The Transports (Norwich, Dragon Hall)
Ballad opera has an
honourable history in this country, stretching all the way back to
the Pepusch-Gay production of The Beggar’s Opera
in 1728 and accommodating Arne, Vaughan Williams and Britten
among others over the next couple of hundred years. Peter Bellamy‘s
The Transports was first performed in Norwich
Castle in 1978 and is now given a re-orchestrated staging by the Crude Apache
Theatre Company.
folk-song collector and singer, one with a strong social conscience.
In this through-composed piece, both elements shine through. The
numbers for the most part keep to the traditional three-four and
four-four time signature and emphasis on minor keys; this is
particularly effective for the unaccompanied solo in which a woman
recounts the problems of keeping alive in a harsh world where her
menfolk work hard for very little pay and so turn to other
(dangerous) ways of putting bread on the family table.
The convicts’ scene on
board to ship taking them to Botany Bay and Tasmania (then Van
Diemen’s Land) also works very well, as does the coach journey from
Plymouth to London when the former servant-girl sentenced to
transportation for theft is separated from the baby she has borne to
another convict, Henry Cable. Both Susannah and Henry are real people
who lived in or near Norwich, part of the 1786 First Fleet of
convicts. His father hanged for their part in a botched attempted
burglary; both Susannah and Henry were lucky to escape the gallows.
Musical director Tim
Lane is occasionally let down by his nine-piece band, though the ten
cast members – most of whom play multiple roles – bring the right sort
of sincerity and rough-hewn style to their singing and acting. The
earth colours of Amanda Greenway‘s costumes suit the mood and
there’s a clever use of props to set the scene as the different
confrontations and journeys unfold. Jo Edye and Panda are the
directors.
