The countertenor stars and sings in Charles Ludlam’s irreverent 1983 play about the legendary diva, directed by Eric Ting at New York’s Little Island.
By
Heidi Waleson
Anthony Roth Costanzo in ‘Galas.’ PHOTO: NINA WESTERVELT
New York
The countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo has a seemingly endless appetite for work and risk—just last year, he took on the leadership of the faltering Opera Philadelphia and starred in a brilliantly eccentric version of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” in which he sang all the roles. An unusually deep and thoughtful passion for opera informs everything he does, so it seems appropriate that he is now performing at Little Island in the ultimate homage to the ultimate diva.
“Galas,” written by Charles Ludlam, is the lightly fictionalized story of Maria Callas; it was first presented in 1983 by Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company with the author as the star. Ludlam didn’t sing in the show; the aria snippets came from Callas recordings. Mr. Costanzo, of course, does. We get a little of “Vissi d’arte” and “Casta diva” and he has added more excerpts, such as Charlotte’s “Letters” aria from “Werther” and Desdemona’s “Ave Maria” from “Otello,” which fit seamlessly into the evening. (The “Ave Maria,” hilariously, is used to help the title character upstage the pope at her private audience.)
Mr. Costanzo sings everything with finesse and brio, as one might expect. The revelation is his strength as a speaking actor. Channeling her distinctive accent and carriage, he’s remarkably believable as Galas/Callas in her many incarnations. Sometimes demure, often fiery, he conveys her drive, perfectionism and heartbreak, all without slipping into caricature or camp. Critical to the illusion is his delicate build, which is swathed in some truly fabulous costumes by Jackson Wiederhoeft and capped with spot-on wigs by Amanda Miller and makeup by James Kaliardos.
The play itself, even in director Eric Ting’s well-calibrated production, hasn’t aged well. At 100 minutes, the show feels long; its slapstick comedy routines grow tedious; and the gay transgressive energy that was exciting four decades ago is now predictable and routine. Seven scenes cover significant beats in Callas’s life, including her meeting with Giovanni (Carmelita Tropicana), the brick manufacturer who would become her husband and manager; the Rome Opera performance of “Norma” that she left after the first act (“The voice is slipping”), causing a national scandal; her love affair with the Greek shipping tycoon here named Aristotle Plato Socrates Odysseus, aka “Sock” (Caleb Eberhardt); her lonely final years after he married Jacqueline Kennedy.
Jeremy Rafal, Mary Testa and Austin Durant PHOTO: NINA WESTERVELT
It’s enacted in a cascade of comedy, with Galas as the relatively sane linchpin circled by a cast of deliberately overacting supporting players. There’s Bruna (Mary Testa), Galas’s maid, a former opera singer who offers career advice and makes oracular pronouncements; the two representatives of La Scala (Austin Durant and Jeremy Rafal) who grudgingly offer her contracts and enunciate the last “la” of La Scala with stuck-out tongues.
Gender fluidity is in the mix: Trans actress Samora la Perdida is both a wildly swishy Pope Sixtus VII (Hahnji Jang, who did the non-Costanzo costumes, provided a striptease-ready white papal robe and high lace-up white platform boots) and the predatory journalist Ilka Winterhalter, who thrills at the hot tip that Galas’s extreme weight loss was deliberately induced by a tapeworm. Ms. Tropicana, short and bedizened with a glittery fake mustache, makes Giovanni the quintessential troll; spurned by his wife at a masquerade party on Sock’s yacht, he puts on a clown costume and chokes out “Vesti la giubba” from “Pagliacci.” Mimi Lien’s set—a gilded catwalk—emphasizes the play’s operatic theatricality. So do Jiyoun Chang’s lighting, complete with explosive flashes and colors, and the recorded musical interpolations—Verdi’s “Dies irae” and the Scarpia chords from “Tosca” ring out as Galas vows revenge on her enemies.
Samora la Perdida PHOTO: NINA WESTERVELT
The cleverest aspect of the show is how it quickly switches tone from quasi-realism to high melodrama and back again. Mr. Costanzo plays these eruptions with appropriately operatic flair—the open-mouthed, silent scream when the news of Sock’s death arrives is an indelible picture—yet even in Galas’s most outrageous moments, we feel her humanity. The play’s principal theme is her loneliness, and while her final speech—“What do I do if I have no career?”— has the inevitable deadpan punchline—“And there’s nothing good on television tonight”—we remember a poignant earlier statement: “I hate freedom. I don’t belong to anyone.” Galas’s (fictional) suicide is a fully theatrical moment, à la “Madama Butterfly,” yet as Mr. Costanzo strips off the kimono and the wig before plunging in the dagger, we get why these operas, even at their most extreme, resonate with reality.
AndyManshel.nyc 