Prudence and Mollywog review "The Magic Flute"...
 

Well....that was definitely....something.

Indeed it was. I've never seen anything like it before!

Many of the vocalists were quite good.

Oooooh!! I've always wanted to see it!

How were the costumes? :)

It wasn't the Julie Taymor-directed one, was it? I read the NYTimes review of it and really wanted to go...

I can assure you that Julie Taymor had absolutely nothing to do with this production.

Gotcha.

Here's the review I was referring to, btw.

Awww... I thought you were talking about the Smurfs one.

The orchestra did a wonderful job, particularly the double reed section!

So mojo for the oboes? :D

Hee!!!! Yes, and also for the bassoons and the English horn.

To give a little more away...

Well, Sarastro was styled as a Scout Master....

And Tamino was a Cub Scout!

Papagano wore short pants and a variety of bird hats.

Oh, and his bells were a toy keyboard.



"Kool-Aid of the Gods!"

The wild beasts of Osiris were stuffed teddy bears and a stuffed fox and a few other assorted stuffed animals.

Okay, so the full story - this was an English translation, done by the director, that set the action at a children's birthday party. The Queen of the Night and Sarastro were feuding parents. Sarastro was a scout leader type, with his temple minions assistant leaders. The prince and his sidekick were in short pants, and the prince had the scout kerchief around his neck, as well. (No obvious boy scout logos, but the adults were in khaki and the prince in blue. Plus the scout leader kept holding doing the whole three finger salute thingy.) Monostatos was the bully at the party with a play badge and a variety of toy guns. The temple youths were teen girls with their hair in pigtails. The first act ended with "who wants cake?" and the whole thing concluded with someone coming on wearing apron and wielding BBQ implements, implying the burgers were done. (Yes, that seems backwards.)

It was definitely not the best version. The performers were good (QotN had trouble with the first aria, but this was also still a dress rehearsal), but the setting was just weird. Sometimes I couldn't look at Molly, lest I end up in uncontrollable giggles.

Sometimes the language was a more literal translation, with the sort of formal language you would expect, and then you'd get lines like (when Pamina is trying to kill herself) "the girl has gone completely mental/she is not the sharpest pencil" -- or something like that. It was jarring to go back and forth between colloquial and traditional language.

And strangely disturbing - the prince is supposed to be a boy at the party (the birthday boy, who gets the flute as a gift) in this translation, and the ladies in waiting parents of kids at the party (I think the three ladies were supposed to be seen as the mothers of the three temple youths), which meant that when the ladies are fighting over who gets to keep watch over the prince because he's so good looking - it was an uncomfortable level of "ick" for me.

I forgot to even mention that bit with the ladies in waiting afterwards! That gave me a serious case of the ick too. A
And you forgot to mention the fact that their main props for furniture/rocks etc type stuff were three giant alphabet blocks...