Porgy and Bess is one of those shows that you’ve heard of, even if you have no idea what exactly it’s about.  This was certainly true for me, who, as a child, assumed it must be about a misspelled pig and a singing cow.  I learned (unsurprisingly) that I was not at all correct on that one, but also that (surprisingly) there were elements of the show I was familiar with; namely, the songs “Summertime” and “I Got Plenty Of Nothing'” rang a bell. (Although the fact that cotton picking work being aplenty would make “livin’ easy” for blacks in the South was news to me.  I guess work is a good thing to be had, even if the work itself isn’t easy.) The music was enjoyable, if operatically sung, although I heard that for lovers of the opera, this production was a departure. Music was cut and bits of dialog added, though I don’t think I’d have found the changes overly bothersome or intrusive even if I were a purist. Being big on story, the story didn’t feel rushed or short-changed.

What was interesting to me was that, from the title, the show seems to be billed as a love story when, in the end, it really seems to be much more of a story about Porgy and his growth as a person on account of his relationship with Bess.  I didn’t find Bess to be a particularly compelling character, and she was generally weak — I suppose her being weak on the inside is an artful counterpoint to Porgy the cripple, weak on the outside.  It was strange, though, I feel like we’re usually rooting for the woman in a love story, and so, Porgy and Bess was interesting in that it challenged that expectation.  We were rooting for Porgy, and hoping Bess wouldn’t go back to her old ways (or man).  It could be that since Bess ostensibly wields more power in the relationship (it’s said she’d be able to get any man), the roles are reversed, or it could be, as hypothesized, that it’s not really a love story after all.

Charles McNulty writes an edifying review for the Los Angeles Times and makes me curious to have seen Audra MacDonald in the role of Bess.