On the surface, their resources are frugal and even humble. The women wear black slips, combat boots, and dirty fur coats. The man wore a gray suit with a modest wide necktie. The primary stage element is a large rectangular platform that can be suspended at various angles from cables attached to the corners.
The no-frills setting is flanked by artists, whose effects are amplified by speakers and live video projections. Right on stage, visual his artist Blake Haberman, mostly with a blackboard in hand, captivated the audience with line drawings projected onto the scrim in real time. He hinted at the enormity of Sarastro’s Temple of Wisdom in his pile of leather-bound books. Foley artist Ruth Sullivan parked on stage leaving behind a curiosity cabinet that he ingeniously used to add sound effects to the stage action.
“Die Zauberflöte” is, at least in part, an allegory of what humans are capable of, what humans can achieve when they look within themselves. McBurney’s apparent delight in the everyday feats of the artists, singers, and actors (who followed Papageno waving the paper bird) spread across the show expands on ideas already present in the work itself. His fidelity to the spirit of the show softened the occasional drop-off, such as when he spliced dialogue into Papageno’s entrance aria.
McBurney also made some rethinks. Specifically, it rethought around the opera’s battle of the sexes, in which an enlightened man shakes his head at the stupidity and frivolity of women. In Mozart’s and Schikaneder’s operas, women lurk in the dark, rugged suburbs beyond the gates of Sarastro’s gleaming orderly sanctuary. Directors often accept this dichotomy as a truism of their work. Audiences laugh at jokes written at the expense of women.
One of McBurney’s directing achievements is breaking this dichotomy by caricaturing male self-satisfaction—although the book’s misogynistic quips don’t elicit an overt laugh— -. The three women (Alexandria Shiner, Olivia Vogt and Tamara Mumford), with their sensual harmonies and hilarious irresponsibility, had Tamino’s jersey off and smelled deeply naughty and great fun. The temple of Sarastro had unflattering ceiling tube lighting and was inhabited by bloodless corporate sills. “The Speaker,” Tamino’s guide through opera’s Masonic personality test, morphs into a self-satisfied and funnyly formal statement of fact (Harold Wilson).
