I am deeply regretful that I didn’t get to see Lost in the Stars until its closing night. Union Avenue Opera finished its 24th season with the Kurt Will/Maxwell Anderson work from 1949, based on Alan Paton’s well-regarded novel Cry, the Beloved Country. It was, quite simply, splendid.
A Zulu Anglican priest’s son has moved to Johannesburg looking for work, and his parents haven’t heard from him. The father goes in search of the boy, and finds him deep in the slums after a brief spell in jail and with his pregnant girlfriend, both living hand to mouth. In a robbery to get some money, the son accidentally kills a man whose family his father knows, a white man who has been racially extremely progressive. (The play was written as the apartheid laws in South Africa were being formulated.)
There’s more, of course, a story that talks about racial struggles on another continent but resonates seventy years later on our own, and Anderson, who not only wrote the lyrics but the show’s book, uses Paton’s exquisite language in both to slip into the soul of the listener.
The casting was more than satisfying, especially Kenneth Overton as Stephen Kumalo, the father, and Tim Schall as the conservative father of the man who was killed. Melody Wilson, as a singer in a small club, tore it up with “Who’ll Buy”. Scott Schoonover, UAO’s artistic director, conducted the orchestra. Roger Speidel did the set and Teresa Doggett the costumes. Joe Clapper’s lighting was a particularly integral part of the production. Shaun Patrick Tubbs was the stage director.
Beautiful music, beautiful words, beautifully presented. Sorry I couldn’t praise it while it was still open.
Lost in the Stars
Union Avenue Opera
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