On entering the newly refurbished Ted Shawn Theatre in Becket, it became evident that live musical performance would take a principal role in future Pillow Productions. Here before the stage was a generous orchestra pit, with experienced classical and jazz musicians noodling happily on piano (Colin Fowler), bass (Simon Wilson), and drums (Vinnie Sperrazza). Not entirely by coincidence, Sperrazza was last here in 2022, performing in “Easy Winners,” in a through-composed musical score by jazz piano master Ethan Iverson, who arranged Burt Bacharach’s music for this very performance in collaboration with Mark Morris, who takes every note, beat, and music nuance seriously. Morris makes this clear in his superb memoir, “Outlook.” A justly celebrated choreography and influential company director, in his heart he is a learned musician. The other performing musicians, who both read Iverson’s score and improvised swinging jazz licks, were trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and Simon Willson (bass).
According to Pillow CEO and Artistic Director Pamela Tatge, Morris made his Jacob’s Pillow appearance in his 20s as a whirling dervish who, while twirling impressively, didn’t have to spot.
This evening was visually illuminated by Isaac Mizrahi’s brilliantly colored, gender-bending costumes and Nicole Pearce’s radiant lighting, casting joyful couplings in shades of blue, rage and sexual energy in startling red, and black evoking calm and reflection. The music, too, amplified emotional intensity. In one startling passage of contemporary dissonance, the two background vocalists, Clinton Curtis and Baire Reinhard, and the stunning Dionne Warwick and inspired singer Marcy Harriell were required to sing harsh intervals together.
To great effect, the Iverson score elevated the intensity of the individual tableaux of Bacharach songs. “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” began with widely spaced B-flat plunks, first across the piano, then through the bass, and other instruments, increasing in intensity even as the rain intensified.
The simple stage set, composed of six pink and cream-colored folding chairs with matching, removable cushions, provided in this dance shelter from the rain, held over individuals and protecting their intimates, who tiptoed around puddles as the storm gathered.
Minutes later, as the plunks intensified into a loud downpour, a brave dancer, Domingo Estrada, refused any shelter, faced the sky, welcoming the flood, and, in delicious floor work and lithe lifts, shook his soaked hair with pride as, at long last, the melody of “Raindrops” was played.
In another stunning tableau, evoking the revival of fundamentalist religion in many denominations in the 1970s, Bacharach’s powerful “Message to Michael” is modernized by changing the male principal character’s gender pronoun to “they,” discarding the rigidity of binary gender designations.
Here, however, the marvelously eloquent dancer Dallas McMurray lip-synchs to Harriell’s vocals even as he faces a semicircle of devotees who respond with joy and applause to his every gesture, leaping to their feet in response to his religious messages.
At one point in his sermon, McMurray assumes Christ-like poses, palms out, arms spread as if nailed to a cross. Toward stage front, before the audience, dancers leap into one another’s arms then separate and reattach, those aching acres of separation serving as magnets to secure their relationships blessed by whatever God.
The question is posed: Can true love only be graced by the formal ceremonies and congregational gatherings led by priests of whatever denomination, in an era of growing secularism and rejection of formal religious observances and gender identities?
The evening’s song cycle ended quietly—emphatically not with fortissimo flourishes designed to bring down the house. To Bacharach’s “I Say A Little Prayer,” its resonance to the “Message to Michael” emphasized in the dancers’ forming a braided circle, arms flapping like angels and occasional idiosyncratic, and humorous bounces.
And then a lone dancer is left on stage for an awkward minute before he, too, exists in silence. Once more, the questions are raised: Who are we? What pulls us together and pushes us apart?
Does some superordinate presence elevate and idealize “The Look of Love”? Or are we all constantly in search of who we are and to whom we are connected, fundamentally alone, but forever hopeful for some deeper sense of personal meaning?
