When an opera company makes the decision to radically update a creation from the past and superimpose a stridently pointed contemporary political message, that company is entering risky territory. However, when it works, as Long Beach Opera has consistently shown that it can, the result is a brilliant musical mirror on the past that offers a sharply focused reflection of our present condition.
But when it goes wrong, as it does in LBO’s cartoon super-hero treatment of Henry Purcell’s 1691 creation, “King Arthur,” which opened Sunday at the Beverly O’Neill Theater, the result feels like the futile act of forcing a square peg into a round hole.
It might have worked. It did in 2017 when LBO teamed up with the three Chicano provocateurs known collectively as Culture Clash (Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza) to create a memorably zany take on Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen.”
Clearly, LBO’s music and primary stage director, Andreas Mitisek (who is overseeing his final season with the company), was hoping lightning would strike twice. For his subject he chose Purcell’s “King Arthur,” which focuses not on the knights of the Round Table and the dream that was Camelot, but on the part of the myth where Arthur, as King of the Britons, fends off a Saxon invasion led by the mighty warrior Oswald.
In a joint leap (pun intended), Mitisek and his Culture Clash collaborators saw in the myth not a hero of British lore, but a distant mirror of President Trump as a deranged, xenophobic, narcissistic, paranoid leader whose mission is to stop a migrant horde of “bad people” from invading his country by building a border wall with a moat and stocking it with alligators.
In this fever dream of a concept, inmate Arthur King (sung with frenetic frenzy by Marc Molomot) is a delusional patient confined in a local loony bin. Arthur’s hallucinatory flights of super-hero fantasies and confrontations are accompanied by his nurse/Wonder Woman, Gwen E. Veer (acted and sung with joyous abandon by Jamie Chamberlin), and his fellow inmate Lance E. Lott (the bright voiced counter-tenor Darryl Taylor). Their adversary is the evil Dr. Oswald (resounding baritone Cedric Berry), although compared to his nurse and the two inmates he seems totally sane.
Somehow this cartoon madness and super-hero gumbo is meant to somehow fit with Purcell’s delicately elegant 17th century score. It never does, even though it is sung superbly and performed with period accuracy by the skilled musicians of the Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra.
And when the singers actually do intone the original poetic libretto by John Dryden in a beautiful series of arias, duets and ensembles, the effect is marvelous to listen to but totally incoherent dramatically.
Admittedly, there are times when the humor succeeds and the satire hits the mark, particularly during Nurse Veer’s 17th century zumba class. But more often than not, Mitisek and Culture Clash’s formula is so strident in its anti-Trump politics and cartoon format that it ends up so over stated it shoots itself in the foot. It’s like two jigsaw puzzles in one box that just don’t match up.
To be honest, I am not a supporter of President Trump or his immigration policy. But if I were, I would have been personally insulted by this production, which is as much a piece of agitprop theater as it is an opera.
Jim Farber is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.
“King Arthur”
Rating: 2.5 stars
Where: Beverly O’Neill Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd. Long Beach
When: Continues 7:30 p.m. Jan. 18 and 2:30 p.m. Jan. 19
Tickets: $49-$150
Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission
Suitability: Adult themes; not suitable for children
Information: 562-470-7464 or longbeachopera.org
