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As a teenager in a girl choir, I rarely had the opportunity to sing works by composers, but there was an exception. A framework of words from a John Sermon Dona, he never failed to make his unexpected turns and discord and a final note that crashes. Its composer, Imogen Holst, had a famous name but seemed otherwise unknown.
The reluctance was clearly his choice. The two annoying Mark Ravenhill Ben and ImoAbout the collaboration of Holst with Benjamin Britten while he was fighting to finish his 1953 opera Glory, its glory, underlines his brilliance and also his desire to subuminate him in the work of others.
Britten, the most celebrated composer in England after the success of Peter GrimesAt nine months to finish the opera in time for a gala to celebrate the coronation of Elizabeth II. But he is in a creative funk, and there are already official doubts about the ability of a booklet on an aging queen led by a young lord. Holst, having genius experience with his late father Gustav, affectionately “Gussia” outfit, abandons his teaching position in Dartington Hall impulsively and moves to the Suffolk Stormy coast to help.
Director Erica Whyman makes the city of Aldeburgh almost a third character, with her howling winds and her heavy seas; The living room set (Soutra Gilmour) is perched on shingles, with a naked back wall representing the endless horizon. The OMI, swirling like Mary Poppins with a carpet bag, is a self -proclaimed “gypsy” without links and few goods. These are madly contrasting types; Samuel Barnett as Ben is sitting primary, knees and feet together, tight hands, while the OMI of Victoria Yeates rushes and the Gristilles, hooks a score, claims a hug. The tail piano, surrounding on the revolve, is the center of this musical maelstrom.
Collaboration is easier to represent on stage than the internality of creativity. The OMI launches ideas, suggests sentences and staging, wave books and scores, the irritation of Ben and the possible acceptance of counterpart. The game is based slightly at these moments but, on time, the OMI also has fun. The cocktail cabinet is heavy. Yeates and Barnett have lively relationships, giving life to this intense and non -sexual relationship. The worship of Peter Pears (Britten’s partner) is an out-of-stage presence, but the OMI has its own sex appeal, dancing like crazy and revealing that it posed once for naked photos.
The themes are appropriate with a recent coronation and the opportunity we have now to assess the second age Élisabethain. From Glory at is an official initiative financed by taxpayers, with all the requirements that bring, Ravenhill also makes sneaky swings on the officials of the Council of Arts and reductions in the financing of the government for the arts. The Cuss pair like seadogs, moaning about Ninette de Valois, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Frederick Ashton, with Roaring Barnett the very Ravenhillian line: “Fuck Kenneth Clark!”
Ravenhill is foreshadowing, the OMI predicting the critical failure of Glory at And pushing a copy of Henry James to Ben The tour of the screw. There is a row somewhat conferred at the end, where Ben accepts his essential cruelty: that he will take what he needs, more credit, and will repel it. But the flying OMI remained in Aldeburgh for the rest of her life, and she, Britten and Pears are resting there to date.
★★★★ ☆
Orange Tree Theater, until May 17, Orangereetheatre.co.uk
This review was initially published during the start of the play at Stratford-Upon-Avon, March-April 2024
