eX Rape of the Lock

This wasn’t, strictly, music theatre.  Harpsichordist/conductor Christopher Hogwood was given top billing on the poster (the image above is a ticket, believe it or not), but wasn’t playing or conducting, so any fans who showed up were probably a bit miffed.  Not that there was much for him to have done on stage anyway – the small amount of accompanying was handled perfectly well by Des Earley and Margaret Doris, and they didn’t need a conductor.  So why import such a big name?  If it was just a matter of giving Des and Margaret a few pointers on continuo playing then there are a few musicians closer to home who could have been as helpful.  The programmes had been locked away in another building, so it was all very mystifying….

The big concept, though, was using Handel’s duets in a theatrical setting.  From a century littered with abandoned plays, many of them gloriously obscene and provocative (in their own way), eX chose instead to take Alexander Pope’s dryly nuanced Rape of the Lock and vainly attempt to shed some exotic ‘new’ light on it.  The effect was certainly colourful – good sets, fabulous period costumes – clearly no expense spared.  The lines of the poem were divided between a company of half a dozen actors who filled out the stage very nicely.  Every so often, though, their acrobatics and games were interrupted by a pair of singers, dressed very grandly, who would glide on stage to perform a duet, before disappearing again.  Maybe there was some connection, but it eluded me.  The poor mezzo in particular, madly dressed as a Farinelli-inspired heroic castrato, looked and sounded quite lost, though the (non-Irish) soprano was admittedly very good.  All a bit silly really, which is a shame, though despite that it was still an intriguing show.

The Rape of the Lock… the unlikely pairing of Pope and Handel

Mention must be made of this week’s production in Dublin by Ensemble eX of The Rape of the Lock, a curious attempt to mesh Alexander Pope’s mock-heroic satire with a selection of Handel’s (often Arcadian) duets. Shifting between spoken and sung material, and between satire and pastoral, it should make for an interesting evening… and with Christopher Hogwood (no less) directing proceedings from the harpsichord we can at least be assured some fine continuo playing.

Stage director Eric Fraad clearly relishes taking a confrontational approach to Baroque culture. Profiling the group in yesterday’s Irish Times, Arminta Wallace gives us a taste of what he has in store…

This original piece will combine the poetry of Alexander Pope with Handel’s Italian duets – or, as Fraad prefers to put it, “smash” them together. Fraad has already “smashed” Handel with the French playwright Racine, as well as mounting a production of Messiah, which opened in a lunatic asylum, finished in a nightclub and featured costumes by the fashion designer Hussein Chalayan.

eX, either unintentionally or not, has already managed to court controversy in some quarters and reviews of their work so far have been mixed – though their success at securing Arts Council funding is impressive. Still, one can only applaude their aim of re-staging Baroque opera with a radical eye, open to the darker subtexts of its culture, and I hope they can pull it off.

One interesting aspect of the project – so far absent from any discussion – is the rather wonderful fact of its being staged in what was (in Handel’s time) the Theatre Royal Smock Alley, historically one of Ireland’s most important theatres. After all, it was here in roughly 1705 that The Island Princess, by Daniel Purcell, Richard Leveridge, Jeremiah Clarke and others – the first opera seen in Ireland – was staged, and also the place which saw David Garrick’s first performances in the role of Hamlet in 1743. So full marks to eX for being site-specific. The theatre was converted into a church in the early 1800s, and even though it was deconsecrated in the early 1990s people still insist on calling it “SS Michael & John”…

Anyway, for booking details, go here.