Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 19

i nlil JjililMWM im" i iifr nm ii Food is of shining quality at Candle Keller restaurant; 'Too Tail' Jones expands his interests to include singing; People Page 22 Peter Strauss stars in 'a whale of a movie' on TV; Win Fanning Page 25 -V Dining Out JfliMrfi Pane 24 FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 1981 19 5l 4 II I I 4 I I II II I no sounds oi silence II ill -II I I i i i i ii i TjfM jp i inierpreiauons oi sympnony classics piayeu ay me if riffle. I I riiisDurgn i oum sympnony lomorrow ai mi. LeDanon 1 II Hich School auditorium. The Drocram is I J) Jl II being oilered by the rerforming Arts for I i I vv. I 1 II I lJ xKv Lady of note Internationally acclaimed soprano Shirley Verrett will perform at Heinz Hall tonight and Sunday when the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is led by guest conductor Hiroyuki Iwaki.

Verrett will be featured soloist during the orchestra's debut performance of Ernest Chausson's "Poeme de FAmour et de la Mer." Pops goes the music "Music from Ballet to Boogie Woogie" will be tied together by the talents of Richard I layman tomorrow, Sunday and Monday at Heinz Hall when he conducts the Pittsburgh Symphony Pops Orchestra. "J7y i 1 i 5 "1 iru tJb V. I a s'lll I There a fine line -j I l-i I between mystery I Ji i and satire in the I I i mJr I Fne Line Theater 1 1 i I Company's Tiny role Lily Tomlin thinks small in the film "The Incredible Shrinking Woman," which also stars ex-Pittsburgher Charles Grodin. The movie opens today at the Showcases West, East and North; and the Cheswick, the Bank, Cinema 22 and Cinema World. production of "Bullshot Crummond," starring Lisa Bradley.

It opens tonight at the Soho Repertory Theater, 3300 Fifth and also will be performed tomorrow night and Sunday. A film of rare quality 1 (T 4 By George Anderson Post-Gazette Drama Critic Question: How do you sell a three-hour Italian movie about peasant life in 1898? Answer You don't Post-Gazette review Even when the movie is as extraordinary as "The Tree of Wooden Clogs" (a dreadful title), it is impossible convince most audiences that it is a rewarding experience. The film won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978, but did not enjoy the commercial success in Europe that usually follows such an award. It opened to rave reviews in New York in 1979 the New York Times even dragged out the rarely-used word "masterpiece" but again it drew only slender business. Now, surprisingly, it has opened a limited engagement at the Arcade Theater on the Southside, and while such a booking is a credit to the theater, it would be unrealistic to expect it to rival "Stir Crazy" as an audience draw.

Such considerations may seem crass when applied to a film of such obvious integrity and artistry as "The Tree of Wooden Clogs, but fairness to the reader compels such a preface. Once the casual entertainment-seeker has been duly warned, it can then be said that this Ermanno Olmi film is a work of rare quality (Continaed on Page 26) 1 Dan Large as Dracula. Darrell Sapp Poet -Gazette John Zarra, owner of the Electric Banana. Punk goes the trend Lab revives 'Dracula' 0' By Barry Paris Ii Mi tli It Hi II' tV II, Fi -V it1- 'hi i 1 -If iU i 111 rf I 1 Zarra is far from a newcomer to trends. His club, when it was called the Spotlite, pioneered the go-go girl movement locally in the 1960s.

It was his club that featured the first go-go boy. When he saw the go-go movement going-going, he completely switched the concept of his club and turned it into a disco. Then he turned it into a black disco. "I even tried country music for a while," Zarra said. "But it didn't take off as well as I thought it would.

New Wave was the next thing and it's working. It's crazy, I'll admit that. But there's a market out there." If you are interested in catching some of the decibels of New Wave music, the Cardboards and The Five will be performing at the Banana tonight. Tomorrow, the Raveups, direct from a tour of San Francisco, will take over. But if you couldn't care less about the weird sounds the groups will be thrusting from the Banana's bandstand, you may enjoy watching the (Continued on Page 22) relief his other two dozen or so films, including such entries as "Blacula," in which the count is played by a black.

Lord knows hpw much additional spinoff merchandise owes its existence to Dracula. Take, for example, Count Chocula breakfast cereal something you can sink your rotten teeth into. Then there's Leon Katz's "Dracula: Sabbat," which predated much of the above and which is now a handsomely mounted and engaging production by the Pittsburgh Laboratory Theater. The dating game that question of whose Dracula came first is probably not of much general interest. But if originality is important in theater, we'd do well to remember that Katz's ritualistic reworking of the Stoker yarn was written way ahead of the Selling of the Vampire craze.

Theatrically, the show resembles a cross between Garcia Lorca and i I (Continued on Page 20) By Mike Kalina Post-Gazette Staff Writer New Wave rock 'n' roll hasn't really inundated the Pittsburgh music scene the way it has in other cities, but lately it's been lapping away quietly at a market here. One of the first nightclub entrepreneurs to latch onto the fad is John Zarra, a man who is to nightclub trends what Sammy Davis Jr. is to gold chains. Is the man who's promulgating New Wave (a.k.a. Punk) music in Pittsburgh essentially a musical esthete who wants to encourage new and broader forms of rock 'n' roll? Nope.

It's all a matter of economics. "I'll try anything," said the gravel-voiced Zarra as he sipped a drink one recent evening about an hour before his club, the Electric Banana, 3887 Bigelow was to open. "Punk, schmunk. It's all music to me. You've got to go with something new all the time.

It's a tough business." Post-Gaiette Staff Writer Ever since Bram Stoker's novel defined him in 1897, Transylvania's Count Dracula has been serviced by the most diabolically successful PR machine in entertainment history. In the last few years alone, he has risen a half dozen times from the literary dead in new characterizations with emphasis on this or that facet of his sanguine personality be it Frank Langella's seductive Post-Gazette review "Dracula" of the late Broadway (and subsequent film) version or Klaus Kinski's vulnerable "Nosfer-atu" in the remake of F.W. Mur- nau's 1923 original. This is not to mention the count's lesser vehicles the noxious comedy "Love at First Bite," for example, or Roman Polanski's "Fearless Vampire Killers." Nor will we catalog you should breathe a sigh of Omar Drignoli in "Tree of the Wooden Clogs..