Itch

Up to Scratch

Itch

by Jonathan Dove, libretto by Alasdair Middleton based on novels by Simon Mayo

Opera Holland Park, Kensington, until 4^th August

Review by Patrick Shorrock

Despite the rain and the icy temperatures, this new work by Jonathan Dove elicits hearty cheers from its audience at Holland Park, where we are under cover from the rain but not the wind!  New operas can so often feel like calls of duty that are hailed as a good thing simply for having come into existence, even when they are a bit long and rather hard work for the audience.  So the genuine warmth and enthusiasm from the audience, despite the inhospitable weather, is conclusive proof that Dove is something really rather special, who has a real understanding of what works on stage.

Initially, the music sounds quite uncompromising, with the vocal lines and the orchestral score doing apparently different things.  Gradually your ears adjust and soon you hear repetitions in the orchestral accompaniment – reminiscent of Janacek in a contemporary style – which seems to become increasingly supportive of the sung parts, which weave together in all kinds of pleasing ways.  This score manages to be both very contemporary and hit the emotional jackpot in the way that the best operas always have done.

Rebecca Bottone as the CEO of an evil greenwashing multinational, willing to resort to theft and child kidnapping to boost her profits, has a high old time launching dazzling coloratura fireworks that make her a worthy rival to the Queen of The Night.  There is some pleasing countertenor ethereality from James Laing as the hippy surfer Cake, who sets off the plot by finding some radioactive rocks that could be a new element and a potential source of green fuel, but might also destroy the planet.  Victoria Simmonds’ teacher provides a visionary and rhapsodic glimpse of Gaia compensating for human errors, while Eric Greene is wonderfully moving when he rescues his son Itch from a watery death in the mine where Itch has taken the stones to bury them, as he urges him back to life and the home where he belongs.  These are standard operatic ingredients, deployed with inventively modern flavours, to provide a very satisfying musical banquet that isn’t short of a sense of fun and completely lacks pomposity, despite the increasingly justified anxiety caused by global heating. 

Alasdair Middleton’s libretto does its job really well, with short singable phrases that keep the music in the spotlight, and scenes that keep the plot moving.  While the story, based on Simon Mayo’s Itch novels for young adults, may be a bit unsubtle, with its cardboard villains and green moralising, it is actually excellent raw material for opera which is inevitably more about feelings than nuanced arguments, particularly as action needed to save the planet becomes increasingly urgent.

The City of London Sinfonia under Jessica Cottis’s confident leadership makes the most of the kaleidoscopic colours in the score without dawdling.  Stephen Barlow’s unobtrusively effective and well-judged production enables the music and the performers to deliver the strongest possible dramatic impact.  In this, he is wonderfully aided by Frankie Bradshaw’s imaginative and flexible set and Jack Henry James Fox’s inventive projections, which take us everywhere instantly: a classroom laboratory; a city by night glimpsed from a kidnapper’s car; a global HQ; the depths of a tin mine; a beautiful beach; and a representation of the Periodic Table (plus wonderfully witty riffs on the chemical abbreviations for the elements that turned it into a magical variation of scrabble). 

All the performances are splendid including Nicholas Garrett’s villainous Flowerdew, abetted by Robert Burt’s henchman Kinch, who also plays the tin mine gift shop owner.  Particular praise goes to the two adult singers who play the children in a way that avoids the perils of over-cuteness and implausibility: Natasha Agarwal as Jack and Adam Temple-Smith as Itch, who moves utterly convincingly from naïve enthusiasm about acquiring a collection of all the elements, to an awareness that he has he has to let go of something rare and precious no matter the cost to himself. 

This is a marvellous opera, but your enjoyment will be enhanced by wrapping up warm, bringing a thermos, and asking for a blanket (they do provide them)!

Patrick Shorrock, July 2023

Photography courtesy of Opera Holland Park