MUSIC REVIEW : COMEDY BY (THE) OPENS ‘PACIFIC RING’ FESTIVAL

Two long hours into a pretentious and often sophomoric entertainment by the UC San Diego-resident comedic musical duo called (THE), the show finally began to rise above the ordinary--the ordinary lounge act, that is.

Here, elements of Oriental mysticism appeared, along with space suits, glitter-snow and 1960s-style lighting effects, props of no great originality but some entertainment value.

But by that time--around 10:15 Tuesday night--the amusements offered by collaborative artists/composers/comics Edwin Harkins and Philip Larson, ostensibly working with materials recently provided by their fellow composers John Cage and Toru Takemitsu, were wearing thin.

The occasion: opening night of the 11-day “Pacific Ring” Festival, sponsored by the music department of UC San Diego as part of the university’s 25th anniversary celebration. Through May 9, the festival celebrates living composers of the Pacific Rim--Cage, Takemitsu, Joji Yuasa, Conlon Nancarrow and Morton Subotnick among them--and presents ethnic and folk expressions in music, dance and drama, as well as the work of graduate students of the university.

A sense of festivity did seem to fill the crowd in Mandeville Center Auditorium throughout the presentation Tuesday night. It laughed, heartily and often, at the well-honed comedic routines of Harkins and Larson, who have been operating as a duo for 10 years now and certainly seem comfortable in their various roles as trumpeter, versatile vocalist, straight man and comic actor--among others.

But what their show has to do with the lands, people and nations that rim the Pacific Ocean--and which the organizers of this festival have redubbed “Pacific Ring”--is open to question.

“Vis-a-Vis” was the name given this 102-minute entertainment, which was supported by a considerable crew of assistants, by multimedia contributions from at least five associate artists and by special funding from the Inter-Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

The event had been billed as a collaborative effort by Cage, Takemitsu, Harkins and Larson. Yet one local musical journalist reported that Cage’s input consisted of merely six notes (important notes, undoubtedly).

And Takemitsu’s influence, though possibly extensive, showed itself only, if in an important way, in the final quarter-hour, when talismanic, Japanese-style drawings appeared on a screen at the rear of the stage. These projections seemed unrelated to anything that had gone before, yet they added to these lightweight proceedings a sense of seriousness, even foreboding, which the observer had to appreciate.

Otherwise, this generous evening proved to be a series of blackouts by (THE), sometimes genuinely funny--as in the brief sendup of pop poet Rod McKuen, which ends the first half, or in a deadpan lecture on the inessentials of trumpet-playing, which opens the second--but just as often only merely pleasant, or partially successful, and almost always earthbound.

What entertained one audience member most thoroughly was the 48-page program book. It offers provocative essays by, among others, Edwin O. Reischauer, Jonas Salk, Jonathan Saville, Gordon Mumma and festival director Roger Reynolds. It also offers, in any number of sober program annotations, wonderfully successful and clearly unintentional academic gobbledygook.