Dance Review: Mark Morris’s “King Arthur” @ New York City Opera
The City Opera has returned from a two-month hiatus with a production to be proud of. Mark Morris’s “King Arthur” (2006), an abstract (and abstracted) opera/dance based on the 17th century collaboration between poet John Dryden and composer Henry Purcell, satisfies as a good night out at the theater. The work is a charming, clever fairytale-like excursion into Baroque pastoral, with whimsical menageries of animals, rain curtains, snow machines and pixies. But don’t go rushing out to take your kids just yet. For all its whimsy and unabashed entertainment value, Morris steers the ambiguous tale (actually discarding all of Dryden’s spoken text; you know, exposition, plot, dialogue, etc.) toward a mature celebration of love, both virtuous and…a little dirty.
The production rides high on its musical components. The cast of singers is virtually flawless. Jane Glover conducts a collection of period instruments with nuance and verve. And the chorus, peeking its many heads just over the brim of the pit, sings with evocative color and buoyant energy. It was such a pleasure to see an operatic piece so well cast.
Morris incorporates the singers into the physical totality of the work with a skill of a true director. The opening “Ritual Sacrifice” sees a mix of dancers and singers coming in and out of one autonomous doorway and taking seat in seven chairs arranged in a discrete curve. The costumes, by Target-chic designer Isaac Mizrahi, are a fanciful blend of every day clothes and quasi-period pastiche; a wig here, a corset there; now a Leprechaun, then a knight. When the singers stand up to perform, they often execute–with confidence–series of arm gestures that echo the angular, intentionally anachronistic gestures of the dancers.
I have to point out here that Laurel Lynch’s entrance, even among the chorus of dancers, was one of the most physically precise entrances I can remember seeing; her broad shoulders perfectly level with her arms bent flat against her chest, head turned; it was almost Egyptian and ideally Morris; look out for her.
The “dirty” part comes at the end of Act II and in the form of a single orgy sequence that joins the dancers together in various positions of coitus–always in pairs–that range from the merely passionate to the downright explicit. The moment comes as somewhat of a shock, but only because we’ve been steeped in the puritanical vacuum of period innocence for some time. You’re not expecting the dancers, who have just played out a clever dance where they lace through a series of wheeled, mirrored doors and wave flashlights around a soprano dressed as a fairy, to suddenly drop down and mimic–although with the same tone of playfulness–inserting a penis into a butt hole; if you can imagine. You just didn’t see it coming.
Morris thrusts us (sorry) into our present relationship with sexual imagery, albeit with cool wit, and a detached maturity, and challenges the preconceptions we might have about the moral and sexual practices of 17th century British folk. The thing is, he’s not entirely out of place to take us there. The musical passage is “And Love, they tell me, is a Dance of Hearts,” a jaunt into the amorous that opens with a lovely duet between sopranos Sarah Jane McMahon and Heidi Stober. It is only our ingrained moral assumptions that tend to castrate historical representations of sex.
I also couldn’t have asked for a better example of how Morris’s sharp, mature sensibility is so different from Paul Taylor’s coy attempt at prurience in “…Byzantium.” Where Taylor’s orgies were demure and self ingratiating, Morris’s is explicit and objective. There is a level of emotional maturity that, admittedly from what little I’ve seen, Taylor seems unable to reach. But Morris does, and, consequently, the moment is more scandalous (he aims out at the audience) than Taylor thinks his is (he aims inward). I will admit, the audience last night seemed so confronted that they couldn’t even laugh; I thought, as a choreographic choice, it was funny-ha ha, not funny-uncomfortable. Either way, it’s a better option than having an audience think it’s in on the arrested naughtiness, as Taylor’s audience seemed to be.
King Arthur keeps going, one vignette after another. The narrative cohesion is kept loosely together mainly by the use of materials; a gold crown to represent the spirit of King Arthur (who never actually materializes); cross bars with pairs of inverted V legs represent horses and are dragged around from time to time; the rolling doors come and go. But there’s nothing grounded enough to get you comfortable in terms of “story.” This may not work for some, although, for this counter critic, the choice was smart and opened up numerous purely theatrical possibilities.
For instance, at the beginning of Act III, where Purcell’s delicious “I can scarcely move or draw my breath” (made popular for a brief moment by the late visionary pop singer, Klaus Nomi), Morris evokes the cruel bite of winter with a tiny little “snow machine”–a sheet of fabric with some holes cut into it and attached to a pulley that is pulled by a dancer bundled up in blanket–that hovers above a refrigerator. When soprano Mhairi Lawson opens the appliance, baritone Daniel Mobbs sings the chilling aria as a procession of dancers drudge by, also bundled up in blankets. It’s smart and satisfying, and Mobbs’s voice is clear and strong.
Countertenor Iestyn Davies also turned out some strong performances, both soloist and in ensemble, with clear enunciation and a soft soprano tone that really complimented the relatively heftier voices of his female counterparts.
Some other wonderful scenic touches are an absurdist “menagerie” of dancers in animal costumes, and an effective celebration around a May pole (the ribbons brilliantly create a physical analog to the choreography). And in the final number, paper airplanes start launching in from the wings as the entire cast sings in chorus the glories of loving one’s country, banners waving. The way such a silly image of juvenile mischief undercuts the seriousness of the pomp of nationalism is remarkably moving, and one hundred percent Morris.
“King Arthur” continues at New York City Opera on various dates through March 15.
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