Theatre in Review: The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (Richard Rodgers Theatre)Thanks to the storm center of controversy that enveloped it even before its Boston tryout, The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess has become the hot-button show of the season (after Spider-Man, of course). The complaints began with that title, which willfully ignores the contributions of librettists Dorothy and DuBose Hayward -- a particularly egregious omission, since the opera is based on his novel and play -- and subsequently took in the staging, orchestrations, scenery, casting, sound design, and, for all I know, the looks of the ushers and quality of the cocktails sold at intermission. Even the good reviews - and there have been many - come tinged with a faint reservations. As far as I'm concerned, the best argument for the defense occurs near the end of Act I, when Norm Lewis, as Porgy, offers a hushed, almost shockingly intimate rendition of "Bess, You Is My Woman Now." As Audra McDonald's Bess joins in, she is transformed, her changing expressions signaling a hard and weary heart opening to the possibility of another kind of life altogether. It's all there -- disbelief, trumped by hope, vanquished by joy; we're watching a soul come to life. For a few minutes, anyway, this terribly mismatched pair enjoys the kind of communion that most people only dream about. If all of Diane Paulus' production were on this level, it would be one for the ages, but, in truth, this Porgy and Bess is a sometime thing, a series of pluses and minuses so intricately interconnected that it's not easy to make sense of it all. This is not to endorse the notion -- heard in theatre chat rooms and elsewhere -- that Paulus and company have played fast and loose with a canonized masterpiece. For all the emotional power of its music, down through the decades Porgy and Bess has been criticized, analyzed, patronized, and picked at as much as it has been loved. For that matter, this is hardly the first production to present a heavily edited version of the score or even attempt a musical theatre approach. And, in casting McDonald and Lewis, Paulus has given us the most ideal Porgy and Bess the contemporary musical theatre has to offer. From her first entrance, sporting a vivid scar on one cheek and tottering unsteadily under the influence of too much "happy dust," McDonald's Bess is trouble in a tight red dress, thoroughly corroded by liquor, drugs, and the wrong sort of men -- yet it's totally believable when she begins to melt under the influence of Porgy's quiet, steady love. McDonald achieves this rebirth without an iota of sentimentality -- which makes her backsliding into corruption all the more affecting. McDonald comes up with one bravura moment after another -- when, cornered by Crown, her murderous ex-lover, she furiously removes her dress, almost taking possession of the rape that is to follow, or when, having thrown away a vial of cocaine, she falls to the ground, grasping like an animal for a few grains of the drug. It would have been a sin if McDonald had never played this role and this production can be justified on the basis of her work alone. With his highly toned physique and a voice better suited for Broadway than opera, Lewis might not be one's first choice for Porgy on the opera stage, but he turns these apparent drawbacks to his advantage, twisting his body painfully to show the character's deformities and infusing the music with a palpable warmth. Aside from them, however, the outlines of Paulus' production sometimes seem a bit blurred. Riccardo Hernandez's decision to render Catfish Row in the abstract, as a metal grid covered with curved wood panels, robs the story of a certain crucial specificity; it also leaves the chorus all too often stranded in the center of the stage. On the other hand, Christopher Akerlind's lighting -- a barrage of acid yellow sunshine that invades every corner of the stage followed by a gunmetal gray gloom the signals the onset of a hurricane -- is gorgeous. Among the supporting players, Philip Boykin is an impressively menacing Crown, but David Alan Grier's Sporting Life seems to stand outside the action; his version of "There's a Boat That's Leaving Soon" is more a bid for a showstopper rather than a concerted attempt on the part of his character to get Bess to run off with him. The choral work is fine, and the reinforcement by Acme Sound Partners is sensitively handled and crystal-clear, but at times the reduced orchestrations--by William David Brohn and Christopher Jahnke, working from Diedre L. Murray's adaptation - are lacking in power. (This is so even with a 22-piece orchestra, large by Broadway standards.) What's most noticeable in Paulus' direction is the lack of an overarching vision, a clear sense of style. Reading between the lines of the media coverage, it almost seems as if she started out attempting to radically rethink Porgy and Bess, only to discover that the piece is more intractable than it looks. Much of the time, she seems to be aiming for a kind of realism which clashes with the material. Porgy and Bess is melodrama lifted by melody to the level of tragedy; the elimination of a good deal of the musical connective tissue and the relative naturalism of the book scenes -- much of them with new dialogue by Suzan-Lori Parks -- results in a show with a certain stop-and-start quality. Despite these contradictions, however, it's clear that The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess still packs plenty of crowd-pleasing qualities. I have a feeling that the opera isn't as well known as many think; it's a tall order for any company, and probably doesn't get produced as often as other equally famous titles. At the performance I attended, the audience clearly reveled in every note -- and why not? Melody upon stunning melody cascades from the Rodgers stage -- from the first note of the spectral lullaby "Summertime" to the determined, hope-against-hope optimism of "I'm On My Way" -- offering a level of pleasure no other musical in town can match. You can say many things about this production, but the thrills it offers are authentic. -- David Barbour 
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