Writer and Director: Moon Kim
Composer: Ábel MGE (Ábel Misha Gille Esbenshade)
Bizarre, captivating and unpredictable, Moon Kim’s new piece for the Cockpit’s Tête à Tête Opera Festival, Emma or Emily, is difficult to pin down.
Set in a large living room, the furniture is draped in white and covered in plastic, and the wonky clock’s numbers have fallen out of order, leaving us with a sense of confusion and timelessness. Emily (Emily Carmichael) enters wrapped in a huge white dress. She lives in this house, yet her monologues give us little information to further our understanding of the situation. Wine in hand, Emily initiates conversations with her furniture, speaking of her seemingly normal life: awaiting the bus (as one does) and dreaming of being a couch. Images of lilies projected onto the screen behind her add to the absurdity –though she cannot see the pictures, she knows them to be there, and they accent her text with a strong visual rhythm.
Shortly afterwards, the doorbell rings rather insistently, and she welcomes a friend into her home: Emma (Eva Stone-Barney). While Emily prances around, Emma is discreet, singing vague responses in recitativo (mmm, maybe), as we strive to learn more about their relationship. The evening ensues with nonsensical debauchery as they drink and throw wine at each other (perhaps explaining the plastic coverings on the furniture).
Carmichael leads the scenes with convincing zeal, strutting, singing, dancing, and even crying, bringing a real sense of operatic drama. Meanwhile, Emma’s character seems vague, and Stone-Barney alternates between singing low tones and speaking quietly, contradicting the very connotations of opera itself. This contemporary take follows through in the music by Ábel Misha Gille Esbenshade, whose atmospheric modern compositions ooze in and out of the scenes, leaving little space to develop the opposition between operatic musicality and theatre. Indeed, the final aria feels unsatisfying, reaching below Stone-Barney’s mezzo-soprano range and turning the tables so quickly that perhaps a few too many questions are left unanswered.
Yet, Emma or Emily is enjoyably absurd. Reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland or Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, it is peppered with brilliant monologues and satisfyingly timed mixed media, leaving us to feel that perhaps real drama lies in theatre after all.
Reviewed on 17 September 2026
