You may have heard that Courtney Love — frontwoman of Hole, scribe of an upcoming memoir, perennial object of Internet adoration/fascination/mockery — is starring in a small-scale opera in New York City this week.
That’s mostly true, although Kansas City Choir Boy is not an opera in the traditional (or contemporary) sense of the term. There are no ostentatious vocal trills, there’s no case of mistaken identity and nothing is sung in Italian. (Technically this is an opera in that it’s “a musical drama that is mostly sung,” but let’s be honest, if we define opera that broadly, the term becomes useless).
But the real surprise is much more pleasant: Kansas City Choir Boy is a loose, irresistible gem, and Courtney Love is gruffly flawless in it.
Billboard Q&A: Courtney Love & Todd Almond Talk ‘Kansas City Choir Boy’
Staged in a small Greenwich Village theater space as part of the third annual Prototype Festival, Kansas City Choir Boy tells the story of a teen couple’s joyous, unfettered romance that comes to a slow death when Love’s character, Athena, moves to New York City to pursue a career in [fill in the blank].
In love with Athena but too woven into the fabric of Kansas to join her, the titular protagonist (Todd Almond, also the composer) turns to hedonism and eventually, music-making, to express himself. It’s ultimately a sad, sentimental meditation on the beautiful things that disappear when life forces two kindred spirits down separate paths.
Love described the main characters to Billboard as “a boy and a girl that are the coolest in town.” As the too-cool-for-Kansas girl who loves her choir boy but needs something larger from life, Love is perfect: at turns playful, distant, resolute and lost. And for a play with no real dialogue, the relationship between Almond and Love feels genuinely sensual — even when they’re not making out sans shirts (Love keeps her bra on, of course), they move as if magnetically bonded to each other.
However, describing Kansas City Choir Boy solely in terms of plot is doing a disservice to the one-act musical drama. The story is told entirely through music, sung by Almond, Love and a Grecian choir of sirens dressed in tight leather club skirts. And despite the small theater space, the work feels miraculously expansive thanks to the inventive use of lights, television (Barbara Stanwyck makes a brief appearance via The Lady Eve) and blocking that makes the audience feel engulfed in the world of the play.
But none of it would work if the music wasn’t so immediately arresting. Many of the songs are adapted from Almond’s own 2014 album, Memorial Day, but those singer-songwriter-y tracks are reimagined within the context of harrowing electronic soundscapes, ’90s alt-rock and contemporary classical vocal interplay.
When Almond’s character desperately stumbles into a rave to find hedonistic solace, the music fits the setting without sacrificing any cohesiveness to the music of Kansas City Choir Boy as a whole. Despite the disparate musical genres encompassed within the hour-long musical, it doesn’t play like an eclectic collection of songs — it feels like a consistent piece of music.
Watch Courtney Love Perform a Song From ‘Kansas City Choir Boy’
And Love is integral to the music’s success. When Almond’s sentimental vocals threaten to veer into saccharine territory, Love’s controlled rasp gives the music some balls. But when the final song fades into the black, don’t be surprised if a tear starts tingling at the corner of your eye.
Kansas City Choir Boy has a sold-out run through Jan. 17, but standby tickets are available. Otherwise, fingers crossed Prototype Festival doesn’t mark the final performance of Kansas City Choir Boy. It feels built to tour, and if it does, you should definitely make a point to see it.