Opera North’s own programme notes are carefully aimed at leaving its audience anticipating something altogether weird and wonderful, but it turns out to be a promise on which, sadly, Nicholas Bone’s production only half-delivers.
Though not for want of trying …
Bet Palmer‘s stage set whisks us over to a daytime television cookery programme, with conductor Garry Walker, on stage, directing chef d’orchestre Katie Stillman’s band of eleven instrumentalists.
There seems hardly time for an initial rhythmical knife-sharpening in strict 4/4 time and we are off …
Amy J Payne and Xavier Hetherington play programme co-hosts June Spoon and Phillip Fork, suitably showy, all-buttery charm on auto-cue, yet raising undercurrents of bile to firm piques in their asides. Musically, they serve up the evening’s highlights, hers a deliciously warming number concerning making gravy and his a heartfelt lament at Spoon’s apparent passing, the latter accompanied by ‘cello playing to savour from Reinoud Ford.
There is sterling vocal support from Frazer Scott‘s Mr. Egg, Scotch, like many of the production’s creators, but here most certainly not coddled, Mark Nathan’s Banana, a thin-skinned, self-avowed exotic fruit, not to be confused with the common roots in the soup, and Peter Van Hulle‘s Butcher, who happens to be the Vicar at the same time.
David Fennessy’s musical score is modern, but carries mood and atmosphere, calm and calamity, to good effect. Familiar kitchen noises abound from the percussion section, and some unforeseen ones are offered. How does a carrot sound? As air squeaking out from a pinched balloon, as it happens.There is puppetry at which to marvel, thanks to ex-Northern School Of Contemporary Dance artiste Ben Yorke-Griffiths, who works wonders, not only with the storyline’s arch-villain, the monstrous Mr. Granules, but by enlivening a potato, carrot and turnip. In his hands, the vegetables, as they say, are sautéed.
So, why my misgivings at a production first performed in Glasgow fully fifteen years ago?
Well, perhaps everyday banter and our sense of fun have moved on in that time …
When Mr. Egg’s opening confessional is to admit being an alcoholic manic-depressive, it should not be expected to raise a laugh. Fork’s jibe at Banana being a “big, yellow bastard”, presumably because it rhymes off with his being turned into custard, does not become funny, even on repetition. Nor is his quick-fire rundown of every permutation of pea and ham soup worthy of a titter. Nor does the Butcher’s response to the enquiry, “What animal do the chops come from?” “Homosexual ones.” have any comical credentials. Nor are incessant references to vomit, faeces and diverse results of excretion and egestion likely to be increasingly amusing as the evening progresses. Need I go on?
These may raise a giggle in a 10-year-old, hoping to offend. Adults should aspire to something more grown up.
For you, gentle reader, I have witnessed a whistling turd deliver the line, “Everyone will turn to shit”.
Only if the critics let them.
December dates:
Wednesday 17h (6.30pm); Friday 19th (6pm & 8.30pm); Saturday 20th (2pm & 7pm) and Sunday 21st (2pm & 4.30pm)
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