Chicago Strip Clubs: Glorious singing trumps audacious but muddled production in Lyric Opera’s …

Director Stephen Langridge has come up with some ideas that worked: the military platoon that engages in drills and calisthenics during the extended Hungarian March, and updating Auerbach’s tavern cellar to a strip club, complete with screaming pink neon and pole dancers.
Yet more often than not, Langridge’s stage action proved more confusing than distinctive, with relentless, overcaffeinated traffic for the lack of any better ideas. The evocation of the Will o’ the Wisps was painted with dancers doubling and tripling Marguerite and Faust, the Marguerite clones bearing cups of coffee through both doors of her house in dizzying appearances and reappearances. So annoying was the result that you wanted Marguerite’s silent heavy-set mother to get up, lock the door and stop all the nonsense.
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The climactic and impossible-to-stage scene of Faust and Mephistopheles’ horseride to hell and ensuing Pandemonium seemed to suffer the most from Boeshe’s non-presence. With Faust outfitted with virtual-reality goggles, it seemed the stage was set for a wild cinematic succession of images. But instead all the …

See the full article from “Chicago Classical Review”