Music Reviews : Levick’s Multimedia Event at County Museum

It was difficult to fully judge Hugh Levick’s ambitious multimedia work “The Embrace of Reasonable Terror” from the concert reading given Monday night in Bing Theater at the County Museum of Art.

Without staging, sets or noteworthy costumes, the two-hour presentation for three actors, three singers and three instrumentalists provided little variety, bogging down to the point of tedium.

Levick and Yves Reynaud collaborated on the text, in which actors portray three instrumentalists engaged in a mundane love triangle during a rehearsal of an opera about the 1945 Potsdam Conference with Churchill, Stalin and Truman.

Each of five equal parts is divided: the first half a scene by the actors, the second a scene from the opera. At the end, Truman decides to drop the bomb on Hiroshima as the lights predictably flicker and flash.

As satire, little is presented that is substantially biting or funny. As experimental theater, the parallels between the three groups of three--representing superego, ego and id--provide a potentially interesting structure but proceed without subtle degrees of contrast. As a multi-media work, the different styles of psycho-drama, bel-canto opera and dissonant jazz confuse more than unite.

Actor Kedric Robin Wolfe energetically played Duggan, a boring clod whose interest in his wife Nell’s relationship with the percussion player is upstaged by his interest in being able to reach the low D on his saxophone. Stephanie Cushna, as the conniving pianist Nell, was more matter-of-fact than passionate. Bruce Abbott, as the temperamental, paranoid, pill-popper Keith, came off more aloof than maniacal.

In the opera sections, bass Philip Larson supplied comic relief with his tastefully wacky portrayal of an egotistical Stalin. Contralto Carol Plantamura carefully shifted between the many aspects of a complicated characterization of Churchill at the twilight of his powerful position as a world leader. In comparison, tenor John Peeling’s Truman proved flat, although his singing was well executed.

Levick read through the difficult saxophone part, supplying most of the leadership to the ensemble. Bob Willey dutifully and accurately represented the piano and synthesizer part while percussionist Jan Williams convincingly punctuated on mallet instruments, cymbals and synthesizer.