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Visions of hell

Alas, this has probably already left the Asian Art Museum (I’m not sure if it was a part of their Phantoms of Asia exhibit – which was a bit of a crock, if you ask me), but I stumbled across  an amazing little collection of contemporary art during my last visit.  A local Japanese artist was working with kids in the Bayview District, and showed them pictures of Buddhist hells – designed for the working through of very specific sins.  The artist then asked them to create their own hells, with the usual kids’ crafts items like paper plates, and straws, and glitter, and pipe cleaners.  The kids were then filmed explaining how their particular hell operates.

“This is the Golden Tiger Hell, and it is for people who tease,” began one implacable sixth-grader, her jaunty wreath of braids standing in for the skull headdress of Kali.  “You do not want to go there.”  Point taken, young lady!  After giving the viewer a run-down of the principal features awaiting the unwary teaser (“She can see her legs torn off here in front of her, and here where you see the shiny foil is where they are celebrating…”), she glares at the camera, mouthing silently, “Are we done?”

All kidding aside, it’s a radical invitation to these young imaginations – somebody offering these kids, who by the very circumstances of their birth in the toughest of neighborhoods have been getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop all their lives, the chance to imagine and incarnate what it would look like if people were punished for hurting them.  The little boy with his all-black Gun Hell will break your heart.

And speaking of tough neighborhoods, there’s the vicinity of the opera house, where we headed for the opening of Lohengrin.  It was the night of the “Dew Tour” at the Civic Center Plaza nearby, with disheveled-looking youngsters on bikes and skateboards hurtling around obstacles constructed in and around the streets, flaunting their ability to heal quickly.  Judging by increasingly panicky emails delivered through the week to its patrons, it appeared the San Francisco Opera viewed this as the zombie apocalypse:  “Streets will be closed off!  Don’t expect many taxis to be able to get through at the end of the performance!  No late seating!  We don’t know how long the power and water will hold out! We nail the doors shut at 7:01!  Our duty is to the uninfected survivors!”

Dewmageddon notwithstanding, we strolled in without any fuss ten minutes before curtain and settled down to a long, but highly satisfying evening. The gentleman in the title role was a revelation -- that big, booming Wagnerian tenor modulating down into something tender, direct and lyrical in the more intimate moments of the drama -- and, if you ask some of the ladies in the restroom line, he was pretty easy on the eyes. A little Aryan for my tastes.... But speaking of Aryans, they didn't pussyfoot around the whole proto-Nazi thing -- the art director just slapped everybody into jackboots and went for it. The role of Elena was not as fully realized as one might hope, but that may have been because the other principle female role, Ortrud, was so deliciously evil. In the second act, she just went full metal Cruella de Ville and never looked back.

And best use of stage blood evah... As tragedy is overtaking the two lovers after Lohengrin slaughters Telramund on their wedding bed (note to self: avoid honeymoon suite where lighting is all fluorescent, and from below), the blood slowly, slowly, slowly seeped, and dripped, and crawled down the bed to invade the floor. Tres creepy.

Something old, something new

For some reason, I've been waxing nostaglic about old terrible movies seen in adolescence (anybody remember the good old Night Comfort Theater, sponsored by some Sacramento waterbed emporium on channel 40, what Susan and I came to refer to as K-Axolotl?). In particular, I'm mulling fondly over "The Dunwich Horror," a 1970 Corman production of an H.P. Lovecraft story starring Sandra Dee as a hapless Miskatonic U. coed. It's dream casting -- I mean, who wouldn't want to see Gidget do Cthulu? Every time she gets a wee bit suspicious that things are not as they seem, some kindly person says, "Why don't you have a cup of tea, dear?" And next thing you know, Sandra's lolling in the back of the villian's convertible, oolonged out of her gourd. Available streaming on Netflix.

And for highbrows, there's San Francisco Opera's recent production of Verdi's early work "Attila." Vocally, it's a magnificent production, with every role sung with passion and depth. (Here's a descripion you don't hear very often, from Josh Kosman's review in the Chronicle: "Bass Samuel Ramey, who sang Attila here in 1991, made a touching cameo as the pope.") But logically and visually -- a bit of a puzzler. Now granted, one doesn't go to the opera for taut plotting... But the female lead has sworn to kill Attila and has his SWORD in her hands for most of the opera. Whaddya gonna do, honey, bel canto him to death? She keeps saving his life from other people's plotting, so that she can kill him herself. Nobody likes a micromanager.

Somebody in the production department managed to dredge up an early swords-and-sandals flick that stars Jack Palance as Attila the Hun, and it is projected behind the poor singers for much of the third act -- distinctly unfair, because the sight of Jack, oiled and bewigged, mugging it up through a dancing slave girl routine is as riveting a sight as a pile-up on an interstate. Barbarian hordes, indeed.