Up to Scratch
Itch
by Jonathan Dove, libretto by Alasdair Middleton based on novels by Simon Mayo
Opera Holland Park, Kensington, until 4th 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.
Read more…Cutting Edge
Sweeny Todd “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
by Stephen Sondheim
West Green House Opera, at the Theatre on the Lake, Hartley Wintney, until 23rd July
Review by Mark Aspen
Picnics are a staple of the typical English country house opera, but seldom do you see the audience picnickers looking at their own meat pies with such circumspection before tucking in. You see, Sweeny Todd is not your usual opera. It is as gory a morsel as you could shake a meat cleaver at … and an opera where you can be sure that the majority of the cast will end up with sore throats.
West Green House Opera’s take on the well-known tale of “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, London’s tonsorial terror from the Victorian penny dreadfuls, , is a riotous rumbustious razor-fest, served up with wicked glee. Its gruesome Grand Guignol style in red and black makes a colourful feast for the eyes, and Sondheim’s urgent thrusting music a feast for the ears.
Read more…Enthralling Elegance
Mozart’s Constanze
devised by Thomas Guthrie
West Green House Opera, at the Theatre on the Lake, Hartley Wintney, 21st July
Review by Mark Aspen
How can such a sensitive and subtle piece provide such impact? The musical study in black and white, Mozart’s Constanze has opened the West Green House Opera Season with a superb semi-staged recital and dance pairing, prefacing its varied 2023 programme.
Maria Constanze Weber, who at 20 years old became Frau Mozart, has without justification had a bad press. Alexander Pushkin, in his verse drama Mozart and Salieri, written during Constanze’s lifetime, took a sideswipe at her (and trashed poor Salieri). Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Mozart and Salieri takes up the theme and well into the twentieth century the calumny persists with Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, Amadeus. The slur was compounded five years later in Miloš Forman’s film, in which Constanze is portrayed as a crude and immature air-head.
Recent Mozart biographers’ historical and musicological research has redeemed her reputation and the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, in its current edition, comments that Constanze has been treated harshly and unfairly and that earlier assessments of her character were “probably wrong on all counts”.
Read more…Queering the Pitch
The Merry Wives of Windsor
music by Otto Nicolai, libretto by Lars Harald Magagerø after Salomon Mosenthal based on William Shakespeare
Queer Voices, at the Arcola Theatre until 22nd July
The Grimeborn Festival 2023
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Otto Nicolai’s take on The Merry Wives of Windsor is a thoroughly delightful piece that doesn’t entirely deserve its neglect. It’s been overshadowed by a far greater work on the same subject (Verdi’s Falstaff), rather like Paisiello’s Barber of Seville, which is, if anything even more obscure than Nicolai’s work.
And then there is what one might call the Boris Johnson problem: the figure of the posh liar, with the gift of the gab, a high sex drive, and no moral scruples, has, for many of us, lost whatever charm it had. These days, we are more likely to side with the citizens of Windsor in their disapproval of Falstaff, while raising an eyebrow at the way that they see their daughters as commodities to be given in marriage to the husband most likely to support their business interests. Nicolai is truer to Shakespeare in making the wives as guilty of this as their husbands, whereas Verdi has them supporting the cause of true love, tipping the balance very much in favour of the women.
The opera is sung in Norwegian with English narration and subtitles. Queer Voices (who describe themselves as Norway’s only queer opera company) had the interesting idea – I quote from their publicity – of transforming ‘the archaic, fat, and sexist Sir John’ into a ‘liberated and gender non-conforming Falstaff with the narrow-minded people of Windsor reflecting society’s attitudes to those of us who break the binary code’. However, they didn’t really deliver what it said on the tin.
Part of the difficulty with queering traditional operas lies in the music. Unless you restrict yourself to operas with male roles that can be sung by women, it is going to be necessary to rewrite the music, something that doesn’t always work. Fenton’s music, beautifully sung by Eldrid Gorset, sounds absolutely fine sung by a soprano, but transposing Falstaff’s role is much less satisfactory, as Mae Heydorn lurches from using a chest voice for the low notes to something higher and more comfortable. Nor is her character very convincing. In reality, someone gender non-conforming is not going to be acting as a sexual predator in the blatantly public way that Falstaff does, because they will be far too worried about being queer-bashed. This Falstaff, for all the charisma that Heydorn brings to the role, comes across as more deluded than dangerous: young, thin, and not entirely masculine; for all the peacocking, this isn’t really Falstaff because the character no longer has the patriarchal dividend.
Another musical option is singers who have transitioned and retained their lower voices. Mathilde Hofvind Borgen as Mr Page wears a male suit and sings the part as written, as does her wife, which certainly intensifies the queer vibe. Indeed Windsor, for all its faults, couldn’t really be more queer if it tried. Mrs Ford and Mrs Page are very touchy feely. Ford carries a handbag and wears a skirt and heels, although his top half is businessman butch. There is barely any convention left in Windsor for Falstaff to disturb.
After the teasing and baiting of Falstaff gets out of hand, there is a long silence and a considerable cut, after which everyone waves rainbow flags for the finale (and we don’t get to hear whether Fenton and Anne are married). I’m not sure that it added up dramatically. But nor am I sure that it matters that much. The score is captivating with plenty of charm although it isn’t deep: this piece is a very conventional comic opera of its time that doesn’t engage with the melancholy of age or the class and gender antagonism that Verdi and Boito mine so effectively in Falstaff.
Director Kristin Lundemo Overøye keeps things moving along nicely, supported by Fridtjof Brevig’s minimal set and inventive costume designs, and the singing is impressive. Therese-Angelle Khachik (Mrs Ford) exhibits a fine grasp of coloratura and makes the most of her musical opportunities, as do the Anne Vilde Johnsbråten (Anne Page) and Maria Dale Johannessen (Mrs Page). Marte Arnesen (Dr Cajus), Mathias Vistnes (Slender) and Patrick Egersborg (Mr Ford) make telling contributions and fit in well with the ensemble.
Congratulations to Kelvin Lim, the solo pianist, for his stamina in maintaining the momentum over three acts. This is a lively and enjoyable start to 2023’s Grimeborn Festival.
Patrick Shorrock, July 2023
Photography by Talitha Khachik
Merry Monarch’s Mistress
Pretty, Witty Nell
by Ryan J-W Smith
Rogue Shakespeare at the Baron’s Court Theatre until 22nd July
Review by David Stephens
In the gloom of the English civil war and through the resulting years of austerity and religious suppression imposed on the downtrodden population by the largely puritan parliamentarians, life in 17th century England was bleak and largely devoid of fun and enjoyment. Punishments were issued for such things as taking leisurely strolls on a Sunday (the Lord’s Day), and joviality and over-exuberance were harshly frowned upon.
Read more…Politics in the Park
Julius Caesar
by William Shakespeare
Richmond Shakespeare Society at York House, Twickenham until 22nd July
Review by Andrew Lawston
York House’s Fountain Gardens provide a suitably classical backdrop to Richmond Shakespeare Society’s outdoor production of Julius Caesar, with the “Naked Ladies” and their horses rearing high above the temporary stage’s scaffold. With deckchairs and picnic blankets dotting the lawn, which is surrounded by tall hedges, the venue is perfect for outdoor theatre.
Read more…Water Music?
West Green House Opera
The Theatre on the Lake, Hartley Witney 21st – 30th July
Season Preview by Quentin Weiver
In anticipation of a pre-taste of a fantastic season of opera, I took a trip to where Surrey just tips over into Hampshire at the picturesque village of Hartley Witney, to revisit West Green House, the early 18th century house, built by Gen. Henry Hawley, who led the charge at the Battle of Culloden.
In 1990 the IRA bombed the front of the house, planning to assassinate Lord Robert McAlpine, a prominent member of Margaret Thatcher’s government. It had been his home, but Lord McAlpine no longer lived there. The house was dislodged from its foundations, and the freeholders, The National Trust, were thinking of demolishing it. Then along came Marylyn Abbott, who had known McAlpine when he lived in Australia.
Read more…Germinating In the Greenhouse
2023-24 Season
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond until August 2024
Preview by Steve Mackrell
A greenhouse is, of course, a place where oranges grow! Amongst the offerings at Richmond’s Orange Tree Theatre this summer will be its inaugural Greenhouse Festival at the end of August. This is a new initiative, a showcase which will provide an opportunity for graduating LAMDA students to display their talents in productions such as Ionesco’s The Chairs and Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal.
Teetering On the Edge
A Doll’s House
by Henrik Ibsen
The Teddington Theatre Club at the Coward Studio, Hampton Hill until 8th July
Review by Brent Muirhouse
As I returned to Hampton Hill Theatre for Teddington Theatre Club’s production of A Doll’s House, I was caught in a state of conundrum. Having truly enjoyed a reimagined version of the play set in during the British rule of India at The Questors merely months before, I wondered if returning to the original, unspecific Scandinavian setting for Ibsen’s piece would prove less vibrant. Before this reviewer’s state of conundrum could stay long enough to even contemplate being trademarked, the energy bursting from the stage in the first few moments – as Nora (Amanda Adams) returns home from a shopping trip to her enthusiastically patronising husband Torvald Helmer (Paul Downey) – put this emotive thought back somewhere in the amygdala and switched focus to the boards being trodden for an immersive two-hour drama.
Read more…Again Last Summer
The Bartered Bride
by Bedřich Smetana , libretto by Karel Sabina
Garsington Opera, at Wormsley, Stokenchurch until 23rd July
Review by Mark Aspen
Would you trust the leader of your local council as a marriage broker? It is a risk worth taking for Garsington Opera, and one that succeeds magnificently. Smetana’s best-known opera is moved from its setting in 1860’s rural Bohemia and transposed to the English countryside in the end of the 1950s. The swinging sixties had not yet got underway, but local marriage brokers are still hard to find. In its revival of Paul Curran’s pre-pandemic production of The Bartered Bride, making the mayor the marriage broker is one of many twists, for of course the mayor has ulterior motives.
However, there are twists galore. The famous Act One polka in takes on the dance craze of 1959 to dissolve into The Twist (and works well to the polka’s half-tempo) … and was that an Elvis lookalike we spotted? More traditionally, the chorus get their ribbons in a twist with a maypole dance on the village green, and the merry-go-round music in the circus is twisting away. Then of course, there is the plot, which has a nice twist at the end, even if it is somewhat predictable. (Tales of Shakespeare and of Gilbert and Sullivan come to mind.)
Read more…
Mark Aspen 