Pacific Opera Victoria performed Zombie Blizzard on Sunday, January 18 as the final part of their Luminary Series, but this was neither about zombies nor blizzards, much to my initial relief and confusion; it’s about the mess that comes with digging too deeply into the past. The songs were written by Aaron Davis—he took selected works from Margaret Atwood’s poetry collection Dearly and brought the words to life in beautifully composed lyrics and musical accompaniment.
The song cycle takes its title from two of Atwood’s poems: “Zombie” and “Blizzard.” Each song began with Davis playing a recording of Atwood reading her poem. I really appreciate that they took the time to respect and honour their source material, with Davis using it to the letter in most songs. I’ve always enjoyed songs that feel like poetry, so this was something I really loved.
Soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee really played into the title, entering the stage in a zombie walk while wearing a blue sparkling dress. It looked as if Elsa from Frozen had become a zombie. Her performance was incredible: her range, her pitch, the confidence on stage. She was singing and signalling to the musicians when to stop and start through raising or lowering her arms.
The first song, “Zombie,” focused on a lost lover who has passed on that the speaker can’t seem to let go of; this piece sets the tone for the whole show. “Blizzard” tells the story of a woman losing her mother, hearing her mother insist on fighting the storm during a blizzard.
A major theme in the show is grief and loss, and the mess it can become. I’ve lost a few people in my life, and I felt seen in these pieces. I cried a fair bit in that theatre, and I couldn’t have been the only one who was.
Atwood also shines some light on the grief and loss felt by women. And while I enjoyed “Princess Clothing,” it felt out of place; I’ve never liked lists in poems and this one had a long list. However, “Shadow” absolutely gutted me emotionally. The piece is about a woman who is sexually assaulted, and she describes the feeling that her body is no longer her own. She is simply a shadow of her former self. There were no details of the violence itself, just the emotional aftermath. And those descriptions also had me holding back tears because of how raw and painful she acknowledges it is.
The performance wrapped up on the namesake piece of its source material, “Dearly.” The final piece feels like a grandmother flipping through an old photo album while reminiscing on all the loved ones lost. It was a slower pace than the rest of the songs, but that’s what it needed to be. This tied the whole show together, emphasized the central theme: loss. Loss of a partner, of family, of who you were before that awful thing happened to you. Grief comes in many forms and all of them are messy. You feel dead inside and stuck in a storm: a zombie in a blizzard, perhaps.
I loved this performance. The lyrics were beautifully written and worked well in song, Davis did a phenomenal job there. Brueggergosman-Lee controlled that stage, despite only standing in one place during her songs. Her voice was just so captivating. Bassist George Koller really blew me away. Watching him switch between using the bow and his fingers on the bass to maximize its range was truly incredible to see. Everyone did amazingly well and it was a pleasure to experience.
It left me feeling that now I have to buy Dearly and discover what else Atwood’s poems have to offer.