Category: Reviews

By George Grella for New York Classical Review

The grandiosity of opera culture—the stars, the spectacle, the stage machinery—often obscures the form itself, which depends on the fine details of things like harmony, dynamics, and individual performances to succeed. 

The great value in small opera companies like On Site Opera is in their smaller scale, and how chamber sized productions are all about intimate details and nuances. With On Site Opera, those all take on a greater significance because the company’s purpose is not to bring audiences into an opera house, but to bring opera to people, wherever they might be able to stage a performance. 

On Site got their new season started early Friday afternoon in just such a fashion: their latest production, the world premiere of Lisa DeSpain’s Song of the Nightingale, debuted in the outdoor public courtyard at Brooklyn Commons, the first in a series of free performances open to the public (and the elements). The opera was commissioned and produced by On Site Opera and Brookfield Properties Arts & Culture.

The results were impressive all around. DeSpain’s opera is a graceful, elegantly crafted piece for a cast of five singers, a modern fairy tale about the collision between contemporary materialism and nature. It bears no relation to Stravinsky’s Chant du Rossignol other than sharing the songbird as a subject and being full of melodies. Outdoor performances are already difficult, so the energy, concentration, and skill of the singers when it was 89º (with dense humidity), and the five-piece ensemble conducted by Geoffrey McDonald was near unbelievable.

The opera, with a libretto by Melisa Tien, opens with The Collector (mezzo Chrystal E. Williams) and The Curator (tenor Bernard Holcomb), discussing her desires. She relies on him for taste, he relies on her for money—the sweetness of the music belies their toxic codependency. The music is highly lyrical throughout, so even when the Williams sang lines like “Everything wants to be gathered,” the sound of it makes her nearly sympathetic.

But this is a fairy tale, after all. The two head out to the woods in search of a “famous performer,” enchanted by the sounds of nature. They run into the Frog (soprano Nicole Haslett, in costume designer Kara Harmon’s smart outfit of green hiking vest and backpack canteen) and the Cow (bass-baritone Eliam Ramos), and eventually find The Nightingale (soprano Hannah Cho). They convince the Nightingale to come to the Collector’s home as a featured performer. As beautifully as she sings—and Cho was ringing and expressive in the character’s two enchanting arias—the city is not for her.

She is rescued by Frog and Cow, the former disguising herself as a mechanical, singing statue, who with the press of a button delivers “I sing for you / I sing for me / I sing this tune / For all eternity.” This ditty is one of the subtle strengths of the opera, it’s pretty but it eventually, and convincingly, grows jejune for the Collector, who realizes the emptiness of her pursuit (the Curator himself leaves the city for the woods, and happiness).

DeSpain’s new opera hit all the marks with a fine shape and pace, and a chorus at the end that wrapped it all up in satisfying fashion. Performing in the round, all the singers were terrific, projecting through the elements via Beth Lake’s fine sound design, with excellent articulation and an unflagging feeling of fun and joy. This all happens at close quarters, and director Katherine M. Carter had the cast moving fluidly about and around the crushed gravel circle and the central tree (McDonald himself was peeking around the trees to throw cues to the singers).

This was a winning combination of a score that was a pleasure because of its modesty and direct communication, a skillful cast that brought out every last bit of feeling and loveliness in the music, and On Site Opera’s intelligence, flexibility, and commitment to engage the public.

Song of the Nightingale will be repeated 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Brooklyn Commons; September 21-23 at Manhattan West; and September 28-30 at Brookfield Place. brookfieldproperties.com

By Roxanne Ray – May 18, 2023 – for the IE Examiner

When the International Examiner last checked in with playwright and actor Justin Huertas and composer Steven Tran, they had collaborated on a pre-pandemic musical entitled The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion and then had worked on a video concept album called Swimming during the lockdowns of COVID-19. Now, the pair is teaming up again to present a World Premiere musical at the Seattle Rep: Lydia and the Troll.

Our lead character Lydia is a singer-songwriter who is dissatisfied with her life, which motivates her to take some new risks, and not necessarily in a good way. “The villainous troll is something that lives inside all of us,” Huertas said. “It’s the voice that tells you that you don’t look good enough, you don’t write well enough, you’re not cool enough.”

And Huertas can relate. “We’re pinpointing that time in Lydia’s life where that voice is at its loudest, which is absolutely something I’ve gone through,” he shared. “The more time that passes and the more distance I have from that time in my own life, the more I understand how I got stuck there and how I pulled myself out.”

Tran also feels a kinship to Lydia. “The protagonist Lydia and I are both music producers, and we both have a deep appreciation and respect for electronic and pop music,” Tran relayed. “Inspired by the multimedia aspects, my vision for the music is to bring studio-quality pop and electronic production to Justin’s songs.”

Of course, since this is Seattle, the troll in the show is not just any troll, but is of course the Fremont Troll. “How many cities can boast a magical, mythical troll living under the interstate?” Huertas mused. “The concept of how that troll got there has been on my mind for years.”

But this time, Huertas and Tran expanded their creative team, to include co-creator and director Ameenah Kaplan. “Ameenah and I met working on a show out at Village Theatre, and I fell in love with her artistry and leadership,” Huertas recounted. “When we were searching for a director for Lydia & the Troll, it truly felt like destiny.”

Tran agreed. “Ameenah is incredibly inspiring as a director, and it’s her multimedia film vision that helped originally inspire my desires for this pop electronic score as well,” the composer said. “The rehearsal room feels vivid and alive, and the art being made is a very cool thing to be a part of.”

Just as important, Kaplan also empathizes with Lydia’s journey. “Ameenah is an incredibly physical director, and a large part of our collaboration has been figuring out the visuals and the physical life of this musical,” Huertas said. “It’s very rare that I have a director as imaginative and collaborative as her, and she’s brought a lot of her own life experiences to Lydia.”

That physicality has dovetailed with Tran’s goal for the music. “I wanted to highlight the kinetic and transformative themes of the script with a score equally as electrifying and modern,” he said. “My vision is to authentically bring the sound of the recording studio to the stage with pre-recorded and mangled background vocals, samples and foley, and hyper-produced electronic tracks, to create a musical tapestry that I am sure will contain sounds and genres that so far have not graced the musical theater stage.”

Working together, the trio has found the development of this new work to be organic. “My experience growing up here as an artist, growing through art, growing through relationships, all of that kind of told me what this story is about,” Huertas said. “I think when people meet Lydia, they’ll see those moments of growth that both Ameenah and I have gone through, and those are the changes we’ll see Lydia experience even as she’s hunted by a troll.”

This evolution is paralleled by Huertas and Tran’s progress as a musical-writing duo. “With each new project, it seems that we are continuing to push our boundaries and grow together as a musical team, both in terms of artistic scope as well as scale,” Tran said. “We’ve never done anything ‘traditionally,’ and Lydia and the Troll feels like a culmination so far of this sonic experimentation and artistic growth.”

Lydia and the Troll runs from May 5 to June 4 at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, 155 Mercer Street, Seattle. 

By W. Barnett Marcus | May 17, 2023 | for Real Change News

Six years ago, as they were driving me across town on a sunny day, my friend turned to me and asked, “Can I show you this song?” As soon as “A Terrible Ride” from Justin Huertas’ 2015 musical “Lizard Boy” began, the entire soundtrack soon became a staple in my life. 

What I didn’t learn until recently is that, six years ago, Huertas began crafting something new. A firebrand of the Seattle-themed musical, Huertas set intersectional stories on the streets of his city’s premiere theaters with “Lizard Boy” and 2019’s “The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion.” At long last, following a 2020 pandemic-related deferral, “Lydia and the Troll” continues this tradition in full bloom, this time at Seattle Rep and with Huertas joined by music supervisor and producer Steven Tran. 

In a captivating opening number performed by Jane (Janet Krupin), a centuries-old myth of the troll emerges: Every 20 years, a troll must elicit a deep truth from a potential new host in order to switch bodies and start the timer over. The mind and soul of the original owner conveniently transfer to the body of an 18-foot-tall troll, the form Jane is trying to avoid retaking. The telling of the myth is layered with a vocoder on Krupin’s voice, an effect which is broadly utilized throughout the show in addition to vocal layering from other cast members out of sight. Mixing human harmony and electronic backing creates a distinct thumbprint for “Lydia” that joins a conversation on incorporating EDM elements to musical theater while thematically supporting Lydia’s (Sarah Russell) aspirations as a music producer. 

For a 90-minute performance, I was not sure what to expect from character dynamics and individual arcs, but one beauty of a small cast is that, even in a short time, everyone has room to show their true colors. Pete (Adam Standley), Lydia’s boyfriend, is on the verge of proposing marriage but demonstrates in just the span of a car ride how what appears like love on the outside can be built on codependent harm. All this tension is embellished by the creative implementation of seat adjustment to match the pace and intensity of Pete’s driving. Lydia’s uncertainty in her relationship becomes physically realized and an emotional handhold for Jane to seize. 

Condensing and synthesizing Lydia’s and Pete’s relationship dynamic while balancing their individual paths to sobriety from alcohol is made entirely possible through the weight of honesty mandated by Jane, who takes advantage of both of their self-defined weaknesses for her own gain. Without anyone with her best interests at heart by the middle of the show, it’s up to Lydia to take control of her life, her self image and her own heart-wrenching moment of self-healing. 

Six years after I first encountered it, rehearsals for “Lizard Boy” began off-Broadway with Prospect Theatre Company for a June run. “Lizard Boy” did some globetrotting since its inception, and, in the buzz of the Rep lobby after the opening night of “Lydia,” I heard the hopes of a repeat. 

I wonder how a show like “Lydia” could scale up to audiences not steeped in the ever-present mystery of the Fremont Troll. As someone from the city, a show about a lifelong landmark felt spiritually nourishing; elements of “Lydia” describe Seattle life in ways that deviate from the Starbucks-and-rain clouds homogeneous approach of popular media. Besides location relevance, “Lydia” interrogates anti-Black perspectives that greatly affect artists in Seattle, adding another layer to concepts of Seattle’s political stereotypes while centering the discussion on Black joy first and foremost. Highlighting Black joy on the Seattle stage is a throughline I’ve greatly enjoyed this past year in ACT’s “Choir Boy” and the 5th’s “The Wiz,” now followed by “Lydia.” 

There is a hint to the history of the Fremont Troll as we know it hidden in the story of “Lydia and the Troll.” The Fremont Troll was designed initially as hostile architecture in response to homeless residents in 1990 and ’91. When Jane marches into Lydia’s life, she creeps into the space Lydia carved out through music for herself and begins dictating how that space should be presented and used, at times leading to Lydia’s positive self-discovery but at others to her loss of autonomy. Jane comes off as hypnotic, impulsive and incredibly vibrant at all times. Her confidence and dignity keeps the tension of “Lydia” high from the very beginning. Lydia, grounded and patient in comparison, contrasts Jane so much as to expose her insecurities through their differences. It doesn’t take long before Jane interrupts Lydia’s songwriting grind and begins a chain of events that upset Lydia’s creative process and sense of self. 

All this talk of the main cast isn’t to underplay in any way the work of the ensemble, Guy Garrison and Sophia Franzella. Having seen Franzella before in Pony World’s “Not/Our Town,” I was thrilled to catch her Rep debut, especially in such emotive physical command of a large mask displayed in shadow. The puppetry work in “Lydia” is by far my favorite design element. Presented in similar fashion to Indonesian wayang kulit — handheld shadow puppets built of intricately cut wood that move on rods and hinges — puppet crafter Garrison’s creative signature gives “Lydia” a seat of its own at the table of puppet-involved shows. When shadow isn’t implemented, the same surfaces hold projections (designed by Bryce Cutler). 

Suffice it to say, Justin Huertas has done it again: “Lydia and the Troll,” in its electronic glory, is a must-see this spring. A matinee could pair well with a visit to the Fremont Sunday Market, where you can visit the Troll and wonder what truths you’re holding back from even yourself.

W. Barnett Marcus is an actor living in Seattle.