Newsday, May 2005

Music is the art of arranging sounds in time. This being so, is a conductor who midwifes the transformation of marks on a page into soaring, crashing noise a mere interpreter or a full-fledged creator?

This is one of the questions taken up in SITI Company's "Score," adapted by Jocelyn Clarke from the writings of conductor, composer, pianist, educator and life force Leonard Bernstein. "Score" is—what else?—a one-man show, starring Tom Nelis as Bernstein, who holds forth for 90 impassioned and sometimes tedious minutes on music, the universe and everything.

Directed by Anne Bogart, "Score" is the third in a series of plays examining the creative process. (Earlier shows depicted Virginia Woolf and visual artist Robert Wilson.) Nelis captures many of Bernstein's mannerisms with uncanny precision: the hooded, pensive brow that unfurled to reveal eyes shining with childlike wonder; the offhand elegance of gesture and attire; the urbane eloquence that tackled issues both puffy and profound.

Bernstein's last-century clichés can set eyeballs rolling, as when he yammers on about trancelike states, Gestalt and "the Jung generation." Bogart's direction underscores the showmanship that was part of the great man's character when Bernstein/Nelis natters and bobs over some of Schubert's most bleakly gorgeous music with a look-at-me flash worthy of P.T. Barnum.

The show's climax—a lecture-performance of the last pages of Mahler's Ninth Symphony—stuns by nobler means. "Excesses of sentimentality that still make some listeners wince; the despair of not being able to drive all this material into some kind of para-music that might at last cleanse us": The conductor's words skewer the artistic objectivity he previously lauds, suggesting that Mahler's music prefigures all of twentieth-century history while at the same time boiling down to the woes and aspirations of one Leonard Bernstein.

Nelis here is riveting. He nails Bernstein's ecstatic podium manner, his every sinew alive to the searing beauty of Mahler's music. (The production's superb sound design is by Darron L. West, with evocative lighting by Christopher Akerlind.) The staging's repeating patterns of words and movements mimic those of a musical score, and Neil Patel's efficient stage design includes a mirror that runs the length of the stage, surrounding Bernstein/ Nelis with a rapt audience.

That said, the torrent of Bernstein's brainy, sometimes platitudinous musings proved too much for a few viewers, who bailed early at the performance attended by this writer. Like the man himself, "Score" is made of both stern and self-indulgent stuff. The opening scene, with Bernstein/Nelis slumped over a podium, awoken by electronic blips (a tuning device, a heart monitor?), then racked by emphysemic coughs, speaks to the voracious hunger for both work and pleasure that undid the maestro.

"Score" is not for everyone, but it is a welcome chance to revisit the passions and foibles of an irreplaceable musical genius.

SCORE. By Jocelyn Clarke, adapted from Leonard Bernstein's writings; directed by Anne Bogart. New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. Fourth St. Tickets $50 ($20 on Sundays). Through June 5. Visit www.nytw.org or call 212-460-5475. Seen Wednesday.