San Francisco Chronicle

DATEBOOK
Saturday January 28, 1995

The logic of music is so fluid and potentially elusive that the notion of musical surrealism would seem to be either impossible or redundant. Yet the strains meld engrossingly in Erling Wold's surrealist chamber opera "A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil," now playing at the Intersection for the Arts.

This hour long piece is adapted by Wold and dramaturge Carla Harryman from a 1930 "collage novel" by Max Ernst, an eclectic assemblage of Victorian-era illustrations fitted with captions.

It replays the long and highly charged dream of 11-year-old Marceline-Marie (nicknamed Spontanette because of her vein of whimsy) on the night before she enters a Carmelite order. In sequences marked by fleeting, associative dream logic, the sleeping child conceives a jumble of erotic, clerical and mythical imagery that is at once exotic and (to her, at least) weirdly familiar.

Engaging Performance
In general, a little surrealism can go an awfully long way. But "A Little Girl" has everything it needs to keep an audience engaged.

Its structure is clear, even when the exact nature of the component incidents is not. More important, those incidentsÑincluding (I think) a ball, a church ceremony and finally, her rejection of her divine bridegroom include much that is witty, psychologically telling or even just momentarily arresting.

What drives the piece is Wold's score, a beautiful and distinctive creation that uses the moody repetitions of minimalism as a frame for more free-form interludes.

Shadowy Lyricism
These extended fantasias range from pop-tinged episodesÑ most enjoyably in a high-spirited sequence where Spontanette imagines hiding furry animals under her nun's robesÑto chapters of shadowy lyricism whose loveliness can be haunting. Accompaniment is provided by a fine seven-instrument ensemble, crisply conducted by Deirdre McClure.

Jim Cave's resourceful production matches the score's variety effortlessly, with a host of puckish visual images (a floating violin, a trumpet used as a censer). Lauren Elder's setÑdominated by Spontanette's big bed and an armoire through which dream characters come and go Amy Trachtenberg's vivid costumes and Elaine Buckholtz's shadowy lighting all make important contributions.

"A Little Girl" also boasts a first-rate cast, led by Chris Brophy, in a shabby top hat and a pencil-thin mustache, as the delightfully theatrical narrator. His spoken role witty and generally at least on the verge of comprehensibility provides the one thread through the uncertain goings-on.

Most of the singing is done, superbly, by Laurie Amat and Pamela Z, who represent Spontanette's dream self (as the narrator explains, the twin name Marceline Marie encourages a sense of double identity). Their vocal parts cling to each other in close-knit dissonances at first, then gradually take off into their own spheres. Jo Vincent Parks plays a number of male roles father, priest' patriarchal avatar and so on.

As Spontanette herself, Mary Fourcade is an astounding silent actress for most of the piece. Simply through her facial expressions -and body language, Fourcade conveys a broad dramatic range including Spontanette's uneasy excitement about her own sexuality, her mingled fear and attraction in relation to the Church, and her growing self-confidenceÑwith utter virtuosity.