Paul Bunyan

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

It is understandable and greatly appreciated that Central City Opera features an American Opera every year. At the moment, Benjamin Britten’s music is enjoying a revival in the United States. Throughout his life he certainly had a grasp of several different musical expressions from chamber music, waltzes, operas, solo pieces, to movie and radio scores.

Alison Trainer (Tiny) and Ryan MacPherson (Hot Biscuit Slim) in Paul Bunyan at Central City Opera. Photo: Mark Kiryluk

Maybe, because he was eager for fame and fortune while in the United States, Britten tried too hard to incorporate mythical America into an opera, absorbing pieces of American music such as hillbilly, ragtime, a work song, an attempted comical duet, with a stab at the blues. Maybe Britten tried too hard to appeal to the teenagers of his day. As the telegram is delivered to Paul Bunyan, maybe he hoped Hollywood would come knocking at his door. Maybe it was because he was only 26 when he wrote Paul Bunyan with W. H. Auden.

Word master Auden had to be five-years-old when he wrote the libretto revolving around the overbearing giant lumberman. The score testifies to the fact Bunyan was born under a blue moon, when the program notes it was Babe, the gigantic Ox who was born on a cold snowy night under a blue moon. The mournful song of the chorus longing for a blue moon indicates it doesn’t happen very often. The truth being there is a blue moon twice a year.

Auden’s simplistic words, uneven cadence, forced rhyming, and elementary derived sentences deceives the greatness his poet muse carries him.

Central City Opera opened last Saturday night for its third opera of the season. It didn’t work when Britten first wrote it. Critical response crushed his spirit. It definitely didn’t work Saturday night under the direction of Ken Cazan with the orchestra conducted by Steuart Bedford.

Opening night for Paul Bunyan at Central City Opera was anything like a celebration of a great man for his music. Within seconds, I was carried back to elementary school days, when children spread their arms and squeaked “Honk, I’m a goose” giggling with waving arms proclaiming their theatre debut as a tree.

Granted there is some magnificent voices, but the elementary staging, leave much to be desired. The music itself is deadly dull. The sing song wording of forced lines, and elementary rhyming the overwhelming sappy patriotic atmosphere, the simplistic plea at the end to save “animals and men” (what was to happen to the women?) over the industrialization of America, after Bunyan and his crew chopped down several forests providing what they wanted then chided others for going after what they wanted made one awfully grateful there were just two acts.

What happened to the staging for Act II? They stood and they sang.

Memorable voices are Marcus Deloach as the Narrator/Ballad Singer even though he arrived in a rocking chair in cowboy slicker and hat on cables over the stage. However this was supposed to read beyond the boards didn’t make it. Perhaps he was an ethereal being engulfing himself in the demeanor of the nursing home quality the cast projected with wheelchairs, and walkers at the very beginning. Was this to represent an aging America bemoaning the loss of their forests facing industrialization? It is slightly comical to think of America as aging in the 1940s, considering how young this country is as far as we are concerned.

John McVeigh tried hard to bring a sense of reluctant life to Johnny Inkslinger, a romanticized hungry cowboy who finds he has to work as a bookkeeper to get something to eat. He doesnt like Bunyan, making it clear by insisting on calling him Mr. Bunyan. Heard but not seen, Bunyan’s voice booms out from the top of the ceiling of the opera house giving Bunyan a god-like quality that doesn’t quite fit the myth. It is Richard Cross who speaks, and his strong voice resonates throughout the opera house. It is difficult to believe McVeigh could actually speak Inkslinger’s words with a straight face.

Alison Trainer sings the role of Bunyan’s daughter, Tiny, and in spite of the preposterous situation, Trainer has a beautiful voice pleasant to hear, no matter what she sings.

Because all the loggers get to eat is beans and soup, the two cooks Sam (John Sumners) and Ben (Shelby Condray) are given their walking papers. Try as they might to pull off a comic routine singing the praises and nutritional value of soup and beans, the signs of comedy are present, but material lacks reason to be funny. Why the revolt for food choices didn’t come earlier is beyond me.

It is helpful that at the precise moment Hot Biscuit Slim (Ryan MacPherson) shows up. Yes, he can cook, and yes, he can provide variety, and yes MacPherson has a glorious voice, but —

Two cats and a dog appear. Fenna Ograjensek and Sasha Cooke take on the feline persona, while Angela Mannino rolls on her back kicking her leg as Fido. It does not appear anyone owns a cat or dog, or if they do the direction didn’t cross the boards.

All this does is add to the silliness and elementary level of the presentation.

The most ingenious moment came with the arrival of the Western Union boy, (Joshua Mochel) who enters peddling his air bicycle supported by two cast members. He has a telegram for Bunyan. With the help of a rocket, he aims the telegram to the ceiling, and that’s as far the creativity in this production goes.

Response from the audience afterwards, did not seem to be unlike the first time Paul Bunyan was staged. Of all of the operas Britten wrote, why was this one chosen? Of all of the American themes Britten had to choose from, why did he bother with the Bunyan theme in the manner he did?

Central City Opera deserves credit for its willingness to experiment, innovative foresight, and its compliance to try anything once. For that I applaud them. But someone should have sat in the audience during rehearsal to understand what they attempted to do did not reach beyond the boards.