The Club at The Banff Centre has seen a lot of action over the years, so it makes perfect sense to transform the tight and dark venue into a den of debauchery for a night.
The Club at The Banff Centre has seen a lot of action over the years, so it makes perfect sense to transform the tight and dark venue into a den of debauchery for a night.
Crush, a new opera by James Rolfe (music) and Anna Chatterton (libretto), and commissioned by the Canadian Opera Company, plays Friday (July 17) and is a modern spin on Mozart's Don Giovanni set in a downtown sex club.
“This is loosely based on Don Giovanni, the Don Juan story of the man who sort of seduces everyone he sees. In this one, Anna and James the librettist and composer have swapped it and Don Juan has become Donna and she is at the sex club and she's the character that sort of seduces everyone that she comes across,” Crush director Amiel Gladstone said.
“Of course this causes all kinds of complications - right off the top, she stabs her latest lover because he won't leave and she's sick of him and she's always moving on, and this lover's name is Matt and his young daughter shows up within minutes looking for her father and is also curious about what goes on in this club.”
Gladstone's work is mainly in theatre, but finds working in opera a fun change with the music taking more of a lead role in production.
“There's slightly different rules and the personalities are slightly different, so I kind of love that shift that keeps me on my toes a bit,” Gladstone said. “You're still on a stage and telling stories so there are some basic similarities, but of course the biggest thing in opera is the music takes precedence over everything and for my work I actually find that freeing because there is a really clear thing that we're all following.”
Gladstone uses pace as an example of something you constantly have to monitor with a theatrical play, whereas in opera pace is dictated by the music.
“I never have to worry about how slow or fast it's going ... so it's been really fun because it's also site specific and we've just gone in and the room has dictated how we staged it,” Gladstone said regarding turning The Club into a sex club.
“It's been described as a downtown hipster sex club, and it's definitely featuring a scenario where people come to this quote, unquote “lifestyle club” where you can basically do anything that you can get someone else to do with you.”
The director says it was the perfect place to put Crush since it wasn't necessary to build a set from scratch, and the inclusiveness found in The Club's esthetic has the singers and music happening all around the audience.
“You'll get the experience of a beautiful singer right up close, and we're also playing with a lot of gender and who's attracted to whom. Donna, the lead character, goes for both men and women, so a lot of the costumes are also like that, playing with the masculine and feminine.
“The costume designer and I have definitely been talking a lot about leather and lace, rubber and chains and all sorts of fetish-ware and some are dressed up as a bizarre version of Hansel and Gretel, so it's really all over the place in that world which has been really fun.”
