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English
National
Opera
Original director
David Pountney
Revival director
Quinny Sacks
and
Elaine Tyler-Hall
Conducted by
Paul Daniel
Titania
Joan Rodgers
The Indian Boy
Arthur Pita
Oberon
Tom Randle
Puck
Nikola Kefetzakis
Theseus/
Hymen
Mark Richardson
Tanterabogus
Carolyn Sampson
Trash
Mary Nelos
Boggart
Mark Le Brocq
Buggen
Ryland Angel
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London
Coliseum
12
June - 5 July 2002 |
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There is sublime
music in this set of masques, adapted
with great looseness from A
Midsummer Night's Dream and played
here – as was doubtless intended
by Purcell and the anonymous first adapter
during the reign of William and Mary
– as farce. The most exquisite
musical moment is Titania's "Plaint"
in the Seventh Masque; and it is not
a coincidence that the star of this
production is the beautiful and beautifully-voiced
Joan Rodgers as the Fairy Queen herself.
Her performance, and a genuinely funny
and convincing Drunken Poet played and
sung by Jonathan Best – a Drunken
Poet staggering about the auditorium,
falling into the orchestra pit, taking
over the conducting, and all the while
singing extremely well – are the
two best things in the whole.
Given
that the cast, and their singing and
dancing, were generally very good, it
is disappointing to have to complain:
but the trouble with this Fairy
Queen is that the farce gets
out of hand, and degenerates into a
knockabout, burlesque, self-lampooning
mess. What begins as amusing becomes
tiresome. Titania preserves her dignity,
and Tom Randle's Michael-Jackson-lookalike
Oberon is consistent throughout, but
the large cast and incoherent structure
of the Fairy Queen
make it imperative that discipline be
kept in the main lines of narrative,
and this failed – not least with
the mortals, it sometimes being difficult
to say who was mistakenly with whom
and which of the two delightful countertenors
was which.
The costume
design was spectacular, but the stage
design was a disappointment, the enticing
demands of the text scarcely being met.
Oberon's Chinese wedding-land was depicted
by means of three visual clichés
of recent and traditional Chinoiserie,
so Titania's demolition of the fantasy
came to nothing because there was scarcely
any fantasy to demolish. The most enjoyable
bit of design was King Theseus's bedroom
during his birthday celebrations –
they constitute the Sixth Masque –
but silly clowning by the "children"
bringing his presents spoiled the effect.
In sum,
the evening was cumulatively a disappointment,
although the good things – Joan
Rodgers, the Drunken Poet, some of the
music, some of the costumes, one or
two of the dances – were very good
indeed. The revival was directed by
two choreographers, and the thought
occurs that perhaps input from a theatre
or opera director might have helped,
for the problem came from the fact that
the temptation too much yielded to in
this production was to stomp and mime
rather than let the music do the work.
AC Grayling
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