OPERA REVIEW : Boris Has a Bad Dream : Mussorgsky’s ‘Boris Godunov’ Is Subjected to a Revisionist Staging

Remember “Boris Godunov”?

Remember Modest Mussorgsky’s vast, sprawling, turbulent, essentially Romantic, unabashedly grand old opera? The one with the cast of thousands, not including the horses?

Remember the colorful, episodic, quasi-historical spectacular about the guilt-ridden, long-bearded and long-suffering tsar, the sonorous, downtrodden Russian masses, the scheming mezzo-soprano princess from Poland, the preening tenoral pretender to the throne, the stuffy boyars, the folksy comic-relievers of the lower classes and the socio-political turmoil in Moscow and environs at the turn of the 17th Century?

Remember the musical changes, additions and subtractions provided over the decades by Rimsky-Korsakov (thick), Shostakovich (thin), Karol Rathaus (nondescript) and other well-meaning editors, a.k.a. orchestrators, meddlers and arrangers?

Remember the great terminal showpiece for flamboyant, bigger-than-life, booming-and-bleeding bassos from Chaliapin to Pinza to Reizen to Kipnis to Petrov to Christoff to London to Treigle to Ghiaurov to Talvela? Remember how poignantly and resonantly they died, usually while rolling down a convenient flight of steps?

Forget all that. This is the Long Beach Opera.

This, to be crucially precise, is the adventurous, iconoclastic, modestly endowed, forward-looking, sometimes triumphant and sometimes foolhardy Long Beach Opera in the hands of Christopher Alden. Always original, often inspired, sometimes muddled, occasionally just perverse, he is, for better or worse, a thinking-person’s stage director.

He also happens to be a man who leaves no traditional turn unstoned. It would seem to be a matter of daring, a point of interpretive honor.

Abetted by Steven Sloane, a spirited ally in the pit, Alden turned “Boris Godunov” on Wednesday at the huge, half-empty Terrace Theatre into a stark exploration of a psyche in torment. In the process, he reverted to David Lloyd-Jones’ reasonable facsimile of the composer’s first version, completed in 1869. Dark, taut and primitive, it lacks love interest--no Polish princess here--as well as popular pomp.

Compounding the potential alienation, Alden has abandoned the progressive story line. He concentrates instead on what must be the protagonist’s bad dream. The director has replaced realism with Expressionism, swapped the props of credibility for symbols and abstractions. Turning his back on temporal truth, he has decided to play out the ancient drama in a contemporary setting replete with political icons.

The likenesses of Lenin, Brezhnev, Khrushchev and their like dot Carol Bailey’s bleakly modern set in strategically placed photos. The omnipresent protagonist, sensitively enacted by Michael Devlin, resembles Nosferatu in a badly tailored business suit.

This is the picture: The open stage, drastically raked and jutting into the pit at a violent angle, reveals the basic tools of Alden’s trade. The choristers, who gesture in stylized unison, are confined to bleachers in a jail-like box, upstage left. Boris-the-ghoul stalks a long, paper-strewn desk center stage.

An elaborate bier, complete with movable boyish corpse, is stationed beneath a trademark Alden clock far right (it is always 10 minutes to 12); an all-purpose bed tilts at the far left. The bare feet of some monstrous statue serve as partial backdrop. Brechtian spotlights, courtesy of the resourceful Adam Silverman, blind the audience at moments of high drama.

It all, no doubt, is fraught with meaning. Deep meaning.

A red banner streams across the playing area, bearing a message in Russian. I think it flashes the opening lamentation of the Russian people: “Why dost thou forsake us, our father? Unto whom dost thou leave us?” No translation is provided.

The cast--including William Hall’s gutsy chorus--sings in dutiful English, much of it intelligible from the eighth row. Nevertheless, someone decided to add the redundant distraction of English supertitles, projected in sporadic phrase-fragments high atop the proscenium. For at least one viewer they created a pain in the neck, both literally and figuratively.

In Alden’s theater of alienation, it is difficult for a novice observer to follow the plot even with the crutch of a translated translation. Storytelling does not seem to be a high priority here. Locales are not defined. Relationships are not observed. Always posing and desperately emoting in their own vacuums, characters wander in and out of scenes that should not involve them. We are supposed to believe, apparently, that they are always there because they haunt Boris’ thoughts.

This, after all, is the tragedy of “Boris Godunov” as filtered through the anti-hero’s dementia. Call it distorted tsar-gazing.

One has to admire Alden’s daring. One wants to applaud his invention. Ultimately, however, one has to admit that his nightmare “Boris” ends up being more interesting than affecting. It seems more a commentary on Mussorgsky’s opera--a fascinating commentary, to be sure--than a representation of the opera itself.

Since madness is operative from the start, there is no room here for psychological development. Since the chorus must remain militaristically static, it cannot exert much of an active force. Since everyone on the stage is encouraged to send independent expressive signals at the same time, there is much visual counterpoint but little central focus. Logic isn’t an issue.

The ensemble did its valiant best on Wednesday to validate the director’s obfuscations within the intimate milieu. Though lacking a charismatic persona and a blaring basso, Devlin capitalized on the solid virtues of clarity and understatement in the title role. John Duykers complemented him nicely as a shifty, cigar-chewing, almost heroic Shuisky.

Brad Creswell asserted himself deftly as the false Dmitri, whose duties remain minimal in this edition. Stefan Szkafarowsky put his rough basso to good use as the long-winded Pimen. George Hogan avoided second-hand buffoonery as Varlaam, ably seconded by the comic-book Missail of Beau Palmer. Martha Jane Howe was properly earthy both as the hostess and nurse to Suzan Hanson’s hysterical Xenia and Colin Nelson’s risen-from-the-dead Feodor. Keene Benson dealt keenly with the prophetic ravings of the simpleton.

In the small pit, Sloane and an excellent little orchestra served Mussorgsky’s lyricism somewhat better than his drama. But this was honorable music-making in a situation where the music wasn’t always of primary importance.

* “Boris Godunov” at the Terrace Theatre, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach. Remaining performance Saturday afternoon at 4. Tickets $22, $40, $60. Student and senior discounts available. For information call (310) 596-5556.