At Music Theatre Wales |
| Music Theatre Wales- The Penal Colony , Riverfront Newport , October 21, 2010 |
Among modern composers, the most obvious modellers of new clothes belonging to the emperor are not those making discordant sounds but those cuddling up to the listener with simple and so-called 'accessible' music.The prime example is Philip Glass, whose film scores and other collaborations often enhance the atmosphere but whose self-generated operas and theatre works find his minimalist style bearing heavy loads. More is sometimes expected of him on a smaller scale, such as In The Penal Colony, a chamber opera for three characters with a libretto by novelist Rudolph Wurlitzer based on a short story by Kafka. But it's not one of Kafka's best efforts and the meaning is confused. A visitor to a penal colony is asked to witness its old method of execution, the acme of horror and savagery. He declines, and releases the prisoner chosen to demonstrate the method before the prison officer submits himself to immolation as an emblem of his belief in the old ways and in the redemptive power of punishment. One is used to praising the performance above the thing performed, and this is the case with Michael McCarthy's direction, Michael Rafferty's conducting and the powerful portrayals of Michael Bennett (Visitor), Omar Ebrahim (Officer) and Gerald Tyler (Condemned Man). They keep Music Theatre Wales’s huge reputation hoisted but, by default, show up Glass’s shortcomings as a composer-dramatist. In view of what’s waiting to drop from the theatre’s flies - a killing-machine like something out of Edgar Allan Poe - the music is about as scary as a mouse with an inferiority complex. |
Reviewed by: Nigel Jarrett |
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