Punk rock Oedipal opera

'Greek' sets famed myth in seedy, Thatcher-era London

06/10/2009 10:00 PM

By MELISSA ALBERT
Contributing Writer

No Comments - Add Your Comment


The former church that is the site of Chicago Opera Vanguard’s production of “Greek” has a fitting air of desecration. TVs and heaps of thrifted furniture, scaffolding and dirty sheets override the pews and stained glass, creating the look of an abandoned real-estate venture gone to seed.

“Greek,” adapted from stage play into opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage, takes the story of Oedipus Rex and sets it in the seedy East End of Margaret Thatcher-era London. Here the production benefits from a stripped-down set and isn’t hurt by occasionally amateurish effects (as in the sequences of lo-fi shadow puppetry), but this inventiveness was born of necessity: due to robust language, a third of the show’s budget was pulled by a nervous donor.

What could be more punk than scaring off the establishment? COV’s artistic director, Eric Reda, impresses on a shoestring, bringing spontaneity and cheek to a seemingly inexorable art form. Our Oedipus stand-in, Eddy, is a punk well-inhabited by the convincingly lean and hungry Justin Neal Adair. After Eddy’s father reveals a fortuneteller’s foretold curse, that Eddy will kill him and marry Eddy’s mother (in a passage mostly lost to the din of the 19-piece orchestra, as happened in spots throughout the show), Eddy takes off. He runs first into trouble — the makeshift percussion of a menacingly choreographed riot — then into fate, in the form of marriage to the cafe owner he recently widowed (Caitlin McKechney), who finds, alas, that Eddy reminds her of the baby son she lost many years ago.

McKechney, roughly the same age as Adair, has a rich voice and the chutzpah to play it older than she looks.

The show’s score is textured and arch, with spells of aural beauty that outstrip the earthy language. Scenes that impress include Oedipus’s standoff with two spitting, panting sphinxes (McKechney and Ashlee Hardgrave, also in multiple roles), the only supernatural element in the play. Another standout is the surreal fight between Eddy and the man he kills, in which they trade Batman-like verbal jabs (“Explode,” “Scream,” “Fury,” “Dying,” “Victor!”) without touching.

Hung on the bones of a familiar story, “Greek” doesn’t need its precursor to feel relevant. And ditching the code-friendly punition of Oedipus Rex’s traditional ending, it closes on such a note of unexpected, anarchic joy that it’s hard not to wonder what other old stories could be revived with an infusion of punk vitality.


No Comments - Add Your Comment