STAGE REVIEW : ‘Stand-Up Opera’ Pursues a New Hybrid

It’s not likely that when B. J. Ward started studying opera four years ago (a little late in life, as she concedes), she had any idea that it would lead to creating a new performance hybrid: “Stand-Up Opera,” which also happens to be the name of her show which, this week, plays Pasadena as part of the “David Galligan Presents Upstairs at the Pasadena Playhouse” cabaret series.

In case you haven’t already figured it out, “Stand-Up Opera” is stand-up comedy with an operatic flourish or opera in low-brow skirmishes with stand-up comedy. If even that sounds daunting, relax: It’s OK if you’re an opera buff, and just as OK if you’re not.

No, Ward doesn’t extol opera and no, she doesn’t trash it either. Au contraire . She really can sing it. Impressively. But what Ward also does is demystify its mystique, which, as anyone who’s ever attended the opera must know, is jealously guarded by unofficial armies of the staunchest, most splenetic and rabid supporters.

The evening comes in two parts of six staggering arias each, abetted by a strong piano solo in Part II from accompanist David Sushel. (Classicists, take note.)

Ward’s saunter through the soap opera world of opera heroines, however, is filled with fanciful footnotes, such as asking of “Rigoletto” what it was like “being married to a sarcastic hunchback” (to say nothing of what it was like to have one for a father).

The stand-up comedy part lies in the contrast between Ward’s trim, appealing presence and her snappy one-liners, delivered in a speaking voice whose almost adolescent lightness belies the coloratura power of her singing.

How else she does it is deceptive: with a delicate pratfall here; by singing “Lakme’s” “Flower Duet” with herself there; by offering to sing her encore after the second aria (in case you’re in a hurry at the end); by talking turkey about those improbable plots, and by being a fund of operatic statistics.

Did you know, for instance, that the death rate in Puccini, “who wrote ‘Tosca,’ ‘La Boheme’ and the original ‘Miss Saigon,’ ” (“Madama Butterfly”) is 66%? Moi neither. But then who spent sleepless nights wondering . . . ?

This is a show that Ward, under the careful tutelage of director Gordon Hunt, has been honing for some time in such disparate venues as the Gardenia nightclub in Hollywood and the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.

The polish shows. Her timing is as precise as her high notes, and the amount of practice she has put in results in great ease on stage--which is not to be confused with laxity or excessive chumminess.

The show has form and shape. Profundity is neither its trademark nor its goal, but such a bright, inquiring mind--and such a palatable combination of vocal prowess and lighthanded spoofing--should not go unre-Warded.

* “Stand-Up Opera,” Pasadena Playhouse Balcony Theatre, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. Thursday-Saturday, 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. Ends Sunday. $20; (818) 356-PLAY, (213) 480-3232. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.