Promised End, English Touring Opera, Royal Opera House Linbury Studio, October 2010

In Shakespeare’s King Lear the fool and Cordelia are never on stage at the same time, and in this operatic version of Lear they are the same character, beautifully sung by Lina Markeby. One might expect an operatic treatment of King Lear to be of Wagnerian proportions, yet Alexander Goehr’s version lasts only one and three-quarter hours, including an interval. Some characters have to be cut, but the nasty sisters are still there, and one of them does the wicked deed of putting out Gloucester’s eyes herself. It’s an intense opera, and the meeting of the blind Gloucester and half-mad Lear is a late focal point.

The simple staging worked well under the direction of James Conway, with designs by Adam Wiltshire, in which the faces of the performers are given an eerie make-up with dark eyes. Throughout the opera all the characters stay on stage, while those not involved in the action stand behind a darkly translucent screen, ready to sing as a chorus when required. The singing was all good, with Roderick Earle notable as Lear, Nigel Robson as Gloucester, and Nicholas Garrett as a sonorously vicious Edmund, well-befitting a man who sang Don Giovanni at Holland Park this past summer.

Unfortunately the diction was poor, probably because the singers had difficulty adjusting to the score, and without surtitles it was not possible to know what was being sung half the time. This is a serious flaw because the words are extracts from Shakespeare, selected by the composer and Frank Kermode, and they’re important. Even with the Aurora Orchestra — well conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth — behind a screen at the rear of the stage, the singers still had to project very strongly to deal with the music, and this may not have helped their diction.

The music itself was intense, as it has to be when distilling the work of a great playwright into a short opera — think of Strauss’s Elektra as distilled from Sophocles by Hugo von Hofmannstahl — but I felt no emotional grip as I do with Elektra’s yearning for Agamemnon in the Strauss opera. I think it’s not an easy play to turn into opera, though several people have tried, most notably a 1978 version by Aribert Reimann, which was produced by the ENO in 1989, but that is a longer work with more scenes. On the whole this seems a bit dull, but may come over better on a second hearing.

Two more performances at Covent Garden are scheduled for October 14 and 16, after which it will tour to the following venues: Malvern Theatres, Oct 21; De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, Oct 26; Exeter Northcott, Oct 29; The Hawth, Crawley, Nov 1; Cambridge Arts Theatre, Nov 3, 6; Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Nov 26.

Our Man in Havana, Richmond Theatre, November 2009

This novel by Graham Greene, adapted for the stage by Clive Francis and directed by Richard Baron, is about a British secret agent in pre-Castro Cuba, whose reports and informers are all inventions. As a vacuum cleaner salesman in need of money, he allows himself to be recruited by the secret services, and feeds them ingenious plots and conspiracies, which he tries to back up with real events, leading to near-disaster. Putting this on stage is not easy, but Clive Francis has the experience of playing in Travels with my Aunt, another Graham Greene adaptation, and like that play this uses only four actors, playing multiple parts. The main character, Wormold (our man in Havana) was very well performed by Simon Shepherd, while Philip Franks, Norman Pace and Beth Cordingly played the other roles. They did brilliantly well, and how they managed the multiple costume changes, lord alone knows. It was like a conjuring trick, and the audience loved it. This play is a comedy, and a reminder of how gross incompetence can be rewarded by Whitehall when it suits them to avoid admitting errors and rank stupidity.

The Winslow Boy, Rose Theatre, Kingston-on-Thames, May 2009

This new production, which is about to go on tour, gave us a terrific performance of Terence Rattigan’s enthralling play about a teenage boy wrongly accused of stealing a five shilling postal order at Naval College. The case, based on a true story, goes all the way to Parliament. This fine production directed by Stephen Unwin, with costumes by Mark Bouman, and sets by Simon Higlett showing the drawing room in the Winslow’s house, worked very well. The acting was entirely natural and this theatrical play came over with complete conviction. What a very pleasant change from the dreadfully untheatrical play Madame de Sade, which I saw earlier the same week.

The cast all did an excellent job, particularly Claire Cox as the Winslow boy’s big sister Catherine, showing great intelligence and emotional restraint. Timothy West gave a commanding performance as his father, with Diane Fletcher as a sympathetic mother who laments the financial and emotional strain created by her husband’s consuming passion for justice. Adrian Lukis added a terrifyingly professional quality as Sir Robert Morton the famous barrister who is surprisingly willing to take on this seemingly trivial case, and prove the boy’s innocence. As the boy Ronnie, Hugh Wyld acquitted himself well, as did Thomas Howes as his elder, happy-go-lucky brother. Sarah Flind was good as the maid, and John Sackville and Roger May were convincing as the young men who would woo Catherine — the first rejecting her when she refuses to drop her brother’s case, and the second willing to wed even though she can feel no love for him.

This is a well-crafted play that starts slowly, building up to the entrance of the famous barrister Sir Robert who undertakes a ferociously provocative interrogation of young Ronnie. After it’s over his remark, “The boy is plainly innocent. I accept the brief”, is a real coup de theatre, followed immediately by the fall of the curtain on the first half. The audience responded well to the performance, and choice lines such as, “the House of Commons is a peculiarly exhausting place, with too little ventilation and far too much hot air” caused well deserved laughter, particularly in view of recent events in parliament. Altogether a wonderful evening’s entertainment.

After playing at the Rose in Kingston the play tours: Cambridge Arts Theatre 1st – 6th June, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre Guildford 8th – 13th June, Theatre Royal Bath 15th – 20th June, Oxford Playhouse 22nd – 27th June, Malvern Theatres 29th June – 4th July, Milton Keynes Theatre 6th – 11th July, Churchill Theatre Bromley 13th – 18th July, Brighton Theatre Royal 20th – 25th July.