15 February 2007
It’s the day before our opening. I’m spending a quiet day a couple of hours away from Leeds in a bucolic valley near Whitby, on the coast. It’s the country retreat of Sue Willmington, the brilliant costume designer who did the clothes for some of the Eight Little Greats and my recent ENO “Makropulos Case”. We took a walk down the hill this morning, greeted the neighbours’ very pregnant goats and had a fabulous lunch in a tiny pub in the tiny town of Goldsborough. And now a bit of blogging. I’m in a good mood ‘cause the final Dress Rehearsal yesterday was a pretty gratifying experience.
The show came back into focus for the first time since the final run-throughs in the rehearsal room a couple of weeks back. Since then, in the sessions involving putting the show on stage, lighting it and adding the band into the mix, the cast has naturally backed off from throwing themselves into it with total abandon. And this show only works when they do just that. It’s a tricky production for the performers, very exposed and stripped-down. It’s not driven by a lot of vivid moves, scenic transformations and dramatic shifts in lighting. It casts a cold, detached light on the Orpheus story. It constantly throws out road-blocks in the way of both the cast’s and the audience’s path towards identifying emotionally with what’s going on. It doesn’t wallow in feeling but, hopefully, earns it the hard way.
Yesterday the (admittedly!) invited audience followed it with great concentration. The performers again became those people at that party, not trying to portray the events but finding themselves in the middle of them. At the note session after the rehearsal, we all felt the same exhilaration. It was, for me anyway, a pretty great feeling.
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