Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci, generally known as Cav and Pag, are two wonderful short Italian operas given a right seeing to at the ENO by director Richard Jones in translations by the poet Sean O’Brien and Billy Elliot’s own Lee Hall.

The first, set in a Sicilian village square, is relocated by designer Ultz in a grim, cramped warehouse with a surprising lack of staging for the great interlude (Zeffirelli had his church-goers streamimg down the stairs) and no fatal orange grove.

But the second, echoing the same themes of tragic love and crime passionel, is a country harlequinade requisitioned as a Ray Cooney farce in a 1970s British rep climate of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, with backstage intrigue, comedy chaos and an onstage audience where mothers march out angrily with small children when the air turns blue with sexual innuendo.

This is funny as far as it goes, but the music doesn’t allow for the theatrical dynamic imposed upon it and the show becomes increasingly wearisome. Pagliacci, the clowns, Canio and Tonio, are here named Kenny “Paxo” Evans and Tony O’Sullivan — they are fitted out to resemble a photo of Little and Large in the programme.

They are touring in a play called “Ding Dong” by Robin Dowdeswell, which sounds creepily plausible, and the theatre poster also proclaims stars from ITV’s “Bless My Soul” — “live on stage.”

The crowd of bystanders gathers outside a theatre portico and side wall that resembles the Playhouse at Charing Cross; well, try and imagine the Playhouse with a great throng of punters buzzing around — it’s a stretch, I know, but this could becomes a reality if the Menier’s upcoming transfer of La Cage aux Folles survives long enough to accommodate the rumoured replacement of Douglas Hodge with Graham Norton in the New Year. 

Inside the theatre there’s a cosy mini-auditorium that suddenly suggests the Jermyn Street venue, with added balcony and rear exits. Except that the people sitting there appear to be having a really good time.

I so wanted to love all this, but the imposition just becomes too much, and it’s not  really beautiful in any way. And, oh my god, the translations themselves! Ugly and unsingable in the case of Cav, trite and cheap in the case of Pag, both texts making you ache to hear the stuff sung in Italian.

Tonio in Pag is deformed, which makes his thwarted love for Canio’s wife Nedda (here re-named Nelly and sung beautifully but played without a scintilla of sexiness, despite the underwear, by Mary Plazas) all the more poignant.

Here, Tony merely wears a loud suit and large glasses. Nelly’s lover, Woody the stage carpenter, is played in blue denim and a Robin Askwith hairstyle by Mark Stone, who also supplies the best male singing of the night.

The house was by no means full, an unthinkable situation on a Friday night for Cav and Pag twenty years ago. All done up Ruth Leon, the merry widow, was squashed in the stalls between legendary critic Andrew Porter and gay novelist Michael Arditti, while Peter Jonas schmoozed volubly with friends.

Lady Vaizey (Tory politician Ed’s mum and a former art critic on the FT) told me she felt she was at an old school reunion (I don’t know why — why she told me, or why she thought the evening was like that) and ace publisher Richard Johnson, formerly of Harper Collins, revealed how much he was enjoying his retirement.

Some critics have declared that Jones’s Pag, at least, shows real signs of re-birth at ENO. I’m not sure. Jones is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant directors in Britain, yet his enthralling Young Vic production of Brecht’s The Good Soul of Setzuan earlier this year is not matched, even by Pag, because the application of the ideas in both halves of the bill does not release or reveal the most important element in opera, the music itself.

And Geraint Dodd’s blazered, barrel-shaped Kenny (Canio) may look like a mad amalgam of Terry Scott and Les Dawson, but his voice and acting are both feeble and he doesn’t break your heart.  

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.