Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle

I like this movie because it shows what life is really like backstage at a live show. Many of the other reviewers seem to think that it SHOULD be about something else, like stagehand basics or the history of opera. Those would be great ideas for other documentaries, but it's just not what this one is about. I've been a professional stagehand for many years and love the way this film captures backstage dynamics. A bell rings and everyone springs into frenzied action for five minutes. Then back to waiting. You have a choice between solitary pursuits like crocheting a smock, or you can bore your fellow stagehands with stories. The lighting and costumes are really beautiful in this production, so you get a dose of that as well if that is is your focus. And it's really interesting how desperate the performers are to impress stage managers before going on stage. I've always thought that must be their way of boosting confidence before facing the audience directly. The woman playing Brunhilde just won't leave the cue caller alone, and he is obviously about to come completely apart from anxiety! In a nutshell, the movie is about people and how they interact in a work environment that is alternately boring and terrifying.

Just saw it in connection with Santa Fe opera production of Valkyrie. But we also were at 1990 San Francisco Ring so it connected audience to stage to backstage. The astonishing level of skills it takes to do the show. Having worked in a small house in opera this is an amazing real record of skills and muscle and huge resources on all levels to do opera and especially the Ring. Don't bother if you don't care about theater.

I thought this was a great idea but, boy, was it poorly executed. We do get a broad sense of how complex and challenging the backstage operations of a show are, but virtually no specifics about any of it works. The producers don't seem to have found any way to tell a story or give the viewer a "through-line." (Which is not to say they didn't try, but having the stagehands relate a synopsis of the Ring cycle as the program's narrative does nothing to tell us about the job of physically mounting an opera.)

We see lots of things happening, but are told little about what it is that the people are doing and why. There's little sense of who is who, or how the various production departments fit and work together. For instance, several times we hear about a problem of some sort -- one expects then to see the problem and its consequences and/or how it gets resolved. But instead the filmmakers generally just cut to something else (generally, pretty generic footage of people pushing stuff or talking into headsets.)

Overall the film ends up feeling more like a pastiche of images that you'd see run under the closing credits of a show, rather than anything worth watching for its own merit.

I have to rate this more highly than the other reviews though my experience with at least more primitive productions of Broadway musicals perhaps made it more interesting to me than to others.

Perhaps the device of having different stagehands narrating the Ring Cycle is rather artificial but it gets the information across. For the most part, we see dress rehearsals for the four "music dramas" from the crew's point of view though plenty of the music comes through even in highly fragmented form.

The names of the gods in the opera give the stagehands endless problems, especially Loge (logeh) which one man pronounces "lohzh" as in a theater section. Another simply says "Loki" which is the Norse form of the name. Similarly with Wotan who one of the grips calls "Wootan" and another calls Odin. (Should be pronounced as "Vohton" as far as I know but Odin is the Norse form of the name.) There is no doubt the work is backbreaking and very exacting and, during these rehearsals, the S-word is used liberally. Steam and fog machines cause a lot of trouble and, though the men play poker a great deal (the stakes look to be very low-grade.), at certain points during the scene changes, they become very active. In the death of the dragon, one young man especially has to push and pull to control the head.

The relationships between the grips and singers are often quite revealing and it is said that some of them are engaged to Rhinemaidens or Valkyries. In one instance, a "traffic manager" (or whatever) is singing, badly, along with the music whereupon Brunnhilde asks if he is being paid to sing.

Of course, I wonder how much of this is true or simply staged for the purposes of this documentary. Nevertheless I find it very revealing for what it is.

Wagner's Ring Cycle is musical nirvana to some; but to others it is the most pretentious, bloated, endlessly boring nonsense ever conceived. Sing Faster takes no real position on the matter, but offers a pragmatic point of view from behind the scenes. The enormity of the San Francisco Opera's project staggers the viewer and the magnificence of the talent impresses, but the stars of the documentary are the stagehands who can do magic with sets and effects while remaining detached enough to play poker or watch the game on TV while one of Western Civilization's greatest spectacles is being recreated. This makes for a fascinating glimpse into the process that is often surreal and hilarious, while still conveying the excitement of the world-class opera company. The singing might be screaming, as one hand explains, but it is often gorgeous. The orchestra is never seen, but provides a continuous soundtrack, courtesy of Richard Wagner, that truly soars. At one hour, the entertainment value never starts to fade. I was hoping they would sing slower!