Mad Men – The Opera

Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti begins not with a prelude, but a jingle. In Matthew Eberhardt’s production a trio of session singers clusters around a studio microphone. A clarinet throws out a slinky riff, the ‘On Air’ light blinks on, and they’re off: a swinging hymn to postwar suburbia, in Andrews Sisters close-harmony. Then we see a scene familiar from a hundred sitcoms and movies: all-American domesticity, 1950s-style. Clean-cut Sam is in his business suit, his prettily dressed wife Dinah fixes breakfast, and Junior scampers about in a cowboy costume. Bernstein establishes his world instantly, and Eberhardt sets it up with a deft touch. This is basically Mad Men — The Opera.

So you know the deal. It’s the hollowness of the American Dream, and sure enough, Sam and Dinah are bickering from the off. What unfolds as they drift through their day — him lording it at office and gym, her bunking off to a trashy matinee at the movies, neither of them bothering to show up for Junior’s school play — is a startlingly cool dissection of a marriage on a downswing.