Last Saturday night, I was at the Opera House for the west coast premiere of The Handmaid's Tale, with music by Poul Ruders & libretto by Paul Bentley based, of course, on Margaret Atwood's famous novel. I was tired when I went in (these things do affect our perceptions; the physical weighs us down, which is one of the themes of the Handmaid's Tale), I was skeptical for several reasons of what I was about to see, but I found myself overpowered by a work I'm still processing several days later.
I don't need to go into why I was tired, but I will broadly sketch my skepticism. The idea felt maybe a bit too obvious, even hackneyed, given the political situation in the United States (the mere fact that anyone, let alone a substantial minority, could still think of voting for Trump tells you everything you need to know about how morally & intellectually & spiritually bankrupt this country is). And the way this material is usually described struck me as self-indulgent: women as perpetual victims, men as oppressors. It's well known that over half the white women who voted in 2016 voted for Trump, & most men I know (including myself, of course) are far from profiting from the current gendered set-up. We've all seen those memes that appeared post-Dobbs about how the wrath of women had been aroused, but all I can think when I see them is Where have they been for the past 45 years? Nothing, & I mean nothing, that has happened has been a surprise. The reactionaries have been announcing for decades to cheering crowds (which included many women, of course) that they were going to pack the courts & overturn Roe v Wade, which is exactly what they did. When Trump was elected, owing to the anti-democratic Electoral College, there was grand talk about "the Resistance", a word which was also highlighted in the publicity for this opera. I dislike the self-glorifying term; it makes it sound as if we're all wearing berets & blowing up supply trains under cover of darkness. Opposing Trump mostly calls for the same boring grind as any other political work, including talking to – &, more to the point, listening to – people who are, in the delicate & lovely euphemism of political writers, "low information".
I just deleted several lines there, because, you know, people care about my political opinions as little as I care about theirs & let's get to the opera. But, for this opera in particular, the political situation is relevant, & our self-deceptions & assumptions are relevant. This opera knows this, & no matter what you go in thinking – & this is the mark of a great political opera, like The Death of Klinghoffer – you will come out a bit shaken in your certainties.
I read Atwood's novel around the time it was published, 1985, & found it strong & convincing – Atwood, of course, is too clear-sighted & complex a writer to produce a simple tale of victimization, & I'm happy to say the adaptation respects that. There is ambiguity & complicity all over in the action & characterization. I did not re-read the novel before the opera (lack of time, mostly) but it came back to me as I watched. The action, which is complicated & not presented in a linear manner, can be followed even without having read the book. The story told in the novel itself is fragmentary, a journal kept irregularly by someone whose fate we never learn, but in the opera the story, until the end, seems less fragmentary than fractured: the pieces are there, just not in chronological order.
Both narrative & music have a lot to accomplish here, & mostly they both succeed brilliantly, though at times I did wish for the expansion possible in a novel – in particular, I wanted to hear more from & about Serena Joy, the wife of the Commander, & Aunt Lydia, the woman in charge of training the handmaidens in their beliefs & duties. They are true believers in Gilead (though I started to wonder about Serena Joy); what are they seeing in it or hoping for from it? But compression & omission are required to convey everything that needs to be conveyed: the violent founding & strictures of the Republic of Gilead, the sporadic concern & opposition before & during the founding, the environmental depredations that make fertility & healthy infants such prized commodities, what life is like under Gilead, & the life (both before & after Gilead) & the tentative moves towards liberation of Offred (the titular Handmaid; her Commander is named Fred, as she is now Of Fred, but also, of course there's the pun on Offered).
The spare, very brightly lit set (designed by Chloe Lamford) & the color-coded costumes (designed by Christina Cunninham) tell a clear story about the relentless surveillance & regimentation of Gilead, & its Spartan lack of softness or luxury, or any kind of sensuality or romance. The time is moved forward a bit from the novel, so it's now happening a few years from our present time (though the surprising amount of cigarette smoking made me think it was still set a few years after 1985). The scenes of life in Gilead are sharply drawn, full of confusion, suspicion, & disappointment. So why would anyone think such a place was a good idea? The music conveys that very well: whenever there's a hymn or prayer or some sort of religious ceremony, the music takes on a gentleness, a harmonious beauty, an ascendance, that is not found elsewhere in the score (in which even Amazing Grace comes across in frantic, fractured distortions). This quality is subtly done; these moments don't jump out from the score, but they do mark a difference in tone from the violent percussion of Gilead's enforcers & the agonizingly high tessiture of the corralled handmaidens. In those early scenes of the handmaidens especially, I was very reliant on the surtitles.
Every aspect of this production is strong: the agile conducting by Karen Kamensek, the sensitive direction by John Fulljames, &, especially, the powerhouse cast: just to mention some of the major roles, Sarah Cambidge as a commanding Aunt Lydia; Lindsay Ammann as the bitter wife, Serena Joy; John Relyea as the opaque Commander; Katrina Galka as Janine/Ofwarren, a friend & ally of Offred; Brenton Ryan as an ambiguous servant of, or enemy of, the Commander & Serena Joy; &, in particular, Irene Roberts as Offred. I realize it's part of the narrative strategy that Offred is not a particularly interesting character: she is a fairly average person, with average interests & concerns, trying to make sense of a horrible situation she is aught up in. Roberts makes her vivid & convincing.
Do you need a spoiler alert if the key plot revelation to be discussed is that there is nothing to reveal? The opera ends, as did the novel, with an abrupt disappearance from the historical record. We do not learn Offred's ultimate fate: freedom, capture, the Colonies? Life, death, imprisonment? Does she reunite with the daughter who was taken from her? The final notes ring out, but the narrative hangs suspended. The point, of course, is that we can try to write the ending for our own time, as best we may, insofar as we can.
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