Skating back to the scene of the rivalry

Stages

July 15, 2011|By Joel Brown, Globe Correspondent

Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera recalls a figure skating rivalry that… (BARRY WEISS )

TONYA & NANCY: The Rock Opera Presented by: Paul Boghosian/Harborside Films

At: Oberon, Cambridge, Monday through Thursday. Tickets: $25-$45. 866-811-4111,

www.cluboberon.com

The news that Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan are back in the spotlight together may inspire a moan of “Why? Why? Why?’’

But wait, this is “Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera.’’ The show, which comes to Oberon Monday through Thursday, harks back to 1994, when the figure-skating rivalry between Massachusetts-bred star Kerrigan and Oregon bad girl Harding erupted into one of the first great celebrity train wrecks of the modern tabloid era. When Kerrigan was whacked on the knee with a metal baton just weeks before the Winter Olympics, in an attack planned by members of Harding’s camp, her repeated wails of “Why?’’ became the signature soundbite of weeks of heavy news coverage.

“I was obsessed with this Tonya and Nancy story from the very beginning,’’ says librettist Elizabeth Searle, of Arlington.

“This whole culture is obsessed, for better or worse, with these celebrity scandal tabloid stories. And my own feeling is, as a writer, it’s kind of your job, in a higher sense, to plug into your culture at the moment,’’ she says. “I feel as a writer I’m holding a divining rod trying to find the sources of energy. And my divining rod quivers with this material. It’s charged material.’’

Tonya and Nancy figured in her 2001 story collection ‘‘Celebrities in Disgrace,’’ and in 2006 she collaborated with her niece, composer Abigail Al-Doory Cross, on the 30-minute chamber opera “Tonya & Nancy: The Opera,’’ which premiered at the same Cambridge venue when it was known as Zero Arrow Theater.

“It seemed to me a natural subject for an opera, because it has the operatic emotions, the whining, the jealousy, the violence, the longing for attention,’’ Searle said. “I felt like it could be an opera for our times.’’

That version has been produced a few times - including partly on ice in Minnesota last year, Searle says. Meanwhile, the creators were also talking with Triangle Productions of Portland, Ore., Tonya’s hometown, about a longer version. They decided a rock musical was the way to go, and they found Los Angeles composer and Berklee College of Music graduate Michael Teoli, another Boston-area native.

“We’re really trying to put the rock back in the rock opera,’’ says Teoli. “A lot of things that call themselves rock operas are a little light on the rock element and more musical theater… . It’s almost a metal musical.’’