An ambitious opera about an Inuit sea goddess floats and sinks in equal measure

Even before I get into the specifics of Kristine Haruna Lee’s War Lesbian, I must tell you: It’s a mess. Granted, it’s at Dixon Place, an invaluable incubator for gorgeous messes, but even when approached with generous expectations, it goes on too long and collapses into a queasy “love before war” triviality. So where do my three-star rating and lasting affection for it come from? Well, the nice thing about stars is that they don’t have to shine steadily—they can twinkle. There’s ambition and scope in Lee’s musical, and throughout it there are flashes of spectacle, imagination, humor and incandescent fury. Lee’s pop-opera collaboration with composer Kathryn Hathaway flickers with occasional excellence even when its pace sags; in its darkest moments you can always find some performer or some naughty bit of stage business shining away in a corner. We start in an Alaska of crumpled white paper (director Jordan Fein creates distinct worlds out of garbage and attitude), where daffy goddess Womb (Jessica Almasy) plays abstractedly with her hair. The band is tucked under the balcony overhang, and over by the piano, two space-eskimo–chic crooners (Stephanie A. Hsu and Preston Martin) sing wry commentary. As Womb lounges on the floor balancing a Marie Antoinette wig on her head, and trying—really trying—to have a single thought, she is annoyed and dominated by another goddess, Ellen (Lee herself), a short-haired, cheerful icon who seems very much like a certain talk-show host. Ellen’s smile is predatory. “I’m a very specific kind of comfort food,” she grits through her grin.