Review: Hansel and Gretel
November 23, 2008
Date reviewed: 21st November 2008
Venue: The Spa Theatre, Bridlington
It seems to be open season on Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. Glyndebourne is touring it and the Royal Opera’s production is soon to be screened live in cinemas nationwide. Given Opera North’s love of small-scale child-friendly tours of this opera – I remember a delightful Tim Supple production at Leeds City Varieties some years ago – it was hardly likely that the Leeds company would miss out.
This year’s Hansel and Gretel uses John Longstaff’s arrangement for seven players (string quartet, horn, clarinet and music director Andrew Griffiths conducting from the piano) and tours five venues for a total of 13 performances, 7 of them matinees, with a children’s chorus from a local primary school at each venue, ending up in the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds from December 11th. There is no extravagant spectacle, but equally no stinting on the quality of the six principal voices.
At the splendidly refurbished Bridlington Spa (excellent chorus from Tickton CE Primary School) the formal theatre setting was not over-helpful, the tatty kitchen set for the opening scene looking rather lost on the stage. However, the response of the largely adult evening audience was overwhelmingly enthusiastic and the production, perfectly attuned to its educational purpose, will find more intimate conditions elsewhere.
Director Oliver Mears has wisely opted for a straightforward, clearly defined approach, full of imaginative touches, but never wilful or controversial. The first act is staged with what he calls “gritty domestic reality”, Hansel and Gretel slouching in in scruffy school uniforms and Sarah Pring and Riccardo Simonetti intensely conveying their uneasy relationship with each other and the children – not quite abusive, but with that potential. Simon Holdsworth’s designs, basic and functional to begin with, find touches of magic as the children, now dressed in more traditional style, head for the woods, the vivid painting that Gretel stuck on the fridge door now the backcloth from which the Sandman will later materialise. The dream of food is done with wit and restraint and even the grotesqueness of the Witch (Mark Le Brocq) is more comic than menacing.
So this is not a Hansel and Gretel to explore the Teutonic twilight. Claire Wild is a gleeful Gretel, whether striking Catherine Tate poses in the first scene or chuckling over the immolation of the Witch, combining expressive and secure singing with a vital stage presence. Frances Bourne completes a highly effective pair of siblings, though, understandably, her sulkily mischievous youth is a rather more mannered creation. Pring, Simonetti and Le Brocq give assured vocal characterisations and Kim Sheehan doubles charmingly as a mysterious Sandman and a ditsy Dew Fairy.
The reduced orchestra means that the usual Wagner comparisons go for naught, though the programme gives youngsters helpful hints on listening for the leitmotif. There is, however, a compensating clarity and purity of sound from the small band, a mix of Opera North orchestra regulars and freelances. The words of David Pountney’s idiomatic translation are projected with exemplary clarity – and very jolly they are, too, with the rhyming of “noodles” and “strudels” summing up an evening when food (or the lack of it) is an ever-present theme.
-Ron Simpson
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