“The Handmaid’s Tale”
Detroit Opera House
Detroit, MI
March 1, 5, and 7
The more time progresses, the further backward it seems that we move. When Margaret Atwood began penning The Handmaid’s Tale in 1984, she was living in West Berlin, encased in the Berlin Wall. I wonder if she had some sort of crystal ball to see into 2022 when the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade or even further to 2025, when the United States would regress into a fascist regime with conservatives touting “Christian values” as grounds to decimate democracy and equality.
Whether Atwood’s dystopian words are prophetic for a collapse of women’s rights or not, the Detroit Opera’s production of The Handmaid’s Tale brings the novel to life onstage with gripping performances and an emotional soundtrack.
The Handmaid’s Tale paints a picture of a totalitarian regime in the fictional Republic of Gilead where women have been stripped of all rights and are not allowed to have jobs or read books. Fertile women are used as “handmaids,” who are forced to bear children for the wealthy elite in government-enforced rape rituals founded on obscure Bible passages. It is here that we meet the handmaid Offred, played by Niamh O’Sullivan, who narrates the story.
Led by conductor Marit Strindlund, the Detroit Opera orchestra provided a harrowing soundtrack, cloaking the audience in the despair and brokenness of the handmaids who had conceded to their fate.
One of my favorite parts about this production was the use of projection mapping and mirrors that gave the show layers of emotion and presence. Seeing O’Sullivan as Offred watch memories of her life leading up to the Gilead regime from behind a mirror — with Lisa Marie Rogali playing her “in the time before” and Detroit Opera resident artist Travis Leon Williams as her partner Luke — felt like watching ghosts dance in the shadows of her mind. O’Sullivan walking behind this same row of mirrors to get to her Commander’s office was a clever way to differentiate settings and was reminiscent of the journey to another realm. In his office, Offred is given magazines, lipstick, and lingerie to wear to an underground nightclub, all things women have been forbidden from doing in Gilead.
O’Sullivan and Rogali sharing a moment onstage together, both versions of Offred singing sorrows of the state of their life and what they lost, was one of my favorite moments of the play.
The Handmaid’s Tale’s dystopian imagining of a future where women are treated as property can be hard to watch. But the Detroit Opera presents a tale with stunning visuals and hauntingly beautiful singing and orchestration. The opera has also taken great care of its audience members, offering a series of community talks on reproductive rights and how religious extremism has been weaponized against women leading up to the production. Each show includes a pre-performance talk with an after-care session to help audience members process their experiences after the performance slated for Monday, March 9. There is also a somatic yoga session scheduled to help move through the emotional production at the opera house on Wednesday, March 4.
It’s challenging to portray all the nuances of Atwood’s characters in two and half hours, and the second half of the show felt slightly rushed, after spending the first half establishing the characters and weight of what the country has deteriorated into. Even though it felt like it all happened so fast, the ending was staged perfectly — a dramatic cliffhanger that leaves Offred’s future up to the audience’s interpretation.
Offred is taken away by armed men, reminiscent of a modern-day ICE kidnapping. Though she is told that they are actually members of the Mayday resistance who are staging her rescue, her fate is not entirely clear. She steps into the middle of the stage, removing her white bonnet and red cloak, and walks through a door with blinding white light on the other side. Her last lines, the same that close her narrative in the novel, echo amongst the audience: “And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.”
This powerful moment cautions us that we are always facing the choice to allow darkness to reign, or to step into the light. Which will you choose?
Further performances of The Handmaid’s Tale will take place at the Detroit Opera House on Thursday, March 5 and Saturday, March 7. More information and tickets are available at detroitopera.org.
This article was published in conjunction with Detroit Metro Times.
