Beguiling Lures of Luxury Laid Bare: Guildhall School’s* Socially Spun Opera Double Bill
Courtship vied with Earth’s superior forces in a slickly performed coupling of disparate works.
Ellie Neate and Jack Holton in The Telephone. Credit: Helen Murray.
*N.B. This piece reviews the second cast.
Petrified by fiendish foes, the ill-equipped protagonists of Gian Carlo Menotti’s 1947 single act The Telephone and Judith Weir’s eleven-year-old work Miss Fortune suffer persecution in the face of fearsome stalkers: the sadistic force of Fate and a forever-ringing telephone. Despite a tightly wound production by director Martin Lloyd-Evans and a deftly composed scenic treatment by designer Anna Reid, Guildhall School’s peculiar pairing of the two makes for a jarring juxtaposition.
Lime green illumines garish offices partitioned by steel pillars in The Telephone: a whimsically warm, scarcely outdated social commentary on technology’s untrammelled quest to steal our souls. Topped with interminable billboards advertising “Esquire Estates,” Lloyd-Evans’ tongue-in-cheek façade boasts both a railway station on its roof and modern gadgets: garrulous Lucy struggles to surrender her consuming iPhone as her long-time boyfriend Ben fights time to offer a proposal. Neon tints lend glows to almost every aspect of this semi-sixties parody of now: while costumes hark back to the days of “Downtown” being No. 1 and the disowned tool of the landline, Lucy’s laptop and intrepid smartphone mock our modern habits.
Embossing her soprano’s silver with a band of crystal bubbles, Ellie Neate endows her Lucy with a chirp-like lyricism that effuses love of life. A flaky heroine, the woman prattles on the phone with friends and enemies alike, compelling her portrayer to extend the voice to seamless scales and climbs of perilous arpeggios. It’s a testless feat for Neate, whose limber instrument scales both with ease.
Baritone Jack Holton’s Ben must battle endless spools of song: an undertaking his performer readily accomplishes. Displaying dogged gall, the vocalist sustains strong low and forte notes, coming across as sympathetic even as he menacingly takes a pair of scissors to the phone cord. When a stunned Lucy wrests a forced confession out of him, his “I assure you, it was all in self-defence!” sounds painfully believable.
Switching to a template swallowed up by far more billboards – this time with “Everything Must Go”, “Exclusive Bayview Developments” and “Fully Private – No Social Housing!” – Miss Fortune’s set transports us to a world fictitious even for the titular doomed woman. Ironically named, young Tina must endure the loss of all her wealthy parents’ savings and transplant herself into “real life”: a realm that remains out-of-reach throughout the opera.
Hinging on the ghoulish hounding of fierce Fate – a counter-tenor role that seems to be the evil twin of Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Miss Fortune comes off as a Halloween-inspired, scarily outlandish tale: the darker side of Cartoon Network.
Amy Holyland, Cleo Lee McGowan and Jonathan Eyers in Miss Fortune. Credit: Helen Murray
Fluorescent sets stand out in a production that elects to pair its real-life facets (“Peri-Peri Chicken” on the detailed menu of Hassan’s Kebab Stand; Donna’s launderette with its mint-coloured washing machines) with parody. Opting to forego the opulence of Lord and Lady Fortune’s party, Lloyd-Evans introduces us immediately to a vast, motley cast of characters whose omnipresent warnings echo that of a Greek Chorus. In this case nonetheless their gawky glamour adds up to a bounty of fake fur, straw boater hats and pink pussy bow necklines.
Ousted by absurdity, reality plays almost no role in a rigidly designed aesthetic that has female workers clad in pink and yellow t-shirts stamped with Disney characters. The implication seems to be that we’re all owned by one giant corporation or another.
Bleaching darker hues and subtler textures, the director’s take is a bombastic, semi-comical interpretation that at times strokes overstatement.
Cheshire Cat grins and upturned eyebrows broach its boards – the sole exception being Miss Fortune herself, who has set foot in Alice in Spook Wonderland. Cleo Lee McGowan executes her lines exquisitely: channelling contemplative dreaminess and dread as she peruses that week’s horoscopes. Demure diminuendos suggest shyness shrinking at dismality when she remarks, “They’ve all gone home”. It’s a robust and resin-like soprano: technically limitless.
Eerie like the screechy sounds of violins al legno, Fate in the hands of Kieron-Connor Valentine exposes an expandable and potent range. Sterling top notes are unscathed by their position on the stave; the counter-tenor mounts their heights with frightening aplomb. Raging as the beast destroys a textile factory and later a kebab stand, Valentine is viciously arresting through the contrast of his gentle timbre and invanquishable violence.
Burly in breadth, Amy Holyand’s malleable mezzo serves her Donna (the laundress) with corpulent characteristics: the woman lays a pale peach trouser leg across another irritatedly; her daily interactions serve as life-saving amusement. Meticulousness lacquers her colossal notes with an impeccable precision; spine-tingling terror is as palpable as capless mirth.
Laura Fleur inoculates her Lady Fortune with delectable derision and astonishment at her unprecedented plight while the curbed macho of her husband in the hands of Jacob Harrison sustains its might in brazen bass notes.
Destroyed financially and physically by an attack on his kebab van, Hassan leaps through humbling hurdles till the hurt outstrips his hope – but not his singer. Innocent Masuku lends the opera its few forays into melody with “Maybe she [the moon] would tell the sun to stay asleep”; depicting aspiration lacking in the other characters. High on prosperity, the wealthy Simon swaggers with uncompromising confidence and vocal prowess in Jonathan Eyers: a baritone luxuriating in the bachelor’s self-love.
Led by Dominic Wheeler, the orchestra offers tight sections but stumbles too often; letting slip brash, bumbling brass, consecutive coarse strings and out-of-sync woodwind. Onstage the chorus makes for an unflappable and punctual contrast.
Slotting clumsily together, the two operas are resistant to entwinement but emerge as finely put together entities – showcasing Guildhall’s students in a fiercely radiant light.
Guildhall School’s Opera Bill ran from 28th February to 7th March. It will be available to watch online from 25th March to 1st April at this link.