Theater review | Operatic "Night Flight" flies at the Moore

Theater Review |

In "Night Flight," a 1931 novel based on his adventures delivering air mail in South America, the author and pilot Antoine Saint-Exupéry wrote of navigating the evening sky by "the frozen brilliance of diamonds."

Such starry phrases irked some of his critics, who charged the writer with precious romanticizing.

But Saint-Exupéry would have none of it. "Any farmer has equally poetic dreams every night," he retorted.

Few farmers, or pilots, craft prose as crystalline and entrancing as Saint-Exupéry's (the writer is best known as the author of "The Little Prince"). And few theater groups would risk turning "Night Flight," his reverie on the dangers and seductions of human flight, into a stage piece.

But Book-It Repertory takes on such gambles. And call it an opera or an operetta, the world-premiere work "Night Flight" is the troupe's boldest move yet.

As presented at the Moore Theatre, it is also a beautiful and flawed risk, which deserves further development to realize its inherent power.

In the Moore, "Night Flight" offers some ravishing musical interludes in the ambitious, tango-infused score composed by Joshua Kohl and triple-threat Myra Platt.

Platt's adaptation evokes the novel's piquant, rhapsodic, tragicomic tone in a way that engages your head and heart, especially in the more dramatic second half. And under Platt's direction, the visual tableaus conjured with metal scaffolding, tall ladders and simple, exquisite lighting effects by ace designers Matthew Smucker (sets) and Geoff Korf (lighting) can be breathtaking.

On page and stage, "Night Flight" is more rumination than action tale. But gradually one gets caught up in the existential dilemma and courage of stormbound mail pilot Fabien (John Bogar); the passion and worry of his new wife, Simona (Ellaina Lewis); the obstinance of Fabien's boss on the ground, Rivière (John Patrick Lowrie); the quirky steadfastness of Brandon Whitehead's meek assistant boss, Robineau; Lauren Kottwitz's eager clerk Elise; and dashing pilots enacted by John Ulman, Brian Demar Jones and others.

All have their parts to play, in Saint-Exupéry's impressionistic tale of daring, hope, fear and transcendence.

It's the music that proves most challenging here. Crossing catchy, rustic tangos with more modernistic recitative and emphatic choruses, the strings-and-accordion score is sumptuous but not saccharine, atmospheric yet ambitious.

More than that, it's hard to say. That's because the boomy acoustics of the Moore, which intermittently swallows up or muffles the (presumably unamplified) voices, often upset the balance between the singers and the able instrumental quartet.

Moreover, this is busy and sophisticated music that, particularly in the rangy solo passages, requires classically trained singers. The hardworking cast does its level best in arias of varying degrees of difficulty. But few have sufficient vocal technique to meet the task.

Bogar (best known for his Shakespeare roles) rises to the occasion with a baritone so robust you wish he had more to sing. (His role could be plumped up dramatically, also.) And Lewis, as his wife, is a skilled classical singer whose soprano can soar above the muddy acoustics.

Others in the cast have solid music-theater credentials, but "Night Flight" leans far more toward opera than most Broadway fare.

If a company like Seattle Opera nurtured this piece, as a chamber work of great promise, more of the score's colors and textures could be revealed, and refined.

In its short debut run at the Moore, "Night Flight" does achieve liftoff. But it should have a follow-up flight, aimed at the heavens.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com