Carlisle Floyd’s 1955 Susannah didn’t become a classic American opera by taking its sweet time. While Floyd’s music sometimes has the gentle, open sonorities of American composers like Aaron Copland, his sense of drama is fierce and relentless, telling its tragic story in ten economical scenes that drive headlong to its startling conclusion.
William Florescu’s new production for the Florentine Opera captured both the momentum of the story, and the lilting heartland atmosphere that permeates the opera. As for atmosphere, you couldn’t do better than Noelle Stollmack’s abstract setting, large cutouts of what appears to be corrugated metal that suggest the rolling hills of Tennessee, where the story is set. With simple forms and textures, she managed to capture both the opera’s heartland simplicity (think of Thomas Hart Benton’s animated landscapes) and the edge of Expressionist emotion in Floyd’s music.
And you could hear those Expressionist textures in the way guest conductor Joseph Mechavich—a Floyd specialist—lead the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. There were times when Floyd’s grand musical gestures overwhelmed the voices onstage (at least from where I sat, toward the back center of Uihlein Hall). But for the most part, there was a terrific synergy.
Particularly when Betty Waynne Allison was singing the lead role. Allison’s voice has both subtlety and power, which served her well in some of the gentlest melodies (“Ain’t it a pretty night”) and at the times when the drama calls for strength and fury. Allison was well-supported by other leads, Jonathan Boyd as her brother Jonathan, Rodell Rosel as Little Bat and Wayne Tigges as the charismatic traveling preacher Olin Blitch. Tigges is not the most powerful bass, but he made up for it with strong acting and a powerful phrasing. The Florentine chorus sounded wonderfully clear in some of Floyd’s stirring and sometimes explosive choral arrangements.
Photo by Kathy Wittman
There are no such explosions in John Kishline’s Success, which radiates a kind of cool rationality even as it deals with big-ticket real world issues. Kishline plays Rick Sterling, an advertising guru with friends and associates in very high places. He ran the President’s last election campaign, and is being asked to engineer his re-election bid as the play opens. Trouble is, Sterling doesn’t really know what he wants any more. He seems to have it all, and so doesn’t know where to go from here.
To compound his problems, he doesn’t seem to be the happiest family man—at least to judge by the phone conversations he has with his unseen wife—and the events of a single afternoon present him with some hard and conflicting choices.
Success was originally staged in 1990, when Kishline was a member of the now-defunct Theatre X. To write the play, he interviewed several Milwaukee success stories (former mayor John Norquist and businessman Sheldon Lubar are mentioned in the acknowledgements), asking them about their life paths and their ideas of success. What he learned became part of the texture of the play.
Prior to the Milwaukee production, Success was presented on a tour of India, via a program through the U.S. State Department.
Success earns its title because of its clean structure (three two-person scenes separated by Sterling juggling phone calls), and its savvy use of language, which conveys the specific elements of the story while still maintaining a level of poetic abstraction. Think of a kinder, gentler David Mamet and you’re part way there.
Each of Sterling’s visitors present a particular sort of drive, energy and strategy. His lawyer (Edward Morgan) is a go-for-broke risk-taker, wanting to make the big deal and retire on its proceeds. Alia Najjeer (Deborah Clifton), a prospective presidential candidate in Egypt, has the glow of idealism and righteousness. And a young associate in his firm (Kriti Pant, an actor based in New Delhi) suggests the path of sustained diligence.
Ultimately, Success is a thoughtful meditation on Sterling’s choices. And even though he spends some of his time conferring with the White House and surveying the landscape from his corner office, Success draws its power from his basic humanity. He faces choices that we all face, and to see these choices captured with beautiful language and fascinating characters is a gift of fine theatre.
Photo Courtesy of the U.S. Embassy
