Conductor, Mark Wigglesworth; Hansel, Anna Stéphany; Gretel, Anna Devin; Peter, Darren Jeffery; Gertrud, Susan Bickley; Witch, Rosie Aldridge; Sandman, Isabela Díaz; Dew Fairy, Sarah Dufresne. Director and Designer, Antony Mcdonald, Lighting Designer, Lucy Carter
I’ve never seen Hansel and Gretel live before. I first got to know the overture when i was 13 or so, and loved the opening horns playing music from the sleep sequence in Act 1. Even further back, when I was about 7, I was taught ‘country dance’ at primary school by a very witch-like lady called Miss Lankeston who had been a student of Cecil Sharp and who dressed in clothes that looked more like Edwardian than anything else. She taught us to dance and sing to the Act 1 duet – ‘with your hands you clap clap clap ‘ etc.
Nearer to the present, I remember reading about various famous productions over the years in the UK that have set out to portray , alongside the straightforward storytelling, some of the darker elements of this fairy tale, and I hoped that this production might offer other insights of that kind. The work has late 19th century stuff you can’t do too much about – the gender stereotypes (though it is Gretel who pushes the witch in the oven), and all the saccharine references to guardian angels – but it also touches on the impact of poverty, the cruelties of consumption, child abuse and cruelty, what makes for a sustaining life for a child and what doesn’t; there’s a lot directors can do with this work that doesn’t remove the happy ending, but does explore the dark of the darkness and indeed what the goodness consists of, in a way that makes it attractive and interesting to a wider demographic in the audience.
Sadly, this production was not really exploring any of these issues. The music was as uplifting and enjoyable as ever but dramatically this was not much more than a West End Christmas show, sadly – and indeed even at that level it seemed slightly skimped on occasion (though it was good to be hearing it in English).
The sets were very effective. There was a beautifully painted gauze curtain for the beginning which also could be lit in various ways to suggest different times of the day, and , of course, shone through to give sudden visions of Hansel and Gretel’s house (during the overture). When Act 1 begun and the gauze curtain rose, there was a suggestive backdrop of shadowy trees and a bright wooden hut. In the forest there are huge logs on the floor and the trees lit in different ways. The witch’s house is a crooked sinister building, with a knife stuck through its roof. It swivels round to show the inside of the kitchen (as in the photo below, where you can see the steps up to the cauldron, and the exploded cauldron after the witch has fallen in. The direst moment of the production was the dream sequence – there’s so much you could do here with video projections, but what we had here was a few dancers dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. The Big Bad Wolf and others flapping round the stage, with a twinkly fairy at hand to guard the children. Even as a family Christmas show, something more spectacular would have been possible, surely? The pitching of the witch into the oven was handed well enough, and there was a rather splendid explosion which seemed to deposit a well-boiled witch into the front of the house. But overall the production didn’t seem to have a clear focus – it was neither a spectacularly conceived and executed Christmas show with lots of moments where you could ‘oooh’ and ‘aaaah’. Neither was it likely to be satisfying to an average opera-goer wanting to be challenged.
The score of Hansel and Gretel is lovely mixture of folk song-like melodies and the Wagnerian idiom, with Die Meistersinger certainly in evidence but also at times Parsifal (particularly in relation to the Sleep sequence); Fasolt and Fafner make an appearance in some of the Witch’s music. Mark Wiggleworth I thought gave a well-balanced reading of the score, keeping the music moving and with the rhythmic propulsion necessary for the folk tunes, but at the same time giving sufficient broadness to the evening prayer and the sleep sequence. I had the impression some of the singers were ‘marking’ – certainly Gretel, who was announced as having a cold, and maybe the Witch as well. All were good enough, none were really exceptional. One element that was very fine indeed musically was the children’s choir at the end, who sounded splendid
John's musical journey 