French Cabaret with a Time Travel Twist
This Saturday I checked out the [Offenbach Cabaret] by Opéra Français de New York show in [Le Skyroom](http://www.fiaf.org/rental/le-skyroom.shtml) of the French Institute Alliance Française. It's a dark, pretty room with a glass wall, with motion-sensitive red lamps glowing at each table. Members of the audience were mostly senior citizens and/or French speaking. I happened to be seated next to society writer Mary Middleton, who was with the Chicago Tribune from 1956-63, and her husband, Gordon Gould who was also a writer at the Tribune and later a Broadway actor.
The spectacle of Offenbachs 19th century songs in a cabaret setting was peculiar enough to be entertaining, but the script felt haphazard. Quickly strung-together ad libs and random thoughts that didnt mesh together felt like an excuse to have unrelated songs, dance and slapstick all in one performance. Several minutes before the end of the show, we found out that three of the five characters had come through a time portal wormhole. Umm. Great?
The Fly Duet number was one of the more successful ideas. In its original context, this song is sung in the operetta Orphée aux Enfers, when Jupiter turns into a beautiful fly and slips through a keyhole to seduce Eurydice. In the cabaret, the New Jersey spoiled wife/ rich husband couple sing it to play out their idiosyncratic sexual fantasy where the husband wears a ski-mask, pretends to be a fly, and buzzes her to climax.
Baritone Marco Nitisco, who played the whipped husband, had a wonderful voice and delivered his music and actions with believability and energetic disposition. The soprano, Sharleen Joynt, as the wife was a hot babe, but her New Jersey/ Long Island/ Italiano act didnt quite fit her, especially because she looks part Asian. Karim Sulaymans role as a character was difficult to understand. It was obvious that he was seducing the wife, but why he was there was never very clear. As a performer, he was buried in the slapstick more so than carrying out the story and music, but one cant blame him because there wasnt much story. To his credit, he still performed even though he was sick, which was announced before the show started.
[Opéra Français de New Yorks] next production is the Mephisto Project (or A Date with the Devil) at P.S. 122 in May, where the program will include devil scenes from various French operas, which, if strung together as a story, will hopefully feel more connected.