Month: June 2008

Categories
Living

Pigging out for the people

As a departure from our usual round-up of current events, Restaurantarama is going to take this opportunity to rave about a restaurant event that occurred in the recent past. Last Tuesday, we had the opportunity to taste the signature dishes of close to 20 of our best local restaurants. The occasion was the second annual Taste This! fundraising event held at UVA’s Alumni Hall to benefit the Salvation Army Food Pantry program. The admission cost of $35 in advance ($40 at the door) gave Restaurantarama and fellow attendees the ticket to a food tasting frenzy, and you’d be wise to mark this event on your calendar for next year. From samosas from the Shebeen Pub and Braai to steak tartare from Cassis, there was a smorgasbord of small plates to be sampled, and all of the gorging was for a good cause.


Display of talent: Executive Chef Angelo Vangelopoulos represented The Ivy Inn in the Taste This! fundraising event held at UVA’s Alumni Hall to benefit the Salvation Army Food Pantry program.

Restaurantarama began the evening of eating debauchery with a shot-glass-sized tasting of flavorful avocado gazpacho soup from Wild Greens, then proceeded to little lobster pancakes drizzled with a reduction of Barboursville Vineyards’ Chardonnay combined with vanilla bean and butter direct from the hands of Chef Dean Maupin of the Clifton Inn. We then consumed several morsels of down-home Southern dishes from the likes of Maya and Zydeco before heading in for a heady slice of melt-in-your-mouth New York strip, personally carved by the Downtown Grille’s Chef Gary Glaser. Believing ourselves full at that point, we ventured over to the Gearhart’s Fine Chocolates table for a wee morsel to end the meal, but then couldn’t resist walking the two extra feet over to The Ivy Inn’s table for a tasting of cherry cobbler scooped onto our paper plate by The Ivy Inn’s own Executive Chef Angelo Vangelopoulos.

Then, feeling satiated but defeated by the inability of our tiny stomach to devour more dishes, we longingly scanned the room for all the tables we’d missed. Places such as Sticks, Brix, Fossett’s, Palladio, Blue Light Grill and the Bonefish Grill definitely called out to us, but it wasn’t until we spotted a welcome surprise—a table from OXO—that we knew we had it in us to power through at least one more savory snack. OXO’s owners, John Haywood and Alice Kim, had just recently announced the restaurant’s closing, so we enjoyed a last sampling of OXO’s creative, French-inspired fare—a deconstructed take on steak and eggs—as a sort of swan song to that establishment. Then, of course, we needed another Gearhart’s chocolate to top that off, and short story long, our digestive system is still recovering from the entire evening.

But it was worth all the Tums to taste such a diverse array of dishes in one place. Plus, we always knew the local restaurant industry was fairly fraternal and often incestuous (what with all the staff poaching and bartender hopping that is known to occur), but it was highly entertaining to see such networking in action. Whether it was observing the Fossett’s team cheekily offering up some of their crab cakes to Downtown Grille’s chef Glaser in exchange for a few slices of his New York strip, or overhearing Palladio Executive Chef Melissa Close chatting it up with one of the OXO crewmates about his future plans, we were witness to the incredibly small and close-knit world that is the Charlottesville restaurant scene. And that was a treat.

Kudos to event chairperson Victor Millner for pulling off such a successful celebration of local food, which, judging by the crowd, raised a boatload for the Salvation Army, and to all the restaurants and chefs who participated in the event. Next year, we are totally going on a liquid diet for a full 24 hours in advance to take better advantage of the spread. 

Quick bites

If you missed Taste This!, you can still take advantage of another good dining deal through the summer—l’etoile is running a special three-course menu for $36 on Wednesdays and Thursdays. We’ll probably be there every week just for the truffled potato pierogies.

Got some restaurant scoop? Send tips to restaurantarama@c-ville.com or call 817- 2749, Ext. 48.

Categories
News

Shoot to the top

For this year’s The-Art-Director-is-on-Vacation photo contest, we asked local camera hounds to send us summer scenes in and around Charlottesville. And they obliged with images ranging from an impromptu, barefoot water dance to a biker’s shadow (and a biker’s footwear) to an utterly broken down school bus lying yellow in the sunshine. In the end, three winners warmed the hearts of our three judges the most. We hope that both the winners and nonwinners inspire you to stop and click with your eyes the roses—and everything else—in the coming months.

Meet the judges

Laura Jones and her husband, Rob, own Migration: A Gallery. The gallery opened in April 2006 and frequently exhibits the best photography from across the country. A former lawyer and lifelong collector, Laura is happy to look at art rather than contracts and other inscrutable legal documents. She can never remember to take photographs of her own life, though.

Stephen Margulies has been curating exhibitions of photography, prints and drawings at the University of Virginia Art Museum (formerly the Bayly Art Museum) since 1986. He is also a poet, artist and essayist. He was born in Baltimore and has degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Virginia.

Greg Antrim Kelly lives and works in Charlottesville, where he co-founded The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative in the fall of 2004. He holds an undergraduate degree with honors in Fine Arts and Art History from Colorado State University. He has worked extensively in the fields of arts and education. His own work, as an artist, typically explores a wide range of mediums and practices including illustration, video, performance, writings, audio letters, cut flowers and an ongoing series of love notes to his wife, Leigh.

We have a winner!

1st Place – Untitled – Sarah Cramer

Congratulations, Sarah Cramer. As the First Place winner of C-VILLE’s annual Summer Photo Contest, you have won a $100 framing package from Partridge and Grace. Second Place winner Natalie Krovetz has won a $50 gift card from Eppie’s. Third Place winner Chris Konnick has won a $25 gift card from Mudhouse.

First place winner, Sarah Cramer, talks about her photograph.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this year’s Summer Photo Contest.

2nd Place
Last Chicken Run – Natalie Krovetz

Second place winner, Natalie Krovetz, talks about her photograph.

3rd Place
Untitled – Chris Konnick

Third place winner, Chris Konnick, talks about his photograph.
Categories
Living

Mousing around [with video]

Back in 2002 local bluegrass fiends the Hackensaw Boys took off on a jaunt called the Unlimited Sunshine Tour. They found themselves part of a hodge-podge bill of diverse but impressive music acts, including Cake, De La Soul, Kinky, The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse. It was a promising step for the band, and they were even invited back to be part of the following year’s lineup. For Pee Paw Hackensaw, a.k.a. Tom Peloso, though, the tour led to something even bigger.

“At one point during the tour [Modest Mouse frontman] Isaac Brock approached me and asked if I wanted to do something for the next record,” Peloso says. “I was very open to the idea.” So, when the time came, he met up with Modest Mouse and took part in the making of 2004’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News, an album that went platinum and was a breakthrough release for the band.


Tom Peloso, top left, and Modest Mouse take the Charlottesville Pavilion stage on Sunday, June 29.

Pretty soon Peloso was a full-fledged Mouse, touring with the band and helping write and record 2007’s We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, which also saw the addition of former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. On Sunday, June 29, Peloso and the rest of the band will bring their show to the Charlottesville Pavilion.

The video for Modest Mouse’s "Little Motel."


We caught up with Peloso, who resides in the Nelson County hamlet of Schuyler when not on the road, in the midst of the band’s current tour opening for R.E.M. “I had bought Reckoning on vinyl when it came out,” Peloso says, “so for me it’s pretty exciting to be on tour with a band that I grew up listening to and really enjoying. Every night they seem to pull out a song that I’m like, ‘Wow I can’t believe they just played that.’”

Being a huge Smiths fan, Feedback was also curious to hear what it was like to be in a band with Johnny Marr. “It’s a lot of fun working with him,” says Peloso. “The first night I met him I actually picked him up from the airport in Portland. When I first met him I felt really comfortable. He’s a really down to earth, genuine guy. And he’s just a great guitar player.”

He’s been keeping quite busy with Modest Mouse, but Peloso found some time earlier this year to get started on a solo album at Monkeyclaus in Nelson County. “It’s kind of funny for me, he says. “I’m Tom in Modest Mouse, and I was Pee Paw Hackensaw in the Hackensaw Boys. And this time the project is me, Tom Peloso, and I’ve never really done a project like that. It’s neat. I feel like I’m learning a lot about myself in doing this.” He hopes to finish up the album in August, once Modest Mouse has wrapped up its current tour.

There’s clearly something special about banging away at strings and tapping your toes on red bricks. In last week’s column, Pokey LaFarge recalled how much fun he had busking with friends on the Downtown Mall, and Peloso told us pretty much the same thing. “Probably some of my most favorite moments were playing on the Mall with the Hackensaw Boys,” he says. Peloso will only be a few steps away from there on Sunday, and the Hacks are playing just two days before (see below), so maybe they’ll meet up to jam like old times.

Happy Birthday, dear Gravity

With so much news lately of venues closing, we’re glad to wish Gravity Lounge a happy fifth birthday. The Lounge celebrates its half decade of existence this Friday, June 27, with a show featuring local favorites the Hackensaw Boys and Morwenna Lasko & Jay Pun. The venue has been bringing a variety of tunes to the Downtown Mall since the summer of 2003, and they’ve got even more good stuff lined up for this summer and fall, including Bill Kirchen on July 6, the Asylum Street Spankers on July 9, the Commander Cody Band on September 11 and Southern Culture on the Skids on November 22. So go party with the Morwenna, Jay and the Hackensaws this Friday and then mark your calendars for more good things to come.

Au revoir

This is the last time you’ll see the current incarnation of Feedback in these pages. Alas, we know! Your current music scribe has had a blast translating Charlottesville’s sonic reverberations into written words over the past year, but now he’s up and leaving to, you know, explore the world and find himself or something like that. Never fear, though, as Feedback will forge on next week, with C-VILLE arts and culture guru Brendan Fitzgerald taking over the reins and guiding it through its new, expanded presence as a blog on c-ville.com. Also, stay tuned for next week’s paper, in which Mr. Ruscher steps out of his Feedback shoes and recounts his many musical journeys.

Got news or comments? Send them to feedback@c-ville.com.

Categories
News

UVA increases its endowment payout

Last month, a number of Board of Visitors members indicated that this year was the time to increase UVA’s endowment spending. And increase it they have.

The Board, which governs the University, voted on June 13 to increase the endowment payout rate to 5 percent from last year’s 4.5 percent, which amounted to a $134 million payout. The increase, which will likely yield more than $15 million annually for spending, came as UVA bumped up in-state tuition next year by 7.3 percent.

Increases in tuition across the nation have led to Republican U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, to pressure universities to spend more of their endowment to make college more affordable. He has gone as far as floating the idea of requiring universities to spend at least 5 percent of their endowments each year.

UVA’s $5 billion endowment does partially fund AccessUVA, the University’s financial aid program. In the 2007-2008 school year, 11.5 percent of AccessUVA money came from unrestricted endowment funds. The two largest expenditures from the endowment go toward instruction (48 percent) and financial aid (25 percent). This coming school year, AccessUVA will have a budget that tops out at almost $62 million.


Chief Operating Officer Leonard Sandridge asked the Board of Visitors to approve a 0.5 percent increase in endowment payout.

The Board also mandated that endowment distribution will increase in subsequent years by the rate of inflation. That rate will be determined by the Higher Education Price Index. In past years, the allowable payout had to have fallen between 3.5 percent and 5.5 percent. This year the Board increased that range to 4 percent and 5 percent.

In an interview last month, UVA spokesperson Carol Wood said that the University hasn’t felt any pressure from Grassley to increase the payout from the endowment. UVA officials pointed to solid investment returns and the increasingly important role that the endowment plays in the University’s budget as the reasons for the payout increase.

From 2006 to 2007, UVA’s endowment increased by $560 million, though investment returns were only 3.3 percent. The University projects that in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, incomes from endowment and gifts will provide 9.1 percent of total revenues. The Commonwealth, it projects, will provide 8.2 percent.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Categories
Arts

Storm’s coming

There are more than 60 versions of “Peaceable Kingdom” by Quaker painter Edward Hicks—different iterations of all creatures great and small, sleek-coated predators and skittish prey, hunkered down together wearing expressions that could make a Zen master jealous. The “Peaceable Kingdom” series comes from a line the Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah (and, for brevity’s sake, Curtain Calls draws from the King James version): “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid.”

All this zoological camaraderie is supposed to be about the promise of salvation and the suspension of sin, but it’s eerie to see. In many of Hicks’ kingdoms, adult humans are visible, but never central; the draw is the collection of beasts, the suspension of their routines and their shell-shocked eyes.


Clay Witt finds his way through the forest with a series of exquisite new works, which will see the light of day in a December exhibit.

“I’m immensely interested in folk art,” says Clay Witt, his finger tapping lightly against the book he holds, illustrating one of Hicks’ scenes, then carries on. “Quaker art, Shaker art…” Witt half-chuckles, closes the book, then leads Curtain Calls to a table in his kitchen to look at a collection of animal etchings.

In 2006, Witt and his mentor, UVA printmaking professor Dean Dass, exhibited a collection of prints and collaborations at Les Yeux du Monde in an exhibit called “Dark Light,” one of the most ambitious bodies of work by local artists in recent memory. Immense, multi-step prints like “The Conference of the Birds”—a 4′ by 7′ lunar field, with an explosive central iris of lapis lazuli and rust—sold big and announced Dass and Witt as both well-suited collaborators and skilled colleagues. The aftershock of Witt’s exhibit left many viewers as bewildered as Hicks’ creations, as if they’d witnessed a small tremor of some immense shake-up to come.

And shake we will. Although Les Yeux closes its doors at the end of June, Witt says that the gallery still plans to show a collection of his recent work in December of this year.

“I really want to make sure that I have the right venue for Clay’s work,” says Lyn Warren, director of LYDM. “It’s so important.”

Witt’s recent work, according to the artist, stays true to his interest in “a central, totemic image,” as he puts it. “Tree of Life,” a 2007 piece that won the juried “Artivism” competition at the McGuffey Art Center, continued the theme, but the four more recent pieces hanging in Witt’s home are more patient, studied explorations of the layered darkness that the artist has pursued and refined for years.

“My work is very redundant, self-repeating,” Witt says, again with a chuckle that suggests the artist’s warm sense of comfort with his world. “There must be an easier way to do things, but I always considered it a meditative process—I self-consciously draw it out.”

Witt’s work is all about alchemy and time, the pairing of chemical processes with traditional symbolism and imagery to generate images as contemplative for a person to view as they are for the artist to create. Witt speaks with Curt about the chemistry at work—layered trees made of Japanese paper, the contentious process of emulsion played out on walnut panels, how water gilding and hyde glue intensify gold and how gold is tempered by rust.

Of the four pieces Witt shows CC, the highlight is “Burning Bush.” The very construction of the piece eludes simplicity: Each patiently hand-cut tree is part of Witt’s drawn out process, but part of another layer of shadowplay for viewers to work their way through. Mica moonbeams split through the branches to shine upon a white gold tree engulfed in flames of rust; there is generation consumed by time in a single tree, surrounded by a forest ready to repeat the violent act.

Back in the artist’s kitchen, Witt presides over a ring of paper animals he’s modeled after images from a 19th-century encyclopedia, creatures he plans to pair with a burning Victorian cage inspired by Hicks. Witt says that he plans to collage the animals onto a canvas to give them depth, then leads Curt into his basement studio.

The 5′ by 4′ panel of walnut—the animals’ canvas—is already murky with gesso, ready to be populated with the chemicals Witt will use against each other. From the ceiling hang tendrils of paper trees that, from beneath, look like roots. Witt points out the spot where he’ll place the burning cage, another central totem.

“I want my paintings to be as dark as possible,” he says, “but still retain a sense of receding space.” Curt leans in closer to look, overturning the shadows on Witt’s canvas and uncovering more shadows that beget more shadows. It occurs to him that the crucial difference between Witt and his audience is that, with each new work, viewers are drawn further into his canvases while Witt emerges, wide-eyed and dauntlessly moving towards the light.

Send your arts news and pictures of puppies to curtain@c-ville.com. News must be big, and puppies must be cute.

Categories
Arts

Game show mania

“I Survived a Japanese Game Show”
Tuesday 9pm, ABC

There’s a great episode of “The Simpsons” where the family gets stranded in Japan and, to earn plane fare home, they subject themselves to the unspeakable humiliations of a Japanese game show. I’m guessing the producers of this series saw that one, since this is pretty much the same concept. Ten American famewhores sign up to be on a game show, unaware that the game show takes place in Japan, and that it will be insane. In addition to the assorted physical challenges, they’ll have to assimilate to Japanese culture with the aid of actor/interpreter Tony Sano (never heard of him) and have to contend with both a prickly house mother and the stereotypically nutso host. We can only hope that comes close to the awesomeness of “Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.” The good news is, after this, you’ll probably feel a lot better about what Americans watch on TV.

“Shear Genius”
Wednesday 10pm, Bravo

I’m one of the few who totally dug the first season of Bravo’s hairstyling competition. Sure, it climaxed too soon with the untimely ouster of catlike uber-bitch Tabatha in the penultimate episode, but it did give us some fantastic moments (Daisy totally frying/dying that one poor girl’s hair pink) and some pretty cool hair. Now it’s back with 12 sassy new contestants who are possibly even gayer than the last “Project Runway” crew. The judging panel has been almost completely overhauled, but sticking around are hunky Teutonic mentor Rene Fris (creator of the most inane catchphrase in pop culture history, “Go shag it!”) and host Jaclyn Smith, still foxy at 63 years old (really!).

“Singing Office”
Sunday 9pm, TLC

Another import of a successful British concept, this new show features hosts Joey Fatone (formerly of ’NSync) and Mel B (of Spice Girls fame) showing up “uninvited” to American workplaces and conscripting the workers into a week-long song-and-dance intensive. At the end there’s a choreographed sing-off, and the winners advance for a chance to win $50,000 in the season finale. I can actually see this catching on a la “Trading Spaces,” since there’s the whole “it could happen to me” thing mixed with our nation’s desperate need for attention. But I am concerned that, given our current economy, I don’t think American productivity should be sacrificed to keep Scary Spice in designer leopard print. But who am I kidding? I can never say no to you, Joey Fatone! (I’m not proud of it, but I accept it.)

Categories
News

Transportation talk roils Richmond

Delegate David Toscano wants to spend more time with his wife and son. File photo.

As C-VILLE went to press on Monday, state legislators were setting to work in Richmond on Governor Tim Kaine’s transportation bill. And boy, do they have their work cut out for them. Not only do they have to read Kaine’s 55-page reworking of last year’s mirage of a transportation funding solution—they also have to find some way to agree about how to fund it, with House Republicans repeating a “No new taxes” mantra and the Democratic Senate majority leader offering a competing proposal.

If you’re experiencing déjà vu, it’s because last year, the General Assembly passed a transportation plan that was supposed to provide $1.5 billion annually. Instead, it was shattered, partly by the abusive driver fee backlash and mostly by a state Supreme Court ruling that nixed the transportation authorities set up for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.


Charlottesville’s State Delegate David Toscano didn’t hear any opposition to raising taxes for roads at a June 15 "Transportation Town Hall" at a county office building.

In the event that Kaine’s latest bill goes through unscathed (which is about as likely as UVA winning this year’s NCAA football championship), we the people of Virginia would have the pleasure of paying: 1 percent more when we buy a car; $10 more for annually registering our cars; and, when we sell our homes, a 250 percent higher “grantor’s tax,” which would go from 10 to 35 cents per $100 of assessed value. Most of the $1 billion generated annually would go to highway maintenance, but the revenue from the grantor’s tax increase—about $150 million annually—would go toward mass transit.

Not included in all those proposed tax hikes: the gas tax, the tax that is actually supposed to pay for transportation. At 17.5 cents per gallon, it hasn’t been raised since 1986, and is the 11th lowest among states. Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw (D-Fairfax) has his own proposal, which would increase the gas tax by 5 or 6 cents, according to The Washington Post. Given current prices, 5 cents is a measly 1.25 percent of a $4 gallon of gas.

Folks in Charlottesville and Albemarle have plenty of reason to pay attention to the legislative squabbling that will unfold this week. The Virginia Department of Transportation just cut funding to numerous local projects, including Hillsdale Drive Extended, Old Ivy Road widening, new lanes for Proffit Road and several railroad bridge repairs. Overall, road funding is being cut 44 percent, leaving Albemarle with only $3 million for secondary road funding in this coming fiscal year.

State Delegate David Toscano (D-Charlottesville) hosted a “Transportation Town Hall” meeting June 16 and speakers had disparate ideas: Stratton Salidis suggested turning the Meadowcreek Parkway into a bicycles-only road. Don Wells warned that peak oil will nullify all these conversations, predicting empty roads after gas prices steadily rise a buck per year. Old Lynchburg Road resident Jeanne Chase wanted to know where the Sunset-Fontaine connector road was, and Randy Salzman suggested a bike/pedestrian bridge over the Rivanna River to connect the new Martha Jefferson Hospital to E. Market Street. Some, like rail-advocate Meredith Richards, wanted more money for mass transit, while others, like county Supervisor Dennis Rooker, wanted the state to fulfill its obligation to fund road maintenance and construction.

So what was the takeaway message for Toscano?

“In terms of what I learned, I think I’ve heard a number of these perspectives before at other times and other places,” says Toscano. “I think you could summarize them along the lines of, ‘We can’t pave our way out of our problems, but it does take some money to address some of our transportation woes.’”

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Legal Aid forces cable company to investigate immigrant pay

Under pressure from immigrants rights groups including the Charlottesville-based Legal Aid Justice Center, the Internet and cable provider Verizon Communications announced yesterday that it might bar certain of its contractors from work if it finds   they withheld pay from immigrant laborers who dug trenches for the company’s fiber optic cables in the Washington area. The concession came a day before protests that are scheduled to happen today in front of the company’s D.C. headquarters.

The Justice Center along with CASA and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs have pressed Verizon on the issue since 2006 with little success so far. The cable company typically hires contractors who then hire subcontractors who hire immigrant labor, thus creating a couple degrees of separation for Verizon when it comes to the unpaid immigrants. "Verizon has known about these problems for some time," said Tim Freilich, a lawyer with the Justice Center’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. "They need to ensure payment now."

Legal Aid’s Tim Freilich says Verizon needs to pay its immigrant labor now.

Categories
News

Hunt is on for longer Mall bricks [with video]

The city has long been planning to rebrick the Mall—a $7.5 million exercise it says is necessary to keep it attractive to shoppers who otherwise might be lured to new shopping centers like the ever-in-the-works Albemarle Place. Mostly, it involves getting rid of the mortar method of joining the bricks with a side-by-side sand method. MMM Design Group had cooked up an elaborate master plan with additional fountains, a children’s play area and a sister city plaza. But City Council wasn’t game for the changes (and their potential costs), saying keep it simple.

The bigger issue now is whether size matters where Mall bricks are concerned. Lawrence Halprin’s original 1970s design has 4"x12" bricks, but newer sections, such as those on Third Street and at the Pavilion, have 4"x8" bricks. City staff has argued for bricks with that 2:1 ratio rather than the original 3:1 ratio because of stability and availability, saying they would have to come from Nebraska. But after the Board of Architectural Review and City Council balked at the change in Halprin’s design, consultants and city staff are talking with Virginia brickmakers to see if making the 4"x12" bricks is possible and affordable.


Not just another brick on the Mall: The $7.5 million rebricking will involve sand technique instead of mortar, but whether the new bricks will be 4"x8" or 4"x12" is still up in the air.

Regardless, the city has decided to do the rebricking all in one four-month swoop, starting in January 2009. Tolbert told Council last week, “[Construction manager] Barton Marlow has told us that they are confident that we can start this on January 2 and finish it on the end of April. They built the JPJ ahead of schedule and under budget.” Businesses, Mall aficionados and taxpayers sure hope that will be the case this time as well.

Anyone interested in adding 2 cents to the discussion can attend a June 30 “Design Reveal” at 6:30pm at 100 Fifth St. NE.

C-VILLE’s Jessie Abrams gives a summary of possible Downtown Mall renovations.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Categories
News

City of Angels

Gentlemen and ladies, open your programs: The 34-year tradition of summer theater at UVA is back after a hiatus last year due to construction of the Arts Grounds Parking Garage. One thing has changed: The somewhat stuffy name “Heritage Repertory Theatre” is now the more festive “Heritage Theatre Festival.” And another thing hasn’t: The audience still largely consists of senior citizens. The middle-agers and variations thereof, and the handful of college students, stand out like clichés in otherwise original sentences.

Which is a way to jump to City of Angels, the first musical offering of the Festival season. Larry Gelbart, of “M*A*S*H” fame, who wrote the book, asks theatergoers to indulge in the overdone trope of a film noir spoof, with all its attendant devices: sultry interior monologues in the form of voiceovers, characters changing their lines as a writer revises them on his typewriter, glaringly sexist witty banter, etc. 

His protagonist is Stine (Garen McRoberts), a young novelist in 1940s Hollywood writing a screenplay about a Sam Spade-like private detective (Rob Marnell) on the hunt for a missing heiress (Holly Williams). There are two parallel stories: the screenplay as it unfolds, and Stine’s many struggles with pea-brained movie mogul, Buddy Fidler (Geno Carr). The tension between illusion and reality mounts as the musical proceeds.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it? It is. Despite the more serviceable than electrifying music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by David Zippel, it all essentially works, thanks to Gelbart’s bad (i.e. good) ear for purposely bad one-liners, and the clever way he presents the competing stories, slicing, dicing and reassembling them. After a while, adding one more time to “I’ve seen this a thousand times” doesn’t seem like a big deal.

Heritage artistic director Robert Chapel has often been in the director’s chair for musicals over the years, and he’s in it again for City of Angels. His style, in tandem with whoever his choreographer is—in this case, Perry Medlin—is essentially not to take chances. Given his always rich resources—this time out, McRoberts, Marnell and company, some playing two or more characters, are fine singers and competent actors, and the lighting design by Ryan Bauer and scenic design by Shawn Paul Evans, featuring shafts of smoky light, swathes of shadow, seedy rooms, a sparkling mansion and more, is close to impeccable—Chapel is like a sports team with a big lead playing not to lose. The resulting blocking and pacing has a kind of chiseled stateliness. There’s a distinct pleasure in that, especially in Charlottesville, where musicals over the course of the academic year are often pretty ragged. Some, however, might find Chapel’s approach plodding, or even dull.

But “dull” is certainly not the word to go out with. It’s nice to have Heritage productions of musicals back, whether you’re looking to relax after a tough day or week at the office, or retired and itching for a fun night on the town—though the latter, apparently, don’t need anyone to tell them that.