British Youth Opera provides a platform for new entrants to the profession, offering mentored experience to fledgling singers, directors, designers, hair and make-up — the lot. Scoring a Century — music by David Blake, text by Keith Warner — is an ideal vehicle for young professionals to train under Warner himself as director, with Lionel Friend as conductor.
Mr and Mrs Jedermann (Everyman) a song-and-dance duo, career through the 20th century’s political and cultural milestones, from First World War trenches to Berlin cabaret, on to a neat juxtaposition of Soviet show trial with McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunt, to Fox News.
It all provides opportunities for hommages, verbal or musical, to Chekhov, Weill, Eisler, Pinter and Sondheim, plus a text crammed with one-liners. It’s a terrific company achievement, led by Hugo Herman-Wilson and Holly Marie Bingham as the Jedermanns and Florian Panzieri as the composer Berthold.
With recherché cracks about a “controversial production” of Wagner’s Meistersinger featuring Nazis, not to mention critics and prostate cancer, nothing, it seems, is too below the belt. The Jedermanns truly offer something for everybody.
Until Sept 7 (020 7863 8000, byo.org.uk)
