Tony Britten combined music and mummery to leavening effect in Peace and Conflict, his 2013 film on his composer namesake Benjamin. His latest makes starchy work of a notionally sexier subject – Elizabethan madrigalist John Wilbye’s saucy relations with his patrons – by having rep actors roam heritage sites, declaiming stylised period dialogue; bland cutaways to a modern chorister’s love life strain to illustrate the loin-stirring capabilities of Wilbye’s music.
Casting the reliably amazonian Doon Mackichan as a 17th-century Mrs Robinson suggests some spoofery is afoot, but everything’s played straight-faced; instead of gags, we get lutes. For all its high-minded ambition, the passion has leaked out of this particular project.
