Discovering 'Powder Her Face' at Skylight Music Theatre

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Photo Courtesy Mark Frohna

Skylight Music Theatre’s upcoming chamber opera Powder Her Face, by Thomas Adés and librettist Philip Hensher, is inspired by the life of Duchess Margaret Campbell of Argyll (1912-1993), a socialite and celebrity of her time that is often remembered most for her scandalous public divorce in 1963. Shepherd Express sat down with Powder Her Face’s music director Viswa Subbaraman, actress Cassandra Black, who stars as the Duchess, and director Robin Guarino, for an in-depth look into this powerful, thought-provoking production.   

What is most exciting about premiering this show in Wisconsin, specifically Milwaukee?

Subbaraman: In a season that celebrates women, it gives us an opportunity to talk about women and celebrity. We have this kind of fascination with women and women doing outlandish things, but when they’re no longer interesting to us, we discard them. This is a show that deals with that in so many ways through the life of possibly the first woman who had to live her life in the media. Additionally, Powder was one of the more radical works of the 20th century. I thoroughly believe that our audience is equally knowledgeable to New York or L.A. or whenever you’d want to look. I’m not going to undersell our audience because I have high expectations of them, and I think they have high expectations of us and the art we give them. So we should be bringing some of the most important works of the last century to Milwaukee. Milwaukee deserves that, so I think we’re doing exactly what we need to be doing for our city.

Any interesting backstory about composer Thomas Adès or librettist Philip Hensher?

Subbaraman: Philip Hensher is an incredibly well-published author. Adès and Hensher approached the story really to make waves. The piece was premiered in ’95 which was two years after the Duchess passed away. So in that sense, like the more recent Anna Nicole opera, this was something that was going to put them on the map and it did to a certain degree.

Can you share how the opera’s music accompanies and/or expands on the story of the Duchess?

Subbaraman: Thomas Adès I think is one of the most important living composers that we have. Adès was 24 when he wrote this. He was a prodigy, he was an incredible pianist, he studied conducting, he was a composer. He’s also become one of the more interesting influences on the next generation of composer, even though they’re all around his age. Adès is so knowledgeable about the art form and it’s evident in the way he writes his music. You can tell he completely digested the operas of Strauss, Wagner and Mozart, and he really understands where his art comes from, but he was really able to develop a unique voice all his own. Too often you see people trying to innovate and they have no idea what came before them.

What kind of instrumentation is involved?

Subbaraman: Fly fishing reels, electric bells, slide whistles, a flexitone, and at one point the percussionist is supposed to take two microphones and swirl them on a snare drum to create a feedback effect. Adès understood every instrument’s capabilities. He has a great innate sense of what the orchestra can do.  

Can you tell me about the vision of Sandra Bernhard, who was supposed to direct the show before she died of cancer, and what it means to bring that to stage?

Subbaraman: Sandy’s philosophical shift in the show was to try and tell the story from the Duchess’ eyes and not from society’s. The Duchess was someone who was a celebrity and I don’t know that she ever had anyone who really truly loved her for her. In fact, there’s a line in the opera that says, ‘All the people who truly loved me, were paid for.’ By telling it through her eyes and not focusing on her sexual exploits, I think we’ve changed the production in a way that, while it is explicit (it has a fellatio aria that’s part of the show), it is not one that is so in your face that it’s gratuitous. It’s elegant and I think it will be a thoughtful way of depicting it for an audience.

Sandy absolutely wanted someone of her generation to come in and direct it from her perspective. When Sandy and I staged the show the first time in Houston, she was the first woman to direct it. Now Robin’s the second. As far as we’ve been able to trace, at least in the U.S., it’s never been directed by anybody but Sandy and Robin when it comes to women. And I think that offers a unique perspective.

Guarino: Here’s the thing. Sandy and I never talked about the vision. We talked about being a woman director—we had talked about that for years. We were like-minded in a lot of things, specifically when it came to how ensembles worked together and how to work with a collaborator. We came from similar backgrounds, she at San Francisco Opera and me at the Metropolitan Opera, where you have to know the material, you have to be on top of your craft, but you have great respect for music, conductors and singers, and know how to work with them. You have to come into the room the most prepared person you can possibly be to interact with people and to leave your closed ideas at the door.

We trusted each other. She called me and it was really hard actually. She said, ‘I’m in Milwaukee, I just had a series of production meetings for Powder Her Face and I realize that I’m not going to have the energy to be in front of a singer all day. I just need to know that there’s someone there who can direct it—do you have January free?’ I said, ‘Well yes, what’s going on?’ And she said, ‘I just don’t think I’m going to be here.’ Sandy had fought cancer for a very long time and she had been told very early on that she would not have a long life, which is something we all sort of knew but didn’t really think about. But this last bout of cancer really hit hard.

[After she had passed away,] we were all scared, we were all sad. However, things evolved in a really natural way at the pace that the people needed to do their work and make their peace with it. I came into a very beautiful, physical production that Sandy had been a part of, and that was really neat because it was careful, it was detailed, it was well thought-out. After our first run through in the room, I was really shaking. I did not realize I would go to that place, where I just felt extremely fragile and like, ‘Oh, Sandy’s here.’

The show is recommended for mature audiences--can you elaborate on this?

Subbaraman: There is some explicit language, there is one explicit scene. I think more often than not, the show has been performed to be a shock opera, to be over the top, to do what society did to the Duchess in her own era, which is to basically send her up and to make her the center of our comedy. It’s often been done with it being about the sex, about how many men she slept with, and I think what we have done is turned it on its head. I didn’t want to bring this show to Milwaukee and do a send up of the Duchess again. We wanted to be able to look at it and say, ‘Who are we as society as we look at these people as celebrity, when we put them on their pedestals and look forward to the day we can tear them down? And what happens to them once they’re torn down?’ I think that’s the reason the show is important.

What kind of insight does the show perhaps relay regarding the effects of society’s obsession with celebrities and their personal lives?

Subbaraman: I think it asks us to think about that question. I think it’s up to the audience member to interact with the Duchess on stage when they see the show, to come up with their own answer to that.

Black: We loved to love her and then we loved to hate her, which is the same with any tabloid artists now, whether it’s Jennifer Aniston or whoever’s on the cover of the magazine at the time. We love to obsess about their excess that we will never know and then we also love to bring them down because it somehow makes us feel better about the fact that we are not that.

Guarino: Imagine the amount of work it took to be in the public eye and stand for something. It’s very much a criticism of society, of the patriarchy, of the political sphere and of the worst parts of bottom feeding society that sort of feed on these tabloids. And of course it completely reflects what’s going on today.

How do you believe Adès expresses the life and personality of Margaret in a comprehensive way?

Guarino: I think it was really challenging for him, frankly. It was brought to Adès by his librettist and I really can relate exactly to what Adès said when he was first confronted with the material, which is, he was trying to find her as a redeeming character. He was looking for who this person was—was she a philanthropist, was she an artist, was she a great reader, was she well educated, was she kind, was she a good mother? And he really found that there was not a very nice human being there or at least that she didn’t really have what he considered a goal or a mission in life, other than to be in the public eye, to be a socialite and to connect her money to power and a title.

As much as this story’s about public appearance and private life, it’s also about conscious and unconscious, and interior life and dream and memory and what’s happening in the moment. We know she’s thinking back and when it starts to devolve. You can really hear that in the music, it’s clearly marked, whatever the mental framework and state of mind is.

Black: It also talks about the fact that all these celebrities aren’t above us, they aren’t that different. Adès really treats everyone very fairly. It’s an opera about humanity and what we do to each other in order to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. And how unsuccessful those attempts are. I think the librettist did a great job of choosing moments.

Cassandra, what is exciting and also challenging about genuinely portraying the Duchess?

Black: I think in this portrayal the scariest thing is making it more about me as a person instead of about her. Finding the places that are not put on, the places that are real, the weaknesses in my own life and psyche, and letting those be available. It is such an exposed, naked part. It focuses on some of the harder things that I think we all have to deal with as people. How we are looked at by our peers, how lonely we are despite how much company we have—those things are not unique to the Duchess. Those are things we all deal with every day. And we also deal with what is real versus what is pretense. That is also something, especially in theater, we deal with. You put on all these characters, you start looking around at other people and analyzing so you can take that and make that part of your craft and you ask yourself at the end of the day, which part’s actually me? For me, this particular production has been a lot about trying to see what is less about the Duchess and more about me as a person.

The most fun part about playing her is that she is an anti-hero. I respond better to characters that have flaws. An anti-hero is so much fun to play because you are allowed to be ugly, you are allowed to be cruel, you are allowed to be even mean to yourself. There are so many different possibilities. So that’s the fun part, to play both the hero and the villain all at once. And the trick is can I allow the audience to feel that way at the same time, because we are all both hero and villain in our own stories.

Can you tell me about working with costume designer Cesar Galindo?

Black: I really love what he’s doing with the show. The Duchess is in mostly pastels and then everyone else in a lot of black, grey, white and muted colors. The designs are fabulous, but the team is also great. I’m not an easy woman to costume. I make most of my own clothes, so I know how hard it is to make things for my body.

The costumes are a character in the show. When we did it last time, all the changes were on stage. This time, they’re not all on stage. Some choice ones happen on stage. Doing this changes everything about how you move, how you interact, how much time you have. How a woman takes off her gloves. These things are interesting to me. All women don’t do those things the same way. I think that those things add a lot to the character.

It’s so worth doing an image search on her before you come to the show. It gives you a really clear idea about the discipline of who she was. There’s a line in the show, ‘She doesn’t look happy, she looks rich.’ When you start to look through the photos, you’re like, ‘Wow, she really doesn’t look happy, she really looks rich.’ It puts an extra spin on that for me, the amount of work it takes. And even now, if you’re in the grocery line and looking at the tabloids, those women don’t look happy either. They don’t, they look rich!

Anything else you’d like to add about Powder Her Face or Skylight?

Subbaraman: I feel like we’ve really found a show that’s uniquely ours. It’s such a difficult work from a performance perspective, because you need great performers to be able to do it. And it’s one that you have to figure out how you’re going to put together in a way that really adds something of value. And so for us to be able to do it, we’re all honored to be a part of it.

Black: It’s kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity for someone who doesn’t travel all over the world to see the shows that they want to see. You really should see more than once, because the first time, I think the piece happens to you. And then after you know what it is, then you can really go back and really start to pick up on all the little details and the little earworms and the psychological aspects. The first time, it really is impact.

Guarino: I think audiences are going to be surprised at how relevant this story is. This piece has gotten a bad reputation at other companies. Sometimes what happens in the attempt to entertain, people send up the story and they miss the point of it. I hope that the audiences will trust that we’re not going to throw it in their face, that we really have brought them an important piece of contemporary work with an issue that’s relevant and we’ve done it with dignity.

I also want to say thank you to Viswa for bringing me here, but also thank you to donors who have faith in what Viswa is doing and are unafraid to support it and take the risk. Often people ask, “What’s it going to be like, what’s it’s going to look like, what can we sell to our audiences?’ but rarely they say, like they say here, ‘We trust you as artists, we trust the journey you’re going to take and the process you’re going to take and we want to be part of it.’ That is the rarest thing that occurs and you’re really lucky that it occurs here because it makes theater vital and worth doing.

Black: It prevents us from being curators in the museum of performing arts. We get to actually create something, and that’s special.

Powder Her Face runs Jan. 29-Feb. 14 at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Cabot Theatre, 158 N. Broadway. Each show includes insightful one-hour pre-show and post-show talks. For tickets, call 414-291-7800 or visit skylightmusictheatre.org.