The Hunchback Variations

Time Out says

Mon Jun 11 2012

We do not, as a rule, expect panel discussions to sing to us. Yet this turns out to be one of the least unusual things about Theater Oobleck’s engrossing high-concept chamber opera, a finely tuned study of sound, fury and the significance of nothing. Two artists are at a plain table, with microphones and a pitcher of water: a young and blithe Ludwig van Beethoven (George Andrew Wolff), unctuously comfy in his status; and the malformed bell ringer Quasimodo (Larry Adams), a grudging gargoyle wallowing in nihilism. They have united to revisit their quixotic attempt, some two hundred years ago, to devise an unachievable sound effect demanded by Anton Chekhov in a stage direction for The Cherry Orchard, a project that was doomed from the start—and not just because both participants died before Chekhov was born. (“As we are both deaf there will be no questions taken from the audience tonight,” sings Beethoven early on.)

Mickle Maher’s witty libretto touches amusingly but firmly on existential questions connected to the struggle to create in a world bogged down by the limits of the possible. Written in 2001 as a play in 11 parts, the text has now been set to deliberative music by Mark Messing that draws out its mysteries in cunning shifts of style, tempo and tone. Christopher Sargent’s piano and Paul Ghica’s cello pleasingly complement Wolff’s bright, clear tenor and Adams’s brooding, shadowy baritone (with additional noises from knickknacks including a squeeze toy, walkie-talkies and a tricked-out can of paint). Confident in its vision despite having no credited director—Oobleck does not believe in them—The Hunchback Variations scores a haunting success while exalting a space for failure.—Adam Feldman