MUSIC REVIEW : New ‘Porgy’ Leads Bring Story Alive at Music Center

A new cast of principal singers took over in Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” Friday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, heightening the drama but singing at a less impressive level.

Terry Cook brought a lanky physique and long, imploring arms to the role of Porgy. He made Porgy’s loneliness, self-doubt and anguish vivid, although he lacked the inspirational fervor of his predecessor in the scene of Robbins’ wake.

Vocally, he capitalized on a deep luxurious richness that regrettably evaporated as he ascended into the upper range. His diction, unfortunately, often was cavernously muddied and curiously accented.

Roberta Laws made a compact, curvaceous, initially independent and almost reckless Bess, facing the contempt of the women with hurt bravery. Later she allowed the character’s deep perplexity, inner turmoil and vulnerability to her own physicality to emerge with almost frightening intensity.

Laws sang with a cutting, sometimes flutelike soprano, powerful in “What You Want With Bess?” but falling short in the charisma needed for “Leavin’ fo’ de Promis’ Lan’.”

Though not ideally matched vocally, Cook and Laws did strongly project one of the basic concepts of the opera--that Porgy and Bess are each better together than they are separately.

Despite some vocal edginess, Angela Simpson as a worn, stoic Serena was perfectly fine in the ascending glissandos culminating in a sunburst in “My Man’s Gone Now.” But even better was the gospel-like freedom and lilt she voiced in the prayer “Oh, Doctor Jesus” to cure Bess.

As the new Crown, Jeffrey LaVar sported huge biceps, which empowered him easily to lift and hurl a woman virtually as dead weight in the Hurricane Scene. More a befuddled giant than a real menace, however, LaVar like his predecessor also had trouble making the impulse for the fight with Robbins credible. He sang with mostly unmodulated bravado.

The rest of the cast was previously reviewed. John DeMain again conducted.

* “Porgy and Bess” continues at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., through Sunday, with alternating principals, then moves to Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, June 21-25.