Hindered Vision

When the lights finally went down Wednesday night in UCLA’s newly restored Royce Hall--after we had donned our 3-D glasses and had our collective portrait snapped a hundred times to make a late ‘90s version of the famous Life magazine picture from the ‘50s and then taken them off again--a screen on the stage started to glow a rich blue. Robert Wilson began what appeared to be one of his incomparable light paintings. The Philip Glass Ensemble in the pit intoned a drone that turned into one of the most marvelous introductions to an opera Glass has yet written.

In the span of a minute or two and with nothing more than very simple music and light, blue fading to white, Wilson and Glass set up the kinds of theatrical expectations that they are famous for. A solo wind line, a few plucked sounding chords on the electric keyboards, a bit of rudimentary counterpoint is all it took to evoke the exotic world of the mystical 13th century Turkish poet and whirling dervish Jalaluddin Rumi. The effect is haunting, beautiful. There are hints, in the music’s ostinatos and a rising scale, of Glass’ groundbreaking 1976 opera with Wilson, “Einstein on the Beach.”

Then the first line of Rumi text--”Don’t worry about saving these songs!”--is sung softly, seductively by one of the four vocalists in the pit. Don’t worry? For months now, the producers, creators and presenters of “Monsters of Grace,” the major new collaboration by Wilson and Glass created for the reopening of Royce and then set to tour the world, have done a very poor job of concealing their worry of saving these wonderful songs.

The most anyone could say of “Monsters of Grace” was that it was too new to say anything at all. A revolution was promised with the use of computerized animated 3-D technology to transform the stage into something it had never been before. Opera for the 21st century was the hype.

Kleiser-Walczak Construction Co., responsible for special effects on “Stargate” and at the Luxor in Las Vegas, was engaged to realize Wilson’s three-dimensional imagery on 70mm film, and the project was reputed to push the envelope of modern technology. Diana Walczak said at a preconcert talk that 20 hackers had moved into the office for two weeks cranking out code day and night, and one had visions of another line of the Rumi text in the opera: “The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.”

In the end, the animators could produce only enough film for eight of the 13 scenes, and one of those didn’t pan out, so six had to be frantically staged at the last minute by Wilson. Rumors were flying that this opera, which had become “Monsters of Grace 1.0” (the beta version), was in trouble. Wilson gave laconic statements to the press and fought releasing images from the work for publication or allowing photographers to shoot the stage. He even reportedly turned away Peter Jennings’ cameras.

And with, it sadly turns out, very good reason.

“Monsters of Grace 1.0,” as presented Wednesday, is a work that still has the promise of a great Glass-Wilson collaboration, but one that has gone far astray. Its foundation is utterly secure. Glass has provided an hour and quarter of a richly captivating music. Wilson has supplied the startling imagery that he is famous for. And the enchanting love poems by Rumi (winningly translated by Coleman Barks) that make little distinction between spiritual and sexual ecstasy not only have inspired Glass into great flights of lyricism but provide the perfect warmth to contrast Wilson’s coolness and abstraction.

But after the first couple of magical moments of the performance, it became painfully clear that the 1.0 version of “Monsters” is missing the key element to any Wilson production--light. Wilson has been known to demand 100 hours or more of lighting rehearsal for a production, and he has used that time to create a stage world that creates the sense of entering into a whole new environment.

Ironically, 3-D, at least in the way Kleiser-Walczak was able to offer it under theatrical conditions (which means some light necessarily leaking from the lit music stands of the musicians in the pit), does just the opposite. It looks fake and kills illusion. The scenes we get--such as a suburban row of houses, a mountainscape with helicopters, the back of a polar bear slowly revolving, a Japanese table setting with a large snake, a hand cut by a scalpel--all appear washed out.

Some interesting attempts are made to deal with perspective, 3-D’s obvious advantage, but even those are undercut by the curious way the film seems to make everything smaller, not larger, than life. Nor is it an advantage to have computer-derived images floating ever so slowly inches before a spectator’s nose. One has all the time in the world to discover how contrived they appear. I actually enjoyed sometimes removing the not very comfortable, easily smudged glasses designed by l.a.Eyeworks and watching the film in two dimensions with an eye closed. It felt more mysterious and monumental that way.

The less said about the staged scenes the better. Many Wilson elements are present--the sudden shifts of brilliant color that can take the breath away, the ineffable slow movements of figures walking across the stage, the unrelated stage properties. But there was clearly too little time to do enough with them. Wilson is perfectionist by necessity.

What will happen to this show is anyone’s guess. It has a large list of sponsors in America and Europe and engagements everywhere. The performance by the seven-member Glass ensemble is a delight (though not as polished as it will surely get); the music, a wonder. The singers--Marie Mascari, Alexandra Montano, Gregory Purnhagen, Peter Stewart--are a pleasing quartet.

But “Monsters” is a show about the stage and technology, and it is intended to be a vehicle for presenting Wilson’s work to places that have never seen it fully realized. And thus far, Los Angeles, still smarting from its failure to mount the biggest Wilson project of them all, “the CIVIL warS,” remains one of them.

* “Monsters of Grace 1.0” continues through April 26, 8 p.m., Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m., Royce Hall, UCLA, $16-$35, (310) 825-2101.