Hansel and Gretel review – family-friendly but magic is missing

The Royal Opera unveiled its new version of Hansel and Gretel almost 10 years to the day after the premiere of its previous production. With its children’s corpses and hi-tech ovens, that predecessor had hardly been the child-friendly production the company hoped for, and its replacement came with a declaration from director-designer Antony McDonald that he was determined to create a real family show.

In that McDonald been true to his word. There’s nothing here that’s likely to give anyone nightmares, unless it’s adults who catch the references to Hitchcock movies in the designs of the witch’s house and can remember their original contexts. The carefully painted Alpine scene that’s there when the curtain goes up confirms that the tendency in recent British productions to update Hansel and Gretel to the present day has been resisted, too. Despite the cinematic allusions to come, we are very definitely back in the Grimm brothers’ fairytale world.

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But that faithfulness to the source comes at a cost. A couple of vignettes during the overture signal that Hansel and Gretel’s family have fallen on hard times, that their former prosperity has given way to penury and hunger, while two hours later there’s the expected feelgood ending with the release of the blinded children. But otherwise there’s no real edge to this production. It has all become a bit too bland, while wit and charm are in short supply, too, except during the dream pantomime, when characters from other fairytales – Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella – flit around the sleeping children.

Disappointingly, Humperdinck’s score also fails to work its magic. Sebastian Weigle’s conducting manages to be stately without ever becoming expressively expansive, and nobody really stands out among the efficient cast. Hanna Hipp and Jennifer Davis sing well enough as the two children, but seem self-consciously awkward on stage; Gerhard Siegel’s Witch – a cross between Joan Sims in a Carry On film and a character from Little Britain – isn’t even cartoonishly scary. There’s a nicely sung Dew Fairy (complete with watering can) from Christina Gansch, while Michaela Schuster is the formidable Mother and Eddie Wade (a late replacement for the indisposed James Rutherford) is the Father. But there’s a spark missing somewhere.