Journal Gazette from Mattoon, Illinois • Page 7

Wind in the Willows-istorms Britain National Theater I Ml Vjj Ghetto; and Ben Jonson's satire, of avarice, Volpone. said, he found adaptations more taxing than original-writing. "It's harder than not being constrained, especially with this book which everyone knows so well. It's like adapting the Gospels," he said. In a pre-performance lecture at the National, Bennett said the book was not part of his Yorkshire boyhood.

"It's a classic, and the nature of a classic is it's a book you think you've read when you probably haven't," he said. Other adaptations of the story abound. A 1985- Broadway musical, starring Nathan Lane, was a fast flop. Toad of Toad Hall, A. A.

Milne's 1929 version, remains a British perennial, even if Bennett and Hytner were after something sharper. "It's a bit 'twee' (precious)," Bennett said of the earlier version. "The theater's moved on a bit since." For this production. the Olivier stage barely stops moving. Mark Thompson's design makes full use of the theater's electric-powered drum revolve, which earns applause as it lifts up from al levels: as children's entertainment for Christmas, complete with hissable bad guys (the weasels); as a parable of repression, involving a quartet who need to finu themselves, both socially and sexually; and as an idyll linking the River Bank to such bucolic images from English literature as Shakespeare's Forest of Arden in As You Like It.

'The idea is that this is a book which (is) not just at the center of English nostalgia but (is) itself about English nostalgia," Hytner, 34, said, in an interview. "That nostalgia for the golden age, an English Arcadia, is something all Englishmen want to escape to." The director initiated the production in response to an offer to stage something at the National over the holidays. "Like many Englishmen, it was my favorite book from childhood," said Hytner, a judge's son from the northern English city of Manchester. "I wanted to do something at the National this Christmas which would be a treat, which wouldn't be mawkish or tragic or. violent or even a gently ironic attack on the way we live now." Besides Miss Saigon, the musical about a doomed love affair set in Vietnam, Hytner's other recent credits include Shakespeare's darkest play King Lear; the Holocaust drama, Spies and 40 Years On as well as television's Talking Heads, and such films as Prick Up Your Ears and A Private Function.

The director, Nicholas Hytner, moves frequently between theater and opera. He next goes to Broadway to direct Miss Saigon. The cast of 24 combines National Theater veterans such as Michael Bryant (Badger) and David Bamber (Mole) with popular British comic actors Griff Rhys Jones (Toad) and Richard Briers (Rat). The Finchley Children's Music Group, consisting of three groups of 10, play assorted field bunnies and squirrels. They appear prior to the intermission to sing the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter, one of the evening's more magical moments.

The show has sold out every performance so far and kept cash registers ringing with intermission sales of videos, T-shirts, postcards and other merchandise inspired by the characters in the story. The first day of bookings, Nov. 5, broke the theater's single-day box-office record, although publicist Nick Starr declined to give exact figures. Starr said the National" has not seen such public interest in a production since its production of the musical Guys and Dolls in 1982. The play itself works on sever By MATT WOLF 'Associated Press Writer LONDON On the stage where one expects the great -plays of Shakespeare, Chekhov and Arthur Miller, audiences instead are finding a mole, a rat, a badger and a toad.

The Wind in th'e Willows, adapted by Alan Bennett from the much-loved Kenneth Grahame book, has provided the National Theater with the kind of smash usually associated with big West End musicals. Set alongside Grahame's famous River Bank, the play charts the burgeoning friendships of four variously furry and scaly creatures whose lessons for, humanity are clear. Toad, the mansion-owning braggart, learns modesty, even as Bat and Mole cross social and class barriers to strike up an enduring friendship. The play ends with a garden party celebrating the best traits of Englishness: restraint, humility and gentility which the characters collectively embody. The show, which opened Dec.

12 in the theater's Olivier auditorium, was an instant winner with critics. Having a hit is nothing Unusual for the production's principals. Bennett is the British dramatist responsible for Single 1 Griff Rhys Jones as Toad in The Wind in the Willows' 40 feet under the stage to show the different homes of Rat, tinues in repertory through June Badger, and Mole. 1 alongside David Hare's New thur Miller's The Crucible and Tony Harrison's The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus. The Wind in the Willows con- York-bound Racing Demon, Ar- roller derW Krauss chose Mi music over son to go into a room on the break and told to stay there and not even see the bar," she sniii "NnhnHv has ever cotlen renllv rowdv.

By JOE EDWARDS Associated Press Writer Sometimes somebody" will get really sloshed at the end of the show, but not often." Late last year, she and her band spent, a month in the Middle East as part of a cultural exchange program- sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency. She gave concerts in Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, Syria and Tunisia. "Our music went over great," she said. "It was a major moment in our lives.

We got to see places most people only think about." She believes women are breaking into the bluegrass field, which has never had a woman as an established star. beginning to be singers, fiddlers, banjo players and all-female bands. Bluegrass has been totally male-dominated. It's just something women didn't dg." She said she's heard other women bluegrass musicians complain about being unwelcome by their male counterparts. "But I've never had that feeling that people didn't want me there because I was a do not sign bluegrass performers because the commercial market for them, is weak.

"They would hire a producer, and I'd want to be able to choose somebody myself," Krauss said. "Maybe I'll change my mind later, but really that's not something I'm after right now. I'm playing with four great people (her band, Union Station), and4 want to keep doing that." She also refuses to play such bluegrass standards as Orange Blossom Special, Rocky Top and Fox on the Run. "Our goal is to play our own music," she said. "Haven't people heard those songs enough yet?" Some bluegrass fans might consider such a statement blasphemy.

Festival performers are routinely asked to play the standards made famous by Bill Monroe, the Osborne Brothers and others. Krauss grew up in Champaign, 111., and Iearned classical violin at age 5. She gravitated to bluegrass music and started winning bluegrass fiddle contests at age 12. Before she was a teen-ager, she began playing at bluegrass festivals in the Midwest. Her current album is I've Got That Old Feeling, her third, which contains songs focusing on romance and heartbreak.

Her past LPs were Two Highways in 1989. and Too Late to Cry in 1987. Since she was 10, she has 'spent much time performing in clubs, places where she was not old enough to legally drink liquor; "One time, when I was about 13, 1 was told NASHVILLE, Tenn. Alison Krauss chose music over roller derby, and the result is a young, bluegrass fiddler-singer shouldering her way into a male-dominated genre. The 19-year-old Krauss is one of just a few women recording the acoustic, mountain-bred music.

She's spent three years recording with Rounder Records and has already made a concert tour of the Middle East. But it wasn't that long ago, a few years in fact, that she had to choose between bowing her fiddle or racing on roller skates: "I was really into roller skating for a long Krauss recalled in an interview in the ofjfice of her booking agent. "I used to go every Friday and Saturday night. I couldn't decide whether to play the violin or roller skate." She chose violin, and subsequently emerged as an independent and gifted instrumentalist with a soprano voice reminiscent of a young Dolly Parton or Emmylou Harris. Though still a teen-ager, she has firm views about bluegrass music' and what she will and won't do.

Compromises aren't likely. Although she has a recording contract with an independent label, she's not ready to jump to a more prestigious major company. "We want to play bluegrass music and if somebody signed us, it would be totally something else," she said. Major labels today 6 woman." Her band a barijo player, guitarist, mandolin player and bass player performs mostly at nightclubs and some folk festivals. "The most exciting thing for me is to see people singing the words to your songs while you stand on the stage," she said, "and when people request songs that you do and no one else does.

Fiddlervocalist Alison Krauss Voice of Cinderella sines over videocassettes contract and at least $10 million more for her contribution' to the the in the 1959 movie Sleeping Beauty, filed a suit in. May 1989 seeking royalties related to videocassette sales. Shaughnessy asks for $10 million in damages for breach of Feldstein 'said he didn't know how many videocassettes of the movie have been sold. Disney in a suit in which she claimed the company needed her approval before releasing the videocassette version of Lady and the Tramp. Lee provided voices and co-wrote songs for the 1955 animated film.

Singer Mary Costa, the voice of BURBANK, Calif. (AP) -Hie singer who provided the voiceoT Cinderella in the animated film has. filed a $20 million lawsuit claiming that Disney violated her -contrefct by producing videocassettes of the classic. Ilene Woods Shaughnessy, who in 1948 was paid $2,500, said in the suit that her contract forbids Disney from making copiesothe movie for sale to the puhUcT "In 1988 defendant Disney commenced production and marketing for sale to the public for the movie's composers, according to company records kept by Smith. She performed such songs as So This is Love and A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes for the movie, he said.

Shaughnessy also sang on radio programs, including The Bing Crosby Show and The Paul Whiteman Show, Smith said. The suit is similar to at least two others brought against Disney. i Singer Peggy Lee won a summary judgment in April against videocassette versions of all of which has been done without plaintiffs consent," the suit said. Steve Feldstein, a spokesman for the home video division of Disney, said the company had not seen the suit and had no comment. Shaughnessy, who lives in Woodland Hills, was 22 when she provided the voice of Cinderella, said Dave Smith, archivist for Walt Disney Productions.

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