Music woman

Trinity Rep does Callas

by Johnette Rodriguez

MASTER CLASS. By Terrence McNally. Directed by Brian McEleney. Musical direction by Richard Cumming and Amanda Dehnert. Set design by Michael McGarty. Costumes by William Lane. Lighting by Russell H. Champa. With Barbara Meek, Richard Cumming, Melissa A. D'Amico, Fredric S. Scheff, Shana Harvey, and Max Vogler. At Trinity Repertory Company, through June 20.

It may take a diva to play a diva. If so, smoky but imperious Trinity Rep veteran Barbara Meek, in her 80th role with the company, qualifies. As the court-holding, contradictory Maria Callas of Terrence McNally's Tony-winning Master Class, La Meek is anything but. She does, however, bring some fragility, as well as passion and hauteur, to the past-her-prime Callas of the early 1970s, teaching her famed master classes at Juilliard and, on occasion, being transported back to the past by the music she once inhabited with all her being. There are things about this production I don't like, but Meek is not among them.

McNally's Callas is not, of course, Callas but the myth of Callas: the temperamental star who changed opera through her unique sound and unusually committed acting -- and who burned out her voice early, in part because she sacrificed safety to fierceness of emotion. The playwright, a fervent and knowledgeable operaphile, uses this image of Callas as a frightening, deliciously entertaining conduit for his own ideas about the sacredness -- and the toll -- of art.

The play is part homage, part disquisition, and one hell of a tour de force for an actress. On Broadway it was assayed by divas in their own right Zoe Caldwell and Patti LuPone. The film rights are owned by the notoriously difficult Faye Dunaway, who was a formidable if invulnerable Callas in the play's national tour. Meek gives a well-sculpted performance that gets at the flamboyant ego (as well as at the disclaiming cattiness) of Callas. "You all lack presence," she admonishes the students. "Look at me. I'm drinking water and I have presence." And head held high, hair swept back, chest thrust forward, she does. (If anything is missing, it's the walk.) But Meek has the inner reserves to hit the character's highest, most savage and shakiest notes as well, swelling to the triumphs at La Scala, lighting cruelly into husband/manager Battista Meneghini, quivering heartbreakingly as she recalls being rejected by the boorish Aristotle Onassis.

Master Class, though widely admired, is not a great play. Its two acts do not so much build as repeat, with Callas sweeping about the stage, dramatically talking about herself, terrifying a student with an aria up his or her sleeve, and finally badgering a performance out of a soprano that is at least good enough to transport La Divina back to La Scala. There, swept along by the ravishing voice of the real Callas, she relives professional highs and personal lows, all the while demonstrating the combativeness and courage she's been pushing down the warbling throats of the students.

One problem of the play is that none of the three ill-clad, under-informed lambs to the slaughter, as written by McNally, would have gotten anywhere near a master class with Callas. And the Trinity production, which is directed by Brian McEleney, plays into, rather than against, the students' lack of sophistication. Melissa A. D'Amico is the would-be-"fiery" Sophie, who's afraid of her own nervous giggle but hopes to acquire some "temperament" from Callas. Hopelessly twitty, she proves to have a lovely voice when Callas lets her get beyond the first note of "Ah, non credea mirarti," from Bellini's La sonnambula. Fredric S. Scheff is more obtuse than cocky as the tenor Callas nicknames Tony Tight Pants. But he too can sing, as he demonstrates on Cavaradossi's first-act aria from Tosca -- enabling Meek to demonstrate a Callas still capable of being overwhelmed by music. Shana Harvey is Sharon, the overdressed soprano whose run at the Letter Scene from Verdi's Macbeth allows us to assess which one of the ladies on stage is closer to Lady Macbeth. Long-time Trinity Rep composer in residence Richard Cumming proves a pianistically accomplished Manny the Accompanist and also gives a wry turn in the role.

The one real misstep is McEleney's decision to have the character of an indifferent stagehand stand in for Onassis in one recollected scene. McNally calls for the actress playing Callas to play all of the parts in her vivid remembrances. McEleney incorporates the other actors, which doesn't do damage except in this instance, with the grotesquely crude Onassis conjured up by Callas materializing in a tux, flinging opera scores about, and even sitting on the piano as he crows about her "boring shit music" and his big Greek dick. When I read Master Class, I thought this the clunkiest part of the script. But filtered through Callas and backed by the superb sound and projection designs of the Broadway production, it worked. Here it doesn't.

Whatever the flaws, Master Class is a testament to the worth, and the high cost, of art on the level of Callas's. It's also a vehicle -- and Barbara Meek knows how to drive it.