Kali­fa Clyne

The Mar­i­onettes Chorale's pre­sen­ta­tion of Car­men, the opera, is a mu­si­cal ex­trav­a­gan­za of gai­ety and in­trigue that cat­a­pults in­to an ex­pect­ed but ter­ri­bly dra­mat­ic cli­max. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it is al­so one of the best the­atre pro­duc­tions so far this year. The high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed opera, which held its open­ing night on Sat­ur­day, saw mas­ter­ful per­for­mances from every one of its 100-plus cast mem­bers. The opera is a mu­si­cal tale of a young woman, Car­men, played by Can­dice Al­can­tara, who is as sen­su­al as she is dan­ger­ous. She comes off a bit self­ish as she steals the heart of cor­po­ral Don Jose (Mar­lon De Bique) from his young love in­ter­est, on­ly to lat­er drop him for the vir­ile and hand­some bull­fight­er Es­camil­lio (Mar­vin Smith).

Ad­mit­ted­ly there is a lot that hap­pens dur­ing the tale and spurn­ing Don Jose could have been a re­sult of his jeal­ous and ob­ses­sive na­ture but Car­men cer­tain­ly isn't blame­less. In fact, a good de­scrip­tion for her would be a saucy gyp­sy temptress who, ac­cord­ing to one of her love in­ter­ests Es­camil­lio, does not keep a lover for more than half of a year. Es­camil­lio him­self is por­trayed with a charm­ing but ar­ro­gant swag­ger. And though De Bique's char­ac­ter very gen­uine­ly ap­pears the vic­tim, he al­so some­how ap­pears the fool. It is al­ways cause for ap­plause when the lead ac­tors of a pro­duc­tion de­liv­er flaw­less per­for­mances. In Car­men, the en­tire cast de­liv­ers flaw­less per­for­mances, from the adorable and vi­brant mem­bers of the youth chorale to the male cast mem­ber wip­ing his mouth on the gyp­sy woman's skirt as Don Jose at­tempts to fight his com­mand­ing of­fi­cer.

Every de­tail of the set­ting is re­al­is­tic and does not feel staged in any way. They didn't miss a beat or a de­tail in this time­less pro­duc­tion. Al­can­tara's por­tray­al of Car­men was def­i­nite­ly the show-steal­er, filled with hip sways, eye-rolling and comedic fa­cial ex­pres­sions. More than that, though, like De Bique, Smith, and Fer­yal Qudo­rah, who played lovestruck youth Mi­caela, it was al­so nat­ur­al and be­liev­able. Like the on­stage cast, the or­ches­tra set the mood re­mark­ably, dur­ing and in be­tween scenes. The mu­sic it­self is very fa­mil­iar and find­ing your­self ask­ing "where do I know that song?" is a def­i­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty. The tale it­self is easy to re­late to as love tri­an­gles and com­pli­cat­ed love sur­round us and so Car­men may feel very fa­mil­iar to our lives. The Mar­i­onettes Chorale's Car­men, runs for five shows on week­ends un­til Ju­ly 17.