First things first: this is a marvellous musical experience. To hear Messiah freed up from those serried ranks of heads lowered over scores, to experience the ENO chorus in all their glory, singing full on into a packed Coliseum auditorium, to have nothing 'between' Handel's music and Jennens' text (almost every word of which was audible in the Coliseum's notorious acoustic) and the audience, except the mystic chasm between stage and house – well, there were times that I thought it does not get much better than this! Conductor Laurence Cummings knows his Handel and knows his Messiah. He drew some wonderfully contrasting sounds from the ENO orchestra, varied his tempi from super-slow to ultra-fast and generally kept a tight grip on the pulse of the whole piece. One chorus in Part Three nearly came off the rails but he pulled it together again: that mishap apart, it was a pretty assured first night's performance. By the middle of the run it will have tightened up too, and may even come in at the approximate running time of 2 hours 50 minutes (the first night was half an hour longer). So on the musical side, top marks all round (I shall return to the soloists when discussing the production later).
So then we come to the production. What approach can one take to staging Messiah? Director Deborah Warner had a succes d'estime in some quarters and provoked much debate in others with her St John Passion at ENO nearly ten years ago, and some of her ideas at that time are recirculated and developed here. But in her programme note on staging Messiah, she claims that the production has turned out to be "something so very different". Common to both is the sense of community-based work, specific to Messiah is Warner's feeling that it has a Shakespearean quality, full of everything and everybody and asking as many questions as it offers answers. How did she set about demonstrating this with direction and stagecraft?
My first impression is that in some ways it is a surprisingly old fashioned, traditional production – effectively a series of tableaux, acted out in a mute pantomime of sorts, sub-divided into three scenic constructs that illustrate the hope and prophecy of Part One, the despair of Part Two and the triumph and resurrection of Part Three. There are common elements – the video back projections of big city life root us throughout in the present day, and the costumes are all inclusive, from working man to suited gent to shabby chic to smart casual. The non-singing community ensemble interact with the chorus, the dancers emerge from club sofas and even hospital beds, limber up and move seamlessly into their routines. It is all very artfully contrived and executed with discretion and restraint. Is it a distraction to have a dance routine being performed alongside a da capo aria? No, not when done as in this production, silently, slickly and with commendable artistry: it seemed to me just fine. The leifmotif for the whole evening incidentally seems to be an inert body, lying prone on the floor. We see this figure from the outset on a bare stage as we enter the theatre, then during the opening Sinfonia, and at various stages throughout the show. Is this 'man' awaiting a redeeming spirit?
Part One is set in the big city. Office blocks, twinkling lights, moving traffic form the skyline. A cross-section of flat dwellers, workers, teenagers, street preachers fill the stage. There are benches, tables, a hospital bed. A lady irons away, upstage left, a stroppy teenage girl slumps watching television downstage right. The tenor, John Mark Ainsley preaches his message of comfort and hope to anyone who will listen. Ainsley is never less than highly musical and has commanding stage presence, but his voice was not really in bloom on this occasion, the sound a little flat and the tenor 'ring' that he can command not much in evidence. A small boy takes on a pantomime, Puck-like role, running around the stage, bouncing on and off chairs and the bed, helping the preacher to collect up his tracts – a lively and entrancing or (possibly) an irritating stage invention, depending on your mood and on your point of view. Then the bed comes into use – the young teenage mother is pampered by hospital staff and her new baby brought to her. Her feelings of joy find expression in dance, hesitant steps at first and never moving far from her infant, then more adventurous as the alto sings "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion". Catherine Wyn-Rogers as alto soloist had a triumphant evening. The voice was pure and steady, breath control well-nigh perfect and as a result her melodic line was entrancing, never more so than in the duet with soprano towards the end of Part One, "He shall feed his flock". Wyn-Rogers also took some risks with her dynamics, going into chest voice for dramatic emphasis and daring to produce true pianissimo singing at the lower end of her register, conjuring up a hushed intensity that carried easily to the back of the stalls where I was sitting. This was a fine and noble performance.
As the Pastoral Symphony plays, the stage clears for a performance within a performance, a play within a play: a schoolteacher leads her infant class onstage for their attempt at a nativity scene. The ENO chorus become onstage spectators, mums and dads interacting with their offspring. And then (pure operatic Handel this) we hear the trumpets for the first time in the majestic chorus "Glory to God". We are now in the central tonal area of Messiah, D major, and as Part One sweeps towards its conclusion, we meet soprano Sophie Bevan for the first time, in "Rejoice greatly". Here I think Cummings made one of his few tempo miscalculations, setting Bevan such a fast pace that her voice never really came through, her ornamentations were rushed and the whole mood of rejoicing lost! Happily Bevan went on to make a much greater impression in the very next number and we heard the warmth in her voice, unforced singing with very little vibrato and a lovely sense of melodic line. This became an assured performance. And so to the last chorus of Part One, set against a deep, dark blue background, with a crowd of figures holding lanterns in the middle distance and the ENO chorus front centre stage singing "His yoke is easy". This was a magical stage picture and I loved it!
Some strengths and some weaknesses of the production were already clear. The biggest technical problem facing any director of a staged Messiah is how to move the chorus on and offstage plausibly, cogently and efficiently. Warner did not really have a solution – the chorus simply wandered onstage, from both sides, and started singing! In musical terms this worked perfectly well, and on the few occasions there were sound narrative reasons for them to regroup onstage, this too proved effective. But the on/off routine looked and felt a bit artificial and detracted from the thought-through nature of the tale and of the way it was being told. Against that, once a tableau had been assembled and composed, interaction between soloists, chorus, dancers and members of the community ensemble worked effectively and often movingly. I found myself, at odd moments, transported by what I was seeing and hearing.
Part Two proved more challenging scenically. It is of course the heart of the work in musical terms, with a sequence of numbers (particularly choruses) that ratchet up inexorably the intensity of the Passion story. Warner divided the stage into three sections, with a central platform, and three giant panels formed a backdrop (representing three crosses). Her deployment of the chorus was either to have them either side of the central platform (from which various coverings were rolled back and carried away, finally leaving a field of grass) or to place them all on the platform, centre stage. Meanwhile, various back projections illustrated the narrative. "Behold the Lamb of God" - nervous titters greeted video images of a lamb, feet trussed, whose live counterpart once featured on the very same stage in St John Passion. "All we like sheep" – the backdrop was a speeded-up projection of commuters on the escalators at a railway station. It seemed to me that dramatic imagination had run out for this section of the work, and some of what we were given was cliché. Musically however another of the evening's soloists came into his own – Brindley Sherratt gave a sonorous, full-voiced account of "Why do the nations" and developed even more forcefully the characterisation and persona of his incarnation in Part One. He was emphatic, rhythmically precise and imposing in the role. I also enjoyed the dramatic interplay between Ainsley and chorus in the section "He trusted in God" – this developed real momentum, with the ever more insistent "let him deliver him" providing an exhilarating few moments.
For Part Three, Warner covers the stage with beds. We are in a morgue, or possibly in a field hospital: anyway, it is a place of death. The rear projection is of another city night skyscape. Bevan, lying on her own deathbed, sings "I know that my Redeemer liveth", falls back and her face is then covered over with a sheet by a nurse: from out of the gloom we hear a spectral "Since by man came death…" But then comes Resurrection. The characters rouse themselves slowly from their beds, one by one they get up and greet others and the stage fills for the final "Worthy is the Lamb" and then the "Amen" chorus. It is a simple enough, perhaps corny concept. My objection – given that it is one of the loveliest soprano arias ever written – is that no soprano should be asked to sing "I know that my redeemer liveth" while lying flat out on her back. Bevan coped – just – but I think she could have sung this aria far more effectively, and with greater control over line and melodic flow, if she had been allowed an upright posture!
Does the production work? With the reservations I have already stated, it does for me, well enough. Warner has not been afraid to tackle the challenges of staging Messiah, and although I think she miscalculates this or that aspect of her production, I also think she does some marvellous things and creates some memorable moments. Does this make the work Shakespearean? I am not sure that it does: Messiah is a sublime oratorio that brings together text and music in a way that has hardly ever been equalled. Onstage enactment of Messiah is an overlay that may add certain dimensions to the work, but may also detract from it. For me, what Warner added was far more than what she detracted: not everybody, I suspect, will think the same. But for those who wince when emotion, or emoting, is displayed onstage, and who abhor cliché (and there was plenty of that), there is a wonderfully simple answer: close you eyes and just listen to this heartfelt account of the score. It really is a pre-Christmas musical treat.
Photo Credits: Laurie Lewis; Robert Workman (last two photos).
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