Reviews

VAF & NSU: John Duffy Institute For New Opera:
Briar Patch from Tales From the Briar Patch and Companionship
Attucks Theatre, Sunday, June 5, 2022
Review by John Campbell

Briar Patch
The Virginia Arts Festival and the Norfolk State Theater Company were co-presenters of this John Duffy Institute for New Opera production. The roots for these operas go back to the second year of the Duffy Institute (2006) when composer Nkeiru Okoye (www.nkeiruokoye.com) was an institute fellow. Her Briar Patch came like a shooting star in this production. The unique staging included a projection of a green structure of stems and leaves onto a diaphanous scrim in front of the singers so that the action appeared to take place in a “briar patch” of green foliage.

Bre'r Rabbit, Robert Mack, has a sweet, lyric, tenor voice and early on reassures us that the ladies like him because, as he says, “I'm cute.” As narrators, the ladies share their wisdom, like fearless, black church women. Here they are birds dressed in hats and dresses to match in red, golden yellow and blue. They are a singing trio on a bridge, mid-stage, and their voices are superb: soprano Christine Jobson as Sister Sparrow, soprano Sequina DuBose as Sister Robin and contralto La'Shelle Allen as Madame Partridge. Their voices, blended and contrasted, tell the folk tale of Bre'r Fox looking for a meal, scheming to catch the rabbit, singing “Shall I toast him or roast him.” Sung by dapper dancer Damian Norfleet with hat and cane, he creates the role with powerful singing and loose-limbed dancing and with a huge sense of fun in his deeply emotional presence.

Tar Baby, a dummy on a rolling wardrobe hanger becomes the sixth character as Bre'r Rabbit is lured by his fresh carrot nose. The rabbit is caught but cons the fox by begging him not to throw him into the briar patch. Bre'r Fox does and Bre'r Rabbit gets away because, after all, the briar patch is his home territory.

Composer Nkeiru Okoye has set the libretto by Carman Moore and draws on African American art forms in instrumental music and vocal expression, with stage direction by Anthony Mark Stockard of Norfolk State University Drama and Theatre Department. The costume designer was Summer Lee Jackson and the superb stage lighting that added so much to the experience was by Jason Amato who has often worked with Virginia Stage Company.

Bre'r Rabbit and the Tar Baby is one of three Tales From the Briar Patch that Ms. Okoye and Mr. Moore have created; Bre'r Rabbit and the Pot of Sense and Madame Partridge's Eggs complete the trilogy. Each is filled with mirth, home-spun wisdom and a life lesson. The creators look forward to the day when all three operas are performed together on one bill. We do too!

Companionship
Our first encounter with the second opera of the evening was on May 30, 2013. Composer and librettist Rachel Peters (www.racheljpeters.com) was a Duffy Institute Fellow and we saw a workshop version with voice and piano of scenes three and six of her opera Companionship. In May 2014 the Institute offered three scenes from Companionship (one, three and five) in an orchestral reading in a program led by Music Director Alan Johnson with a nineteen piece orchestra. Some of those players were also in the eleven piece orchestra in this year's performance, also conducted by Mr. Johnson. The Institute did not offer a public performance in 2015, though Ms. Peters was a Fellow that year also.

Companionship was billed as a domestic, comic tragedy in nine scenes. The humor in Companionship is of the absurd kind. Adapted from a short story by Arthur Phillips, it is the tale of a young woman recently released from a mental hospital. Her present obsession is to bake the perfect baguette. Baguette number 207,345 becomes a personality named “The Dough”(Kate Tombaugh). The baker Leslie Sinclair (Maren Weinberger Maddry) is befriended and forgiven by The Dough who falls asleep muttering “Time...Time.” Eventually The Dough's food of choice is discovered to be thyme. Leslie's dad Gene (David A. Small) comes and tries to examine his daughter's new friend. Unsuccessful, he leaves and The Dough takes over all Leslie's decisions. Leslie's mother (La'Shelle Allen) comes to snoop. Her prettier twin sister Viv (Sequina Du Bose) barges in with her dad and is condescending and critical. Leslie boots them all out and is congratulated by The Dough for her “great wisdom.”

While Leslie is out at the farmer's market “buying thyme,” The Dough creates a mate (Robert Osborne) and sings a love duet with him when Leslie returns. This is cruel because we know that Leslie's friend from the hospital committed suicide. Actually, all of the characters are cruel to her except her dad. Unless you find cruelty funny, there is no humor here.

The baguette family grows and soon there are six little ones. A chorus of six vocal music students from the Governor's School for the Arts (recently graduated seniors Elie Borodine, Kira Cervi, Mads Poole, and undergrads Abigail Bodvake, Jolie Ragin, Logan Windley) form a lyrical chorus. The next day Viv shows up with her exterminator boyfriend, Tom (Kevin Gwinn) to clear out the baguettes but he demurs because they smell so good. Later that evening the little ones smother Leslie to death.

Bob McGrath was stage director. Like Briar Patch, the projections were by Laurie Olinder and also made clever use of a scrim, this time with white lines to delineate the architecture of the apartment and even tables and appliances and a cold, black, starry universe behind the brightly lit singers. The production values and voices made the best possible argument for this new opera. Miss Peters writes well enough for solo voice and chorus but her pleasant and even-toned music never grabs us to pull us into this troubled young woman's world.

The composer spoke enthusiastically to Jim Roberts of VEERmag.com in May, 2022 of this culmination of years and years of her work that she can now share with many more people. We wonder what she is trying to communicate. We have no idea what the point of this opera is. Is this a comedy? A tragedy? A horror movie? Maybe it's as cold as the universe projected on the scrim. The music gives no clue. So much work, so well done but devoted to an absurd set of events that we could form no emotional connection with.