Ringing in the New Year With Booze, Babes and Bats

Even before the curtain went up, the Boston Conservatory's "Die Fledermaus," at the Emerson Majestic, offered a visual treat. Because of the lighting in the orchestra pit, conductor Ronald Feldman's shadow covered the entire right wall of the theater. As the overture progressed, one sensed with delight the contrast between the unintentionally sinister apparition and the music's light waltzes.

After enjoying a fine opening from especially impressive celli, the audience was temporarily blinded by the bright, glassy, modern set, and seemed surprised by the English-language production. It's usually a bad idea to translate German libretti. It's also risky to tamper with the original setting of a staged work of art. Why, then, did this "Fledermaus" come off so well? Because it was damn funny.

The latest version of Johann Strauss' invincible operetta replaces Old Vienna with New York, and sets the story on the final day of Prohibition. Besides confirming the characters in their schnapps and vodka guzzling, this innovation allows for wittiness of reference: we got to see flappers onstage during the longer instrumental passages, and hear mention of Greta Garbo, Dillinger and Einstein. The evening's comedy embraced everything from metahumor and operatic in-jokes to puns, sight-gags and slapstick, and the freshness of the jokes kept the story lively through a potentially interminable second act.

The cast wasn't quite as charming as Strauss' many waltz themes, but, then again, what is? Jennifer Sgroe, as Adele, was more versatile than Margot McLaughlin's Rosalinda; both, however, sang beautifully, and displayed a fine comic gift (but is this rare?) for exposing the stupidity and infidelity of men. John Middleton and Matt Greene were admirable as minor characters, the lawyer Blind and the infinitely sarcastic Frosch. Charles Baad had several great moments as the title character, the "Bat" who was out to settle an old debt of humiliation. Kristina Martin, who sang the role of the impostor Prince Orlovsky, the Bat's partner in crime, unfortunately wasn't quite on par with the others.

Shannon Glynn's Eisenstein was hilarious, but his upper register was too pinched. As the police chief Frank, Jim Jordon was convincingly clueless, and had the appealing likeness of a Don Martin character in MAD Magazine.

Best of all, though, vocally and comedically, was John Bernard as Alfredo, a character whose very name suggests the world of opera he was to lambaste. Bernard seemed for all the world to be reprising Kevin Kline's role in A Fish Called Wanda, only with a better grasp of Italian. His onstage, offstage, and backstage impromptu arias paid tribute to "La Traviata," "Tosca," "Turandot," "L'Elisir d'Amore," "Der Rosenkavalier, "Aida," and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." As Rosalinda's lover, his goodbye kiss at the end of act one, when he was being falsely arrested as Eisenstein, was perfect--a kind of Big Red commercial in triple time.

Part of the humor of the operetta has to do with the absurdity of so many of its situations, for instance, when "Orlovsky" claims, "Vee Russians have a motto: chacun a son gout" and sings an aria about it, or when Eisenstein sneaks off to the party by telling his wife (who thinks he's going to jail) that "the tuxedo is the requisite emblem of innocence." But a lot of it is in the English translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin, which one has to admit can be at times clunky ("transgressors taste my fury" or "your face I have to see"--who talks like that?), but at others is suave and adorable.

It is impossible to describe how well the text "O goodness me/ what misery/ how dreadful a calamity!" complemented its crazy waltz, while the singers onstage danced what was ostensibly the pachanga. Or the success of the Bat's corny "He is the goose to be cooked...watch while I baste." Even better was the faux-Gallic banter between Eisenstein and Frank, neither of whom spoke French: "affaire?" ... "Camembert!"; "du jour?" ... "I' amour!"

The integration of choreography into Act II was effective mainly because the female dancers were so athletic and energetic. The chorus had its best moment during the addictive "Du und du" waltz, which in the "Blue Danube" echelon of ubiquity and whistlability.

The finale in the police department was silly, and so very "Mayberry." Eisenstein and Rosalinda had an unmistakably Ted-and-Peg Bundy exchange on their way to making up. If "Die Fledermaus" has a moral at all, it's that any reconciliation is possible if both parties are sufficiently drunk. Since only Falke emerges from the third act sober, we have to conclude that, in life, the grudge-bearers have less fun.

This operetta has been a crowd-pleaser ever since its 1874 debut, when it must have been a shocker. And this production, even to judge by the number of people humming in the Symphony T stop after the show, took a great thing and made it even better.