By Carol Davis
SAN DIEGO– Overall, I consider myself one lucky gal. How many of us can boast of seeing endless hours of theatre; some good, some bad and some ugly and then having the privilege of sharing that experience by writing about it? And just to carry that theme a bit further, how lucky can one be to have seen, in one weekend, an opera and a play about missing body parts? I might add, at this point, not too many folks can add that to their dubious claim to fame.
Would you call my sightings ghoulish? Macabre? Gruesome? Morbid? Scrumptious? I would add, all of the above and then some. Then you might think, ‘she must need a rest’. But that’s the world of theatre and oft times truth is stranger than fiction, so here goes!
**
The last time the San Diego Opera mounted Salomé by Richard Strauss, based on Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name, was during the 1997/98 season. To say that it’s not that popular an opera, might be true (it was not a packed house on opening night) and to say that it won’t appeal to everyone’s senses might be true as well but it is challenging and needs just the right grouping of singers as well as those who love to listen to Strauss’s music to pull it of as well as The S.D. Opera did this past weekend.
When it was announced that Lise Lindstrom would be singing the role of Salomé, the spoiled, stubborn and somewhat loony teenaged princess and step daughter of King Herod in this season’s opening opera of the same name, yours truly knew, that after watching and hearing her play in last season’s Turandot, we were in for a treat, and a treat it was. Then when Greer Grimsley was tapped for the role of Jochanaan (John the Baptist), the deal for me was sealed.
Salomé, famous for its sensual ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ (choreographer Seán Curran) in the final scene, is the opera that gives way to a blood thirst that takes at least ten minutes of a mad scene where Salomé dances with the head of John the Baptist in her hands still wanting a kiss from him. It all happens when King Herod prompts his stepdaughter, Salomé to dance for him and in return, will grant her any wish. Between Herod’s lust for the teenager and Salomé’s fascination with Herod’s prisoner, John The Baptist, Salome agrees to dance if she can have John the Baptist’s head on a silver platter.
Soprano Lise Lindstrom couldn’t have been a more exquisite or exciting Salomé. Small in stature but with a persuasive and dramatically convincing voice she lays out the case for her obsession and fantasy with the imprisoned Prophet. Baritone Grimsley is simply marvelous and a more than rousing John the Baptist as he refuses her advances thereby angering her even more. Grimsley, a larger than life and quite handsome John, moved me to chills when he was singing.
Tenor Allan Glassman’s Herod is also in perfect voice as the deranged, warped and alcoholic stepdad who not only lusts after his stepdaughter but also is willing to cast her mother, his former sister in law, Herodias, now his wife, (his dead brother’s wife but that’s another story) mezzo soprano Irina Mishura, to the wolves if truth were known.
The strong cast also includes tenor Sean Panikkar as Narraboth, the head guard who insists no one look or even think unpleasant thoughts about Salomé and mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman as Herod’s Page (almost a one woman Greek Chorus is first-rate) who forecasts gloom and doom to come over the Kingdom. Four tenors and one bass make up the Jewish contingency (all dressed in Bruno Schwengl’s array of rabbinic garb).
The great hall of Herod is emphasized (Bruno Schwengl) as a deep three-sided box with a wall at the end covered by a giant wooden circular disc that houses the prisoner Jochanaan. A few long benches hug one wall and the entire square looking cave including the ceiling is beautifully bathed in golden, turned green, turned, gray, turned red shades (Christopher Maravich) changing as the moods and Strauss’ music complete a sensual, sexy tone poem taken from a biblical story, translated from the Wilde play and put to music.
The opera is performed without intermission and is conducted by Stewart Bedford. With only a few more performances on the calendar, it’s worth a try especially to see Lindstrom dance with her seven veils but most notably, to hear her beautiful instrument.
Opera Dates: Jan. 31 @ 7PM, 8PM Jan 3 and 2PM Feb 5th
Organization: San Diego Opera
Phone: 619-533-7000
Production Type: Opera
Where: 1100 Third Ave. Downtown
Ticket Prices: $50.00-$275.00
Web: sdopera.com
Venue: San Diego Civic Theatre
**
Across town in Old Town, the Cygnet Theatre is presenting the Southern California premiere of Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane. Billed as a comedy, if you know anything about the playwright, you will understand that this is black comedy to the core. The sign posted at the box office reads: adult language, racial slurs, gunshot sounds. So if any of this offends you, McDonagh is not your cup of brew.
It also happens to be the playwright’s first play set in the U.S. Most of his works take place in Ireland (The Lieutenant of Inishmore recently reviewed, The Pillowman and The Beauty Queen of Leenane to name a few) even though he has lived in London his entire life.
This 2009 play premiered in New York and starred Christopher Walken, which sounds right. It also sounded right that local actor the edgy Jeffrey Jones should star in this premiere production. Jones plays Carmichael, a certified, but somewhat dangerous nut that has been searching for his missing left hand for some twenty-seven years even though he has a suitcase filled with chopped off left hands sitting in front of him. This unfortunate behanding happened in…Spokane, Washington
The play takes place in a run down hotel room (Christopher Ward), small town America where we meet up with Carmichael, the one handed psychopath who has a prisoner in his closet. It seems that Toby (Vimel) has promised Carmichael that he could find his hand. Toby’s girlfriend Marilyn (Kelly Iversen) arrives with a package and demands to see her boyfriend. In the meantime, the hotel operator, a another odd duck, Mervyn (Mike Sears) makes an appearance asking about a gun shot sound he hears.
Carmichael plays dumb, Toby falls out of the closet and he and Marilyn look on anxiously at the unwrapped butcher paper package she hands Carmichael that holds the key to their fortune, they think
Things go from bad to worse as Carmichael figures out that Toby and Marilyn are a pair of two bit thugs with a rap sheet of empty promises and that Toby once scammed him out of some money. This is not a good place for these two dumb kids to find themselves in. For Carmichael, revenge is sweet and Toby and Marilyn won’t have long to live if Carmichael has his way as Mervyn looks on in glee.
McDonagh’s plays are not what one might call pleasant or even fun to sit through, but for the most part, at least the others I’ve seen, are tolerable and even oddly humorous in some strange way given the subject matter. Again, most that I have seen are wonderfully acted and directed and I can say worthy of a robust conversation after.
‘Behanding’ although artfully directed by Lisa Berger, falls well below the high standards of plays this playwright has written mostly because the play has zero to say. There is a whole lot of nothing that happens during this one act, ninety-minute rage that we usually expect from him. And if it showed any humor, dark or otherwise, I missed it.
Jones does his best to conjure up enough quirky anger and weird obsessions to scare the wits out of Toby and Marilyn and Sears is just odd enough to make him the most interesting of all the characters. Vimel’s Toby and Iversen’s Marilyn are just window dressing for Carmichael’s anger and no matter how much tossing, begging and disjointed pleading for their lives that goes on among the three or sometimes four of them, it’s all for naught. Even the ending falls flat. But I’ll save that for you if you choose to see it.
Between Ward’s set designs, Michelle Caron’s lighting design, Jessica John Gerche’s costumes (especially Sears outfit), Peter Herman’s wig and makeup (Sears is sporting a pony tail hippie look so unlike him that it is comical) and Matt Lescault-Wood’s sound, production values live up to the usual high Cygnet standards. Would that the play did the same.
See you at the theatre.
Dates: through Feb. 19th
Organization: Cygnet Theatre
Phone: 619-337-1525
Production Type: Comedy
Where: Old Town
Ticket Prices: $29.00-$54.00
Web: cygnettheatre.com
Venue: Theatre in Old Town