Yara Arts Group, marking its
30th season at La MaMa, brought to the stage of the Ellen Stewart
Theater its recent collaboratio with Nove Opera Kyiv. The one-week
engagement was reviewed by Beate Hein Benett on it opening, December
19, 2019 and by Larry Littany Litt on its closing date, December
22.
Beate
Hein Bennett
“The Center Will Not Hold…”
OPERA GAZ
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| Photo by Valeriya Landar |
Dec.19,
20, and 22, 2019
Presented by LaMaMa (Ellen Stewart Theatre), 66 East 4th Street,
New York, NY
Co-production: Nova Opera Kyiv and YARA Arts Group
Thurs., Fri. at 7 PM, Sun. 3 PM (No Saturday show)
$30 gen. adm., $25 students and seniors (+ $1 facility fee); $10
with LaMaMa membership
Box office: 212-352-3101, www.lamama.org/gaz
Show’s website: https://www.yaraartsgroup.net/gaz
Reviewed by Beate Hein Bennett Dec. 19, 2019
Human robots, worker ants, industrial hell, machines going beserk—OPERA
GAZ!
GAS, a word like a scream engulfing space! Gas, an element permeating
space! Gas, an energy that can kill! Gas, an industrial product
and present in the bowels of the earth! GAS is silent until it explodes!
The Ellen Stewart Theatre LaMaMa presented the audience with a theatrical
explosion—Opera GAZ imported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Virlana Tkacz,
director of the YARA Arts Group in New York, created with the ensemble
of Nova Opera Kyiv a production that is partly historical recovery,
partly revolutionary music theater.
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| Photo by Valeriya Landar |
Inspired by Les Kurbas’s 1923 theater production in Kyiv
of “Gas I”, part of a trilogy (The Coral, Gas I and
Gas II) written between 1916 and 1923 by the German Expressionist
playwright Georg Kaiser (1878-1945), Ms. Tkacz, together with composer/performers
Roman Grygoriv (also conductor) and Illia Razumeiko (on the piano),
conceived and composed the libretto, with live electronic music
by Georgiy Potopalskiy. Live music on stage included superb musicians:
cellist Zhanna Marchinska, double bass Nazar Strilets, Andrey Nadolsky
percussionist, Ayk Egyian on vibraphone and percussion, Ihor Boychuk
on trumpet, trombone, and flute, Sergiy Shava on tuba, and Oleg
Nedashkivsky on French horn. I mention the musicians first because
it is music that holds the performance together and drives it with
all its varied colors from electronic sound manipulation to operatic
scoring-- at one point Verdi inspired melodious ensembles and arias--
to percussive industrial and bomber airplane noises until the final
act of absolute destruction and chaos. The ensemble of singer/actors
of two sopranos, Anna Kirsh and Maryana Holovko, mezzo-soprano Oleksandra
Maillet, baritones Andrey Koshman and Ruslan Kirsh, and bass Yevgeniy
Rakhmanin are remarkable performers who execute the intricate dynamic
choreography by Simon Mayer with precision and full engagement whether
as robotic workers with stylized hammers or in almost trance-like
state of utopian human romance or ultimately as a furious mob destroying
themselves and their tyrannical environment—the gas factory--with
their relentless ubiquitous mad clown dictators, conductor and pianist,
superbly embodied by nimble Grygoriv and Razumeiko .
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| Photo by Evgen Maloletka |
The ever flexible space of the Ellen Stewart Theatre allowed for
a constructivist modernistic set, designed by Waldemart Klyuzko,
Evhen Kopiov, and Watoku Ueno. It is somewhat reminiscent of the
skeletal 1920s stages, inspired by Piscator, with platforms for
the musicians and their instruments, movable steel pipes of varying
lengths attached to the central upright piano which could be handled
by the actors with mechanical motions to alter the piano sound.
The background was dominated by three huge concentric glass circles
of lights, reminiscent of the architectural bands of glass that
adorned modern factories designed by Walter Gropius in the first
decades of the 20th century. The metallic appendages and stylized
metal tools used by the actors during the performance emphasized
the industrial feel visually and aurally. Tetiana Sherstiuk designed
for the workers grey unisex coverall costumes with cloth boot covers
that looked as though made for work in nuclear plants. Lighting
design by Jeff Nash and sound engineering by Caley Monahon-Ward
completed the environmental effects of a factory moving inexorably
towards the brink of disaster.
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| Photo by Valeriya Landar |
A fragment of this production was first presented at the Art Arsenal
in Kyiv in November 2018 as part of an exhibition “Kurbas:
New Worlds” co-curated by Ms. Tkacz and Mr. Klyuzko. The complete
work premiered at the National Theatre in Kyiv on June 11, 2019
and was subsequently presented at the Music Festival Vienna on September
17, 2019. LaMaMa must be congratulated for bringing this astounding
work to NYC—unfortunately there were only three performances.
However, considering the actual destruction of such an integral
part as the central piano, a trumpet, and other instruments and
props, it was probably impossible to do more performances. (Upon
leaving the first performance on Dec. 19th, I noticed two more upright
pianos, painted in metallic silver, perhaps waiting for their destruction.)
In rereading Georg Kaiser’s GAS I, it struck me how timely
the original play is in terms of our own period: the technological
dehumanization, the huge economic gap between workers and corporate
CEOs—major characters in the trilogy are the billionaire factory
owner and the billionaire’s son. The collusion between capitalist
enterprises, the military, and the government and the expendability
of human labor in the interest of power and profit drive the play.
The dialogue is curtailed into slogans—contemporary twitter
style is analogous to the Dada style of the 1920s. The mash-up of
popular music and brutal music, biomechanical movement to emulate
robotic factory work as well as emblematic emotion, or mob actions
-- these are stylistic characteristics of the original 1920s productions
that were re-imagined in “Opera GAZ.” Ukrainian critic
Ihor Panasov made the following cogent observation: “…
what I think is most important in GAZ is the palpable and constant
foreboding of a great explosion which drives this performance. Any
person living in 2019 finds themselves in its epicenter. Technological,
economic, social, and political crisis rage—authoritarian
regimes, mechanized life surround us—all this is in GAZ.”
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| “Koliada: Winter Songs on Mars”
-- The Koliadnyky (left to right) Mykjola Ilyuk, Mykola Zelenchuk,
Vasyl Tymchuk and Ivan Zelenchuk. Photograph by Waldemart Klyuzko. |
A small addendum: Ms. Tkacz and YARA Arts Group have been instrumental
in introducing Ukrainian performers from different cultural realms
to NYC. In early December at the Ukrainian Museum, a concert “Koliada”
of traditional Ukrainian-Carpathian Winter songs was presented that
featured musicians with ancient instruments from the Carpathian
village of Kryvoryvnia, joined by NYC based Julian Kytasty, a 3rd
generation bandura player and three singers from the group Ukrainian
Village Voices, also based in NYC. “Koliada” is a winter
ritual that predates Christianity but is now associated with Christmas.
The songs, part of a caroling tradition, are evocative of communal
life, as audience members of all ages began singing along. On December
21, the same group performed “Koliada: Winter Songs on Mars”
at LaMaMa on the set for Opera GAZ. (Unfortunately, I was unable
to attend it.) After the Dec. 19th performance of the opera, as
the audience milled around on stage among the remnants of the final
scene of destruction, I observed one of the Koliada performers--
a mixed expression of sorrow and puzzled humor on his face-- picking
up the bent pieces of a trumpet and trying to figure out how to
mend it.
Larry
Littany Litt
Searing modernist opera leaves you
wanting to see it resurrected
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Photo by Valeriya Landar. |
Opera
GAZ
Created by Yara Arts Group and Novo Opera
Virlana Tkacz: Director, Concept and Libretto
Roman Grygoriv: Composer, Libretto and Conductor
Illia Razumeiko: Composer and Libretto
Waldemart Klyuzko: Set Designer
Simon Mayer: Choreographer
Tetiana Sherstiuk: Costumes
Reviewed Dec. 22, 2019 by Larry Littany Litt
Gas is the power driven blood of the industrial world’s ubiquitous
engine. Gas is about seeking out hidden chthonic death in difficult
places where ancient animals and plants died eventually decaying
then compressed into a liquid mass. We all know how gas rises to
the surface then is refined for our human use. But what happens
socially when it rests in a gas plant. What are the dramatic possibilities
and interactions? Are humans and gas compatible or is gas a jealous
lover/antagonist?
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Photo by Valeriya Landar. |
Opera GAZ is Yara Arts Group’s reinterpretation of George
Keiser’s 1919 Expressionist play about an explosion in a Ukranian
gas refinery. This version is one of the most searing intentional
modernist operas I’ve ever seen. From the giant halo of blinking
lights to the details of the Modernist designed piano, no essence
of Opera GAZ’s theatricality is left unnoticed. I was moved
into another world of music and song where worker/singers in drab
costumes enrich and reposition their lives as workers will do on
the job with conflict, love and existential angst.
Roman Grygoriv, one of the opera’s composers and librettists
onstage plays a manic music ensemble conductor in the exposed risers
and on the factory floor. His gyrations, dancing, and general chaotic
movement attract the eye as the multi-talented singers form different
choral lineups that project the difficulty of working around dangerous
materials. The highly charged libretto moved me to spine-tingling
expectation of the inevitable accident to come. All is not right
in happy socialist worker land.
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Photo by Valeriya Landar. |
Every factory floor needs a stand up brothel piano to pace the
workers and keep the rhythms of production apace with the boss’s
schedule. Composer and librettist Illia Razumeiko plays an altered,
decorated piano as if he were in Fritz Lang’s masterpiece
Metropolis. This caricatured pianist slowly becomes unhinged and
altered as the workers sing their way to the combustive crescendo
of utter madness and real destruction. The pianist and piano descend
into a shattering finale that burst my brain. I was glad to see
and hear it. Could Yara/Novo do the same every performance? I’m
left with questions about the mystery of this brilliant unique opera.
Ms. Tkacz’s direction stunned me. There was total audience
silence throughout the performance. The end of this opera cross-fired
my brain. Finally an apocalyptic theater piece that left me wanting
to see it resurrected from the ashes of its infernal chaos. A must
see if you hear it is being remounted.
“And God created the heavens and the earth, people, animals
and plants, and all the elements but we created for them the energy
for the entire industrial world… GAZ”
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