I IMPERSONATION, ILLUSION AND INTRIGUE
Cottonwool clouds, a scatter of furniture and instruments, an ancient cine camera, a noble arch and some pillars and fake trees. On a 1920s film set, the director’s bawling megaphone shouts at ten invisible extras trying to be a throng (‘seven years of fascism and they can’t even walk straight”) . A chap on a hobbyhorse with wheels arrives dressed as Zeus while the director snaps “i’m refracting reality through the dreams of Achilles”. A chap in commedia del’arte magician’s striped pantaloons arrives saying “I am the maestro and the air is servant to me”, before turning a flame into a rose and levitating a table while falling instantly and operatically in love with the director’s sister.
It’s a very good start, admit it. This little theatre under the thundering Charing Cross trains always suits an oddball musical, ideally of modest scale and massive eccentricity, and this is a forgotten late-18c comic operetta about love, women’s rise, Enlightenment science and magic tricks. Only retold and set in the 1920’s, with an Italian illusionist on the run from Mussolini and from the Catholic Church’s ban on conjurers. Got it so far?
The 18c science-v-magic-v -religion theme remains, as does the classic operatic plot about a father disapproving of a suitor; and the music is the original . It’s by Napoleon’s Kapelllmeister, Giovanni Paisiello, a composer of great bounce and tunefulness admired by Catherine the Great and respected by Rossini.
The rework is a labour of love and it shows, in a good way. The new book and lyrics are by James P. Farwell, who when not writing is an exper on cyber-war and bio-defense, working in numerous international bodies. And I tell you, if he brings the same cunning and detail to zapping digital villains as he does to this, they must watch out. It’s an enterprise which hovers pleasingly netween pastiche, philosophy and homage to opera’s more florid period.
Directed by John Walton, it has six skilled singers (notably Reka Jonas as Clarice) , a tiny but elegant band aloft, and magic tricks devised by Harry de Cruz and performed by Dan Smith as Julian aka the Great Agrofontido (How hard must it be to find a decent bel canto tenor who also belongs to the Magic Circle?)
It fizzes along, duets growing to quintets, spirited quarrels, ridiculous disguises, expostulation from an endearing James Paterson as the scientist-Count father, and the growing menace of the Cardinal’s pursuit. The dialogue is sharp, and the lyrics no more absurd than any Italian-to-English translation of Rossini or Donizetti. Actually many are well shaped to the music and smart, in the patter somgs or gloriously ridiculous rhymes like the Cardinal’s defence of torturing heretics with electrodes “Don’t be so prickly, it’s all done very slickly”. Some arias are lovely, especially from Jonas as Clarice. And one duet is gamely sung by the magician and his sidekick Pupupptino (Constantine Andronokou) dressed as Trojan slaves tied up back to back, in rags.
By the interval I was well content with it as an entertaining absurdity . When your basso profundo is a fascist Cardinal, your scientific Count has an Einstein hairdo and your sopranos soar and bicker at speed in a hair-pulling spat while the magician turns another hankie into a rose , who’s complaining? But proper magic crept up in he second half: Stuart Pendred’s villainous (and gloriously pompous) Cardinal prowling the gallery and the aisles with a torch looking for heretics, while the fleeing pair reappear in ridiculous drag to the panic of their womenfolk. But then the two basses sang Addison’s great hymn “The Spacious Firmament” to Paisiello’s music with the backdrop of stars behind, and a shiver went through the house.
On went the stratagems and disguises, Julian and Pupuptino disguised as a pair of renowned Greek scientists for a marvellously heartfelt debate between the Count and the conjurer about how science must be willing to believe in the impossible..But for all the jokes and the false whiskers it was working towards a dimming of lights and a sombrely splendid magic demonstration, levitating the golden globe from the orrery into the shimmering air. With the rapt watchers , us among them, wreathed in music from above. And I thought yes, this is what theatres are for. To be transported.
Which is more than I was for some long time stuck at Colchester in the late train home, writing this. But it was well worth the effort. The tixkets, by the way, start at £20 and the best are £45. A steal.
charingcrosstheatre.co.uk to 21 Sept
rating four
and a musical mouse in respect to Giovanni Paisello
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