St. Louis Eats and Drinks With Joe and Ann Pollack

A Few Thoughts

"Spring can really hang you up the most," wrote Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf, and "Younger than springtime," said Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. We're solidly into the season now, with flowers budding and weeds sprouting, and there's a great deal going on to interest readers of St. Louis Eats.

For example -- we found a couple of dynamite desserts in Webster Groves recently. We like to go out for a drink and a snack of some sort, either sweet as in dessert or savory as in pizza, to accompany a drink, maybe alcoholic, maybe a fancy coffee or tea, and therefore we appreciate places that are open late enough for a post-theater stop. We like Sasha's, both on DeMun and on Shaw, and we like Atlas, and the Good Pie on Olive street. But we were dazzled at Cyrano's and at Robust, a mile or two apart on Lockwood avenue.

Carolyn Downs, an owner of Cyrano's with her husband, Charlie, has been an outstanding pastry chef at numerous restaurants for many years, and her recent triumph on our taste buds may be the simplest yet. How complicated can chocolate-covered bacon be?

Thick, nicely smoky bacon and extremely dark chocolate, but what a treat on the tongue.

The over-the-top joy at Robust was described as a special, but if other customers reacted the way we did, it should be a regular by now. Anyone with a sweet tooth just goes belly-up at the thought of bread pudding that begins with two doughnuts, one cake-style and one--hang onto your belt--glazed. The sweetness was under excellent control, the whole thing absolutely succulent, causing us to paraphrase George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" song, "It Ain't Necessarily So," into "Little doughnut was small but oh, my. . . ."

* * * *

The incipient passing of Atlas, the brilliant bistro by Jean (out front) and Michael (in the kitchen) Donnelly is a sad moment for those who appreciated its simple, beautifully prepared dishes and warm atmosphere. Bryan Carr will be taking over, which may be very good news if he can keep the CWE spot purring like he has done in Clayton.

* * * *

An interesting move on the Missouri wine scene begins next winter. For some 25 years, the Missouri Wine and Grape Board, as efficient as most bureaucratic organizations, has run a three- or four-day wine affair, the Midwest Grape & Wine Conference, at a Lake of the Ozarks hotel. There have been seminars, lectures, dinners and speeches organized around a trade show for the wine industry and those who support it, and are supported by it.

Most of the Missouri winemakers and winery owners showed up to gossip and swap stories and show off their wines. There was good fellowship and a lot to drink, and some good stories to write in the days when the Post-Dispatch was a real newspaper and covered a lot of events, even some not connected to baseball spring training. One of my favorite memories was meeting a couple of veterinarians from from Oklahoma who made wine on the side under the Dos Okies label, a splendid, geographical, bilingual pun with a beer reference

I've not attended for many years for a number of reasons.

But for 2011, the conference is being taken over by a magazine, Vineyard and Winery Management, which has considerable experience in running trade shows for the wine industry. Its headquarters are in Santa Rosa, Calif., the county seat of Sonoma County, and if you want an advance clue on the purpose of the partnership, well, the magazine also runs the Tasting Room Profitability Conference and Trade Show, which it considers a "similar event."

The first item on the magazine's agenda was to move the conference from the lake, a pleasant, scenic and relaxing site even in mid-winter, to beautiful downtown St. Charles and the St. Charles Convention Center. It will be held Feb. 5-7, and its press release announcement noted that its new location will provide "easy access from all Midwestern wine regions and accommodate a 50 percent expansion of the trade show (120 vendors).

See you there. . . .

-Joe

2010 Farmers' Markets

Farmers markets are one of the best things to happen to St. Louis eaters since the invention of the ice cream cone. We've decided to keep a schedule of the area's markets at the top of St. Louis Eats. We hope this will make it an easy reference for both you and us. As we learn firm dates on more markets, we'll keep it updated through the season. So far, this is where and when to shop:

Carondelet Farmers Market South Public Market lot,

7700 S. Broadway

Saturdays, June 12 - October, 7 a.m.-noon

 

Clayton Farmers Market

8282 Forsyth Ave. (Straubs parking lot), Clayton

Saturdays May 22-October 30, 8:30 a.m.-noon  

Downtown Farmers Market

Old Post Office Plaza, Locust Street, 8th to 9th Streets

Thursdays beginning June 3, 4 p.m.-7 p.m.

Ellisville Farmers Market

Bluebird Park, 225 Kiefer Creek Rd., Ellisville

Thursdays May 13 through mid-October, 4 p.m.-7 p.m.

Father Tolton Center City Greens Farmers Market

1018 Baden Ave.

Fridays and the second Saturday of the month, 9 a.m. - noon

 Ferguson Farmers Market

20 S. Florissant Rd., Ferguson

Saturdays, May 1 through October, 8 a.m.-noon

Kirkwood Farmers Market

150 E. Argonne, Kirkwood

daily beginning April 1   

Maplewood Farmers Market,

7260 Southwest Ave at Manchester (Schlafly Bottleworks parking lot), Maplewood

Wednesdays beginning  April 7, 4 p.m.-7 p.m.

Midtown Center City Greens Farmers Market

1202 S. Boyle

Thurs & Fri., noon-6 p.m., first Saturdays of the month, 8:30 - 11:30 a.m.

North City Farmers Market

14th & St. Louis Ave.

Saturdays, 9 a.m. - noon June 6-Oct.3

Overland Farmers Market

2500 Woodson Rd., Overland

Saturdays May 8 - October 30, 8 a.m.-2 p.m.  

Tower Grove Park Farmers' Market

Tower Grove Park just west of the Pool Pavillion

Saturdays May 8 - October 23, 8:30 a.m. - 12:30 p. m.

Warson Woods Farmers' Market

10001 Manchester Rd., Warson Woods

Tuesdays June - October, 3 p.m.-7 p.m.

Washington University School of Medicine

Euclid Avenue & Children's Place by Barnes & Noble

Thursdays 11 a.m.-5 p.m. through October

Webster Groves Farmers Market

South Old Orchard Ave.

Thursdays June 3-Oct. 14, 3 p.m.-7 p.m.

Wildwood Farmers' Market

Town Center Plaza Off Mo. Hwy 100

Saturdays May 15 - October 9, 8 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Five Guys Named Moe

Two-tone wingtip shoes were only the beginning. The flash and dash that make "Five Guys Named Moe" a joyous evening extended from there through the costumes to lights and set, gained momentum from Charles Creath's talented quartet and rolled through the evening with six talented performers and the vibrant music and lyrics of Louis Jordan.

The musical, a Black Rep production that opened at the Grandel Theatre last night to run through April 25, pays homage to one of the first black composers of popular music to hit white music charts as well as black ones. Jordan's "jump style" also set the stage for looser forms of jazz that evolved into rock and roll.

Ron Himes' direction is smooth and easy; Charles Creath, as always, is a musical director with a splendid sound (he's on keyboard, with Jo-El Williams on sax, Jeffrey Anderson on bass and Leon King on drums) and Lazette Rayford-O'Brien did fine work with the choreography, pushing experienced dancers like Drummond Crenshaw, Sean Walton and Gary E. Vincent, making things a little easier for the others.

Daryl Harris' costumes were a real bright spot, the men in glorious color -- Crenshaw (Four-Eyed Moe) in bright green shirt and bright blue trousers, Vincent (No Moe) in orange and tan, Walton (Little Moe) in blue and green, Horace E. Smith (Big Moe) in burgundy and purple, Herman Gordon (Eat Moe) in purple and dark red and Anthony Tarvin Jr. (Nomax) in basic black. They came out for Act II in white shirts with collars and cuffs that matched the slacks and shoes, and later donned white tuxedo jackets with colored lapels. They were dazzling.

The plot is slender; the opening has a resemblance to "The Drowsy Chaperone," with Nomax drinking and listening to a radio (Linda Kennedy is the vintage d.j.). Chris Pickart's set matches the 1930s art deco table model with a huge one as a backdrop, and the Moes come through to do some good works on Nomax, who has been dumped by a girl friend, and to entertain him and us at the same time.

The men sing well together, showing some fine harmonies, and they all get a chance to set the pace in a Jordan classic. Vincent does a lively tap number that he choreographed to "Reet, Petite and Gone," then comes back with "Messy Bessie" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens," in which Crenshaw has a glorious supporting role. Tarvin, a standout in his professional debut, scores with "Safe, Sane and Single" and "Early in the Morning (And I ain't Got Nothin' But the Blues)," and the ebullient Crenshaw has a hit duet with Gordon in "Pettin' and Pokin'." The ensemble charms in "Saturday Night Fish Fry," "Choo-Choo Ch-Boogie," "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?" and other Jordan hits of long, long ago. I saw "Moe" on Broadway in 1992, and the Black Rep production is every bit as good. It provides lots of fun, and proof to the younger generation that some of us older types also had good music on our radios.

A Black Rep production, through April 25, at the Grandel Theatre

-Joe

Chloe

If sex sells, as some maintain, "Chloe" should be a real blockbuster of a movie. The slick tale of a woman who hires a "professional escort" to do a little chick-check of her husband's fidelity stars Julianne Moore as the jealous wife, Liam Neeson as her flirtatious husband, Max Thieriot as their son and Amanda Seyfried as the harlot from Hell.

Of course, the French did it first, which detracts from some of the plot and some of the box office prospects.

Anne Fontaine, credited as a co-writer with Amanda Cressida Wilson on "Chloe," directed "Nathalie" in 2003, with Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant as husband and wife, Emmanuelle Beart as the hired interloper.

Atom Egoyan, who directs the remake, keeps it moving rapidly, and when the story threatens to slow down, there's always a bout of sex to pick up the pace a little.

The movie opens with a warning for all husbands: If you're supposed to be at home on your birthday, be there. When David (Neeson) supposedly misses his plane and leaves a large number of guests hanging around his fancy Toronto living room, drinking his liquor, eating his food and waiting to surprise him, Catherine (Moore) becomes suspicious that he is philandering.

Rather than hire Philip Marlowe or Guy Noir, Catherine lets her own predilections get in the way after she meets Chloe (Seyfried) in a chance encounter in a restaurant rest room. Chloe works as an escort. Sex is extra, like fancy hubcaps or monogrammed cuffs. Seyfried certainly is lovely and sexy, with rosebud lips, a come-hither look in her eyes, blonde hair and more curves than Highway 94 between Weldon Springs and Augusta.

Catherine wants more than a yes-or-no answer about a bedroom rendezvous. She wants a full play-by-play description of the encounter, including a full statistical analysis. If Chloe and David were playing golf, she would demand to know the number of strokes and the size of the clubs. If they were playing baseball, she'd insist on learning the weight of the bat and the speed of the fast ball. Chloe picks up this little game rapidly, and we're off. There's a great deal of sexual activity and a great deal of talking about it by Catherine and David while Chloe sits around and poses provocatively.

The acting is generally good by all hands, though Seyfried overdoes it from time to time. There's also interesting work from Thieriot, who finds himself in an awkward position. The ending, unfortunately, is far too pat and easy, as if Egoyan and the writers could not find a better way out and finally threw up their hands and turned off the camera.

Opens today at several theaters.

-Joe

Greenberg

Ben Stiller is a talented actor. Noah Baumbach ("The Squid and the Whale") is a talented writer and director. But the two of them now have combined to create one of the most disagreeable, unpleasant and irritating leading men I've ever seen. I don't walk out on movies or plays. It's my job to see them and write about them. But I came awfully close to standing up, telling Stiller and Baumbach what they could do with their movie--all 107 minutes of it--and leaving.

"Greenberg" is the movie, which opens today. Roger Greenberg is the name of the character played by Stiller. He has returned to smoggy, grubby, unglamorous Los Angeles after 15 years in New York, with a nervous breakdown along the way.

So why does he feel he should give me one?

Greenberg, yet to accomplish anything in his own life, is rude, arrogant, pompous and also has a lot of bad qualities. He is staying in the luxurious Hollywood home of his brother (Chris Messina), who is off to Asia with his family for a lengthy vacation.

Greenberg reconnects with his old friend, Ivan (nice work by Rhys Ifans) and with a former girl friend, Beth (the lovely Jennifer Jason Leigh, Baumbach's wife, credited with the original story), who married and divorced while Greenberg was in New York. And he connects with Florence (Greta Gerwig), his brother's personal assistant who provides help with the various vagaries of house-sitting. Florence is a nice person, a little unsure of herself, who has a bad habit of hopping in and out of bed with men she doesn't really like.

So what gives him the right to play the tyrant, to criticize and berate her?

Baumbach obviously is providing a dissertation on loneliness, on Los Angeles, on interaction among people.

So what gives him the right to flaunt all this unpleasantness--and more to the point--to bore me?

Opens today at the Tivoli

-Joe

Dressel's Public House

Lives there a soul so dead as to say no to a hot, freshly-fried potato chip? Particularly when it's accompanied by a glass of an appropriate chilled beverage, be it beer, sparkling wine or even a diet Dr. Pepper? There's something particularly addictive about them, and a heaping basket, all golden-brown and crisp at the edges, accompanied by a drink of choice is impossible to resist for many folks—including us. And we're especially fond of those at Dressel's in the Central West End, where Jon Dressel, poet, bon vivant and fan of everything Welsh, has stepped, aside in favor of son Ben.

If we needed an excuse for a visit, there's also a new dining room, non-smoking, to the south, with a view of the passing parade on Euclid Avenue. The remodeling also involved a larger kitchen and new rest rooms. The dining room feels very different, with Ben's surfboard hanging as a piece of what might be called athletic-performance art and a photo of him atop it as proof. Yes, surfing. In Wales. On its west coast. Heck, Ann knows someone who scuba dives there. No one in the dining room is about to call you "dude," but the chips, the right mixture of crisp and chjewy, deserve to be termed "rad." The bar remains cozy to the extreme, with lots of drawings of composers and authors, and the oval bar with long-timer Mustachioed John behind it.

While those chips do as a first course for many, there are other meal-starters, some as formal as duck confit on potato-bacon-scallion pancakes with a gingery cherry chutney, others as casual as a riff on the ploughman's lunch theme. The duck was nice enough, but the potato pancake charmed, lots of flavor frolicking around, although we were surprised in a Welsh pub to see scallions rather than leeks, the leek being to Wales what the shamrock is to Ireland. The ploughman's, described as a banger and cheese plate, had a house-made sausage (a banger being the UK slang for a particular common sausage), coarse-ground and moist. While it had one of the two marks of real bangerliness, being markedly underseasoned relative to its kinfolk of other lands, it lacked the heavy dose of breadcrumb filler that marks an authentic banger. This latter, however, is a not-unwelcome concession to American tastes.

The bangers, potato pancake and chutney reappear, this time together, as a main course. And the house's tradition of not only a daily stockpot, some sort of a thick stew, chowder, burgoo, or such, goes on; we had a side of a dense southwestern vegetable soup, but it's primarily done as an entree. Hamburgers, of course, a very respectable half-pound version of the pub burger, but it suffers from being served on brioche. Brioche is a very fine sort of bread, certainly, but it's too sweet and too fragile to pair up with something as gutsy as a hamburger should be. The lamburger, here called a "5" burger served with a Stilton (blue) cheese smear on top, was juicy as all getout, another dish that should be a good gateway for the lamb-reluctant.

Shepherd's pie, an old British Isles dish, is basically meat and gravy topped with mashed potatoes. Dressel's does it with lamb, which is much more traditional, and adds turnips to the potatoes—neeps and tatties, says the menu, using the Scottish phrase. The meat-to-starch ratio is about even or even leaning slightly toward the starch, which points out that this dish was originally a frugal housewife's friend.

A friend succumbed to an order of oysters and chips, and chose well; the oysters weren't overcooked, and were nicely briny. The Asian slaw alongside with ginger and sesame provided a good contrast. Meatloaf was a special one night, and a large slab arrived grilled, which is how it was re-heated. And that worked surprisingly well, the loaf turning crispy at the edges but retaining its juices, some mushrooms on top waving merrily and the first-rate mashed potatoes underneath.

We were also very pleased with the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich with two kinds of cheese and some meaty back bacon that's cured in-house. Toasted ciabatta was the base for this, and it worked well, soaking up the juice from the tomato and holding the melting cheddar and blue cheese. An excellent sandwich.

Desserts were mixed. Bread pudding was too heavy and deeply unexciting. The only flaw in service on a couple of visits was when a young server enthusiastically explained chess pie as an old English dish (it's from the American South). Chess pie, a chocolate version on this particular night, is sweet, dense and gooey, rather like pecan pie without the pecans. The crust was good, and the filling rather like eating a candy bar, which Joe found quite appealing while Ann was less impressed.

Potables are a real draw here, with whiskies and beers of great variety and a better-than-passable wine list. The draft cider is excellent (far better than the bottled ones) and properly dry to accompany most of the food. Beer styles suit every palate and preference.

Dressel's

419 N. Euclid Ave.

314-361-1060

http://wwwldresselspublichouse.com

Lunch and Dinner daily

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Use dining room door

Smoking: Yes

Entrees and sandwiches: $8-$17

 

This Week's Wine March 24, 2010

Robert Craig stood behind a makeshift table at Grapevine Wines, the Kirkwood wine retailer and, like every winemaker I've met, talked about his wines as if they were his children.

"I've always liked wines that went well with food," he said, lifting a bottle and pouring the deep garnet wine into a glass. "That's why I named this one 'Affinity,' because it goes so well with dinner, and it's made to be ready rather early in its life."

The 2006 Affinity, a classic Bordeaux blend, is a year or so away from being a superior wine; it's an extremely enjoyable companion to dinner today but will improve dramatically and deserves another year of aging in the bottle. It's 76 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, one percent above the minimum for using the name of its primary grape, and three more Bordeaux grapes, Merlot (13 percent), Cabernet Franc (6) and Petite Verdot (5) round out the blend. Retail is about $50, and well worth it. The wine is rich, with deep berry and black fruit notes and a touch of coffee in the finish. The grapes are sourced from Craig's vineyard, shown below, just south of Stag's Leap. Merlot softens and adds roundness to the Cabernet Sauvignon while Cab Franc and Petite Verdot bring brightness and spice.

Craig has been a Napa vintner for many years, with his own vineyard on Howell Mountain established in 1992 and producing Cabernets since 1995. He was deeply involved with the Hess Collection, Spring Mountain and Mount Veeder in the 1980s before going out on his own.

Craig also had two other delicious, expensive '06 Cabs on display, one from Howell Mountain in a vineyard at 2300 feet, the other from classic Mt. Veeder, a few hundred feet lower. Both wines are deep in color, with many layers of flavor and long, loving finishes.

Howell Mountain (about $80) is 84 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 12 percent Merlot and 4 percent Cabernet Franc, unfiltered and unfined, which adds to the richness and body. Mt. Veeder (about $70) is an 81-19 mixture of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot; the higher percentage of the latter grape makes it a little softer, and there's a hint of cocoa in the later stages. Both wines need additional aging, maybe two years in a corner of the basement or a dining room closet, but they will reward a drinker's patience.

The 2008 Chardonnay is from the Durell vineyard, close to the Carneros region at the southern end of Napa County. Lots of citrus and melon aroma and flavor, and a nice hit of mineral toward the end. A very good Chardonnay, at about $50 retail.

OTHER TASTINGS -- A couple of elegant Sauignon Blancs reached the tasting table recently, providing delightful companions to seafood. Joseph Phelps, a consistently superior Napa Valley producer, offered a 2008 Sauvignon Blanc (about $30) that had wonderful mineral qualities and a lovely honeydew aroma. Light, crisp and delicious. Dry Creek Vineyard, from Sonoma County, has a slightly different variety of the Sauvignon Blanc called Sauvignon Musque, from the Taylor Vineyard (about $25). It has more complexity than other Sauvignon Blancs I've tasted, and a great deal of citrus on the palate. It's splendid. Prices, by the way, are approximate retail.

Argentina contributes some excellent red wines at lower prices, primarily from Malbec grapes. The Alamos label is used by the Catena family, based in Mendoza, and its 2008 Malbec (about $13) is hearty, with blackberry and plum notes in a deeply colored wine with a long finish. This wine is perfect with pizza or pasta.

-Joe

Cusanelli's

There aren't many St. Louis restaurants that have been around as long as Cusanelli's, a traditional Italian spot of the sort that once lived on a large number of street corners throughout the city, but it's an extremely low-key spot and one of the few establishments that seems to be thriving in a far-south neighborhood with more than its share of "for lease" signs. The location has been a restaurant and tavern for centuries, and Ulysses H. Grant supposedly left an unpaid bar tab--apparently not a great surprise--when he departed for the Civil War. The author Washington Irving stopped for 19th-century refreshment, too, at least according to a resident historian. Cusanelli's looks the way it has for generations, an unremarkable two-story white building at the corner of Lemay Ferry and Bayless Roads. It came to mind one day when we were looking for an early dinner before a visit to the Ivory Theater, less than 10 minutes away.

“This place hasn't changed in 30 years,” remarked a fellow a couple of tables away, just before he ordered fried chicken. Well, it had been longer than that for one of us. They've redecorated in the intervening years, and things seemed more casual than they once were. There was a faint memory of white tablecloths at one time.

There are two dining rooms, one near the bar, with smoking, and another, larger, across the entrance hall, plus a rear dining room that was occupied by a festive group, growing rapidly and arriving with gifts. Most of the employees we saw were quite young, with a sprinkling of more experienced types. All were amiable, keeping their pleasant affect as the dining room rapidly filled with diners, all of whom seemed to be folks who'd visited often in the past. Several barely glanced at the menu before ordering.

A house specialty is pizza, reminding us of the days when it wasn't unusual for a restaurant to announce PIZZA STEAK CHICKEN in its ads, the way the old Cusanelli's did in the rotogravure sections for the Cardinals and what then was called the Municipal Opera. And, well, if a restaurant can promote flatbread with toppings for a first course, why not a pizza for a first course? And, yes, a large; who can have too much left over cold pizza for a weekend breakfast? Cusanelli's Deluxe features sausage from its own recipe, onions, bacon, pepperoni and mushrooms, and it was a treat, heavy with a variety of charcuterie, piping hot and nicely spiced. Someone in the kitchen really cares. Relatively light on the cheese, with a thin--but not cracker-thin--crust and cut in the traditional squares, it's a little different than its cousins around town, but quite delicious. The sausage is a little lighter on the fennel than some recipes and that makes for a better balance of flavors.

Then came their dinner salad, old fashioned iceberg lettuce, pale tomato, a little red onion and grated cheese, just the thing for a blue cheese dressing the way it would have been umpty-ump years ago. Things were fresh, including the small croutons, but rather an ordinary, if satisfactory, salad.

This seems to have been The Year of the Fish Fry, and all the talk about local Lenten food made us think of the old St. Louis favorite, jack salmon, known in some other places as whiting. Ann's particularly fond of it, and having pretty much grown up in a fish-free zone, was quite proud when, as a kid, she became adept at boning jack salmon at the old Forum Cafeteria without sending the fish or anything else on the table a-flying. Of course Cusanelli's has jack salmon. And it arrived....boned. Yes, breaded and cooked, and then boned in the kitchen and sent out that way, with the requested side of cavatelli with red sauce. The fish was fine, not overcooked, with a nice crispy crust perfectly browned, although it cooled far too quickly because of its evisceration. The cavatelli retained a fair texture, and the sweetly traditional tomato sauce was just what one would expect.

 
Once upon a time, filet mignon was the dish to have here, and on this night, it felt that way, too. The 8-ounce filet had been rubbed with some peppery seasoning and cooked to rare, as ordered; clearly, this is a kitchen that understands “rare.” The beef had good flavor for a filet, even beyond the rub, and it put to shame some of the more expensive pieces of meat we've had over the years—not all, to be sure, but some. We asked for the mushrooms and brown gravy promised by the menu to be served on the side. The same large sliced mushrooms as populated the pizza arrived, and a small dish of gravy that tasted of beef broth cubes, something that didn't do credit to the good beef. There was a throw-back feeling to watching foil-wrapped baked potatoes go by, a tactic we thought certainly had not survived the 20th century. We chose fries which were okay, but unremarkable.

We saw a number of plates of good-looking fried chicken in passage, and a chap behind us raved about it to the server. The wine list is unremarkable, but the pours of the house offerings are old-style generous, almost to the top of the glass. A slice of apple pie finished things up. It was fresh and warmed, but could have come off the shelf at the A&P grocery store that once was a few blocks up the street.

Cusanelli's

705 Lemay Ferry Rd., Lemay

314-631-7686

Dinner nightly

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Good

Smoking: Yes

Entrees: $8-$20

The Fantasticks

All the superlatives about "The Fantasticks" have been written, and they're all true. In the 50 years since it opened off Broadway, there has not been a night when a production was not playing somewhere in the world. I can't count how many times I've seen it, but the first time included Jerry Orbach in the role of El Gallo. I was charmed then, and I was charmed by the Rep's production last night at the Loretto-Hilton Center, and I've been charmed--at least a little--by every production in between.

The Tom Jones (book and lyrics) and Harvey Schmidt (lyrics) masterpiece will run through April 11, closing the Rep's 2009-2010 season; it's a delightful, bright, beautiful evening of theater, directed wonderfully by Victoria Bussert, well-sung and acted by the entire cast, which generously yielded the best laughter to Joneal Joplin in his 90th Rep show, on a set imaginatively designed in a three-dimensional format by Gary M. English.

It marked the end of 38 seasons at the Rep for Joplin, and his first appearance, in a 1972 production of "Of Mice and Men," coincidentally was my first theater criticism for the Post-Dispatch.

The teenagers who fall in love (Stella Heath and Cory Michael Smith), involve a girl who pleads, "Please, God, don't let me be normal," and a boy who is a perfect adolescent doofus. Their fathers (his, Dan Sharkey; hers, Scott Schafer) argue over gardening techniques, hire a professional kidnapper and amateur philosopher, El Gallo (Brian Sutherland) to plan a crime and take a dive. He adds a pair of clowns posing as aged actors, Henry (Joplin) and Mortimer (John Woodson), who bring a glorious touch of slapstick and physical comedy.

The entire play is overseen by a mute sprite (Sara M. Bruner) who carries out the oxymoron of being a non-speaking narrator while running up and down English's ladders, hanging the moon (and the sun, too) and carrying on all sorts of necessary tasks with smiles, grins, downcast looks, a wrinkly nose and all the necessary expressions. She's terrific.

So is the rest of the cast. Heath shows off a fine soprano voice, and all the youthful insecurities. Smith is a bit less vocally impressive, but he demonstrates a perfect attitude and proof that the girl is right when she tells him girls mature earlier than boys. Sharkey and Schafer are physical contrasts who charm in a duet that may have been the first musical theater song to champion the virtues--at least some of them--of vegetables.

Joplin and Woodson, gussied up to the nines by the imaginative costume designer Dorothy Marshall English, provide more humor than is usual in the play. Interestingly, they seem to be the only actors who have a costume change (Heath doffs her boots in favor of ballet slippers, but that doesn't really count), and much of the time, it appears that they have merely added a few more layers of non-matching clothing, adding to the laughter they bring to the stage. Peter Sargent's lighting added to the magic of the production.

And then there's Sutherland, as the black-clad El Gallo. Sporting a dapper little mustache, he's a triumph for casting director Rich Cole and director Bussert. He's excellent, with a wry wit and wonderfully low-key performance, almost off-hand at times and yet always persuasive and with impressive timing. But his affect, to me, is that of the "aw, shucks" hero of all the B movies of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. It's absolutely perfect casting, and that type of work is one of the things that makes the Rep special as it winds down another season with a brilliant finale.

"The Fantasticks," a Repertory Theatre of St. Louis production at the Loretto-Hilton Center through April 11.

-Joe

The Art of the Steal

The continuing story of the Barnes Foundation is a tragedy, one of many in America when the rich and powerful, using expensive p.r. firms and lots of money, manage to weaken the rule of law and the rights of property for those less well-endowed, all the while claiming to be acting for the benefit of the people. Don Argott's documentary, "The Art of the Steal," is an excellent film that was, unfortunately, unable to do more than show what happened.

I was fortunate enough to visit the Barnes some years ago. Founded in 1922, it was a fabulous collection of modern art, tucked away in a Philadelphia suburb, with odd hours. It belonged to Lincoln University, a predominantly black college, left by the will of Dr. Albert C. Barnes, who made millions with his discoveries of patent medicines like Argyrol and spent millions on art, buying up hundreds of works by Matisse, Picasso, Seurat, Renoir, Van Gogh and others and hanging them in an almost random manner, one painting practically on top of its neighbor. He always was solidly anti-establishment, considering those people to be phonies, cheats and liars. Before he died he wrote a will that kept his collection intact and away from the people he despised.

Some 70 years later, as the 20th century turned into the 21st, some of Philadelphia's rich and powerful, like the leaders of the Pew and Annenberg foundations, decided that moving the Barnes collection to downtown would make the city's "Museum Row" more glamorous and bring more tourists and conventions to the city, more plaudits and power to them.

It took a lot of work, but because the Barnes board lacked the resources of those who wanted the art, neighborhoods were re-zoned, laws were rewritten, Lincoln U. leaders were bought out or otherwise seduced while those who fought to keep the museum where Dr. Barnes wanted it were demonized. The Pew group even convinced the Internal Revenue Service to change its status to legalize what it was doing and lessen its tax bill at the same time. Walter Annenberg, who made his money with the Daily Racing Form and whose name is atop the USC school of journalism, then left his art collection to the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York.

Argott has allowed his villains to be hoist on their own petards, with comments from the Philly mayor (John Street) and the Pennsylvania governor (Ed Rendell), along with interviews with people like Richard Glanton, who bragged, "I brought the Barnes out of the Dark Ages," though most of the movers and shakers refused to be interviewed. Those who fought and argued for maintaining the status quo included art critics (Christopher Knight of the L.A. Times), art historians (John Anderson), museum directors (Colin Bailey of the Frick Collection), the furious Nick Tinari, once an art student at the Barnes, now an attorney, and many of the Barnes neighbors in the quiet little suburb of Lower Merion.

For many viewers, the film will be a slight disappointment because it is not a tour of the collection, which is in the process of being stored for removal to a new space downtown, but there are some old views which give some idea of its strange beauty and the idiosyncratic mind of Dr. Barnes. But Argott's point and the film's strength lies in its warnings.

Opens today at the Tivoli.

-Joe