Peter Grimes at ENO

29/01/14

An odd production this. It isn't boring, but it flattens Britten's drama into a piece of caricature and grotesque theatre. Paul Steinberg's sets are semi abstracted with their cubist angles and lack of detail, but are traditional in their pictorial rather than symbolic intention. Director David Alden confusingly pitches this against psychologically abstracted physical direction. By "psychologically abstract" I mean that the physical characterisation and movement of the chorus and principals can't be consistently attributed to psychologically motivated people - instead we see the "sorts of things" these people might do, often in alienated, abstracted ways. Thus there's mass choreography ("old Joe has gone fishing" is a dance sequence), slow motion walking, stormy arm swaying and silly walks. The Borough doesn't seem like it is comprised of individuals, but instead is an abstract "wave" of hatred and mistrust. The social situations aren't intended to be literal depictions of events which can be confusing, and the lack of clarity is compounded in Act I by the lack of certainty about where the sea actually is. Eventually we work out that the crowd's gormless stares at the audience are meant to be seaward glances. The "characters" that the principals play (except for Peter and Ellen), fit in with this directorial style, but feel reductive and one dimensional to me, and the less scary for it. Auntie is the most interesting perhaps with her masculine pinstriped suits, cropped hair and cabaret manner, and the absurdist action in her brothel at the beginning of Act III comes as a surprise. Her 'nieces', often portrayed as loose women, are here cartoonish twin school girls, certainly mentally ill, who are fondled by the apothecary to no one's particular concern. A grim picture of the sexualisation of girls that the Daily Mail reading borough don't mind (and further, don't even see), whilst simultaneously screaming about the rumours of boys being abused.

Ellen is not the brave, healing, mother figure that we have come to expect, nor is she Grimes's bridge to society. In fact she's almost the most solipsistic of the lot, responding fully only to invisible internal stimulus, which makes her repeated lapses into hopeless inaction seem nihilistic and selfish. In Act II she seems unperturbed by (the child) John's very obvious extreme psychological anguish. She is very moving as she enjoys the sunlight in the harbour, but then is coldly distant when she points out John's ripped shirt, which elicits from him a disturbingly protracted bout of demented scrabbling at his own neck and back. When she sees the bruise, instead of comfort she offers only a chilly lesson in the painful ways of the world. When Grimes appears she seems hopeful though soon lapses into despair, not unreasonably of course, but at an arbitrary moment, which again makes it about her. In Act III, her embroidery aria is delivered looking directly into the audience, another opportunity to drift into her own isolated thoughts. Balstrode attempts to make contact here, but he is well and truly ignored. Again, the apparently arbitrary moment of depressive doubt, once again in response to internal stimulus rather than an outside event, makes her quite unsympathetic. It's a take on the character that I haven't seen before, reinterpreting the dreamy warmth and nobility of Ellen's music as an alienated and egoistic escape from life. It didn't do it for me, because I like watching relationships on stage rather than alienated drifting around, and Ellen is sort of the linchpin of the piece in terms of the relationships contained in it, but it's an interesting critique of a character commonly seen as "good".

Grimes's misanthropy seems reasonably argued and comes from a place of surprisingly acute social sensitivity in the Prologue - he wants to silence rumours with a proper trial, because otherwise the fearsome Borough will not only continue to tell the stories, but elaborate on them, and the rumours will linger. His subsequent plans to escape his situation become ever more erratic and fantastical as he is increasingly ostracised from society. This production's picture of Grimes is closer to a traditional view of the character than is Ellen's, but the lack of social reality to his situation makes him a less interesting and complex figure than he usually is. Stuart Skelton is very impressive vocally in the role. His general bruskness fits the character well, but the spellbinding pianissimo that he started his great visionary aria "Now the Great Bear and Pleiades", held the otherwise noisy audience absolutely rapt for its entire duration. This happened again in the extraordinary mad scene, where Grimes's mind  thoughts flits and plays over the music of the entire opera, though now made uncanny by the lack of harmonic context. Occasionally, slight instability in the vibrato produced a few tense vocal moments, but perhaps this was first night nerves. Acting wise he did fine, but the direction provided scant opportunity for building a dramatic arc with his colleagues.

Elsa van den Heever's Ellen was unusual dramatically in the ways already mentioned, but vocally she provided a convincing portrait. Here voice in the upper register is shiningly full and very beautiful, but falls away in vibrancy of tone in the lower half of the voice. Rebecca de Pont Davies's rich voiced Auntie gets ever better as the evening goes on, and when she is joined by Heever, Mary Bevan, and Rhian Lois for the quartet "From the gutter" we get one of the highlights of the evening. Matthew Best's Mr. Swallow is vocally imposing of tone and character, though I couldn't fathom why his character had a lisp. Felicity Palmer is a delight as the steely voiced Mrs. Sedley, reacting with believable irritation at Ned Keene's piss staking sexual advances. Leigh Melrose and Timothy Robinson provide worst of the "character acting" as Ned and the reverend Horace Adams respectively, though I don't blame them for this, and both are vocally right for their parts. Iain Paterson's finely sung Balstrode rounds a vocally accomplished cast.

Edward Gardner draws some lovely playing from the ENO orchestra, and the score's softer beauties are his forte. He doesn't manage to inspire the energy and aggression of the faster, louder sections nearly so convincingly, the act II interlude for instance seeming wan and undernourished. There's a spot of wonderfully beautiful viola playing in Act II from the section principal, Amelie Roussel. The ENO chorus are on thrilling form.



The central theme of Peter Grimes, that of society against the individual, is terrifyingly presented by Britten because the victory of the Borough is so complete. The social glue, the thing that pulls this society of preening misfits together, is not a genuine belief in conservative values, but rather the hatred of and then destruction of a vulnerable and isolated individual. This is chilling. Grimes is a threat not because he is odd or violent (in actual fact all of the members of the society that we witness are extremely odd - threateningly eccentric, immoral, hypocritical, prurient, or drug addled, and we can only surmise that each of the members of the chorus are the same), but because he is unconcerned with and possibly simply unable to "keep up appearances". Something about him makes it impossible for people to feel neutral towards him. In some ways we know, by the rules of tragedy, that Grimes is doomed from the beginning. But Ellen's resistance, whether powerfully, or (as here) weakly presented, is also crushed, and her future seems pretty bleak. Is she next for this treatment from the Borough? One feels that this society will continue to prey on its weakest members until it has destroyed itself. An apocalyptic vision.






Photos (c) ENO/Tristran Kenton

Die Fledermaus at ENO

30/09/13

This genuinely unsettling production of Die Fledermaus presented a quite unexpected take on a piece that is often regarded as a guiltless piece of confection. I don't think I've ever seen a review of any production of this piece that doesn't contain the word "fizz"*; I can already see many London reviewers bemoaning the lack of it in this ENO production. But this production attempts a lot more than mere hedonism and is in its way far more unnerving than the recently opened Bieito Fidelio, also at ENO.

Director Christopher Alden maintains the Viennese setting of the original but attempts an updating of the piece to a non specific time - Act I might be Freud's Vienna (introspection, sexual obsession), the second act the roaring 20's meets the Rocky Horror Picture Show (freedom, transgression of boundaries, sexual frivolity), Act III reactionary subjugation of this libertine enjoyment (in fascist oppression, and an accompanying repression of sexuality into fetish).

Dr Falke, the Operetta's central manipulator, is here presented as a Freud figure, the others his patients. A huge pocket watch swings over the stage - a symbol of Eisenstein's infidelity, but also Dr Falke's mesmeric treatments for his patients and his hypnotic influence on all the events in the operetta. He tries to keep an objective distance, but he also dehumanises his patients - his bell ringing hypnotism is more redolent of Pavlov's experiments than the actions a compassionate therapist. His own insecurities are revealed in his humiliation of Eisenstein - we are meant to believe that his plans are all designed to make his patients confront their sexual excesses, but it is soon revealed that public ridicule is (perhaps strangely in this context) what Freud/Falke most fears and that at least part of his motive is simple revenge.

Rosalinde's neuroses offer the most clichéed picture of "Freud with patient", but this idea provides striking departures for other characters, most notably Prince Orlofsky, who here totally the lacks the swagger that he is often played with. Instead his boredom is taken as evidence of a profound depression and alienation - he has lost his sense of humour and libido, and initially can't even leave his bed. His aria "Chacun a son gout", with its unquestioning surrender to the vagaries of taste ("it's just my inclination") reflects the bleak thought of a soul that is directionless and dispassionate. A very interesting and wholly valid reinterpretation of this character. In the final act, Adele provides a sexual salvation and connection to the real world for him.

As to Rosalinde, the opera opens on the vast grey interior of her immaculate bedroom - she first dreams of her therapist, and we soon realise that she is fantasising also about sexual escape: her old flame Alfred steps out from behind her bed (in dashing "romantic" 16th century dress, redolent of Don Carlo and Il Trovatore) as if from her dream. Eisenstein's rapacious lawyer Dr Blind is a goulish abberation - scuttling around like a beetle, molesting Eisenstein, then crawling under the marital bed for his exit. When Eisenstein's infidelity is secured with the introduction of the party idea, the rift in the marriage is very literally depicted onstage as the bedroom splits in two, allowing garish colour and gender-bending revellers to pour in. Tellingly this rift is never repaired, even after the final reconciliation. Often Alden lifts the lid on the titillation and innuendo of this sex obsessed operetta and just lets happen on stage exactly what is being suggested by the words and music - the bed is the location of almost too many infidelities to count.

The action flags slightly towards the end of Act II, as the production's wide ranging ideas fail to cohere, and the surreal, abstracted take on the events of the party means it doesn't really ignite as a convincing piece of revelry. Act III comes as a shock. Frosch (the jailor) it turns out is a psychotic nazi like character, determined to put an end to the fun and transgression - he locks all the party guests in prison, and begins burning their transvestite garments. Actor Jan Pohl is genuinely very scary in the role, dominating the stage and putting the often exaggerated comic acting of the others into stark relief.

As its adherents well know, opera as an art form is obsessed with sex and death. In operetta the almost exclusive focus on the former can seem like a frantic escape from the latter, but here Alden grants levity a more serious purpose than escapism. The production ends in dreamy escape, the comedy of which feels a welcome relief and relaxation, though the bitter taste of what we have witnessed remains. After the brutality and terrifying capriciousness of the fascist prison, Rosalinde's and Eisenstein's laughing acceptance of each other's infidelities and human imperfections seems not just the humane thing to do, but obligatory for survival. In light of fascism, infidelity is as nothing - the threat of the latter is rendered meaningless by the horror of the former.

Musically this production is consistently good, without ever being truly exceptional. Julia Sporsén's voice is fundamentally a very luscious full lyric instrument, and her care for line is admirable, but the extensive coloratura demands of the role of Rosalinde are rarely convincingly in place. Rhian Lois' Adele has no troubles in this regard, navigating the music as she does with such ease, but her characterisation relies a little too much on cliché to be as funny as she needs to be. Jennifer Holloway's Orlofsky is fascinating and commanding, and the physical illusion of masculinity is complete. She is an excellent singer also - if she can develop the chest tones that give the female voice an appealingly masculine edge, she will be perfect in that role. Tom Randle sometimes sounded a little stressed vocally as Eisenstein, but generally manages the part fine. Richard Burkhard's conversational style as Dr. Falke seems appropriate and certainly makes him easy to understand. More specificity in his acting might have been welcome as he is such a linchpin of this production, though he still manages to charm.

Eun Sun Kim makes her ENO début in the pit, and was immediately impressive with her sprightly, energetic conducting in the overture, inspiring the ENO orchestra to produce excellent playing throughout the evening. Her beat is precise and clear, and has an easy flexibility which meant that this deceptively challenging to conduct music never felt laboured and nor were there ensemble problems. Slightly lacking was a sense of variety which might have allowed the climaxes to thrill more, but this was a very promising début.

This is well worth seeing. It's an ambitious staging, and as such doesn't always cohere ideally or avoid moments of clumsiness, but it's a thoughtful piece of regie and certainly provides insights into the darker undertones of this "fizzing" operetta.





*why do people love this pun so much? I do realise that by commenting on it, this review now also has the word fizz in it. Never mind - next time I see this piece, I will endeavour not to include it.