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Stephanie Berry, Davone Tines, Frank Senior, and
Samantha Howard in The Gospel at Colonus.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes |
Musical styles are mixed to maximum emotional effect in unusual productions in one new outdoor venue in Manhattan and at the 50th anniversary season of a long-established festival in upstate New York. Lee Breur and Bob Telson’s The Gospel at Colonus returns in a soul-stirring staging in the Amp at Little Island, affording spectacular views of the Hudson River as a galvanizing cast retells the Oedipus myth with passion and fervor. Meanwhile in Cooperstown, New York, the Glimmerglass Festival celebrates its golden anniversary with a moving world premiere (The House on Mango Street) and a pair of innovative, imaginative restagings of two modernist classics from Broadway and the opera repertory (Sunday in the Park with George, The Rake’s Progress). The Gospel at Colonus has an unusual production history. After opening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1983 and winning an Obie Award, the adaption of Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus at Colonus set in an African-American Pentecostal church service was performed to acclaim in Washington, DC, Philadelphia and Atlanta and was filmed for PBS. An unlikely Broadway transfer in 1988 starring Morgan Freeman ran for only 61 performances and received only one Tony nomination (for Breuer’s book).
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Kim Burrell (center) and company in
The Gospel at Colonus.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes |
Breur's original production was on a grand scale with an enormous choir. Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s new staging is more intimate with David Zinn’s minimal set suggesting sylvan glades and ancient ritual environments. The role of Oedipus, seeking sanctuary and shelter just before his death after a tragedy-strewn reign as king of Thebes, was originally taken by the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. (This casting echoed Oedipus’ horrific self-blinding after discovering he had unknowingly killed his father and slept with his mother.) Here his lines and solos are divided between an intense Stephanie Berry who also serves as narrator and preacher of the service, and operatic bass-baritone Davone Tines and jazz singer Frank Senior.
