NEW YORK – Several truths were revealed at the world premiere of the chamber opera Eat the Document at the HERE Mainstage on Jan. 9. First: Everything changes. Second: Everything stays the same. Third: Opera and musical theater are not necessarily separate genres.
Part of the 12th season of the Prototype Festival (now produced by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE), the work was composed by John Glover with a libretto by Kelley Rourke. The two had teamed up once before, on Stay for Onsite Opera, but the pandemic prevented it from being premiered. Their source for Eat the Document was the 2006 novel by Dana Spiotta. The story compares American activism in the 1970s with that of the end of the 20th century by following the life of a woman with an unusual perspective on both eras.
In brief, Mary and Bobby accidentally kill someone in a bombing gone wrong in the 1970s. They run from each other and from the law, taking on new identities. By the 1990s, Mary has a teenage son, Jason, an obsessive collector of music from his mother’s youth, but he has no idea who she is or what she did. Meanwhile, Nash, the owner of an alternative bookstore in the 1990s, gives kids a place to vent their dissatisfaction with society and plan their own activism. Nash, of course, turns out to be Bobby. Don’t expect a happy ending, but there is a certain peace to how things end.
Even as the audience trickled in, Peiyi Wong’s set took on a lived-in aspect. Singers milled around among bookshelves and boxes of LPs; one read on an old sofa. The seven musicians in the band (string quartet, piano, guitar, drums) settled into their onstage seats. The cleverly designed set works for the whole show.
The interplay of opera and musical theater was immediately obvious. About half the singers are trained for musical theater, not opera, and that’s no problem. There’s an earthiness, an authenticity, about their delivery that helps the story seem real. The melody of the introductory song consists of short, punchy, emotion-rich phrases — a touch of Dear Evan Hansen. It repeats the words “No more,” but by the time its reprise comes in the final scene, we realize its hopelessness: There will always be more — more situations to protest and more activists desperate to be heard.
The non-linear storytelling takes some getting used to, but by half an hour into this 90-minute work the seamless change from era to era seems normal. Everyone plays multiple roles and sings in the chorus. While both the teen son and the young Bobby of the 1970s are played by Tim Russell, the distinction between the two characters remains clear. Russell is moving as the son, whose skill at ferreting out old music leads him to discover his mother’s past.
Overall, the cast is made up of strong actors with highly capable (if non-operatic) voices. Mary in her new life, several identities past the bombing, is sung with poignant earnestness by Amy Justman. Bookstore-owner Nash, a full-time cynic who hates everything but longs for love and meaning in his life, is played sympathetically by Paul Pinto. As a determined feminist in both generations, soprano Adrienne Danrich used her resonant lower register to great effect.
Bass Paul An has a riveting stage presence and powerful voice, portraying a Vietnam vet whose PTSD comes to a fevered pitch under searing green lights (designed by Ayumu “Poe” Saegusa). Yet An completely changes his sound in another role, crooning a faux-1970s pop hit.
Soprano Danielle Buonaiuto plays young Mary as well as an ingenue named Miranda who falls for Nash. Her first solo arioso is more sorrowful than angry as Mary ponders possible names for her new identity, while the stress of the choices she faces is reflected in frantic writing for string quartet.
Although Mary runs away, human urges are constant. When millennial activists meet at Nash’s bookstore and convince themselves that violence is the answer, the music reaches back to the 1970s. Nash deflects their rage, suggesting they set up a dancing flash mob to disrupt the corporate business day, as men sing a quartet about types of lethal gases, a reminder of his past.
In other ways, the culture of protest has changed unrecognizably: The leader of a computer-activist group called the Hacktivists (brilliantly sung by tenor Michael Kuhn) doesn’t see the irony in infiltrating a corporation and then accepting a well-paying job from the same company.
Composer Glover seems to feel at home in an endless range of genres, including the striking atonal moment when Jason realizes his mom is a murderer. There are two beautiful duets for women featuring long, arching lines in close harmony. Soprano Natalie Trumm nails a punk-style “aria” as a late-1990s girl who’s enraged about how “unsustainable” the world is. And in a fascinating moment, Glover merges a doo-wop vocalise with nasal singing similar to Bulgarian Orthodox chant.
The show’s complex, interwoven tales were fluidly directed by Kristin Marting, who was honored after the show because she is leaving HERE, which she founded 30 years ago. Holding everything together, at a decidedly unpretentious upright piano center-stage, was music director Mila Henry. She showed an astonishing ability to multitask: playing the difficult piano part, conducting everyone, and mouthing all the words. As for the instrumentalists, they mastered every style from a Viennese waltz to wildly syncopated tone clusters.
Eat the Document continues at HERE through Jan. 17. For information and tickets, go here.
