Review of ‘Mahagonny’ by Dutch National opera

• 9 September 2023

  (Warning- this post contains content that might trigger some readers)

  Date of performance: Sept 2023
  Libretto: Brecht
  Score: Weill
  Director: Ivo van Hove
  Musical Direction/Conductor: Markus Stenz
  Dramaturgy: Koen Tachelet
  Video: Tal Yarden
  
  This opera by an all-male creative team did nothing to refresh gendered tropes that exist in traditional works. While it supposedly shines a mirror to contemporary society, it does nothing to question the ways in which women and gender diverse people have been traditionally cast as the property of men; in fact it works very much to reinforce those tropes. The casting included a number of POC, including Lauren Michelle in the lead role of Jenny, which was a coup, and in this regard the company’s diversity cred was on show. But that felt a little like box-ticking, when the video material only succeeded in fulfilling racist and sexist stereotypes through its proximity to porn-lite; close ups of sex workers (black and white) provocatively acting out (to their male clients); the audience was invited in, but only if they were, or could imagine being men, because I am here to tell you no sex worker has never/would ever behave towards me in that way.

  Moreover the close-up video might have been used to balance such superficial stereotyping, to register the deeper internal realities of these complex characters. To me this would have been a much more interesting use of video - however such ‘internal’ moments were exclusively reserved for the lead character Jimmy, who carries the existential thread of the plot and who, unsurprisingly for a work written by two men in the 1920-30s, is the man around which all the action revolves. The Director came close to portraying his leading female characters with similar nuance when he lingered on Evelyn Herlitzius (Widow Begbick) for a long close up; the camera at times flirted in close up with Jenny too, but such close ups on her were preoccupied with presenting a sexualised image. The director might have drawn us into a deeper dialogue with Jenny’s private, inner world through a more neutral (less voyeuristic) use of the camera and more nuanced directorial guidance of Michelle’s performance.
  
  The use of video too often felt gimmicky- as though the director had his newest party trick on show. The split focus of trying to read surtitles, watch the action on stage, keep track of the handheld, fast panning video on the screen, watch the orchestra and conductor in the pit, and listen to the music was just sensory overload- with way too much visual focus and busy-ness for my taste. I liked the increased intimacy the camera afforded but felt it could have been used much more sparingly and judiciously to amplify the inner worlds of characters (as with Thomalla’s Dark Spring or Foccroulle ’s Cassandra), rather than create more chaos, which seemed to be the director’s intention all too often.
  
  The real breakdown in my engagement with the directorial approach towards the video (and the whole show) occurred in the second half, when we were shown a young woman (presumably a sex worker) stripping off her clothes via the big screen. Her strip tease to full nudity is accompanied by loud cheers from the male singers on stage who are watching. Once she has stripped we are given free reign to observe her naked body for a while, as though the director wants us to enter into the eyes of the men who are hoping to sample her wares. At this point the male gaze so endemic to traditional opera asserted itself with force. It is as if the director had forgotten the thousands of women in the ‘room’; we in the audience are literally being presented the work through a 100% male gaze. Then the whole sequence went to the next level when the director chose to use green screen to present the young men on stage thrusting at a virtual set of buttocks, pants down and shirts off, one after the other, while the young woman (presumably somewhere backstage in front of a camera) leant forwards, breasts hanging, buttocks raised, to mime being fucked from behind. This sequence went on for an entire song, through at least 5 minutes and probably about 10 men, and I found it disturbing. Not due to the use of nudity or the depiction of sexual contact but due to its intense, resolute and unapologetic objectification of the young woman, who was the only one to be shown fully naked, who looked bored and miserable, and reminded me of the many such women one sees in porn videos. It was awful. Made worse and taken to a triggering level when the men united in cheering each other on towards the end of the scene, collectively looking on as one of their number virtually fucked the bent-over woman. I don’t care if it wasn’t real; big deal that it used green screen to show sex in a live production; it still felt like an unnecessary violation that reinforced the long list of problematic gendered tropes in traditional opera in a symbolic sense. It wasn’t novel; in fact it wasn’t clever at all. It was completely gratuitous and showed conservative sexist patriarchal values in full swing. So much for revolutionary new opera.
  
  If this production really wanted to question contemporary society (as it claims to wish to do), I would suggest rather than stereo-typecasting of female and femme-male ‘whores’ (in the classic sense of the word) and forcing the audience to endure grossly overblown, close up, and long durational sex with a female nude as passive receiver – it might reverse the roles and use green screen to instead show the men full frontal, naked with dick and balls dangling, taking it up the arse with the woman in control, fully clothed and wielding a strap on. Flip the script please. That would have better suited my - and no doubt the other women and queer people in the room’s - taste more.
  
  A final word about the music. It was great. Respect to the conductor. The orchestra was tight and subtle, and the final number worked like a juggernaut, meandering through tempi, driven by the bass section and percussion with a force that was so compelling I found my eyes riveted to their performance. The young men playing their basses were clearly enjoying themselves immensely, putting their whole bodies into it, resembling a rock band more than a pit orchestra at the opera. Watching them reminded me why I love music and why I love watching others playing it and playing it with others, including men. There is no doubt that watching the masculine alive in men is a beautiful thing, but does articulating this power have to come at the expense of others? I think we should be aiming to achieve works that feel OK for everyone to be a part of. If this production had shown women also in their power, women rocking out on stage, beautiful and in control and powerful in their destinies (qualities that Brecht has actually written into his character Jenny), happy and strong- even if there had been one such moment, I would have felt better about it. Instead, the women and gender diverse people were afraid, defensive, wheedling, small, cowering, subjugated, conniving, at best, simply cool – but always acting out in relation to the men they were orbiting.

  While we might expect nothing more from a work premiered in 1930, I do expect more from a Director making work for the stage in 2023. Next time, at the very least, make her a woman.