Trap Door

An opera that follows an American soldier in Iraq, and what leads him to murder an Iraqi, is a worthy idea, but it never jells in this production. Composer Lisa Scola Prosek has chosen a great medium for capturing the intense emotions that are ever-present in a constant state of war, yet she has packed so many side stories and backstories into her 55-minute performance that the main story fails to grab us. What's more, some of these side stories – like a clueless, very blonde American reporter trying to find a feel-good segment in the middle of chaos – are handled with such a heavy hand that any satire is squeezed right out of them. The choices made by director Jim Cave don't help, as the performers are constantly hurrying around but rarely adding compelling insight into what is actually going on. Prosek gives us some lovely songs, like an Iraqi taxi driver who hears music in the roar of trucks and clouds of dust that surround him, and the set by filmmaker Jacob Kalousek neatly captures this foreign world to which we are intimately connected. But any greater understanding of the soldier and the world he lives in never emerges.