Billy Budd
Blid spots spike the weekly critical cocktail with a rim of salt, just as soft spots add sugar. The first are more dangerous. They break out uncontrollably, unequivocally in this column about twice a year. The rest of the time, as far as possible, they're suppressed in the interests of fair play. On occasion there's no option but to confess to them. The Beggar's Opera is one. Blame doxies and wenches and posh cockney hussies. Blame thinness of character or gawky mix of speech and song, or the interminable length. It's hard to think of characters less sympathetic. Macheath, Peachum, Polly, the very names and antics spawn yawning apathy.
A couple of months ago, a raw, rousing production by ENO's Baylis Programme all but rescued the work from its void. The enriching involvement of homeless actors, members of Cardboard Citizens, endowed the work with the humanity it usually lacks - whether in the hands of Britten, or Brecht and Weill (in The Threepenny Opera ) or Laurence Olivier (who appeared in a 1953 film) or John Gay himself, creator of the original 1728 text.
But now once again, a little too soon for comfort, I'm the sad soul peering through the glass at a fabulous party. History records Mousetrap-like innings for all the different versions of this hybrid affair, with Nigel Playfair's 1920 production at the Lyric, Hammersmith, beating the lot with nearly 1,500 performances. Someone must have loved it. Evidently many did last Wednesday at Wilton's endearing but punishingly uncomfortable Music Hall, where Broomhill Opera mounted a new production.
Jonathan Lloyd, ever an inventive and alternative voice, had provided a quirky new arrangement using elements of Pepusch's original ragbag of songs and dances. Neo-baroque ditties rubbed shoulders with snatches of Wagner, a mock-heroic version of Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary and the traditional Lilli-Burlero.
A versatile eight-piece band, deftly directed by Charles Hazlewood, had fun slurping, sputtering and whooping as Lloyd's maverick score demanded, with particularly witty inventions for guitar, banjo and accordion, in every style from flamenco to George Formby. At one moment Cliff's 'Millennium Prayer' seemed about to engulf us, then a barrage of Maharishi 'ooohms' issued forth. Little play was made of Gay's attack on elaborate Italian opera, except in the most general sense; a lost musical opportunity. Nevertheless the music had an engaging habit of glinting and flickering between past and present.
Under Jonathan Miller's direction, the work has been updated to the early Victorian era, inspired by Henry Mayhew's investigation of the London poor. In practice this meant whiskers galore and Dickensian garb but little else. You expected, at least, a dash of Victorian melodrama which, in the work's hybrid context, might have been justified. Yet removed from the period of its creation, the satire ended up aimless and toothless. (It might have done better in our own times. Think of the possibilities: Jeffrey, Ken, Tony and cronies lurked in the wings of possibility.) Everyone is unpleasant, out for gain. Love is scorned. No one is elevated by their circumstances. Nothing has value. Without good, what force has evil? At the heart a question roars: what's the point?
With a couple of exceptions, notably Ali McGregor as Polly and Tara Harrison as Lucy, few of the singers could act or the actors sing. No one's asking for Bryn Terfel but it helps to be able to hold a note. The unexpectedly polite staging, with minimal props, removed all sense of prison, parlour, street or bar. None of the characters burst out of formula. Nor did the street life anatomised by Mayhew impress itself upon the action with clamour or clatter, literal or suggested.
Claudia Mayer's designs included a row of handsome, propped-up doors, a metaphor which remained unsolved by the end of the evening, by which time the only door holding any charm was the exit. But don't be deterred. Go and support Broomhill, a striving enterprise always prepared to explore the crevices of musical theatre missed by bigger companies. Enjoy a rare chance to see Jonathan Miller, still a national asset, at work. Just leave me at home.
Britten's Billy Budd, superbly performed by the LSO and an outstanding cast, proved to be the flip side of The Beggar's Opera. The preoccupations are similar, exposing the ambition and corruption of those in power, the suffering of those without it. The difference, quite apart from the obvious contrast in musical scale and ambition, is that Britten's work burns with conscience, where The Beggar's Opera has none.
The performance was semi-staged, with attention to detail and ingenious delineation, through costume, of the subtle class structures in this work. The officers wore white tie and tails, the lowlier Master At Arms a velvet smoking jacket, the crew casual attire. Entrances and exits were carefully staged, with Richard Hickox's appropriately brass-railed podium daringly used as various bits of the man o'war. Apparently Hickox devised the movement, with input from the cast. Who needs directors?
John Tomlinson chilled the blood with his obsessive, creepy, bullying portrayal of Claggart. As Billy Budd, Simon Keenlyside shone with broken innocence. Philip Langridge, one of our finest singing actors, is as good a Captain Vere as you can get, unsurpassable in frail moral grandeur. Every member of the 16-strong cast, the Tiffin Boys' Choir, the London Symphony Chorus and, blazing throughout, the London Symphony Orchestra, deserve highest praise. Hickox conducted as though his life depended on it. A recording is due out next year. Forget The Beggar's Opera. This was one for choosers.
