Sunday, July 1, 2001

SMT's Menotti tribute treat for both ear, eye

By MORRIS SULLIVAN
NEWS-JOURNAL CORRESPONDENT

DAYTONA BEACH — Gian Carlo Menotti, the composer who created two Pulitzer-winning musicals as well as one of the most ubiquitous Christmas classics, "Amahl and the Night Visitors," plans to celebrate his 90th birthday next week.

To celebrate, Seaside Music Theater has chosen as this year's operatic offering a pair of his short pieces, "The Telephone" and "The Medium."

The two are distinctly different. "The Telephone" is a light comedy, while "The Medium" is an eerie drama. However, with their congruent styles, their similarities make them excellent companions.

"The Telephone," a half-hour farce with a two-person cast, explores a theme which was fairly new when Menotti composed it. Ben has come to visit Lucy before leaving town. Before going, he wants to express his love for her and propose marriage. Unfortunately, Lucy's telephone rings, and his proposal has to wait while Lucy's attention abruptly shifts to her love affair with the electronic voice. On one level, the opera is a light look at the differences between men and women that would fit neatly into the plot of a '50s sitcom.

However, that broader theme, the interference of electronic relationships with our face-to-face ones, has become almost as universal as man vs. nature. Anyone who has gotten stuck at an intersection while the driver ahead of him blissfully ignored a changing traffic light in favor of a cellphone conversation, or anyone who has had to wait for his spouse to answer e-mail before beginning an important conversation, can relate to the frustration Ben feels.

Director Lester Malizia chose to make "The Telephone" a period piece, and it is clear from the opening tableau that it will be performed as high camp, with Lucy dressed in a cartoonish Donna Reed-like costume and both characters moving from one stylized pose to another. The over-the-top staging serves to remove the audience a step from the more dated "war between the sexes" plot elements, allowing the contemporary theme to emerge more clearly. The effect is perfect. The two members of the cast, Elizabeth Stanley and Joseph Spieldenner, display comic timing that is as true to the mark as their well-matched and powerful voices.

Menotti has given Lucy more and longer opportunities to sing, and he has hilariously reduced some of her telephone conversations to melodic, albeit repetitive, babble. While Stanley gracefully moves around the set crooning into the mouthpiece of her electronic lover, Spieldenner tries in vain to regain her attention, his frustration becoming more and more desperate until it finally reaches almost slapstick levels.

The physical relationship of Spieldenner and Stanley is a lot of fun to watch. However, when the score does give both a chance to sing, either in hilarious counterpoint or in fluid harmony, they are even more fun to hear.

If "The Telephone" feels a little like a golden-age-of-television sitcom, "The Medium" feels more like a Victorian ghost story. The dramatic transition begins when the set, during intermission, transforms from a parlor with the intimacy of a TV screen to the main room of Madame Flora's home, a sprawling, forced-out-of-perspective structure in which the angles of the scrim walls and raked floor run amok, hinting of hidden mystery and jarring deception.

This somewhat longer piece tells the story of Madame Flora, a medium/con artist. The patrons at her seances include bereaved parents who come to communicate with their dead children. Flora delivers the goods, using rigged furniture and other sleight of hand to create the "spirits" of their lost loved ones, until finally during one such seance she witnesses the presence of the genuine article. The touch of a ghostly hand on Flora causes her perception of the world to collapse like a house of cards.

The dialogue in "The Telephone" would work almost as well spoken as sung; that of "The Medium" is somewhat more lyrical. While the lyrics are very accessible, Menotti uses poetic structure to create passages that range from heart-rending to spooky and even disturbing, as when the parents repeatedly ask of Madame Flora why she suddenly fears their "dead." Madame Flora has two confederates: her daughter, Monica (Angela Sacco), and her ward, a mute boy whom she hired away from Gypsies, Toby (Luke Griswold). Monica and Toby are in love, and while they owe their livelihoods to Flora, they are united in their need to escape from her cruelty.

As Madame Flora, Jane Christeson wonderfully portrays both her harsh exterior and her vulnerability, and she does so while powerfully executing the character's daunting singing tasks. The rest of the singing cast is equally competent, with Sacco, Shannon Polly (Mrs. Nolan), and Emily Carroll and Michael Shiles (Mr. And Mrs. Gobineau) flawlessly exploring the range of emotions offered by Menotti's dazzling score.

The production uses some delightfully surreal devices, using the interplay of lighting and scenery to transcend the material world, especially at the heartbreaking end. When Madame Flora finally confronts the "next world," the walls virtually dissolve, the heavens open up, and the poetry of both the music and the visuals take us with her.

*"The Telephone" and "The Medium" run through July 8 at Daytona Beach Community College Theater Center. Tickets -- $23 to $35 for adults, $10 for children younger than 18 -- are available by calling the SMT box office at (386) 252-6200 or 1 (800) 854-5592.