There are few kinks to work out in BRO’s fine ‘Preservation’
–by Dean Johnson/Music Review | Boston Herald |10/03/98

“Preservation,” a two-act rock opera by the Boston Rock Opera Company
at Tower Auditorium, Mass. College of Art,
Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 17.

Human nature never changes, and the proof is in the Boston Rock Opera company’s production of Kinks frontman Ray Davies’ “Preservation.”

Until this week, “Preservation” hadn’t been performed in its entirety since the Kinks last performed it in 1974. But the piece, dubbed “a morality play” by its author, is in many ways more contemporary now than when it was written.

A onetime honorable man (Mr. Flash) has become a corrupt businessman and politician who is opposed by the superpious Mr. Black, who favors mind control to legislate his own particular brand of morality. As the two forces clash, the little people are caught in the middle.

The setting is the imaginary Village. It might as well be Washington, D.C. Everyman is portrayed by the Tramp, the only one who makes any real sense. He watches all the madness without getting involved and ultimately is the only one to escape with wits and integrity intact. Because the production hasn’t been performed in nearly a quarter of a century, the only real precedent for the BRO are the two “Preservation” albums recorded by the Kinks.

The group is true to the spirit of Davies’ original music — so true that the Tramp (Peter Moore) and Flash (Mick Maldonado) sound uncannily like Davies in places.

Moore plays the Tramp with a carefree, loose-limbed grace a little reminiscent of the Scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz,” while Maldonado’s Flash is a wonderfully unctuous soul, in part, perhaps, because Davies has said Flash has more of him than any other character in the production.

Other standouts are Brian Gottesman as an insidious Mr. Black and Letters to Cleo singer Kay Hanley, who vamped it up as Flash’s girlfriend Belle.

Though Thursday’s opening performance had its share of technical glitches (dead mikes, missed lighting cues, unbalanced singers-vs.-band sound levels), it was an fun night, especially for Kinks fans.

Davies’ original tunes range from feisty pop and raging rock to English dance hall ditties, with a little country and western thrown in. The music, particularly ensemble numbers such as “Here Comes Flash,” “He’s Evil” and “Money Talks,” holds up well. And “Sweet Lady Genevieve” is as wistful and sweet as anything he’s written.

Jane Bulger’s choreography and Eleanor Ramsay’s direction add enough action and visual appeal to flesh out the story. But like any opera, the music carries the real message.

Even Davies, who took in last Sunday’s dress rehearsal, was impressed. His response to seeing his onetime pet project brought to life onstage for the first time in nearly 25 years:

“It was worth the wait.”

Who are we to disagree?

(c) 1998 The Boston Herald

‘Preservation’- minded:
Boston Rock Opera gets its Kinks by reviving a piece of music history

— by Dean Johnson Boston Herald: 10/01/98

Could there be anything more terrifying for a small theater group than seeing the renowned author of the work you’re performing show up at an early dress rehearsal?

It happened to the Boston Rock Opera company Sunday. The 5-year-old nonprofit group was prepping for Friday’s debut of the Kinks’ rock opera “Preservation,” when Kinks front man Ray Davies popped into the Tower Auditorium at the Massachusetts College of Art to check out the production.

The 23 cast members — including Letters to Cleo lead singer Kay Hanley — “were freaked out,” according to BRO producer and director Eleanor Ramsay. “Some of the people in the cast are big Kinks fans,” Ramsay said, “so they were really nervous. Having the author there, no matter who it is, is pretty nerve-racking.”

They needn’t have worried. The next morning Davis had nothing but kind words for the cast.

“It’s a very energetically and dynamically presented production,” he said. “They did a grand job.” In this case, there was good reason for a little extra pressure — and Davies’ interest.

“Preservation” has never been performed in its entirety since the Kinks toured with it in 1974. Hollywood, European companies, supposedly even Ray’s brother Dave, the Kinks’ lead guitarist, have all asked to do it over the years, but Davies shot them all down. Until now. The BRC staged a portion of “Preservation” five years ago and began a dialogue with Davies. “I’ve known about this company’s work for several years,” Davies said, “and they’ve been very persistent in trying to get ‘Preservation’ put on properly, and they believe in the piece.”

“I encouraged them to do it,” he said, “because I feel they have a genuine affinity for the piece and its music, and though I’m not that involved with it, I’ve given them my blessing to do the production as they see fit.”

The work, which Davies called “a documentary myth,” is replete with corrupt politicians on one side, the extreme religious right on the other, and the little people caught in the cross fire. “What I found interesting is that it parallels so many contemporary situations,” Davies said. “My politicians are kind of extreme good or bad, and it resonates in so many ways with things happening today that I hope,” he quipped, “this is a step towards resurrecting this every time an election comes around. It should be treated as a kind of fairy tale and a hard-edge documentary.”

Meanwhile, hard-core Kinks fans are treating this production as one of the highlights of the end of the century. According to Ramsay, the BRO has been contacted by folks from Germany, England, Venezuela and the West Coast, all determined to take in the production. Like traditional opera, there is no dialogue. Ramsay admitted that she dropped five songs from the original work as well as passages and verses in other songs. But Davies didn’t complain and even offered more editing that the group just couldn’t fit in with its imposing deadline.

“Eleanor’s choice was to let the music speak without too much explanation,” he said. “I found that if you’re attentive and listen, like any opera if you don’t speak its language, you still get the gist of what it’s about. I was amazed at how much text is really in the music. “It’s actually rekindled interest in the work,” he said. “You tend to leave things behind, but this project has reminded me that I was writing something more than a rock album when I made it.”

The two albums that make up the complete opera, “Preservation Act I” and “Preservation Act II,” have recently been released with bonus tracks on the Velvel label. Though Davies is finishing off a choral piece because of a premiere in England next month and a full-fledged stage production, “Come Dancing,” being readied for the London stage next year, he isn’t ready to say the Kinks are finished. “I’d love the band to play again,” he said. “It’s such a great band. But I only want to do shows and records because we have good new music. I don’t want to appease people who want to see old hits. I think the band has to be alive and play new music to work, and we’ll decide all that next year.”

The BRO’s production of “Preservation” could also stretch into next year. Though the Boston run is slated to end Oct. 17, Ramsay said there are discussions of bringing it first to New York and then to London. It could even be part of the prestigious Edinburgh fest next summer.

If Kinks fans are beside themselves because “Preservation” is coming to life again, Ramsay may have more good news for them in the future. She’s already considering taking on the Kinks’ “Soap Opera” for the BRO.

The Boston Rock Opera’s production of “Preservation” will be staged tomorrow, Saturday, Oct. 9, 10, 16 and 17 at Tower Auditorium in the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets: $10-$15. Call (617) 423-NEXT.

(c) 1998 The Boston Herald

Music Reviews The Boston Phoenix : October 8 – 15, 1998

Boston Rock Opera: Preservation Acts
— Jonathan Perry

Longing for a mythologized past and contempt for a morally bankrupt present have always been dual preoccupations at the heart of songwriter Ray Davies’s work with the Kinks. Nearly a decade before he wrote his two-part dystopian nightmare of political corruption and greed dubbed Preservation Acts 1 and 2, Davies chronicled class hypocrisy and the unsavory secret impulses of the teetotaling bloke next door in “A Well Respected Man.” Then, six months later, he released the playful, life-of-leisure ditty “Sunny Afternoon.”

For its 1998-’99 season opener, Boston Rock Opera is presenting, for the first time, both acts of the Preservation saga in a version that throws Davies’s lifetime obsessions under the stage lights in lavish fashion. This production, which kicked off last weekend, will run the next pair of Friday and Saturday nights (October 9 and 10, 16 and 17) at the Massachusetts College of Art’s Tower Auditorium. Davies himself was so pleased with BRO’s 1993 production of Act 2 that he consulted with the group’s co-founders, Mick Maldonado (who plays the corrupt real-estate baron Mr. Flash and is the new production’s music director) and Eleanor Ramsay (producer, director, set design), on the new script and dropped by the rehearsals.

If a special press performance of the rock musical a week ago Thursday provided any indication of what’s in store, Davies has to be grinning. Not only has BRO’s production done satisfying, faithful justice to his darkly brilliant vision, in some ways it outshines the original albums. As grandly ambitious as they were, save for a smattering of classic and should-be classic songs, Acts 1 and 2 were, on album at lleast, ultimately uneven projects — inferior to works like 1969’s The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, which served as the blueprint for a subsequent Davies rock opera. In BRO’s hands, the songs, dialogue, and characters leap from dusty obscurity to vivid, three-dimensional life, at once funny and sad and tragic, with all Davies’s original intentions intact.

A dynamic cast of more than two dozen actors, dancers, musicians, and behind-the-scenes personnel expertly deliver the tale of an epic battle between Good and Evil and how it’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference. Maldonado is perfect as the thuggish Mr. Flash, who takes control of the Village and turns it into his own “vulgar playground.” In truth it’s kind of hard not to root for the unscrupulous degenerate who eventually gets his comeuppance, since (1) you can see that the supposedly righteous leader-in-waiting, Mr. Black (played with fascistic Moral Majority glee by Brian Gottesman), is a very bad dude who’s probably a lot more dangerous than the more obviously crooked Flash, and (2) Flash and his henchman throw a better party thanks to the fantastic eight-piece band led by Matt Thorsen. Plus, Flash has Letters to Cleo’s Kay Hanley (Belle) on his arm — that is, until he gets caught sharing some bubbly with one of the floozies.

The unwitting center of this apocalyptic storm-a-brewing is the Tramp — who’s essentially Ray Davies. The Tramp vacillates between just wanting to be left alone to sit “in the midday sun” and lamenting a world of selfishness where “nobody gives anymore.” Expertly played by Count Zero’s Peter Moore, he doesn’t want to have to choose between Flash and Black, since either way he and everybody else in the Village get screwed (i.e., turned into mindless zombies à la A Clockwork Orange). In other words, to cop a line from one of Davies’s rock-opera-writing contemporaries, “Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss.”

(c) 1998 The Boston Phoenix

Boston Globe: Living | Arts
Davies in the wings for ‘Preservation’

By Jim Sullivan, Globe Staff, 10/02/98 | The Boston Globe Online | Boston.com

Ray Davies, singer-songwriter for the Kinks, wrote the pair of conceptual albums ”Preservation Act 1” and ”Preservation Act 2” a quarter-century ago. The Middle Ages of rock ‘n’ roll, if you will. So, go ahead: Blow the dust off the old RCA records, or better still, pick up the re-releases on Velvel with bonus tracks. Some good tunes, but maybe it’s all a trifle dated …

A ”reform” politician, who is himself clandestinely corrupt, is challenging a glib leader who has long been morally bankrupt for the control of ”the Village,” once a happy little spot now gone to rot. The common people’s lot? To be doormats and pawns. The politicians’ ultimate aim? To line their own pockets and zombify the public. There are moments of hope and some brilliant melodies at work, but it’s a persuasively cynical and cyclical work, one that does not portend well for the people.

Which would make ”Preservation” about as topical as today’s paper.

Davies, on the phone from New York, references not the political travails in the United States, but what has happened in his native England. ”I was the most depressed person,” he says, about Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair’s coming to power, taking over from the conservative John Major. ”There will always be a new Tony Blair or somebody, a Mr. Right coming in and turning out the same as everybody else.”

”Preservation” has long been a favorite of Boston Rock Opera co-founders Mick Maldonado and Eleanor Ramsay. The group staged a one-night-only performance of ”Act 2,” which is where most of the ”action” happens, in 1993 at the Middle East in Cambridge. The company will be kicking up an expanded, revamped ”Preservation” (both acts) for six nights, Fridays and Saturdays, at the Tower Auditorium, Mass. College of Art, eleanor1 Huntington Ave., beginning tonight at 8:30. Maldonado has the lead as the venal Mr. Flash; Brian Gottesman is the so-called reformer Mr. Black; Letters to Cleo singer Kay Hanley plays a floozy named Belle. It’s directed by Jane Bulger and Ramsay.

”I went up to see Eleanor a few times when I was in Boston,” says Davies, who generally splits his at-home time between New York and London, ”and gave her my blessing because it’s good she’s got the energy to keep going with it. I stopped by to see a staging last weekend, and I was quite impressed with what they were doing. But it’s their production. Not to be confused with me doing a Pete Townshend.”

Ramsay says some cast members’ hearts skipped beats when they found out Davies was going to catch a rough run-through. ”He had some very constructive comments,” Ramsay says. ”Ray was filled with ideas – there were some changes, and he encouraged us to go with some ideas we had but were unsure of.”

”I think I tuck myself away,” says Davies, of his on-set presence. ”I’ve been in these situations before and it is difficult to have the person who wrote the piece there. But after a while they’re so concerned with what they’re doing it’s difficult to think about what the author thinks. They’re stuck in the middle of it and they’re on their own journey.”

Davies pooh-poohs his contributions – ”I can’t compliment the musical performance highly enough” – noting, with a chuckle, that he was primarily concerned that Maldonado wasn’t making the dastardly Mr. Flash evil enough. He was pleased that the show had been sufficiently ”de-Kinked,” and he also tweaked the ending a bit.

The Kinks toured the United States only once behind ”Preservation,” in 1974, and did a just a weekend of shows at a London theater.

A second story, one that rides alongside the political theme, says Davies, is the tale of ”Preservation”’s Tramp, the everyman/observer who is ”an alcoholic, a beggar, really. It’s also one man’s struggle to get his life together. I love the element of somebody trying to do some personal or trival things against this big backdrop. The parallel is that the things that bring Flash down are there in [the Tramp’s] personal life.”

Davies, dubbed by some as the godfather of Britpop for his influence upon Blur, Pulp, and Oasis, is the master of writing about flawed characters, with many of the songs being self-critical.

Davies says the problem with staging ”Preservation” is that 1) it wasn’t written for the stage, and 2) was in fact written under pressure. The Kinks’ recording contract, the band’s commitment to deliver new music, forced Davies to move ”Preservation” along the pipeline faster than he would have liked. Some of the linking segments, he suggest, need work. At the time, he says, ”I didn’t have much time to sit around, do workshops, and get fancy directors in. You just have to put the thing up and go out.”

What Davies has gleaned from the rock opera group’s rehearsal is this: ”I was amazed how the music carries the story.”

This story ran on page D12 of the Boston Globe on 10/02/98. © Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

Boston Globe: Living | Arts
STAGE REVIEW
‘Preservation’ is packed with powerBy Jim Sullivan, Globe Staff, 10/05/98 | The Boston Globe Online | Boston.com

IIt has been Boston Rock Opera’s mission, since its 1993 inception, to dust off, kick up, give respect to, and sometimes tweak the rock operas and story-songs of the past, such as ”Jesus Christ Superstar,” the Who’s ”A Quick One While’s He’s Away,” the Beatles’ ”Sgt. Pepper.” The company held a one-off performance of the Kinks’ ”Preservation Act 2” at the Middle East its first year. And it’s back with the full-blown ”Preservation” – a slightly edited composite of Acts 1 and 2 – at Tower Auditorium at Mass. College of Art. (Composer Ray Davies consulted with director Eleanor Ramsay and contributed several ”author’s notes.”)

The stage is mostly spare – three towers, four-tiered steps – and pretty much has to be to accompany the ever-swirling singers and dancers coursing through. It is directed by Jane Bulger and Ramsay, who with Mick Maldonado is Boston Rock Opera’s co-founder.

It’s a busy two hours of rockin’ theater. Glamour, greed, political scheming, science gone too far, socialism gone awry, and absolute power doing what it tends to do. At the start, the suave, yet brutal and duplicitous Mr. Flash (Maldonado) presides over the ”village.” Ah, but discontent is brewing. An everyman called the Tramp, a semidrunken sage played regally by Peter Moore, is our tour guide. Flash is challenged by the Mephisto-like smoothie, Mr. Black (Brian Gottesman), who gives lip service to creating a class-free society, but links up with the Vicar (Marty Barrett) and the Do-Gooders to stamp out smut, invoke censorship, and clamp down on personal freedom. With the aid of the Mad Scientist (spindly-legged Jim McKay), he turns Flash and the rest of the village into zombies. One by one, the townfolk pass through an arch and are jolted with a ray of brain-draining radiation. Flash’s girlfriend, the floosie-with-a-heart-of-gold Belle (Kay Hanley), goes kicking and screaming – and emerges zombified. Only the Tramp escapes. Poor Mr. Flash. After breaking down, proclaiming ”I’m everything that I once despised,” and recovering a semblance of humanity, Flash gets zapped. Cruel world. The shell-of-Flash and Mr. Black lead the new coalition government.

Thematically, ”Preservation” is one of Davies’s best works – both broad and intimate, politically savvy and righteously pessimistic. Everything sounds glorious – major chords rip from the eight-piece band, walloping crescendos abound, singers get to tear into their roles – but that’s just Davies’s way of writing uplifting songs about dire situations. Rottenness consumes this village and taints its hapless people. Davies warns of the pressure to conform; he touts the plight of the often-trampled common man; he believes politicians have only power and their pocketbooks in mind. Davies hammers away at the right-wingers; he zings the lying lefties.

”Preservation” is packed with strong songs. ”He’s Evil,” sung at each other by the warring Black and Flash camps, was brilliant. The Tramp’s cynical history lesson, ”Nobody Gives,” was dynamic – Moore ended the song in a ball on the floor, stomped by Flash’s men. Flash and Belle’s swan song, ”Nothing Lasts Forever,” brought a tear. The finale, the faux-triumphant ”Salvation Road,” is a joy to behold. Everyone except Mr. Black believes they’re marching off into a merry future.

There is a lot of action in this production, as with any BRO event. On stage, it’s a hurly-burly populated not just by the politicos but by schoolgirls, ”do-gooders,” henchmen, workers, businessmen. It seems like a cast of thousands (23, in fact) and it takes some work to keep everyone straight. Occasionally the miking was erratic. The first act is a rather long table-setter – most of the drama, conflict, and best songs come in the second act. But, taken either bit by bit or as a whole, ”Preservation” is a delight. It’s a mess out there in the village, but it sure feels good in the audience.

This story ran on page B06 of the Boston Globe on 10/05/98. © Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.