Magic and its mechanics (very Masonic and possibly Meyerholdian): foley and video artists, sleight of hand, orchestra on the same level as the stage, performer sorties amongst the musicians and the audience, and the most beautiful music and singing. Simon McBurney’s (of Complicité theatre company) The Magic Flute returns to the Coliseum for its third revival since it opened in the 2013/14 Season.
A quest for love, trials by fire and water, Masonic rituals (both Mozart and his librettist were members of the same lodge) and pantomimic Singspiel, the staging is Grotowski poor theatre. The set is a large swinging multi-purpose wooden platform, table, floor and ceiling, tilting this way and that, convenient for sliding.
Opera made easy, the stage magic comes with projections (did you know the opera was composed in 1791?—you do now) some created in chalk in the moment by a video artist who is ambidextrous. Seeing how it is done to the left of me is fascinating, but takes my eye away from the performers, if not my ear. The ear is distracted by the foley artist’s tricks (sound design Gareth Fry) and gimmicks to the right of me. Thankfully, the music and the singing win.
Past and present meet: evangelical men in grey suits (from The Handmaid’s Tale and present-day America) speak at a corporate “assembly”: “we are in a time of great crisis”. Their chief is Canadian bass John Relyea, a rumbling-voiced, sonorous Sarastro, kindly, benign. “Will you fight for wisdom?”
The crippled Queen of the Night is out of a sinister fairy tale, whilst her three lascivious Ladies (Carrie-Ann Williams, Amy Holyland, Stephanie Wake-Edwards in terrific voice) are in present-day army camouflage. They strip Prince Tamino down to his underwear. But just about refrain from sexually abusing him.
It’s a Manichean battle, you see, between light and dark, Wagnerian even. American soprano Rainelle Krause in her ENO debut brings the house down and halts proceedings with her coloratura in the second act, by which time the audience has realised it can let its hair down and become more vocal.
Tamino (tenor Norman Reinhardt making his ENO debut) is sent to rescue the Queen’s daughter Pamina from the corrupting influence of Sarastro, or so she thinks. With the help of simple bird-catcher Papageno, guano-splattered tramp David Stout, who is also in need of a mate. That’s a manipulative bargaining chip for Sarastro. Baritone Stout (I last saw him in La Gioconda) is an endearing birdman.
Stout’s comic role is pure panto, especially when he propositions an embarrassed young woman in the audience and leaves his phone number chalked on the video guy’s blackboard. There’s a sense of Complicité improvisation in the free-spirited role. How happy he is when he gets to eat Victoria sponge, when he gets his Papagena (soprano Alexandra Oomens), their voices melding in joyous love.
A flute and chimes are given respectively to Tamino and Papageno as magic protective charms. McBurney has a flautist (Claire Wicks tonight, the second night) step out of the orchestra and play on stage. The chimes player is late for his cue (a joke) so Papageno has to play them to his delight. But his clattering stepladders annoy everyone.
Too many jokes to reference—there are many, subtle and not so subtle. Humans fly, birds are folded sheets of music (economical props), and extras fill the stage. The three spirits, in brilliant voice, appear as if by magic above the stage—it’s all light and mirrors, original lighting by Jean Kalman, video design by Finn Ross. The magic of theatre; the magic of creation.
I wonder if it’s the translator, the late Stephen Jeffreys, who has taken liberties with the text (“hormonal rage”?) or McBurney. Concepts aside, the orchestra is on good form under the baton of Erina Yashima making her ENO debut, the chorus singing as usual is exceptional, and the cast shine in drab costumes.
Soprano Sarah Tynan (a wonderful Eurydice and Lucia) stands out as Pamina; tenor Peter Hoare (a delight in Grange Park’s The Excursions of Mr Brouček, and outstanding in ENO’s The Mask of Orpheus) is a naughty gnome of a Monostatos. Not played as sinisterly as I’ve often seen, he gets his comeuppance and not the girl he lusts after, Pamina.
Fire blazes on screen, thunder rumbles, water drips (the foley artist wears an umbrella—more tongue-in-cheek (there is no repressing the irrepressible McBurney, whose productions, not least The Master and Margarita which I saw numerous times, I admire)—feet stamp, and voices soar to the heavens.
Mozart’s music wins every time. The last opera he wrote, The Magic Flute is a must see—you will leave the theatre with joy in your steps—even into the rain. First half sixty minutes, second eighty-five—time well spent. Wisdom, reason, enlightenment, but the best of them is love. The voices have it.