The iconoclastic centenary "Ring" was followed by numerous original interpretations, at Bayreuth and elsewhere, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The 1988 festival opened with Harry Kupfer's grim interpretation of "Das Rheingold", in which Wotan and the other gods were represented as gangsters in mafioso sunglasses. This entire "Ring", says Spotts, was "a parable of how the power-hungry cheat, lie, bully, terrorise and kill to get what they want". In August Everding's Chicago "Reingold" (which would become part of a full "Ring" cycle four years later), the Rhinemaidens were attached to elasticated ropes manipulated from the wings, which enabled them to cavort freely through the air, using lip sync to co-ordinate with off-stage singers. Edward Rothstein, writing in "The New York Times", found the production "a puzzle ... cluttered with contraptions and conceits" which, he imagined, were visual motifs which would be clarified in later operas. Keith Warner, in his 2004 production for Covent Garden, portrayed, according to Barry Millington's analysis, "the shift from a deistic universe to one controlled by human beings". The dangers of subverted scientific progress were demonstrated in the third "Rheingold" scene, where Nibelheim was represented as a medical chamber of horrors, replete with vivisections and "unspeakable" genetic experiments.