Satiric Vein of British Artist Bleeds in ‘Orpheus’ : Scarfe’s drawings give life to Music Center opera that deviates from ordinary

“My aim has always been to entertain people,” says British artist Gerald Scarfe. “When I first took on ‘Orpheus in the Underworld,’ I thought, ‘Ah, this is opera: I’ve got to be very serious about all this.’ I approached it all wrong, and it took some weeks before I realized everybody wanted me to do what I usually do--have a little bit of satirical fun.”

One of Britain’s most respected and controversial illustrators, Scarfe had more than a little bit of fun with his version of “Orpheus,” which premiered at the English National Opera in 1985 and opens at the Music Center Wednesday for 17 performances through July 2. He transformed Offenbach’s spoof of classical mythology into a contemporary freewheeling socio-political satire. The devil with the phallic nose who appears on the posters and T-shirts suggests its often outrageous nature--and represents a distinct departure from the usual tone of opera at the Music Center.

The show was a major success in London, although Scarfe’s flamboyant designs dominated the production. The critic in the London Daily Telegraph advised actors, “Don’t work with children, animals or Gerald Scarfe.”

“I think the reason I upstaged everybody with the scenery and costumes is that I’m used to working in a newspaper,” said Scarfe in a telephone interview from his London home. “In a newspaper, you’ve got to hit hard, because you’re competing for the reader’s attention with advertisements and screaming headlines. So I was trained to catch the viewer’s eye, and that’s what I did with the scenery in ‘Orpheus.’ However, I think the cast ultimately rose to the level of the scenery and began to play at that kind of level, as a comedy.”

In the Scarfe production, instead of being scolded by the other gods for disguising himself as various animals to woo mortal women, Jupiter was forced to undergo psychoanalysis. He reclined on a dark leather couch that resembled a naked woman, before a backdrop of brilliantly colored Freudian monsters. One of the backdrops of Hades depicted six gargantuan Victorian gourmands made of pasta, meat and vegetables. Skeletons in tattered wigs and robes arose from their coffins as the Judges of Hell.

John Styx, the perennially befuddled former King of Beotia, sported a leather corset, high-heeled boots and fishnet hose. Public Opinion, the redoubtable “symbolic personage” who compels characters to do things they dislike, was transformed into an enormous caricature of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, with six singers hidden in her mammoth bustle.

“Orpheus” may be the first opera Scarfe has designed, but it’s certainly not the first of his works to provoke a controversy. Born in London in 1936, he quickly rose to prominence as a cartoonist/illustrator during the early ‘60s when his drawings appeared in the British humor magazines Punch and Private Eye. His three-dimensional, papier-mache caricatures of John Kenneth Galbraith, the Beatles and Dan Rowan and Dick Martin appeared on the cover of Time.

During the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, his work grew increasingly angry and distorted: The dark, splattery ink lines looked as if they had been gouged into the surface of the paper. He caricatured Richard Nixon as an army tank and plane dropping bombs, Ronald Reagan as a decrepit Mickey Mouse and Dr. Christiaan Barnard as a needle-nosed vulture tearing the heart from a living patient. Currently, his favorite target is Margaret Thatcher, whom he’s depicted as the Grim Reaper, a hatchet and a prize-winner in a society dog show.

In 1984, a town councilor in Newport, Monmouthshire, denounced three of his drawings (including one of Harold Wilson in bed with the “Gnomes of Zurich”) as “lavatory wall artistry” and ordered them withdrawn from an exhibit at the municipal gallery. Incensed, Scarfe bought a hammer and personally removed the entire show, precipitating a major scandal.

Although he began designing for the stage in 1967 with a production of Alfred Jarry’s “Ubu Unchained,” “Orpheus” is Scarfe’s first theatrical project to be seen in America. In the United States, he’s known primarily for his work with the rock group Pink Floyd: He created elaborate sets and puppets for its 1977 and 1980/81 tours and designed the film “The Wall” in 1982. (The poster for the movie, featuring a semi-abstract screaming head, is his best-known image here.) Scarfe says that a desire to see the response his work elicits led him to stage design.

“Two million people may see a drawing in the Sunday (London) Times, but I get no feedback from it at all,” he explained. “It was only when I put my work into exhibitions that I actually saw people in front of my paintings, laughing or pointing something out to one another. From that, I developed a need to put things onto the stage, where there’s an immediate reaction. My wife, who’s an actress, always says I’m very much a show-biz artist: I want to get my work in front of people, and I want an immediate reaction. I want applause, of course, as everybody does.”

Scarfe describes “Orpheus in the Underworld” as the product of a year-long collaboration with English National Opera (ENO) director of productions David Pountney. Together, they devised what would be described in Hollywood as a “high-concept” version of the operetta. They originally planned to set the production in Victorian England, but Scarfe concedes, “I deviated from that quite a lot.” He designed huge, animated cardboard figures that serve as backdrops and outsized costumes that often resemble small sets.

“It was something of a challenge for the people in the costume and prop departments to try to make things look like my drawings,” he continues. “Normally, they have to make things look Renaissance or 18th-Century German or something like that, but this was a fantasy world that I had created. I think they enjoyed the challenge of trying to do something different with these costumes, which were often quite outrageous.”

But what the “Orpheus” Los Angeles audiences will see represents a reworking of the original ENO production. This version, directed by Peter Mark Schifter, has already been performed in Houston and Detroit. The cast includes Jonathan Mack as Orpheus and Tracy Dahl as Eurydice. The book is by Snoo Wilson and John de Main conducts.

The work has been recast as something more like a musical than an opera or operetta. “We changed some of the costumes when we brought it to America,” Scarfe said. “In England, Public Opinion was Mrs. Thatcher; Dom DeLuise will be playing the part here, so I’m sure it’s going to be a romp. But the main difference between the productions in America and London is the piece has gotten more and more entertaining. Offenbach was always entertaining and had some good tunes, but people who’ve come expecting a normal opera have been surprised by how much fun it is.”

“The show is much more like a Broadway musical now than it was in England,” he added. “It’s meant to be a highly entertaining evening: visuals, music, song-and-dance. It’s pure show biz, really; it doesn’t bear a lot of relation to opera ultimately.”

The description of a classic operetta that has been reworked into something closer to a musical comedy sounds very much like the ENO production of Jonathan Miller’s “The Mikado” with Dudley Moore, which played at the Wiltern Theater in March, 1988. Scarfe seemed mildly annoyed by a question about the similarities between the two shows.

“The unfair thing about that is we did ‘Orpheus’ at the ENO about two years before ‘The Mikado,’ ” he said. “I always felt that it borrowed quite a lot from ‘Orpheus,’ although ‘The Mikado’ is set in a certain sort of real world and ‘Orpheus’ takes place in a fantastic, Scarfe-like world that doesn’t bear much relation to any particular time or place. Still, ‘The Mikado’ played in Los Angeles first, so it’ll look as though we’re following when in fact, we led.”

Scarfe will oversee final details of sets and costumes in the Los Angeles production and acknowledges he’ll probably make last-minute changes and additions. “When ‘Orpheus’ opened in London, I was still painting backstage as the audience was coming in,” he confesses. “I thought I might get caught on stage with a paint pot and have to sing an aria.”

Although he says he would like to try designing a more serious work--perhaps Wagner’s “Ring” cycle--Scarfe has no plans for further operatic work after the Los Angeles run, a situation he describes as “very disappointing.”

“The English National Opera said that I was very much a part of the family, and that I would be getting further commissions, but I’m still waiting for another, three years later,” he concludes.

“It surprises me, because ‘Orpheus’ was an enormous hit here in England. They put a lot of money into it, but the money came back and put them on their feet--they were financially in a bad way at the time. It could be they’re afraid I’ll upstage the production again and make it something completely different.”