Photo Flash: First Look at CARMEN HIGH at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

By Bridget Stucker

"Hey, Carmen, you're so fine...!"

This week, while the Festival Theater in Edinburgh indulges the opera lover with the classic Bel Canto opera, Norma, a group of young, singing-actors give opera a facelift over at Spotlites International.

Carmen HIGH is a production that looks to find common ground with all audiences and not just for opera devotees. Director and creator, Stephanie Vlahos (a former professional opera singer herself having sung opposite luminaries such as Placido Domingo and Frederica von Stade) explores ways in which to repurpose the opera rather than simply conceptualize through gimmickry. Not unlike the 1943 Broadway retelling of the opera Carmen entitled Carmen Jones, Carmen HIGH effectively utilizes the opera's story as a platform to illuminate a very different context: high school. It does so, significantly, with authentic voices; high school students themselves. With newly conceived lyrics that honor the intentions of the original French while updating the dialogue and context of the story, Carmen HIGH blurs classical music with originally-composed hip hop and pop music to effectively make the emotional underpinnings of an opera written in the 1800's still current. Just as in the original opera, Carmen High blends music with dialogue to tell its story.

In Bizet's original opera, Carmen is a gypsy, a woman with a different moral code that so intrigues the soldier, Don Jose that his attraction turns to obsession. It is the quintessential story of fatal attraction. In Carmen HIGH, Carmen is a cheerleader, tough, focused on self-gratification, and a bully. Her friends (part of the cheerleading and pep squads) both fear and glorify her. Jose is a super-intelligent loner in need of an anchor to ground himself in reality but his brush with Carmen spins him out-of-control. Ultimately, he targets Carmen and all of her friends, avenging his spurned heart by slaying the demons with a gun.

Georgia Mendes sings the title role, "mean girl" with passion and ease - able to shift between opera and musical theater with verve and commitment. Grant Grayson Bower plays her counterpart, Jose (originally Don Jose), as a brooding, Goth-influenced young man. With a vocal performance of his "inner monologue" pop song You're Driving
Me Crazy that is particularly noteworthy, Grayson's Jose doesn't indulge his dramatic performance in tenorial rants but instead, brooding authenticity.

However, Carmen HIGH is as much about its entire ensemble as it is about its principal performers. As we follow the tragedy of Carmen, we are taken through the highs and lows of high school, stopping momentarily to reach into the lives of other students in the high
school and to experience their inner thoughts/desires.

Worthy of note in this production are the "inner monologue" songs written by young singer/songwriter, Lily Campbell who manages to grasp the core of each random high schooler's lament with a catchy hook.

Perhaps not for the died-in-the-wool purist, Carmen HIGH is a refreshingly, new take on an old form that allows a classic to speak to new generations of audiences. Told without the aid of props or set elements, it relies on the gifts of its performers who deliver performances that are not only exciting but are a window into what afflicts us at the very core - intolerance, prejudice, and fear.

Carmen HIGH is Stephanie Vlahos (conceiver/director), Bizet (original opera music), The Faceless Muse, Kendra Celise, Lily Campbell, David Robinson and Scott Kelley (additional music), Scott Kelley (Choreographer), Jared Sayeg (Lighting Design) and And Galbach
(musical direction). Cast: Dominique Adapon, Darci Anderson, Connor Bezark, Grant Bower, Naja Burton, Maria Campo, Jackson Hatwan, Chris James, Sebastian de Klerk, Leah Lane, Georgia Mendes, Paloma Mettler, Mia Michaud, Isaiah Mikael, Aidan Morvec, Amy Prochaska, Joe Riahi, Daniela Rodrigo, Zane Sipotz, Charlie Smith, T J Smith, SAra Watson,
Shelbie Wayne, and Jack Zager.

Carmen High runs August 4th to 12th at the Spotlites International Venue 22-26 George Street, Edinburgh www.spotlites.co.uk.

Photo Credit: Isabel Wells