“Porgy & Bess,” distilled at 150 proof

 

By the end of the Porgy and Bess, four characters are dead, Bess has run off with the drug-dealing Sportin’ Life, and three men have been jailed on and off. Life is short and hard on Catfish Row, and the Skylight Music Theatre’s Porgy and Bess makes that abundantly clear.

Director Bill Theisen’s chamber version of the the 1935 opera shows not a teeming African-American neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina, but one corner of the neighborhood. In it, 14 inhabitants behave like a close-knit extended family, with all the loving, feuding, bad apples and good, good times and bad that any family enjoys and endures.  With 70 people on stage, you might not grasp the enormity of the tragedy that befalls these people or fully feel the pressures on these Southern African-Americans in the 1930s. But in this compact Skylight production, the dwindling population startles, appalls and drives home the point of this George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin/DuBose Heyward opera.

Right along with these characters, we feel the pressure  with special intensity in the first two scenes. Music director Richard Carsey’s reduction of the score from full orchestra to nine players gives the more raucous music an exposed-nerve edge. Through these scenes — in which Crown bullies everyone, murders the innocent Robbins and manhandles the drunken Bess — Carsey pushed the tempo ahead near the ends of phrases again and again. The singers delivered on this, and thus the music added to the urgency of the drama.

Such music kept us tense and on the edge of our seats in the Cabot Theatre of the Broadway Theatre Center. Eventually, we needed some relief, just like the people of Catfish Row. They know how to relax and have a good time despite everything, and a certain heroism lies in that. As the characters prepared for an excursion to an island for a church picnic, the cast and the orchestra shaped the musical phrases into sighs of relief on the one hand and rising inflections of anticipation on the other. Carsey, the singers and Gershwin understood exactly how to regulate the musical weather to support the drama throughout the show.

In an interview this week, Theisen said that he intended each character to shine as an individual through the weave of the community, and that is exactly what happened on opening night Friday. Everyone except T. Stacy Hicks’ white Detective has a name — no anonymous choristers in this production. Every last member of this cast had the presence, skill and commitment to deliver on Theisen’s premise. Each drew a human being in sharp relief and established both personality and place in the community hierarchy. As time goes on, we get to know who meshes and who is sand in the gears, who leads and who follows, who is brave and who is fearful. It’s fascinating.

Bass-baritone Jason McKinney’s Porgy is a big man, a strong man, an unlikely rock within the community. McKinney’s imposing physical and vocal presence makes Porgy’s moral and physical strength credible, and McKinney exactly understood Porgy’s blunt sincerity.

Opposites attract in Porgy and Bess. Kearstin Piper Brown, who alternates as Bess with Rhea Olivaccé through the run, brought a world of subtlety to Bess. Porgy’s simple and direct, his inner life and outer life are one. She’s conflicted, complicated, full of contradictory impulses. Brown let us see, feel and hear all of that in a riveting, layered interpretation that culminated in her surrender to Crown’s (Nathaniel Stampley)  brutal sex appeal — even after Porgy has taken her in and apparently rehabilitated her.

Brown and Stampley played that climactic scene, set on the island where Crown has been hiding after murdering Robbins, with searing intensity. His aggressive posture and the pointed accents in his singing make her recoil, physically and musically, but also wear her down. You can see and hear her resolve give way in the crucial moment when she stops resisting Crown’s embrace and slides down his body like melting ice sliding off a roof. As she descends, she lets out a sustained Ohhhh of despair mixed with desire as the pitch fades ever so slightly as she sinks.

If Porgy’s happy with Plenty O’ Nothin’, Anthony P. McGlaun’s Sportin’ Life is happy Believin’ in Nothin’. He’s not so much a hedonist, although he’ll take his pleasure when he can, as a nihilist. He mocks the faith of those around him with a fluid ease that tells us he won’t be converted in a foxhole. The formidable Sheri Williams Pannell, as the knife-wielding, pipe-smoking Maria, can oppose him on his own terms and was funny doing it Friday night.

Cecilia Davis, as Clara, sang “Summertime” to open the show. She and Carsey didn’t allow it to be a wholly comforting lullaby for the baby in Clara’s arms. It moved a little too fast and left too little space between phrases. I believe that was no accident; even in such a tender moment, a young black mother doesn’t forget the threatening world around that child.

Soprano Adrienne Danrich sent her voice soaring over all as Serena, the church woman, conscience and matriarch of this besieged clan. Only Sportin’ Life has the temerity to defy her, and even he isn’t so sure about that all the time. When that amazing Danrich voice rings out, just one response is appropriate: Yes ma’am.

Directors & Designers

Stage Direction & Choreography Bill Theisen; Music Direction Richard Carsey; Assistant Director Sheri Williams Pannell; Set Design Ken Goldstein; Lighting Design Annmarie Duggan; Costume Design Carol Blanchard; Sound Design Gary Ellis

Cast

Porgy: Jason McKinney; Bess: Rhea Olivacce, Kearstin Piper Brown; Serena: Adrienne Danrich; Crown: Nathaniel Stampley; Sportin’ Life: Anthony McGlaun; Clara: Cecilia Davis; Maria: Sheri Williams Pannell; Jake: Bill McMurray; Annie: Cynthia Cobb; Lily: Erica Cochran; Robbins: Shawn Holmes; Jim: Jonathan Christopher; Mingo: Sean Miller; Peter: Cameo Humes; Detective: T. Stacy Hicks

Performance Information

Porgy and Bess runs May 17-June 9 in the Cabot Theatre of the Broadway Theatre Center. For tickets and further information, visit the Skylight’s website or call the BTC box office, 414 291-7800.