Reviews

A Magic Flute

A’,
not ‘The’. This isn’t Die Zauberflöte as written by Mozart but
a 95-minute potted version adapted by the formidable Peter Brook, now 86, and conceived
as his farewell production to his Paris theatre, Les Bouffes du nord.

To
say that expectations for this ran high is an understatement. Armed with vivid
memories of Brook’s chamber version of Bizet, La Tragédie de
Carmen, and having made multiple pilgrimages to his peerless
Don Giovanni at the Aix Festival some years back, I had put
a big red circle around this date months ago. What sadness, then, to witness
such a dispiriting swansong from a great director.

Brook’s
late work for the stage has become increasingly stripped back (though always
stylishly so) to encourage audiences to focus on the drama. With A
Magic Flute he catastrophically extends this dépouillement
to the musical performance, and in his quest to present the essence of Schikaneder’s
story he treats Mozart’s score with something approaching contempt. The
orchestra gives way to a faceless piano reduction (played either by Franck
Krawczyk or, as on Friday, by Matan Porat), the vocal calibre of his young cast
is frankly third rate (again, there are two casts who alternate throughout the
run; the second may possibly be stronger), and those arias that survive the
cut-and-paste are thrown off like unwelcome intrusions upon lethargy.

Brook’s
love of the exotic prompts him towards a visual language of bamboo sticks and
vaguely Arabic costumes. Although such stylistic decisions have no bearing on
the story, they do not detract from it either and present good surfaces for
receiving Philippe Vialatte’s subtle lighting. That, unfortunately, is as good
as it gets.

The
performances of the players are so muted that one wonders what can possibly
have occurred during Brook’s extended rehearsal period. Only William Nadylam
displays any charisma at all, and his task is not to sing but to narrate the
missing plotlines – which begs the question: why make cuts to essential
material in the first place? And why then interpolate an aria from elsewhere
(for Papagena) that contributes nothing either to the action or to the dramatic
structure?

The
sensation of lèse majesté in criticising such a legendary figure as Peter Brook
is as nothing compared to Brook’s own hubris in presuming to improve on Mozart.
Whereas thirty-odd years ago his Carmen was a masterpiece of
concision; this Flute is a massacre by excision. As for the
staging, it’s hard to believe the great director has seen any of the good work
being done by other creative hands in the 21st century. His ‘bare essentials’ shtick
has developed little in recent times and it’s beginning to look very tired now.
This is deadly theatre.