Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✭✭✭✩
written by Pierre Klanac, Fuhong Shi and John Rea, directed by Ruth Madoc-Jones
Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, Young Centre, Toronto
July 29-31, 2010
Queen of Puddings’ latest production, Beauty Dissolves in a Brief Hour, is an exquisite piece of music theatre. Consisting of poems in three languages set to music by three composers, the work on paper might seem to be more of a song recital for two sopranos and accordion than theatre. Yet, QoP co-artistic directors Dáirine Ní Mheadhra and John Hess conceived of Beauty as theatre from the start and stage director Ruth Madoc-Jones and designer Michael Gianfrancesco find a fundamental mystery underlying the three sections that forges them into a unified whole. It is a strange, thought-provoking journey that has greater impact than its running time of 45 minutes would suggest.
The first section, “Jeux à vendre,” is composed by Pierre Klanac to a text by Christine de Pisan (c.1365-c.1430). The playfulness of the the text disguises a mood of intense desire and unrequited love. Klanac emphasizes this through a minimalist style, building from a cell of only four notes, and moves to a point where all we hear is fantastic echoing of sounds between soprano Xin Wang and mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó. Here the accordion is not as fully integrated into the musical texture as it is in the following sections. In the second section, “Spring, River, and Flowers on a Moonlit Night,” Fuhong Shi has set the Tang poem in a style reminiscent of György Ligeti focussing on the interrelations of shifting timbres between the accordion and the two singers. What emerges is a sense of melancholy and loss. The last section which gives the entire work its title is based on poems mostly by Giulio Strozzi (1583-1652) translated into English. Composer John Rea begins in a pseudo-Renaissance style that soon morphs into a sparse post-Britten sound world. Here love finds fulfilment but only with the sad acknowledgement of its fragility.
Szabó and Wang sing beautifully with utmost command of subtlety and nuance. If you associate accordions with the polka, think again. Master accordionist John Lettieri produces aggregations of sounds like those of a synthesizer along with an uncanny breathing by pumping the bellows on their own. Gianfrancesco has clad the two singers in identical neoclassical gowns with translucent hooded cloaks. As we listen to these songs about love we wonder whether they are sung by one woman to another or by two halves of the same woman. Madoc-Jones has this mystery unfold as a delicate otherworldly ritual. By the end you feel not that beauty has dissolved but been created before your very eyes and ears.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-07-30.
Photo: Krisztina Szabó and Xin Wang.
2010-07-30
Beauty Dissolves in a Brief Hour