“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.
Offred, performed by mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts, narrates her abduction from Time Before into Gilead, where she becomes a slave. As she dramatized the heart and soul of this bleak vision, with her younger self (sung by Simone McIntosh) beside her, she conveyed Offred's role as both victim and someone attempting to understand. Whether she wore the Handmaid’s red robe and white wimple, or the slinky sequined dress The Commander orders her to put on, she did so as women have been taught: to apologize. I am sorry I am telling my story in fragments; I am sorry this is the way it is. I am sorry I feel numb, empty, for not being the way I was. Apology, when it was she who was repeatedly raped and stripped of everything that kept her human. Apology, when it was she who became disposable.
While sung in English, with Roberts and McIntosh, Lindsay Amman (Serena Joy), Sarah Cambidge (Aunt Lydia) centering so much of the sound in the upper register, it was sometimes hard to understand. The bass of John Relyea (The Commander), Christopher Oglesby's tenor (Luke, Offred’s former husband) and Brenton Ryan (Nick, her current love interest) contrasted well with this, however frightening their actions brought forth. The sound palette, overall, gave us sound like a quasi-moan and shriek, as if a wound spoke.
Christina Cunningham’s costumes accent the societal ranks in Gilead: red for the Handmaids, army green for guards, black for The Commander and foot soldiers. Fabiana Piccioli’s lighting design emphasize the striations of totalitarian control: moments of darkness ripped apart by explosive lights, a blinding glare from the floor thrusting us deeper into fear and bleakness.
“IN HOPE.” We came away from the opera wrung out, exasperated, forlorn but, at the same time, moved that its creative artists are determined not to give up to the lust for power aimed at breaking the human spirit. Once again, San Francisco Opera offers us a choice. We should take it.
