Carlow Arts Festival's Tiger King-inspired opera sees a showdown between zookeeper Joe Exotic and animal conservationist Carole Baskin.
★ ★
Bask in the presence of a great showman whose attraction to dangerous creatures has held people’s attention far and wide. After years spent working various jobs, he finds a genius talent for putting living things in cages and charging people money to see them. Self-aware and calculating, he prepares his next performance, presenting to his audience the exact version of himself he wants to be seen.
Ladies and gentleman, say hello to Louis Lovett.
That synopsis shouldn’t be compared with Joe Exotic, the convicted zookeeper who’s become the icon of a true-crime television series, and now the inspiration for Carlow Arts Festival’s short opera Exotic v. Baskin. Rather, Lovett - a visionary director and actor who gave us captivity dramas such as Hansel and Gretel and FRNKNSTN - is the host of the festival’s live broadcast. Lovett plays a vapid, silly theatre critic named Villum Harsch who introduces the broadcast's productions while puffing on a pipe and blowing smoke - in more ways than one.
After some of Villum’s empty-headed critical takes, we get to Dana Kaufman’s short opera. The real-life feud between Exotic and the animal conservationist Carole Baskin campaigning to shut down his zoo - a story of animal abuse, tragedy and attempted murder - was recently portrayed as an enjoyably trash kaleidoscope of bad haircuts and propaganda spin by Eric Goode and Rebecca Chailkin’s docuseries Tiger King.
The mythical status of both individuals now fits the broader canvass of opera buffa. “Hey all you cool cats and kittens,” says Ariana Lucas’s Baskin, recording a campaign video wearing pale theatrical make-up and a flower crown. She’s quickly interrupted by a broadcast of Exotic - a gun-bearing, deranged Lucia Lucas - threatening violence against her. The subversive libretto by Tom Swift has Exotic sing the last syllable of his name over and over, like a time bomb ticking down.
The short production - only four minutes long - is directed by its cast with inventive use of video-call backgrounds. Mixed footage contrasts between Exotic’s terrifying zoo compound and Baskin’s New Age animal sanctuary. Similarly, Kauffman’s composition has fun tonal shifts, from the dramatic build-up of Exotic’s threatening comments to the saccharine music of Baskin’s cultish address to her followers.
If Tiger King ultimately sided with Exotic, through some choice editing that suggested Baskin had a criminal hand in her husband’s disappearance, then Kaufman’s opera shows signs of standing up for Baskin. “The press are so dramatic,” she says, as the music spirals darkly to imagery of tigers eating flesh.
The operatic riff struggles to tame its subjects though. The promised showdown between Exotic and Baskin disappointingly gives in to a song and dance through a field, with each admitting how the other completes them. It may very well belie the slipperiness of the matter. When dealing with someone as in control of their story as Joe Exotic - testimonial footage about his life was destroyed in a mysterious fire - it isn’t easy to land satirical jabs that sting.
Even our festival host Villum isn’t quite the send-up you’d hope for, as a supposedly wicked art critic holding a grudge after failing as an artist. “I learned that it pays to be harsh,” he says, rather benignly. Whether a devil or an angel, the days of being well paid are gone I'm afraid.
Carlow Arts Festival's broadcast is available to view on the festival's YouTube and Facebook pages until 13th June.
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