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theater_review120I'm not an opera afficianado, but I love the chamber opera Bed and Sofa. The Kitchen Theatre produced it in 2002; this revival in their new space is even better.

Based on a 1927 Soviet silent film, Bed and Sofa concerns a love triangle brought on by a housing shortage. When Ludmilla finds herself stuck with a surly husband and negligent lover, all packed into a tiny apartment, she compares her plight to Mother Russia, trading one tyrannical leader for another.

That's the scripts' only political statement. Polly Pen's music and Lawrence Klavan's libretto focus on life's small details using repetitive lyrical forms: the bed, the sofa, the train, the rocking chair. Faced with their strange polygamy, each character simply sings: "I never speak in big and complicated ways, but love is big and complicated."

Director Susannah Berryman has created a delicately detailed production, where every look and gesture develops both character and story.

The cast is superb. Flexible is the word: each one uses vocal and performance skills to create fully rounded characters. Sternhagen brings her Ludmilla from dreamy despair through shy love to slitty-eyed rage. David Neal's supple baritone creates a tough yet wispy Kolya. As the lover Volodya, Patrick Olivier Jones goes beyond mere tenor brawn to show us a complex man torn between his old friend and his new love.

Steve TenEyck's set design places the cozy crowded apartment against the cold red and black domes of Moscow, glowingly lit by Max Doolittle. Benches become movie theatres and trains; a box on a table becomes the roof on the Bolshoi, where Kolya works. Costume designer Lisa Boquist excels in the details: Ludmilla's peasant blouse, Volodya's eyeshade, and the carefully kept raggedness of genteel poverty.

As Ludmilla says when she escapes her complicated plight: "Not another word."

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