Martyn Brabbins, conductor; Jamie Manton, director; Tom Scutt, set & costumes; Lucy Carter, lighting. Cast: Sally Matthews, Vixen; Pumeza Matshikiza, Fox; Lester Lynch, Forester; Madeleine Shaw, Forester’s Wife / Owl; Alan Oke, Schoolmaster / Mosquito; Clive Bayley, Priest / Badger; Ossian Huskinson, a Poacher; John Findon, Innkeeper / Cock; Gweneth Ann Rand, Innkeeper’s Wife / Hen; Claire Barnett Jones, Dog
I braved storms and dodgy rail connections to get to this show, starting out from home near Sheffield at 0810, getting soaking wet on the way to the station in 50 mph winds, and getting to the Coliseum at 2.45pm. I was rewarded with a moving and lively new production, in fact having its opening performance (the original first night on Friday having been cancelled by Storm Eunice). The production handled the how-to-play-the-animals issue well – the vixen and fox were relatable to the audience but clearly different in lighting and costumes from the humans. Somehow the production gave far more emphasis to the animals than the humans. The schoolmaster and priest were much more cyphers than in some of the other productions I’ve seen – literally grey figures in dark costumes. Very effective community engagement work had led to a lot of extra children as animals too, emphasising this point, the centrality of the life of the animals. We saw or sensed little of the Forester’s inner life, his relationship with his wife, and there was none of the sexual tension you sometimes find in productions between the Vixen and Forester (though there was a splendid bit where the Forester and his wife plonked down on the sofa to see the telly, bewildering the Vixen….)
The set seemed to be a logging station in a forest, which emphasised the intersection of the lives of humans and animals. Colour and variety were given by vertical banners that streamed downward with fascinatingly different images of the natural world, though several sheds didn’t seem to be adding much. The human desolation and sadness for times passed and lost in the human world through climate change in the prelude to Act 3 was mirrored by the vertical banners representing the forest collapsing. A textile carpet of flowers appeared for the Forester’s final, moving reflections on nature. The animals for the most part were colourfully costumed and lit – I loved the frogs, and a special mention for the toadstools! I got a bit confused by the hens who seemed to turn up in the forest as part of the Vixen’s wedding…! On a couple of occasions, a door opened out to a blazing white at the back of the stage, I’m not sure what this was about- some sense of divine unity beyond the different worlds? There’s nothing in the text to suggest that, really……the opera celebrates the cyclic returns and transient beauty of Nature rather than anything transcendent. Sometimes I felt the design team had just been a bit defeated by the size of the Coliseum stage…on the other hand the starkness of the sets really threw you into the drama at the beginning which felt good – it took a while for me to remember what was supposed to be going on!
Musically the star of the show was the orchestra and Martyn Brabbins – some wonderfully sharp rhythmic and sensitive playing and the warmth of the Coliseum acoustic is ideally suited to Janacek’s orchestral sound. The sound at the end was glorious…. The chorus went astray once or twice in the wedding scene and weren’t fully as one with the orchestra but no doubt that’ll sort itself out in later performances. All the singers were strong – Lester Lynch was excellent in the Forester’s final soliloquy and Sally Matthews clear and lyrical throughout as the Vixen. There were some distinguished senior figures in some of the cameo roles – Clive Bayley and Alan Oke as priest and schoolmaster (whose diction was the best – some of the other singers required the audience to constantly refer to the surtitles. What, I wonder, did I do 50 years ago at the Coliseum if singers were unintelligible? I suspect the lack of surtitles impelled them to communicate more through clarity of diction, something that singers now don’t need to bother about…..)
Anyway, thoroughly recommended!!! (though I just received an email today saying that I have a ticket for the Barrie Kosky / Mirga Munich production of this work in July – will very much be looking forward to that!!)
John's musical journey 