The Shining (Opera)

"Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick."

 - first words of King's The Shining.

"Hi, I've got an appointment with Mr. Ullman. My name is Jack Torrance." 

- first words of Kubrick's The Shining.

"You've got to watch her. She creeps." *

- first words of King's script for The Shining miniseries.

"Did you remember the parking brake?" *

- first words of The Shining, the opera.

* More or less.

This one will be somewhat tough to discuss, as there's no CD, no DVD, and a paucity of YouTube links to the production. A shame - and a bit of a mystery. Why no official recording? Why no film of the performance? Why have no other performances opened anywhere after the initial run? No opera company anywhere in the world wants to put on The Shining? Are the rental fees too high? The run in St. Paul sold out each night. Multiply that by any opera market that knows King's work (a lot) and you'd figure there'd be mutual profit and interest. None of these things add up to me. What is the rationale for keeping this off the market? 

I'll try my best, though. First things first: this is terrific stuff. When it comes to contemporary opera, I know virtually nothing. Through supplemental reading, repeat listening, and strategic use of Robert Greenberg's How To Listen To and Understand Opera, I've learned a bit about opera over the past year, but it's been 99% traditional repertoire stuff. I had not, for example, heard of either the composer (again, Paul Moravec) or the librettist (Mark Campbell).

Above, with director Simonson and conductor Michael Christie.

A few seconds googling revealed oh hey, these guys are not just very well-known but highly accomplished, top-of-their-field personalities. Very much an honor to have these guys bring your work to the stage. It's a bit like King getting adapted by... well, Kubrick, I guess. (Except - as is mentioned in each and every press release I could find on the Shining opera - part of securing the rights to the book included making it clear that it was adapting the novel and not the movie. King's never going to let that one go. Of all the hills to die on, Kubrick's The Shining is King's Dien Bien Phu.)

Anyway, I very much look forward to checking out more of the creators' work. That also goes for the leads: Brian Mulligan as Jack Torrance and Kelly Kaduce as Wendy Torrance. 

Both carry the opera more or less on their shoulders. The real treat of the opera if you're a fan of either the novel (or the film, or even the miniseries... I guess) is seeing these characters brought to life with such intensity from the leads. Opera fits the novel well. The composer and librettist both seize upon this to great effect, which allows the leads to bring the characters - familiar to so many of us - to new life while still being recognizable. 

British critic Michael Eaton listed the three rules of effective adapation as (1) the geography can be jettisoned if the sociological ground base is preserved, (2) it is not the significance of the characters as written but the structural relationships between them that should remain fixed, and (3) thematic coherence is the essential springboard. Quibble with them if you like (myself, I think point two is too slippery-slope-y) but by his or any standard of adaptation, everyone involved here did a remarkable job of it. But special credit to Mark Campbell; I don't think it's overstating it to say of the three attempts to translate the book into another medium (one of them by King himself) he might have done the book the most justice.

(The polar opposite of this sort of understanding is something the Wall Street Journal wrote in its review: "(The opera) elevates the story from a horror to a human drama." Clearly written by someone who has never read the novel.) 

Anyway, Kalduce and Mulligan are both fantastic. The cast is rounded out (among others) by Arthur Woodley as Dick Hallorhan, David Walton as Delbert Grady, and Mark Walters as Mark Torrance. They each get time in the spotlight and knock it out of the park. I wish I could cue up particular moments from their songs, but alas. Grady in particular brings some comic menace to his scenes. And the Don Giovanni-like appearance of Mark Torrance is a highlight of the whole show.

Sorry no screencap, but here's Doc (Alejandro Vega) and Woodley's Hallorhan.

One last word on the adaption before moving on to the music itself: Jack's struggle with learning that it's his son that the Overlook is really after and that he's just being manipulated to maneuver Danny into place is fleshed out better here than in any other place. Perhaps not the novel, but that's to be expected. Of course, the novel didn't have aria, duet, and chorus to work with either. Especially with this score.

If you just listened to the music, you might be forgiven for thinking Danny (and Toby's) presence was too drastically reduced. But on the contrary, Danny is the pivotal on-stage role: it's just that as a child he can't carry the musical score so he has to be used strategically. And he is - to great effect. But visually and stage-wise, as far as how his presence ends or moves scenes along, he is the key piece on the chessboard, just as in the novel.

Okay, so let's get to the music. It was described as "a haunting score by Paul Moravec, sparing in its use of melody in its quest for mounting tension and suspense" by Alan Kopischke for USA Today. And it is certainly that. This is operatic score in the constant-musical-momentum mode, and not quite the Verdi or Wagner mode, with orchestral flourishes that call attention to themselves and/or standalone songs you might be whistling on your way out of the opera house.

After 3 listens - and boy, it'd be nice to crank the CD or blu-ray from their respective delivery mechanisms but hey! - I think my initial impression (this is great music) stands. Is considerably deepened, in fact. Listen to this. You can see some of the production at that link, too. Once you get a sense of the score, listen to this rehearsal with only piano.

The voices blend better with the orchestra, but that's why it's an opera. I pick out a lot more about what the music is doing hearing it only on piano. Very modern sense of harmony (modern as in Stravinsky/Schoenberg) but mainly: just spooky, disorienting music. It's such an interesting way of enveloping the Overlook and this family drama. Lush but sinister, and wonderful - regal when it has to be, a cauldron of tension otherwise. 

I loved every number where the Overlook ghosts appear, and Jack and Wendy have some nice duets. Robert Greenberg has described the opera composer as an architect who gathers his materials based on the direction he's given from the subject matter, not someone who sits down, magically inspired, and develops an opera in a coherent fashion. He chooses his materials - so many arias, a duet here, a chorus there - by what he needs to accomplish. Such is the case here, it seems to me; Moravec and Campbell chose wisely. I'd love to read along with the libretto for a better report, but see above.

The stage and costume design (by Erhard Rom and Karin Kopischke respectively) looked pretty good from the glimpses I've seen.

A few words on the early days of trying to get King to sign off on permission to do the opera: 

"Johnson got to King’s lawyer almost immediately but negotiations stalled until Paul Moravec revealed that he was buddies with Peter Straub. Maybe he could make a call? The call hit paydirt (it didn’t hurt that Straub, unlike King, is an opera buff) and King signed off on the project with a few provisos: (1) Minnesota Opera could make a CD of the The Shining but not a DVD, (2) King maintained approval of the libretto, and (3) The opera had to be based on King’s book, not the Stanley Kubrick film. Done, said Johnson."

Did he show up during its opening and so far only run? Has he ever mentioned it in interviews? I found no answers to these questions.

And fair enough - should King pretend he's an opera fan? It might be as simple as that - he feels uncomfortable commenting on it. Again, fair enough - his permission to do it and relatively mild stipulations to do so is comment enough. I do, though, feel that some of the adaptations he has endorsed and promoted are done with far less panache and affection than this opera, so it's unfortunate, if only out of respect to such a respectful production, that he hasn't. Someone in the King camp should do something about this. If they haven't already - what do I know about what kind of emails and gift baskets and polar bear expeditions to Greenland have or haven't been organized behind the scenes?

And opera houses across the country should put it on! It's absurd something this good - and popular - can sit unused.

James Hughes, Slate - "After this brief run, the company’s hope is that the opera will travel to other cities, other shores. The sets and simulacrums of natural beauty that fit so well in St. Paul will soon be broken down and cataloged, ready to be transferred to the next caretaker. "

Let's hope so. 

~

The Shining was composed by Paul Moravec with libretto by Mark Campbell, as performed by the Minnesota Opera as part of its New Works Initiative, premiering in May 2016. Directed by Eric Simonson.

King's Highway pt. 82: The Miniseries (Worst to Best)

RANKING THE TV MINISERIES

of STEPHEN KING

King's written two original miniseries, and nine others have been made from his works. Some (The Shining, The Stand) he was more involved with than others (Salem's Lot, The Tommyknockers). 

I did not consider 11.22.63 for the below. While it's certainly a miniseries, they went out of their way to label it otherwise. ("Event series," "limited-run series," "Original Content Event," etc.) So, hey, have it your way, 11.22.63 folks. You saved me from having to figure out if it's my least favorite of all miniseries based on King's work or only my second least favorite. (Mini-review: started off quite strong but lost it when they strayed recklessly from the book.)

Similarly, I didn't consider either Kingdom Hospital or Golden Years for this list. They kind of ended up being miniseries, but neither ever really boldly claimed themselves one way or the other. You snooze you lose. Let us begin.   

11.

The Shining
(1997)

The Shining in addition to being my second-favorite King book is a classic of 20th century horror. You'd never know it from this toothless and abhorrently-paced adaptation. 

King as screenwriter/ adapter of his own work carries as much of the blame for how this turned out as director Mick Garris. King famously hates the Kubrick adaptation - well-trod ground round these-and-all-parts - and set about "correcting" it by emphasizing everything Kubrick "got wrong." And so, as Karina Wilson noted in her book-to-movie-to-mini-series review: "It takes most of Episode One for the Torrances to get settled in to the Overlook, they don't get snowed in until partway through Episode Two, and Jack doesn't get anything but tetchy until Episode Three."

First mistake: underestimating Kubrick's genius for novel-to-film adaptation. That's at least 50% of his genius. The other 50 is his understanding of composition and storytelling. Next mistake: hiring Mick Garris to make a visual rebuttal to Kubrick's film. Say what you will about Mick Garris, but there is nothing in his catalog (and everything in Kubrick's, for contrast) to suggest a flair for visual storytelling. At least for something like The Shining. His penchant for cheap make-up fx and pop-out scares immediately positions this as campy horror rather than the Kronos-laden dread of the book. (Something, ironically, Kubrick's film conveyed a lot better.)

Compare these shots from The Shining to similar make-up from Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot, filmed almost 20 years earlier.

I don't know how Garris can be so dramatically tone deaf to allow any of the Mommy/Daddy/Danny arguments to stand the way they are. It all feels like a Dark Shadows episode but without the kitsch factor. And several decades too late. And with a subpar-sitcom-kid-actor. (Sorry, Courtland Mead.) Anyway, there's too much to get into - here's my original review where I went full-grumpy. I agree with my buddy Mark - the only way this would have worked would be if they'd cast the entire cast from Wings in all the roles. 

King liked this Ghost-Dad-kiss bit so much that he brought it back for Doctor Sleep. Where it actually works (a little). In the miniseries it's just horrific.

10.

(2004)

Okay, so I've never seen this one. From what I read, though, this seems about where it should place. (Not according to this viewer, sure, but most everyone else.)  

Great cast, though.

9.

Bag of Bones
(2011)

I'm not a particular fan of the novel but even before I read it, I tried to watch this mini-series on three separate occasions. Never successfully.

I eventually forced my way through to the end, but man does this thing drag. Worse, it doesn't exactly make a whole lot of sense. Worse still, we're in well-traveled King backwaters here. Not in and of itself a dealbreaker but not something to light a fire under my feet. 

Pierce Brosnan is decent - most of the cast is decent, I guess, and the scenery of Maine (Nova Scotia, actually - close enough) is gorgeous. Contrary to my snarky comments above, occasionally Mick Garris does produce some nice visual images, and Bag of Bones is probably his best-looking work. Not just the scenery, I mean all the in-frame composition. As observed here, the picture chosen to lead off this section is good visual shorthand for Mike (Brosnan)'s coming ever-so-slowly out of grieving. Garris even seems to have moved away from filming the dialogue scenes dead-center-on, TV-backdrop-style. (That type of composition is all over The Shining, Sleepwalkers, and The Stand.)

8.

The Langoliers
(1995)

As slow as Bag of Bones is, it's Run Lola Run compared to The Langoliers, which has been referred to as a half-hour Twilight Zone episode stretched out to three hours, with some of the most agonizing acting ever committed to film in Bronson Pinchot's portrayal of Craig Toomey. (Not, unbelievably, the most agonizing performance in a King miniseries; that's still to come.) This one hits every negative: bad performances, horrible special fx, simultaneously over-and-underwritten, you name it.

So how does it place ahead of Bag of Bones - or even The Shining for that matter - in this here countdown? The better question is why do I always feel like watching it.

If you figure that one out, let me know. Even talking about how awful it is makes me want to throw it on for background. I've got some kind of problem with this movie. Or maybe I just love The Twilight Zone so much that I'm secretly pleased with a half-hour TZ concept stretched out beyond all reasonable shape to three hours.

(Though technically, it's more The Outer Limits than Twilight Zone.)  

7.

Rose Red
(2002)

This one has some great ambience, and I like the idea of a paranormal super-team investigating a haunted house, as well as the history of the house and its unworking of Joyce Reardon's mind. It's unfortunately distinguished by some really bizarre performances, which is a puzzler. I'll put that on the director Craig Baxley, who as we'll see in a bit has done great work elsewhere, as have Matt Ross and Nancy Travis, yet here everyone seems to be working from different scripts and/or not watching the dailies. Julian Sands and Emily Deschanel are good, though.

And waaay too many slow-pans of the house and reaction shots. It's a beautiful house, but come on now. I could bring up the yet-another-psychic-autistic-kid angle, but I guess it just comes with the territory. 

6.

The Tommyknockers
(1993)

I covered this one in greater depth last month. The mini-series is a very different animal than the book. The book is dark, cynical, indulgent, and gross; it utilizes these qualities to great effect. The mini-series is okay, but it is none of the above. It has the straight-to-video sensibility of a low budget, functionally-atmospheric-but-don't-ask-too-many-questions slice of 80s horror. (Despite coming out in 1993).

I sympathize - the book poses many difficulties to the adapter. In addition to a flying saucer that's three football fields in diameter and other set and special f/x logistics, there's an endless stream of vomit, lost teeth, and blood.  And sometimes all three.

Nevertheless, as the only version I'll likely ever see of a novel I dearly love and one that is more or less faithful to it (albeit in a Muzak way) it could be worse.

5.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes
(2006)

Here's how this miniseries shakes out for me on a scale of zero to five:

"Battleground" 4.5
"Crouch End" 2.25
"Umney's Last Case" 3.25
"The End of the Whole Mess" 3.75
"The Road Virus Heads North" 3
"The Fifth Quarter" 3
"Autopsy Room Four" 3
"You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" 1.25

So basically, there's "Battleground" and then there's the rest of it.  Why they adapted some of the ones they chose and not "Rainy Season," "Home Delivery," or "The Ten O'Clock People" is beyond me. Actually, it's probably a rights issue of some kind - I have no idea. Point is, I haven't looked it up.

But I just love "Battleground" enough for the whole damn miniseries to place here at number five. And it's not like it's the greatest thing ever filmed, either. It's entertaining and slick and clever and William Hurt sells the shit out of his role, but viewed another way, it's all very overdone, a lot of conceit covering a rather mundane (some might even call it silly) plot and William Hurt "does his best despite the material" or some sentiment like that. I can see that side of it, objectively, but subjectively, I'm just start-to-finished pleased with everything.

The others worth seeing are "The End of the Whole Mess", "Umney's Last Case", and "The Road Virus Heads North", none of which are perfect (and the latter might even be bad) but I have this Langoliers sort of relationship with them where I acknowledge they're not great but always kind of want to watch them. "The Fifth Quarter" and "Autopsy Number Four" are inoffensive but unremarkable. The other two are terrible.

And the end of "The End of the Whole Mess" actually deepens and darkens its source material. The episode is uneven, but the end is quite good.

This is from "The Road Virus Heads North," not "The End of the Whole Mess." But it feels like a better ending-screencap for this section.

4.

It
(1990)

As with The Tommyknockers, I sympathize with any adapter of this novel. Director Tommy Lee Wallace did the best he could, I'm sure, between a rock (the novel) and a hard place (network standards.) He chose to emphasize the best of what he had: Tim Curry as Pennywise. The Barrens look pretty cool, and there are a few nice scenes here and there, but Curry's turn as the killer clown who terrorizes the children of Derry towers over the production. 

Everything else? On paper, some of the casting is great; in practice/ as directed, not so much. Like The Tommyknockers, scrubbing the source material of its more controversial elements is understandable, but it lessens the scope and impact of the novel considerably. Sure, the novel's kind of overstuffed and goes to some ill-advised places, but the oversimplifications in display here are not the answer. 

3.

(1994)

If you weren't around or paying attention at the time, this was one of the last Event-TV miniseries of its day. (Despite Hulu's claims re: 11.22.63) This was "Oh my God, they're making The Stand" followed by phone calls after (not during) and everyone taping it on VHS and organizing watching parties. I wasn't reading King in '94, but I definitely was one of 19 million Americans who tuned in for each of its four parts.

Alas, it hasn't aged too well. This AV Club review is worth reading in full for all the reasons why. Here are some excerpts:

"Everything from casting choices to wardrobe to musical cues cements The Stand firmly in the mid-’90s, sacrificing any timelessness in favor of an already dated sensibility. It’s not the self-aware frolic of Clueless or the drab naturalism of Office Space. This is 1994 as an ’80s hangover, complete with former members of the Brat Pack and an 8-year-old Top 10 hit already milked for nostalgia."

(Although I really like that "Don't Dream It's Over" scene, me.)

"When so many performances fall flat, it’s hard to blame the actors. Except for Frannie’s furrowed eyebrows of apocalypse, everything plays so big, with yelling, emphatic gestures, pervasive unearned comradery or antipathy, that there’s no room for small moments to expand, not that there are a lot of small moments in The Stand. Mick Garris never met a Dutch angle or a jump scare he didn’t like, and he didn’t start underplaying in a cross-country tale of Biblical catastrophe."

"Gravity and compassion are what this version of The Stand lacks, as well as metaphor. The story of tragic destiny is rendered flat and trite. It’s not just prosaic and pedestrian, though it is both of those. (It's) constrained, diminished by its dreary pace, by simplistic characters and motivations, and by its cramped, narrow sense of time. "

I liked Nick and Tom, though. Most of the casting, actually. Except Molly Ringwald as Frannie and Corin Nemec as Harold.

The Stand (the book) is two different books: one is an ultra-realistic character study of a society in breakdown and recovery, with micro/macro managed adeptly, and the other is a pulp religious parable where characters receive their instructions from dreams and a retarded man is put under deep hypnosis to become a spy and God speaks through burning bushes and stuff like that. The Stand (the miniseries) skimps on the former and doesn't gracefully handle the latter. 

Nevertheless, it's watchable and has more than a few things about it that I really like, even if it's way too literal (particularly with the "hand of God" at the end.) Sooner or later someone will do the book correctly and I can jettison this excuse but until that happens, I'm forgiving of much of it simply because I enjoy having some version of it to watch.

2.

Salem's Lot
(1979)

Talk to anyone born in the 60s or 70s and you'll hear the same story about how freaked out they were by dead Ralphie Glick (Ronnie Scribner) scratching on brother Mark Petrie (Brad Savage, from Red Dawn and a bunch of 70s/80s TV)'s bedroom window. It's definitely a watershed image of 70s TV, right up there with Kunta Kinte, Wonder Woman, and Columbo.

I was too young to tune in live, myself, but I watched this a lot on VHS growing up, and that scene freaked me out, too. It hasn't aged quite as well as the rest of the miniseries, but it's easy to see how it could have imprinted itself so deeply on a generation of viewers. 

I say "aged quite as well as the rest of the miniseries." Let me clarify - it's not that Salem's Lot does not seem a product of 70s TV; it very much does. Part of you watching this in 2016 has the same reaction to watching Emergency! or Dragnet or something, just an awareness that teleplay has undergone many revolutions since the time these things aired. It's just one of those movies, like Jaws, where its dated-ness doesn't matter too much. 

 

Successful both as a standalone story and as an adaptation of a beloved King novel, Salem's still has a lot to recommend it in 2016. James Mason is exceptional as Straker, for starters. The scenes where Constable Gillepsie question him showcase the actor's effortless skill in conveying menace and snobbery with Old World Charm.

As mentioned here: "Hooper, who made beautifully nasty hash out of family rituals in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), pulled out all stops in showing evil literally erupt into a middle class home to consume the nuclear family and all their social safeguards."

And finally:

1.

Storm of the Century(1999)

I have seen this five or six times over the years, and it gets better each time. This last time - over a stretch of weeknights two-weeks-ago - was perhaps the most enjoyable of all. If this was a novel, it would be up in my Top Ten of King's works. 

It opens with strokes so broad that you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a parody of some kind. The soundtrack swirls and the camera pans over stiff-upper-lip lobstermen assuring themselves that whatever the sea or storm ("staaahm") throws at them, they'll get through it, and the voiceover - Tim Daly in no-nonsense working-class-hero mode - embellishes it. "We're a town who knows how to keep its secrets..."

Then, the familiar scene is shattered when a stranger taps a cane on an old woman's door and brutally murders her by splitting her face open and taking her seat in front of the television.

Born in lust, turn to dust.

Burn in sin? Come on in.

It mirrors the opening of The Regulators, which came out only a few years before Storm: an overly-tropish scene shattered by sudden, furious violence. And while the story definitely follows some trajectories that will be familiar to King Constant Readers, part of its appeal is the ways in which it doesn't resemble any other King work. Particularly in part 2, in the eye of the storm and when Linoge reveals what he's really doing there.

Speaking of, is there any doubt that Colm Feore as Andre Linoge is a top 5 King villain? Movie, TV, or miniseries. He's perfect. I have no problem speaking of him in the same breath as Tim Curry as Pennywise, Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, or Max Von Sydow as Leland Gaunt, among any others anyone cares to mention.

The eerie and surreal dream sequences showcase the actor's facility for different accents.

(Sorry for how dark these came out; I probably shouldn't even include them.)

Anyway, he seems to work often enough, but based only on this and a few old Friday the 13th episodes, I wish he'd get cast in higher-profile roles; he deserves them.

Ditto for Tim Daly, who anchors the other side of the production, namely the outvoted/ doomed moral everyman. Daly was King's first choice for The Shining miniseries but was unavailable. I wonder if this was written as a sort of consolation prize for him? Whatever the reason, I'm glad it was, and he is great in it.

I feel compelled to mention the complete inability of everyone involved to do a Maine accent. No two people sound alike, and some don't even sound like they're speaking English. I will never understand the lapse into savagery and slurring that marks so many actors' attempts at a New England accent. Some (Daly, Feore, Julianne Nicholson) don't even try, and that's best. The rest of the cast goes from bad (Casey Siemaszko) to worse (Jeffrey DeMunn, Becky Ann Baker) to inhuman (most everyone else.)

Accents aside, though, Storm of the Century, despite being fairly well-reviewed by fans and critics alike, remains something of an unsung moment in King's considerable back catalog. Which is too bad. It's a little overlong, sure, as befits its miniseries nature, and the ending is bleak, but it's also bold, original, and provocative, with considerable repeat-viewing value. 

"It's a cash and carry world. Sometimes you pay a little. Mostly it's a lot. Sometimes, it's everything you have."

~

NEXT: The Regulators. (Probably)