Creating Carmen

Oh Play !

Creating Carmen

by Clare Norburn

The Telling at The OSO Arts Centre, Barnes until 2^nd February, then on tour until 7^th March

Review by Brent Muirhouse

Creating Carmen begins with the strum of Spanish guitar, setting the platform for an exploration of the interplay between creation and creator.  In this latest innovative production by The Telling at the OSO Arts Centre these take the form of Prosper Mérimée, the author and originator of Carmen, the untameable protagonist, who here exists beyond her pages to take control of her own narrative.  It’s meta and it’s musical, and it’s more than just a declaration of Mérimée, as Carmen is real and no figment of the imagination, and becomes a tormenting muse and the driving force behind his novella, made most famous by Georges Bizet’s opera.

Suzanne Ahmet’s Carmen is the heart of the production, carrying herself magnetically, an operatic antihero, part pantomime villain, part tragic figure.  Ahmet is every bit as charismatic as one would hope as Carmen, an equal concoction of daring rebellion and doomed romance.  Against her, Niall Ashdown’s Mérimée is understandably a more subdued presence, a man who is pulled into Carmen’s orbit but struggles to keep up with the planetary rotations of her vitality.  The push and pull of the writer and his creation drives the piece, even if at times, the narrative progresses more slowly than its predecessor at The OSO, What The Dickens? which benefited from the conveyed richness of Dickens as a character, a man whose personal history is as layered as his literary works.  Prosper Mérimée, by contrast, comes across here as more of a passive figure, overrun by the force of Carmen, and it requires his creation to do the lion’s share of the story’s heavy lifting.

The real energy of Creating Carmen, however, comes from its musicality.  With a duo of Spanish guitars (David Massey and Francisco Correa), a flute, and operatic vocals (both performed in tandem by the supremely talented Emily Andrews), three-piece CarmenCo more than accompany the play, but are a leading character, propelling the play like the bulls of Pamplona.  The music is a constant auditory heartbeat that underscores Carmen’s domination and where it intertwined with drama the production finds its most compelling rhythm.

As the final Cordoban chords crescendo, there remains a lingering question: does the creator ever truly control their own story, or does it inevitably take on a life of its own?

It’s clear in Creating Carmen, with its Carmen a character unconfined within original fiction and the lines of this play, seizing her place at the centre of the stage, masterfully parading to musical performance.  As I stepped out into the bitter January air, those Spanish strings still reverberating, I found myself wandering amongst the streetlights of suburbia, their glow accompanied by CarmenCo’s melodies following me home.

Brent Muirhouse, January 2025

Photography courtesy of The Telling