Opus
Opus By Michael Hollinger
Directed by Mark Routhier
Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Orlando, FL</strong>
We associate office politics with big corporations and hand-to-hand combat with marriages. But take the worst of both worlds, and we find ourselves in the middle of The Lazzara Quartet. These 4 string players struggle with artistic and financial direction, fight schoolyard battles with no 3rd grade teacher to moderate, and suffer painful personal attacks with no opportunity for make-up sex. We meet them as they teeter on the brink of success while seeking a replacement player for the unstable and recently fired Dorian (T. Robert Pigott). He was lover to bossy Elliot (David Karl Lee), but this sort of intergroup romance is always a bad idea. Dorian saw music no one else could, and perhaps his genius was worth his undependability, but replacement Grace (Meagan English) just might be his equal, and you won’t have to worry about her missing a dose of Lithium. Calm and collected Alan (C. S. Lee) books the group into the White House and a full 25 minutes of fame, but they have one week to rehearse and their 4th member Carl (Nowicki), has a touch of cancer bugging him. This should be one impressive concert, at least backstage.
“Opus” appeared in last year’ PlayFest as a workshop, and while this version lack major script changes, it feels tighter and slicker. The cast packs some real star power, with the PlayFest special Guest C. S. Lee in the lead role as a skeptical and detached musician, fed up with his quartet fellows and wishing they could leave their personal problems outside. Pigott bubbles along, always showing the bright, positive face of manic depression, but you’ll wonder what he saw in David Lee’s prissy and bossy Elliot. Grace and Alan make for a more believable chemistry, even as the specter of another inter band romance haunts the quartet. Nowicki’s wild hair and flustered parent persona gives him the look and feel of a prophet wandering the desert, seeking to redeem the rest of the cast from everything that leads to apostasy from gospels of Bartok and Beethoven.
There’s a smooth soundtrack of Lazzara strings supporting the cast as they constantly prodding each other about minor errors in playing. Director Routhier assures me those errors are real, but they are so minor it takes a much better ear than mine to hear them. Fortunately, this cast MAKES me believe I can, and that’s more than enough. “Opus” immerses you in highest levels of musicianship, but keeps the problems right down here with us mortals. It’s theater at its finest.
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