It will be a first time collaboration for Cape Town theatre when legend David Kramer teams up with the Cape Town Opera for a new musical, Orpheus McAdoo this October.
The highly anticipated production is an exciting, fresh take on Kramer’s hugely successful Orpheus in Africa that premiered in Cape Town in 2015 and will play at the Artscape.
Boasting a versatile cast, Orpheus McAdoo will be directed by Kramer, whose music is inspired by early spirituals, minstrel songs, ragtime, ballads and opera and includes several new songs.
Cape Town Opera voices will lift the choral elements to new heights and audiences will identify with familiar, traditional hymns and tunes such as Amazing Grace and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
Orpheus McAdoo features a cast of Cape Town Opera (CTO) members including accomplished House Soloists Conroy Scott as Orpheus and Brittany Smith as Mattie, who won a Fleur du Cap Theatre Award last year for her role as Maria in The Sound of Music.
“Appearing alongside the CTO singers in both speaking and singing roles will be a number of equally talented performers such as Jody Abrahams who plays Egbert Washburn, Ernest Logan will be played by Dean Balie, Alexis Petersen (Lucy Moten), Elton Landrew (Curtis), Eldon van der Merwe (Richard McAdoo) and Natalie Robbie (Lady Loch), all of whom are well versed in musical and dramatic theatre and who add depth to the production.
Kramer said: “I’m looking forward to working with the combination of opera singers and musical performers to partly conjure up this era. It’s my hope that audiences will experience what the Virginia Jubilee Singers might have sounded like in concert in those days.
“This choir made a tremendous impact and the story of Orpheus and his wife Mattie and their struggle with minstrelsy in the 1890s provides for an entertaining and eye-opening evening at the theatre.”
The story revolves around the African-American choir known as The Virginia Jubilee Concert Company led by Orpheus McAdoo, that visited South Africa in the 1890s. Invited by Lady Loch, the High Commissioner’s wife, they successfully presented a style of singing that had never before been heard in the Cape and beyond.
The troupe became an overnight sensation, and toured towns and cities like Worcester, Wellington, Kimberley, Graaff- Reinet and Laingsburg, as well as the rest of South Africa, Kramer said.
“The reason Opheus McAdoo is suitable for opera singers is that McAdoo’s choir – the Virginia Jubilee Singers – are required to sing the jubilees without accompaniment. They need to have powerful, trained voices that can project. As portrayed in this musical, the Virginia Jubilee Singers Choir is made up of 10 members of the CTO company.
“The leads, Orpheus and Mattie are played by Conroy Scott and Brittany Smith, both trained opera singers who are also accomplished musical theatre performers.
“This musical has a variety of music genres, jubilee singing, minstrel charm songs, ballads, early American folk music, ragtime and even a little opera. It is highly entertaining.”
Orpheus McAdoo runs at Artscape from October 18 to November 4. Tickets range from R200 to R450 can be purchased through Webtickets and Artscape Dial-A-Seat on 0214217695.
Weekend Argus