Theatre in Review: Red Eye of Love (Amas/Dicapo Opera Theatre)

	Ali Mauzey. Photo: Carol Rosegg

Clearly the summer silly season is hanging on into September. Consider the plot of Red Eye of Love: Wilmer Flange is an impecunious young man who falls in love with a winsome young thing named Selma Chargesse. Sadly, Selma is affianced to O. O. Martinas, a meat entrepreneur who has erected a 13-floor emporium devoted to various chops, sirloins, and roasts. (It eventually rises to 49 stories, but never mind.) Selma gets together with Wilmer long enough to produce a little brat named Bez, but she eventually succumbs to the siren call of O.O.'s meaty millions. Wilmer goes into business for himself, trying to sell dolls that show signs of aging and morbidity, but, not surprisingly, the dollars don't roll in. The Depression intervenes along with World War II; finally, Selma and O.O., who have experienced marital doldrums, decide they can't live without Wilmer, and all three head off to a future of love, brotherhood, and choice cuts.

Let me quickly add that this is a musical, which means we get a chorus line leaping around while holding what appear to be giant legs of lamb. There's also a meat ballet, featuring a male chorus of tap-dancing cows, a pig in a tutu, and a sassy pair of sheep performing a modified strip. (As O.O. notes, "My heifers have to be hoofers.") Why it isn't titled Rib Eye of Love, I'll never know.

In fact, Red Eye of Love is adapted from the 1961 play of the same name, a legendary and apparently long-running production about which it is difficult to find much information. (John Guare has written fondly of it.) With its absurdist plot line, silly throwaway gags, and jabs at capitalism and the politics of war, it is thoroughly a product of its time, although even in 1961 one imagines that many of its ideas looked like hand-me-downs from various sources, including Eugène Ionesco and Kurt Weill. (Since the libretto was adapted by the late Arnold Weinstein and John Wulp, respectively the author and producer of the original play, we must assume we're seeing a faithful version.)

The peculiar thing about this enterprise is the collision of styles. In adapting Red Eye of Love, the authors, in an experiment that recalls the work of Joseph Priestley (or perhaps Victor von Frankenstein), have grafted this dated bit of freeform whimsy onto the format of a traditional book musical, filled with ballads, patter songs, and razzmatazz choruses. Indeed, there is something of the old two-a-day vaudeville in exchanges like the following:

Wilmer: Selma, why did you leave me two days ago for dollars?

Selma: I only did it for the money.

And then there's this:

Selma: Kiss me.

Wilmer: On the mouth?

Selma: On the street.

If your sides are splitting, make a beeline to the Dicapo Opera Theatre.

As it wanders from no place special to no place in particular, glorying in its own inanity, Red Eye of Love would be intolerable except for a couple of things: Sam Davis' score devises a pastiche Broadway style, inflected with occasional minor notes, that works both as parody and on its own terms -- and, despite the ruthlessly giddy tone, he manages a couple of attractive ballads. Within their own narrow limits, the lyrics contain some surprisingly amusing wordings. I rather liked "Two Fat Cats," in which Selma and O.O. exult "We own bank accounts/Becount we own banks" and "We made moolah/Out of moo." And there's something graceful when, in the title song, Selma frets that "He who was meant for me/Is not the he who pays the rent for me."

Also, in Ted Sperling's sparkling staging, a skilled cast charms even in the silliest of moments. Josh Grisetti, who has developed into a fine utility player, lends Wilmer a wistful air that keeps things from cloying too badly; his natural light touch proves to be a perfect match for this helium-inflated material. It's not easy to play a worried husband who looks at his troubled spouse and says, "You need sleep. I saw you slaving away in assorted gizzards," but Kevin Pariseau makes it seem a breeze. However, the evening belongs to Alli Mauzey, a petite powerhouse with a blonde mop of hair, a throaty voice, and a deadpan manner that puts the fear of God into the weakest comedy line. As Selma, she amusingly ages from an innocent, mixed-up young thing to a fur-wrapped worldling with a heart full of rue. Speaking of her husband, she tells Wilmer, "I'll thank you not to call him an ignorant old, useless old, impotent old man." "I didn't say he was impotent," says Wilmer. "Yes. Well. Anyway," she replies, waving away the entire conversation with a devastatingly casual wave of her hand. She also makes the most of her numbers, including the title tune.

The production famously features a set design by Robert Indiana, which consists almost entirely of a backdrop featuring a number of variations on the USDA stamp of approval. The visuals are augmented by David Wilson's projections of breadlines, green leaves, and rain. Matthew Richards' lighting is both seamless and attractive. Martha Bromelmeier's costumes amusingly take the characters through the years, not to mention those clever animal getups for the ballet. Ray Schilke's solid sound design includes an offstage crash, wartime explosions, and a radio broadcast.

Still, all of this talent is poised carefully over an enormous void. There's no getting around the fact that Red Eye of Love is about nothing, a dated exercise marked by vacuous attempts at wit. Most of the avant-garde work of a half-century ago strove to shock and upset its complacent audience. Even then, this one surely suffered from a fatal case of the cutes. -- David Barbour