Of Motors and Men

Why is it so difficult to find new operatic work that feels relevant to our culture and age? If you look toward Prototype Festival, Beth Morrison Production and HERE’s annual showcase of fresh opera for ten years past (Our Pandemic Year excepted), the genre’s future can be found. On a recent evening at the Abrons Arts Center, Emma O’Halloran’s operatic double-bill “TRADE/MARY MOTORHEAD” presented three characters (a woman with an anger problem, two men with a masculinity problem) who struggle to find agency and identity in a modernizing Ireland.

Abrons Arts Center was the perfect size for the performance—a bigger hall would have undersold and a larger proscenium would swamp the Jim Findlay’s tight, efficient scenic design. O’Halloran’s score (a strong showing by Elaine Kelly and Novus NY, who expertly balanced by Alex Dowling’s sound design) had little strength on its own, tending to provide accompaniment rather than emphasis or subtext.

In Mary Motorhead, the evening’s opening piece, a bare stage allows Christopher Kuhl’s lighting direction to delineate mood and physical space for roughly forty minutes. Naomi Louisa O’Connell held court as the sole and titular character, displaying a powerhouse voice and a knack for pacing. Just when I thought her volume peaked in a moment fury, she surprised a few scenes later by ratcheting up—yet never forcing—her round, controlled tone.

Though the entirety of the drama takes place in Mary’s prison cell, color and patterns lead us to various locations in her mind (a dance floor, a standing bar) as she explains the “secret history” of her imprisonment; we don’t know why she’s in the clink and she wants to write her own narrative. Circles of light enclosed O’Connell’s face, tightening into ovals then disappearing and returning like a visual theme. Flashing strobes of red and white underline Mary’s rage and despair. While plates of crisp, blue-white mimic Mary’s prison cell closing in—a neat trick of lighting, if textually obvious—O’Connell drew out a shockingly long controlled diminuendo, leaving the hall in a hushed, contemplative silence.

Two men, Older (Marc Kudisch) and Younger (Kyle Bielfield), battle repressive society in TRADE, the evening’s second work. They search for meaning in each other while mulling over their previous sexual encounter, and—with the help of a few pints—eventually open up to share their innermost fears and longings. Bielfield’s acting was no match for Kudisch’s Tony-winning presence. In a moment of tension, Older looms over Younger like Lydia Tar to Petra’s playground nemesis; it is impossible to believe that Bielfield’s jerky movements—giving pouty, awkward teenager rather than menacing chav—cause his counterpart any alarm.

TRADE has the seeds of a larger, evening-length work but felt underdeveloped as presented. It’s hard to pass too much judgement on the libretto without knowing what is lost or gained from the original text by Mark O’Halloran (the composer’s Uncle), but certainly exploring the wider story would move some elements—Older’s impulse to clean teeth when discussing “dirty” queer affairs or the transactional, semi-public sex that becomes Younger’s gay origin story—beyond cliche towards a specific, realized portrayal of two broken men jealously guarding their toxic masculinity. Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers provides a successful example that successfully tells the story of a gay relationship while including the family, coworkers, and friends on its fringes. Is it coincidental or historical that both works share a “we’re gay, but not that kind of gay” line and secret (often motel-based) rendezvous?

Perhaps the men’s secret can only be shared within the confines of their cheap hotel, aided by cheaper beer; but what if we met the daughters they treasured, the mothers who can’t be put up with, or the wife who can’t be kept, we would understand why Older and Younger desperately cling to the heterosexual norms that grate against their strongest desires. Maybe then the final tableaux, a cool embrace as the music fades, would feel earned, but this ending doesn’t quite ring true. Older, fully clothed, has already paid for the night, and Younger is nearly nude.