February 02, 2010 Arts » Performing Arts

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Facelifts at the Met and the Phil 

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click to flip through (2) MARTY SOHL/METROPOLITAN OPERA - The riddle scene from Act II
 

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Hansel and Gretel (**1/2) -- Eurotrash for kids?? Set and costume designer John Macfarlane has taken Engelbert Humperdinck's fairytale classic out of the woods and into an industrial monochrome modernity. The first act takes us from the woodland cottage where we usually find the siblings' home to an urban pre-WW2 apartment. Then we move to the warmest stop in the new Met production, "the woods." Only it looks like an eerie Elks Lodge that reminded me of a Stratford Festival production of No Exit that I saw in2003.

Here we get the kindliest touch from Macfarlane when the Sandman -- actually, a delectably fey Jennifer Johnson -- sings the lost children to sleep. The 14 angels that appear to them in their sleep are 14 identical pastry chefs with oversized heads that make them look faintly like the muffins they bake, in a dreamy, jowly Maurice Sendak way. For Act 3, the witch's fabled gingerbread house has been monstrously debased into a vast mess hall kitchen splayed across the full width of the Met stage, with a huge fridge, corrugated aluminum doors big enough to open on a loading dock, and the obligatory oven.

All this is hardly enough for Macfarlane's deconstruct of the Grimm Brothers, for each scene in Humperdinck's confection is prefaced by a flat or cut-out scrim showing either a plate with food or a wide mouth poised maniacally to take a bite. With such subtlety, the designer connects the poverty of the siblings' family, the childish craving for sweets that draws them inexorably to the gingerbread house, and the cannibalistic witch waiting to devour them.

Stage director J. Knighten Smit and a very fine cast overcome this ghoulish squalor as best they can. Miah Persson has an irresistible goofiness as Gretel, and Angelika Kirchschlager is so butch in the pants role of Hansel that I could almost bite her myself. As for Philip Langridge crossdressing as the Witch (alias Rosina Lickspittle), he enjoys himself even more lavishly than the title characters, ladling on a pile of comical, cackling condiments and slurping them all down with demonic glee.

Seasoned veterans Rosalind Plowright and Dwayne Croft have their own wary charm as the frazzled parents. Both have the disoriented look of singers accustomed to singing these comprimario roles in adorable conventional productions. They were trusting when they signed their Met contracts, but now, by some cruel cosmic accident, they must reprise their mom-and-pop performances in an alternate universe!

Program Note: There is plenty more pageantry, treachery, and diva action to come in the Met's 2009-10 season, with three more of the legendary Saturday matinee radio broadcasts supplemented by Live in HD screenings at two area locations. Plácido Domingo adds a new role to his amazing gallery -- his first as a baritone -- in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra this Saturday. Simon Keenlyside and Natalie Dessay star in Hamlet on March 27, and Renee Fleming has the title role in Rossini's Armida on May 1.

Both the Stonecrest 22 @ Piper Glen and the Concord Mills 24 are also among the roster of theaters where Encore Events are broadcast. So if you missed the February 3 weeknight encore of Carmen, you still have second chances for Boccanegra on February 24, Hamlet on April 14, and Armida on May 19, all at 6:30pm.

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