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In memoriam
Remembering June and Ives, plus a Norton recap, and more

June Carter Cash1929–2003

Fans of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, who were the reigning king and queen of country music until June’s death last week at age 73, would never have guessed June would be first to go. Johnny’s battles with illness and chronic fatigue since the late ’90s have been well-documented, whereas June’s wide-eyed presence and manic energy made her seem unstoppable until her recent heart problems. She died a week ago Thursday, May 15, after becoming critically ill following a heart-valve replacement in a Nashville hospital on May 7.

June Carter, who married Cash in 1968 after he proposed on a Toronto stage during a concert they were playing, was the last surviving member of the Carter Family. The Carters, led by her mother Maybelle and her mother’s cousins Sara and A.P., were pioneers of country music who were vital in transforming the style from a primarily instrumental folk form to a vocal-based popular music. By the late 1930s, June — who was born in Maces Spring, Virginia, on June 23, 1929 — was part of the group. She sang, played autoharp, and developed her skills as a comedian, allowing the Carters to perform on the vaudeville circuit with a mix of pop and gospel music and sketches. When the group disbanded, in 1943, June, her mother, and her sisters Helen and Anita continued on as Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, performing at the Grand Ole Opry into the 1960s, when Cash made them part of his traveling troupe.

June had her first hit in 1949, when she recorded " Baby It’s Cold Outside " with the comedy duo Homer and Jethro. In the early ’50s, she married country singer Carl Smith, but by the middle of that decade she was divorced and studying acting in New York at the Strasberg Institute, an experience she chronicled touchingly in " I Used To Be Somebody, " on her 1999 solo CD Press On (Risk/Small Hairy Dog). She was also managed by Colonel Tom Parker at the time, and she shared concert bills with Parker’s most famous client, Elvis Presley.

Johnny Cash and June Carter met at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956. Despite a mutual infatuation, it took several years before she joined Cash’s traveling show and they began their romance. Their love was the inspiration for Carter’s most famous song, " Ring of Fire, " which was written with Merle Kilgore and became a smash for Cash in 1963.

Through subsequent decades, June was a stabilizing force in Johnny’s often tempestuous life while maintaining the roots of the mountain-music tradition in which was she raised in her own songs and performances. On Press On, June and Johnny recorded " The Far Side Banks of Jordan, " a gospel-inspired number in which they wonder aloud who will be first to die, each pledging to wait for the other on " the far-side banks of Jordan. " Now they have their answer, and that song has even more power to induce tears.

— Ted Drozdowski

David Otis Ives1919–2003

David O. Ives, who spent 40 years with WGBH, including 14 (from 1970 to 1984) as the station’s president and CEO, has died at the age of 84. It’s no exaggeration to say that he carved the face of public television: the television programs ’GBH initiated under his leadership include Nova, Frontline, Masterpiece Theatre, Mystery!, Evening at Pops. Julia Child’s cooking shows, This Old House, and The Victory Garden, not to mention the public-radio shows The Spider’s Web and Morning pro Musica. What’s more, he was a shameless and entertaining fundraiser. Viewers who caught ’GBH’s poignant tribute this past weekend saw him wearing a pith helmet and standing in the middle of what looked like the set for Field of Dreams " beating the bushes " for new station members, or singing the PBS version of Gilbert & Sullivan’s " Titwillow " with the refrain " Contribute, contribute, contribute " as Tony Randall poked a long-handled collection basket into the Pops audience. He will most certainly, as the station’s tribute concluded, be missed.

Services are scheduled for next Thursday, May 29, at 2 p.m. at Harvard University’s Memorial Church, in Harvard Yard in Cambridge. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to WGBH.

Centennial citations:The Elliot Norton Awards

The 21st annual Elliot Norton Awards were presented Monday night at Emerson College’s newly named Cutler Majestic Theatre. It was a dizzying evening of centennials, with the awards’ namesake, long-time Boston theater critic Elliot Norton, having celebrated his 100th birthday May 17 and the Majestic also turning 100.

The Boston Theater Critics Association was pleased to have actor Brian Dennehy, whose Tony-winning turn in Death of a Salesman was followed locally by an appearance in The Exonerated, as Guest of Honor. Dennehy is currently putting another notch in his considerable reputation with a Tony-nominated turn in the all-star production of Long Day’s Journey into Night that opened on Broadway May 6 and also features Vanessa Redgrave, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Robert Sean Leonard (Carolyn Clay’s review appeared in the May 16 Phoenix.) His citation read, " Whose dedication to the theater has resulted in performances and productions that stay with audiences for a lifetime. " His touchingly bewildered yet stentorian James Tyrone will enter that canon — and he isn’t in bad company, either.

Among local honors, the Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence was bestowed on long-time Boston actor Jeremiah Kissel, whose recent turns on area stages run the gamut from a dirty-trenchcoat-clad pervert in the Huntington Theatre Company’s Betty’s Summer Vacation to a scabrous Pistol in Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Henry V to a jaded Shpigelsky in the Huntington’s A Month in the Country. The Abbey Theatre’s searing Medea was honored as Outstanding Production by a Large Visiting Company, and Fiona Shaw was cited as Outstanding Actress in a Large Company production for her terrifying washed-up-celebrity turn in the title role. (She is also nominated for a Tony.) Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre resident playwright Gip Hoppe’s satire of cable-TV war coverage masquerading as a documentary, A New War, was honored as Outstanding Production by a Small Visiting Company.

Outstanding Production by a Large Resident Company was first-season American Repertory Theatre artistic director Robert Woodruff’s staging of Rinde Eckert’s world-premiere music-theater piece Highway Ulysses, which recast Homer’s Odysseus as a post-traumatic-stress-disordered Vietnam vet. Scott Edmiston’s elegantly designed production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, for Nora Theatre Company, copped the award for Outstanding Production by a Small Resident Company. And the Theatre Cooperative’s straightforward staging of provocative young playwright Rebecca Gilman’s Spinning into Butter was honored as Outstanding Production by a Local Fringe Company.

You will not be surprised to learn that SpeakEasy Stage Company’s Bat Boy: The Musical, which has been reprised twice to sold-out houses, was honored as Outstanding Musical Production — proof, perhaps, that there is art to be culled from Weekly World News. And Annette Miller’s fierce turn as thwarted wife and mother and fanatical Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in William Gibson’s Golda’s Balcony was selected as Outstanding Solo Performance.

An award for Outstanding New Script was bestowed on Irish emigrant and Boston University–trained playwright Ronan Noone, for The Blowin of Baile Gall. This solid yet lyrical drama, which takes place on an Irish-village construction site, also garnered an award for Outstanding Set Design, Small Company, for Richard Chambers, who came up with not only European light switches but several worn and hideous wallpapers. In the category of Outstanding Set Design, Large Company, David P. Gordon won for his far more gorgeous fairy-tale composition for the Huntington Theatre Company’s The Blue Demon.

The directing awards were headed by Anne Bogart’s for Outstanding Director, Large Company, for her elegant yet slapstick treatment of 18th-century French playwright Marivaux’s La Dispute, at the American Repertory Theatre. Another obvious honoree was SpeakEasy Stage Company artistic director Paul Daigneault, who was named Outstanding Director, Small Company, for the winning and resilient Bay Boy. His citation also mentioned SpeakEasy’s staging of Stephen Sondheim’s difficult Passion.

Film and television performer Arliss Howard was honored as Outstanding Actor, Large Company, for his coruscating turn as Dr. Astrov in the American Repertory Theatre’s Uncle Vanya. Long-admired area actor Billy Meleady was tripled out as Outstanding Actor, Small Company, for his memorable turns in The Lepers of Baile Baiste and Howie the Rookie (both for Súgán Theatre Company) and The Blowin of Baile Gall (for Boston Playwrights’ Theatre). Laura Latreille was named Outstanding Actress, Small Company, for her calculating artist in Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things for SpeakEasy Stage, and Naeemah A. White-Peppers was honored as Outstanding Actress, Fringe Company, for her performances in Zeitgeist Stage Company’s Bee-Luther-Hatchee and Chain.

Revels goes midsummer and free

Revels, which every year brings the popular Christmas Revels to Harvard’s Sanders Theatre, is moving its spring Revels production from the Cutler Majestic Theatre to the Children’s Museum, from indoors to out, and from spring to the summer solstice. Oh yes, and the performance will be free. Midsummer Revels will take place Friday June 20 from 7:15 p.m. until twilight. A grand procession of oxen-drawn carts, Scottish Highland pipes, Caribbean steel drums, larger-than-life puppets, circus performers, morris dancers, a Chinese Dragon, and the Padstow ’Obby ’Oss from Cornwall will parade down Congress Street and onto the museum grounds, where there’ll be a 90-minute outdoor stage performance featuring the Revels Chorus, the Branches Pan Groove Steel Orchestra, the Pinewoods Morris Men, and Revels favorites David Coffin and Janice Allen. The evening will conclude at sundown with the lighting of a " Midsummer Beacon. " Admission to the museum after 5 p.m. on Fridays is only $1, so if you come a little early, you can enjoy its offerings and make a mask for yourself

Rain date is Saturday June 21 at 3 p.m. The Children’s Museum is at 300 Congress Street (nearest T stop is South Station, on the Red Line). For more information, call (617) 972-8300 extension 21 or visit www.revels.org.

Issue Date: May 23 - 29, 2003

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