Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is one of my favorite novels. I have taught it—and therefore read it—multiple times, and each time it provides a fresh pleasure. So when I heard that the Metropolitan Opera was mounting a version of it with music by Mason Bates and libretto by Gene Scheer, I was eager to see it but realized that travel to New York, much less the cost of a good ticket, would be prohibitive. I was therefore delighted to stumble onto a broadcast of the show on PBS as part of its Great Performances series. Aristotle asserted that the most important elements of drama were plot, character, and diction, but he also included spectacle and music as crucial parts of the package. As a great fan of the book, I was let down by the changes to the plot (no Golem! no Antarctica!), though I recognized that they were necessary if the work was to avoid being the length of Wagner’s entire Ring cycle. Still, I was bewildered by some changes to character (Joe Kavelier’s brother becomes a sister, and thus his son becomes a daughter for the sake of symmetry?). But full marks to Mason Bates for the music, which works in three different idioms (somber and traditional for Europe, jazzy for New York, and electronic for the world of the comic books). And a standing ovation to director Bartlett Sher and his team of designers for the astonishing sets and projections. After seeing this production, Aristotle might have bumped spectacle up to the top of his list.
A gigantic cast performs on a gigantic stage on a gigantic set that magically and seamlessly segues from interiors to exteriors, from nightclubs to battlefields, from the top of the Empire State Building to the pages of comic book adventures that the two creators are drawing and realizing. I have never seen such a grandly ambitious staging that works so well. But I was glad that I got to see it on TV for free rather than in the opera house for hundreds of dollars per seat. The shortcuts to the story kept the characters at a distance despite their glorious venue to occupy.
Also on television, and ironically closer to the actual length of Wagner’s full Ring Cycle, is the 15-episode, 15-hour second season of The Pitt. I have heard of people griping that Season 2 doesn’t reach the heights of Season 1, and to me that’s akin to quibbling that Hamlet doesn’t quite measure up to King Lear. Here we have a different kind of grandeur: a television show that has committed whatever resources are necessary to pull off the visual equivalent of James Joyce’s Ulysses: one day in the lives of multiple characters, with tones running the all-inclusive gamut from comic to tragic. According to IMDB, there have been over 300 actors with speaking parts appearing over the two seasons. That number does not include the supernumeraries, those extras who must sit in the waiting room or fill the gurneys and wheelchairs in the background. Glimpsed in the course of the day, these people not only complete the world of the overcrowded, overwhelmed hospital, but also evince the investment that HBO has committed to making this series as brilliant as anything on television. And before all you Game of Thrones fans start clearing your throats, let me say that I saw and admired the original GOT, though not the later iterations. That’s a damn good show. But in the end it’s fantasy melodrama—good versus evil, with dragons. By contrast, The Pitt explores fully human characters, flawed but aspirational, who are in this emergency room not because they seek power or wealth, but because they want to resist the cruelties of a whimsical universe.
Aside from a few scenes outdoors, we are inside the confines of the emergency room throughout the day. I hope that my readers are aware that Episode 1 starts at 7:00 a.m., unfolds roughly in real time, and ends at 8:00 a.m., whereupon Episode 2 takes up the narrative until, hour by hour, fifteen episodes later we get to 10:00 p.m. and something resembling a respite for some, but not all, of the characters. Everyone in the cast is excellent. Special kudos to Noah Wyle, who carries the action, and to Sepidah Moafi, a newcomer in Season 2, who serves as a worthy foil to Wyle’s Doctor Robby. One of the quieter, more intimate moments occurs when Nurse Dana Evans, played to perfection by Katherine LaNasa, helps to collect the rape kit for a victim of sexual assault. The show takes its time with this process and allows the nurse, whom we see typically snarling at colleagues and the occasional patient, to demonstrate her empathy. This show is not afraid to close the doors for a while on the raucous waiting room and the chaotic emergency department to allow for a scene free of histrionics. That’s as courageous as any of the daring risks taken by the ER doctors and nurses throughout their daunting day, In its willingness to play the entire narrative scale between intimacy and tumult, this show is as grand as any opera, even if you watch it on your telephone.