“IN HOPE”. These are the last words of San Francisco Opera’s The Handmaid’s Tale by Poul Ruders, to a libretto by Paul Bentley based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel. Almost all characters, dressed in scarlet red, stand downstage while six hold up the letters to spell these two words. After an account of a devastating future world, c. 2030 in the Republic of Gilead, in which force brutally dehumanizes women, the production leaves us with a drop of possibility. Does it work?
After a two-year, Covid-generated delay the production is directed by John Fulljames. It never stops moving. In Chloe Lamford’s set, the stage seethes with activity that tells the story of a totalitarian take-over, indicated by a series of abductions of women and children by nameless government officials, forced insemination, visibly violent childbirths and dispersal of babies. As doors and walls rise and fall, disobedient handmaid corpses hang suspended overhead, ultrasounds of babies in utero are flashed on screen behind a video of punishable clandestine activities. We watch what prevails in countless families around the world. Under the insidious stare of Eye, the spy center à la Orwell, multiple characters enact scenes simultaneously, madly fracturing our attention. Multiple points of view are de rigueur, to accent a world in which we submit to enslavement. The rules of this theocracy engulf everyone, creating the world as a warehouse of destruction. Offred, Ofglen, Ofwarren: women serve as baby-machines; they must not read or write; they may own nothing. Lines of Christian prayer are interspersed with Gilead doctrines. Unless we stop, unless we resist, will this be the next stop on the train of Western Civilization? Can we rise and resist?
Poul Ruders’ score, managed with rigour by Karen Kamensek, conveys its throbbing restlessness in fragments of different musical modes. This punctures any possible comfort in listening. A cross-hatch of instrumental sounds keep recombining traditional sounds with unique additions to make this point: organ and keyboard, glockenspiel and drums, thunder-sheet and Balinese gong, tubular bells and, sizzle strip, heavy metal chains and cymbals creating a palette of organized confusion. As Kamensek drew these together, it felt as if an imminent storm was brewing, one that would burst the stage, overflow the pit and had us grabbing our seats. However, moments of pure silence punctuated that intensity and Kamensek, conducting with steadiness, not only kept it at bay, but kept the frame on the score's brutality without distilling it.