SEATTLE — Fellow Travelers, Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s opera about the “Lavender Scare” McCarthy-era anti-queer witch hunt of the 1950s, began its 10th-anniversary tour Feb. 21 at Seattle Opera. Based on Thomas Mallon’s intrigue-rich 2007 novel about the 1953 firing of an estimated 5,000-10,000 LGBTQ+ governmental employees on the grounds that they posed security risks, the opera centers on the politically dangerous love affair between veteran governmental employee Hawkins Fuller (Hawk) and a cub reporter, Timothy Laughlin (Skippy). Several key government figures, including Senator Joseph McCarthy and Senator Charles Potter, for whom Laughlin becomes the speech writer, make appearances and inform the drama.
The opera, which premiered at Cincinnati Opera in 2016, is now enhanced by a closing backdrop from the Lavender Names Project, a collaboration between the American LGBTQ+ Museum and Kevin Newbury, one of the 10th-anniversary revival tour’s instigators, as well as its initial director and spearheader. Fellow Travelers also arrived in Seattle framed by statement after statement about queer repression, the Clinton presidency’s failed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and current governmental attacks against LGBTQ+ people.
Seattle enhanced the politically charged lobby installation that accompanies the tour with a glittering pre-performance drag queen greeter, Queen Andrew Scott — she stood so monumentally by the entrance that I initially thought she was a specially commissioned sculpture — the Assigned Gay at Band ensemble blasting away in the upstairs lobby pre-performance, a very out pre-performance talk by Seattle Opera dramaturg Jonathan Dean, a significant program guide and online commentary, and numerous interviews and stories. In short, context and implications were established long before the curtain rose.
Not that the curtain rose seamlessly on opening night. After Seattle Opera’s out general manager James Robinson welcomed everyone with a bit of political commentary, the curtain mechanism thrice threatened to keep Fellow Travelers in the closet. After many titters, bursts of applause, and onstage visits by technical personnel, the curtain finally rose more than part way, and Spears’ music shifted the energy.
As distinct from the 2023 Peabody Award-winning, Oscar-nominated Showtime mini-series Fellow Travelers with Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, the opera adheres closely to the novel’s trajectory, minus most of the cattiness. Vietnam War protests, the disco era, and the AIDS crisis are not part of the drama, which extends from Hawk and Skippy’s chance daytime meeting in Dupont Circle — the proverbial park bench of countless gay romances — just as McCarthy’s LGBTQ+ purge is picking up steam, through their final heartbreaking separation.
The story and music have only grown in power since I attended the Cincinnati Opera premiere. Though I’m not convinced that Spears makes a convincing case for his curious meld of minimalist repetition with the courtly singing style and melismatic flourishes of medieval troubadours that was intended to indicate hesitation, fear, and heightened emotion, his intentional scoring for small orchestra (with strings doubled in Seattle) mostly relegates the orchestra to a supporting role.
Steven Osgood, making his Seattle conducting debut, succeeded admirably in highlighting the orchestra’s extended periods of silence — moments when the constant minimalist-fueled hustle and bustle of city and government life stops to allow some of the opera’s most telling emotional interludes to sink in without distraction. These poignant moments, which arrive in the far more compelling second act, tear at the heart, especially when a conductor such as Osgood gives them the space to develop.
Seattle ensured that every attendee was aware of a “movie-style rating of R” for “sexual content, onstage nudity, references to abortion and suicide, and paranoia about Communism and institutionalized homophobia.” The opera includes an intense onstage love scene between two male characters, as well as characters who express homophobic sentiments, the website states. “We do not recommend this opera for young children, though it may be appropriate for older teens. Those who choose to bring a youth should prepare them with historical background about the Red Scare and the concept of being ‘closeted’.” As if any youth with access to TV and the internet hasn’t seen far more than the two lovely too-brief rear views of Timothy that Seattle provided.
Opening night’s Jarrett Ott (Hawk) and Colin Aikins (Skippy), both making their Seattle debuts, held the stage in virtually every scene. (Joseph Lattanzi, reprising his debut role as Hawk, and Andy Acosta as Timothy perform on alternate nights.) With his strong, jutting jaw projecting arrogance and dominance, and an extremely beautiful baritone whose virile core gives way to winning sweetness on top, Ott seemed typecast for the role. Atkins’ tenor may sound somewhat pushed on top — his voice is most comfortable in its appealing midrange — but the force with which he projected his highs ultimately enhanced emotion. Additionally, his youthful handsomeness and slightly hunched posture were heaven-sent for the role of a subservient youth who twice attempts to flee the pains of closeted love without ever succeeding in breaking its hold.
Only one of the supporting artists — Amber R. Monroe as Hawk’s longtime colleague and Skippy’s confidante Mary Johnson — made a mark. In her Seattle Opera debut, Monroe was initially laden by a strong vibrato that occasionally obscured pitch. But in her unexpected final outpouring, a brief outburst of truly operatic proportions, she was magnificent. The revelation of her unwanted pregnancy was touching. Jeremy Weiss (multiple characters), Randell McGee (Tommy McIntyre), Kyle Pfortmiller (Sen. Charles Potter), Vanessa Becerra (Miss Lightfoot), Marcus DeLoach (Sen. Joe McCarthy), and Elisa Sunshine (Lucy) more than held their own. But only McGee, with his intentionally fey mannerisms most evident in the opening scene, lingers in the memory.
Newbury’s deft staging, which benefited from Sara E. Widzer’s intimacy direction, Vita Tzykun’s original sets, Devario Simmons’ costume design, Thomas C. Hase’s lighting, Ashlee Naegle’s hair and makeup, and Dean’s captions, had only one misstep. When the ironically named Miss Lightfoot got wind of Hawk and Timothy’s affair and spied on them before turning them in, Newbury turned her into an exaggerated, cartoonish caricature that resembled a silent-screen vaudevillian miming her part. I also wish that more had been made of McCarthy’s out-of-control alcoholism and Potter’s corruption. But these are small quibbles about the opera’s construction, Newbury’s direction, and the Up Until Now Collective’s production. When, at opera’s end, the Lavender Names Project’s portraits of Lavender Scare and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell victims rose behind the singers, I held back sobs.
This production and cast of Fellow Travelers, which is slated to head to Portland Opera, San Diego Opera, the Glimmerglass Festival, and, in 2027, Austin Opera and back to Cincinnati Opera, must be seen as well as heard. Far more than the sum of its parts, it exemplifies the power of art to enlighten, inspire, and transform.
