By Clarke Bustard Special correspondent
Richmond, VA, October 11, 2015 – Dying is easy, comedy is hard. So goes the comedian’s adage. Dying comically? That’s really hard.
What was dying had to well and truly expire before Virginia Opera’s production of Jacques Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld” firmed up its comic footing. The takeoff point of the show, the marriage-gone-sour of Orpheus and Eurydice, came across as (luke)warmed-over Bickersons. Eurydice’s sudden death in mid-fling with a bit of Arcadian beefcake … meh. Things begin to heat up as the Olympian gods rebelled against an overdose of blissful propriety.
Then everybody goes to hell, “where all the meats are roasted and all the guests are toasted,” and the show starts cookin’.
This was more Offenbach’s doing than any misfires by stage director Sam Helfrich or an animated, athletic cast. The devils get the best tunes and comic sketches, and the big production number at the end, the famous can-can, visually and musically scorches everything that preceded it.
In his director’s note, Helfrich kisses off “stuff for the music scholars and historians” that are packed into this score; but if you know your Bellini and Meyerbeer, and get Offenbach’s merciless spoofing of bel canto and 19th-century French operatic melodrama, the laughs are compounded.
Conductor Anne Manson played those jokes to the hilt in a rollicking performance of the orchestral accompaniment with members of the Richmond Symphony. The Virginia Opera Chorus, prepared by Adam Turner, also rose to the occasion, especially in the ennui-turned-rebellion scene concluding Act 1.
Meredith Lustig, playing Eurydice, and Kelly Glyptis, playing Cupid, took the vocal prizes in Sunday’s final performance of the production’s run. Both scaled coloratura heights with grace and sly wit, and reveled in physical comedy. Lustig’s buzzing-fly duet with Troy Cook (Jupiter) was by far the show’s funniest number.
Other comic honors go to Kyle Tomlin, a manic Mercury; Brian Mextorf, earnestly nerdy as Eurydice’s underworld guardian, John Styx; and Margaret Gawrysiak, perfectly frumpy and bossy as Public Opinion, arbiter of honorable behavior, bullying an unwilling Orpheus (Javer Abreau) into rescuing Eurydice from the underworld and prolonging his lousy marriage.
Cook’s portrayal of Jupiter on high was rather tepid — Leah De Gruyl, as his aggrieved spouse, Juno, gave off more sparks; but once in the underworld, buzzing around Eurydice in a preposterous golden fly costume, Cook redeemed himself musically and comically. The theatrical trajectory was reversed for Daniel Curran, who seemed to deflate when he traded the role of the shepherd Aristeus for that of Pluto, master of the underworld.
Justin Boccitto’s choreography was on the cautious side; curiously, he almost made more of the rebellion on Olympus than of the can-can. Jeremy Sams’ witty, modern-vernacular English translation did not carry through the coloratura vocalizing. Fortunately, the musical numbers were captioned. Unfortunately, spoken dialogue wasn’t.
Clarke Bustard produces Letter V: the Virginia Classical Music Blog, at www.letterv.blogspot.com.