Who would have thought that the city of Pittsburgh, Penn., could provide a connecting thread between the Metropolitan Opera premiere of Nixon in China to The Divine Sister, an uproarious off-Broadway comedy spoofing Hollywood films about nuns by out playwright and drag artist extraordinaire Charles Busch? Read on and find out how.
Nixon sings
Avant-garde director Peter Sellars, a native of Pittsburgh, first came up with the idea of depicting President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to isolationist Red China as grand opera. Sellars approached American composer John Adams to write his first opera with poet Alice Goodman in 1985, and the rest is history.
When Nixon in China debuted at the Houston Grand Opera in 1987, critical opinion was all over the place. Since then, Nixon in China has increasingly gained a more prominent place in the worldwide operatic repertoire. Nixon in China's premiere at New York's Metropolitan Opera certainly gives it an officious stamp of artistic approval.
The Met's production is imported from the English National Opera, but it's essentially Sellars' much-traveled and once-televised 1987 production enlarged for a grander stage. There is an initially literalist approach to the production, but the work itself is really a meditative reflection on this diplomatic event that brought about major political and cultural shifts between a capitalist America and a communist China.
Sellars stages lots of details and hindsight (often not in the libretto) about China's cultural revolution and the fates of its leaders that didn't happen while Nixon was in China (so don't be surprised when Chairman Mao gets fellated onstage in Act III).
Because of this, Nixon in China will infuriate opera goers who want a clear narrative through-line with properly dramatized characters like so many 19th-century operas based upon historical figures. Sellars and his collaborators assume that audiences will know the facts and personalities going in, which means that future productions of Nixon in China will probably need to be exhaustively annotated with historical footnotes to fill in for the receding common knowledge gaps of Nixon and his generation.
That said, the more you know 20th-century American and Chinese history, the more you'll get out of Nixon in China and the contemplative questions it poses.
Since Adams uses electronic amplification for his excitingly propulsive minimalist score, it's difficult to truly gauge how strong the vocalists are. Based upon the second performance of Nixon in China on Feb. 5, the majority of singers were very impressive.
The weak link is baritone James Maddalena in the presidential title role, which he also originated in 1987. I suspect that Maddalena was struggling though a cold or infection, since he was heard vocally straining and clearing his throat on the online audio simulcast of the opera's opening night (Maddalena also avoided a few high notes at the second performance). Still Maddalena had many of Nixon's hunched mannerisms down pat.
Though many critics nowadays proclaim Nixon in China to be a modern masterpiece, I've come away with more reservations now that I've seen a recreation of the work's original staging. Besides, it's really up to history to be the ultimate judge if Nixon in China continues to be staged centuries from now.
The Metropolitan Opera premiere of Nixon in China is screened worldwide to select movie theaters Saturday, Feb. 12, via a live high-definition simulcast (noon in the Chicago area). Visit www.metopera.org or www.fathomevents.com for participating theaters and ticket prices.
Nun finer
A rundown Catholic parish called St. Veronica's in Pittsburgh is the setting for Charles Busch's The Divine Sister, a screaming funny off-Broadway spoof of Catholic films. Movie classics like The Song of Bernadette and The Bells of St. Mary's get scrambled up with more modern fare like Agnes of God, Doubt and even The Da Vinci Code for this Busch camp fest performed by character actors of the highest caliber.
Though Busch has established himself as a Broadway playwright (The Tale of the Allergist's Wife), he made his name with outrageous gay pop culture inspired off-Broadway spoofs of old Hollywood in the 1980s with such titles as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and Psycho Beach Party. The Divine Sister is a wonderful return to Busch's roots, but this 2010 comedy shows much more maturity in its sharp writing structure and elbowing satires. The Divine Sister should no doubt have a healthy life regionally in the years to come.
But the main reason to see The Divine Sister now is to bask in the comic drag genius of Busch himself as the play's Mother Superior with a questionable past as a wise-cracking newspaper reporter (imagine if Rosalind Russell's His Girl Friday character became the nun of The Trouble with Angels). To see Busch himself whipping up the audience into torrents of laughter just by a vocal tic or facial grimace shows what a master of comedy he is.
Longtime Busch collaborator and friend Julie Halston is also along for the ride as the butch wrestling coach/nun Sister Acacius, and the comic rapport and affection between the two is very palpable. Busch directing veteran Carl Andress also keeps things fleet and funny throughout.
Newcomers to Busch's work are also supreme delights in The Divine Sister. Three-time Tony Award nominee Alison Fraser repeatedly wrings laughs out of her over-exaggerated accents as the sinister visiting German Sister Walburga and the droopy Irish cleaning lady Mrs. Macduffie. Jennifer Van Dyck over-articulates and gesticulates in the grand manner as the atheist philanthropist Mrs. Levinson, while Jonathan Walker knows how to use his bulging blue eyes to best effect as the romantic interest Jeremy. Rounding out the cast is Amy Rutberg's exaggeratedly innocent yet dementedly visionary postulate Agnes.
Now it's no surprise that gossip columnists reported that Broadway producers approached Busch and his producers to move The Divine Sister to Broadway. Wisely, Busch and company have resisted the offer.
After all, if you're going to do a side-splitting comedy bit about a Hollywood agent nonchalantly describing the immense proportions of his privates to an increasingly gagging and grossed out nun (Julie Halston, priceless as ever), it really belongs in a worn-around-the-edges downtown institution like the SoHo Playhouse.
The Divine Sister continues on in an open run at the SoHo Playhouse in New York City. For more information, visit www.divinesisteronstage.com .
