VENEZIANA !
Buongiorno to Venice 1730, a city stage topped with the golden winged lion of St Mark, arched and curtained and lit with candelabras . Overhead a twelve-piece orchestra complete with harp is visible in the galleries. Below, our hero a determined young castrato – sold and gelded in childhood – is cheeking the maestro Faustino who taught him to sing high and girlish for the operatic stage, not to mention taking other advantages in return. Marco (Jack Chambers, boyish and vigorous) is ambitious, but when he meets the beautiful and determined Giola – daughter of a black slave – he decides to back her career, and defy racist and classist snobberies by taking her to the court of his patroness Assura. Whose corrupt husband Pietro and his accountant Luigi are, by the way, embezzling her fortune in a hospital project while a camp stout cardinal giggles through her soirées.
It’s a musical – brand new, lyrics and music by Matthew Wilder with a thumpingly Panto-melodrama book by Tim Luscombe – so they sing. And how they sing! with killer determination. Apart from a couple of gentler, magically period-pastiche numbers sung from behind a fine gold and feather mask by Jennie Jacobs (as Marco, it’s a neat doubling) the numbers are full-on aggressive and divergent in style. . There’s rum-ti-tum retro Lionel-Bartish jollity, some startling sub-Sondheim moments, and lots of plain musical-pop-LloydWebbery. Fine: we can digest a bit of variety, but the problem is that in the first half especially too many numbers are just plain overwrought: lurching from climax to climax with no nuance between. Marco is ambitous and hopeful, Giola determined, Faustino insanely jealous, Azzura predatorily nymphomaniacal, Pietro bossy, and they all underline it by too rapidly rising to a serious belting high money-note. No nuance.
At one point you think ooh, perhaps this is offering a bravely transfriendly-fetishist theme, as Marco in his gilt diva cloak pronounces that castrati are actually better than women , because they have both female grace and male strength. Seen that online several times, sigh.. But no, that’s countered by his backing of Giola and willingness to be seduced by Assura (not all castrati are impotent). It really isn’t a very deeply thought-through book. But things improve terrifically as the first act ends, because if you’re going to do some cheery hokum like this, it’s best to go over the top as soon as possible. So Faustino bursts into Giola’s proposed performance for the nobles and causes so much chaos that the Cardinal ends up stabbed and the young people arrested.
Even better, the second half begins with a delightful row between a drunken Pietro with his wig off and Luigi who is sitting mournfully at a harpsichord, thinking accountancy-thoughts. And there’s a fine quarrelsome duet between Assura and Pietro, a dramatic poison suicide elsewhere and a better number from Faustino, but Luigi gets the first real hooting stamping applause of the show, as Sam Barrett in the role does the full heroic-opera self reproach and regrets his collaboration with Pietro. There’s a trial scene, a threatening noose, a revelation, and a last-minute (rather touching) miracle for a sad elective-mute Nicolo, who we had hitherto forgotten existed but who is necessary for justice to be achieved.
Under the arches, the old Players theatre has a taste for staging small, often brand-new musicals at under half the seat-price of the big West End just up the road, and I have long had rather a weakness for the place. Sometimes there’s a treasure – TITANIC the musical started there, with twice the history and ten times the heart of that awful film. Sometimes it’s a fascinating imported oddity, like GeorgeTakei’s ALLEGIANCE. This one is only definable as a sort of melodrama-pantomime mini-opera, and not an actual treasure. But it’s beautifully set by Ceci Calf and dressed by Anna Kelsey, and if it has rather more soggy heart than hard genius it does maintain enough self-awareness to stick to about two hours including interval. And provide us with a happy ending and a big joyful ensemble curtain-call. People left smiling. So did I.
charingcrosstheatre.co.uk to 14th June.
rating 3
theatreCat 