FOR YOU till 11 July
FOR YOU: Composer Michael Berkeley, Librettist Ian McEwan
Music Theatre Wales
Birmingham Rep 4 July, Oxford Playhouse 11 July
Runs 2h 40m, one interval
Bold, sometimes beautiful, but flawed.
FOR YOU is a tale of intrigue, of love, sex, jealousy and death. Just the stuff opera is made from - so Music Theatre Wales’s commission may come as no surprise. Love and sex are powerful, but in Ian McEwan’s story they become warped, distended; they are a powerful force for bad. A famous composer, Charles, is in the final stages of creating his greatest work - Demonic Aubade; yet part of his creative energy is used to seduce orchestra players, bully his household and staff, and humiliate his wife. So, in this story, creative inspiration is also warped and tainted.
Michael Berkeley has created a detailed and atmospheric score, and one that’s often moving. His orchestration is subtle and his setting of the text achieves moments of great beauty. There is a Polish housekeeper in the play, Maria; an outsider both by class and nationality, she’s secretly passionately in love with composer Charles. Whether she sings of her home, or of her love, Berkeley sets her words to haunting melodies, underpinned by a disturbing and beautiful harp ostinato, delicately brushed with other instruments (Maria - Arlene Rolph, Harp - Ruth Potter.)
This is a flawed work, though.
There is a lack of focus in the plotting. This may not matter in prose, but in drama we need to be drawn into the play’s world by a character whose story we follow. In this one we start by thinking it’s Charles, the composer; but in scene 2 we become convinced it’s Antonia, his wife. Eventually, we realise it’s Maria the maid. The trouble is, moment by moment as the drama unfolds we are not sure in which direction to look, nor with whom we should empathise. At the end of the day, sadly, we’re left cold, for we don’t care about anyone.
There is a problem of tone with the text too. Music lifts drama onto another level; it doesn’t matter whether it’s in sung-through opera or music theatre or in works with spoken dialogue, it’s always true. But music can’t lift banal dialogue on to another level; the tone or structure of the language must do part of the work. In FOR YOU, it appears as if the music is being left to do all the work; it tries, but the language proves too earthbound and the music-drama cannot, for the most part, soar.
Arlene Rolph is in beautiful voice as Maria, the maid, full of suppressed passion.
Charles: Nicholas Folwell.
Robin: Christopher Lemmings.
Joan: Rachel Nicholls.
Antonia: Gail Pearson.
Simon: Jeremy Huw Williams.
Maria: Arlene Rolph.
Conductor: Michael Rafferty.
Director: Michael McCarthy.
Designer: Simon Banham.
Costume Designer: Holly McCarthy.
Lighting Designer: Mike Brookes.
2009-07-05 12:59:18