The mystery of the Poisoned Mouse

Today is Tuesday, which means another in our weekly series of pointless "training" sessions. Except, for once, this one wasn't so pointless. People actually (a) met with IT beforehand to make sure that the tech worked and they knew how to operate it and (b) solicited submissions so they could research them ahead of time instead of combing through documentation in front of us in real time. What a difference. (Of course, it leaves you asking, "Why the hell couldn't we have done this from the start?" but that's just slapping a gift horse in the face.)

What really made this session different, however, was an unexpected guest. So unexpected, in fact, I nearly stepped on him. If only I'd had a cameraphone he'd be getting dozens of Likes right now on FB, so adorable was he. Instead we gathered round and alternated between cooing and trying discern what was wrong with him. I mean, no sane healthy mouse stands right in the middle of a well-lighted doorway where there are lots of people and no food at all. The consensus was that rat poison was addling his senses.

Eventually, someone found a disposable water bottle to carry him away in, but until then there was a clumsy process of trying to scoop him up with paper and such which only drove him out of the hall and into the meeting room. My murophobic boss wanted him dumped in the toilet, prompting me to point out the horribleness of death by drowning. "Why don't you just waterboard him?" I asked.

Les insuffisiances d'un Werther

Since the sum total of my knowledge of the plot of Goethe's famed novel amounted to "Werther has a sad and shoots himself", I really wanted to make it through at least Book One before last Saturday's performance. In the end, I just couldn't manage it, but it turns out not to have mattered. As far as I can tell, Massenet was content to take the character names, some snatches of dialogue, and the general plot summarised above.

Actually, my push backfired. Minutes before the curtains rose, I was skimming the scene where Werther skips town, thinking to myself, This scene will definitely be in there. Not really: Massenet (or rather the three-man team responsible for the libretto) drops one of the participants and delays it until after Werther's love marries another. Which is fine, except that I was having a hard enough time following developments due to the illegible staging.

In his reaction, the Snore King was complaining of such elementary failures of direction as having Sophie face Albert when she's addressing Werther, but my problems were even more basic than that. The set you see above remained pretty much constant throughout all four acts. Looking at it, can you tell me what's interior and what isn't? (It's difficult to tell here, but that dark mass stage right is a great pile of domestic furniture with a stairway winding through it.) What if I tell you that the singers make almost all their entrances and exits either upstage right or through that hole in the floor stage left?

Nuphy was as annoyed as I, so at intermission we challenged our seat partner to defend it. His explanation helped some, particular when it came to the character of Sophie (who is shown running around every corner of the stage, inside and outside of the metal band the others treat as the limits of their world), but I found his justifications for the projections in Werther's garret (downstage right) unconvincing and even he was taxed to explain the staircases in the stage floor. At least I was able to adjust my expectations and get more out of the visuals for the second half.

The real shame of it is that this is musically Massenet's best opera (yes, I do realise that is rather the snootynose equivalent of saying it's U2's most challenging album) and it was sung beautifully. Sophie Koch was amazing as Charlotte, and the only reason I would rate Matthew Polenzani any less is that I wasn't 100% certain that the occasional raspiness in his voice was purely vocal characterisation. Kiri Deonarine had the perfect demeanour and vocal style for playing a flighty French ingénue and they made the interesting casting choice in Craig Verm as Albert, since usually the most attractive man onstage is the one playing Werther.

So as long as I could ignore the distracting movements of the cast, I really enjoyed myself. It wasn't all bad; some things did work, like having Werther physically occupy a different plane from everyone else or using the flat screen depicting foliage to show the changes of seasons. And some choices, while not entirely successful, were at least defensible and intriguing, primary among them having Charlotte read Werther's letters in the presence of her husband in Act 3. All in all, a step up from Boccanegra and in the running for best experience at Lyric this season.