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Theater review: Opera meets Broadway in ‘Porgy and
Bess’ at Dallas’ Winspear Opera House
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Lawson Taitte 
Theater Critic
Published: 13 December 2013 03:02 PM
Updated: 13 December 2013 03:02 PM
The 2012 Tony Award winner for best musical revival, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, was
designed to bring what has come to be regarded as the great American opera back into the
realm of Broadway-style musical theater. There’s a certain irony, then, that the Dallas stop of
the new national tour for the Lexus Broadway Series wound up at the Winspear Opera House.
For my part, this new version adapted by Suzan-Lori Parks and Diedre L. Murray contains
plenty of Porgy. I’ve never taken much pleasure in George Gershwin’s attempts to set most of
the dialogue in opera-style recitative. This trimming cuts most of that but leaves in the big
concerted numbers, not to mention all the glorious tunes. It straddles the two worlds of opera
and Broadway in much the same way as, say, West Side Story.
The brains behind the project is currently the Great White Way’s favorite director of musicals,
Diane Paulus. I’m ambivalent about her work as a director here. She encourages her
performers to act in a physically broad — dare we say operatic? — style, although they dig
deep into character and specific emotion. Paradoxically, many productions on the operatic
stage in recent decades have tended to feel more natural and detailed.
Ronald K. Brown’s choreography, with its allusions to African roots and the popular dance
forms of the 1930s, feels too generic to help much. For all the talk of a jazz flavor to the new
orchestrations, what you hear from the pit sounds all too typical of the cut-down,
overamplified Broadway bands these days. We’ve been spoiled by the full-size orchestras of
our local Lyric Stage, not to speak of the opera orchestras that have become standard in this
music.
The theater-style voices in the current production mostly do justice to the score. Many touring
cast members carry over from the Broadway run. It’s a bit of a shocker that Porgy, Nathaniel
Stampley, sounds more like a high baritone than a bass. He portrays the handicapped hero
movingly, and he sings well in his own way. But changing the range of a role like this makes a
difference: No opera lover would want to hear a deep bass role like, say, Boris Godunov sung
by a high baritone, even one like the late, legendary Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
How you ultimately feel about this version will probably depend on your response to its
handling of the role of Bess, which was molded around the talents of Broadway queen Audra
McDonald. The louche, sexy slouch and the feral scowl are barely softened, even when Bess,
played here by Alicia Hall Moran, tries to reform herself while living with Porgy. There’s no
sense of a buried nobility, and it’s a foregone conclusion that Sporting Life (a mostly
charmless Kingsley Leggs) will lure her back to the dark side.
That said, Moran is stunning in the part. She has the soaring operatic chops the lush music
requires, coupled with the jazz instincts required in her work with her offstage husband, jazz
pianist Jason Moran. Her solo verse of “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” is the most thrilling
moment in the show: Her effulgent tone pours out, then is filed down to the narrowest, most
beautifully controlled line imaginable.
Plan your life
Through Dec. 22 at the Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora St., Dallas. Runs 165 mins. $30 to
$150. 214-880-0202. attpac.org.
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