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Opera to the people
Hansel and Gretel
High Time Opera
Belgrade Theatre
***** HANSEL and Gretel, a ‘fairy tale in three
acts’, is the best-known of Englebert Humperdinck’s prolific output and
this translation from Kit Hesketh-Harvey (Kit and the Widow) translates
not the libretto (by Adelheld Wette, Humberdinck’s sister), but the nuts
and bolts of the original story from the Brothers Grimm. Themes emerge
of poverty, magic and food. Why this tale now? That’s a good question. High
Time is a new opera company, the first professional opera company based
in Coventry, which aims to bring opera to family audiences who wouldn’t
normally get the chance. As such the choice was of an opera that was
accessible to a family audience and in this they have succeeded.
Twenty-seven per cent of the audience were children. The ‘children’ on stage, bickering and being
naughty, Hansel (Charlotte Ireland) and Gretel (Alexa Mason) have been
so trying to their mother (Wendy Dawn Thompson), living in grinding
poverty in a hovel in the forest, that she banishes them to the town
rubbish dump to forage for food. When father, the poor woodcutter (Jon Stainsby),
returns from work, his happiness at a stroke of luck - good money for
repairing the animal cages at the newly arrived circus – turns to
horror. He already knows that the circus ringmaster
(Oliver Marshall) has a reputation for stealing children – so many have
disappeared from the town. The children try to go
home but are lost. It is dark, they are hungry, they hear noises that
are scary and try to sleep but can’t. Until the dreammaker (Sian
Cameron) sprinkles magic dust on them and they sleep and dream with that
beautiful, simple, haunting melody you’d know,
When at night I go to sleep.
The children dream of forgiveness and treats,
Christmas and lollipops and have the best night’s sleep of their lives.
Caroline Kennedy as The Keeper of the Birds, the dawn chorus, wakes the
children. But stranger danger lurks and their happiness
turns to tears as the oleaginous circus ringmaster arrives and tricks
Hansel into a cage to fatten up to eat later. Gretel has to work out how
to save her brother – which she does mercifully in the traditional way
by playing it daft but in so doing saves the host of children caged for
later consumption. I haven’t mentioned the clowns, they set the
scene with the most charming piece of scene shifting dance I’ve ever
seen (Joey Parsad, Miriam O’Brien, Liam Lewis who also choreographed). I
also haven’t mentioned co-founder Benjamin Hamilton as conductor and
repetiteur Richard Black. This production, directed by Felicity Green, is
charmingly simple, beautiful musically, very funny and then very dark by
turns and well worth seeing. I, for one, will seek out High Time in the
future. To 09-05-15. Jane Howard
09-05-15
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