POLITICAL TO A FAULT

By Michael Walsh

I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, a new pop opera by avant-garde composer John Adams, radical black poet June Jordan, iconoclastic director Peter Sellars and 26 urban-graffiti artists, raises an interesting question: Is it possible to be so politically correct that one becomes politically incorrect? Or to put it another way, Are some groups of people so inherently villainous that it is perfectly acceptable to stereotype, ridicule and otherwise bash them?

Anyone who has followed American political discourse of late knows that the answer to both questions is yes -- as long as the bashee is a white heterosexual male. If, as in this case, he is also a Los Angeles policeman who is unwilling to confront his repressed homosexuality, so much the better. And if his moral weakness can be contrasted with a succession of noble people of color, including a madonna-like illegal Salvadoran immigrant, a lusty black preacher, a "reformed" gang leader and a prejudice-battling Vietnamese Legal Aid attorney, then you have a show that is p.c. to a fault.

Adams and Sellars are no strangers to topical political controversy. Their two previous operatic collaborations, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, both set to elegant, literate librettos by poet Alice Goodman, tackled explosive subjects in unconventional ways. Nixon presented a surprisingly intimate, sympathetic portrait of the former President, while Klinghoffer roused the ire of some American Jews with its compassionate presentation of Palestinian suffering. Jordan, the team's new librettist, is a political activist whose lapidary vernacular libretto uses a catastrophic Los Angeles earthquake as a metaphor for the shattering power of love.

The three thus form a potently up-to-the-minute trio. So it's both surprising and unfortunate that Ceiling/Sky, now having its world premiere in Berkeley, California, before traveling to New York City and Europe, is so fundamentally flawed, both politically and dramatically.

It's a shame because the work contains many moments of rare and innovative beauty. Adams' eclectic, pop-oriented music, scored for an eight-member rock band, conducted ebulliently by Grant Gershon and sung by a cast of young Broadway-style performers, is a radical departure from the expansive minimalism that marked his earlier stage works. The title song, for example, is a syncopated chorus that could have come straight from Broadway, while A Sermon on Romance is a foot-stomping gospel shout. Your Honor My Client He's a Young Black Man, sung by the Vietnamese lawyer (the dynamic Welly Yang), has an almost rap-like ferocity that contrasts poignantly with a touching number like Consuelo's Dream, sung by the Salvadoran immigrant (Sophia Salguero). Adams has long shown a fondness for pop music (Nixon had a fox-trot), and here his fascination with the wellsprings of American musical expression has resulted in a series of strikingly hummable melodies. Says the composer: "I never realized how hard it is to write a good song."

Equally striking are the banners, designed by spray-paint graffiti artists from Los Angeles and San Francisco, that form the production's sole dacor. Each scene is illustrated by a single pennant, and each act is preceded by a collaborative mural depicting the deeply divided city of Los Angeles before and after a major temblor. Jordan's poetry too is highly accomplished and eminently singable. Although the piece was conceived before the 1994 Northridge quake, the title and title song derive from a memorable remark by a survivor of that disaster and form the show's central metaphor: "I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky!/ I was miserable and aching/ at the way the news kept breaking/ I was searching for a reasonable reason for my smile/ I was finding what I want washed out completely in denial/ I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky!"

Still, the politically correct cliches at the heart of the piece are a crippling obstacle. They aren't even consistent. For if Mike, the much maligned cop (Michael Ness), is a repressed homosexual who finally realizes his true nature in the quake's aftermath, shouldn't that make him a Good Guy? Is David (Jesse Means II), the priapic minister, really a symbol of black male virility or a sexual predator? Is Dewain (Harold Perrineau Jr.), the gang leader who is arrested for stealing two bottles of beer, an avatar of resistance or merely a common thief?

Sellars says his ambition is "to have this piece be the spring show in every high school in America." It will need some reworking first-not just character reassessment, but pruning in the overlong first act and fleshing out of the second. Even then, with a female trio delivering such lines as "The pen on the pillow of sperm/ The penis stretched out for Venus," it's doubtful that Ceiling/Sky will replace Brigadoon anytime soon.