Scottish Opera, 03/02/2018
Turnage : Greek
Susan Bullock
Allison Cooke
Alex Otterburn
Henry Waddington
Members of the Scottish Opera Orchestra
Finnegan Downie Dear
Mark-Anthony Turnage was 26 when he received the commission for his first opera, which premiered in Munich, then at the Edinburgh Festival, two years later, and put Turnage's name firmly on the musical map. Thirty years later, Scottish Opera re-staged the piece for the 2017 Edinburgh Festival, and added a couple of performances for Glasgow this month.
Greek is based on Steven Berkoff's 1980 play of the same name, a modern-day revisiting of Oedipus Rex, unusual not for the modernising of the subject, but for the rather startling blend of language styles - from overblown to frankly vulgar - while being set in rhyming verse. It's one of his earlier plays, but the voluntary provocation that was already being recognised as a trademark of his writing is very present, something that a decade later would be labelled as "in-yer-face theatre". In adapting it for an opera, Turnage and Jonathan Moore, the original director, kept much of the explicit language, and the violence of expression.
In setting this text, Turnage was expressing his anger with Thatcherism, and the state of the nation; Berkoff was doing something similar when he wrote it, except that Thatcherism wasn't quite settled in, yet, so "The Plague" was also a hold-over from the previous regime. There is much that still resonates today, although perhaps not quite in the same way, and the "Hold on to me" quartet near the end came across, particularly, as a kind of stagnation, a desire to cling to an existing fantasy, no matter how tainted at the root.
Technically, it's a chamber opera, requiring four soloists and 18 instrumentalists, and with a runtime of 80 minutes, without interruption. Eddy, the updated Oedipus, is a dedicated role, but the other three singers take on multiple parts, with the idea that wherever Eddy goes, he continually meets the same people, and is therefore inextricably intertwined with them, and cannot possibly escape his fate. Personally, this is an aspect of this opera with which I have a problem. The whole concept of the fortune-teller delivering the prophecy (which is believed), and an inescapable fate sits oddly in modern western dress, to me, and I can only read it as an indictment of an education system that permits people to accept this kind of thinking, which is not, I believe, what either the play or the opera intended.
Present-day director Joe Hill-Gibbins had quite a bit of fun staging the more violent scenes - nobody lays a finger on anybody else, but it's set up almost like a series of comic-book panels, onomatopoeic shouts from cast and orchestra projected onto the back-drop while the cast twitches in a reactive dance. It's a very spare setting. The stage area is barely used at all, instead there is a platform, which extends a little way over the orchestra, on which is a large, blank, white wall with a doorway cut through it at either end. This wall pivots in the centre, allowing it to revolve, although there is no difference between front and back.
The projections (not the words, but the images) are effected live, from a table with a camera to the side of the orchestra - at first I thought it was a foley table, for sound effects, like on a radio stage - with judicious use of such mundane elements as baked beans, a cup of tea and miniature toy soldiers. It's a little hard to describe, but it worked well enough. If there's no decor, however, the costumes were almost exaggeratedly 1980s - Eddy in a red track suit, the other costumes in lurid metallic fabrics or extremely faux pleather, and clumpy trainers all round. Low rent, to say the least.
Alex Otterburn's Eddy cannot be called likeable, but the character is not intended to be. Baby-faced, blond and buzz-cut, Otterburn strutted and preened; this is not Oedipus, Eddy is self-centred, cocksure and arrogant, and Otterburn pulled this off splendidly, also managing the vocal demands - switching from song to speech, and from aggression to lyricism - very convincingly. His three colleagues were also all very good, with particular mention for bass Henry Waddington (looking, at times, startlingly like the actor John Goodman).
Turnage's idiom, in this early work, dipped in and out of a dizzying variety of sources, but there was a crisp economy of style well transmitted by the compact group of instrumentalists and conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, proving that this piece can still hold its own on stage, and deserves its revivals.
[Next : 16th February]
Susan Bullock
Allison Cooke
Alex Otterburn
Henry Waddington
Members of the Scottish Opera Orchestra
Finnegan Downie Dear
Mark-Anthony Turnage was 26 when he received the commission for his first opera, which premiered in Munich, then at the Edinburgh Festival, two years later, and put Turnage's name firmly on the musical map. Thirty years later, Scottish Opera re-staged the piece for the 2017 Edinburgh Festival, and added a couple of performances for Glasgow this month.
Greek is based on Steven Berkoff's 1980 play of the same name, a modern-day revisiting of Oedipus Rex, unusual not for the modernising of the subject, but for the rather startling blend of language styles - from overblown to frankly vulgar - while being set in rhyming verse. It's one of his earlier plays, but the voluntary provocation that was already being recognised as a trademark of his writing is very present, something that a decade later would be labelled as "in-yer-face theatre". In adapting it for an opera, Turnage and Jonathan Moore, the original director, kept much of the explicit language, and the violence of expression.
In setting this text, Turnage was expressing his anger with Thatcherism, and the state of the nation; Berkoff was doing something similar when he wrote it, except that Thatcherism wasn't quite settled in, yet, so "The Plague" was also a hold-over from the previous regime. There is much that still resonates today, although perhaps not quite in the same way, and the "Hold on to me" quartet near the end came across, particularly, as a kind of stagnation, a desire to cling to an existing fantasy, no matter how tainted at the root.
Technically, it's a chamber opera, requiring four soloists and 18 instrumentalists, and with a runtime of 80 minutes, without interruption. Eddy, the updated Oedipus, is a dedicated role, but the other three singers take on multiple parts, with the idea that wherever Eddy goes, he continually meets the same people, and is therefore inextricably intertwined with them, and cannot possibly escape his fate. Personally, this is an aspect of this opera with which I have a problem. The whole concept of the fortune-teller delivering the prophecy (which is believed), and an inescapable fate sits oddly in modern western dress, to me, and I can only read it as an indictment of an education system that permits people to accept this kind of thinking, which is not, I believe, what either the play or the opera intended.
Present-day director Joe Hill-Gibbins had quite a bit of fun staging the more violent scenes - nobody lays a finger on anybody else, but it's set up almost like a series of comic-book panels, onomatopoeic shouts from cast and orchestra projected onto the back-drop while the cast twitches in a reactive dance. It's a very spare setting. The stage area is barely used at all, instead there is a platform, which extends a little way over the orchestra, on which is a large, blank, white wall with a doorway cut through it at either end. This wall pivots in the centre, allowing it to revolve, although there is no difference between front and back.
The projections (not the words, but the images) are effected live, from a table with a camera to the side of the orchestra - at first I thought it was a foley table, for sound effects, like on a radio stage - with judicious use of such mundane elements as baked beans, a cup of tea and miniature toy soldiers. It's a little hard to describe, but it worked well enough. If there's no decor, however, the costumes were almost exaggeratedly 1980s - Eddy in a red track suit, the other costumes in lurid metallic fabrics or extremely faux pleather, and clumpy trainers all round. Low rent, to say the least.
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| Allison Cook and Alex Otterburn in Greek (© Jane Hobson 2017) |
Turnage's idiom, in this early work, dipped in and out of a dizzying variety of sources, but there was a crisp economy of style well transmitted by the compact group of instrumentalists and conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, proving that this piece can still hold its own on stage, and deserves its revivals.
[Next : 16th February]