By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Tim Fuller
From left, Manny the accompanist (Walter "Bobby" McCoy), Maria Callas (Vicki Lewis) and Sophie the student (Rachel Gold) in a tense search for artistic truth.
We the audience are sitting in on a master class conducted by famed soprano Maria Callas. Noted playwright Terrence McNally (“Ragtime,” “Love! Valor! Compassion!”), a professed opera buff, drew on similar classes Callas conducted at the Juilliard School in the early 1970s to write his Tony award winning “Master Class,” named the Best Play of 1996.
Now the Arizona Theatre Company is running “Master Class,” directed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, with Broadway and Carnegie Hall artist Vicki Lewis as Callas, who is most certainly remembered for her fiery spirit.
ATC audiences can be assured they don't need to know anything about opera – or about Callas, for that matter – to be drawn into the deeply layered intensity of McNally's “Master Class.”
The playwright is more interested in showing how the most talented artists of every discipline must indeed work harder and dig deeper than those more exceptional artists who are content enough to be merely great.
Just as Spider-Man reminds us, “To those whom much has been given, much is expected, ” Callas is eager to enforce that relentless desire for more.
These emotions, the very tensions between Callas and each of her students, becomes a true contest of wills that ultimately strips away the teacher's own lifetime grip on her defense mechanisms.
Lewis herself is smaller in stature but fills the stage with her uncompromising confidence. She swirls and demands, insisting three of her students accept nothing less than complete sacrifice for their art.
The students are: Sophie (Rachel Gold), a shy soprano whose voice seems stronger than her personality; Sharon (Kanisha Marie Feliciano), a more defiant soprano eager to stand for what she believes; Tony (Victor Ryan Robertson), still defining for himself that unique quality for which all tenors are known.
All three have more than met their match in Callas. But the playwright also knows all true artistic greatness must come from within the ordinary experiences everyone shares, the same hunger for love, praise and admiration.
So as Callas keeps asking her students for more, she keeps being reminded of her own life's past, her own heartbreak and frustrating experiences chasing elusive moments of happiness.
Adding classroom atmosphere are Walter “Bobby” McCoy as Manny the accompanist, playing a magnificently grand piano, and Trent Mills as a nameless stagehand who keeps bringing Callas more glasses of water.
“Master Class” runs through March 23 with performances at various times Wednesdays through Sundays in the downtown Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. Tickets are $25-$90. For details and reservations, visit atc.org or phone 833-282-7328 (833-ATC-SEAT)
