the New York Harlem Productions tour) impressed with a sarcastic list of things that supposedly were open to ambitious blacks.  The song was written prior to the last presidential election, so when he sardonically sang that an African-American might become chief executive it drew considerable laughter. Matthew Tuell (International Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera) was masterful as an Alabama Reb who lay dying in his first experience with snow, which fell touchingly in the background. Faith Sherman (numerous credits, including the English National Opera) drew strong laughter as a spy selling pies to the Union troops. Mark Walters was impressive throughout. Wendall Harrington’s projected images added much background scenery.

Grim realities enhanced the gripping power of this message, such as hogs eating the dead, houses in ruins, and an undertaker delighting at his new-found wealth.

The title county is in Virginia’s north-central horse country, far from the main part of the Rappahannock River.  One wonders why a more powerful title was eschewed.

Curiously, both the opening and closing were the weakest parts of the production. Perhaps this writer is too imbued with the showbiz axiom: start and finish “big!” Thinking of all that was endured by both Northerners and Southerners, of both races and both genders, I left the theater feeling humbled.

(Pictured: Aundi Marie Moore. Photo by David Polston)

Eric Stevens
Cabaret Scenes
April 17, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org