Mozart Goes Hollywood in Adaptation Of His Comic Opera 'Cosi Fan Tutte'

Nick Olcott thinks Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" is the perfect opera. "It's perfectly constructed, perfectly balanced," says the director-writer. "Just clear and clean and very funny."

Even so, Olcott dared to tinker with perfection in his 2003 English-language adaptation of the comic opera, "Cosi Fan Tutte Goes Hollywood." La-La Land in 1929 is the setting for his re-imagining of librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte's tale of women tricked into betraying their fiances. The In Series production will run at Source Sept. 12-26, in partial rep with the company's Jazz Age piece "From U Street to the Cotton Club."

Mozart's opera caused a scandal in its day, Olcott says, and is often perceived as misogynistic for its portrayal of women as innately fickle. "I think of it much more in the way Mozart took it, which is women can't be trusted because they're human, and no humans can be trusted," he says.

"In most of his operas, Mozart is preaching the gospel of forgiveness," Olcott continues. "Even someone like the Count in '[The Marriage of] Figaro,' who is a nasty guy -- I mean he's cheating on his wife and harassing the servants -- but even he is perfectable if he admits his errors and is forgiven them."

In Series Artistic Director Carla Hübner describes Olcott's version of "Cosi" -- one of seven adaptations she has commissioned of Mozart's late masterpieces -- as a "pocket opera." Her company has always straddled categories and performed in small spaces on a shoestring budget.

"You can do opera in a small space, with few resources, because the combination of the music and the story can and should have enough of an immediate impact that you don't need the big trappings," she explains. As for doing opera in the language your audience speaks rather than the tongue it was written in, that may not be ideal, but it has its benefits, Hübner says. "You adapt to your circumstances, and sometimes you discover something special."

Olcott had no misgivings about translating and adapting "Cosi" to his Hollywood vision. "I'm a great believer in trying to demystify opera . . . to understand it's just another form of musical comedy." (Details at http://www.inseries.org.)

'Catonsville Nine'

The University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center is about to experience a Vietnam War-era flashback in the form of Daniel Berrigan's play, "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine."

A kind of free-verse docudrama based on a court transcript, the play recounts the trial and conviction of a group of Catholic antiwar activists, including Berrigan and his late brother, Philip, both Catholic priests, who burned Selective Service records at a Maryland government office in 1968. The Catonsville Nine were convicted of destruction of government property and sentenced to three years in prison. Daniel Berrigan went into hiding, then later turned himself in.

"The Trial of the Catonsville Nine" premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1971 and briefly ran on Broadway, both times directed by the Mark Taper's Gordon Davidson, who also did a 1972 film version.

The Actors' Gang, a Los Angeles theater troupe founded in part by Tim Robbins, will perform the piece Sept. 17 and 18. There will be related panel discussions and a documentary, "Investigation of a Flame," all on the subject of peaceful protest. (Details at http://claricesmithcenter.umd.edu/2009.)

Actors' Gang company member Jon Kellam directed the current revival, using a blend of direct address to the audience and stylized stage movement inspired by commedia dell'arte, among other styles. "It looks pretty. It is also a little cinematic, the way I approached it," says Kellam, noting he borrowed ideas from the film version, too.

At the 1968 trial, the judge allowed the defendants to explain their motives at length. Several spoke of having worked with the poor in Latin America, where they saw suffering and even death caused by American military and corporate influence as well as corrupt local governments.

"It's about Americans telling the truth about what we do," maintains Kellam, who says he grew up among social activists in Chicago's Hyde Park area. "It's not about armchair liberals. It's about people who were on the front seeing firsthand."

In conjunction with the play, a panel discussion will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 18, focusing on the University of Maryland during the Vietnam War. One participant, Leonard Taylor, professor emeritus of engineering, was among the faculty who tried to keep the peace in the spring of 1970, when students protested the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. Most of the students, he says, were "just good kids. They talked to the National Guard. They were friendly. There was no violence of any sort" among the vast majority. "The grace of the whole thing [was] the students' behavior. . . . Meanwhile, the administration was completely buffaloed by this and not knowing what to do."

Follow Spot

-- Tonya Pinkins, a Tony nominee for "Caroline, or Change" and a winner for "Jelly's Last Jam," will headline "Black Pearl Sings!" at Ford's Theatre. The Frank Higgins play, opening Sept. 25, is about a musicologist who discovers an imprisoned Texas woman whose memory contains dozens of historic and uncatalogued African American songs. Ed Gero will play Scrooge in Ford's new production of "A Christmas Carol," opening Nov. 23. Married performers Christopher Kale Jones (Frankie Valli in the first national tour of "Jersey Boys") and Jenna Coker-Jones will star in "Little Shop of Horrors" at Ford's, opening March 12.

-- Keegan Theatre has announced it will assume full-time residency at Church Street Theater this fall. The company will no longer divide its time between Church Street and Arlington's Theatre on the Run. Its new season will feature "Of Mice and Men" (Nov. 5-29), based on John Steinbeck's Depression-era novel. The show will begin life in Ireland as the production Keegan does on its annual tour of that country. Kerry Waters Lucas will direct. Other offerings will include the musical "Rent" (Dec. 17 to Jan. 17); "Girl From Gdansk," the world premiere of a roiling family saga by Liam Heylin (Feb. 4 to March 7); "Dancing at Lughnasa," Brian Friel's Tony-winning drama about five sisters in 1930s Ireland (March 18 to April 18); "The Graduate" (April 29 to May 23), Terry Johnson's stage adaptation of the 1967 film; "A Man of No Importance" (June 10 to July 11), based on the 1994 film, about a Dublin bus conductor obsessed with Oscar Wilde, with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and book by Terrence McNally; and "Noises Off" (July 22 to Aug. 22).