City of Birmingham Touring Opera, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 28 March 1997 Curlew river: Leader of the pilgrims Ashley Thorburn Ferryman Jeremy Huw Williams Traveller Quentin Hayes Madwoman Neill Archer Spirit Sam Woods Director Toby Wilsher The prodigal son: Tempter Ivan Sharpe Father Charles Johnson Elder son Quentin Hayes Younger son Andrew Burden Boy Matthew Lloyd Director Mark Tinkler The burning fiery furnace: Abbot/Astrologer Jeremy Huw Williams Herald Quentin Hayes Nebuchadnezzar Ivan Sharpe Misrael Andrew Burden Azarias Ashley Thorburn Ananias Charles Johnson Angel Darren Chadwick Director Sean Walsh Chorus Birmingham Contemporary Music Group Music director Simon Halsey This presentation of all three of Britten's church parables in one evening, with a common cast but different directors, could be described is epic theatre in more than one sense. I certainly felt that it went on for too long. But putting the pieces together also highlighted the way they dramatize big themes in a sort of boys' own Brechtian theatre. This performance was part of the sixties component of Towards the millenium, but it seemed to me to have more to do with Anglicanism in the thirties. All three parables are framed by Latin processionals and recessionals, and were originally written (I believe) to be performed by the choir at Orford Church. The adult cast in this production sound and look like Oxbridge choral scholars, and at some of them were in the past. The productions of The prodigal son and The burning fiery furnace alluded to the social and autobiographical context in which Britten wrote them, and while this added some interest, it also highlighted the rather narrow emotional range of the parables. The main problem with doing all three pieces together, in fact, is that Curlew river is, IMO, a far better work than the other two, and works as drama without needing such contextualization. It was done very effectively as an ensemble piece, with the monks and fenland setting that Britten visualised. Neill Archer's madwoman was very moving. It must be tempting for a director or singer to turn this role, the only female role in the three pieces, into a diva in drag, in an attempt to appropriate the emotional directness of operatic soprano roles for a man's voice. In a specifically English context, it must also be quite difficult to avoid making the madwoman into a pantomime dame. Archer instead delivered a direct performance of the music with some very basic gestures presumably meant to evoke Noh drama. Another Noh-derived element was the appearance of the boy's spirit as a life-size puppet. Some reviewers didn't like this, but I thought it fitted well with the play-within-a-play theme: the whole story is an illustration of God's mercy performed by monks, and having the spirit visible to all emphasises the supernatural/unreal nature of the story/performance. The other two parables, based on more familiar and less abstract stories, didn't have the same emotional force for me. The Prodigal son was set in England, apparently in the 1930s, with the father's household dressed in Brideshead sleeveless sweaters and cloth caps. The sinners in the city were vaguely Guys and Dolls, but the main temptation to sin took the form of a little boy. Ivan Sharpe was a good, sinister tempter, but the range of sin on offer was rather limited. The music as well as the libretto suggests that the main temptation for the prodigal is narcissism, which doesn't really make for drama. The Burning fiery furnace was done last, though written second, presumably because it is the jolliest -- Britten said "gayest" -- of the three. Unfortunately, there isn't really much excitement in the music (give me Handel's self-congratulatory children of Israel any day). Jeremy Huw Williams was an appealing Astrologer, terrorizing a flaky Nebuchadnezzar, but again, the degeneracy on offer (a floor show of little boys this time) wasn't really enough to lead anyone astray. The adults wore evening dress, and the boys school uniform. The Israelites wore dress scarves to recall prayer-shawls, and homburg hats -- my first thought was that they looked like Orangemen, which in the specifically English middle-class context was not totally implausible. This production will apparently be the main event of the Aldburgh festival in the summer. It's certainly worth seeing for Curlew river, and the other two pieces are very well directed and sung given their limitations. But it does go on a bit, and it does get a bit sanctimonious.