The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 75

Happy Thanksgiving, 1983 Akron Beacon Journal G3 NIGHTLIFE 1 Civic movie ght of The Bar After ni oomo Nightlife Mark Faris Civic Theatre manager Linda Stef-fancin had no intentions of competing with Sunday night's ABC-TV broadcast of The Day After. After all, the movie, about the destruction of the U. S. A. by nuclear war, was viewed by some 75 million people, and the Civic only holds about 2,600.

Still, Ms. Steffancin says she expected more than the 19 who did show up for the theater's offering of The Plymouth Adventure, a movie about the founding of our country. "I guess we bombed," says Ms. Steffancin. PULL OUT THE STOPPERS Hopefully, attendance will be better for The Main Event, the gala New Year's Eve bash scheduled for the Civic and Sarah's Deli (both places are on Main Street).

Since it was announced here last week, a menu for a gourmet buffet at the theater has been completed. It will include chicken Florio, tenderloin of beef bordelaise, shrimp Newburg, lin-guine with garlic-herb butter, fresh clams, wild rice with black mushrooms, champagne and, according to place in town.) With the failure of Issue 1, however, an elated Nemer says he's going full-speed ahead with plans to continue expanding the 53-year-old landmark which, during his six years as owner, has grown by some 1,500 square feet. The latest expansion expected to be complete within another week will add 500 square feet more and, hopefully, alleviate the necessity of locking out would-be customers for lack of room. Joe hates that. DIAMOND JUBILEE It didn't exactly hurt Neil Diamond's feelings when tickets to his Sunday, Dec.

18, appearance at the Coliseum sold out so quickly that two additional dates Monday and Tuesday were added. But Neil's used to it. According to publicists, such has been the case for just about every show he's done this year. Last June when he played the Forum in Los Angeles, for example, six additional dates had to be added. According to Coliseum officials, some tickets at $12.50 and $15 are still available for his Tuesday show.

For details, call 867-8910. Square celebration with a stereo simulcast by WKDD-FM. For a $15 ticket, you get hors d'oeuvres and music at Sarah's from 9 to 11 p.m. and a shuttle-bus ride to the Civic for the New Year's celebration. All drinks, except the dinner champagne, are extra.

Additionally, the Cascade Holiday Inn is offering a overnight package for people who just can't bring themselves to leave downtown. Better yet, Mayor-elect Tom Sawyer, no doubt anxious to get the new year off to a good start, also will be in attendance. For more information, call Sarah's at 253-5745 or the Civic at 535-3179. THE SUN ALSO RISES Considering the location of his saloon at East Exchange and Spicer just east of the University of Akron campus, Joe Nemer was a little concerned about the outcome of Issue 1 on the 8 ballot. Had it passed, the drinking age in Ohio would've been raised from 19 to 21, and Nemer figures he would've lost about 40 percent of his clientele at the Sun Grill.

(Joe calls it the hottest Sarah's Al Kerkian, "a whole mess of other stuff." The Main Exchange jazz ensemble will play in the theater lobby. And the Steve Summers Orchestra will play traditional dance music in the pit in front of the stage. Another jazz group, Mary Martin and the 9th Street Tuna Band, will be playing in Sarah's. According to Kerkian, the deal is this: For a $40 ticket, you get hors d'oeuvres and music at Sarah's from 8 to 9 p.m. and a shuttle-bus ride to the Civic for the buffet, dancing and wel-coming-in-the-new-year festivities, which also will include a Warner-Amex cable telecast of New York's Times iJ Neil Diamond REVIEW Polish composer's music elicits strong reaction 3 1 lit.

5 Si WMi'W fi mm i il Tommy Lee Jones (right) duels Grant Tilly in Nate and Hayes Is 'Nate and Hayes' adventure or burlesque Bill O'Connor By Donald Rosenberg Beacon Journal music critic As the 20th century has moved into its last quarter, composers increasingly have faced a crucial dilemma how to create music that says something new without emptying concert halls in the process. Numerous composers have set out to achieve such goals by looking backward instead of forward as they explore musical ideas. American composer George Rochberg, for example, began rejecting the most severe contemporary idioms, such as 12-tone techniques, in the 1960s, choosing instead to return to tonality (horror!) and even quote past masters in his works. Similarly, David Del Tredici (also an American) threw off the thorny serial style in which he long had been working to adopt more accessible means of composition. In his series of works based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Del Tredici has employed the most traditional of means in a highly colorful manner (his Final Alice has been the biggest orchestral hit of the last decade).

THE MOST striking example of a composer dissatisfied with his own development and the paths traveled by contemporary music in general may be Krzysztof Penderecki, the Polish composer. Penderecki (penderETSkee) emerged in the late 1950s as one of the most audacious composers of the day, a fact that will be demonstrated when the Cleveland Orchestra plays Pen-derecki's De natura sonoris No. 1 (1966) on Friday and Saturday nights at Severance Hall under the baton of resident conductor Yoel Levi. Penderecki's bold experiments with instrumental texture, notation and rhythm (un-guided by distinct pulse) earned him a reputation as Poland's avant-garde darling. In such works as Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960), Dies Irae (1966) and, most powerfully, the St.

Luke Passion (1965-66), Penderecki also showed himself to be an artist with an abiding social and religious conscience. By 1974, however, Pender- De natura sonoris No. 1 is done, the Cleveland program this weekend takes a most conservative turn. The remainder of the concert comprises Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.

i it's a program of "firsts" both fine works, but all too familiar. Just think how stimulating it would have been if De natura sonoris No. 1 had been followed by the Violin Concerto No. 1 or Cello Concerto No. 2 and then perhaps excerpts from the Polish Requiem or, fancy this, Paradise Lost.

Where Paradise Lost is concerned, in fact, there is a Cleveland connection. A few seasons ago, when the Geve-land Orchestra devoted an entire program to the music of Penderecki in its Great Composers of Our Time series, Penderecki was supposed to have conducted. But when the composer fell ill a few days before the concert, the Cleveland Orchestra's chorus director, Robert Page, took over the baton a logical choice, since he only recently had prepared the choruses for the premiere of Penderecki's Paradise Lost at Lyric Opera of Chicago. STILL, De natura sonoris No. 1 is available to anyone wishing to store these ideas for future comparison with later Penderecki works.

De natura sonoris, as its title states, explores the nature of sound through instrumental highs and lows, which are arranged in many imaginative orchestral fabrics and clusters and set apart by moments of equally intense, and disturbing, silence. Penderecki's unique way of arranging orchestral choirs and achieving stunning instrumental effects has been copied by many composers, though always with less success. The irony in all of this is that Penderecki himself no longer formulates his ideas as before. Can Penderecki be considered an artistic Dr. Jekyll-Mr.

Hyde? The answer is in the negative, for there's no doubt that he has exerted absolute control over both of his musical personalities. For information on the Cleveland Orchestra's concerts this weekend, see today's Weekend Guide, page GS. Krzysztof Penderecki ecki began to feel too restricted by the technical innovations he had worked so hard to devise. Though he already had employed traditional forms in a totally contemporary manner, the composer now set out to alter his style drastically, surprising just about everyone who thought this enfant terrible would continue to tread his daring path. THE SUBSEQUENT works that have flowed from Penderecki's pen largely have avoided the composer's previous advances in musical direction and notation.

Penderecki's new style might be termed neo-Ro-mantic, since harmony and melody are used rather traditionally, though distilled through the composer's ever inventive ear for orchestral sound. The Violin Concerto No. 1, written in 1976 and first played by Isaac Stern, is a lush, richly lyrical work not far removed from Mahler. His opera Paradise Lost, from 1978, employs bits of J. S.

Bach and Wagner in a highly organized, dramatic framework. Last year, Mstislav Rostro-povich gave the premiere of Penderecki's Cello Concerto No. 2, and the composer currently is completing a Polish Requiem. The Cleveland Orchestra program this week would have been a splendid opportunity to examine the two sides of Krzysztof Penderecki, for the contrasts are remarkable. In both modes of expression, Penderecki is a master builder whose music elicits strong reaction.

It's too bad, then, that once Listen to the story of Nate and Hayes. Bully Hayes (Tommy Lee Jones) is a pirate. A rogue. But he's one of those bad guys who has a sense of humor and his own code of honor. For example, he doesn't cheat an honest man.

Hayes dabbles in legitimate trade, too, and in that capacity, he ferries Nathaniel (Michael O'Keefe) and his fiance, Sophie (Jenny Seagrove) to a tropical island where they are to marry and where Nathaniel intends to take up missionary work. When Hayes leaves them there, the evil Ben Pease (Max Phipps), a slave trader, sacks the place, killing many, kidnapping Sophie. Hayes joins forces with the now angered Nate, and the two set out to rescue the fair Sophie. Sounds interesting. Right? But it's not.

THE FILM never catches fire, because as soon as anything starts to smolder, director Ferdinand Fairfax douses the fire. He does that because he violates a basic tenet of storytelling. We have to know what kind of story we're watching. Is this an adventure story, a comedy, a burlesque? Fairfax can't make up his mind. Hayes, for example, pan be in a fight to the death with a woman warrior, and he can quip, "Alone at last." In that atmosphere, we can't get too upset when somebody is shot, stabbed and otherwise treated shabbily.

On the other hand, it is difficult to laugh when people are being killed all over the place. It's obvious that Nate and Hayes attempts to cash in on the Raiders of the Lost Atk popularity. The tongue-in-cheek ap- proach to that movie worked. It doesn't work here. Jones is an appealing enough hero, although he seems at times to be a little-league James Garner.

O'Keefe's role is too cliched to allow him to do much. He has to be the nice guy who suddenly learns to drink, sword fight and kill. He does all of those things, tossing out quips like his mentor, Hayes. The mood that prevails in this movie is like that of the old comedy skits on TV variety shows. We watched while the participants deliberately tried to get each other out of character.

If Tim could break up Harvey or if Sonny could make Cher laugh, it was considered comedy. The skit existed only to allow them to mug. THE STORY was of no importance. Same thing here. Actually, the story is a pretty good one for an adventure movie.

But that story constantly is made fun of. The characters do not laugh with the whole business, as they did in Raiders. Instead, Fairfax has them mocking the story. The result is that we don't care much what happens, because we know we'll be laughed at for getting interested. "NATE AND HAYES" Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Michael O'Keefe, Max Phipos, Jenny Seagrove.

Running time, I hour, 40 minutes. Now paying at Akron Square Cinema, Loews State and Circle Mall Cinema theaters. Rating: PG parental guidance. RECREATION Hother Mature Holiday decorating courtesy of I Even though flowers and buds are not abundant in fall, nature provides other materials for creative decorating. A workshop at Quail Hollow State Park this weekend will show you how to use these things to make holiday adornments.

The presentation will be Friday from noon to 3 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. Long-time herbalists and natural crafts instructors Robert Klause and Kathi Rader will demonstrate how to use pine cones, grape vines, seed pods, dried flowers and seed heads to make decorations. Both teachers are volunteers at the King-wood Garden Center near Mansfield.

guided nature walk Sunday at 3 p.m. at Firestone Metropolitan Park, starting from the Tuscarawas shelter parking lot. This walk counts toward the hiking spree, which ends Wednesday. Naturalists are available for guiding classes and other groups of 20 or more. Call 867-5511 for information.

The Akron Metropolitan Parks Hiking Club plans a rugged, five-mile hike Sunday at 2:30 p.m., starting from the parking lot of the Boston Mills Ski Lodge, Riverview Road at Boston Mills Road. May be muddy. BIKING The Stark County Bicycle Club is sponsoring two League of American Wheelmen holiday patch rides Sunday at 2 p.m. Choose a 12-, or 25-mile ride; both start from Louisville High School on Nickelplate Road. The club also plans a 35-45-mile ride Saturday at 10 a.m.

from Kent State University Stark Campus on Frank Road. Call 1-455-6933. Meet and choose a distance and leader for each of these rides planned by the Akron Bicycle Club: Saturday, 10 a.m., from Turkeyfoot Lake State Park. Sunday, 10 a.m., from Mogadore High School. mission is free.

HIKING As a special service, the Metropolitan Park District office will be open the weekend of Dec. 3 and 4 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. to enable Summit County residents who have completed the Fall Hiking Spree to pick up their awards. Awards can also be picked up on weekdays during the same hours at the district office, 975 Treaty Line Road, Akron.

A late fee of $3 will be charged after Dec. 30, and no awards will be available after March 31. The district will sponsor a Each workshop participant will make a wreath to take home. A $7 materials fee will be charged on the day of each session. Quail Hollow is a mile north of Hartville off Congress Lake Road.

Register for Saturday's class by calling 1-877-6652. PARKS Rangers in the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area plan these events: Saturday, p.m., examine the rise and fall of Everett, the rural village that sprang up beside the Ohio and Erie Canal's Johnny cake Lock. Meet for slide show at Happy Days visitor center, on Ohio 303 between Ohio 8 and Peninsula, carpool to site. Saturday, p.m., join Geveland free-lance writer William Murmann for an armchair trip to the Cape Cod National Seashore. At Canal visitor center, on Canal Road a mile south of Roekside Road, Valley View.

Sunday, 2-4 p.m., explore' the landscape left exposed by fallen foliage. Meet at Ledges; picnic area parking lot, off Truxell Road between Ohio 8 and Akron-Peninsula Road. The Wilderness Center, 9877 Alabama Ave. S. W.

(a mile west of Wilmot off Ohio 250), will show the 55-minute documentary, The Year of the Wildebeest, Sunday at 2 p.m. Ad.