MAKE A SPLASH B5 GOODY GARLICK IN PRINT B3
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Inside & Outside
LIVE OPERA AT GUILD HALL B3 MORE THAN PHOTOS B5
THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2019
Theater
Looking Beyond the Facade
Music
Striking a Balance Between Foundation & Fearlessness The Slocan Ramblers bring bluegrass back to Sylvester Manor
Lyons stages “Reasons to Be Pretty” in Southampton BY MICHELLE TRAURING
N
eil LaBute’s “Reasons to Be Pretty” is the most challenging play Joan Lyons has ever directed. And that is precisely why she’s doing it. The playwright’s first and only to see Broadway, the hard-edged comedy can get nasty and uncomfortable, testing audience sympathy and allegiance as they watch the action unfold on stage, unbuttoning the strikingly complex characters for all their worth. With that comes a script that Lyons was not prepared for, she said. “I love LaBute, but I’ll tell you what I don’t appreciate: He has a very unique way of writing this show,” the director said. “He refers to it as the ‘uncommonness of common language,’ where people interrupt each other and they interject. It’s really hard for the actors to learn. They’re waiting for someone to cut them off, to interrupt them. And if that doesn’t happen, there’s a dangling end of the line.” But Lyons said she isn’t worried. Actors Jonathan Fogarty, Bethany Dellapolla, John Lovett and Bethany Trowbridge have handled the script with grace — as well as her direction — and will be ready for opening night on Friday, January 11, at the Southampton Cultural Center. “I like to just pull the whole thing apart and then put it back to together, and see what you come up with,” she said. “I think there’s definitely a richness of the characters that I didn’t expect to see, and that’s a tribute to my fine cast. There are nuances in the characters that we’ve pushed.” Lyons and her cast of four quickly realized there was more than met the surface of the contemporary play, which opens with Steph (Dellapolla) ripping into her longtime boyfriend, Greg (Fogarty) — who had remarked to his best friend and co-worker, Kent (Lovett) that he finds his girlfriend is “regular,” as compared to a recent hire at their company, but wouldn’t trade her for the world. The comment, without much context, makes its way back to Steph via her best friend, and Kent’s girlfriend,
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Frank Evans, Adrian Gross, Darryl Poulsen and Alastair Whitehead are the Slocan Ramblers.
T Bethany Trowbridge in “Reasons to Be Pretty.” dane dupuis photo
he same week Adrian Gross bought a mandolin, he met a beautiful woman. Almost 11 years later, they’ve both stuck around — she as his wife, and the mandolin as his sound in the now wildly popular bluegrass quartet, Slocan Ramblers. “I should know how long ago that was,” Gross said, his wife laughing in the background during a telephone interview from northern Quebec, where he was taking a break from the road with his family. “It all came together for me, almost as one thing.” A classically trained guitar player since age eight, the Montreal native’s pivot toward the mandolin was freeing, as he learned the instrument by ear. It was a window into oral music —
“music played without really over-thinking it and without any notes on a page,” he said — and he was hungry for it. He was hungry for bluegrass music, too, without even knowing it. “I wasn’t just diving into the mandolin, I was diving into learning music in a folk way — by ear and by feel,” he said. “It just fit for me, for some reason. It’s best to not over-think it.” Gross also fits with Frank Evans, Darryl Poulsen and Alistair Whitehead — who play banjo, guitar and double bass, respectively, as the Slocan Ramblers — and they will return to Shelter Island on Saturday, January 19, as an encore to their Sylvester Manor debut in April 2017. “It was a highlight, to be honest,” Gross said
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The Toronto-based band will come to Shelter Island on January 19.
courtesy photos
Art
A New Home for Keyes Gallery
A dream comes true for Julie Keyes with her new location, next to The American Hotel BY MICHELLE TRAURING
F
or every one person, there is another they avoid at all costs. Someone they brush off, push to voicemail or hide from in the supermarket. For American Hotel owner Theodore Conklin III, Julie Keyes is convinced that person was her. And she doesn’t blame him one bit. For the better part of nearly two decades, the art consultant barraged the Sag Harbor hotelier about his space next door, occupied by perfume retailer
Bond 9 since 2011 and, before that, a cigar shop — until now. As of Friday night, it officially became the home of her newest endeavor, Keyes Gallery. “Since 2000, I’ve wanted this space — it’s the most iconic, fantastic spot ever. I asked Ted about it every 15 minutes,” Keyes deadpanned before laughing mischievously, standing inside the 1,100-square-foot space on Main Street. “There have been moments where I’ve walked up to him and he has said, ‘Please, not now.’ It was like a bad mov-
ie. We all have someone we avoid, and I’m sure I was Ted’s.” Conklin eventually caved — “I descended upon him like fog,” Keyes said, “I wrote him emails, I sent him credit reports, I sent him recommendations” — and, as soon as she could, the gallerist immediately got to work. Last Wednesday, a crew of nine was busy painting, sewing, hanging and cleaning. They were putting up walls where they hadn’t been before, transforming the space into her vision for her first group show, “Rotating Blue Chip,”
MARCH 2018
MAGAZINE
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Julie Keyes in her new gallery space on Main Street.
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referring to art that is reliably profitable, no matter the economic climate. “Every time we do a show, we’re gonna change the gallery. We’ll have to repaint it,” she said. “If we do black-andwhite photos, we’ll repaint the gallery grey. I’m all in for making the space a big part of what we’re doing. The challenge is to take this historic building and make it able to show modern art as a complement, not as an arm wrestle. So there’s a lot of thought into the cura-
THE EXPRESS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
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PRETTY DELICIOUS Growing edible flowers can be good for your palate
Out of the ring at the Hampton Classic
TRAINING
WHY WOMEN LOVE ANTOINE
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HIGH TECH IN THE KITCHEN historic windows: what a view GONE OFF THE GRID THE MAGIC OF MADOO living with art the season ahead
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THE RESORT TOWN IS BOOMING, EVEN AS MOTHER NATURE PRESENTS A CHALLENGE
The Summer Book May 23
BLUEFISH DELISH I STIRRING THE POT I FARMER TO BAKER A DISTILLERY GROWS IN SAGAPONACK I THE WOMEN OF WINE
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Wind’s Way Home for Art Halsey’s Legacy Skolnick’s Vision Freetown Restoration
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