Sunday 9 June, The Mission Theatre
A première, no less. And written by its actors. An Entertainment.
The lives of the usually overlooked, the chorus, the supporting cast, the present-but-uncredited. They have their opinions about the stars, of course, and they are much better informed than you or I; and have honed their observations over years of silence. To hear them speak now… well it’s time.
We’ve heard it all before, of course: the struggles of the female performer with age and stereotypes; the struggles of any non-star with the occasional dream and the inescapable everyday; the things we do to earn a crust. But it all still exists, so we’ve not heard it enough, not REALLY heard it.
This is an entertainment, as I said, it coats its barbs in salty irony and sweet music. It means a lot that when - in the high-point [and closing section] of our hour together - the ladies have to sing together, that of course they do it for real rather than any recorded trickery, and they do it well. Having them do it the once, of course there was the temptation to have them sing earlier in the piece too, and it makes more material: I believe all the pieces sung are also referred to in the trialogue, and may have been the occasion for references or even humour inaccessible to those without a deeper knowledge of the standard opera repertoire. Sure you’d have liked it more if you’d known more about it, but it was still funny, and to the point, nonetheless.
The actors are believable and so is their relationship, their friendship, and of course there is the temptation to guess that it is an actual relationship and situation, though nothing in it needs to be. As I said, they can sing a bit too. The climax does indeed deflate Grand Opera, bathetically, and by then you’re happy to see that happen: the exchanges between the trio onstage, in full confidence that nobody is looking at them, are the most telling and the ones you’d most wish to overhear for real. Perhaps they too are real & actual.
At an hour with a simple [albeit suitably crowded] set and recordings, voices & noises off playing a nicely calculated part, this will make a great diversion at festivals of drama and indeed music and opera.
Bis!
Dr Zeno
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