DANIEL JOHN KELLEY

While continuing to work on my various projects, I have been seeing much theatre and opera in New York City. Here’s what I’ve seen most recently:

The Nosemaker’s Apprentice- This weekend I helped out at The Nosemaker’s Apprentice at the Brick Theatre in Williamsburg. If you saw it, I was the big Jew in the kiosk taking your money. Nice to meet you. If you did not see it, I highly recommend you do so. The show is a ludicrous and fantastical epic told by an alcoholic divorced plastic surgeon to his spoiled 8 year old daughter- a tale of a medieval plastic surgeon’s apprentice who adventures across Europe, trying to find himself and the true meaning of reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, and what it means for his mortal soul. The cast is fantastic, the script is great, the production is awesome. Go see it. You will enjoy yourself.

Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge- This was Prospect Theatre Company’s latest endeavor, a new bluegrass musical adaptation of Playboy of the Western World. This was my first time seeing a show at Prospect Theatre, and I was very impressed. The adaptation brings the piece to the Wild West, where a mysterious and handsome stranger shows up in a little mountain town and proceeds to shake everything up, cowboy style. It’s closed now, so you cannot see it. But if it returns, I recommend checking it out for the energetic blue grass band, Peter Mills inspired lyrics and the big reveal of the awesomely gory gaping head wound provided by costume designer Sidney Shannon.

Gotterdamerung- For the second time in 3 weeks, I won the Metropolitan Opera raffle, which means that I was treated to incredible $25 orchestra seats for the six hour opera finale of Wagner’s ring cycle.

This is the last hurrah for Otto Schenck’s incredibly literal, sword, spear and breastplate ring cycle which was brought to the Met in the 80s. The DVD box set of this production sits on my DVD shelf. It was wonderful to see it live- and to hear the lush orchestra enlarged to full Wagnerian capacity.

Overall, watching the production, I felt constantly reminded of the epic nature of the work- I kept turning to my friend and nerding out in my opera nerd way, saying “This is awesome!”, instead of being drawn into the story and the characters. That is not to say that opera should not be awesome (it should), but that I don’t believe that the experience of something as monumental as the Ring should end there. Somewhere someone far smarter than me said something to effect of “Puccini was able to turn starving artists into Gods, but Wagner took the Gods and made them human.” The incredible thing about Wagner’s Ring, for me, is that while the story is epic- with dragons and magic rings and Gods and giants, etc.- it is ultimately about the very human failings of these mythic creatures.

In Gotterdammerung, at one point, Brunhilde is told that if she gives up her magic ring- the ring that her boyfriend gave her- the world will be saved. Though Brunhilde is our heroine and divine, she makes the very human choice of holding onto the ring, because it’s the ring her boyfriend gave her- only to find out he’s betrayed her love. Ain’t that the way? Stranded amongst the rocky crags of Schenck’s set, dressed in a gown of purest white, it’s hard to see anything but the melodramatic implications of Brunhilde’s choice. But it is a perfectly human thing to do- and is especially apropos in the current economic climate- which was brought about, ostensibly, by people clinging to magic rings that they were told would solve all their problems, but ended up just hurting everyone around them, and ultimately themselves.

That’s not to say that the orchestra was not great (they were!), and that some of the singing wasn’t great (especially Dalayman as Brunhilde and Paterson and Gunther), but there was definitely something deeply human missing. Let’s hope Robert LePage’s technological wonders can unlock it, for his new production of the ring in 2012.