A
CHRISTMAS CAROL – IKRISMAS KHEROL /
THE MAGIC FLUTE – IMPEMPE YOMLINGO
Young
Vic, London SE1
Opened 29 November, 2007
*****
One of my most persistent reservations about theatre work from other
cultures is that, rather than responding to the form or content of the
work itself, we may simply be luxuriating in exotica. I was therefore
on high alert regarding the Young Vic's seasonal presentations:
versions of Dickens and Mozart, to run in repertoire, by a South
African company (with one white performer) in English and Xhosa. The
fact that these productions are directed by Yorkshire-born Mark
Dornford-May, former chief at Broomhill Opera, might have been further
cause for concern.
As it happens, I already knew from experience that Dornford-May is one
of the most respectful and engaged cross-cultural directors. His
Anglo-South African version of the Chester mystery plays, Yiimimangaliso, had too brief a
West End run in 2002, and his township-set film version of Bizet's
opera, U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha,
won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2005. He is adept at finding common
notes and strains between cultures and building an experience upon that
shared sense of humanity.
Thus, for instance, the quasi-Masonic tests undergone by Tamino in The Magic Flute here become akin to
Xhosa rites of passage, and the sound of the flute itself is rendered
by a trumpet with a sunny fluidity that recalls Hugh Masekela. This,
however, is the only non-percussive instrumentation in the piece. Much
is performed a capella, with
harmonic textures that manage to combine Mozart and South Africa. On
other occasions accompaniment is provided by a phalanx of xylophones in
different registers; the requirement to hit a note repeatedly to give
it any kind of sustained duration lends the piece a more allegro vivace quality, leaving the
voices to set the mood of its more reflective passages. (Papageno's
magic bells? Bottles tuned by part-filling them with water.)
Ikrismas Kherol begins with a
simple but brilliant coup de
théâtre. A complete blackout is broken by flashes
of light overhead, and noises which gradually resolve into a work-song.
The miners of uScrooge's mine are proceeding through the roof-space
down to the stage, where they put in a full shift of rattling and
battering before knocking off for Christmas, only to have their
sentimentality derided by uScrooge herself.
This biggest change (the Christmas ghosts are also female, although
Marley is a male asset-stripper) actually serves to lower the sugar
level. It seems more genuinely shocking that uScrooge has no
quasi-maternal compassion either for her student niece or for Bob
Cratchitt's daughter Tiny Thembisa (another couple of gender-bends),
the latter of whom is collecting sponsorship money for her schooling;
her father's fellow miners are embarrassed at having so little to give,
but give they do, whereas uScrooge contemptuously offers a banknote
"for her performance" after the girl is possessed by the spirit of
Marley.
Dornford-May's wife Pauline Malefane makes a fearsome, snake-haired
Queen of the Night in Impempe
Yomlingo, but paradoxically this singer gives a stronger
performance as an uScrooge who has sworn off her childhood love of
music. As she watches the Ghost of Christmas Past's video presentation
of her mother's death and elder sister's terminal illness contracted as
she hustled to afford food for the youngster, Malefane maintains a face
which is utterly impassive and yet suggestive of mountainous,
suppressed emotions. The definitive sign of uScrooge's redemption is
when she begins to sing, simply and unaccompanied, an elegy for an
unknown beggar girl. Dickens' story is now a world away from our lives,
but it was written as social agitation against the evils of Ignorance
and Want; Dornford-May and his company have made both its sorrows and
its hopes, as well as the maturation of the lovers in The Magic Flute, come thrillingly,
heart-burstingly alive once more.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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