by Frank Hurby
W.C.L.U
[Dean Elzinga’s] performance was a brilliant tour de force of both acting and throat sounds…The conductor and artistic director of Red, Jonathan Sheffer, kept this madhouse on pace, with appropriate spirit. Stage director Gregory Keller lent the work a real sense of the king’s frenzied fears and foibles.
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by Jermone Crossley
W.C.L.U.
Given the theatrical nature of the experience, stage director Gregory Keller risked disaster by reconceiving the set in such a way that the work’s central conceit – the image of the deranged King attending to the singing of his pet birds – was pretty much abandoned. This tossed out, not just the dramatic context of the piece, but layers of symbolic meaning that depend on that context. Fortunately, the six instrumentalists navigated the challenging score the remarkable agility. And the performance by bass-baritone Dean Elzinga, both as a musician and as an actor, was absolutely staggering.