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Beethoven: Heaven's Voice
AOL DIGITAL CITY The word "genius" gets tossed around so often
("Oh my, the new Britney Spears CD is pure genius") that it
may have lost much of its meaning. Still, few would say that applying
the adjective to Ludwig van Beethoven is mere hyperbole. Writer Ronald
Russell read over 40 biographies of the composer in preparing for his
play and found many details that are little known to all but scholars
but which are still utterly relevant to today's audiences. Orange County
native Bradley Miller tackles the demanding role for the one-man show,
with Patricia Miller serving as director.
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NORTHERN LIGHTS The incomparable composer and pianist Ludwig Van Beethoven once said, "To play without passion is inexcusable!" No worry here! The Chance Theaters' most recent original play, "Beethoven: Heaven's Voice," was filled with passion that played well to the packed house on opening night. Penned by Ronald Russell, the portrait of Beethoven, framed by the author, was honest, well thought out and compelling on many levels. Russell's research included reading 40 biographies on the master musician. In addition, as Beethoven began to lose his hearing, he filled volumes of conversations with his students, friends, adversaries, and loves. Those books still survive and provided a vast store of knowledge about the famed composer - not just about what he thought - but his exact words! Russell wove this information into a skillful pastiche, showing Beethoven's genius as well as his personal frailties. While, currently playing on the Chance's "Evolving Stage," this could easily have been the centerpiece of any of its "Main Stage" presentations. Both sophisticated and accessible, it was an obvious labor of love. Playing Beethoven in this wonderful one man show was Bradley Miller, last seen at the Chance as "Nanki-Poo" in Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Mikado." Miller is a veteran actor with considerable skills of his own. In the 21 years he has been performing locally, in such diverse roles as "Mr. Roberts" to "The Sound of Music," Miller seems to have been building up to something truly great. "Beethoven: Heaven's Voice" seems to be it! Miller spent two hours on stage by himself and held the audience close at hand. They were moved, inspired, shocked, amazed and occasionally prompted to the relief of laughter by Miller's interpretation of this cleverly written script. Beethoven's life, for all his genius, was no day at the beach. A drunken father, strict teachers - including Haydn and Salierri - the looming shadow of Mozart, Napoleon, friends that seemingly turned foes, and a series of unrequited loves left him less than an affable fellow. It was his degenerative hearing loss, however - starting in his late 20's and leaving him totally deaf in his late 40's - that was the cruelest trick the fates could lay on him. As his music reached the peak of it's maturity, he could no longer hear it played. He had to "hear it" in his own imagination and nothing more. And, as audiences became more appreciative, a black silence, in an ocean of waving handkerchiefs, was all there was to sustain him. Miller captured all the emotion, drive, mad-genius, and pathos of this musical giant and never let it slip into a caricature. It was a brilliant performance. A lot of the credit for the success of this offering goes to Patricia Miller - Miller's wife - who directed. She is also an accomplished theatrical pro with directing credits that include, 'Finian's Rainbow," "Once Upon A Mattress," and "Picnic." P. Miller apparently knows all the right buttons to push, as B. Miller became Beethoven before our eyes. It was quite thrilling! Set in 1826, Beethoven recalled his life in a gripping
two-hour retrospective. Technical Director Casey Long was responsible
for guiding the imagery and of course, the sound track was classic! The
four most famous notes in music, from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, were
standouts in a flood of intensity!
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CURTAINUP.COM Just opened at The Chance Theater's Evolving Stage is the world premiere production of Ronald Russell's "Beethoven: Heaven's Voice". A full-evening one actor show in the style of Hal Holbrook's "Mark Twain" or Julie Harris' "Emily Dickinson", the work chronicles the public triumphs and private pain of the great 19th century revolutionary composer. Set at the home of Ludwig van Beethoven, on a fateful evening in 1826 when the composer's beloved nephew Karl's life is hanging in the balance, the play has its hero speak to an imagined visitor in a lengthy confessional. The relevant key characters in his life story make their own contributions through voiceovers. The topics Beethoven (Bradley Miller) raises include, among others, the pains he experienced as a child prodigy with an alcoholic father, his ambition to free music of its 18th century shackles, his frustrations as a recognized musical genius with no success in eagerly sought after love relationships, his disappointments with and then explosive rage at a Napoleon turned authoritarian, and his grandiosity and humility in response to the especially unfitting affliction of growing deafness. Russell sees the frankly unhappy but fundamentally decent Beethoven, tough and persistent in the face of so many ironic, heartbreaking diminishments, as a model of behavior for contemporary persons. It is this focus that enables him to make his play relevant and moving, not just a staged biography of generally known facts or an exercise in victimology. But even so, as with most plays of this sort, the work is inescapably a vehicle. The writing rises or falls with the performance of the single actor on stage. Happily enough, Bradley Miller has a field day in the part. Equally adept at expressing sorrow or rage, irony or tender affection , he holds the audience in the palm of his hand for the full two hours. His is the kind of performance that actually deserves the standing ovation so routinely given these days. The director Patricia Miller also merits praise for the brisk pacing of the piece, and the energetic way she has the star move about the stage as mood and topic vary. The lighting by Casey Long is distinguished as
well. Passages of general exposition are spoken with full lighting, meditative
moments in relative darkness, and moments of ferocious rage underscored
with a liberal use of red. Any potential for audience fatigue at lengthy
speaking by a single character is here also skillfully avoided. All in
all, this is a fine production that should be seen.
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ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER When Mozart first heard 16-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven play the piano in Vienna, he remarked to friends, "Keep your eyes on him - someday, he will make a noise in the world." Beethoven did indeed make a very large noise in the world of music. Yet the cruel irony of his life was that his loss of hearing -- moderate in his late 20s, total at 50 -- made it even more difficult for this towering genius to connect with others. Here was one of the world's greatest composers, unable to hear his own creations. This tragic aspect of Beethoven's life is at the center of Ronald Russell's dramatic one-man play "Beethoven: Heaven's Voice." In its world premiere at the Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills, "Beethoven" is a compelling portrait of a man who viewed himself not just as a musician and composer, but as a revolutionary whose concepts of music would upend the established order. And because the story is told by Beethoven himself, the play is a self-portrait. We're at Beethoven's home in Vienna in 1826. The great composer is near the end of his life. His deafness has enveloped him, isolating him from his fellow man. As the play begins, he receives a visit from his friend Holtz. In cleaning his belongings, Beethoven has found a letter he had written to his one and only true love, his "immortal beloved." He reads part of it to Holtz. He attempts to converse, but, frustrated, barks at his friend, "You know I can't read lips!" Beethoven relates all of his latest news to his friend, including the recovery of his nephew Karl, "the son I never had," from an attempted suicide by gunshot. "Fate can deal unwieldy blows," he says heavily, and soon he's recounting his life's story, from his birth into a family of musicians in Bonn, Germany, to his musical triumphs in Vienna, where he's heralded as a pianist whose performing style is so extraordinarily powerful that women in his audience routinely faint. Russell's dense script packs an entire history book's worth of information about Beethoven into a brief space - under two hours - and offers a soundtrack with excerpts from nearly 20 of the composer's greatest sonatas and, in the second act, his great symphonies. Beethoven lived during a pivotal point in world history, and he chose to use his music to express his overarching ideas regarding not just music but society, politics, philosophy and, most important to him, religion and man's relationship with God. Bradley Miller, a likable and skilled actor, would seem an odd choice for the role...Yet, Miller pulls off this portrayal, if only through sheer force of will. He has mastered Russell's heavy text... Seated behind the small clavichord onstage, he mimics Beethoven's excerpted performances of several of his piano pieces, creating the illusion that he's actually playing. In later scenes, where the composer conducts his own works for orchestra, Miller appears lost in the emotions of the moment. Perhaps Miller's greatest accomplishment is his expression of the deep sorrow and grief that overcame Beethoven in his final years. ..."Beethoven: Heaven's Voice"
plays in repertory with another fine Chance production, of the rare Gilbert
and Sullivan operetta "The Gondoliers." Like that staging, also
a period piece, this one features a finely atmospheric set by Oanh Nguyen
- in this case, suitably gloomy - and good period costuming for Miller,
provided by the Fullerton Civic Light Opera Company.
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OC WEEKLY When it comes to drama, Ludwig van Beethoven was the ultimate one-man show. For all his public calamities—alcoholic father, miserable love life, bad health, fickle patrons, hassles with his nephew Karl, his own rotten personality and above all his deafness—the real crises in his world were private. In life, he was the quintessential loner. In culture, he was—if you believe Paul Johnson in "The Birth of the Modern"—the first modern artist: he "established and popularized the notion of the artist as universal genius . . . as a kind of intermediary between God and Man." Just put him on a stage by himself, and you’ve got an orchestra pit full of dramatic opportunities. At least that’s what The Chance Theater and director Patricia Miller are hoping for with their production of Ronald Russell’s "Beethoven: Heaven’s Voice". Russell has done a respectable job of culling Beethoven’s written words and crafting them into a rough biographical arc, underscoring key points with a running chronology of his music (the soundtrack to the man’s life, naturally)... As Beethoven, Bradley Miller’s wig is way too tame and he looks too healthy for 1826, but his command of Romantic-era vernacular is almost volcanic (even when he trips over himself). Beethoven was supremely full of himself but also bemused by his power over others, and Miller’s rants nail both personalities... As in the biopic "Immortal Beloved", Russell takes the license of establishing the identity of Beethoven’s mystery lover, hammering away at the phrase "immortal beloved" a few times too many... But false notes like these are mostly few and far between.
The real tenor of the play is echoed in the shiny black-and-white keys
on Beethoven’s keyboard. Aside from conjecture about the identity
of the "beloved," the play is a fairly literal chronology of
the composer’s life. Classical music breeds idolatry the way swamps
breed mosquitoes, so the play’s religious title is cause for suspicion.
When you see Beethoven’s study—a phalanx of churchlike windows
with rainbow backlighting—you know you’re in a place of worship.
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