Just like “Amour” — Michael Haneke’s austere movie about aging and death — could never have been made in America, “Opus No. 7” had to be imported from overseas. It’s not just the subject matter — life, art and death in the Soviet Union — but its visual sophistication.
Russian directordesigner Dmitry Krymov tells stories through vignettes and impressions rather than a regular plot. He uses symbol-heavy theatrical trickery, and works on a grand scale. St. Ann’s Warehouse has been reconfigured so the show sprawls out on an 86-foot stage to better deploy eye-popping feats like a blizzard of paper and a roller derby of wheeled pianos made of sheet metal.
Krymov hardly ever travels here: A rare foray happened last year, when the Lincoln Center Festival presented “In Paris,” starring Mikhail Baryshnikov. But his reputation’s crossed the ocean ahead of actual shows, and the entire run of “Opus No. 7” sold out before the first performance.
Well, get on line and hope for cancellations, because this is an extraordinary experience.
In his program note, Krymov explains that he was inspired by Balanchine pairing unrelated one-act ballets in a single evening. The first half of the show, titled “Genealogy,” is an impressionistic rendering of the oppression of Soviet Jews under Stalin; the second, “Shostakovich,” is a surreal look at the composer, who fell in and out of favor with his Communist masters.
While they share a similar cast and setting — 1950s USSR — the stories stand on their own.
In “Genealogy” the actors interact with projections and the set itself to tell us the memories and stories of embattled Jews. Hands poke out of the panels that form the back wall, projected photos suddenly come to life, eyeglasses and rough outlines represent children — a man (Mikhail Umanets) then manipulates a pair of small red shoes like puppets.
After intermission we meet Shostakovich (Anna Sinyakina, in drag) in a segment almost entirely devoid of dialogue. Looming over him is a 15-foot-tall puppet of Mother Russia, who seems benevolent at first, then turns murderous after donning a cap with a red star.
The second half relies too much on Slavic whimsy — Krymov overuses Sinyakina’s Chaplinesque pantomimes — but it recovers with a haunting finale that showcases the cast’s beautiful singing voices. You may never be sure what any given moment means, but you won’t soon forget “Opus No. 7.”