‘Candide’s’ Audacity of Hope

×

Expand

Photo by Katelyn Farebrother

Skylight Music Theatre 'Candide'

Skylight Music Theatre cast in rehearsal for 'Candide'

Voltaire’s novel Candide (1759) was a sharp satire of his society, but also a penetrating look through the false consciousness that can keep society docile. Among its characters, Professor Pangloss, blind even to the nose on his face, insists that we live “in the best of all possible worlds.”

The comic operetta Candide (1956), brought to the stage this month by Skylight Music Theatre, is the work of many hands. Playwright Lillian Hellman wrote the libretto with music by Leonard Bernstein, but Stephen Sondheim, Dorothy Parker and a gaggle of writers contributed to the text. The book used in Skylight’s production is by Tony-winning playwright Hugh Wheeler.

Skylight’s Michael Unger inherited Candide when he came aboard as artistic director. The operetta was scheduled for the 2020 season but, as he says, “the pandemic had other plans.” He adds, “I absolutely would have programmed it. It’s a brilliant score and it harkens back to the roots of Skylight.” The company performed Bernstein’s eclectically tuneful operetta in 1982 and 1992.

Milwaukee audiences may remember Candide’s director, James Ortiz, for his Skylight production of Beauty and the Beast (2017). The Obie winner designed the set and the puppets. “He has such a fresh mind,” Unger says. “This will be like no Candide you’ve ever seen.”

Although Voltaire’s Candide can be read as cynical, Unger sees the operetta as “being about hope in a world that can seem hopeless. The optimistic ignorance of those running its society has a lot to say about how a society goes off the rails if we don’t take care of each other.”

Oct. 13-29 at the Broadway Theatre Center. For mor information, visit skylightmusictheatre.org/candide.