Peter Brook's "A Magic Flute"
Freely adapted by Peter Brook, Franck Krawczyk, and Marie-Hélène Estienne from Mozart's opera, "A Magic Flute" stripped away all superfluities of staging to focus on the singers' relationship to the music. The score was played expressively by Franck Krawczyk on solo piano at stage right. A cluster of upright canes served as forest, prison, and Masonic temple. It is interesting, however, that the simple staging drew attention to its own ingenuity. It did not help when the singers knocked down the canes. Throughout the evening at Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, a small part of my mind kept wondering when the next cane would fall. The two actors who played incidental parts in the action were an inelegant solution to the problem of scene change. The singers were exposed by the lack of spectacle. Adrian Strooper who sang the heroic and lovesick Tamino on July 5, when I watched the production with TB, came through beautifully. So did his lover Pamina, sang by...