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London Review
London ReviewThe Enchanted Pig
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Love makes you the hero. Love makes you the fool.
Love makes you happy. Love makes you cruel. ---- Chorus |
Caryl Hughes as Flora and Rodney Clarke as The Pig
(Photo: Keith Pattison) |
The tale is based on a folk tale from Romania for which Alasdair Middleton has written an original and inventive libretto. King Hildebrand (John Rawnsley) has forbidden his three daughters to enter a locked room and like all girls with curiosity and initiative they unlock it and discover the Book of Fate, which predicts that two of the princesses will marry handsome kings, but that the youngest Flora must wed a fat pig from the North. The Pig is a pig by day but a handsome man by night because of a witch's spell. Flora's groom is kidnapped by The Old Woman (Nuala Willis) with a view to his marrying her daughter Adelaide (Kate Chapman) and to rescue him Flora has to wear out three pairs of shoes made of iron by travelling round the world. On this journey she meets the North Winds (John Rawnsley and Nuala Willis), the Sun (Delroy Atkinson) and the Moon (Joshua Dallas). You see Flora has fallen in love with The Pig (Rodney Clarke/Byron Watson) and she seems to quite enjoy frolicking in their bed of mud.
The opera is designed by Dick Bird with a creative wit which allows the princesses to have high coiffures like swirling ice cream cones trimmed with Burberry ribbon and The Pig to be a vision of pigskin and porcine references. Flora is enabled to fly on wires and the characterisation of the North Winds as an old settled but verbally sparring couple is interesting. John Fulljames, director of The Opera Group who have jointly produced The Enchanted Pig with The Young Vic, has given us a production that is never static.
The singing is exquisite and Caryl Hughes has a very large part as Flora. She is rarely off stage, except of course when she is flying over it! Rodney Clarke has great stage presence and a beautiful voice and Akiya Henry is always fun to watch and easy to listen to. Alasdair Middleton's libretto is full of clarity and has moments of comic genius like the song of the North Winds about the realities of a loving household with her false teeth and his hairy back. The ending is happy although I think we would all have preferred hearing about the fun in the mud, "A lovely pool of bubbly mud. Churning, chestnut, chocolate pool; Thick, relaxing, tempting, cool — To quench the fires of swinish blood.
In case you think that someone has bewitched the Young Vic and rebuilt it as an opera house, I can report that the next four main house productions will all be plays or I might have to wear iron shoes!
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THE ENCHANTED PIG
Music composed by Jonathan Dove Libretto by Alasdair Middleton Directed by John Fulljames Starring: Caryl Hughes, Rodney Clarke With: John Rawnsley, Kate Chapman, Akiya Henry, Anna Dennis, Nuala Willis, Joshua Dallas, Delroy Atkinson, Byron Watson Design: Dick Bird Lighting: Paul Anderson Musical Direction: Ian Watson or Edward Hessian Movement: Philippe Giraudeau Running time: Two hours twenty minutes with one interval A joint production of The Young Vic and The Opera Group Box Office: 020 7922 2922 Booking at the Young Vic to 27th January 2007 Then Northern Stage Newcastle 0191 230 5151, 31st January to 3rd February Aldeburgh Music, Snape, Suffolk 01728 687 110, 10th and 11th February Sheffield Lyceum 0114 249 6000 15th to 17th February Richmond Theatre 0870 060 6651 27th February to 3rd March Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge based on 14th December 2006 performance at the Young Vic. The Cut, London SE1 (Rail/Tube: Waterloo/Southwark) |
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