Stuart McRae, The Devil Inside, Music Theatre Wales, 3 February 2016

Peacock Theatre, London

 

Richard – Nicholas Sharratt

James – Ben McAteer
Old Man, Vagrant – Steven Page
Catherine – Rachel Kelly

Matthew Richardson (director)

Samal Blak (designs)
Ace McCarron (lighting)

Music Theatre Wales Ensemble

Michael Rafferty (conductor)

 

Images: Bill Cooper
Richard (Nicholas Sharratt) and James (Ben McAteer)

 

An excellent new opera, jointly commissioned and co-produced by Music Theatre Wales and Scottish Opera, The Devil Inside received its premiere at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow (23 January) and, following a visit to Edinburgh, continued its touring life in London. Not the least of the evening’s discoveries for me was the Peacock Theatre on Portugal Street: used by the LSE during the day, and turning properly theatrical at night. It is a splendid space, of which I hope to see more.

 

Richard and Catherine (Rachel Kelly)

Stuart McRae and his librettist, Louise Welsh, have produced a finely crafted opera in seven scenes, none overstaying its welcome, the whole more than the sum of its parts. ‘Inspired’ by Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Bottle Imp, we enter the sub-Faustian world of late capitalism and ‘property development’. That, however, is the setting rather than the substance; the bargain is the thing. James and Richard, lost in the mountains, meet an old man who offers them a way to become as rich as he is, if they buy a green bottle from him. Tempered in the flames of Hell, it contains an imp who will grant the owner his every wish; the catch is that, if you remain in possession of it when you die, you will go to Hell, and the only way of ridding yourself of it is to sell it on for less than you paid for it. And so, the story continues, James as rich as, well, a property developer, before selling it on to Richard, who remains haunted, consumed by it. Having met Catherine, who becomes his wife, James must regain the bottle when he learns of her terminal illness. The price has sunk so low that they must go abroad, where the currency is worth less. Eventually, and just in time, Richard, addicted to the bottle and its imp, takes it for one centime from Catherine, makes his last wish and dies. What, however, has Catherine wished for just before? If the Devil has made her pregnant, then...?

The libretto works as it should, as a libretto, rather than as a stand-alone piece. McRae clearly relished the opportunities it offered, for again, his music works as it should, as musical drama, not as stand-alone music. It is atmospheric, characterful, resourceful, and more. The smallish ensemble is full of intriguing solos and instrumental blends. Two harmonicas make for a frightening duet; interestingly (I only noticed this afterwards from the programme), they are played by the two violinists. Deep sounds – we are dealing, after all, with an opera forged in Hell – are often to the fore: alto flute, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, trombone. But so are fantastical, post-Britten glistenings, silver and gold, as befits the prize and the delusions it offers. The music for the bottle and its imp itself does not in any sense sound ‘like’ Wagner’s for the Tarnhelm, but the unnerving mixture of timbre and harmony produces what is perhaps not an entirely dissimilar effect. (Or maybe that was just my fancy!) It is perhaps inevitable that the sound of chamber opera in English brings to mind composers such as Britten and Birtwistle; I am not sure that I detected specific influence, although I am not sure that I did not, either. More importantly, the score sounds apposite, guides the action, indeed in many cases is the action (the interludes in particular, although not only then), and makes for a chilling night in the theatre.

 

James and the Old Man (Steven Page)

 

Michael Rafferty’s direction of the Music Theatre Wales Ensemble seemed wise and assured throughout, balancing musical and theatrical impulses to excellent effect, as did the playing of the instrumentalists themselves. All four members of the cast created their characters to equally fine effect; they sprang off the page into our mythical consciousness. Nicholas Sharratt’s Richard proved properly ambivalent, ultimately human and loving, yet not without weakness. Rachel Kelly’s Catherine seemed too good to be true, and in a sense was: was not her obsession with having a child as dangerous as the others’ obsession with the bottle and its imp? Ben McAteer made James’s sorry descent utterly credible from beginning to end. Steven Page’s Old Man and Vagrant (on the far-away island, briefly in possession of the bottle himself) made their theatrical point vividly and without histrionics. The resourceful production from Matthew Richardson and his team left nothing to be desired. So much can be done with intelligent direction, designs, and props, that attention was focused where it should be: upon what emerged as a new and important re-telling of an old, powerful tale.

For details of the production’s tour, visit the website of Music Theatre Wales.

Greek, Music Theatre Wales, 22 October 2013

Linbury Studio Theatre

 

Gwion Thomas and Sally Silver as Eddy's parents
Images: Clive Barda

 

Eddy – Alastair Shelton-Smith/Michael McCarthy

Eddy’s Mum/Waitress/Sphinx – Sally Silver
Eddy’s Sister/Waitress who becomes Eddy’s Wife/Sphinx – Louise Winter
Eddy’s Dad/Café Manager/Chief of Police – Gwion Thomas

Michael McCarthy (director)

Simon Banham (designs)
Ace McCarron, Jon Turtle (lighting)
The Music Theatre Wales Ensemble
Michael Rafferty (conductor)

 

After the bitter disappointment of Anna Nicole, came this reminder – both sad and hopeful– that Mark-Anthony Turnage was once capable of writing urgent, exciting music theatre. Indeed, from this composer I have heard nothing finer, perhaps nothing to match, this, his first opera, to Steven Berkoff’s libretto after his own Oedipal play, Greek. Adverse circumstances notwithstanding, this performance and production from Music Theatre Wales offered everything one could reasonably hope for, and more. Marcus Farnsworth, who had been ailing on the first night, had awoken with no voice, to be replaced by an heroic combination of the flown-in-from-Berlin-that-afternoon Alastair Shelton-Smith to sing the part on stage and Michael McCarthy to act, to mime the sung passages, and to deliver the spoken text. If anything, the practice added to the feeling of alienation, social and theatrical, but it would have come to nothing without such committed performances. From the word go, or rather a somewhat bluer word than that, when McCarthy hastened toward the stage, scarily impersonating an irate member of the audience hurling abuse at the audience, he inhabited the role visually and gesturally. His own production frames the performance convincingly, offering a return into the audience as Eddy is rejected by his family, those who supposedly love him unable to stomach his desire to ‘climb back inside my mum’. Shelton-Smith’s assuredly protean yet deeply felt vocal performance fully deserved the rapturous reception it received from audience and fellow cast-members alike, and would have done so even if it had not been for the particular circumstances.

Sally Silver and Louise Winter as the Sphinx

 

 

But the other performances were equally assured. Sally Silver and Louise Winter proved as versatile in vocal as in acting terms, their combination as lesbian separatist sphinx being sleazy and savagely humorous in equal measure. Gwion Thomas was just as impressive in the other male roles, the sad would-be patriarch as much as the brutal police chief. The Music Theatre Wales Ensemble under Michael Rafferty played Turnage’s score as to the manner born: angry and soulful, biting and tender, urgent and yet offering oases for reflection. Whether called upon to play in conventional terms, to shout, to stamp, or even to strike a pose, there could be no gainsaying the level of artistry on offer from players and conductor alike.

 

McCarthy’s production places the work firmly in the tradition of music theatre – doubtless partly out of necessity, but, unlike in the opera, virtue certainly arises out of fate. Props are minimal but used to full effect, the cast in proper post-Brechtian fashion undertaking the stage business too. Video projections of key words, not least Berkoff’s inevitable ‘Motherfucker’, heightens both drama and alienation. But perhaps the principal virtue is that of allowing the anger of Berkoff and Turnage’s drama to unfold, within an intelligent yet far from attention-seeking frame. The transposition of the Oedipus myth to 1980s London now seems both of its time and yet relevant to ours. It works as a far more daring version of the original EastEnders might have done, yet with injection of magic realism. Both Berkoff’s ear for language – the ability to forge a stylised ‘vernacular’, which yet can occasionally shift into knowingly would-be Shakespearean poetry – and Turnage’s response and intensification, whether his pounding protest rhythms or the jazzy seduction of his beloved saxophone, work just as McCarthy’s staging does: they grip and yet they will also, if not always, distance. Above all, one continues to feel and indeed to reiterate the anger felt by outcasts in the brutal Britain of Margaret Thatcher. Incest offers not only its own story, but stands or can come to stand also for other forms of social and sexual exclusion. Hearing of the plague, one can think of it as Thatcherism and the ignorant, hypocritical right-wing populism that continues to infest political discourse, or one can turn it round and view it as the guardians of morality most certainly would have done at the time of the 1988 premiere, as the fruits of sexual ‘deviance’: the tragedy of HIV/AIDS.

 

That space to think, to interpret is not the least of the work’s virtues, fully realised in performance. Its musical lineage is distinguished; on this occasion, those coming to mind included Stravinsky, Andriessen, magical shards of Knussen, and, alongside the music theatre of the Manchester School, that of Henze too, especially the angry social protest of Natascha Ungeheuer. But it is its own work, now with its own performance tradition, of which Music Theatre Wales’s contribution is heartily to be welcomed.    

Punch and Judy, Music Theatre Wales at the Royal Opera, 17 March 2008,

Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House

Punch – Gwion Thomas
Choregos/Jack Ketch – Jeremy Huw Williams
Pretty Polly/Witch – Allison Bell
Doctor – Nicholas Folwell
Lawyer – Peter Hoare
Judy/Fortune Teller – Carol Rowlands

Michael McCarthy (director)
Simon Banham (designs)
Ace McCarron (lighting)

Music Theatre Wales
Michael Rafferty (conductor)

Birtwistle season is upon us in London. Last week, the Nash Ensemble and Andrew Watts pieces from his Orpheus Elegies at the Wigmore Hall, and next month will see the world premiere of The Minotaur at Covent Garden and the English National Opera’s Punch and Judy at the Young Vic. The Royal Opera House pre-empted ENO, by inviting Music Theatre Wales to revive its production of Punch and Judy in the Linbury Studio, as part of the ROH2 programme. Whilst two productions of Birtwistle’s tragicomedy might seem excessive to some, the prospect of comparison is for many of us enticing indeed.

Punch and Judy was first performed forty years ago at Aldeburgh. Imagine the reaction! Britten, it seems, was none too pleased; accounts differ, but he is said to have walked out. We approach the work from a different standpoint, of course, and it is impossible for many of us not to consider Birtwistle’s subsequent œuvre in the light of this early cause célèbre. The preoccupation with ritual tellings and retellings, enactments and re-enactments, of myth has been a running thread throughout his career, and not only in terms of the stage. Punch and Judy remains, however, a violent, even shocking piece of music theatre, crucial for anyone for whom musical drama is a living art form rather than a platform for x and y to sing in the nth revival of Tosca.

Birtwistle directs that a five-piece wind ensemble should be placed on stage. Here, the entire fifteen-strong orchestra was placed immediately behind the puppet booth, which framed most of the action. Simon Banham’s designs and Michael McCarthy’s production were generally straightforward and all the more powerful for that. This is not, I think, a work that really partakes of ambiguity, at least not in that sense. Colours, costumes, and movement all complemented the ritual of Birtwistle’s music and Stephen Pruslin’s fine libretto. The latter is surely one of the great opera texts; it could hardly have been more consonant with the composer’s own interest in both the mechanics of musical theatre and in verse-refrain forms, the latter of which dates back to the 1959 wind quintet, Refrains and Choruses. Cycles, repetitions, symmetries are mirrored in the music – and were here attentively presented in the production too. There was no attempt to shy away from Punch’s violence, for instance in his murder of the baby with a syringe and his knifing of Judy, but never did one have the impression of sensationalism. (David McVicar would have profited from taking note in his recent Salome.) This was real violence, in a sense all the more real for its ritual artifice. The immediacy of the Linbury’s space measurably heightened the dramatic tension.

The singing was mixed. None of it was bad, but I did not find Peter Hoare’s Lawyer and Nicholas Folwell’s Doctor as impressive as the rest of the cast. Their interpretations seemed a little generalised and they sometimes had difficulty making themselves heard above the small but loud orchestra. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to warm to Pretty Polly, but Allison Bell brought a marvellous technique to the role, which needs just that to fulfil its sometimes stratospheric demands. Carol Rowlands proved a powerful musical actress as Judy. Gwion Thomas might have strayed a little close to undue caricature at times – although this must largely be a matter of taste – but he vividly inhabited the central role of Punch. Perhaps finest was Jeremy Huw Williams as Choregos, the Puppet Master. After an ever so slightly unsure start, his was a scintillating performance, both musically and visually, alert to the demands of the text and highly successful at projecting them. The ensemble pieces all worked very well: slower numbers, such as the Passion chorales, penetrated to the heart of the strange lyricism that is just as much Birtwistle’s hallmark as the violence. In this, the cast was greatly aided by the orchestra of Music Theatre Wales and by Michael Rafferty’s authoritative conducting. Totally secure in rhythm and orchestral balance, whilst still sounding newly minted, the transformations from freneticism to haunting, almost antique beauty were faultlessly conveyed. The drama lies just as much here as on stage proper, and no one could have been in any doubt as to that.