Isabelle Kettle’s new production of Britten’s 1954 chamber opera for Bath’s Ustinov Studio is properly haunting. Based on Henry James’s novella about orphaned children whose governess believes them to be prey to malign influences, it is a horror story which becomes a tragedy. The claustrophobia of the Ustinov’s tiny black box of a space is ideal for the work’s dark sense of enclosure, even if the grandeur of the Bly country house can only be suggested by the expanse of transparent backdrop as window.
The many scheduled performances demand double-casting, but tonight’s cast of six could hardly be stronger, the key roles of Flora and Miles played by Maia Greaves and Oliver Michael, whose dramatic gifts and musical poise are simply astonishing. It is they who colour the attention-holding stage business with which Kettle cleverly supports the instrumental variations between scenes, with playful, childish games sometimes carrying a sinister edge, notably when the corpse of a dead crow must be ritually buried. The set’s single austere column also affords them hidden climbing foot-holds, a further nerve-wracking element.
Sarah Gilford’s Governess is beautifully sung and acted, balancing her care of the children with the increasingly neurotic perception of evil being perpetrated. Yet the story’s ambiguity – is it all in her imagination? – is rather less than usual, perhaps because, in such close proximity, the figures of the valet Peter Quint and the former governess Miss Jessel (Xavier Hetherington and Elin Pritchard) seem more solidly flesh and blood.
As the housekeeper Mrs Grose, Emma Bell is a big vocal presence, initially warmly reassuring but gradually unable to disguise her own tortured understanding of how, in life, the dreadful Quint had always “had his will”.
Henry Websdale and Aleksandra Myslek’s arrangement of the score for two pianos, celeste and flute (Carys Gittins doubling alto and piccolo), is boldly bare, their playing sensitive to Britten’s idiom and its carefully measured, slow ratcheting of tension. Kettle also makes good use of the requisite two grand pianos on set, one covered with a great white sheet so that when the children spring out from underneath with a loud shout, Mrs Grose is not the only one startled. In the later sequence in which Miles shows off his piano playing – Websdale doing the honours here – the almost-dancing Michael seems to take flight as though already entering the world of spirits. When finally forced by the Governess to identify the evil force, not only does Miles scream out “Peter Quint, the devil” but he runs straight to him, to be lifted high and embraced, before going limp in his arms. It’s an extraordinary moment.
