Rodwin’s Creative Daring Sustains One-Man Opera

However much we acknowledge the importance of challenging the old cultural guard, experiments in the opera run up against a formidable legacy. David Rodwin takes the O-word for a spin in his engaging project, “virtual motion,” billed as a “one-man hyper-opera,” which had its premiere at the Heliotrope Theater on Thursday and continues tonight and next weekend.

The tragicomic tale of Mike, a hapless virtual reality designer facing existential, romantic and automotive woes, the work is often fascinating and strangely poignant. It is brought to life by a hyper-hyphenate: Rodwin serving as composer-cast-narrator-mime-choreographer-dancer and generally a self-reliant conceptualist.

Surface effects--Rodwin’s dazzling and literally multifaceted performance, for instance--are clever enough to momentarily distract us from the simmering angst. Throughout, themes of dislocation and alienation hover over like dark clouds, as does the specter of looming catastrophe, whether a fatal automobile accident or the doomed flight of the Challenger or lost love. Rodwin gamely juggles several roles, splitting personalities right and left, and right.

Still, questions dog us: For one, is this, in fact, an opera? A textual-musical component runs throughout, but usually without a melodic line, and when songs do appear, they tap into a bland language of pop and Broadway. In its best passages, the sonic framework is based on precise, rhythmic fragmentation passed through a sampler and woven into a fairly simplistic fabric of Rodwin’s electroacoustic sounds, Lester Lewis’ guitar and Mark Zaki’s often doubled violin parts.

The sum effect can be a bit too canned. Then again, artifice is part of the aesthetic equation. Nothing is quite as it seems. The empathetic qualities of the vignettes are kept at bay through a disarming blend of lip-syncing and live speech, with occasional--and serviceable--singing. Cartoon sound effects punctuate the proceedings, adding to the “virtual” ambience. The story itself is told in jigsaw-puzzle chronology, gradually revealing itself.

A spare but effective scheme by lighting designer Aaron Francis and director Valeria Vasilevski help maximize the minimal setting. But the stage truly belongs to Rodwin. If less than a musical triumph or an operatic innovation, his “hyper-opera” serves as a psychodrama of his own admirable invention, and execution.

* “virtual motion,” tonight and Thursday-Aug. 15, 8 p.m., Heliotrope Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope. $10. (310) 281-8337.