arts&culture» Stage Toms’ scientist surveys his plans in Frankenstein.
CHRIS BENNION
Opening Nights PFrankenstein; Or,
The Modern Prometheus
CENTER HOUSE THEATRE (SEATTLE CENTER), 216-0833, BOOK-IT.ORG. $24–$38. 7:30 P.M. WED.–SAT., 2 P.M. SUN. ENDS MARCH 9.
ALYSSA DYKSTERHOUSE
MCCAW HALL, SEATTLE CENTER, 389-7676, SEATTLEOPERA.ORG. $25 AND UP. 7:30 P.M. WED., FRI., & SAT. ENDS MARCH 7.
“To admit prejudices can be helpful,” wrote critic Virgil Thomson in his autobiography as part of a primer of sorts for those in his profession. So I won’t pretend I’ve ever felt much affection for the work of Gian Carlo Menotti, America’s most active and popular mid-20thcentury opera composer. Still, I was startled to rediscover, after a couple decades away from his 1950 The Consul, what a false and exploitative piece it is. Not even Seattle Opera’s solid and handsome production, which opened Saturday, and not even the grandly committed performance of lead soprano Marcy Stonikas, could persuade me that Menotti meant a word of what he wrote in his tale of a woman—Magda Sorel, the wife of freedom fighter John—encountering police brutality and stonewalling bureaucracy in an unnamed Eastern Bloc-y nation. The Consul (the title refers to the ominously unseen figure to whom Magda applies for asylum) is less—far less—an opera about political oppression than an opera that uses political oppression for its own ends, which seem to be merely to make an audience twitch like a wired laboratory frog. Why is there a lush, Technicolor, end-credits orchestral entr’acte leading into our first view of the Consul’s gray office, a file-cabineted nightmare straight out of Brazil ? To establish the mood? Fail. Why the embarrassing attempts at comic relief (the Consul’s secretary flirting on the phone; an onstage magic act)? Because the subject warrants them? Fail. And why, for God’s sake, is there a baby who serves no dramatic function at all except to die in Act 2 and yank our chain? Because none of Menotti’s characters (he wrote the libretti as well as the music) are fully realized human beings. The paper-thin Magda is courageous and unhappy, but we learn nothing more about her, and no one else onstage gets even that much characterization; they’re types, symbols, plywood set pieces to be pushed around. The proof is in the final insult: After two hours of torment, Menotti cannot even grant Magda a dignified death, interrupting her suicide attempt with a ridiculous hallucinatory dream
PA Little Night Music SECONDSTORY REPERTORY, 16587 N.E. 74TH ST. (REDMOND), 425-881-6777, SECONDSTORYREP. ORG. $27. 8 P.M. THURS.–SAT. ENDS MARCH 9.
One thing that made me extra-cranky about The Consul (see above) was that the previous evening I’d seen SecondStory’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s 1973 A Little Night Music —superior in every conceivable way a work of art can be, but one Seattle Opera will never stage because, God forbid, it’s a “musical.” (If I’m ever proven wrong, my apology will be loud, eager, and grateful.) Affectionate warmth; wit instead of shtick; lyrics that are nonpareil in their sparkling erudition and intricacy; two dozen memorable tunes; emotion that’s earned rather than cattle-prodded out of you; and above all, a stage full of actual human beings: All this is what Sondheim (music and lyrics) and Hugh Wheeler (book) provided that Menotti couldn’t. Everyone in SecondStory’s winning cast finds in his or her role some inflection, some tilt that brings it to life: Becca Orts’ effervescent giggles as young bride Anne Egerman; Micheal O’Hara’s smooth urbanity as her older husband Fredrik; the crispness of Sharry O’Hare’s bons mots as ex-courtesan Leonora Armfeldt. At the top is Jennifer Littlefield as the latter’s actress daughter Desirée. Where Menotti gives his heroine a mid-suicide dance number, Sondheim gives his his greatest hit, “Send in the Clowns,” a lusciously affecting what-if elegy sung to Fredrik, her lover of years past. (My only casting quibble is that Josh Krupke seems awfully young for the belligerent Carl-Magnus, Desirée’s current amour, though he blusters gamely and amusingly nevertheless.) If the approach as a whole could be drier—this production’s a floral Asti rather than a snappy cava—it’s still got loads of charm deepened with bittersweet notes, fully in tune with Sondheim and Wheeler’s wry insights into the human heart and genuine regard for their characters. GAVIN BORCHERT E
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SEATTLE WE EKLY • FEBRUARY 26 — M ARCH 4, 2014
Going into Book-It’s new staging of Mary Shelley’s monster tale, I expected it either to be sublime or subpar—and probably the latter. What more could possibly be done with the source material? Didn’t that new movie, I, Frankenstein, just bomb? Yet this production perches on perfection. From Scooby-Doo on down, pop culture has had its way with Shelley’s 1818 novel, which among other themes explores the notion of dualism—that people are neither inherently good nor evil, but possess a capacity for both. As director and adaptor, David Quicksall treats his two leads accordingly: Instead of being some arrogant mad scientist, Victor Frankenstein (Connor Toms) is sweetly suffering and scared stiff. Played by Jim Hamerlinck, Frankenstein’s creation—simply listed in the playbill as “?”—compels our compassion, even while cowing his creator. In other words, expect no stereotypes here. Quicksall also manages to preserve Shelley’s supporting characters—mostly ignored in the various movie versions—to delightful effect. From blocking to performance, his cast of 10 deftly elicits both humor and horror. (I’ll single out Ian Bond, playing Victor’s doomed friend Henry Clerval, for his balance between commanding a stage yet not stealing its focus.) The show’s design elements blend like chocolate and peanut butter. Supremely stylized yet stunningly simple, Andrew D. Smith’s lighting and Andrea Bryn Bush’s set effortlessly employ the Romantic motifs of light and dark, while Nathan Wade’s sound design agreeably accentuates that contrast. Though I still have a soft spot for 1985’s The Bride, with Sting creating Jennifer Beals as his perfect woman, this is the best adaptation of a familiar classic that I’ve seen in years.
The Consul
ballet in which her mother returns from the dead to announce she’s marrying John (WTF?); and the magician—a character completely gratuitous in terms of the opera’s larger theme—gets the last word. So it’s not enough that The Consul is an inchdeep trivialization of one of the most momentous and agonizing events of the modern era, Eastern Europe’s (ongoing) struggle against totalitarianism. (One can imagine Menotti in the late ’40s mulling his next project: What can I write about that’ll really pack ’em in? . . . I know! Human-rights violations! ) Menotti, astonishingly, managed to ratchet up the outrage even further: He wrote an opera ostensibly about the horrors of dehumanization in which the empty characters exist only to be manipulated for his ulterior motives. That’s one hell of a sick irony. As a composer, Menotti had a talent for building urgent and forward-driving ensembles; for ear-tickling orchestration; for opulent sonic wallows (it’s corn syrup, but it’s tasty). As a dramatist he was a hypocrite and a fraud—with, by the way, a streak of misogyny (recalling, among other examples, his libretto for Samuel Barber’s 1958 opera Vanessa; or, a Woman Without a Man Is Totally Worthless) that makes Puccini look like Oprah. As a stage work, The Consul is contemptible from top to bottom. GAVIN BORCHERT
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