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Porgy and Bess
A Vibrant Theatricality

There are two broad poles of theatrical experience: one in which the audience, recognising the inadequacies of performance and production, strives to mentally create an ideal presentation whilst viewing a flawed one; the other in which the audience is led into a new world, mapped out coherently and convincingly by performances and a production which establish their own validity. The former experience can be enervating, requiring that the audience works hard to gain satisfaction (either intellectual or visceral) by struggling against the received experience. The latter is the true theatrical experience, the only one that can lead to catharsis. Here the audience is swept along by the production, recognising the presence of an insight greater than its own, and willingly suspending judgment until the production can be considered as a whole.

Ella Gerber's production of "Porgy And Bess" for the New Zealand Opera Company brought me closer to this true theatrical experience than almost all other live productions that I have seen in New Zealand. It had gutsy vigour and a vibrant theatricality, reaching out across the proscenium arch and drawing us into the world of Catfish Row. This in marked contrast to last year's "Rigoletto" which was old-fashioned and lumpy, stolidly remaining "out there" beyond the footlights. One school of thought can accept failure in operatic production and performances pro— vided that the music is well played and sung. They consider opera to be an unreal medium in which characters sing rather than speak. This permits performances of Mozart's comic operas in which the sophisticated wit of the music is destroyed by heavy buffoonery in the acting, or of Verdi's blazing dramas which are marred by theatrical timidity. But for the true operatic experience the production must make valid theatre of the libretto. "Rigoletto" needs to make your blood run cold. "Porgy And Bess" must move the heart. Ella Gerber's production often did just that.

For instance, when Porgy sang "I Got Plenty O' Nuttin' " the stage filled with his simple faith. Inia Te Wiata's strong voice and marvellously clear acting made a direct appeal. Serena's "My Man's Gone Now" was sung with the stage drowned in dark blue light, ending with Serena supported by two women in a Crucifixion pose. Such strong symbolism works in a committed production. Then there was Bess's disturbing self-absorption even when declaring to Porgy that she was his woman. The anxiety that we felt accorded with Martha Flowers' overall characterisation of Bess. She was theatrical, narcissistic and ephemeral in her passions. Her love for Porgy was an act that we only partly believed, it was no surprise to see her later succumb to the entreaties of Sportin' Life and strut exultantly off — hips swinging, torchy and provocative. This was theatrical magic as the music swelled and Bess, dazzling in a scarlet costume, high-stepped off with never a backward glance at Catfish Row.

There were other very successful moments, but more important was the overall coherence of the production. The action drove forward, maintaining a firm theatrical reality. This word "theatrical" must be used. Ella Gerber took no socially realistic view of Catfish Row, rather she used all her evident theatrical genius to suspend belief and tell her story in bold images. No social realist would have the inhabitants of Catfish Row respond with comic unanimity to the arrival of the cops, and their interrogations. Again this succeeded in this production.

Performances of real power are necessary to support a bold production, and Ella Gerber was well served by her principals. Inia Te Wiata's Porgy was superbly sung, strongly characterised and completely lacked self-pity. This was the most important single contribution to the opera. His simple adoration of Bess in Act I was credibly transformed into the determination to follow her to New York. These last moments of the opera need the conviction that he put into his portrayal. Martha Flowers' Bess was no ordinary woman. Torchy, self-willed and predatory, her every movement balletic and conveying delight in her own body, here was a marvellously complete Bess. Delores Ivory brought a striking nobility to Serena and responded to the idiom of the music as perhaps only a negress could. This made "My Man's Gone Now" and "Oh Doctor Jesus" the clearest refutation of the view that "Porgy And Bess" is no more opera than "Oklahoma!".

I admired particularly Ella Gerber's tact in handling the crowd scenes. In choruses the stage was alive with movement, thus relieving the predominantly amateur cast of the anxiety of individual attention. When a principal character became important the chorus assumed an unobtrusively static grouping that led the eye to the centre of interest. In fact they often turned away from the audience, truly effacing themselves. This spared the audience that unhappy spectacle of a group of players miming anguish or ecstasy, but merely succeeding in looking embarrassingly over-exposed.

The success of the opera owed much to the musical direction of Dobbs Franks who kept a firm control over the music and gave the singers sure support. A tendency to vocal "over-drive" made the storm scene noisy and incoherent, but on the whole the chorus sang with unanimity and power.

All this and much more added up to an impressive total of virtues. The major fault in the production the night that I saw it, and apparently on many other nights, was the portrayal of Crown. John McCurry's complete lack of voice due to laryngitis led him to drastically overplay his part. When he waylayed Bess on Kittiwah Island his acting was a parody of diabolism and reminded me irresistibly of Groucho Marx. An understudy was obviously needed in this important role; too often the production lost its grip when Crown was the centre of interest. Toni Williams' Sportin' Life was short on malevolence and with an inadequate Crown this meant that the warm humanity of Porgy contrasted insufficiently with the forces of evil in the opera.

"Porgy And Bess," then succeeded mainly because it was given a production that transformed it from an opportunity for canary-fancying into robust theatre. This was the real stuff of opera. Let us hope that the New Zealand Opera Company will never again give us productions that neglect this fundamental dimension. How I would like to see Ella Gerber's "Otello." ...

—Malcolm Carr.