at La Mama until December 16, 2001
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss is the basis for Silver
Rose, a play by Kate O'Brien, directed by Lloyd Jones . Unfortunately, the play
does not rise to the level of its parent opera.
The concept is that Adele, (Heather Leviston) the diva
singing the role of the Marschallin from Rosenkavalier, falls crashingly in
love with her co-lead.
Not such an unusual story, you say? Well, the fact that the
young lover, Octavian, is played by a mezzo-soprano, takes the romance into
same-sex love territory.
Iris (Mary Helen Pirola) is an 'out' young, funky lesbian.
Adele is a celebrated singer, a middle-aged woman with a husband, child and
public reputation she wants to protect.
Here is a recipe for high drama, deception, clandestine
trysts, dramatic or romantic arias and operatic emoting. Sadly, the play lacks
these.
The actors look uncomfortable and have difficulty making the
awkward dialogue convincing.
Both Leviston and Pirola
are singers and the production might have benefited from a fuller use of
sung text to heighten emotion and give us a sense of the opera the characters
perform.
Music provides a background to scene changes but it is an
oddly eclectic mixture of popular, ballads and passages from the opera. Lyrics
are often spoken which feels stagy.
One very long scene is essentially an unaccompanied song
that is sung prettily by Pirola. The song, however, does not advance the story
and goes on too long.
O'Brien's script lacks coherent structure and wanders
between styles. Poetic purple patches follow internal monologues and long,
repetitive dialogues between the potential lovers.
It has no dramatic conflict, no surprises and no sub-text.
We know everything from the beginning.
Too many scenes do not serve the story.
The play begins as Adele's story then becomes Iris's. There
short and pointless scenes from Adele's childhood that explain nothing of her
present. It delves at too great a length in the middle of the play, into Iris's
past failed relationship. There is too much exposition
and too little dramatic tension.
There are two unnecessarily slow costume changes at the
beginning and end of the play. The pace alters little apart from in the
childhood scenes with Adele's drunken dad.
This play needs a great deal of development to work
theatrically.
By Kate Herbert
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