CHELINOT. To 12 August.
London
CHELINOT
music and lyrics by Michael Cryne book by Daniel Byrne
Union Theatre 204 Union Street SE1 0LX To 12 August 2006
Tue-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 25min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7261 9876
www.uniontheatre.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 July
I can live without hearing Chelinot again, but we may well hear more of its composer-lyricist.
As Occupations go, things haven’t been bad for the French village of Chelinot. The Maquis are doing their duty with bits of sabotage, but the Germans and locals happily meet down the pub for a few drinks and songs from local chanteuse Malene. It could be the Occupiers mistook this blonde beauty for a French Dietrich, but one German major is intimate enough for her to extract secrets to pass to her Resistance chums. Maybe (it’s not ultra-clear) he too uses her as a source of trade secrets.
Then the efficient German machine reaches Chelinot with Nazi officer Einseitz. There’s nothing he won’t use to prize the Resistance apart. And cattle-trucks begin rumbling in the night.
While avoiding Nazi-chic, the subject resists the musical treatment. Apart from Malene’s song, a public performance to other characters rather than an exposition of the opening situation to the audience, the pre-Einseitz mood has no musical expression. And, for a long time, Michael Cryne’s music is largely roped off in the area of instrumental addenda.
Whoever had control of this piece’s structuring has often timed its musical operations badly. Throughout, situation that could be exploited musically are not, while music’s used for narrative sections where speech would do at least as well. Even an apt musical section, expressing fissures within the Maquis, comes before enough is known of situation or characters to give the number any context.
A shame, because in itself the impact of Nazism on Chelinot is charted well, if not with any surprises. The growing menace of deportations becomes increasingly insistent by comparison with the anti-Resistance theme, reflecting the community’s growing awareness. And once at least, there’s a near-Verdian intensity as a morally agonised, physically fearful character sings of his position. It’s sung with fine conviction by one of the few cast members who can manage Cryne’s tendency to exposed, sustained high-note melody endings.
The singing’s uneven, the acting often paltry. But the space is well-used and Cryne’s score (for string quartet plus keyboard) is especially fine in its instrumental lines, while the framing song has a fine plangency.
Andre: Alan Richardson
Le Trec: Andy Obeney
Olivier: Oliver Carson
Aimee: Sarai Kirk
Malene: Nikki Gerrard
Irene: Annie Walker
German Soldier/Gendarme: Nathan Dunkin
Ensemble: Charlotte Milchard
Gendarme: Thomas Coombes
Jean-Paul: Warren Rusher
Louis: Aidan Crowley
Schultz: Alistair Gilyatt
Max: David Laughton
Einseitz: Ross Forder
Weill: Aidan Synnott
Oscar: Alexis De Vivenot/Joshua Gordon
Directors: Ben De Wynter, Sasha Regan
Lighting/Assistant director: Steve Miller
Musical Director: Christopher Peale
2006-08-02 02:26:32