HANSEL
AND GRETEL
Royal
Opera House, Covent Garden *****
The abiding memory leaving the theatre is that this was an
abundantly happy show. The excellent cast were enjoying themselves, the
orchestra were relishing Mark Wigglesworth’s warmly empathetic response to
Humperdinck’s wonderful score, and the audience glow could have lit London’s
late-night sky (but the abundant Christmas illuminations got there first).
Anthony McDonald’s simple, convincing directing over picture-book
sets of his own design allows all the action of the opera to develop whilst
always focussing concentration on the glorious music. If the highlight of the
whole evening was the orchestra’s glorious delivery of the Act II prelude,
nothing happening onstage, that does not detract from the enthralment of this
production.
We begin with a dumbshow through gauze, the family enjoying
a simple meal around the kitchen table. Then the reality sets in, Hansel and
Gretel (Anna Stephany and Anna Devin both charming and communicative) trying to
amuse themselves until their wits’-end mother (Susan Bickley a convincing
baddie) arrives, and sends them out into the forest to forage. Darren Jeffrey
is a far more sympathetic father than we sometimes see, returning not so much
drunk but euphoric at having sold all his stock of brooms.
But it is too late. The children are now lost in the wild
wood where a wicked witch is rumoured to live. Stephany and Devin sing a moving
Evening Hymn before Isabela Diaz makes a delectably Dickensian little Sandman
lulling them to sleep. We then have a beautiful dance-sequence, Grimm fairytale
characters (Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Red Riding Hood –
have I missed any?) protect the children enchantingly.
Hansel and Gretel are woken by Sarah Dufresne’s persuasive
Dew Fairy, and find they have both dreamed of 14 angels, producing paper
cutouts to prove it. But then they stumble upon the Witch’s house, puzzlingly
not a gingerbread one in this production, but more like Psycho’s Bates
Motel, with a kitchen-knife slicing the roof. Rosie Aldridge is perhaps an
over-compliant Witch (I have seen scarier ones), and willingly allows herself
to be overturned into a Heath Robinson-like cauldron swilling with melted
chocolate.
At which point a phalanx of brilliantly-trained (Cardinal
Vaughan School and Grey Coat Hospital) little children emerge, brown-clad, as
they have been turned into gingerbread girls and boys, and groping around in
dark glasses, as they have been blinded. Hansel’s deft use of the Witch’s magic
gas-lighter restores their sight, and they, too, produce paper angel cutouts.
All ends happily, which is how this review began. But a word
of praise, too, to the audience. Behaviour was immaculate; I saw only one phone
flash all evening; the response was warm and whole-hearted, with so many
curtain-calls on this opening night. And standing ovation was there none, as
there undoubtedly were all over the musicals in Shaftesbury Avenue – though this
presentation certainly deserved one.
Christopher Morley