Nixon in China

Opera Theatre of St. Louis

Richard Nixon’s 1972 diplomatic mission to China was one of the most significant events of the last century. The results of it are still visible today and will no doubt continue be so for decades into the future. You’d think, then, that the 1987 opera based on that visit would be rich in drama and historical insight.

If so, you’d be wrong. Nixon in China, receiving its first local performance by Opera Theatre, is as static and dramatically inert a piece of musical theatre as you are ever likely to endure. In fact, it barely qualifies as theatre of any kind. There is no action or character development to speak of, barely the hint of a plot, and no discernable point of view. John Adams’ score is not without its effective moments, but overall it demonstrates why minimalism was something of a musical dead-end.

Alice Goodman’s libretto is the chief culprit, however. Yes, it’s filled with striking images and facile word-play – a bit too much of it, in fact – but it’s elliptical to the point of obfuscation and makes a fetish of obscurity. As my wife remarked on the drive home, “I don’t need to have everything spelled out for me, but I would like to know what alphabet is being used”. In any case, even when the lyrics make some sort of sense, the characters themselves don’t interact. Nixon speaks in typically American political rhetoric, Mao Tse-tung in riddles, and Chou En-Lai in Marxist clichés. Mostly they pontificate rather than interact. Granted, that’s what politicians usually do, but it doesn’t make for very interesting theatre.

That’s not to say that the text is completely devoid of interest. The final scene - in which the Nixons recall the difficulties of life during World War II while a suddenly youthful Mao (the original stage directions call for him to step, Ruddigore-like, out of a portrait) dances with is wife as they recall their younger days – is often touching, with Chou En-Lai’s final words providing a melancholy coda: “How much of what we did was good? Everything seems to move beyond our remedy. Come heal the wound. At this hour nothing can be done. Just before dawn the birds begin, the warblers who prefer the dark, the cage birds answering to work. Outside the room, the chill of grace lies heavy on the morning grass”. There are also moments of political comedy and dramatic insight here and there, but on the whole Goodman seems more interested in being clever than being coherent.

Stage director James Robinson has apparently attempted to compensate for the lack of movement in the libretto by keeping his cast in almost constant motion, some of it unrelated to either the words or music. Additional visual interest comes in the form of Wendall K. Harrington’s inventive video design, which shows a mix of vintage newsreel footage and mood-setting images on a dozen monitors made up to look like 1970s TV sets. The results are often intriguing and frequently comic, but it’s rather like trying to bail out the Titanic with a teacup.

As for the cast – well, never have so many sung so well in the service of so little. Baritone Robert Orth is just about perfect as Nixon. He doesn’t look that much like the former President, but his body language is right on target and his portrayal sympathetic. Soprano Maria Kanyova is a winning Pat Nixon, showing impressive vocal control in her long Act II meditation on America’s future.

Baritone Chen-Ye Yuan and tenor Mark Duffin are impressive as Chou En-Lai and Mao, respectively. Yuan, in particular, delivers a remarkably nuanced and believable performance. And soprano Tracy Dahl has some truly hair-raising moments as the fiercely dedicated Madame Mao. Bass Jan Opalach does what he can with the minor role of Henry Kissinger, who seems to have been thrown in merely for the sake of the occasional cheap joke. He effectively takes center stage, however, as the evil landlord Lao Szu in the production of the 1964 “revolutionary ballet” The Red Detachment of Women, which is performed for Nixon and company in the third act. What Kissinger is doing in that role and why Nixon, Pat and Madame Mao become involved in the action of the ballet is another set of questions that Goodman leaves unanswered.

Speaking of that ballet: this “show within the show” brings moments of real drama to the evening, courtesy of choreographer Seán Curran and an impressive corps de ballet, headed by Kimberly Jewart and Sun Ho Kim. After nearly two hours of theatrical inertia, it’s a welcome relief.

The monochromatic sameness of Adams’ music must, it seems to me, present a considerable challenge to both conductor and players. Happily, Marin Alsop, who has been so impressive in her guest appearances with the St. Louis Symphony in the past, handles the baton with great precision and draws solid performances from the musicians.

There is one other issue to be dealt with here. In Adams’ own comments on the original production (which can be read on line at http://www.earbox.com/sub-html/comp-details/nixon-de.html), he notes how closely he and Goodman worked with director Peter Sellars. In that version Sellars pulled out all the theatrical stops. When Air Force One landed, for example, a nearly full-size jet fuselage pulled on to stage and the actors who descended from it were dead ringers for the Nixons and Kissinger. Other impressive bits of stagecraft followed, all of which no doubt provided the drama that the music and libretto themselves lacked.

The Loretto-Hilton, unfortunately, isn’t the Kennedy Center or Houston’s Jones Hall, where the opera had its premiere performances. Large casts and big theatrical effects are simply not possible there and without them, the paucity of theatrical content in Nixon in China is glaringly apparent. Like Miss Saigon or the spectacles of Baroque opera, it’s a work conceived with a lot of flash in mind, and doesn’t work well without it.

The bottom line on OTSL’s Nixon in China, then, is this: if you’ve never seen it before and are dying to find out what all the tumult and shouting is about, call 314-961-0644 for tickets. It runs through June 26th. Otherwise I’d say you can skip it. If you do go, however, give serious thought to buying a copy of the libretto from the OTSL gift shop in advance. Elocution problems and the amplification of the singers (required by Adams but counterproductive in this setting) make whole sections of the text incomprehensible at times.

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