The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, October 2011

Sometimes in Figaro the Count can appear a bit of a twerp, but not here. Fiona Shaw’s new production allows him to show testosterone-fuelled frustration, and Roland Wood acted the part as if he were Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey with a wonderful singing voice and hormones running riot, even tearing a doll to pieces in Act III. Forget the TV series — go to the opera. With Elizabeth Llewellyn stepping in at the last minute as the Countess, this was simply wonderful. Her cavatina at the start of Act II when she sighs for the loss of her husband’s love immediately raised the performance a notch, just as it had at Holland Park this summer.

Iain Paterson as Figaro, all images by Sarah Lee

Iain Paterson sang a very solid Figaro, with excellent diction, though you never felt he was in any danger of losing the plot, and Devon Guthrie sang a beautiful Susanna. She was delightful in every way, and Kathryn Rudge as Cherubino gave a remarkable en travesti performance, acting very much the amorous young man. The whole cast sang extremely well together, with fine support from Paul Daniel in the orchestra pit.

This Mozart and Da Ponte opera has a cutting edge, based as it is on Beaumarchais’s play, which was banned from the stage in Vienna where the opera was first performed, and this production adumbrated the tension between master and servants rather well. The translation by Jeremy Sams was suitably direct, as for example when the Count sings at the start of Act III, “Could it be that another of my lackeys has got ideas above his station”. And the emphasis on the master/servant relationship is alluded to before the overture even starts, as we see projections of silhouettes doffing their hats and bowing deeply. But if this makes it sound too political, the production admirably adheres to Beaumarchais’s alternative title The Crazy Day (La folle journée), with a rotating stage conveying different aspects of the house’s interior and adding to the confusion all round at the end of Act II.

Roland Wood as the Count with Antonio the gardener and Figaro

The designs by Peter McKintosh involved traditional costumes in an abstract modern setting, and the occasional use of video cameras pulled the whole thing forward in time as if we were looking back on a vanished world. Certainly that world vanished in one part of Europe with the French revolution in 1789, just three years after the first performance in Vienna, and the opera was only shown in France for the first time in 1793.

As with other English National Opera productions using modern translations, the words have an immediate effect, and Fiona Shaw’s production allows the performers to inhabit their roles and work together as if this were repertory theatre.

The result is well worth seeing, and performances continue until November 10 — for details click here.

Mother Courage, National Theatre, November 2009

This play by Bertolt Brecht — Mother Courage and her Children — was written very swiftly after the German invasion of Poland that year, but is set in the period of the thirty-year war from 1618 to 1648. It deals with a shrewd canteen woman who follows the troops across northern Germany, making a living from the business of war. At one point there is an ending of hostilities, which distresses her since she has just stocked up with provisions, whose value will rapidly fall. But in fact the war carries on, and the action is contained in twelve years during the middle of the war, represented in twelve scenes. An important technique used by Brecht is his Verfremdungseffect (alienation effect), which he says “prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer”. This is achieved by the use of very simple props and scenery, often named by placards, and using the same actors in varied roles. It works in the sense that we are observers who remain unmoved by some of the terrible events that occur. Nor indeed do we feel any sympathy with Mother Courage herself, who was brilliantly played by Fiona Shaw. Her wily toughness comes over as part of her personality, rather than a survival mechanism, but who is to say? Her mute daughter Kattrin was well portrayed by Sophie Stone, and her younger son, the simple but honest Swiss Cheese was beautifully played by Harry Melling.

There is not a single character for whom one really feels much sympathy, and the dark side of war is ever-present. The play was well directed by Deborah Warner, with songs by Duke Special and ‘musicscape’ by Mel Mercier. The fine translation was by Tony Kushner, and the narrator’s voice was that of Gore Vidal, whose extremely bleak view of war, seeing it as a way of balancing the budget, was quoted in the programme. It was rather odd to have a variety of accents, American for Vidal, Irish for both Mother Courage and Stephen Kennedy as the chaplain, and English for most of the cast, but in some ways this conveyed a sense of internationalism to business carried on by other means, and aided the Verfremdungseffect desired by Brecht.