When George Bernard Shaw was sent to the East End to write a review, he asked his editor if he should take a pistol. Perhaps appropriately then Whitechapel’s Wilton’s Music Hall – hardly changed since its opening in 1859 – is transformed into a dangerous South American jungle, the stage draped in exotic foliage, the air alive with eerie birdsong, for the lightly bewitching Charles Court Opera production of Mozart’s 1791 show The Magic Flute.
True to music hall style, an upright piano is the accompaniment and no orchestra. The brilliant David Eaton is the player (he also has a small electric keyboard for some effects). With the original director John Savournin (this is a revival fluently achieved by James Hurley), Eaton is also the translator from German of the witty libretto. Martins Smaukstelis’ Tamino is an innocent explorer seeking knowledge through his smoky soft-edged tenor which fits the masonic enlightenment plot of the 18th century original. Eleri Gwilym’s Queen of the Night recruits him to rescue her daughter, but what is virtue in the first half becomes evil in the second and she makes a thrilling spectacle of her great second act aria with bitter, arrow-straight tone, muscular rhythm and bulls-eye intonation throughout. Her bad is really good.
Matthew Kellett maintains the cockney spirit with a cheeky chappy Papageno rendering his birdcatcher’s song like champagne Charliewhen we wanted a little more lyrical richness of tone. His comic asides during his attempted suicide wins amused audience sympathy and his coy delight at finally netting his Papagena is touching. H eplays the shrill panpipes on stage: that’s no effect. Peter Lidbetter’s thick dark basso profundo as Sarastro, given a solemn Aztec look, sometimes overwhelms his own diction but he presides with suitable bare-chested authority.
Alison Langer’s sweet soprano as Pamina imparts due confusion as she veers between loyalty to her night-obsessed mother and a daylight-strewn path free of superstition. Joe Ashmore plays the villainous Monostatos as a moustachio’d cad, another music hall trope. However, the winners in the production are the trio of Ladies, Sarah Prestwidge, Martha Jones and Meriel Cunningham who are a constant delight whenever they appear, initially in their bickering over the handsome entrapped explorer but latterly in their deft handling of snake and bird puppets, singing as ventriloquists with no loss of vocal skill, a performance both witty and charming.
The staging is magical and entertaining, but one wonders at the end if it’s not a little too ribald this music hall treatment and that it is in danger of glossing over the dark profundity of what for many years puzzled audiences with its meaning. It was Mozart’s last opera, although he didn’t know it, and it has a power and pathos which shouldn’t be overlooked. Comic, yes, but not at all costs.
Rick Jones
Critics’ Circle