BROOKLYN — Avant-garde composer Michael Gordon recently recalled in an interview how Richard Foreman once brought him a few short scripts, asking him to set to music whatever parts he wanted, “with one requirement — that I keep the duck. He said, ‘I need the duck.’”
The result — duck intact — was the opera What to Wear, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2006. Now, 20 years later, and just over one year since Foreman’s death, the piece has finally come to New York. A presentation by Beth Morrison Projects at BAM Strong Harvey Theater as part of the Prototype Festival, What to Wear opened Jan. 15 to a sold-out crowd ready to relish an evening of having absolutely no idea what was going on.
Decades ago, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in Greenwich Village regularly hosted new Foreman plays — glorious and gritty productions by his Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Remembering those days, I was heartened to see plexiglass panels forming a hanging fourth wall across the Harvey stage, a device Foreman always used, as if his mind-world needed protection against the surrounding reality. Indeed, this production of What to Wear was based on Foreman’s own in 2006, newly tweaked by co-creative directors Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson.
The set’s floor — tiled stripes and squares in black, white, and crimson — brought to mind the Queen of Heart’s realm in Alice in Wonderland. Sure enough, knaves soon appeared with hearts on their shields. Three large faux-wood ducks, sporting silken durags, waited downstage left; their time would come. Skulls sat atop posts as if warning logic to keep out upon pain of death.
The Bang-on-a-Can All-Stars played just offstage, conducted by Alan Pierson; violinist Darian Donovan Thomas, percussionist David Cossin, and electric guitarist Mark Stewart were particular standouts in this heavily rock-inspired work. The whole orchestra wore black caps topped with colorful little balls, just in case anyone accidentally started taking things too seriously.
There wasn’t much chance of that. The opera opens with the entrance of a duck in a jester hat, with Xes for eyes, and the announcement that the duck has been “banished from the realm of the oh, so beautiful.” The main characters are the duck (who does not sing and is absent for most of the opera) and four singers all playing — simultaneously, not sequentially — Madeline X, who is obsessed with fashion. The lengthy opening number consists only of the words “This is Madeline X” repeated over and over. Such was Gordon’s modus operandi throughout. The entire libretto of this 75-minute opera could probably be recited in about six minutes.
The score has a richness and jauntiness that suits Foreman’s endless joyful chaos. Although the material is repetitive within each number, Gordon’s style covers a wide range over the course of the opera. And the busy-ness of the layered sounds makes the repetition seem more clarifying than stultifying. One might call it enriched minimalism. And while there are plenty of experimental techniques in use, the composer does not steer clear of either consonant chords or sweet melodicism. Overall, the high-octane music is more engaging than disturbing. Although at times the heavy texture nearly overwhelmed the singers, every aspect of the sound was fed through electronics, so sound designer Garth Macaelavey kept the melee under control.
Gordon is not afraid to retool ideas from the past. He borrowed some techniques from the Renaissance, including imitative counterpoint in a couple of numbers. But instead of having a second voice enter, say, two bars after the first, the voices are maybe one beat off from each other, causing a shuddering vocal traffic jam — or the sonic equivalent of dragon scales layered into textured armor.
As if anyone familiar with Foreman could stop thinking about him during this production, his voice was literally present as recordings of him reading many of the libretto’s lines before they were sung. “This is a terrible world,” he assures us. “Objects are beautiful in such a world.” And that was the first clue that this opera is about materialism, insofar as a Foreman script can be said to be “about” anything.
The four-bodied Madeline X (sopranos Sarah Frei and Sophie Delphis, mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn, and tenor Morgan Mastrangelo) attends a fashion show, with insane costumes by E.B. Brooks, who also did the originals. “Models” wear stacked, colorful innertubes with thick staves used like ski poles, while the chorus sings four words — “Here is a costume” — countless times. Then the Madelines snipe at how the models look.
A metaphorical door opens when Foreman intones another line: “Madeline X, who understands now that inside her mind is a second mind.” As is often true with Foreman, one could take it as a serious statement (a reference to feminism?), just simple silliness, or utter madness.
Indie rock star St. Vincent made a guest appearance; surprisingly, her entrance drew no audible reaction from the audience. Slinking onstage in a boa and carrying a bow and arrow, this melancholy Cupid sang “So sad, but I must reject you, you who are not beautiful the way I am” in her signature husky voice. It was a moment of touching beauty.
There’s a trick to a great performance of Foreman: Every cast member must be convinced that their nonsensical words and actions are not only sensible but essential. This production had that quality, with a constantly crowded stage full of committed lunacy. The chorus moved as well as it sang, mixed in with trained dancers. And the four Madelines embodied their daffy role with humor and grace; Delphis and Mastrangelo contributed particularly strong voices.
Oh, and the duck came back at the end, threatened with execution in a hilarious number that starts with the line “When a duck enters a fine restaurant” and continues with a dancer twirling around with a plastic Peking duck on a silver platter and Mastrangelo singing (utterly deadpan) about how the duck would rather have a roast beef sandwich. And then the chorus brings in golf clubs (because the duck “plays golf for fun”) to the distorted screeching of the guitar, and a Terry Gilliam-inspired giant pointing hand indicates a new, more glamorous duck.
You just have to let the weirdness and humor wash over you like a salve. Foreman may have left this realm, but his spirit shines through every aspect of this production.
