OPERA REVIEW : A Wacky and Raunchy Long Beach ‘Bluebeard’

I’ll get right to the point. The wild, wacky and inventive Long Beach Opera has scheduled only two more performances of Offenbach’s “Bluebeard” in the intimate confines (800 seats) of the Center Theater: Wednesday night and Saturday. Go.

“Bluebeard,” a.k.a. “Barbe-Bleue,” isn’t just another tale of Hoffmann or a molding slice of Parisian life. Written in 1866 and forgotten, for some unfathomable reason, not long thereafter, it is bright and nasty, broad and sassy--a grudgingly good-natured satire on social mores, political foibles, fairy-tale platitudes, sexual convolutions and operatic manners.

It also happens to be very, very funny.

The music bubbles, jerks, bounces and sways with endlessly quirky verve. It hardly pauses for lyric expansion or laryngeal indulgence.

The text was created by none other than Meilhac and Halevy, the boys who gave us “Carmen.” It toys naughtily yet prettily with the eternal quasi-love story of the royal serial-killer bigamist and his semi-reluctant, all-too ultimate wife.

Michael Milenski and his inspired Long Beach cohorts took this all very seriously Sunday afternoon. In terms of the drama, that meant playing fast and loose, modern and raunchy with the libretto. In terms of the music, it meant reasonable fidelity to the original impulses. It also meant musicological drudgery involving the collection of various editions and the collation of numerous orchestrations.

The sprawling result runs a short three hours with a single intermission. It deserves to be savored by audiences far beyond Long Beach.

The production has many heroes, a whole ensemble of them, in fact. The word ensemble is used most advisedly in this context.

The prime hero must be Christopher Alden, the ever-clever iconoclast whose staging transforms the period piece into a quick, slick, stylish, stylized comedy of eros. For inspiration, he seems to have turned to such disparate sources as Mel Brooks, a couple of “Rocky Horror” icons, Jean Genet, Toulouse-Lautrec, some lofty absurdists, a few porn-again cartoonists and the elegant antiquarians of the Opera Comique. It is a nice mix.

Abetted by his brilliant designer, Peter Harrison, Alden plays the drama on a raked platform backed by a vast wall. Both surfaces are decorated symbolically with a zillion grinning skulls.

The cast, dressed in dazzling-chic unicolors by couturiere Eugenia Krager, pops in and out of cut-out windows, doors and traps. The picturesque symmetry is adorable, and Anne Militello, the lighting designer, reinforces the mercurial moods with surreal glee.

The hard-working (the adjective is an understatement) singing-actors (acting-singers?) do Alden’s bidding with just the right tone of cheeky bravado. The histrionic shenanigans are executed with deadpan zeal, no matter how silly. The vocal standards are uniformly high, and Charles Kondek’s wickedly, liberally updated text is articulated with crisp delight.

James Hoback, a definitively demure Albert Herring not that long ago, is anything but innocent as a sardonic song-and-dance Bluebeard, spiffily decked out in white tie and tails. His lyric tenor has taken on a heroic ring so stunning that one can only agree with a critical comment ad-libbed post-aria by a long-suffering henchman: “At least he has high notes!”

Angelina Reaux makes a feminist tour de force of Boulotte, Bluebeard’s sixth and final spouse. She musters a charming imitation of a grand operettic chanteuse (Hortense Schneider created the role) without slighting such marvelous muses as Lucille Ball, Annie Oakley, Daisy Mae Yokum and the lusty Grand Duchess of Gerolstein.

Perrin Allen luxuriates in beefcake narcissism and sings deftly, too, as the shepherd Adonis (call him Saphir), then turns lounge-lizard con brio at the court of King Bobeche. Susan Davis Holmes matches him, hump for grind, as Fleurette, the earthy blond soubrette.

Michael Sokol is part Chaplin, part Lorre and totally endearing as the not-so-mad scientist in residence. Zale Kessler blusters and prances sweetly as the chief courtier to the splendidly fatuous Bobeche of Ken Remo. Michele Henderson makes much of the besotted blowziness of his hungry Queen.

A perfectly disciplined chorus of 12 functions eloquently as observers, participants and scenery. Five of the women also do winsome Wili-esque duty as Bluebeard’s formerly defunct wives.

Laurence Gilgore conducts a rather loud little orchestra, stationed at stage left, with sweeping elan and rhythmic propulsion. An ingrate might wish for a little more subtlety, for keener attention to Offenbach’s sly insinuation. Still, the spirit is emphatically willing.

Go.