Review: ONLY AN OCTAVE APART at Spoleto Festival USA

As we were recently reminded in a special CBS celebration of Carol Burnett’s 90th birthday, “Only an Octave Apart” was first sung by Burnett and soprano Beverly Sills in 1976 on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. That was a year before the first Spoleto Festival USA was first presented in Charleston, South Carolina. So the full-length CD recorded by Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond, followed by the full-length ONLY AN OCTAVE APART stage show, now live at Dock Street Theatre, is a fascinating look at how much things have changed – and how much they haven’t – since the crown jewel of New World arts festivals was still in embryo.

When Burnett and Sills staged their duet, the New Met was still a pre-teen at the Lincoln Center, and their encounter was mostly about the comical incongruity between network TV and opera, pop and high culture, a sweet voice that could benefit from amplification and one that gloriously blared, and how delightfully these vast differences could be bridged. Julie Andrews subsequently filled in at Sills’ spot opposite Burnett, somewhat altering the chemistry and disparity, and Bernadette Peters recently teamed up with Kristin Chenoweth when Burnett was feted.

Costanzo and Bond are clearly in a different mold, and their show produces a different, more risqué vibe. The younger Costanzo is gay, and the elder Mx Bond is trans, so the chemistry is brasher and bolder, and after engagements in Brooklyn and London, they can jubilantly proclaim that this is the show’s first foray “into a Hate State.” Nothing remotely as mundane as network TV is in this cross-cultural rendezvous. Now we have edgy cabaret encountering baroque-era opera, drag pitted against high culture, and a sweet countertenor mixing it up with a non-binary baritone who seem to have razor blades in their larynx.

Watching OCTAVE after attending Bond and Costanzo’s joint interview with Martha Teichner the previous afternoon was a lot like sitting in an echo chamber, since much of their early patter was about ground already covered: how their show came into being and their mutual admiration. As the lines about the Hate State affirm (along with Bond’s repeated quips about performing at the “Stiletto Festival”), there is flexibility built into the script, a certain amount of spontaneity and improvisation for the cabaret divx to feel free and a certain amount of structure and recognizable landmarks for Costanzo to feel secure and oriented.

Of course, those who came to the show after listening to the Octave CD had a different echo-chamber experience. For me, the anticipation of what songs these two flamboyant performers would sing together – aside from the title song, of course – was genuinely suspenseful.

Even though I’d seen publicity shots, the outré Jonathan Anderson costumes turned out to be more of a wallop. The first pair of full-length gowns, with their pointy projections, could double as writing desks! Although they were seriously overmiked, I wanted to hear much more of Bond at a softer volume, for Costanzo has been a staple at my visits to Spoleto for over 20 years, long before his Akhnaten apotheosis at the Met.

No wonder, then, that the most satisfying duet for me – and everyone else in the room – was the fun-filled mashup where Bond sang the novelty pop hit, “Walk Like an Egyptian,” while Costanzo actually did that, crossing in front of Bond as he reprised the quacking gibberish Philip Glass wrote for him when he portrayed the ancient Pharaoh. Naturally, the exuberant Bond wanted to get a piece of that quacking action themselves, and Costanzo completed the role reversals by singing the pop trinket as high as it has ever been sung.

Less successful role-reversal silliness came earlier in the show when Costanzo stationed himself behind the curtain so Bond could feel like the bewitching Carmen as they lip-synced the countertenor’s rendition of the “Habanera.” More to my liking was Costanzo’s singing of both roles in an Orpheus and Eurydice duet by Christoph Willibald Gluck, underscoring what he had told us the day before in the Teichner interview, that he had started his operatic career as a tenor.

Yet Costanzo confided in the scripted format of Octave that he found the countertenor pre-1750 lane too narrow to stick strictly with an operatic career, and Bond sagely confirmed the enormity of their co-star’s ambitions. Perhaps this was what impressed me most about Bond and their rapport with Costanzo. Speaking barely above a Lauren Bacall purr, they could interrupt the ebullient Costanzo in mid-gush and not a word of their quips or barbs would go unheard.

Before the rousing “Egyptian” climax, there are more serious and affirming interludes that help set up this zany showstopper. Costanzo sings Franz Liszt’s “Über Allen Gipfeln Ist Ruh,” based on Goethe’s valedictory poem; Bond brings tenderness and a very timely pathos to “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows,” and he only goes slightly overboard on the loneliness of “Me and My Shadow.” The duet on Patrick Cowley’s “Stars” was the most consistently powerful of the night, but only because their rendition of “Under Pressure” by David Bowie and Queen – some notably operatic rockstars – veered into “Vesti la giubba” from Pagliacci.

In the midst of the COVID pandemic, Only an Octave Apart started off as a recording project that would keep the artists busy, productive, and connected. But the stage version of OCTAVE continues to benefit its stars and expand their skill sets. While Costanzo has acclimated himself to venturing off-book onstage, he has noticed that his newfound comfort and relaxation have carried over into his singing. His hunched-up shoulders have eased down, and one night, he discovered that he had sung three notes higher than he had ever reached before.

Naturally, there were a few Hate Staters in the audience who had blundered into the Dock Street Theatre not knowing just how far apart from their comfort zones this show would be. They walked out at various points, exhibiting differing levels of tolerance that might be clinically analyzed. More of us were uplifted by the audacity and pride we saw onstage – and by the overwhelming acceptance throughout the hall.

Every so often, we were reminded of Taylor Mac’s triumphant return to Charleston in 2011 after a previous conquest, when he proclaimed, “This is my festival now, bitches!” and renamed it The Stiletto Festival. It is rather pitiful that America has regressed at least as much as it has progressed since then. That made ONLY AN OCTAVE APART more than a heartening display of courage and lighthearted determination from Costanzo and Bond. In a Hate State flooded with MAGA maniacs, this was a rainbow of love.

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