Benjamin Britten’s 1947 opera shares its tone with the famous series of Ealing screen comedies launched that year: an attitude to stock characters and staple attitudes of English life that blended mild satire with fond nostalgia.
In this village comedy set in East Anglia in 1900, a lack of suitably chaste young women to be May Queen means that the repressed grocer’s lad Albert is anointed May King. At his coronation, however, his lemonade is spiked, and he sets off on a drunken spree, finally returning to put his elders and betters firmly in their place.
Some commentators observe a gay subtext, by which Albert’s self-liberation from the stuffy values imposed by his mother and the village worthies is a kind of coming out. But the libretto doesn’t offer much potential for exploring this, and John Copley’s expertly crafted production wisely lets the audience fill in any perceived blanks. Tim Reed’s sets and Prue Handley’s costumes perfectly re-create the rural-period ambience, while Copley uses the orchestral interlude before the final scene to show us what Albert actually gets up to after a few drinks – although it’s nothing very shocking, and he ends up flat on his back.
The director and cast work hard to extract the last ounce of humour from a piece that – given that Britten was no Brecht – is more cosy than confrontational. But the vignettes of Loxford’s great and good are about as good as it gets. Anna Gillingham’s twittery schoolteacher, Alexander Robin Baker’s conventionally judgemental vicar, Adrian Thompson’s self-satisfied mayor and Andri Björn Róbertsson’s decent but dim village bobby are all a joy, although their combined thunder is stolen by Orla Boylan’s utterly terrifying Lady Billows – the local bigwig whose Wagnerian tones and gimlet gaze quell all opposition. She is obsequiously supported by Clarissa Meek, as her thin-lipped housekeeper, Florence.
Albert’s predicament is credibly set out by Richard Pinkstone, while Kathleen Wilkinson is trenchant as his overbearing mother. Timothy Nelson’s Sid and Kitty Whately’s Nancy constitute the village’s romantic young couple, while its cheeky kids are jauntily personified by Emily Vine, Catriona Hewitson and Jack Stone.
The Grange festival has been canny in inviting Britten’s former musical assistant Steuart Bedford to conduct, which he does with an ideal blend of precision and sensibility. In the pit, the Aurora Orchestra play excellently for him.
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