Opera Theatre Company, The Lir, Dublin
Opera Theatre Company's Irish tour of Mozart's The Magic Flutegot under way in the Lir theatre, a small venue but a good sampling of what's to come on the long, long road to the final performance in Carlow on February 18th.
As so often, OTC makes “small” work well. The black-box space is fully and imaginatively utilised. A fine six-piece ensemble plays Cameron Sinclair’s faithful pocket adaptation under the clear, responsive direction from the piano of OTC debutante Brenda Hurley. The props are minimal but judicious, and several of the fresh young cast have multiple roles.
But if you're under the impression that Mozart's personality was impish and impudent, the mischievous balancing act between comic and serious performed by director Annilese Miskimmon would have won you over. Happily, her balance favoured the comic: many Magic Fluteshave the life abruptly drained out of them by a stodgy reverence for Mozart's temple brotherhood, an allusion to the Freemasons. Miskimmon channels Mozart and pokes fun at the order and at pomp in general, providing great comic space for Eoin Hynes and Nathan Morrison (priests, slaves, etc) and Lawrence Thackeray (Monostatos), all emphatically proving their worth as beneficiaries of OTC's Young Associate Artists' Programme.
While all three were always potential scene-stealers, the clear leader is Owen Gilhooly as Papageno. Never straying into slapstick, always vividly inhabiting the opera’s most human and sympathetic character, Gilhooly matched his fine comic timing and presence with his customarily refined singing.
It’s inevitably less fun for the straight roles, but these acquitted themselves well, with Adrian Dwyer as Tamino, Emma Morwood as Pamina, and Matthew Trevino as Sarastro. The Three Ladies (Mary O’Sullivan, Joan O’Malley and Mihaela Loredana Chivase) always sustained the spirit and energy of the moment, and a self-composed trio of young trebles played the Three Boys. Soprano Alison Bell, although her wider vibrato distinguished her from everyone else in the cast, had no trouble hitting her stratospheric top notes as the Queen of the Night.
Under Miskimmon’s pacey direction, the design team wittily lights and sets the story in roughly 1912 – we see suffragettes; Monostatos is a London bobby. In all, it precisely fulfils OTC chairwoman Virginia Kerr’s wish that “an evening at the opera take us out of ourselves and lift our spirits”.
