ARTS . Theater Review

It Ain't Over

Master Class at Media Theatre, Through Feb. 21.


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Published: Feb 9, 2010

Some plays, like Hamlet and St. Joan, shouldn't be produced without just the right actor for the leading role. Add Terrance McNally's Master Class to that list. At Media Theatre, Artistic director Jesse Cline cast Ann Crumb as opera diva Maria Callas — clearly the right choice.

While McNally's new play about opera, The Golden Age, awkwardly uses Callas recordings (see David Anthony Fox's review at citypaper.net/arts), this 1996 Tony Award-winner puts Callas center stage, two years before her 1977 death, when she no longer sings but agrees to teach. Ironically, neither Master Class, nor Crumb's Barrymore Award-nominated performance as famously off-key Florence Foster Jenkins in Souvenir at Media two years ago, allow this veteran Broadway performer to sing much, or well; both, though, invite her to feel music's passion, which she does vividly and magnetically.

Crumb reveals Callas' distinct layers: Her warm smile and soothing tones can't hide a killer instinct — "You don't have a look," she says bluntly to a student, "Get one" — which itself thinly veils a neediness causing her to beg for applause even as she turns on her Greek accent to appear folksy and humble. Her lack of empathy for the student singers seems driven partly by bitterness and envy, but largely by a compelling passion for the art of performance: "It's not a note we're singing here, it's a stab of pain," she tells vapid Sophie (Allison Hymel). "Anyone can get the notes out."

Costume designer Maggie Baker gives Callas a wonderfully sleek all-black look; her students' suitably garish attempts at dressing up for the diva underscore the difference between vocalists and singers.

We'll look back on Master Class as McNally's most eloquent statement about the triumphs and tyranny of the artist's calling, much as we see Shakespeare revealed in Hamlet's advice to the players. Even as Callas brutalizes Sophie, Tony (Logan Rucker) and Sharon (Elisa Matthews) — lashing out for every slight, real or imagined, she experienced in her career — her belief in art inspires: "There are no shortcuts in art, no easy way ... only discipline, courage, technique."

Callas pulls away from the classroom (Joe Leduc's handsomely stark white, semicircular walls) for spoken arias that share her story from desperate beginnings in war-ravaged Greece to international fame, with much about her doomed romance with shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. In these challenging sections, Crumb truly soars, perfecting what Callas preached. Through Feb. 21, $36-$42.50, Media Theatre, 104 E. State St., Media, 610-891-0100, mediatheatre.org.

Read more theater reviews at citypaper.net/arts.