A high-concept stunt? A rare stroke of artistic luck? A Frankensteinian collage of 21st-century life?
All of that can be said about Complications in Sue, an opera of sorts that premiered with surprising cohesion and great audience response, on Wednesday at the Academy of Music.
Opera Philadelphia is on new ground with this collection of 10 loosely linked scenes by different composers who did their work without knowing what the others were up to.
Each scene documents a decade of the life of Sue, in a birth-to-death chronicle curiously devoid of outstanding achievements but forming a reflection of the worlds (both inside and outside her psyche) swirling around her.
At the center of it all — including episodes about Santa Claus in crisis, a grieving ex-husband, and Sue’s shopping algorithms coming to life — was the sharp-tongued cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond.
Playing the imaginary Sue, she sang, talked (and danced here and there), and seemed to go off script with a damning litany of current government persons and entities. She prompted the loudest ovation of the evening with a no-holds-barred condemnation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Somehow, the components came together, thanks partly to the anything-can-happen atmosphere of the piece.
The 10 episodes — as fantastically conceived by librettist Michael R. Jackson — are like semi-improvised comedy sketches that leave certain psychological doors open for the composers to create a sense of operatic magnitude.
The composer lineup, full of strong personalities, was framed by Errollyn Wallen on birth (during which Bond walked down the theater aisle saying hello to aisle seaters) and Nico Muhly on death (in lovely choral writing with a waning, interior heartbeat).
Generally, tunes weren’t a priority as the composers characterized the theatrical events that Jackson gave them, such as Nathalie Joachim’s scene with a newscaster from deep within Sue’s psyche interviewing her about life choices. When Sue’s husband has a meltdown, Dan Schlosberg goes on a rampage through musical styles reflecting the cultural jumbles of our times. Missy Mazzoli makes Santa Claus’ breakdown more tragic than comic.
Nobody just went for laughs, even when they seemed to.
Andy Akiho had singers being annoyingly manic playing college kids obsessing over who they thought Sue is. But this is where the overall theme of Complications in Sue coalesced: Do we know anybody? Or ourselves? Do we want to?
Composers Cécile McLorin Salvant, Rene Orth, Alistair Coleman, and Kamala Sankaram also wrestled with such issues in one way or another, sometimes using minimalist-shaded repetition for urgency, prominent bass lines for dark corners and with absolutely no need to box these situations into some sort of smooth musical package.
from inside Sue’s imagination in Opera Philadelphia’s “Complications in Sue.”
That last quality made many of these miniature compositions seem epic in their implications. Was Complications in Sue really just 90 minutes?
Under the confident direction of Caren Levine, the four-member cast consistently gave it their all in deeply unconventional musico-dramatic assignments.
Kiera Duffy and Nicky Spence each had episodes giving them space to dominate the stage on their own. Duffy’s voice was an island of sweet stillness even in tumultuous moments while Spence never let intonation and enunciation slip even in his most reckless moments.
Nicholas Newton played both Santa Claus and Death with equal conviction (an accomplishment indeed). And if you walked in not knowing that Rehanna Thelwell was walking through her stage roles that were actually sung by Imara Miles, you wouldn’t be any the wiser.
The one disappointment on the performance front was Bond’s dance of death: It was just a lot of twirling in moments that asked for transcendence. Much of Bond’s fan base feels anything she wants to do is just fine. I’m not one of them.
One major achievement was how the production elements worked together. That just doesn’t happen very often in new operas.
The Krit Robinson-designed production ranged from a charmingly makeshift Christmas tree to dazzling abstraction. In later scenes, the stage had concentric rectangular frames, each with changing, subtle coloring.
Raja Feather Kelly and Zack Winokur shared directing duties but in such fluid, choreographic staging, it was hard to determine where one director’s work started and the other left off.
Consider what this team could do in more conventional operatic circumstances. I hope to see that.
“Complications in Sue,” plays at Feb. 5, 7 p.m. Feb. 6, 8 p.m. Feb. 8, 2 p.m. Academy of Music, 240 S Broad St. All tickets are Pick Your Price, starting at $11. operaphila.org, 215.732.8400, tix@operaphila.org
Leave a Reply