May 26, 2004 Arts » Performing Arts

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Lucy in the Highlands With Dementia 

Plus a guest appearance by Little Richard

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There's a healthy chunk of excess built into Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. The opera pounces upon the proud Scottish lads and lasses of Sir Walter Scott's colorful romance, strips away their gritty brogues, and has them warbling in florid Italian. Singers playing the roles of the principals, Lucia and Edgardo (nee Lucy Ashton and Sir Edgar Ravenswood), are usually at the pinnacle of their careers. So the lead soprano and tenor are obliged to act half their age, regressing to the mighty passion and petulance necessary to form the resolve to kill or die at the drop of a haggis.

Toss in Sumi Jo as Lucia to further complicate the ethnic stew, and the excess threatens to reach critical mass. Perhaps that's why last week's Opera Carolina production, under the direction of Stephanie Sundine, strove so diligently to mute what little Scots flavoring remains in the drama after being purged from the music.

Anyone who had seen a cinematic version of Scott's Rob Roy would have quickly noticed the absence of kilts in the costuming. Except for a bit of fabric thrown over a loveseat, hardly bigger than a grace note amid the huge wedding scene, there wasn't a trace of a tartan all evening. Nor did Roberto Oswald's set dispel the nagging notion that the design elements of this production weren't conceived for Lammermoor.

Perhaps to accent the callous severity of Lucia's ancestral Ashton home, Raimondo was transformed from Lucia's tutor to the family's chaplain. Sundine's emendation significantly lessens Raimondo's loyalty to Lucia throughout the drama -- and nearly eliminates any sympathy we might expect of him toward Edgardo. It also changes the attitude that Lucia has toward Raimondo from one of trust to one of obedience.

Dramatic damage is most acute in Act 2 when Raimondo persuades Lucia to marry Arturo, chosen by Lucia's elder brother Enrico for the wealth he can infuse into the family's empty coffers. The treacherous Enrico has forged a letter from Edgardo to convince Lucia that she's been tossed aside for another bride. Where Raimondo usually seems to be as convinced as Lucia that Edgardo has betrayed her, righteously enraged on her behalf, now the clergyman seems to be an accomplice in the slimy plot.

The drama deficit counted for little when Sumi Jo and Harold Wilson, as Raimondo, were making the music. She was utterly compelling from the moment she entered in Act 1, though one could sense a touch of trepidation when she reached for the high notes in the "Quando rapita in estasi" rhapsodizing over her love for Edgardo. Jo sang the celebrated Act 3 mad scene with commanding confidence, retaining the youthful purity of Lucia and fusing it with murderous gore for a truly macabre combo.

Wilson was consistently impressive as the stolid Raimondo, particularly narrating the horrors of Lucia's nuptial bed, though his prodigious basso would be more fitting for the Commendatore in Don Giovanni. The rest of the singers simply weren't of the same caliber. Only mezzo Yolanda Denise Bryant's rendition of Lucia's companion, Alisa, could be decried as genuinely execrable, but her interaction with Jo in Act 1 was mercifully brief.

Unless singing has been outlawed for opera villains, Oziel Garza-Ornelas' chronic barking as Enrico must be judged a failure. Little Richard singing "Lucille, you don't do your daddy's will" would have been more welcome and apt.

Joseph Wolverton was best in the passionate gesticulation facets of Edgardo, drawing his sword at the wedding and later challenging Enrico to mortal combat, but his tenor carried no electric thrills and sounded surprisingly puny paired with Jo. When Lucia perished, virginity intact, and Edgardo finally grasped her fidelity, Wolverton couldn't rise to the magnificence of the hero's grief and remorse, leaving the final scene anticlimactic.

When the supertitles unexpectedly disappeared during the grand wedding scene, the inertia of Sundine's direction was cruelly exposed. But if this was OC's most colorless production of the season, Jo's bravura will help it to be remembered among the finest overall. The admiration and enthusiasm roused at the Belk last Thursday were extraordinary. So was Jo.

The good news about last week's Lullaby of Broadway was the superb musical direction of Don Hite and the snappy choreography by Markie Martinez and Fred Tallaksen. These far outweighed the revue's overdependence on the showtunes of Andrew Lloyd Webber and the self-consciousness of TV reality show hunk James Getzlaff. But the bad news is that Lullaby, contrary to the info published in last Friday's Observer review, will not be completing a second week at Booth Playhouse. It's over. Hite was not as expert at marketing his product as he was at musicmaking, so his expected audience never materialized. Hite folded his tent to cut his losses, and the Broadway Carolina tunefest will resurface at Hilton Head on May 31.

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