Welton Jones

San Diego Arts

"Opus" at the Old Globe Theatre

The Music is Everything
By Welton Jones
Posted on Fri, Mar 27th, 2009
Last updated Wed, Apr 1st, 2009

There’s no place to hide in a string quartet, Four lines of music, imagined by some genius composer, and one is now yours. Yours alone. And the other three need you to be there, just as you need them.

Quartet playing looks like great fun. Serious, professional quartet playing looks impossible: Four voices merged into one with nobody in charge, consistently providing music that works not only for the players but for the world.

Plenty of room for drama there, decided playwright Michael Hollinger. And he was right, provided he could find an acceptable way to show music being made by actors who don’t play.

That’s where Kyle Donnelly came in, a director with a simple but effective plan: Teach the actors the body language, render the instruments silent, play a good recording and away we go.

Thus “Opus,” a bright and entertaining new play at the Old Globe’s temporary playhouse in the San Diego Museum of Art through April 26.

Donnelly and her cast of five having solved the basic visual conundrum by hard work, good taste and letting Sarah Nematallah (billed as “quartet advisor”) keep things looking as right as possible, the decks are cleared for some good old melodrama.

This particular quartet is on top of their game, wining prizes, earning acclaim, selling their product and bringing themselves artistic satisfaction despite a predictable bag of real-world annoyances like romances, illness, jealousies, commitment issues and individualism.

But cracks have appeared. Bonds have burst and changes are required. Like a miracle from music heaven, the answer appears in the form of a brilliant conservatory girl, all cats and herb tea, able to sight-read Beethoven at a world class level.

There’s never been a female in the band before and she brings the inevitable complications. But she also brings the music, and at a level so high that even major complications won’t really matter.

That’s the central issue of the play: Nothing finally matters except the music. But the music MUST happen. Otherwise...

Well, as one member of the quartet is forced to say to another: “You’re not good enough to be unpredictable.”

In the end, hard decisions must be made. No, BRUTAL decisions. And there’s an excellent chance that they won’t work out. The magic may be gone. But the effort must be made, for the sake of the music.

These five actors may not be musicians but they certainly understand their own art’s ensemble playing. Hollinger has given them the words, a most plausible mixture of jargon and attitudes from a rarified world, and Donnelly has found a comfortable shape for some very harmonic acting.

Jeffrey M. Bender’s second violinist is as comfortable as an old shoe. Corey Brill’s cellist is a family man with solid practical instincts. Jim Abele as the intense first violinist and Mark H. Dodd as the violist are where the sensitivity starts to jab. And Katie Sigismund is the new violist, charmed and charming. Good work by each though what’s important is the even better work by all. It helps make the author’s point while allowing the play to come alive.

Ninety minutes isn’t really enough with these people, though Hollinger is a very efficient story-teller. Some additional information would brace some effects. Devices such as recording studios with unseen engineers and fragments of television documentaries, tossed in randomly as flashback filler, could be better done with more imaginative stagecraft.

Kate Edmunds’ scenery is a missed opportunity, bare realistic essentials only. York Kennedy’s lighting is competent without being much help and Denitsa D. Bliznakova’s costumes? Well, what can you do with rehearsal clothes and performance blacks? Miss Sigismund does get a nice dress for the White House performance.

(Some juicy stuff there. Obviously, it’s the president before the one we have now. The compromise: The quartet will substitute Beethoven’s hefty C-sharp minor Opus 131 for the request Pachelbel Canon. “It feels like playing a Tampon ad,” somebody notes. But they must agree to play “Hail to the Chief.”)

The indifferent decor isn’t really a problem, though. The play’s the thing, just as, for the quartet, the music’s the thing.

Take along a classical music nut – preferably one who has played chamber music. They’ll love right up to the moment when the one guy grabs the other’s instrument and...

No. I don’t want to relive THAT.

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM HERE

DOWNLOAD CAST LIST HERE

About the author: Welton Jones has been reviewing shows for 52 years as of October 2007, 35 of those years at the UNION-TRIBUNE and, now, eight for SANDIEGO.COM where he wrote the first reviews to appear on the site.
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Comments

Posted by Happy Ron	Sun, Apr 5th, 2009
I really liked this play, my review is here: http://www.happyron.com/?p=155

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