Opera Holland Park
Tama Matheson (director, actor)
Jayson Gillham (music director, piano)
Stephen Wicks (assistant director, choreography)
Suzy Kohane, Oliver Holland (actors)
Téo Debreuil (ballet soloist)
On the hottest day of the year, Opera Holland Park turned from its own season to the period in which it generously permits use of its theatre to other, smaller companies and events. The first, following on from last year’s Beethoven: I Shall Hear You in Heaven, was Not Entirely Serious’s Tchaikovsky: Child of Glass. Reuniting co-producers Tama Matheson and Jayson Gillham and actors Suzy Kohane and Oliver Holland, Matheson and Gillham tripling and doubling as writer/director and pianist/music director respectively, the new play welcomed Royal Ballet soloist Téo Dubreuil to the team, with impressive, often moving results.
Tchaikovsky’s life presents, of course, a very different story from Beethoven’s, but both, like many others, have clear narrative arcs, the latter with undeniable tragic elements, the former an undeniable tragedy. (I found this writing another composer biography, that of Schoenberg: how well a life structures its works, at least in certain cases.) Here the emphasis naturally lies on the composer’s homosexuality and broader queerness, Tchaikovsky initially appearing onstage in a dress, only to lose and never regain it. There are other stories to tell, no doubt, but in a general ‘bio-play’, it would be perverse to ignore this as guiding principle. Russian culture ministers, should they still exist, may beg to differ. Across today’s world, an increasingly ominous space for LGBTQ+ people, and not least in a United Kingdom in which Rowling & Co. seem to call most of the legal shots, we hardly need reminding of how fragile acceptance can be, of how distant liberation remains.
Matheson brings to onstage portrayal of the
composer the same energy and commitment shown not only in his writing but also
his general animating presence. Put simply, this would not be happening without
him—though it is no one-man show. In narration and dialogue, there is a
readiness to recapture, even in necessary translation, the different style and
voice of Tchaikovsky’s age. A good deal of basic – and sometimes less basic –
biographical information is conveyed: perhaps some time a little too much,
although the balance is difficult to strike. The outlines, however, as well as
telling detail are very much present, as indeed they are in the contributions
of his fellow actors, called upon to summon up a chorus of portrayals (literally
in the ‘court of honour’ some have claimed drove Tchaikovsky to his death). I
mean no disrespect to writer or actors, though, when I say that it is elements
of music and dance that linger longer and hit deeper. Such, after all is their
nature—arguably in general, but certainly in the life in question, its agonies as
clearly as any sublimated into art. Gillham’s pianism, crystalline, scintillating,
seductive and more, guides us through a distinguished tasting-menu of Tchaikovsky
and others (Rachmaninov, Mozart, Bizet, Wagner, Saint-Saëns), original piano
music (solo or concerto) and arrangements delivered with equal ease and magic. The
‘Bacchanale’ from Samson et Dalila puts in an apt, orientalist
appearance for a scene in Paris, in which the composer succumbs once again to the
sins and liberation of metropolitan flesh. Here, Debreuil’s personification of
Tchaikovsky’s urges, his dreams, and ultimately, even in death, his hopes truly
commands the stage. His is a part lying somewhat in the line of Tadzio (Britten’s
more than Visconti’s—or Mann’s): more knowing, perhaps, yet also crucially
beyond good and evil.
