Jakob Lenz, English National Opera, ENO, Hampstead Theatre, April 2012

It’s not often you see the main performer in an opera fall into deep water on stage. In fact I’m sure I’ve never seen such a thing before, and this was not metaphorical water. It was the real thing, and Andrew Shore gave a remarkable performance as the eponymous character.

Lenz and Friederike

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz was a German dramatist, writer and poet, born in what is now Latvia in 1751. After being banished from Weimar in 1776 for writing a scurrilous poem poking fun at various members of the court, his life gradually became dominated by mental instability, sympathetically portrayed in a prose study by Georg Büchner — known to opera lovers as the author of a play on which Berg’s Wozzeck is based. Büchner’s work inspired this chamber opera by Wolfgang Rihm, written in 1977–78.

It is in thirteen scenes, which are carried through without a break, the whole thing lasting just 75 minutes. But what an experience this is of a man descending into madness, or is he sane and the world around him is going gradually crazy? The water is ever present. He falls into it again, and again, and in scene 5 after preaching in the church he baptises a girl by submersion. Later the child is drowned by Friederike Brion, an ex-lover of Goethe about whom Lenz felt passionately. She lies dead even after Lenz commands her, “Arise and walk”, … but then later Friederike escorts her from the stage. It was all in Lenz’s mind, and it was an inspiration by director Sam Brown to bring in an actress to portray Friederike in a full eighteenth hair-do and finery.

The other singing roles here are taken by Jonathan Best as the Lutheran pastor, building a new church whose roof is finally fitted in the last scene, and Richard Roberts as Kaufmann, a friend of Lenz who comes to visit him in the village in Alsace. He too is dressed in eighteenth century finery with rouged cheeks, serving to contrast the urban world that Lenz has left with the natural world he now inhabits.

Designs by Annemarie Woods with excellent lighting by Guy Hoare help give an almost supernatural sense of impending insanity, very apposite to Lenz’s condition which many have considered to be a case of schizophrenia. This is a fascinating work and the programme notes help illuminate the background to Lenz himself.

Musically the rhythms keep changing, and the small orchestra of eleven players, including three cellos but no other stringed instruments, was very ably conducted by Alex Ingram. He seemed effortlessly to keep the singers in phase with the music, which can’t be easy. Sam Brown’s production is not to be missed, but what really made this such a remarkable performance was Andrew Shore in the title role.

Performances continue until April 27 — for details click here.

Danton’s Death, National Theatre, NT Olivier, August 2010

This play by Georg Büchner deals with a two-week period during the terror following the French revolution. The events he describes were but forty years in the past, and Büchner knew many of the speeches by Robespierre and Danton by heart. He was born in 1813, the same year as Wagner, so both these brilliant artists were at a very impressionable age when the 1830 revolution in France brought the ‘citizen king’ Louis-Philippe to power, and both became young revolutionaries. But while Wagner lived to create great operas, Büchner died at 23. This play was written in 1835 when he was just 21.

Robespierre and Danton, photo by Johan Persson

The main characters are Danton, Robespierre and Saint-Just. In an interesting essay in the programme, Ruth Scurr writes that “Büchner presents a brilliant portrait of Robespierre as a cold-blooded hypocritical fanatical prig”. Does he? If so this production didn’t quite show it. Robespierre is a background figure in the second half of the play, and seems to show serious reservations about condemning Danton, while Saint-Just is the prime mover in getting him convicted and guillotined. In this sense I thought Alec Newman gave a strong performance of Saint-Just, while Elliot Levey gave Robespierre a wrather camp feel, as did Chu Omambala with Collot d’Herbois, but that was presumably the intention of director Michael Grandage. It did however create something of a Monty Python feel to the whole thing, except that it wasn’t funny. It was dull and unrelenting, and while Toby Stephens’ extremely emotive portrayal of Danton may have been convincing, it didn’t elicit my sympathy.

Saint-Just in public mode, photo by Johan Persson

Paule Constable’s lighting, and the music and sound by Adam Cork, were wonderful, as were Christopher Oram’s designs showing enormously tall doors and windows that made the revolutionaries look small. Robespierre’s remark that ‘Virtue must rule through terror’ is often repeated, and the play has plenty of youthful energy from its young cast, but feels a bit like a history lesson. It only had its first performance 65 years after its author’s death, and Büchner went on to write deeper things, particularly Woyzeck, which was later used by Alban Berg in his opera of that name. Of course it’s always worthwhile to recall the history of the French terror in the early 1790s, but if one wants to recreate a sense of idealism, and revolutionary energy run amok, Giordano’s opera Andrea Chenier is the thing to see — Covent Garden and the ENO please note.

The four acts of this play are performed without a break — lasting about an hour and three quarters — and near the beginning we hear Robespierre saying (in Howard Brenton’s new version), “Only by your own self-destruction can you fall” (German: Du kannst nur durch deine eigne Kraft fallen). Robespierre fell just a few months later, but at the end of this play it is Danton and his friends who go to the guillotine, and that final scene is a brilliant coup de theatre. Whether it’s worth waiting for, I’m not so sure.

Performances continue until October 14 — for more details click here.