Maelstrom after the crash
DINNER AT EIGHT Wexford Opera House Review by Anna Hayes
THERE’S A certain fascination with Depression Era America – be it the smoky jazz tones, the ‘Gatsby’ inspired style or the shallow decadence of it all, its dramatic juxtapositions tend to intrigue people on a very human level.
‘Dinner at Eight’, in that regard, fits the bill of taking a group of people and tossing them into the maelstrom that was Manhattan, post the Wall Street crash.
An ever present aspect of the set is the constructions of the city, jutting out from each wing and above, giving an effective visual representation of a place that has been turned upside down – something that goes seemingly unnoticed by most of the characters, shown again by an opening that tells us that ‘the party goes on’. It’s accompanied by a show reel of news reports that tell a very different story of recession and desperation.
With all of that in mind, the turning of attentions to something as innocuous as a dinner party serves as an effective element of comedy. Mary Dunleavy, as Millicent Jordan, is wonderfully melodramatic, again oblivious to the concerns of the world outside.
It is her husband Oliver (Stephen Powell) who is most affected by the Depression and he shares a duet with Brenda Harris’s Carlotta Vance in which they lament how the town they remember is gone.
Powell has the most affecting aria of the opera when he sings of the uncertainty surrounding his business and his health, communicating the overwhelming anxiety that gripped those in his position at the time. His soul-searching is replaced with the macho attitude of carrying on and fighting through the struggle, much like his younger, more ruthless associate Dan Packard who, with his bored wife Kitty (the brilliant Susannah Biller), is a boisterous personification of the American Dream. The stripping away of the set and the silhouetting of Powell against a simple grey backdrop gives the very impactful impression of a man adrift.
Richard Cox as the failing actor Larry Renault is perhaps the only other character that an audience can sympathise with. T.S. Elliot wrote that the world ends not with a bang but a whimper, and there is certainly an air of this to Larry’s final scene.
There are utterances of musical theatre style throughout the work, jazzy interludes a la Bernstein, and crisp, ensemble singing that are reminiscent of Sondheim, but the staccato nature of the melody makes it a more challenging endeavour for the cast, particularly when it comes to tapping into the emotion behind the words. To that end, the physical acting, and facial expressions of the cast are key and are well executed. Dunleavy, in particular, uses her entire frame to emphasise the ‘trauma’ she feels at the disintegration of her dinner party, and to perfect comedic effect.
It somewhat saunters to an ending which doesn’t so much give closure to any of the events that have played out on the stage, rather finishes on another silhouetted frieze, as if to emphasise that we have seen a snapshot of a time that history has told us enough about for us to make an educated guess as to where it goes next.
‘Dinner at Eight’ is not an opera that people will remember for its music, but for its blending of comedy and tragedy, moments of visual brilliance, and the overall recreation of an era that, in some shape or form, is never too far from happening again.