The lights have just gone up for intermission at the opening night of San Francisco Opera’s long-awaited production of The Handmaid’s Tale. As people begin to rise and excitedly chatter about what we’ve just witnessed, the woman next to me turns to her companion and sighs.
“Well,” she says, “this is unrelentingly bleak.”
Anyone familiar with The Handmaid’s Tale will tell you that is certainly a fair assessment. This is, after all, the story of a woman violently torn from her family and forced into a life of sexual servitude by a theocratic regime. America is no more, replaced by the Republic of Gilead, whose leaders attempt to solve an infertility crisis by forcing fertile women to reproduce with the commanding elite. These “handmaids,” living with their assigned commanders’ families, are considered disposable vessels, unworthy of even retaining their own names. The woman at the center of The Handmaid’s Tale is known only as Offred — literally “of Fred,” the commander she’s been assigned to.
Running through Oct. 1 at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, composer Poul Ruders’ and librettist Paul Bentley’s interpretation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel is a faithful yet incredibly innovative rendering of the original story. For opera attendees stepping into this patriarchal dystopia for the first time, however, the shock may be significant. (The “unrelentingly bleak” lady couldn’t possibly have known how much darker things were going to get in the second act.)
Consider, for example, the scene in which two women have hoods thrown over their heads and are hung by their necks from the rafters. Or the one in which a man is beaten to death in slow motion by a group of handmaids. Or the two in which Offred is ritually raped by Commander Fred while a shocking refrain of “Amazing Grace” plays in the background. Another, depicting the violent breakup of Offred’s family, made the man in front of me jump out of his seat. Directed by John Fulljames, The Handmaid’s Tale opera — like the book and enormously popular Hulu series — is not for the faint of heart.
The lifeblood of this particular production is Irene Roberts as Offred. The mezzo-soprano’s heartrending vocal delivery is matched by a grueling physical performance in which Roberts must endure physical groping by several male cast members, dressing and undressing repeatedly (including the removal of underwear), as well as running, crouching and falling to the floor. Roberts’ performance here is consistently astonishing — the reason all eyes stayed glued to the stage throughout, even during the most harrowing of scenes.
