Past Production Reviews
11Amy Ní Fhearraigh, noticeably taller than Mangan, acted her part superbly. Her silky tones entwined beautifully with that of Mangan in the Evening Prayer. Both Ben McAteer and Miriam Murphy made much of their roles, Murphy possessing impeccable comic timing. Her hasty return for her chicken nuggets and her quarter pounder burger before searching for her children was as hilarious as it was anachronistic.
McCrystal has no inhibitions about hamming everything up to the max, given a huge leg up by designer Paul Brown – it’s so sad that Brown died in November, robbing him of the chance to see his work made real. Brown’s sets and costumes are beautifully executed, a riot of colour and fun, and difficulties like “how to turn a bunch of not exactly young and sylph-like chorus members into sweetly tripping fairies” are handled with panache. Stagecraft is nothing short of superb: the sheer amount of movement from the chorus is jaw-dropping, and there is exuberant use of things like people flying above the stage or the random apparition of animal puppets (check out the Fairy Queen’s use of the unicorn’s horn). McCrystal can’t resist putting in a bunch of additional gags, many of them visual but some spoken: the vast majority of them worked, with the audience in stitches.
Les costumes victoriens sont très colorés et fantaisistes et le décor composé par de très poétiques toiles peintes à l’ancienne pour les scènes d’extérieur est parfaitement efficace. Ils sont dus à Paul Brown, un décorateur très prisé au Royaume-Uni, disparu peu avant le début de cette production. Un bain de bonne humeur et d’humour très singulier (le fameux humour camp) apte à réconcilier avec ce genre si particulier ceux qui pensent qu’il n’est guère exportable.
Indeed, Lizzi Gee’s movement direction is superb. The children’s rough-and-tumble antics; the dream sequence, in which the children really do ‘take flight’ into fantasy; the delicate dancing of the en pointe duplicates of the dazzling Dew Fairy (He Wu), with their ‘milk-bottles’ of dew droplets; the reawakening of the lost children and the final chorus in celebration of this miracle: all are brilliantly conceived and executed. And, the choreography provides the production with a judicious moment of tongue-in-cheek kitsch. Reunited with his toy aeroplane by the sympathetic Sandman (Gillian Keith), the sleeping Hansel’s imagination powers a ‘lift-off’ to paradise. A bleached-blond flight crew arrive, smiles beaming and uniforms spic-and-span, and semaphore their pre-flight briefing before the excited children soar into the air on the surging wave of Humperdinck’s score, to be greeted by their parents bearing the balloons that will float them to wonderland. It’s terrifically well done.
Rachel Kelly and Susanna sang the roles of Hansel and Gretel in fine style, acting the childish roles with mischievous enthusiasm, but the real comic star of the piece was Alasdair Elliott as the witch, appearing first in a dress and luxurious blonde wig, but later revealing himself as a bald male, which I suppose makes him a warlock rather than a witch.
The Scottish Opera orchestra, under the baton of Derek Clark, delivers Sullivan’s exhilarating score with colourful, expressive gusto. It is, all-in-all, a marvellously no-holds-barred staging of an absolutely joyous comic opera.There is, in The Gondoliers, a few jokes at the expense of, Gilbert’s bugbear, the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1862 (whereby a large company, such as a major football club, to take an entirely random example, could declare itself bust, leaving creditors out of pocket, at very little personal expense to the major shareholders). There’s very much more on the subject in G&S’s lesser-known opera Utopia, Limited.Given a smart and engaging treatment here as a semi-staged concert (which plays at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh on November 5), the piece is an enjoyable comedy in which the Anglophile King of Utopia declares his country a “company limited”.As Ireland is joked about in parenthetical asides, Gilbert makes an interestingly modern observation. In his passion for all things British, the Utopian regent makes no distinction at all between “Englishness” and “Britishness”.
Scottish Opera uses colour and movement to conjure up a feast for the eyes and ears. Derek Clark sets a good pace for the numbers, a few faster than might be expected. The orchestral excellence was very much appreciated and it was nice that the audience of traditional theatregoers allowed the overture to run in absolute silence. The brilliant string playing by a large section was perhaps occasionally drowned by ‘delicately-modulated’ brass in vocal passages, but this did not affect the singing, which was magnificent throughout.
