Paul Bunyan/British Youth Opera – review

The Britten centenary has inevitably put the composer's first opera in the spotlight once again, but British Youth Opera's production, directed by William Kerley and designed by Jason Southgate, shows that the staging of Paul Bunyan does not get any easier.

The problem is the portrayal of the title character himself. The giant logger of American folklore, around whom Britten and his librettist WH Auden built their operetta, never sings; in their critique of the founding of the American dream, he is by turns narrator, protagonist and omnipotent presence. Some directors prefer to keep Bunyan out of sight and portray him as a disembodied voice, but Kerley gives him flesh, with Will Edelsten overseeing events and delivering his platitudinous pronouncements from a stage-side box. Rather than helping to clarify things, this just adds another layer to a score whose dramatic pace and shape are already uncertain.

Yet the reasons for persevering with Paul Bunyan and presenting it with a young, keen cast such as BYO's are obvious. There is plenty of chorus work and lots of cameo roles that need a slick, light touch, and they mostly get it. Dominick Felix certainly seizes his moments as the Western Union Boy, while several roles are more than cameos: Samuel Smith's performance as Johnny Inkslinger, Christopher Jacklin as the ballad-singing narrator (complete with a neat Bob Dylan reference for one of his numbers), Louise Kemeny as Tiny and Peter Kirk as Slim all make their mark, too.

Peter Robinson's lucid conducting shows that though the score may be uneven, there are enough moments – a scrap of melody here, an effortlessly brilliant touch of orchestration there – when Britten's genius can't help but show itself, hinting at what would come just a few years later.