Last Chance to see “Suddenly Last Summer”: The Avant-Garde Is Alive and Well at Bard

Singers from the Young People’s Chorus. Photo by Maria Baranova.

Eleven years ago, the director Daniel Fish pulled off a coup de theatre at Bard SummerScape with the world premiere of his innovative production of the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma!” It was thrilling to see how a febrile mind could reinterpret a classic in a way that was completely original and surprising but made perfect sense. The production eventually made its way to Broadway where it was nominated for eight Tony Awards and won two, including Best Revival of a musical.

Fish is back at Bard’s Fisher Center with his world premiere opera, “Suddenly Last Summer.”  The visually arresting performance, which runs through July 19 (get your tickets now!) is based on Tennessee Williams’ one-act play that most people know from the 1959 film version starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, and Katharine Hepburn, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.  It’s the story of a wealthy New Orleans matron, Mrs. Venable (Tina Benko), whose beloved adult son, Sebastian, died the previous summer in scandalous circumstances when he was on a European vacation with his cousin Catherine (Mikaela Bennett). Mrs. Venable has been pushed to the limits by the stories Catherine has been telling about how Sebastian died at the hands of young boys, and she’s had Catherine sent to a mental hospital. Now, she is courting a doctor (Branden Lindsay) whom she wants to lobotomize Catherine so she’ll stop telling these stories—or if she does tell them, no one will believe her because they know she has been deemed certifiably crazy. 

A commission of Fisher Center LAB and Opera Philadelphia, “Suddenly Last Summer” has a libretto by Fish and Gideon Lester (artistic director and chief executive of the Fisher Center) and music by Courtney Bryan, a 2023 MacArthur Fellow who is currently composer-in-residence with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. But this opera is so much more than an aural experience, especially because the only character who sings is Catherine, along with the choral ensemble (members of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City) whose choreographed appearances onstage add another layer of visual drama. It’s an engaging, percolating, avant-garde production where the stagecraft dares to eclipse the words and music.

The actors share the stage with a visual artist, Lucy Tarquinio, who makes paintings at a work table,  stage left, throughout the performance. We watch her create a series of abstract images that are projected onto the back wall of the stage, which sometimes resemble Rorschach prints and are thus open to interpretation. The lighting design is used to great effect so that the silhouetted shadows of the actors against the walls are nearly as dramatic as the actors themselves. You sit in the theater and wonder, What am I going to see next?

What you don’t see at the beginning of the opera is Catherine, who is singing offstage in what may or may not be a response to the dialogue between Mrs. Venable and the doctor.  But I could barely make out any words that were being sung. It also took me quite some time before I could understand what Mrs. Venable was saying because Benko’s southern accent is thicker than the humidity in New Orleans on a summer day.

I desperately wished that Fish had decided to incorporate supertitles into his production. Having seen the movie and read the synopsis of the opera in the program, I could follow the story but there is so much I missed.  (I learned too late that the full libretto is in the program.) Bryan’s powerful score is wonderfully melodramatic at times, variously creating feelings of urgency, anxiety, and fear. As someone with a limited affinity for opera, whether classical or contemporary, I must defer to others about the success of “Suddenly Last Summer” as a musical composition. But as a visually stunning theatrical experience, “Suddenly Last Summer” is a must-see.