Steve McGonagle is a set designer whose community-theater work always amazed me back when I was a reviewer. One set that stands out in my mind was his huge train engine charging toward the audience in the Vokes Players performance of On the Twentieth Century (not to mention all the scene changes for that old-time musical).
Recently, Steve returned to school, to Boston University, to get his PhD, and he mentioned to me that he and other students were working on a BU Fringe Festival entry. (I blogged a bit about the original, 50-year-old Edinburgh Fringe Festival here.)
On Sunday my husband and I went to see the 90-minute opera in the black box space upstairs from the Huntington Theater. It was wonderful in every way, not least because Steve designed and built a beautifully plausible Golden Gate Bridge with only a $200 budget.
The new Jake Heggie opera, Three Decembers, was based on a Terrence McNally play. The story revolves around a self-centered and overbearing stage diva. Her grown children find her maddening and hurtful but still important to them. The acting was subtle and true to life in a way that opera seldom is, for me anyway. And we were amazed at the clarity of the words sung by the cast from BU’s School of Music Opera Institute. (We got the “blond cast” and understood that there was also a “brunette cast” to give more students opportunities.)
We admired the variety of styles and moods in Heggie’s score, some of it wonderfully lyrical. Three Decembers had a libretto by Gene Scheer and was directed by Tomer Zulun. Allison Voth was music director. More here.
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