Edinburgh Festival 2012: Locked Room; Ghost Patrol, Traverse Theatre, review

Locked Room, * * * *

As part of its rather muted 50th birthday celebrations, Scottish Opera has commissioned two short new works in collaboration with Music Theatre Wales. Both are well worth hearing and seeing, although one is distinctly more successful than the other.

The cool, lean libretto for In the Locked Room has been adapted by David Harsent from a short story by Thomas Hardy. It tells of a young husband and wife who rent a holiday cottage in which one locked room is kept aside for occasional use by a celebrated poet, who is secretly enjoying a sexual liaison with the landlady. The husband is a City boy, commuting up to town and consumed by the closing of a huge financial deal; the wife is an awkward, lonely romantic, entranced by the idea of the poet and his melancholy writings.

The tragedy which ensues is adroitly handled by Harsent, but it is Huw Watkins’ score which brings it to dramatic life. Leanly but purposefully orchestrated, it is marked by a tensely repressed sensuality and some beautifully modulated vocal writing.

For my vulgar taste, the climax isn’t quite powerful enough, but thanks to the sustained and enmeshed economy and focus of text and music, I was gripped throughout. Michael McCarthy’s lucid and supple production is expertly executed by the cast of four, and there’s an outstanding performance by that lovely young soprano Ruby Hughes as the wife.

Ghost Patrol, * * *

Stuart MacRae and librettist Louise Welsh have a hard act to follow, and Ghost Patrol seems slack and prolix in comparison: it’s a piece of arresting musical gestures and punchy ideas which haven’t been smoothly stitched together, and the interesting dramatic situation – the queasy meeting in Civvy Street of two soldiers who have previously colluded in a traumatising atrocity – never builds any operatic momentum. It feels like a play that’s been dragged unwillingly into a musical straitjacket.

Crisply staged by Matthew Richardson, the piece benefits from the committed performances of Jane Harrington, Nicholas Sharratt and James McOran-Campbell, the latter mysteriously obliged to spend an unwarranted amount of time wearing nothing but his underpants.

Michael Rafferty conducts both scores with finesse, and the orchestral playing is of a high standard. Don’t expect to come away feeling exhilarated, but this is a thought-provoking double bill of authentic musical quality.

Until Saturday at the Traverse (0131 473 2000), then touring