Ironically, the blueprint for director Deborah Warner’s new, kaleidoscopic vision of Handel’s Messiah, could have presaged a festive turkey in the eyes of reactionaries. At the onset, her exceptional cast take to the boards looking a mite ordinary: cosmopolitan audiences expecting operatic dressings might balk here. Shorn of theatrical glad-rags, dressed in workaday clothes, their debut suggests a rehearsal. The illusion passes swiftly - in today’s novelty-driven, spectacle-hungry school of entertainment, this multi-layered, mufti Messiah well exceeds expectation.
      Messiah rivets with sly juxtaposition, knowing modernism, and above all, marvellous musical interpretation. The incorporation of an ensemble of 44, non-singing Westminster residents from different back-grounds and age-groups is inspirational. These ‘extras’ mingle seamlessly with the chorus, adding depth and verisimilitude to the back-drop projection of inner-city urban sprawls. Rarely has an updated historical masterpiece conveyed such unconventional, yet heart-felt, immediacy.
      The Coliseum’s stage is unexpectedly complex and cavernous, as interpreted by set-designer Tom Pye. His knowing, pin-sharp exposition galvanises (even glamorises) the everyman chorus and Handel’s historic expiation. Some props are resolutely ordinary (a desk, ironing board, church pew or hospital bed) yet shiny obsidian tiles twinkle like Dorothy’s yellow brick road; Breugel, Da Vinci and Monet works are referenced; and annunciation lilies, or biblical tree-boughs, glister with gilded promise. Climactically, row upon row of perspex biers line the stage bearing bodies awaiting resurrection.
      Layers of opaque allusion manifest, but it is a measure of Messiah’s sophistication that they challenge rather than irritate. We are treated to sinuous, supporting dancers weaving magical bodies with the score. A group of children re-enact the Jesus’ nativity with humour and humility – a young soloist Max Craig uplifts with piping, poignant pitch. All four adult soloists command, but it is Sophie Bevan’s ambiguous Gabriel, whose heavenly voice remains with you. She attends Mary; a fragile, teenage slip of a thing. Warner’s baby Jesus is the son of a twenty-first Century, single mother, whose lonely labour is self-sufficient, born of a welfare state.
      This intelligent, provocative Messiah, reinterprets Handel’s uplifting song of Christ’s birth. Counter to Mammon’s Christmas lure, a December visit to this Coliseum production is well worth the candle.
Caroline Kellett Fraysse