Canadian luminaries, including the writer Margaret Atwood, have praised “Messiah/Complex,” which grapples with heady themes such as Islamophobia, climate change and colonization. But after my story about the production was published in The Times, the work also came under criticism. “Messiah/Complex” opens with Spencer Britten, a gay biracial Chinese tenor, who is shown wearing six-inch-high stilettos. He told me he had fashioned his segment as an affirmation of gay pride as well as an exhortation to the world, including his tut-tutting conservative Chinese aunties, to accept him for who he is. “Messiah/Complex” also seeks to empower Indigenous voices, among them singers in Yukon, the Northwestern Territories, Labrador and Alberta.

Source: New York Times January 08, 2021 20:15 UTC