In the end there is still hope. A baby or a newborn rides through the sea on a narwhal, chuckling happily – narwhals are shy, almost mythical animals because they have long tusks, like creatures from a fairy tale. So the baby, who is a rubber doll and whose chuckle comes off the production line, could ride towards a future on this animal, even if the four hours before it did not necessarily look as if this future could be particularly happy. Because basically this performance of the Nature Theater of Oklahoma is a huge and at the same time very friendly doom tableau.
The production is called “Burt Turrido. An Opera”, and the subtitle should be taken seriously – even if the performance is not an opera in the narrower sense, phenomenologically, it is. The Nature Theater of Oklahoma has existed under this name since 2004, but Kelly Copper and Pavol Liška began working together in New York in 1996. They already became legendary in 2006 with their production “No Dice”, based on the transcription of almost endless phone calls, a form of production that they repeated a few times over the years. After that, practically all European festival organizers stood in line. Which in the end was and is necessary, because the troupe could hardly make a living from the performances in New York.
The instrumental soundtrack has a mind-expanding effect after four hours of performance
Now “Burt Turrido” came out a few weeks ago at the festival in Groningen, was then shown at the Wiener Festwochen and now at the Zurich Theaterspektakel. Festival tours like this are normal for the troupe, even if they have since explored other formats, made radio plays or made films – “Die Kinder der Toten”, based on Elfriede Jelinek’s novel of the same name, was shown at the Berlinale in 2019.
Basically, in terms of structure, “Burt Turrido” is a return to the company’s roots, more consistently built than ever before. For four hours, five people screened off text. About three sentences are spoken during this time, otherwise it is sung. Mostly a kind of spoken chant, but it can also have ariose moments, especially when it is Kadence Neill’s turn, a radiant, completely unmoved appearance who, like everyone here, goes along with every nonsense with great seriousness. Robert M. Johanson has put together a continuous instrumental soundtrack from a lot of country music, but also piano ballads, pop and rock, which in itself already has a mind-changing effect in the duration of the performance, in connection with the singing and the permanently wobbling and dancing movements of the People on stage become completely intoxicating. So just opera. With cowboys.
Basically, “Burt Turrido” is an absolutely compelling country opera. About three sentences are spoken in four hours of performance, otherwise there is singing.
(Photo: Jessica Schäfer)
The story itself actually bears traits of the baroque opera, where supernatural beings still have a decisive dramaturgical function. Here there are various ghosts who appear as Huibuh ghosts, including Emily (Neill), who lives immortally in the sea where she once drowned. Sometimes she is accompanied by two other ghosts, then one thinks of the three Rhine daughters, but above all she has a longing for redemption and believes that she will find it in the boat refugee Burt Turrido (Gabel Eiben), who is supposed to die with her. That’s all opera, Wagner, redemption in death and condemnation to the sea.
It’s just stupid that Turrido gets to an island that was once full of ice and snow, then came climate change, it became a banana island, climate refugees came, everyone killed everyone, what remained were Anne Gridley and Robert M. Johanson, who now, because yes no one else is there, playing queen and king and keeping a single slave, played by Bence Mezei, because someone has to do the dirty work. The result is a polygonal love tragedy against the background of the total devastation of the country, painted rags as a background (theater goes everywhere and doesn’t need much!) Tell of a devastated island and a littered beach, baroque wave crests mark the sea. The whole range of friendly narrated, meandering stories, whose lyrics, invented by Copper and Liška, are at odds with the music, is ultimately an imaginative theatrical trick. Because basically “Burt Turrido” is an absolutely compelling country opera from the end of our world, which man himself destroyed.