Shelagh Delaney | A Taste of Honey / 2016

permanent outsiders

by Douglas Messerli

Shelagh Delaney A Taste of Honey / Los Angeles, Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, the performance I saw, with Deborah Meadows, was on Sunday, October 2, 2016

 

It’s interesting that this season has seen two new revivals of Shelagh Delaney’s 1959 play, one at New York’s Pearl Theatre, and the other at Los Angeles’ Odyssey Theatre Ensemble. I’ve not seen the New York production, but apparently, like the Los Angeles revival it includes an on-stage jazz ensemble, surely appropriate—as opposed to some of the other music used in Odyssey version (“Que Sera Sera,” sung by both the character Jo [Kestral Leah] and on record by Doris Day, one of my very least favorite songs of the 1950s).  Although I haven’t read the script for years (I reviewed the play, read from the script in 2013), I certainly don’t recall, moreover, Jo’s mother, Helen (Sarah Underwood Saviano) taking up a saxophone to accompany the trio.

       In any event, I am sure that, along with several statements, particularly by Helen, spoken directly at the audience, director Kim Rubenstein intended to “modernize” a play that does certainly creak some. I’m just not that all those updatings truly worked. Perhaps this late 1950s slice of kitchen sink drama— without, fortunately, the sink—is best presented as a kind of historical document. Perhaps, even in its original appearance—one of a handful of plays and films by the likes of John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Alan Sillitoe, and John Arden who, in their “angry young men” grouping, completely changed British theater—it would quickly seem dated, with for more experimental plays by Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and the American Edward Albee being performed nearly simultaneously and in the years following.

       What is still amazing about this play is not its language—although Delaney always expressed her delight in the Salford dialect—but in its daring mix of subjects. Writing the play in response to the repressed gay sexuality of the plays of the elder statesman of the day, Terence Rattigan, Delaney, without a blink, calls up quite straightforwardly issues of prostitution, child abuse, and vastly different ages of marrying couple (in the behavior and relationships of Helen and her 20-year younger boyfriend, Peter [Eric Hunicutt]);  teenage sex (both Jo and the author herself were under 18 when they became pregnant); interracial marriage (the young sailor with who whom Jo finds her “taste of honey,” Jimmie [Gerard Joseph] is black); and homosexuality (this, in the person of Geoffrey [Leland Montgomery] who cares for Jo when her sailor disappears).

      If some of these themes seem introduced with almost accidental casualness, others are taken up quite seriously, presenting alternatives to the current—and sometimes still present—sentiments of the day. Yes, Geoffrey, as the gay nurse, is often a kind of stereotype, but he is very much more real and, at least, a different kind of stereotype from Rattigan’s whispering and tortured men and women.

      What also doesn’t get much said about the play today—and I’m afraid the Odyssey production didn’t completely succeed in its attempts to portray it—is that A Touch of Honey is also very funny, sometimes in the manner of Pinter and Albee. Although Jo seems permanently damaged by her mother, their relationship is often a dependent one, based on their mad “Irish” sense of argument.

      Saviano, perhaps the strongest member of this cast, did her best to make her lusty “good-time-girl” mother into less of a monster and more of a blustering fool. But it’s a complex role and needs a superlative thespian like Angela Lansbury, who played Helen on both the stage and in film, to get it right. Certainly, she has the lusty, loud-voiced monster down, but the kind of cow-like tenderness Albee discovers in his Martha, is here missing.

      All the actors did their credible best, with Leah having the benefit of a Manchester accent, while the others shifted in and out of Salford dialect. Joseph, shifting from the jazz ensemble drums to sailor was a likeable and quite tender “black prince” for Jo, and helped us to comprehend what Jo sees in him.

    Montgomery’s character is one of the most complex of the play. As a gay man, seemingly still closeted , since he will not reveal why he has been thrown out of his previous digs—clearly because he has been caught in bed by his landlady with another man. He also has to channel, without being too effeminate, the campy humor of the day; no mean task.

      He is also quite evidently “in love”—whatever that might mean in a work where no one feels loved enough—with Jo, offering to marry her in a far more serious way that even Jimmie has. He’d surely be the most loving and caring father for her mixed-raced baby.

     But he’s also a kind of coward, easily scared off by the returning Helen and, before that, by her drunken lover, Paul. And, ultimately, he leaves Jo, as she begins to go into birth contractions, in the lurch. Without him, more importantly, she has no one to help her escape the same patterns which have destroyed Helen, and one might imagine the two in the future locked in their hateful embrace a bit like the mother and daughter duo of Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale of Grey Gardens fame.

      Ultimately, however, everyone in this play is a permanent outsider, with no way to truly enter a society that would never be able to understand them even if they had been offered “entry.” Although Delaney hated to be described as one of “the angry young men,” she was certainly a very angry, and yes humorous, young woman. Although she wrote one other play, several film scripts, and a credible autobiographic work, Delaney had put all of her wrath into this one early play. For that reason, if for no other, A Taste of Honey a work worth watching again, even if it does now function better as a document than a living modern theatrical play.

 

Los Angeles, October 3, 2016

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (October 2016).

John Adams, Lucinda Childs, and Frank O. Gehry | Available Light / 2015

unaltered images of movement

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Adams (music), Lucinda Childs (choreography), and Frank O. Gehry (stage design) Available Light / Los Angeles, Walt Disney Concert Hall, June 6, 2015 

 

Although often referred to as a “performance art work,” and despite the collaborative contributions of composer John Adams, architect and, here designer, Frank Gehry, Available Light is very much a modern balletic piece in which choreographer Lucinda Childs plays the major role. That this work from 1983 was first performed in the museum space of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Arts “Temporary Contemporary” venue, and was curated by art curator Julie Lazar, may have made this dance seem to be something other than is, leading some art critics such as Los Angeles Times’ William Wilson to dismiss it and others to praise it as an avant-garde, cutting edge piece. But as its revival at the Walt Disney Concert Hall last evening confirmed, it is a beautifully conceived work of contemporary dance that is different from others, perhaps, only through its venues: besides MOCA and the Concert Hall, the work was also revived at Mass MoCA and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, all rather untraditional locations for works dedicated to movement.

       To say that this work primarily functions in the dance world, however, does not take anything away from the lush musical circlings of Adams’ score nor detract from the breathtaking two-tiered platforms that Gehry has created for the dancers to perform on, the top layer held up plinths of a kind of delicately laced chain-link fence-like construction that reminded us, of course, of the architect’s early constructions. While the original MOCA audience sat on two sides of the platforms, experiencing it, accordingly, from completely different vantage points, most of the Concert Hall audience members were able to observe the patterned movements of the two layers of dancers from a shared perspective. My only presumption is that, as Deborah Meadows and I were seated on the fourth-floor level, the action of the dancers came into sharper focus, revealing the fact that the ten dancers on the lower level, moving in pairs of twos and threes in repeated spins (generally one and a half turns), skips, and leaps were determined by similar movements along a lateral bias by the two dancers above—although those patterns alternated later in the performance. In short, like two waves of movement, it appeared that the dancers of the top platform determined, for the most part, the larger image of dancers in a group on the lower level.

      While these series of “patterns and permutations, repetitions and variations,” as dance critic Anna Kisselgoff suggested in her 1983 review of the Brooklyn performance, are all signatures of Child’s minimalist esthetic, we might almost read this two-layered patterning in a different manner, particularly if we explore the metaphoric associations of the work’s title, perceiving the “available light” as having to do with photographing or imaging a reality without artificial light sources, and imagining the two layers of movement to reflect actions of two hands (the two top-positioned dancers) moving through water and chemicals to the resultant image (the ballet corps below).

      Such a reading is surely encouraged by the fact that the dancers are all dressed by costumer Kasia Ealicka Maimone in the three colors of the photographic studio, white, black and red, and that, from time to time, light designer Beverly Emmons dims her normally bright white lights into near darkness and briefly introduces red tones. And while we feel some guilt, perhaps, for reading Child’s obviously abstract movements in this more literal manner, it appears to give significant structure and depth to the whole, particularly if we believe, as Kisselgoff argued, that “the piece is not simply [an] exercise in perception, [but]… an aid to perception.” For in this work of wide-eyed availability, the observer can readily see how each movement gives direct rise to others, and transforms simple elements into waves of wider motion and expression.

      However, one might “read” her dance with Adams’ joyous music and Gehry’s simple but elegant designs, Childs has created in Available Light something truly profound. And the Los Angeles Philharmonic should be commended for returning this excellent work to the city of its birth. I feel fortunate to have been part of the audience rediscovering this work of art.

 

Los Angeles, June 6, 2015

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera and Performance (June 2015). 

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II | The King and I / 2017

making oneself at home

by Douglas Messerli

 

Richard Rodgers (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics, based on Margaret Landon’s Anna and the King of Siam), The King and I / Los Angeles, Hollywood Pantages Theatre / the performance Howard Fox and I attended was a matinee on January 18, 2017

 

 The King and I, obviously, has no witchcraft behind it. Yet, given the exoticism of the “barbarians’” world that the proper English school marm, Anna Leonowens (Laura Michelle Kelly) enters, it might as well be magical, which the sets (in this case by Michael Yeargan), costumes (by Catherine Zuber), and music all attempt to recreate. The Thailand of Rodgers and Hammerstein is a gold and marbled fantasy land that has been, quite literally, “dreamed up.” Is it any wonder that the straight-thinking Anna keeps demanding of the King (José Llana) a "normal" home outside the confines of the palace.

      Symbolically, of course, she is asking for a “home” with him, an impossible thing. How is she to become the teacher to his family and him if she, too, is not a kind concubine, and her refusal to enter into that state is also what makes her even more interesting to him—not to say her outlandish dress and manners. In a song I had forgotten, since the movie had excised it, “Western People Funny,” we get the so-called barbarians’ reaction to Anna and her kind, and we get a new perspective on how the Victorian hoops and tight ribbons must have appeared to the Siamese.

     This King, however, is clearly not stupid, and quite openly perceives that he will be seen by the English and other western cultures as a barbarian, particularly if he desires to “build a wall around Siam to protect his country.” Hearing these lines on stage two days before the inauguration of a President who has expressed that very desire, made many in the audience, I am sure, flinch.

      Anna sagely advises him to do just the opposite, to invite the outsiders into his world so that they might see he is not a true barbarian. Of course, by doing so, the writers and composer hint that the true barbarians, in this case, may be the westerners, not the people of Thailand; and this insinuation helps to soften the quite obvious colonialist sympathies of the musical, something that has always made me winch in watching the film and stage work. It’s still hard—hearing such works as “A Puzzlement” and even “I Whistle a Happy Tune”—whose reprise during the King’s death seemed terribly inappropriate and, I’d argue, should have, as the movie did, been deleted—as does the endless repetition of “etc, etc., etc,” makes it somewhat difficult to stomach some of this musical’s disdain of cultural differences.

     Never mind, by the time the big bash is over, and we’ve experienced the cross-cultural lectures of the stunning Jerome Robbins-inspired ballet-within-a musical, “The Small House of Uncle Thomas,” the situation has radically shifted. The King, a bit like Trump, is now convinced of his own cleverness, and Anna, after a breathless series of polkas in “Shall We Dance,” has fallen in love with the seeming barbarian.

      Given her position still as an outsider, however, she cannot completely “redeem” him, and he is still committed to punishing his slave-concubine from Burma, Tuptin (Manna Nichols). He is, after all, a kind of barbarian in Anna’s eyes, and recognizing that he remains so in her eyes, quite literally destroys him.

     However, even the fact that the departing Anna determines to stay on and help the Prince Chulalongkorn (Anthony Chan, so much better than the movie Prince) during his new reign, it is hard to forgive her moral abandonment. And, in the end, we do feel that, despite all of her good intentions, it is she who has been not only the King’s adversary, but his personal barbarian—a kind of colonialist amazon who has imposed her views and values upon a vastly developed society, even if it be an autocratic one.

      The things that save this musical from its thematic inconsistencies are many: the wonderful singing of all involved (although the necessary amplification of voices, given the vast size of the Pantages theater, was a bit disconcerting), the simple yet elegant settings (including a gloriously beautiful curtain used to marvelous effect throughout), along with orchestral settings I’d not heard before which made me aware of just how muted was the symphonic version presented by the 1956 movie, as well as all the other stage-craft talents in lighting and costumes, and, of course, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s resplendent score. I admit that I loved this production.

 

Los Angeles, January 19, 2017

Reprinted from World Cinema Review and USTheater, Opera and Performance (January 2017). 

 

Tom Jacobson | Captain of the Bible Quiz Team / 2016

asking questions

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tom Jacobson Captain of the Bible Quiz Team / presented by Rogue Machine Theatre, Sunday August 28, 2016 at Lutheran Church of the Master, Los Angeles

 

Los Angeles playwright, Tom Jacobson’s new play, Captain of the Bible Quiz Team, is about the collapse of the small Kandota Lutheran Church in Little Sauk, Minnesota—or perhaps we should say that it is about the end of numerous such churches, since in writing this lovely work, Jacobson interviewed eight ministers nationally, all of whose churches were radically effected when in 2009 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) voted to welcome the LGBTQ community into their ranks not only as members of the church but as pastors as well.

      Jacobson’s play, with the major role of Landry Sorenson alternating between four actors (two of them women, one black male, and white male; the performance I saw was with Mark Jacobson, no relation to the playwright) takes place in a number of Lutheran churches throughout the city (the performance I saw was at Jacobsen’s own church, the gay friendly Lutheran Church of the Masters in Los Angeles) with a real organist, a program that mimics Sunday Church bulletins, and with the audience itself serving as interactive congregants. Like Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, some audience members were asked ahead of time to take on small roles throughout the play, and at the end, each attendee was named and asked to stand in a final act of unexpected support for the young preacher—not yet ordained as a full pastor—who has just declared he has lost his faith.

     Sorenson is the son of the full-time Church’s minister, who has suddenly been hospitalized and is near death for much of the play. The young preacher, accordingly, comes back to his home-town to bear several burdens: to nurture a basically conservative, mostly Scandinavian congregation, back to health, while simultaneously caring for a dying father whom he has strongly displeased with his collegiate and after activities. He has already told his son, in no uncertain terms, that he does not feel he is fit for the ministry, and throughout his dying he refuses for much of time to even acknowledge his presence.

     The young Sorenson, in his mix of high idealism and his often rambling seven sermons (Christmas Eve, December 2009; Epiphany, January 2010; Baptism of Our Lord, January 2010; Ash Wednesday, February 2010; Maundy Thursday, April 2010; and Good Friday, April 2010), is hardly a fit for a community that is certain to have heard highly structured homilies for most of their lives. But most of all is his dangerous tendency, as he claims was the pattern of the Lutheran founder, Martin Luther himself, to question everything, including the veracity of Bible stories and the fundamental values of his congregants. And, in that fact, this work reminds me some of Robert Bresson’s far greater The Diary of a Priest (see My Year 2000).

      Although he makes some important new changes, including establishing a needed food back in conjunction with other community churches, and even slightly increases attendance, he further grates on many churchgoers by revealing personal information about himself and his relationship with his father, and, finally, admitting that he himself has fallen in love with another man (in the production I saw, the supposed lover was represented as a black man). Members of the congregation retaliate by interrupting him mid-sermon with written messages, arguing for succession from the ELCA because of its decision on the LBGTQ inclusion and proposing Sorenson’s own termination—in particular for his tossing away an ancient couch in the church basement—a couch which as a child, he had often slept upon.

     Even worse, Sorenson discovers some secrets in his own father’s closet: most notably, the fact that, in an attempt to build a pastoral house next the church years earlier, he had taken out a loan in the name of the church, which was never paid back. The church must now attempt to free itself from the larger ELCA simply in order to not be closed down.

Tom Jacobson

     A true believer at heart, however, Sorenson seems to meet these dilemmas with an open mind and a calming heart. But when his father dies, still refusing to even speak to his son and his lover, the young preacher finally begins to break, his sermons becoming even more personal as he speaks of his own spiritual crisis. The only meliorating fact is that his father has left the family farm to the church, and its sale may pay off the church’s debt; the son has been left nothing. But even here, he proclaims, beneficently, that at least his father has given him his faith; what better gift than that, he proclaims.

      By the final Easter Sunday sermon, however, the minister admits his loss of faith, not of God, apparently, but of his fellow beings. The narrow-mindedness and hostility of the congregants themselves has seemingly defeated him. Yet another audience member walks forward with a written message, and the genial Sorenson, quipping on these now regular intrusions, braces for the worst.

      But this time either God or the men and women to whom he has been preaching—Jacobson has left the answer vague—has wrought a true miracle, as the audience members’ names are called out and we all gradually stand up to ask him to create a new church in the living room of one of our supposed members—an act much like ancient Christians who gathered to confess, in just such small, hidden-away locations, to one another. The questions Sorenson has pummeled them with have finally found their way into the minds of his congregation.

      I am what you might describe as a cynical non-believer (I too, however, was brought up as a Lutheran before my family turned to the Presbyterian Church—which I am sorry to say took even longer than the Lutherans to accept the LBGTQ community). I didn’t even bother to attend the Jello-mold party next to the church at play’s end—although I did sing along with the well-known hymns before each sermon.

     Yet there was something moving about being asked to turn to our fellow audience members (as church-goers are often encouraged to do) to shake their hands and, mid-play, express our love to one another. In an odd sense, this simple act was perhaps one of the most dramatic moments of this “play” simply because it questioned what theater actually is and was always, a bringing together of a temporarily sharing community to listen, question, challenge, and react. That acknowledgement of one another’s presence seems to be an important element missing in so much of today’s drama. And for many of millions, that dramatic interchange is what draws them still to church.

 

Los Angeles, August 29, 2016

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (August 2016).

 

Eugene O'Neill | The Emperor Jones / 1992, 1999, 2009

the emperor awakens

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eugene O’Neill The Emperor Jones / performed by The Wooster Group in a video of 1999, stage performances in Hong Kong and Chicago in 2009, and early work-in-progress performances in New York from 1992

 

It will be hard for many theater-goers, surely, to watch any version today of Eugene O’Neill’s early success, The Emperor Jones. Not only is the central figure, Brutus Jones, presented as a vain and foolish black who has temporarily hood-winked the citizens of a Caribbean country, but he speaks in a dialect right out of minstrelsy, that uses the “n” word too many times to count. The first few sentences out of Jones’ mouth says it all:

 

                Who dare whistle dat way in my palace? Who dare

                wake up de Emperor? I'll get de hide frayled off some

                o' you niggers sho!  

 

      The Wooster Group production from the 1990s and the early years of the new century, at least saved its audiences from having to spend an hour with this wincingly painful language coming out of the mouth of black man; in their production, a woman, Kate Valk, plays Jones. But she does so, dressed in a garish imitation of a Japanese emperor’s robe like something out of The Mikado, while in blackface.

     It’s almost as if Wooster director, Elizabeth LeCompte, were taunting the liberal and conservative correct-thinking fates. Surely the NEA critics of Reagan’s day might have had a hissy-fit if they’d seen this show.

      Miraculously, however, the Wooster group and Kate Valk, in particular, have created a work that not only questions the very values of O’Neill’s original, but that actually touches both our intellects and our hearts, partially restoring the intentions of O’Neill’s original. By layering the various levels of white bigotry that has made Brutus Jones such a self-destructive being, we discover his real humanity sometimes hidden by both the original text and the theatrical interpretations of such a figure. Valk majestically takes on this character with all the crazed enthusiasm of the characters in Jean Genet’s The Blacks, and in her interchanges with the sometimes garbled video presentation of “his” white “partner,” Smithers (William Dafoe in the video version and Scott Shepherd and Ari Fliakos in staged versions) speaking an equally exaggerated British brogue that presents him as a kind of Japanese-inspired pirate, Jones reveals his knowledge that any royalty bequeathed him is only temporary.

       Jones, in Valk’s performance, may be a con-man, even a brutal dictator, but unlike so many of real-life strong-men, he is no liar and is not self-deluded: he admits he has only taken on his role to get the money. His fate, in short, has predetermined the greed of the white men and women who behind the ridiculous wardrobe and paint to which sacrificed his reality.

      The decision to have Jones played, accordingly, by a woman in blackface is brilliant in its Brechtian positing of that character. But to successfully navigate the obvious pitfalls of the language you need the brilliance of someone like Valk.

    Hooting (“Hah-Hah-Hah,” in seeming imitation of Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire) and hollering, by turns; seriously terrified by his fate and comically mocking his whole ridiculous “reign,” the Emperor of this work runs the gambit of emotional expressions. Valk is at once a peacock and a wide-eyed child-on-the-run, terrified of being caught and lynched. His own myth, that he can be killed only with a silver bullet, makes him a kind of vampire, which, in fact, he has been playing, sucking the blood from his own kind.

       If Valk’s performance, as Charles Isherwood, has argued in The New York Times is legendary, she is supported fortunately by excellent company actors in Dafoe, Shepard and the multi-gifted Fliakos, but by the memorable costumes and the delicious score of composter David Linton..

      LeCompte’s eccentric direction is not to be ignored. It’s hard to explain it, but a short dance by the Emperor and his hit-man Smithers, in which they enact a kind of synchronized Kabuki mime, brought tears to my eyes. The Samurai-like warrior clearly is courting his (female-male) Emperor. Even the stage-extra figure, controlling the rolling executive chair of the Emperor’s throne, later gets into the act

      The video, which I watched was first shown, apparently, in 1999. But the same DVD contains performances from 2009 at Chicago’s Goodman Theater and the Hong Kong Arts Festival, as well as early work-in-progress performances at The Performing Garage in October 1992. I preferred the taped performances to Christopher Kondek and Elizabeth LeCompte’s video. Both the Goodman Theater and Hong Kong performances were wonderful, but perhaps because of the needs of the audience, Valk more clearly enunciated her words in the Hong Kong performance, giving the role much more clarity. But perhaps, having by then seen so many versions, I simply heard it with more comprehension. Seeing this production so many times, however, is a reward for anyone truly interested in American theater.

 

Los Angeles, March 13, 2016

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (March 2016).

John Adams and Peter Sellars (based on Old and New Testament Sources and texts by Dorothy Day, Louis Erdrich, Primo Levi, Rosario Castellanos, June Jordon, Hildegard von Binger, and Rubén Dario) | The Gospel According to the Other Mary / 2012

a body transfixed by the noonday sun

by Douglas Messerli

 

Peter Sellars (libretto, based on Old and New Testament Sources and texts by Dorothy Day, Louis Erdrich, Primo Levi, Rosario Castellanos, June Jordon, Hildegard von Binger, and Rubén Dario), John Adams (composer) The Gospel According to the Other Mary, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel / the performance I saw was on Saturday, June 2, 2012

 

The new opera-oratorio by John Adams and his often-time collaborator Peter Sellars, if nothing else—and there is a great deal more to be said for this work—is a serious and mature contribution to orchestral and vocal music of the 21st Century. Focusing this work on a woman, Mary Magdalene, the "other" Mary (Jesus' mother and Mary the mother of James being two further Biblical Marys), in legend from the town of Magdala, but in this version is described as being, along with her sister Martha and their brother Lazarus, from Bethany.

      The gospels mention her very few times, primarily in Luke and Mark; but her importance is clear, particularly through the apocryphal texts which refer to her several times. She is one of the strongest and most important women who was close to Jesus, remaining with him beneath the cross until his death and accompanying his body to the sepulchre wherein he was buried. Most importantly, however, are the biblical texts that describe Mary Magdalene as the one who discovered that Christ had risen, reporting the news to his doubting disciples. In connection with this role, particularly from the 10th century on, she is referred to as the "apostle to the apostles."

      Adams' and Sellars' piece recounts some of this biblical history, particularly Mary Magdalene's suffering at the feet of Jesus during the Crucifixion and her later discovery of the missing body, Jesus, who she mistakenly took to be a gardener, calling her by name, the event which ends the work. But through the libretto's collage of texts, this piece takes the Mary Magdalene our of biblical context and drops her into numerous Twentieth century contexts, presenting the two sisters first as women who have been arrested and jailed, later as women who run a "House of Hospitality" for homeless girls, and in the Second Act as women picketing along with civil rights activist and union leader César Chávez—a far different César from Caesar Augustus whose call for a census brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem for their child's birth.. This shuffling back and forth in time is an attempt, obviously, by the librettist and composer to link the immediate lessons of Jesus with those who carry his message forth into our own time. And in several ways their condensation of time successfully presents these two important women in Jesus' life in a role in which they embody Christ's teaching, while at the same time emphasizing—particularly in Martha's complaint of being forced to serve alone while her sister lies at the master's feet—the special role Mary Magdalene played in Jesus' life.

      Adams' music, particularly in the first act, as he follows these women's lives and the resurrection of their brother Lazarus, is lush and beautiful, his constantly shifting rhythms reflecting the pushes and pulls of the demands these special followers put upon Jesus. The composer's brilliant concept of carrying much of the narrative through the voices of three countertenors (Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings, and Nathan Medley) allows the story to move forward, while the central figures, Mary Magdalene (Kelly O'Connor), Martha (Tamara Mumford), and the strong-voiced Russell Thomas as Lazarus sing of their own psychological experiences and their personal relationships with Jesus.  

      From the beginning we come to understand Mary Magdalene as a woman of special intensity, having evidently attempted suicide and isolated herself from others after her brother's death—the injuries to her arm healed by the messiah—while later showering her love upon Jesus with the herbs and ointments with which she has bathed her hair and with which washes Jesus' feet. Far from the hard-working and more sensible Martha, Mary is clearly a woman of passion, as the women's chorus put it (in Spanish) "a body transfixed by the noonday sun," which becomes a metaphor of her love for and her personal relationship with Jesus. This Mary—without specifically being portrayed as a former prostitute—is very much an embodiment of Jesus' teachings about love. 

     There are numerous powerful moments in the First Act, including the prophet Isaiah-inspired "Howl ye," sung by Lazarus and the Chorus, the passage in Spanish I just referred to ("En un diea de amor yo bajé hasta la tierra"), the intense Resurrection of Lazarus ("Drop down, ye heavens, from above"), again sung by the Chorus, Lazarus' own impassioned outburst ("For the Grave cannot praise thee,"), Mary's "I wash your ankles" and the Chorus's response ("Spiritus sanctus vivificans vita"), and the absolutely splendiferous Last Supper, sung by Lazarus ("Tell me: how is this night / Different from all other nights?"), a  piece, ending the First Act, which I almost hoped might never cease.

     Unfortunately, not all of the passages that Sellars chose for his collage are as excitingly poetical as those I mention, and, particularly in the Second Act, when the biblical narrative begins to dominate, so too does the music turn a bit turgid, occasionally reminding one of the numerous Hollywood film epics of Jesus' life and crucifixion. Here the Countertenors and their narrative-telling dominate, while the personal viewpoints of the work's three major figures is diminished by the swelling of larger events, including Jesus' own arrest and Mary's and Martha's agitated protests. Accordingly, the action is described in a kind of secondhand manner that affects not only the libretto but the music as well. Only with the Crucifixion, particularly in Scene 4, with Mary's recounting of the falling rain on Jesus' body, and Lazarus' interpretations of the dying Christ's words: "I want no shelter, deny / the whole configuration" does the work again reach the heights of the First Act. And both librettist and composer redeem this act with the stunning introduction of a resurrection of nature itself: "It is spring. The tiny frogs pull / their strange bodies out / of the suckholes," sung by both the Chorus and Mary. The final graveside encounter between Mary and the gardener who calls her name, is so marvelously understated that the audience with whom I saw The Gospel According to the Other Mary was not sure to applaud as Dudamel brought the orchestra to a quiet cessation.

     What I have said above, however, cannot to do justice to instrumental variations of this piece which uses numerous percussion instruments not usually to be found in modern-day orchestras, along with the employment throughout of the cimbalom, creating the sound of an instrument contemporaneous with the Biblical events. Some of the narrative difficulties, moreover, may be solved

when the production is transformed from a piece of the orchestra hall into a blend of opera and oratorio performance, which is planned for the future. I cannot wait to rediscover this work in its new form, and feel blessed to have experienced it in this early manifestation.

 

Los Angeles, June 3, 2012

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (June 2012).