Theater Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s



Callas love
Life imitates opera in Lisbon Traviata
BY CAROLYN CLAY

The Lisbon Traviata
By Terrence McNally. Directed by Eric C. Engel. Set by Brynna Bloomfield. Costumes by Gail Astrid Buckley. Lighting by Linda O’Brien. Sound by J. Hagenbuckle. With Peter A. Carey, Neil A. Casey, Bill Mootos, and Jason Schuchman. At the Lyric Stage Company of Boston through March 9.


Life imitating art, as The Lisbon Traviata bears out, is not necessarily a good thing. At the center of Terrence McNally’s 1985 play is a gay man obsessed with opera in general and with Maria Callas (also the subject of McNally’s Tony-winning 1995 Master Class) in particular. Act one finds Stephen and his equally opera-crazed pal Mendy playing records (remember, this is the 1980s) and burlesquing tragic scenes from opera. But what Stephen summarizes as the " boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy and girl croak " plots of opera seem to have seeped deeper into his blood than he knows, as becomes clear in the melodramatic second act that finds Stephen being left by his long-time partner. Let’s just say that what happens is closer to Carmen than to La traviata.

The play takes its name from a pirate recording of Verdi’s opera sung by Callas in Portugal in 1957, and there is a lot of banter about the differences among opera recordings and performances. At one point, when Mendy can’t pinpoint the artist on a particular recording, he waspishly observes that, obviously, someone is singing; otherwise, the goings-on would constitute not an opera but a play. And The Lisbon Traviata, albeit an Off Broadway hit in its time, is proof (if such is necessary) that an operatic plot, divorced from beautiful music, can register as florid, repetitive, and bathetic. Certainly act two of The Lisbon Traviata is all that, and its relentlessness is only underlined in Eric C. Engel’s uncharacteristically unsubtle production. By the time tragedy ensues, one is just glad to be released from the grip of a central character whose whiny, compulsive desperation makes him less attractive than Stephen finds " Beast from Down Under " Joan Sutherland.

There are timely themes running under The Lisbon Traviata, which is set in the darkest days of the AIDS crisis. Middle-aged editor Stephen, in his urgency to save his " stable relationship " with doctor Michael, actually denounces the victims of " our own bubonic plague, " as if terror at being tossed back into single life at a time when sex can be fatal is at the core of his angst. And the play’s treatment of the importance of art in the lives of its characters (when they aren’t camping) is touching. It is easy to believe, for example, that Stephen is more in love with the " strange, sad, siren sound " of Callas’s voice than he ever has been with his partner of seven years, Michael. Also on the plus side, opera maven McNally builds some amusing opera-world fanaticism and dish into the play’s comic first act.

But The Lisbon Traviata paints a somewhat hackneyed picture of gay men, particularly in the mincing, kimono-clad, needy, and demanding Mendy. When the character refers to an acquaintance as a " stereotypical aging immature queen, " the image of the pot and the kettle does loom. And Neil A. Casey, imperious in bottle-glasses and red-silk-pajama pants, does nothing to ameliorate the character, playing him with high-octane childishness, bitchiness, and flounce. At least in act one, Peter A. Carey, as Stephen, counters Casey’s Mendy with some modicum of cool even as he trumps him on opera knowledge.

Unfortunately, the character, as written and as played, loses every iota of cool after intermission when Stephen calculatedly returns too early to his and Michael’s apartment (in Brynna Bloomfield’s set design a Spartan fortress of unreachable LPs). There Michael, per arrangement, has been entertaining another man who turns out to be more than just a casual fling. This act, whose trajectory is meant to move from sophisticated Manhattan modernity to a tragic, unexpected, operatic finale, is much too long. And none of the characters comes off terribly well, with the exception of Michael’s new boyfriend, Paul, played by Jason Schuchman with a grace that acknowledges but is not cowed by the awkwardness of the situation. Bill Mootos paints a pained, suave Michael who doesn’t know to git while the gittin’ is good.

Carey’s Stephen really falls apart in this act, partly because he allows his character’s desperation to come to full bloom way too early. Then he has nowhere to go, except to get more strident. Engel doesn’t help, and neither does McNally, pounding away at Stephen’s emotional disintegration, which flips back and forth between frantic, insistent self-pity and " Name That Tune. " I’m a fan of the playwright’s best work, but, for my money, The Lisbon Traviata would only be worth reviving if you could dig up Verdi to write it a score.

Issue Date: February 14-21, 2002
Back to the Theater table of contents.