Robert Tanitch reviews ENO’s Thebans at London Coliseum
Sophocles (496-406BC) wrote the Theban plays over a wide interval of time. They were not written as a trilogy and are quite separate. Julian Anderson and his librettist, Frank McGuinness, however, have made them into a single operatic unit lasting 100 minutes with two intervals. They have also reversed the chronological order which means Oedipus at Colonus comes last and that the dead and the living inhabit the same stage.
Orchestrally and chorally, Thebans is often thrilling. The conductor is Edward Gardner. There is some impressive solo singing, too, notably by Roland Wood as Oedipus, Peter Hoare as Creon, Matthew Best as a transsexual Tiresias and Julia Sporsen as Antigone. But, exciting and complex though the sound is, the opera doesn’t work as well as Sophocles does. It is not as moving.
The Fall of Oedipus (the best and most horrific detective story ever written) is set in the past and lasts 50 minutes. The story of Antigone is set in the present and is cut to 20 minutes, too short and too rushed for the confrontation between her and Creon (a battle between the Individual and the State) to be as dramatically effective as it is in the original.
The Death of Oedipus, which is set in the future and lasting 30 minutes, has a striking set: a bleak and blighted sacred wood, a surreal place for the living and dead to meet. The impact of the chorus in their roles of guardians and the voices of the gods is all the greater for their remaining off-stage.
The first two acts are far too static. Pierre Audi doesn’t know what to do with a large chorus of lepers in Act 1. The groupings are very artificial. The manhandling of the blinded Oedipus, when they chuck him out of the city, should be more frightening. A chorus of Fascist militia in Act 2 is just left standing there, rigid for most of the time.
There is movement for the individual characters in Act 3 but it never feels natural. What the production needs is a choreographer, somebody like, perhaps, Michael Keegan-Dolan artistic director of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre.
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