Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Amor intervenes and claims he can show them a superior power. The ensuing action hinges on Nero, played by Christian Quilici '01. Nero seduces Poppea (Tonia D'Amelio '00), sending his wife Octavia (a vitally austere Eleanor Hubbard '01) and Poppea's ex-boyfriend Otto (Carolann Buff) on a plot to murder Poppea. The outcome, the defiant coronation of Poppea and the happy banishment of Otto and his new girl (Drusilla, ably sung by Genithia Hogges `01), is supposed to be a testament to the power of love as represented by choir boy Amor, but it never really loses...
While Poppea's libretto certainly sounds better than it reads as a plot, this production's singing was so fluent that I could follow the plot almost continuously. Also, I never really noticed that the actors were singing. The color and expression of various voices were at the forefront of the production, but none of the singing seemed staged. The four leads were particularly strong. Quilichi and D'Amelio occasionally swung a flat, everyday-speech exclamation into their performances, and Buff, in her transsexual role as Otto, single-handedly built the tension of the play, bellowing out against Poppea...
...Byers-Blackwell, made a suitably contrasting couple as they scheme their way through the remainder of the show. Giroux demonstrates a wonderfully repulsive amount of sleaziness as well as a convincing rooster call, and Byers-Blackwell plays Lily as the domineering, long-legged, gum-chewing femme-fatal behind the plot to kidnap Annie...
...wonderful job with her elderly, jaded character, providing perspective on the play by holding the rest of the characters in brazen contempt. The Leibeslieders, a kind of Greek chorus, add another narrative layer to the work. Each of the singers parallels a character and performs occasional scenes based the plot, though an exact connection is difficult to decipher. Along with Leonora's critique, the Leibeslieders have a surreal effect on A Little Night Music...
...hook, the Tommy's moral sensibilities are deeply troubled by Grigoris' less-than-honest sales strategy, which he markets to Tommy under the "rob the rich to feed the poor" label. While Grigoris feeds scruple-free off of the paranoid West Los Angeles psyche, Tommy complicates the plot until even Robin Hood risks entrapment...