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The Marriage of Figaro, Almost Solo and Fully Alfresco
The countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo sings every part as his co-stars lip-sync.
The night breeze was delicious in that late summer way, the lights of Jersey twinkled across the Hudson, and the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo’s vocal cords were projected live on two giant screens, pink and weird and undulating like some beast from the Aliens franchise, as he sang Countess Rosina’s Act Three aria, “ Dove sono i bei momenti.” The image made my jaw drop, though perhaps not as much as Costanzo’s — there it loomed, a kind of weird, fleshy synecdoche for all of the frenetically ingenious reimagining of The Marriage of Figaro that’s currently bursting the seams of the outdoor amphitheater at Little Island. For Costanzo isn’t alone onstage; he’s surrounded by a company of actors, all first-rate clowns, who begin the play as his harried, breathless stagehands and gradually morph into full expressions of Mozart and Da Ponte’s characters. Fleet, irreverent subtitles by Nicholas Betson and witty, rehearsal-style costume pieces by Emily Bode—a hat and waistcoat here, an open-back dress, a flower crown and ribbon there—keep us up to speed and entertained on multiple levels: Costanzo’s body-hopping experiment, after all, is layered on top of a play that already revels in disguise, swapped outfits, and mistaken identity.
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