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Owen Wingrave, Aldeburgh Festival, review: 'mismatch'
Neil Bartlett's production of Owen Wingrave for the Aldeburgh Festival takes the wrong approach to this Cinderella among Britten's operas, says Ivan Hewett
Owen Wingrave is the Cinderella of Britten’s operas. It was commissioned for BBC television in 1969, and has rarely been seen on stage, as its claustrophobic intensity makes it perfectly suited to the small screen. As the director of this production Neil Bartlett says, it’s an opera that seems to take place entirely in close-up. I saw the original production as a small boy, and can still remember the accusing faces of Owen’s aunt and grandfather and fiancé, filling the screen as they hurl the accusation “How dare you!”.
Owen’s crime is refusing the military destiny laid down by family tradition. He reveals his pacifist feelings to his military instructor, and is then hauled in front of a family inquisition at the vast and gloomy family home. In that TV production even the dead ancestors seemed to join in, glaring down accusingly from their picture frames.
Bartlett gets rid of all that Victorian fustian, even though he keeps a basically Victorian setting, minimally sketched in on Snape’s uncomfortably wide stage with a few movable panels. Just beyond this space is a threatening posse of present-day soldiers, lunging threateningly from the shadows whenever Owen’s pacifist leanings appear, and moving the mobile panels around between scenes. They represent the eternal, unappeasable spirit of male aggression. In the Henry James story on which the opera is based we hear of a Wingrave boy killed by his father for cowardice. Early on we glimpse a pyjama-clad boy, then later several more dragged away by these soldiers in alarming images of child abuse.
In all this swirl of movement the figure who really commands the stage is Jonathan Summers as Spencer Coyle, the military instructor who at first is appalled by Owen’s lonely ethical stance, but eventually won over. Susan Bullock also impresses as Owen’s formidable and disapproving aunt.
But the other characters seem thin. Owen himself ought to have a cutting edge (“I’d hang the lot of ’em!” he says about the great military leaders). As played by Ross Ramgobin in this production, he often seems lost, coming over more as a victim than as a stout soldier for the good.
Otherwise the performances are strongly characterised, as is Mark Wigglesworth’s conducting of the Britten-Pears Orchestra, which brings out the dry, scrabbling menace of Britten’s music (performed here in David Matthews’s clever reduction for 14 players).
The real problem here is a mismatch between Bartlett’s energised, open production and the enclosed, fetid nature of the piece. It’s a hothouse plant, which withers the moment some fresh air is let in.
Owen Wingrave is at the Aldeburgh Festival on June 15, 16, 18. Tickets: 01728 687110; aldeburgh.co.uk. It opens at the Edinburgh Festival on August 15. Tickets: 0131 473 2000; eif.co.uk