The Hat and The Cat: Can we demand free will?

The Hat: Arendt Meets Heidegger & The Man Who Woke Up – Thompson Street Opera Company

At the fore of the storefront opera scene in Chicago, Thompson Street Opera Company continues its examination of the fortes and foibles of life in real time through the lens of the works of living composers. Both artistically and academically advantageous, this credo brings a richness to the tapestry of the city’s operatic canvas about which we must brag when waxing politick and gloat after the second cocktail. The double bill Thompson presents this weekend should entice both the  converted and the seeking opera enthusiast to sit up close and person in the womb of a black box theatre, immediately engaged in a conversation about the concept (or is it “construct?”) of free will.

In The Hat: Arendt Meets Heidegger, today’s theatre explorer will meet two of the most important philosophers (even if Arendt’s philosophy was to embrace the annihilation thereof) of our time as they discover each other’s unorthodox mental processes and embark on a relationship which shapes their intellectual gymnastics for the remainder of their careers. With internal and shared conversation around the definition of being, choice, and the greater consciousness of personhood, and what might be labelled as divergent concepts of a person’s need for, or even the ability to successfully exercise, an ideal of self-directed democracy against the potential of a natural gravitation toward a structure of autocracy,  their musings are as immediate today as the headlines in the evening edition. Arendt escaped the Nazi ovens while Heidegger joined The Party, albeit for a short time. The Man Who Woke Up also theorizes about fate vs. free will, but within a very different, highly comedic paradigm.

Philosophy is an endemic
precept in the composition and appreciation of poetry. As they create new
pathways for thinking, philosophers must use the very tools of Shakespeare in
their writing, creating words or new amalgams thereof to paint their innermost
musings on the walls of the greater collective. Building on a theme of the
exchange of letters between a younger “student” and an older “teacher” that Thompson
Street began earlier in this season with composer Clint Boronzi’s When Adonis Calls, the audience is once
again the fly on the wall as two lovers who in actuality spend more time with
each other in the bed of correspondence are revealed flesh-to-flesh. As Adonis sang the correspondence between an
older, jaded, established poet and an open-hearted student of the art, Zsuzsanna
Ardó’s libretto for The Hat outlines
the discrepancies between a left-leaning, atheistic German Jewish Arendt as she
meets and procures the supervision of her doctoral dissertation by the married,
Catholic, academic-star, Professor Heidegger. For the second time in Thompson’s
season we see characters based on real-life individuals being attracted to their
ostensible opposites, and then realign. Composer Karen Siegel’s complicated
rhythms set against sonorous chordal structuring highlight the passionate
confusion, refusing to salve with a solid, particular vocabulary.

Soprano Emelia Clark
gives a generous, internal performance as Arendt, showing with glances rather
than telling with gestures, and allowing her lush instrument to sing the
character’s heart. Bass-baritone William Roberts is splendid as Heidegger.
Possessed of a towering physicality and voice, Roberts’ portrait gushes the
outpouring of a new passion that resonated within the professor at the meeting
of who he might have called his soul-mate, had he believed in such a fragile
notion. Mezzo-soprano Liana Gineitis and tenor Matthew Peckham, moving fluidly
between supporting roles and vocal members of the orchestra, were outstanding
in every way. Their musicianship was as exacting as that of the six
instrumentalists — supporting when appropriate and stepping to the center in
their turn. Peckham’s diction was particularly polished; he was always
understandable, no matter the cacophony Siegel brought to play at the most
highly-charged moments.

Composer Robin Haigh
serves as his own librettist for The Man
Who Woke Up, and the integration of those capabilities leads to a highly
successful thirty-minutes of provocative entertainment. As if the audience
doesn’t already enjoy sufficient entry into a storefront production by very
proximity, The Man in this piece IS the audience, waking to find himself in an
unknown location, unable to communicate without singing his every utterance,
with his trajectory determined by those on the other side of the footlights.
Reminiscent of Tarantino’s film Pulp
Fiction in its refusal to take itself seriously and, in so doing, allowing
us to normalize shocking cross-species killings and welcome into our families
even the most vicious of kitties, this is one irreverent, dark comedy.

The formidable cast
includes countertenor Eric Schlossberg as the Owner, Kelsea Webb as his Wife,
Angela Born as a cat called Whiskers, and Jonathan Wilson as the erstwhile
sleeper. Schlossberg’s pungent instrument and wild, wide-eyed portrayal are as
integral to the success of the production as soprano Kelsea Webb’s flowing
instrument and calculated winking at the material. Aficionados of the
storefront opera scene in Chicago look forward to every performance given by
Born, and while this piece doesn’t show off her silky soprano, her murderous
Whiskers is another star in her crown of unique characterizations. In the title
role, baritone Jonathan Wilson grants us another pitch-perfect performance. His
mad scene at the apex of the opera alone is worth more than double the price of
admission.

Thompson Street’s
Executive & Artistic Director Claire DiVizio directs the double bill,
creating two very different worlds with virtually the same furnishings, mostly
placed in the same formations, by inviting the work of the first and the
current creators to tell their stories. The sense of ensemble upon which
Thompson Street provides itself is palpable. Carefully- choreographed stage
violence as successful as that which is on display here is only possible when mutual
trust is fashioned and sustained. That they manage to present a fully operatic
experience without upsetting the ethos that is the purview of the intimate black
box theatre is a testament to DiVizio’s art. Music Director Alexandra Enyart
once again pulls off the miracle of storytelling the nuances of a contemporary
opera score by insisting on championing the imperatives while working in a very
intimate space. This is perhaps the hardest work in storefront opera, because
decisions must be made afresh in any instant, while serving the score on the
stand and balancing the sound between the singers and the very present
orchestra. Enyart’s growth in confidence and authority is evident in every new
project she undertakes. Lighting designer Paul Knappenberger creates an other-wordly,
yet simple glow that seems to emanate from the core of the lessons being
offered.

It is more than appropriate that Thompson Street offer us an operatic examination of the philosophical arguments that swirled around that saddest of times, The Holocaust. What an important time for students of history to be reminded, and for those who aren’t adding up parallels be given an opportunity to exercise what is currently their free will.

Highly Recommended

Reviewed
by Aaron Hunt

Presented
April 4-7 in Studio Two at Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave, Chicago

More information about Thompson Street Opera Company is available at www.thompsonstreetopera.org.  

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.