Oberlin

Children cutting off a dead witch's head? Holding out their fists to the audience as their parents kneel in prayer, a blatant eschewal of religious themes? This was no kids' story. No, Oberlin Opera Theater's production of Engelbert Humperdinck's opera Hänsel und Gretel on November 8 in Hall Auditorium was a dark interpretation spearheaded by director Jonathon Field. It was an overwhelming success.

As soon as the curtain rose, grimness faced the audience, the set, designed by Christopher McCollum, emphasizing stark diagonal lines, drab browns, and a general raggedness. The walls of the protagonists' house were all tilted, and the trees outside were a messy collection of brown sticks. Likewise the straw in the house's brooms--the father character is a broom-maker--was rough and unkempt, and the table cloth was tattered, fraying at the sides. Punctuating the intensity on stage was an axe hanging on the back wall.

Violence was the name of the game in the acting. The siblings Hänsel and Gretel (Nicole Levesque and Emily Hopkins, respectively, on Friday night) rough-housed constantly in the beginning--Gretel coming out on top more often than not. But the mood sobered when the Mother (Hannah Hagerty), arrived home, put her bag on the floor, and promptly smacked the two children upside the head. By turns angry, stressed, miserable, and, for a short, wonderful time, joyful, when the Father (Michael Davis) brought home unexpected food, Hagerty powerfully captured the impact of poverty. Davis, too, was impressive toeing the line between drunk, playful "tavern-cavalier" behavior and frightening abusiveness.

The music, under the baton of Raphael Jiménez, was superb. Levesque, Hopkins, Hagerty, and Davis, as well as Rebecca Achtenberg and Victoria Davis as the smaller roles of the Dew Fairy and the Sandman, respectively, showcased beautiful voices with rich tone and impressive German diction. Particularly gorgeous was the duet between Levesque and Hopkins in the serene "Abendsegen," the evening prayer before they fall asleep together in the forest.

Holistically and in solos, the orchestra was excellent. Moreover, there was a palpable connection among the entire ensemble, the singers and the orchestra together building the music's drama as one. Interestingly, the aesthetics of the production didn't match up with the score, which was Romantic but far more often brave or domestic in tone rather than dark.

There was no doubt, however, who the star of the performance was: from the moment when she first snuck up on Hänsel and Gretel to her inevitable demise in the oven, Oberlin alum Karen Jesse was stunning in the role of the Witch. She always owned the stage, whether singing enticingly of cakes and marzipan, gesturing alluringly toward her gingerbread house, attempting to charm a conflicted, hungry Hänsel, or shrieking with rhythmic laughter. 

The Witch's costume and the set for her house were both perfect contrasts to the production's otherwise gloomy aesthetic. While in general costumes were wonderfully raggedy, an example being Hänsel's ripped corduroy shorts, the Witch's was costume designer Chris Flaharty's shining moment. Jesse sported clown face paint, a bowler hat with feathers, and a dress sewn together from swaths of different fabrics--perhaps from the clothes of previous children she had captured. Against the brown setting of the woods, her house sported purples, greens, reds, and blues and was adorned with candy canes, pin-wheels, and faces sticking out of the walls, a very creepy Candy Land.

The production was enthralling, but a few weak points stuck out. While the use of projection to depict a rising moon after Hänsel and Gretel had fallen asleep was clever and effective, the moon's bursting apart--with poor animation, to boot--was rather lame and overly symbolic. Also, while some might call the scene in which angel children emerge from the woods and run around the sleeping siblings cute, a better word might be tacky, especially in the context of this extremely original production.

Most disappointing was the moment when Hänsel and Gretel push the evil witch into her own oven, vanquishing her--a moment of glory, or at least satisfaction, no? The definite climax of the narrative, it was a bit of a dud. More energy seemed to be reserved for the explosion of the oven shortly thereafter, indeed a surprising spike in the drama but a fleeting and slightly cheap one in the course of the slope down denouement. Of course, it is rare for an opera to nail narrative, so a high standard in that department may be asking a bit much, but this was a particularly unsatisfying moment in an otherwise riveting evening.