Leonard Bernstein began composing his satire on a dysfunctional marriage when on honeymoon and, by his own admission, the one-act opera was based on the bickering nature of his parents’ relationship. Sam and Jennie Bernstein were very much alive in 1951 and can’t have been thrilled to know they’d spawned such an unhappy pair. Names were barely disguised: Sam was still named Sam and Jennie only became Dinah because it worked better musically. In Mid Wales Opera’s new staging, it’s the true-to-life element that gives the work its disquietingly contemporary feel, along with Bernstein’s particular combination of punchy word-setting and jazz-inflected score.
MWO’s continued survival against the odds is ample testimony to their gutsy approach and, while this SmallStages touring production is necessarily done on a minimal budget, it manages to realise an authentic 50s vibe as well as the claustrophobia of Sam and Dinah’s marital treadmill. Bernstein’s device of a sassy trio – here sung by Kirsty McLean, Sam Marston and John Ieuan Jones – with lively Greek chorus-style eulogising of the suburban American dream heightens the contrast between the couple’s consumerist aspirations and their all-too-evident personal despair. Director Richard Studer reinforced this by having the trio interact closely with Sam and Dinah, sometimes setting up further tensions, but also bringing a lighter, wittier touch to the dark irony of the narrative.
Samuel Pantcheff as Sam – strong on the braggadocio after winning his handball game – and Samantha Price as Dinah – her dream aria while in therapy poignantly sung – conveyed the bleak sense of partners unable to listen to each other, intent on their own thoughts. Pity their poor son Junior whom they neglect; perhaps it’s this apparent unconcern that makes it hard to sympathise with them. Even as they finally attempt to rekindle lost love, with a movie-date to see Trouble in Tahiti – hence the opera’s in some ways confusing title – it’s clearly not going to be happily-ever-after.
Using Bernard Yanotta’s chamber arrangement of the original score, music director Jonathan Lyness presided at the keyboard, ensuring that the bittersweet melodies and harmonies – pre-echoes of later Bernstein often piquing the ear – spoke as vibrantly as the singing.
In a second half featuring the full quintet of singers in an entertaining cabaret sequence of American songs, the impossibility of perfect relationships, as expressed in Stephen Sondheim’s The Little Things You Do Together with which they began, was a good foil for the Bernstein scenario. But it was soprano Kirsty McLean’s dynamic delivery of Sam Carslow’s Mr Paganini that stood out.
• At Wyeside Arts Centre, Builth Wells on 14 November and touring until 5 December.
