Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 22

22 Section 1 Chicago Tribune. Friday. November 23. 1990 OVERNIGHT Collin INC In 'God's spine-tingling tale spoiled by overkill Austrian cellist makes the most of Bach suites m. "''r ivl'n By John von Rhein Music critic The number of major cellists who devote entire programs to the six unaccompanied Bach cello suites cannot be much higher than the number of works in the canon.

These are considered difficult works for both performers and listeners, although it must be said that the pedantic kind of reading that some modern cellists bring to these scores has done little to offset their reputation for being dry, intellectual exercises of more theoretical than practical interest. Heinrich Schiff, who devoted his recital Wednesday night in Orchestra Hall to three of the suites, is well prepared to argue convincingly on behalf of this music as music. He is a modem musician, and he performs Bach on a mod- Music By Sid Smith Entertainment writer "God's Country," now at Interplay, begins with a quietly chilling, candlelit ritual centered around the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. That patriotic touch, however, is a bit misplaced. The candleholders are neo Nazis, and Stephen Dietz's drama plunges the viewer into the midst of an actual white supremacist ceremony by an organization that, from its Pacific Northwest base, conducted one of the largest crime sprees in U.S.

history, robbing banks and murdering innocents, all in an effort to wipe out any non-Aryan residents. Members of the group eventually were convicted and their ringleader, Robert Jay Mathews, was killed during a government raid of his island hideout But the hatred goes on, and among the facts related in the drama is the acquittal of a related organization in Arkansas. "God's Country" is a highly presentational stage play that includes trial testimony, long stretches of narrative and dramatic enactment to chronicle the to Thought police Josh Hoyt, president of the Citizens Utility Board, had to cut his "you-can-fight-Comm-Ed" speech short at a senior citizens center when the power went out Clerkfest Aid. William Krystyniak's name is being tossed around as a possible City Clerk candidate instead of Aid. Joe Kotlarz.

Does the Southwest Side want to keep its piece of the City Hall pie? Busy Monday Will House Speaker Mike Madigan and new County Board President Dick Phelan, who haven't been the closest of chums, find common ground in Senate President Phil Rock's office on Monday? Davis data Even some of Danny Davis' friends wonder if he was maneuvered into running for mayor. "He can be gullible," said one longtime associate who thinks Davis' effort "is too little too late." He and others think Davis may have been pushed by African-American candidates who need a "black fig leaf' for their own contests. On the plus side: Davis is considered such a nice guy that allies of Rich Daley, such as Aid. Luis Gutierrez, say they would have a tougher time attacking Danny than someone like Eugene Pincham or Gus Savage. In the wards Anne Sheridan, who ran scheduling for Sen.

Paul Simon's campaign, will manage Ed Eisendrath's re-election race in the 43rd Ward. Is former Aid. John Buchanan, who once lost to Ed Vrdolyak but then made peace with him, running for his old seat as the Fast One's candidate? Watch to see if Rich Daley appoints Joe Moore to fill David Orr's 49th Ward seat Committeeman Lee Preston wants someone else. But Daley is courting all those Independent Dems along the Lake. They like Orr.

And Orr wants Moore. Turner, Tuners, teens Ted Turkey's, er, Turner's, first feature film will costar Ellen Burstyn, Glenne Headley and Kelly McGillis in "The Awakening" a 3 0 deeds and expound on the beliefs of this Tribune pnoto oy CnucK Barman Combining intellectual curiosity with a complete mastery of the cello, Heinrich Schiff performs three Bach suites in a recital at Orchestra Hall. very sick, very frightening social substrata. The group had a hand in the 1984 Theater 'God's Country' A drama by Steven DM2, directed by David Partcovich. Performing at Interplay, 1935 S.

Halated St, at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday, through Dee. 14. Length of performance, 2:20.

Ticket! are $14. Phone ern instrument. He makes, in other words, no half-hearted stabs at "authenticity." For Schiff the essential challenge is to recreate this music for today's listeners with a thorough sense of historical awareness. And he succeeds wonderfully well. It was cellist Pablo Casals whose performances and recording in the early years of the century resurrected this music long considered unplayable and established it in the repertory.

But Casals' readings, for all their inimitable insights, are the product of a romantic sensibility: They tell us more about Casals than about Bach. No cellist today can escape Casals' influence, just as no cellist should be bound by it The great thing about Schiff is that his Bach playing combines intellectual curiosity with a complete mastery of the cello both technically and as a medium of deep expressive feeling. His tone is warm and full but he varies it with such a range of nuance, articulation and. rhythmic freedom that monotony never sets in. The Austrian cellist is not one to allow empty virtuosity and personal mannerism to obscure musical truth.

It is an approach that reaches to the heart of each score and communicates its eloquence directly to the receptive listener. No. 6 seemed uncommonly fresh with their buoyant and springy rhythms. Still, it is in the preludes and saraban-des that Bach allows a cellist the greatest opportunity to let his re-creative imagination roam freely. In the C-Major Prelude Schiff, with his enormous dynamic range, produced string-crossings so sonorous that his instrument seemed to possess four more strings than normal.

All four sarabandes boasted a grave nobility, marvelously sustained. Scholars believe Bach's Suite No. 6 was intended for a five-stringed instrument, which explains why it employs a higher register than the preceding suites. Here both Schiff and his audience lost a degree of concentration, and the musical results paled accordingly. The cellist suffered sups of intonation in the difficult string-crossings of the Prelude and also lost steam in the Gigue.

But these were minor blemishes in an evening of richly satisfying Bach. SchifFs program held the solo suites No. 2 in Minor (BWV 1008), No. 3 in Major (BWV 1009) and No. 6 in Major (BWV 1012).

It was a short program by normal recital standards, but long on musical satisfaction. In performances of this stature, one could but marvel at the inexhaustible invention Bach poured into the suites. Schiff was obviously aware of stylistic imperatives but he never carried that awareness to pedantic extremes. His phrasing often simulated the minute swells of the Baroque bow. Yet his observance of repeats was dictated by content and balance, not dutiful didacticism.

The cellist was particularly alert to the dance impetus that informed most of these 21 movements. His allemandes and courantes moved with an irresistible joie de vivre. The drone effect of the gigue in the Third Suite was forcefully projected. The familiar bourrees of BWV 1009 and twin gavottes of Suite title that'll no doubt be changed to avoid confusion with "Awakenings," the Robin Williams film directed by Penny Marshall. An artistic team from New Tuners Theatre, in the Soviet Union to oversee a production of "Charlie's Oasis Museum and Bar," is probably the only Chicago theatrical group to boast a Turner blessing from the Archbishop of Siberia.

Not a lot of those going around these days, huh? Teen dream: You can catch the Wham! reunion (Andrew Rideely and 'Shogun: The Musical' missing the regal touch murder of disc jockey Alan Berg, whose incendiary Denver talk show frequently included long sessions on the white supremacy movement. Dietz offers Berg as a main character, portrayed on the air in his station and later as a ghostly commentator. We also learn of the group's almost incredible armed robberies; of their relationships with their wives and families and how their insidious beliefs are woven into the fabric of community life; and of their bizarre methods and rituals, including nightly flashlight forages though graveyards by the wives, gathering the names of dead infants to provide the men with aliases. At times spine-tingling stuff, "God's Country" is also a bit much. As if convinced that a straightforward documentary might make things too easy, Dietz has packed his tale with too much information and too many shifts in time and sequence.

The actual series of crimes and their courtroom exposition get lost amidst the other material, including ad- ditional rituals within the organization and soliloquies by residents representing (' different social reactions to this scary phenomenon a hapless farmer, for ex- ample, whose economic plight is changed by a group of these people, strangers to him at the time. There's an extraordinary amount of fact and paranoid fiction expounded upon, everything from lengthy details about victim Berg's personal life to the zealots' twisted beliefs of a Jewish con-, spiracy, dating, it is explained, all the way back to the machinations of in- George Michael, oh totally awesome) if you can et yourseu aown to kio oe Janeiro in late January for the 10-day Rock In Rio festival. Also on the Theater bill: Guns Roses, New Kids on the Block, Billy Idol, Ziggy Marley and David Lee Roth. By Frank Rich New York Times News Service NEW YORK Had actor Philip CasnofT not been beaned by a falling slab of scenery at a press preview last week, "Shogun: The Musical might have been best remembered as the first Broadway musical extravaganza to beguile an audience with a song about a sexual toy. But CasnofT accident and his speedy recovery upstaged all else in the show and justly so.

Casnoff is something. "Shogun," with or without sexual toys, is something else. I was at the fateful preview in which the actor was abruptly knocked flat, bringing screams from the audience and causing the immediate suspension of the show. When I returned to the Marquis Theater a few days later to see the complete second act, I was struck not only by Casnoff physical resilience but also by a remarkable change in his performance. Before he was injured, CasnofT, a gifted young New York actor little known outside the profession, was giving a dutiful but hardly stellar performance well sung, agile, bland in the role of John fans of its James Clavell source, "Shogun: The Novel," or perhaps by viewers of "Shogun: The Mini-Series" or even wearers of "Shogun: The T-shirt." "Shogun" aficionados will presumably experience the stage version as a progression of recognizable tableaux inspired by a sacred text Of the 30-odd other musical numbers composed by Paul Chihara for "Shogun," few are memorable except "Karma, this show's inevitable if ludicrous opening number, and a ballad titled "Bom to Be Together" that, between its constant repetition and its orchestration by the Andrew Doyd Webber arranger David Cul-len, might as well be piped in from "Aspects of Love" around the corner.

Given its poverty in other departments, "Shogun" is the kind of show at which it is de rigueur to praise the physical production if only because that's where the big budget was most conspicuously spent. Patricia Zipprodt, a costume designer second to none, has indeed done beautiful work, turning out enough kimonos and other more extravagant ceremonial robes to make the silkworm an endangered species. Blackthorne, the English sea captain who finds himself marooned in the civil war-torn Japan of 1598. After his recovery, Casnoff had the swaggering self-assurance of a star in complete command of a vast production. He was enjoying himself as he had not been before, and, of course, the audience was adoring him in return.

Had the actor's brush with a possibly career-ending injury inspired him to take a gutsier stance on stage? Had all the publicity attending the incident pumped up his ego, forcing him to behave like a big deal rather than like just another unsung New York actor who happened to land a large part in a forgettable show? Whatever the explanation, Casnoffs accident, painful and terrifying as it must have been, can be seen from the vantage point of its happy ending as the biggest break of his career. And if that's not show biz, what is? As for the rest of "Shogun: The Musical," I suspect it is best appreciated by dustrialist Henry Ford. But there's simply too much, and some of the more melodramatic moments are drenched in overkill one Nazi ritual would probably be more than enough. Interplay's troupe and director David Perkovich, however, do an excellent job delivering Dietz's script, tackling its many shifts and characters with efficient, committed craftsmanship. The write Stuff On Tuesday, Chris Moore was just a guy waiting tables in a Cambria, restaurant On Wednesday, he was a millionaire after Hollywood Pictures paid $1 million for his as-yet-unpublished novel, "Practical Demon-Keeping." The moral of the story: Start writing.

Ad-ing and subtracting WLS-AM was one of the radio stations carrying advertising for the Illinois State Lottery "was being the operative word here. One explanation for why they aren't any more is that Lottery Director Sharon Sharp took a particularly caustic hit from one of WLS' feisty hosts, and Sharp acknowledges, "I know one of those people was being pretty hard on the Lottery." But a spokeswoman for Bozell Jacobs, which handles the Lottery account, said (in the language of adspeak) that WLS "didnt trend the way we wanted in terms of effectiveness and efficiency based on budgets." It didnt have anything to do with a negative blast at the Lottery? "Well," said the adwoman, "We do try to stay away from advertising on controversial stations." Political file Anti-abortion activists are making noises about disrupting Dick Phelan's inauguration festivities. And speaking of Phelan: Sen. Alan Dixon is holding a fundraiser at the Monocle in Washington, D.C., Nov. 28.

Word is that Dixon wants to raise some big money early just in case Phelan decides to challenge the senator in 1992. Some of Paul Simon's staffers who went off the Senate payroll to work for his campaign have been told they won't get their jobs back. INCIings Friday birthdays: Maxwell Caulfield, 30; Steve Landesberg, 45; Tom Joyner, 41. Saturday birthday: Tony Fitzpatrick, 32. For those who have been wondering: The state's flags have been at half-staff in honor of Myron Weil, the former head of the Tollway Authority.

OK, we get it that Elizabeth Taylor is pretty famous and that people might buy a perfume just because her name is on it And well grant that the name Cher might sell a few ounces as well A Herb Alpert signature fragrance we never could figure out, and now we're just real puzzled as to why anybody would buy a perfume called "Moments" just because Priscilla Presley put her name on it But she has and people will. Is this a great country, or what? NEWSMAKERS direction on the major streets that snake around the capital, and at one speed slow authorities decided this week to try out a novel concept: Two-way traffic. Not a bad day at the fjord Algot Hansen hooked a couple of Per Ungs the other day. The unemployed Norwegian was fishing in a fjord near Oslo when he reeled in two bronze statues, valued at $17,000, by prominent Norwegian artist Per Ung. The statues had been stolen from an art exhibition, apparently were too hot to fence, so they were dumped, police told the NTB news agency.

Although his catch didn't feed Hansen's empty stomach, Mr. Ung provided a nice reward. Wyeth caught in the act "Who do you think you are, Andy Wyeth?" a cop says to a man sketching a picture of a dead squirrel on a road in front of a house. Of course he does. A full account of Wyeth's encounter with the law, and the artist's continuing relationship with model Helga Testorf, appears in December's Connoisseur magazine.

until Christmas, why trust the mail, kids? Advertising Age says a company called Faxnet has set up shop in selected stores across the country and will fax children's letters and wish lists to Santa. On thin ice Gold-medalist Brian Boitano has formed his own gentler and kinder performance troupe for post-Olympic figure skaters. Performing "21 times a week" in touring shows such as the Ice Capades "makes you lose everything that you ever loved about skating," Boitano told the Ft. Lauderdale News Sun Sentinel. "Those shows just kill you.

You're being killed every night by these skates that you used to love. You want to skate well every time, you want to entertain people, but with six shows a weekend, how can you? It's impossible." Rx: Plenty of bed rest In an interview with Egg magazine, actress Shirley MacLaine unscrambled what's been ailing her: "I'm fighting bronchitis. And so in the middle of one of my numbers, I find that I have a big wad between my nose and my throat, and I don't know what to do with it You can't choreograph a moment to blow your nose. We're creating so much with our minds these days. It's amazing.

Somebody was pressuring me in a personal situation. I couldn't say, 'Don't do this! to him for certain reasons, and I know that's how I got all backed up and came down with this bronchitis. On the road to progress In Bangkok, where cars move in one HERMAN The terror of Mayberry Andy Griffith, the just-plain-nice sheriff of Mayberry for almost a decade, is still struggling to clear up a misconception: Andy Taylor he is not. Griffith tells TV Guide that he once had a dream in which he pounded the daylights out of Deputy" Barney Fife. "It was so vivid," Griffith recalls.

"His head was just swinging there. I had people get rid of his body. Then I woke up, wet all over." Stock tips from Zsa Zsa "I know that it's terrible that he sold those junk bonds to little old ladies," said Zsa Zsa Gabor, a veteran trader in the commodities of insults and rich, powerful men, in speaking of convicted junk-bond king Michael Milken. Gabor says Milken, who faces 10 years in prison for violating securities laws, "should have tried to sell junk bonds to Mr. Charles Keating.

Then everybody would have been happy." Second-hand shoe sale Opening-night dresses, more than 70 pairs of shoes and furniture belonging to the late actress Ava Gardner have brought $680,300 in an auction at Sotheby's in London. The Hollywood star died at age 67 in January. Among the clothes were the pink sequined halter-neck dress Gardner wore to the opening of "The Barefoot Contessa" in Tokyo and a silk negligee and gown from "The Casssandra Crossing." The collection of shoes included shocking pink stilettos, ivory satin shoes with diamante buckles and lime green loafers. There was no word on whether Imclda Marcos participated in the bid- 0 And they're off AP Laaerphoto Broadway Bart: Bart Simpson made the Big Apple debuting at the 64th annual Macy's thanksgiving Day parade. Somehow it didn't make the horscra-cing pages of the sports section, but James and Lisa Machamer were declared the runaway winners of the "Des Moines Breeders Cup." Their purse: a $1,000 savings bond, a crib and six months of diaper service.

But the big payout is in nine months, of course. Jon Ililkevitch ding. Edging the competition With only about five weeks to go "Your last employer wants to know what you aia witn tne canteen money..