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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > June > 02
Monday, June 2, 2008
Review: Austin Lyric Opera’s ‘The Bat’
Any fair assessment of Austin Lyric Opera’s production of “The Bat,” now being performed in Dell Hall at the Long Center, needs to begin by considering the size and difficulty of rewriting a well-known opera with its setting in Austin. But the creative brains behind Esther’s Follies — Shaun Wainwright-Branigan handling dialogue and Lyova Rosanoff and Steve Saugey providing often brilliant rhymed couplets for the music — have crafted an affectionate and funny send-up of all things Austin-tacious whose quality, sustained over the length of a three-hour show, is generally spectacular.
Anyone who is acquainted with “Die Fledermaus,” Johann Strauss Jr.’s first, most popular and probably best operetta, should enjoy the deft sensitivity with which the authors blend elements of the original story and text with a multitude of modern and local references. Weird things happen at a costume party at the Driskill Hotel hosted by “Jefferson Kodosky” (played by Joseph Frank), at which hardly a notable Austinite, character or even landmark is not represented: Willie Nelson, Lance Armstrong, the Mangia dinosaur, the Texas Capitol, the University of Texas Tower, on and on. Burnt orange and Longhorn logos are everywhere. Genuine Austin performers make guest appearances; at my show the Biscuit Brothers and Albert & Gage provided a refreshing 10-minute interlude.
I was surprised at some of the abysmal Texas dialects displayed. Only Ev Lunning Jr. (originally from Iowa and a faculty member at St. Edward’s University), as the jailer Frosch in the last act, nailed the look and the sound of a son of Texas and threw in a couple of good “bits” besides.
The really extraordinary moments in the original “Die Fledermaus” were the few passages where the new lyrics felt clunky: the intoxicating salute to champagne in this version mentioned almost every well-known alcoholic beverage except champagne; and the sweet hymn to brotherhood and love appropriately became a love song to Austin, but the new text was earthbound next to the refined music.
This production includes plenty of excellent singing, though there aren’t any stars. Austin is the star this time. Richard Buckley, with the ALO orchestra and chorus, provided a spirited musical backdrop to the proceedings. This production is something that just can’t happen anywhere else and surely won’t happen again here anytime soon. If you can get tickets for the second weekend, don’t miss it.
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