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La Didone meets Planet of the Vampires
The Wooster Group’s Elizabeth LeCompte has a vision
La Didone (Photo: Delphine Coterel)
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To have the foresight to imagine a successful collision between two unlikely worlds like the Metropolitan Opera and Ed Wood is a gift. To pull it off and create something fresh, surprising and, above all else, entertaining, is genius. Elizabeth LeCompte, director of veteran theater troupe The Wooster Group, has achieved just that with La Didone.
“I wanted very badly to look at the earth from space, and this is the only way I could do it,” LeCompte says of her inspiration for pairing the classic opera La Didone with the 1965 sci-fi B-movie Planet of the Vampires. “I wanted to put them out in space looking back. I didn’t foresee being able to do that literally in my lifetime.” The production opens with a prologue condensing the Trojan War into a brief voiceover when the show begins with Aeneas’s arrival in Dido’s Carthage, at which point classic and camp collide.
La Didone’s ability to catch even the most jaded audience member off guard is part of its appeal. “I look forward to the moment when a zombie tells the crew their fate,” says LeCompte. “But I also enjoy the moment right before the piece starts when the audience is waiting and things start to happen on the stage.” A band comprised of an electric guitar and accordion, among other instruments rarely utilized for classical music, play Francesco Cavalli’s 1641 score while men in silver space suits deal with crashed spaceships and hostile aliens on the surface of a foreboding planet. When two spaceships on a doomed mission crash, only one of the crews survive. However, they must contend with the reanimation of their dead comrades. Bits of the original movie are blended in via monitor while reenactments fill the missing scenes.
The story of Dido and Aeneas plays out simultaneously on a split stage next door. The script for both stories plays overhead, creating an environment at once stimulating and utterly confusing. Hai-Ting Chinn’s Dido is particularly haunting as she effortlessly delivers a sophisticated, heartfelt performance, adding a somber, nostalgic note to the madness unfolding onstage.
“It’s (La Didone), as close in approximation to what the inside of my head feels like that I can get,” says LeCompte. “This piece does feel more gentle and sad.” That may speak to the wild enthusiasm for the production so far. In a sense, it offers hope to the audience in the midst of a cast of doomed players.