Those who mutter about opera being too serious, too heavy, should hie themselves to Union Avenue Opera’s current offering Albert Herring, good lighthearted stuff in the heat of mid-July.
Victorian morals cross swords with a mamma’s boy in the tale of a shy grocer. Albert is named King of the May after none of the young women in the English town of Loxford are felt to be of high enough character to receive this impressive honor. It’s the idea of the town’s reigning dowager, Lady Billows, a character out of Downton Abbey with an element of Lady Catherine de Bourgh from Pride and Prejudice. Albert lives completely under the heavy thumb of his widowed mum whose store it is, and can’t imagine kicking over the traces.
The superb Christine Brewer sings Lady Billows, and she alone is reason enough to see the show. The voice is fabulous, but she’s also having a whale of a good time with the role, her acting a delight. Albert is David Walton, so shy at first that we hear little from him, but once he opens up, sounds great. His Albert is not a teenaged boy, but an adult, dutiful and deeply constrained.
Albert’s mum (Janara Kellerman) is thrilled with the honor and the cash prize with it, but Albert is almost literally struck dumb. His friend Sid (Nathaniel Buttram) and Sid’s girlfriend Nancy (Holly Janz) – and please note this preceded Mr. Vicious and his paramour Nancy by three decades – are setting up the celebratory luncheon after Albert’s coronation and Sid slips some rum into Albert’s lemonade glass. Uh-huh. Somehow, all this manages to avoid slapstick, even in the lemonade’s repercussions.
Visually, too, it’s great fun, with a charming set from Kyra Bishop and Teresa Doggett’s costumes. Additionally, the orchestra, led by Scott Schoonover, the company’s artistic director, sounds delicious and is perfectly balanced with the unamplified voices, no drowning out at all. Tom Ocel did the stage direction.
Albert Herring
through July 15
Union Avenue Opera Company
733 Union Boulevard
314-361-2881