ONCE BRITTEN TWICE SHY?
The late David Hemmings, one of Britten’s mentored, worshipped boy sopranos, was unforgettable aged 12 as the original MIles in the composer’s terrifying opera of corrupting ghosts and childhood innocence, THE TURN OF THE SCREW. Hemmings told me with a laugh, years later, that yes ,Ben was besotted and he stayed in the house and once in the bed but no, nothing untward happened, and never would have. Not least, said the adult drily, because Peter Pears kept a very tight eye on them. “He knew I was a naughty boy..curious”. He was generous about the whole glamorous and artistic experience, though it is public knowledge that the composer blanked him when his voice broke and his star run ended.
I was away for this King’s Head plays opening, but its worth catching up to alert you in its final week. And after the RSC’ s BEN AND IMO (scroll down for review). it wasirresistible. For the action of Kevin Kelly’s well-researched piece takes place a year or so after the other play and the fraught year of composing Gloriana, th deal with that difficult, creative obsession of Britten’s and the alarm of those around him – Pears, Holst, and Jonathan Clarkson as the director Basil. At one point the composer screams that he and “Miles” will be together forever, conflating the boy with his hero and those sinister notes “Malo..Malo..”, and indentifying Pears with Peter Quint ,the ghostly villain who lures the innocent child. At another there is a nightmare sequence when he dreams that a hanging judge is condemning him for the terrible sin , sodomy, “not to be spoken among Christians” as the terrible old law put it. His partnership with Pears was still illegal, and men had reason for such terrors still.
Yet it is a thoughtful, rather than sensationalist play. Gary Tushaw’s Britten catches the man’s vulnerable petulance and anxious perfctionism, sliding into hysterical unreason in the heat of creativity. Even better, Simon Willmont’s brings Pears a solid decent dignity: the quality very striking when the kid rounds on him, with jeers about Leicester Square lavatory pickups and dirty “homos”. Musical moments are integrated well, notably when poor Pears sings “the foggy dew” while mentor and boy have gone night swimming alone.
. The whole is book-ended by first person narration by Liam Watson as Hemmings; my only quibble being that he ends the show with a mawkish yearning back, long after Britten’s death, wanting to be reassured that he did well. More interesting would be to acknowledge that his career as actor and director, and singer in his own right went on, and flourished for fifty more years. That Aldeburgh interlude was only a moment. But it was a remarkable one, and part of a troubled artistic and social history. Both shows are worth seeing, but hurry for this one..
Kingsheadtheatre.com to 10 march
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