“Fidelio: Alice’s Odyssey” has its Madison premiere on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 227 State St. Not rated, 1:37, two and a half stars out of four. Tickets are free for museum members, $7 for non-members.
“Fidelio: Alice’s Odyssey” opens with an idyllic scene in which lovers swim naked in a secluded cove. The woman, Alice (Ariane Labed) is about to leave for the sea, and the man, Felix (Anders Danielson Lie), draws a picture of her as a mermaid, swimming merrily off as he sobs on the shoreline.
But Alice doesn’t grow scales and a tail, but takes on the shapeless overalls of an engineer on a massive freighter, where she is the only female on board. That opening scene reminds us that, in a world surrounded by men, she is still a woman, which brings a host of complexities on board. It becomes ironic that the ship she’s assigned to is named “Fidelio,” as fidelity turns out to be something of a problem for her.
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