Reviews

Prototype Review: The Souring of Countercultural Radicalism in Eat the Document

John Glover and Kelley Rourke’s adaptation of Dana Spiotta’s novel kicks off this year’s edition.

Kenji Fujishima

Kenji Fujishima

| Off-Broadway |

January 13, 2025

Danielle Buonaiuto, Paul Pinto, Adrienne Danrich, Natalie Trumm, Tim Russell, and Amy Justman appear in Eat the Document at the 2025 Prototype Festival.
(© Maria Baranova)

Dana Spiotta’s 2006 novel, Eat the Document, charts the ways in which the radical fervor of the ’70s eventually gave way to disillusionment in the ’90s. It’s ambitious in scope and full of vivid character detail, so much so that the idea of compressing it into a 90-minute chamber opera would seem like a fool’s errand at the outset. The best that can be said for composer John Glover and librettist Kelley Rourke’s resulting adaptation, making its world premiere at this year’s Prototype opera festival, is that, like the two aging radicals at its heart, it means well.

Louise (Amy Justman) and Nash (Paul Pinto) are the two radicals, though Louise was not always known by that name. Originally Mary (Danielle Buonaiuto), she was forced to go on the run and leave her lover Bobby (Tim Russell) after one of their radical actions in 1972 goes horribly wrong. Now in 1998, she’s a single suburban housewife with a son, Jason (also played by Russell), who obsesses over the music of his mother’s generation. As for Nash, all we know from the start is that he owns an anarchist bookstore and, on the side, leads groups of youths who plot their own, comparably ineffectual radical actions. One of those youths, Miranda (also Buonaiuto), develops a crush on him, a romantic interest he reciprocates before she meets a “hacktivist” named Josh (Michael Kuhn).

In Spiotta’s novel, Nash co-owns the bookstore with his best friend Henry, who has frequent nightmares about the Vietnam War despite not actually having served in it. Glover and Rourke have retained the character (played by Paul Chwe MinChul An) but jettisoned his connection to Nash and the bookstore. (Adrienne Danrich and Natalie Trumm round out the ensemble.) Such a severe truncation, though, is indicative of how much nuance and detail is lost. Here, all the characters feel two-dimensional, and a climactic reunion between a pair of major characters feels strangely schematic as a result.

Paul Pinto, Tim Russell, Danielle Buonaiuto, and Amy Justman appear in Eat the Document at the 2025 Prototype Festival.
(© Maria Baranova)

Those shortcomings might not register for those who haven’t read the book. Glover has at least composed a richly varied score that isn’t afraid to touch upon terrifying dissonance and punk-rock stylings when dramatically appropriate. Director Kristin Marting’s doubling of certain actors to suggest a passing of the torch from one generation to the next is an imaginative touch, as are some of the more colorful cues in Ayumu “Poe” Saegusa’s lighting design. And set designer Peiyi Wong makes impressive use of HERE Arts Center’s Mainstage theater to encompass both Nash’s bookstore and Louise’s suburban digs in one space, with prop designer Oscar Escobedo filling it with ’70s and ’80s LPs and musty-looking books.

The cast does what they can to infuse these characters with life. Even with a barely-there part, An brings genuine basso profundo gravity to Henry’s traumatic visions of wartime death and destruction. Buonaiuto and Russell both pop with idealism as the younger characters. As the older characters, Justman and Pinto certainly bring sensitivity and impressive vocal chops, but only occasionally are they really allowed to express the kind of disillusionment their characters ought to exude. That’s perhaps less their fault than that of the work’s creators. A novel that was both intellectually and emotionally resonant has turned into an opera that loses the source’s emotional core.

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