Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 29

Pittsburgh Fost-Guzettw February 14, 1992 ARCHITECTURE At, VVA ti ill ML A J- nt, i i if I if nil 7 jJ 4 Church restoration follows gospel of Gothic style Bob DonaldsonPost-Gazette A view of the altar and right transept in Calvary Episcopal Church, Shadyside. At left is a new tile platform, and at top are pipes of the rebuilt organ. By Donald Miller Post-Gazette Staff Writer ne of the city's most distinguished buildings, Calvary Episcopal Church, Shadyside, will mark the coming end of its $1.3 million restoration with a dedication Sunday. This will be followed by a series of celebratory concerts running through the beginning of June. In 1906-07, Ralph Adams Cram, regarded as the foremost American church architect of this century, designed Calvary Church, at Shady Avenue and Walnut Street, in English Gothic revival style.

"Cram led the way to a second generation of Gothic revival," said Calvary's current architect, Gerald Allen, of Allen Harbinson, New York. "He moved away from Victorian overlay to a purer Gothic ideal." Allen's 10-year-old firm has done a number of renovations similar to Calvary's. He said his firm has tried to keep all changes close to what it be- lieves Cram might have done himself. "The project was physically simple and very straightforward. The thing was not to wreck what had been done," said Allen, 50, who taught af Carnegie Mellon University from 1986 to last year.

"Our aim was, for anyone who has not seen the church, to ask, 'What did you Instead of creating a new style, Allen thinks it is as heroic to produce work that joins invisibly with the best of what came before it. Changes to Calvary include a new tiled platform in front of the rood screen (a decorative closure surmounted by a cross, called a rood in early times). It separates the nave, or main pew area, from the high altar. The platform offers better access to pulpits on either side of it and provides a better space for viewing ceremonies such as baptisms. There is also new wood flooring under pews, new paneling for choir stalls, rewiring and relighting, repairs to the roof and stained-glass windows.

Several chandeliers, including Romanesque ones designed by famed church architect Bertram Goodhue, who worked with Cram when Calvary was built, have been updated. Interior stone has been cleaned and plaster repainted. The total impression is splendid within the generally restrained style of English Gothic revival, There is also an additional element of grandeur. The Casavant Organ located near Montreal has rebuilt Calvary's 1962 organ at a cost of $600,000, re-using existing pipes where possible. Decorative pipes above the chancel, the area of choir stalls near the high altar, have been changed from pewter to gold color while brass chandeliers now have a wrought-iron finish to match other metal in the sanctuary.

A side chapel will have a new wood screen. It is being carved in England and will be in place for Pentecost, marking the descent of the holy spirit upon the apostles, in June. Ceiling recaulking has given the organ and choir more aural clarity and the music more reverberation, very pleasant surprises. Donald Wilkins, Calvary organist and choir director, described how the organ console can be wheeled through the rood screen. "The front of the console folds up now in order to fit through," Wilkins said.

"We have tried to do everything to make the renovation a monument for this" age." Assisting on the project were church members Ray Gindroz, principal with UDA Architects, who chaired several committees, and Philip Hal-len, president of the Falk Medical Fund, who is chairman of the dedication series committee. The public is invited to Sunday's 10:30 a.m. dedication service, Hallen said. Ten concerts, nine of which are free, will be held over several weeks to mark the occasion. On Feb.

23, organist Wilkins will give a dedication recital at 8 p.m., preceded by a reception and organ demonstration at 6 p.m. (For information, call 661-7023.) Martin Neary, organist and master of choristers at Westminster Abbey, London, will speak at 10 a.m. Feb. 2, and will give a recital at 4 p.m. March 1.

Organist Diane Bish, 8 p.m., March 13; Washington National Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, p.m. March 20; choral evensong by the Calvary Church Choir 4 p.m. March 29; Heinz Chapel Choir, 4 p.m. April 5. The Pittsburgh Oratorio Society ill sing Handel's "Messiah," at 8 p.m.

April 17, (for ticket information call 661-7023); organist Dudley Oakes, p.m. April 27; organist Douglas Major, 8 p.m. May 15. After a 15-year hiatus, Wilkins will revive a Diocesan Choir Festival, at 7:30 p.m. June 7.

MOVIE REVIEW Weekend Clever skit does not movie make By George Anderson Post-Gazette Film Critic laugh at it. It is hard to imagine a teenager with self-esteem so low he or she could not look down at Wayne and Garth. So how do you make such limited characters sustain a full-length movie? You don't. Writers Mike Myers, who plays Wayne, and Bonnie and Terry Turner have compiled a script that is mostly a series of disconnected gags. Some of them work, including a surprise appearance from a "Terminator 2" character.

Some of them don't, including most of the material involving the supporting players and what passes for a plot. In fact, the movie seems so underpopulated, that the title "Wayne's World" takes on an even more restrictive meaning than intended. With so few people around, it seems criminal to waste them, but the role of Wayne's pathetically persistent ex-girlfriend Stacy misfires terribly. As played by Lara Flynn Boyle, she is so pitiful that her repeated abuse seems thoughtlessly cruel. Even the mostly adolescent audience with whom I watched the movie didn't laugh at poor Stacy.

Rob Lowe, in a career low, turns up as a smarmy TV packager who tries to sell the boys' cable show to a commercial station. Brian Doyle-Murray is the bloated sponsor. But it is Wayne and Garth who will matter most. Myers is engagingly funny, in a role he tailored for himself. He clearly understands the background from which this agreeably dim-witted SEE PAGE 3 disaster.

The high-school age audience' at which the film is aimed will give it good business for a week or so, after which "Wayne's World" is likely to slip into the black hole of bad movie concepts, along with "Strange Brew," the now mercifully forgotten film about Dob and Doug Mckenzie and their "Great White North" reports on "SCTV." There's a world of difference between a good five-minute skit and a 90-minute feature. Well, 85 minutes of difference, at least. Wayne Campbell and his nearly brain-dead buddy Garth are party-loving, heavy metal fans who talk in adolescent fits and starts, mostly about hot babes and other topics of which they clearly know nothing. They represent a fantasy of teen life so determinedly stupid that teens can Editors Susan Puskar Mark S. Murphy Scott Mervis Design Catherine Tigano Listings Arlene Haralson Call 263-1577 Retail advertising Call 263-1385 Cover Saxophonist Ornette Coleman ayne's World" is the greatest movie since "Citizen Kane" NOT.

VV7 Those two amiable dweebs who host a cable access show from a basement on "Saturday Night Live" have been brought to the theater screen by Paramount. The result is just about what usually happens when a jiumorous TV sketch is transformed into a featirrc-Iength film a minor..