When I interviewed Xiaoxi Tu a few weeks back about her senior thesis opera, “She Unnames Them,” she told me that the audience shouldn’t expect “propriety.” Since most operas aren’t advertised as postmodern and probably don’t feature gamelan, I’m not sure what the audience went in expecting to see—I know I went in expecting to be a little bewildered and more than a little impressed. Indeed, as I left the Sunday matinee, my mind was pretty blown, and I was very impressed, in particular with Tu’s ability as a composer and conductor.
The story, which thankfully was explained in the program, is based around the idea that Adam has named all the animals in the world, and Eve, realizing that these names don’t truly fit the animals, takes the artificial titles away. The audience sees the process and the motivation behind this “unnaming” through songs sung by the animals and by Eve herself.
The show started with an arrangement of “Jesus Loves Me,” sung from offstage by the cast, which became steadily more discordant as the song progressed. This opener immediately highlighted two of the show’s greatest strengths: the orchestra and the incredibly eclectic score. The ensemble, conducted by Tu in front of the stage, consisted of a small gamelan group incorporated into a larger orchestra. The musicians were excellent across the board, and although the gamelan (and, in one notable scene, the banjo) brought an original and almost otherworldly sound to the show, Tu’s blend of traditional western and eastern sounds was so successful that I quickly forgot how “exotic” the gamelan ensemble was and heard the music as an effective whole.
As for musical eclecticism, I think you’d be hard pressed to find another opera featuring both a hoedown and a tribute to Missy Elliott (“Let Your Butt Cheeks Clap,” adapted “in collaboration with Jared Keller, Amanda Facelle, and Benedict Bernstein,” was a high-energy highlight). Tu’s fluid mixing of musical styles supports the idea that the world becomes more vibrant and livelier when the urge to categorize is overtaken by the ability to see the world as a greater whole. Of course, the hip-hop/country/classical juxtaposition could easily have failed—it’s a risky venture, and Tu’s committed musicians and actors pulled it off beautifully. I don’t know much about opera, but I’m willing to bet that the Met has never seen anything like “She Unnames Them.”
The performers themselves worked well as an ensemble, and were quite convincing physically as the animals they played (which ranged from a parrot to a whale). The yaks, played by Amanda Facelle, Tess Smagorinsky, and Elizabeth Greenwald, were musical standouts, opening the show with a three-part a cappella number, and Sara Duchovny gave a sneaky performance as the cat. At the very end of the show, the five actresses playing the trees silently closed the story with fluid ambiguity—the image they created deserves special mention.
Brittany Fowler, as Eve herself, sang and acted beautifully; her face gave away just as much as the lyrics did for most of the show. In the final scene, as Adam (played by Adam Black, who fearlessly opened the show in the nude) searched for something undefined but apparently very important—ignoring Eve completely—Fowler moved through the entire range of emotions of a woman who knows she can’t stay but struggles to leave. The scene was particularly powerful, probably because the dialogue was markedly more concrete than the rest of the show; it was close to home, so it hit a nerve.
Although “She Unnames Them” captivated me, I left the show with one bone to pick: for a good part of the show, I simply couldn’t tell what the actors were singing. I could appreciate the music itself, but I couldn’t get a handle on the lyrics. Part of this might’ve been due to the acoustics in the World Music Hall, or the logistical difficulty of trying to be heard over an orchestra, or maybe the fact that opera is so highly stylized. For whatever reason it was very hard to understand the lyrics, which was a real shame because I’m sure that if I had been able to hear them, my appreciation (and comprehension) would’ve been that much greater.
Aside from this technical difficulty, “She Unnames Them” was an exuberant, entertaining, and accomplished show. Tu says that she’d someday like to write an opera based on Marx’s “Das Kapital”; I really hope she gets the chance.