Unqualified Theater Critic – The In Series’ Barber & Barberillo at Source

Being a bit of a skeptic with regards to musical theater, I nonetheless picked up opening night tickets to  The In Series‘ pocket opera double-bill of Barber & Barberillo. The title is a play on words and a nod to the linkage between the two features, Samuel Barber’s American chamber opera A Hand of Bridge and Francisco Barbieri’s zarzuela El Barberillo de Lavapiés (the Little Barber of Lavapiés).

A Hand of Bridge, the 1959 jazz-tinged American opera by Barber and his partner Giancarlo Menotti, is a humorously devastating examination of the inner monologues of two card-playing couples. Spanish tenor Alvaro Rodriguez sings the part of Bill, an attorney having an affair and wondering with whom Cymbeline, his lover, keeps company tonight. His wife Sally, played by mezzo Chris Stewart, laments her partner’s poor play but fails to question why her husband is distracted because she, too, is held in thrall. The object of her affections isn’t another person, but rather a hat adorned with peacock feathers. The standout performer here is soprano Randa Rouweyha as Geraldine. She observes wryly as Bill makes a sloppy play that trumps his wife’s queen, noting that the face card is far from the only female whom Bill has neglected. She wonders who hold Bill’s attention tonight, and in doing so reveals that Bill’s current crush is not his sole indiscretion. Geraldine further laments her lost relationship with her dying mother as her stockbroker husband David, played by the Peruvian baritone José Sacín, wallows in existential angst not only over the monotony of his bridge-playing existence but also over his jealousy towards his wealthy boss.