THE OPERA OF TIMUR

It was an outrageous 75 minutes, under director Daniel Fish. The rest of the cast--Amelia Watkins as Brainy Woman, Eliza Brag as the Ape, Timur as the Doctor and Matt Boehler as the Director--couldn't have been bettered. And cheers to the production team for a stellar job: Amy Rubin and Jim Findlay (scenic designers), Joshua Higgins (video desginer), Terese Wadden (costume designer), Barbara Samuels (lighting designer), and Garth MacAleavey (sound designer).

The opera/movie comes out of the plot of Captive Wild Woman, in which a mad doctor, played originally by John Carradine, transforms an ape into Acquanetta. Behind the character is the Doctor (the flamboyant tenor Timur, indulging seriously in the role), a nurse named Brainy Woman (soprano Amelia Watkins), the ape (Eliza Bagg, in and out of costume), and the movie’s Director (bass Matt Boehler, carrying a palpable weight of harried world-weariness).