‘Proximity’ and ‘The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing’ Reviews: A Weekend of World Premieres

A performance comprising three works by artists including Anna Deavere Smith and John Luther Adams received a technically spectacular production at Lyric Opera of Chicago; at Chicago Opera Theater, an opera about the brilliant British mathematician proved a labored telling of a tragic story.

Gordon Hawkins as Preacher Man, Issachah Savage as Curtis Toler, and Jeff Parker as Arne Duncan

PHOTO: TODD ROSENBERG PHOTOGRAPHY

By Heidi Waleson

March 27, 2023 5:29 pm ET

Chicago

For the world premiere of “Proximity,” a suite of three new American operas, which opened Friday, Lyric Opera of Chicago boldly enlisted a group of creators who were almost all new to opera and the visionary director Yuval Sharon, known for his unconventional approach to the form, who was charged with wrangling their work onto the stage. Each piece tackles a hot-button contemporary subject. “The Walkers” by Daniel Bernard Roumain and Anna Deavere Smith explores gun violence; “Four Portraits” by Caroline Shaw and Jocelyn Clarke looks at loneliness exacerbated by technology; “Night” by John Luther Adamsand John Haines is about climate change. 

To emphasize the operas’ interrelationships, Mr. Sharon alternated scenes of the first two pieces throughout the evening and concluded the first act with the single scene of “Night.” The juxtaposition of different musical languages was surprisingly smooth—conductor Kazem Abdullah had a lot to do with that—but it was the polished, high-tech production, designed by Jason H. Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras, that unified the operas and kept the piece afloat as a theatrical evening even as its component parts varied in their effectiveness. 

As she does in her plays, Ms. Smith fashioned her libretto from interviews, often used verbatim. For “The Walkers,” she started with Chicago CRED, an organization that works with young people to reduce gun violence: Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, one of its founders, and Curtis Toler, a former gang leader who is part of its team, are characters in the opera. She deftly weaves their words and feelings into a fictional story of gang confrontation, while Mr. Roumain’s music, with its hip-hop rhythms and a trap set in the orchestra, vividly evokes the powder keg created by groups of posturing teenagers feeding on historical animosities and easy access to weapons. In this unsentimental, up-to-the-minute urban scenario, the liveliest posse leader is Chief’s Daughter #1 (Kearstin Piper Brown), fierce in a long pink wig and bright, skin-tight attire (Carlos J. Soto did the costumes), who gets wrongly accused by a rival group of shooting a child. 

Zoie Reams as Sibyl

PHOTO: TODD ROSENBERG PHOTOGRAPHY

Other standout performers included Issachah Savage as Toler—his aria wondering if his methods are really working was especially poignant; Norman Garrett as Bilal, a gang member newly released from prison; Ron Dukes as Chief’s Son #1; and young members of Uniting Voices Chicago. The most powerful performance came in the final scene, with Whitney Morrison as Yasmine Miller, a real person, recounting the killing of her toddler son, Sincere, shot through their car window as they were driving to a laundromat. Mr. Roumain’s setting of her colloquial speech is operatic but without artifice; the repeated words “he didn’t, he didn’t . . . make it” become the mantra that any mother might hear over and over in her memory.

“Four Portraits” is more abstract, depicting a couple—A (countertenor John Holiday) and B (baritone Lucia Lucas)—divided by technology. Ms. Shaw writes most persuasively for chorus, and here eight singers created a haunting cacophony of overlapping words, most of which were incomprehensible without the supertitles. In the best scene, “The Train,” they are B’s fellow passengers on public transportation, separate yet sometimes mysteriously coalescing into an ensemble. Mr. Holiday’s distinctive timbre was often drowned out in the chaos; Ms. Lucas’s voice sounded harsh in her Scene 3 aria about loneliness, as she drives a car accompanied only by a GPS (Corinne Wallace-Crane, processed to sound like multiple voices). The principals’ ill-fitting gray costumes did them no favors.

The company of ‘Proximity’

PHOTO: TODD ROSENBERG PHOTOGRAPHY

“Night” was just obscure. Both the opaque text, in which a Sibyl sees the end of the world, and Mr. Adams’s music, for a soloist (Katherine DeYoung) and chorus, built on a repeating downward pattern, were oracular rather than gripping. 

The ingenious production rescued “Night” and helped weld the other two pieces together. The arced, quarter pipe-shaped set was illuminated from within by a changing panoply of brilliantly conceived LED images, ranging from Google Earth views of Chicago to streaks of colored light that resolved into landscapes, and, for “Night,” a glittering starscape. Along with this visual opulence, its tempos expertly calibrated to match the music, we got occasional closeups of singers, and the larger-than-life view of Ms. Morrison’s face made Yasmine Miller’s bleak anguish personal. 

***

On the same weekend, at the Harris Theater, Chicago Opera Theater presented the world premiere of “The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing” by Justine F. Chen and David Simpatico, the tale of the brilliant mathematician who broke the Nazis’ Enigma code during World War II, was prosecuted, convicted and subjected to chemical castration under Britain’s draconian anti-homosexual laws in 1952, and died, by suicide, at the age of 41 in 1954. It’s a tragic subject, but labored storytelling and pedestrian vocal writing make the opera’s dramaturgy sag, particularly in the interminable final scene, which insists, unpersuasively, that Turing has performed some kind of mathematical soul transmigration. 

The most interesting musical moments include what the creators term “chat clouds”—transition episodes in which chorus members recite random words, some of which eventually rise to the aural surface. The Bletchley Park scene features a lively ensemble, with Turing as a kind of lounge singer backed up by a music-hall sextet of cryptographers working to break the code.

The opera was solidly cast and produced, although the hard-working baritone Jonathan Michie could not quite make us feel for Turing and his insistence on being himself, no matter the cost. Tenor Joseph Leppek was lyrical as Turing’s great love, Christopher, who died at age 18; Taylor Raven’s sonorous mezzo and Teresa Castillo’s high soprano supplied some vocal contrast as Joan Clarke (Turing’s cryptographer colleague who is game for a marriage of convenience) and Sara, his mother. Lidiya Yankovskaya ably led the chamber orchestra. Benjamin Olsen’s clever design placed the chorus in an aerie above the playing area, masked by a scrim that provided a projection surface for the “chat cloud” words; below, director Peter Rothstein marshaled his cast amid changing set elements like Turing’s code-breaking machine, his bed, and his poison-littered kitchen table. Nora Marlow Smith’s costumes evoked the period; Paul Whitaker’s lighting enhanced the story’s ominous mood. 

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).