Clapham – home to hundreds of young Londoners crammed into sticky-floored house-shares of a weeknight and the sweaty dancefloors of Infernos at the weekend. Where better to stage The Rake’s Progress, Stravinsky and WH Auden’s 1951 fairytale-cum-morality-play about a country innocent swallowed whole by the temptations and corruptions of the capital? Add a cast and creative team in their 20s, and you’ve got immersive theatre before you even open the doors.
We’ve seen Rakes before from British Youth Opera (2009’s starred a certain Nicky Spence, star attraction of this year’s Last Night of the Proms – this finishing-school for students and young professionals clearly works) but never one conceived, directed, designed and stage-managed entirely by the participants themselves. In terms of professional development it’s a gift, but it made for a bit of a bumpy show on opening night.
A V-shaped stage encloses conductor Oliver Cope and Sinfonia Smith Square at its centre. Three door frames (clad in Bridgerton offcuts of wisteria for Anne Trulove’s country bower, etched out in red light for London) supply Alexandra Kay’s minimal set. It’s a tricky setup that maroons characters in narrow lines or banishes them to the very back of the theatre, further obscuring already difficult sight lines. And with no pit to tame the enthusiasm of the orchestra, balance is often an issue for the young singers.
Cope is all crisp precision and lucidity, his Prelude launching a swift, cool account of Stravinsky’s Mozart-homage of a score. The orchestra responds intermittently, but the right angles and sharp points of Stravinsky’s score are an unforgiving architecture, and too many chords and rhythms smudge or sag.
Director Tom Deazley makes no big gestures in a quiet, gently contemporary staging that’s more interested in psychology than society. His cast (the first of two) do him proud. Tenor Sam Rose’s Tom Rakewell is a brittle, suggestible creature who comes startlingly into focus in the tenderness and vulnerability of his Bedlam scene. This is a beautiful young voice, packed with promise, and his physical awkwardness sits nicely against the assurance and polished stage package of Sam Young’s Nick Shadow.
Sophie Bysouth is a sweet-voiced, earnest Anne, capable of harnessing some fire in “I go, I go to him”, and deeply touching in her woman-to-woman confrontation with Rhian Davies’ confident Baba the Turk. Matthew Bawden relishes his cameo as Sellem, and Gabriel Tufail Smith catches the ear in the small role of the Keeper.
Stravinsky and Auden may play modernist games with arm’s length artifice and irony, but ultimately you judge a Rake by its heartbreak. This cast delivers, even if the mechanics of staging and presentation don’t always help them do it.
• At Battersea Arts Centre, London until 21 August
