Edward Tulane is an opera based on a novel by Kate DiCamillo. The libretto is by Mark Campbell with music composed by Paola Prestini. The most famous member of this trio is DiCamillo, a writer of books for young adults who became famous with her first novel Because of Winn Dixie. Ms. DiCamillo has written a number of books, many of them bestsellers and highly regarded. Edward Tulane had a long and difficult gestation -- COVID delayed the production, a world premiere, for a couple years. The opera is about two hours long, divided into two acts of approximately equal duration. The production was lavish and colorful, involving many set changes (implemented on stage without dropping the curtain) and requires a large cast, although most of the parts can be doubled. Because the story is a fairy tale, the show features elaborate costumes -- there are jelly-fish, sea-horses, a murder of scary-looking crows, a talking dog, a rat and a wart-hog to name a few of the characters who appear in lavish full-body costume; in fact, one of the figures resembles, from a distance, the cowardly lion as he appears in the famous movie-production of The Wizard of Oz. The action is staged within a framework that can be made to appear as rigging on a ship, a ruinous Victorian house, or an industrial site: big timbers support a frame-work of box-like cells with eaves and gables. This part of the set doesn't vary but can be transformed into different sorts of environments by lighting effects. Within the box of this heavy-looking scaffolding, various mobile sets can be deployed -- they are simply pushed into place to provide platforms or enclosures for the singers. There are ingenious lighting effects -- stars with comet-like tails on the back wall, scrims to simulate water when the titular character is under the sea, and, at one point, Edward Tulane even dons white angel wings and is shoved toward the front of the stage atop a launch-pad of scaffolding: he threatens to fly up to heaven to join a poor little girl who has died. The effects have the sort of elaborate, over-done and "magical" aspect of productions at the Minnesota Childen's Theater and the influence of MCT pantomime-style staging is everywhere evident in the set design and blocking. There's no question that the show is a treat for the eyes, although like most confectionary the imagery tends to be overly sweet and cloying.
Edward Tulane is a stuffed rabbit. In the show, he is represented by a rabbit doll that seems to be about a yard long and by an actor who sings his lines. The actor wears a rabbit suit, on occasion stylish human garb, and has big stiff ears. The plot is episodic but fairly simple. A little girl receives a stuffed rabbit at Christmas whom she dubs "Edward Tulane." When she takes a sea voyage on the Queen Mary, the rabbit is snatched by bullies and, for no good reason, thrown in the sea. After sitting on the bottom of the ocean for awhile (with the aforementioned sea horses, jellyfish and an octopus), a fisherman drags the toy ashore in his net. The fisherman and his wife are lonely and their children are grown and so they are pleased to have the stuffed doll as part of their home. But a mean woman, possibly a daughter, intervenes and for no good reason, takes the rabbit away from them and throws it on a garbage heap. The rabbit is retrieved from the garbage by a talking dog who brings the toy to his master, a hobo. The hobo re-names the rabbit Malone -- perhaps, in homage to Sam Beckett. (Each successive owner renames the doll and dresses it according to his or her own tastes -- much to the dismay of Edward Tulane, who if truth be known, spends most of the opera whining about his changes in fortune.) When the railroad cops attack the tramps, the doll again changes hands and ends up as a scarecrow in a corn field where he is menaced by sinister-looking crows. A boy finds the rabbit posted as a scarecrow and takes him home to comfort his little sister who is dying. The boy and his sister are the victims of a fat swaggering drunk who is their abusive father. These adventures bring the first act to a close with a chorus involving all the characters who have owned Edward Tulane up to this point.
In the second half, the boy's sister has died. When he is threatened by his drunken and vicious father, the boy departs with the rabbit, leaving pa passed-out cold on the stage. (The fat singer getting up unassisted from lying on his back on the stage was the highlight of the opera for me; the spry, heavy set performer in Jeremiah Sanders and my hat's off to him.) The boy takes the rabbit to Memphis where he has him rigged up as a marionette and earns some money from passers-by when he makes the stuffed rabbit dance. The boy and rabbit go to a diner and order all sorts of food (three slices of pecan pie, pronounced "pee-can"); of course, they don't have enough to pay for the lavish meal and so the cook, who righteously indignant, smashes the rabbit's head on the counter and knocks him out. (The boy now is out of the story.) Edward wakes up in the shop of a crazed toy-restorer. The restorer has fixed up Edward, miming the repairs while he babbles out a song that is half annoying nonsense syllables -- it's as if the librettist has just given up during this scene. The crazy toy-doctor puts Edward up for sale, displaying him on three steeply sloped shelves on which about fifteen other dolls sit, dressed in doll clothes and holding their toy replicas on their lap. This part of the show is deeply creepy -- it's sort of like a slave auction. The toy shop proprietor berates the dolls for not showing sufficient brilliance to be sold; the poor dolls frantically compete for the attention of customers. It's all pretty hellish and disturbing. At last, a mother and girl enter the shop. The girl has lost her beloved doll at a cafe. (Query? why doesn't she and mom just go back to look for the doll.) The child demands that her mother replace the doll before they go home. The little girl (who like all children in this show seems to be about 35) picks out Edward Tulane and, in the anti-climactic final scene, we see the Victorian house set with which the show commenced -- are we supposed to believe that the mother and child are the same people who originally unwrapped Edward Tulane, now about 15 years earlier? This is unclear to me.
The libretto mines a vein of pathos exploited by Hans Christian Andersen in stories like "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" and "The Old House". This is the pathos of once beloved toys being cast aside, no longer loved, and left to rot. In these kinds of tales, the toys are sentient and so we experience their grief and despair at being abandoned. (The film bears some resemblances to Steven Spielberg's infinitely morose AI, particularly in the scenes where the doll -- Spielberg used robots -- is drowned in the depths of the sea.) Not content with showing the suffering of the animate doll, the libretto also features the off-stage death of a sickly little girl protected from her belligerent, indifferent and drunken father by her teenage brother. The show poses this question; who is the intended audience for this opera? Some of the material is very harsh and not in the bland, circumstantial way of the classical fairy tales, but in the quasi-realistic and disturbing manner of a Dickens' novel or one of Hans Christian Andersen's more sado-masochistic fables. (The slave auction of the dolls is particularly grim and distressing.) I would expect very young children would be appalled by this material. Teenagers aren't going to attend an opera and adults will find the material predictable and simple-minded without any real conflict or meaningful characterizations. The opera is lavish, colorful, and undoubtedly expensive to produce, but it isn't likely to really please anyone -- I say this notwithstanding the tremendous applause that the piece garnered at the show that I attended. The libretto is poorly written and involves lots of unmotivated actions and, at key moments, the show requires its protagonists to act in wholly inexplicable and irresponsible ways -- why would the wise child order a dinner that he can't possibly afford? And isn't it a little questionable to imply that we should dislike the cook who, after all, has been defrauded? If the dolls are truly inanimate to humans, then why does everyone talk to them? And why is toy-shop owner so vicious in demanding that they "shine" to be purchased? Some strands of the libretto are left unresolved. Everyone seems to wonder why Edward Tulane can't talk? (I didn't have any problem with this -- he's a stuffed rabbit and doesn't have the ability to speak.) But shouldn't Edward's inability to speak be solved with a splendid aria at the end of the opera that can be heard by others on stage? But this doesn't happen. Edward is rather unpleasant, selfish and always whining about his situation -- to be sure being sunk to the bottom of ocean or harried by crows isn't too pleasant but his self-pity is a little off-putting. The plot seems to require that Edward Tulane grow to appreciate love and become loving himself. The world "love" is used about a hundred times in the libretto, an over-emphasis that is maudlin and manipulative. Although the opera is through-composed, I can't recall any impressive music of any kind, no memorable tunes or interesting orchestration (although a large orchestra is necessary to the performance). The music is all recitative with a few numbers for trio, octet, or chorus that are completely forgettable. There are scenes that don't really make much sense -- the mother of the child who first owned the doll in the First Act tells a fairy-tale about a princess who rejects love and, for that offense, gets turned into a wart-hog. I guess the story is supposed to be thematic -- Edward Tulane is unable to love or show his love. The fairy-tale is acted out with elaborate costumes and pantomime. The child hearing the story comments on its unsatisfactory ending and wonders out loud what the tale is supposed to mean. We second her complaints. This show cost a fortune to produce and is performed with passion and devotion, but I don't think it's any good. (The audience on the 15th of October disagreed with my assessment.)
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