Dan Norman
It’s hard to fall in love on stage.
Movies have it easy. Movies can collapse weeks, and even months, of courtship into a few moments of montage filled with fated laughter, sly glances and slow advances, all set to the new top 40 love song.
Things move much more quickly in Madison Opera’s Fellow Travelers, which opened Feb. 8 at Overture Center’s Capitol Theater. The story is about two government employees — played by Ben Edquist and Andres Acosta — who hide their on-again off-again gay relationship during the “Lavender Scare” that arose parallel to the 1950s Red Scare.
The affair starts abruptly, with a strangers meeting in a park. After their first sexual encounter, the older, experienced man is telling the younger one he “owns” him.
Audiences may give it a pass because it’s a brave work that features two men in love. Fellow Travelers does deserve acclaim just on that score. But if you imagine it as a conventional if clichéd boy-girl story, the weaknesses immediately stand out. Even dramatic characters have to earn love, from soulmates as well as audiences. This is the rare opera that would be bettered by making it longer. Time needs to be set aside for character development, to create the audience sympathy required for suspense.
There’s also strange leitmotif symbolism, including milk, Bermuda, palm groves and a virgin-ish Mary. You’d think her moment of considering abortion might get at least one aria, but zip. The opera includes double entendre lines such as “Play the game and come out on top.” Get it? And the “other man” who breaks up the couple is God.
And yet it all somehow works in this strong production. Greg Pierce’s libretto is masked by the sheer strength of direction, design, cast and score.
The thirsty, yawing chords of composer Gregory Spears suggest an unlikely but driving, effective mix of Tchaikovsky and Copland, with a strong nod toward Bedřich Smetana’s Moldau.
It completes the dramatic tension only suggested in the script, but it must be a mighty challenge to performers, who often have to sing around the chords. It’s a uniformly strong cast, and Edquist and Acosta are standouts, with voices that are alternately powerful and poignant.
It’s the direction by Peter Rothstein that truly elevates the production. Artistic director at the Twin Cities’ Theater Latté Da, this is his third time directing Fellow Travelers. He clearly knows where its strengths lie, and cannily makes the most of them.
For the Madison audience, the most emotional part of the evening was offered by the simple presence of Madison Symphony Orchestra’s conductor, John Demain. His wife passed unexpectedly just the day before. Still he showed up, did his job and did it well. A good portion of the cheers and standing ovation at night’s end belonged to him.
Fellow Travelers plays once more, Feb. 9 at 2:30 p.m. in Overture’s Capitol Theater.
