Cockpit
Theatre, Marylebone
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| Images: Cathy Pyle |
Leontes – William McGeough
Hermione – Sadie Parsons Polixenes, First Gentleman – Robert Willoughby
Paulina – Louisa Hollway
Mamillius, Camillo, Antigonus, Officer, Second Gentleman – Christopher Adams
Perdita/Soprano – Héloïse Werner
Florizel – Stephen Williams (clarinets)
Anne Denholm (harp)
Marianne Schofield (double bass)
Kim Ashton (composer)
Nina Brazier (director)Sophie Mosberger (designs)
Damian Robertson (lighting)
Hanna Grzeskiewicz and Héloïse Werner (co-producers)
Much of the most interesting
art of our time seems to ask questions of us rather than to answer them. Sociologically,
there are doubtless many reasons for that, many of them blindingly obvious if
we pause to consider the world around us. (And who amongst us is not doing that
at the moment?!) That is certainly my experience of most recent worthwhile
opera (theatre, more broadly) staging. Our lot, whether we like it or no, is
metatheatrical, and a good deal of other meta-things too. On the whole, I like
it; I certainly value it.
In that spirit, this new ‘musical
reimagining’ of The Winter’s Tale
from The Hermes Experiment asked questions of itself and of us, not least
concerning genre. I had been expecting an opera of some sort; that was certainly
not what I got. We heard an hour’s worth of Shakespeare’s text, very well
delivered, well acted too, with music. Rarely were words and music opposed,
although sometimes they were. There were elements of song, but more often,
boundaries between words, music, and gesture (I always seem to fall back upon
Wagner at some point), between actors and musicians, between most components
present or believed to be present, were questioned, blurred, negated, perhaps
even, dare I suggest it, transcended.
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| Polixenes (Robert Willoughby) |
Adaptations have long been part
of Shakespearean reception; there would be little reception to speak of without
them. Garrick’s Florizel and Perdita
is an obvious example here; (semi-)opera-lovers will immediately think of
Purcell’s Fairy Queen. There was no
pastoral, but so what? No one was claiming this to be a performance of the ‘original’;
insofar as I thought of what this ‘was’, or perhaps better of where I might
locate it, somewhere between a version with incidental music and a (mostly
spoken) cantata-cum-music-theatre-piece might have come closer than many
attempts. But I did not really spend my time trying to locate what I saw and
heard. I took it, I hope, for what it was, and enjoyed it, my Shakespearean appetite
whetted rather than sated. When contrasted with the bizarre Glyndebourne-Royal
Opera House Macbeth opera, I know which I found more
involving, by a country mile.
Kim Ashton’s name was given as
composer, but not in the traditional top billing, for this seems to have been a
genuinely collaborative effort. I was put in mind of Schoenberg’s futuristic
vision of studios at musical work: ironic, given his emphatic self-understanding
– ours too, surely – as Teutonic, Romantic ‘genius’. Here, however, there was
nothing ironic, nor falsely modest. As Ashton himself explained in the
programme, ‘My position as ‘composer’ of the piece is precarious: while my name appears
at the top of the score (a compilation of instructions, including only sparse
musical notes), the music is as much by The Hermes Experiment as it is by me,
since most of what you will hear is being improvised live, according to musical
shapes and behaviours agreed in advance.’ That would only work, at least in the
sense that it did here, with excellent preparation, for which director, Nina
Brazier should, I presume take a good deal of credit too, likewise everyone
else involved.
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| Hermione (Sadie Parsons) and Perdita (Héloïse Werner) |
For
instance, again to quote Ashton, ‘The “folk song”,’ which certainly had that
air, ‘in the second half is a case in point – particularly since it is the
first tonal piece I have ‘composed’ in about 15 years!’ (As Schoenberg
admitted, there were still good tunes to be written in C major, although this
was not, if I remember correctly, in C.) ‘When someone suggested that a folk
song would suit one scene well, the soprano Héloïse [Werner] sketched out its
opening melody; I then fleshed this out into a rough whole; finally Héloïse,
Anne [Denholm] (who plays it later on the Harp) and I all tweaked it here and
there until I no longer remember who was originally responsible for which note.’
The darkness of the bass clarinet and its interjections made their points, not
necessarily translatable into words; so too, did the harmonic – and melodic –
resonances of the double bass.
Similarly,
actors came close to music – do they not always, in Shakespeare? – and in some
cases, definitely crossed any such a boundary. The inability to handle
Shakespeare’s verse – there are many ways, of course, but there are also
failures – is the bane of many a contemporary Shakespeare performance. Not
here, for all conveyed both its beauty and its meaning, Robert Willoughby
perhaps my favourite in the former respect. William McGeough offered a subtle portrait of wounded
masculinity as Leontes, Sadie Parsons an intriguing voice (Hermione) whom we wanted to believe, and whom we knew we were correct to believe, but who could yet sow some of that doubt experienced by Leontes. I could go on, but it was a company effort, symbolised
perhaps, by Héloïse Werner’s wordless soprano – a voice from beyond in more
than one sense, I think – becoming Perdita. Likewise, instrumentalists (the
other members of the Hermes Experiment all outstanding) were called on not only
to employ extended techniques but also, music-theatre-style, to participate in
the ‘dramatic’ action.
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| Hermione |
There was, then, a particular,
one-off sense of enchantment to the night’s proceedings. I shall not say ‘more,
please’, since that would seem rather against the spirit of what was seen and
heard; I was, though, delighted to have been there.
