I discovered this buried in my drafts. Apparently I finished it, but never posted it. Oops! The performance was on April 26, 2014. Enjoy! The setting: The not-so-distant future, when overpopulation and global warming have made water and other natural resources very, very scarce. The cast: A traveling acting troupe, a gaggle of orphans, and a tribe of desert people. The fare: Theatre of the Absurd bookended by environmentalist surrealism. Opera Parallele's presentation of two one-acts warning of selfishness and decadence was excellent. OP seamlessly melded the two works and crafted them into a play-within-a-play form. They presented it as a wandering theater troupe who stops to present a morality play for a group of desert people. The staging was a bit static in a couple places and the acting unfocused at times, but the singing was very good throughout. The least exciting moments came in Mahagonny at the beginning. The ensembles are very challenging, so the director catered to that, clumping the unsavory gentlemen beautifully singing the quartet ("Auf nach Mahagonny") together for a card game at the edge of the stage. This was fabulous for the sound and the cohesion between the orchestra and singers and was in keeping with the narrative and characterization, but visually and emotionally it was somehow not engaging. The set design was inventive, with a full-sized, functioning boat on wheels that had a foldout platform attached as the biggest and most impressive set piece. Unfortunately, it was quite heavy, and it seemed the cast had not had enough time to play with and get used to it. The lighting catered and contributed to the atmospheric changes onstage. The costumes were interesting but not distracting. In short, the design team did a great job. All of the performers were top-notch. Even the chorus was engaged and vibrant. They sang well, with good verve, volume, and cohesion. The children, culled from the San Francisco Girls' Chorus, were charming with a healthy dose of annoying (when they were supposed to be so). The main cast was quite excellent. Rachel Schutz particularly stood out and did a good job changing her physicality for her different characters. Her lovely and expressive voice carried clearly through the hall. Throughout his life, Bertolt Brecht was adamant that theater should make the audience THINK, not FEEL. He put forth that theater should be a call to action; the audience should leave the theater uneasy and wanting to DO something, rather than feeling cleansed by and reveling in the catharsis they just experienced. However, his Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect) tends to not be very endearing. People enjoy being immersed and lost in a narrative; escapism is the name of the game, with fantasy films (yes, superhero movies count as fantasy) and comedies topping the movie box office charts. OP struck a working balance between call to action and narrative. It was a cerebrally and emotionally engaging and thoroughly enjoyable show.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMaayan is a Manhattan-based opera singer. Archives
January 2019
Categories
All
|