PhilaCulturati

Terrence McNally’s Golden Age is an insider’s look at the schemes and dreams behind the curtain at an opera. But this is no fictional everyman opera production. McNally, a devoted opera aficionado, has set his production at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris on the opening night of Bellini’s I Puritani in 1835. The Golden Age then spends the next three hours AND three acts indulging an overload of selfish egos, petty jealousies, recriminations and career strategizing.

As he has already demonstrated in Master Class and The Lisbon Traviata, McNally is an adoring encyclopedia on the opera. Whether you know anything about the opera or not, McNally is slavish in his affection. But the characters in Golden Age are all completely self-indulgent to the point of disgust. McNally to often has them remind us they are geniuses, the dialogue sounding to unreal to believe. Three hours of “insider-at-the-opera” and you will fully understand why we use the term “diva” in the manner that we do…

It is not just the weight of McNally’s uncomfortable and unrealistic dialogue that drags the production down, it’s the overwhelming quantity of it. The production runs three hours, a decided no-no in today’s short attention-span era. Struggling to maintain composure during the third act, my ADD-afflicted date literally began to vibrate in his seat.

The Philadelphia Theatre Company’s cast and crew do deserve some applause for attempting to smooth over the glaring evils in the script. Stand-out Marc Kudisch is swaggering sexual baritone Tamburini. Kudisch is so good you actually wish he had more dialogue. Hoon Lee is another underused talent. Lee plays tenor Lablache with the perfect mix of panache and comedy. Lead actor Jeffrey Carlson, who I instantly recognized from his stint as a transvestite on All My Children, plays a serviceable Bellini. His devotion and adoration to soprano Maria Malibran (Amanda Mason Warren) never rings true to me though, a major flaw in a major plot point. Warren’s character, like the rest of the cast, alternated between completely unlikable and sadly delusional, thanks to a script that desperately wants you to think that opera singers are more devoted to their images then their health. The rest of the cast work fairly hard with fairly dull material, trying to find a bit of monkey’s gold wherever they can…

Director Austin Pendleton must carry the weight of our criticism, for not making some judicious and glaringly needed cuts to the encyclopedia of a script. Pendleton can’t blame McNally – playwrights and directors must work together to mount a production of this enormity. Hopefully they will, and that the Golden Age will leave Philadelphia with the proper edits to ensure a long and healthy run.

“Golden Age,” ran through Feb. 14, Philadelphia Theatre Company’s Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St., Philadelphia. Tickets: $46-$59. 215-985-0420, www.philadelphiatheatrecompany.org.

by Matthew Ray for PhilaCulturati.com