Wrapped up in Freudian interpretation this could have so easily gone terrible wrong but in fact the pseudo psychological packaging of director Christopher Alden allowed the silliness to shine through as hypnotic and shiny as the coveted watch that forms a central plot line and like that every present watch this was well timed fun.
I laughed out loud a lot, the libretto was masterfully translated, and sung with enough knowing irony and faux innocence to show off its careful choice of words, there was a lot of sudden changes of pace to highlight the joke and polish the humour embedded in the words, this was one of the funniest translations I’ve heard. Daniel Dooner and Stephen Lawless are to be congratulated for their work. The clear precise diction helped too with the singers well drilled and precise in their ensemble singing.
It’s curious that most of the laughter came from the words, but then the singing was such high quality that perhaps it’s nice to not watch singers hamming it up knowing that the brilliantly funny rhymes and words will carry the laughter for them. This made the whole thing dryer and more sophisticated. It also allowed the characters to seem slightly more scheming, selfish and self indulgent rather than just idle drunken buffoons.
Allen Moyer’s set has just enough to delight while allowing the hollowness of the lives of the characters to be glimpsed, it’s just the right side of camp, and as with all camp is slightly aggressive and intentionally shallow.
Jennifer Holloway as Prince Orlofsky was menacing but difficult to hear though the cod accent but was all unpredictable uncomfortable drunken caprice. Rhian Lois’s Adele full of hard Barry Island charm was wonderfully frivolous her singing delightful, Julia Sporsén Rosalinde filled the Coliseum with her full bodied voice and with a touch of the fake naïve (a la Madeline Khan) the audience were delighted by her and Tom Randle as von Eisenstein bringing a firmness of tone to this production and being believable in this boyishly indulgent role. Richard Burkhard as Dr Falke – his character as much Freud as Falke – held the whole thing together, even while swinging from a suspended pendulous clock wearing huge bat wings. Andrew Shore as Frank fills the stage with his tragic comedy and Simon Butteriss plays the lawyer Dr Blind with an off the scale weirdness that I loved, he was deeply odd and disturbingly funny.
The accents are all over the place, but this must be intentional and the comedy is heavy handed in parts, or deliberately obvious I was never quite sure; part of the director’s intention is to keep us as confused as some of the characters are.
Constance Hoffman’s costumes are delightful, full of character and detail and catching the slightly hallucinogenic utterly decadent but trembling on the abyss of 1930’s Vienna perfectly. The forced suggestion of cliché and frothy wink wink naughtiness combined with the ugly presentation of Frosch the jailer as a twitching deeply unpleasant thug talking his pleasure with twisted S&M power games shifted the night out of the comfort zone and it jarred, but then I suspect it was supposed to. Alden is too clever and used to convention to use such ideas without subtext, the slippery meaning of character in this production adds to the dream like quality of the whole affair, although can – on occasion- obscure some important narrative moments.
The chorus look as if they are having great fun, skipping around and being all sequinned and twisted but they also feel slightly dampened too, however this is little cause for concern because they are so delightfully distracting in their endlessly detailed costumes.
Read the synopsis, see some video of the production and listen to some of the music on the ENO website here;
With saucy wit and more than a hefty dollop of dark camp this was not just bubbly froth, but gave the whirling swirling melodies a dark foundation of obsession and decadence on which to do their frivolous waltz. It was more dance macabre in places but then making this Strauss operetta relevant to the tired cynical audiences of today is as difficult as it must have been for Strauss dealing with the same crowd. The swigging of champagne hides the deeply ugly side of these characters and Christopher Alden brings this underbelly out, we watch the last few nights of the Weimar republic; the drunken sodden indolent waking up into the sinister beginnings of a golden dawn of intolerant repression. Deep deep down they are all very shallow.
Eun Sun Kim conducted this debut performance at the ENO and her pacing and energetic leading of the orchestra was charming, never giving a moments rest, keeping the vigour and relentless thrill of the music just right and managing the change of pace which highlights a lot of the humour with a masterful light touch. She’s a delight to watch too, waving and bouncing in the pit. I can imagine her energetic conducting of the orchestra might annoy some purists but the evening passed quickly, the music flirtatiously tugging the production along by its silk cravat.
This was the first night and it felt like a party just getting started, it has all the hallmarks of being brilliant when the cast have bedded in with each other and can relax a little and let themselves go, the singing and music however was excellent and this is a solid presentation and interesting reinterpretation of Straus entertainment from the ENO and silly fun with a serious message, just as it was intended. Director Christopher Alden shows us that this often safely performed musical style can still be relevant to a 21st century audience when a risk is taken to make it so.
Dark but funny.
Until November 6.
For more information or to book tickets see the ENO website here:
October, 2,5,9,11,15,18,22,24 & 31, November 6
ENO
London Coliseum,
St Martin’s Lane
London, WC2N 4ES
You must be logged in to post a comment.