(I have writer’s block and this has been sitting in my notes unchanged for a week. I might finish it. I might not!)

Strong marks on principle for digging up the original staging of an avant-garde opera from 2006 and running it in the 837-seat Harvey Theater—for my money, one of the prettiest venues out there—and nice to see it sell out, too! The Times ran a piece about how hot these tickets are, but curiously neglected to mention that they were very available until a late-November announcement (and subsequent social media blitz) of alternative rock darling St. Vincent joining the company. Your intrepid reporter on the ground saw quite a few of her concert hoodies. But I digress.

What to Wear is an odd duck and proud of it; it’s a dissonant rock opera by composer Michael Gordon and librettist Richard Foreman about the homogenizing superficiality of society. This short relaunch of the original staging from 2006 (with returning principal Sarah Frei!) is, in significant part, tribute to Foreman, a downtown theater legend who passed away last year. What to Wear could have been especially incisive in the era of Jenner Surgery & Instagram Face backlash but for its deliberate ambiguity of message and muddlingly extensive literalization of fowl metaphors, like ugly ducklings & black swans. There’s an enormous duck that loves to golf. (Michael Gordon’s been doing a mini-press tour saying, in effect, “Yeah, I don’t get this either. Richard insisted.”) The experience leans into the absurd, but with a couple toes planted squarely in reality to provoke some rumination.

Four principals—two sopranos, a mezzo, and a tenor—collectively play the lead, Madeline X, a denizen of a world in which appearance is everything and the un-beautiful are cast out. Madeline frets about how to dress. The ensemble is clad in these elaborate, bizarre costumes.

Arbitrary

Are those ping pong balls glued to your head?

disembodied voice (Foreman’s, I think)

two minds

soprano - placid soprano - impassive mezzo - bemused tenor - menacing

situated behind panes of glass emblazoned with “Do try to, Madeline X. Do try to.”