Review-Il Marito Disperato-Hong Kong Arts Fest
17-3-13
By: Tom Hope
For ‘Momix-Bothanica’ (also running this week) our reviewer recommended you sit in the cheap seats to get the bigger picture. ‘Il Marito Disperato’ is a show to mortgage your jewellery and take to the stalls. I sat at the back of the upper circle and, whilst feeling great goodwill for and from the show, could never engage, comedically or emotionally otherwise. Instead, I repeatedly drifted off and was snapped back each time to what I might be missing by laughter from the fortunate folks below.
Cimarosa’s ‘opera buffa’ premiered in 1785 and has been through a few transformations since. This production by the San Carlo Theatre of Naples (Cimarosa’s home city) transposes to modern times whilst trying to recapture the anarchic improvised spirit of the Commedia del Arte from which opera buffa sprang. The less-than-serious plot (a jealous husband, his free spirited spouse, her sassy maid, her clumsy companion, a flirty Count and a flighty Countess…) serves as a frame on which to hang a series of comic sequences as 3 variously importunate men are brought into line by three pretty well sussed women.
Apart from a silly plot – and what comic opera doesn’t have that – what’s not to like about this production? The 29 piece orchestra (harpsichord-playing conductor included) played sweetly throughout. The cast sang with verve and acted with gusto. The set is scintillating – a two storied balconied and phallically lighthouse-like holiday villa in a Tyrolean village setting, rotating as needs must to a love pad interior. Its pastel colours radiate perpetual light hearted bohemian bonhomie. You just know everything’s going to work out fine in the end.
To complement this determined gaiety, there’s an engaging transparency to the production as the cast’s own music director sat in a deck chair stage left throughout to conduct the ensemble (no fancy offstage CCTV links here). Other disbelief-busting elements included a ‘director’ who, before the overture, harangued the audience on what to expect and then prowled about the set clicking his fingers for his ‘stage hands’ to rotate the set and do other stage business besides. This re/deconstructiveness morphed into straight-up zany by the second half, with snowstorms in summer, pirhouetting penguins and a powerpoint projected demo from the ‘director’ on how all this deconstructed silliness might be desconstructed yet more.
So what’s not to like? Well, as I say, I would have liked personally to have more of a sense of connection with the humour and the production generally. From up in the gods, it all seemed too remote – artistically as well as physically. Others must have felt the same because what started as a packed upper house had many seats free for the start of the second act.
I can’t put my finger on any one thing – other than next time (if there is a next time) to make sure I end up closer to the stage for fuller immersion in this larger than life lampooning of the ever constant unconstancy of Italians, humans and (presumably) penguins too.
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