Michael Scott's new opera is a setting of the play by W.B. Yeats. It now opens, not with a musician singing, "why does my heart beat so? Did not a shadow pass?", but with an anonymous figure, prone on a dimly lit and mist-filled stage, who struggles to enunciate the words of Pearse's Proclamation. The message seems to be: Forget Yeats and his drams of plays for a drawing-room elite; this is going to be an updating of Irish history so that it will speak immediately to you, reinforced by music of this age.
The expressionist gestures of the people in the play are also at odds with Yeats's hauteur, but when the words of the play can be distinguished, which is not always the case, they take on a life of their own, separate from the music, which becomes redundant.
Michael Scott's music, performed on Irish harp, violin, cello and uilleann pipes, tin whistle, percussion and two keyboards, relied rather heavily on unison playing, as in folk groups, and the keyboards blanketed the tone of the other instruments. The colours that would have been available from a judicious use of varying instrumental combinations were not employed and the total effect was featureless. The music's sideways glance at Irish traditional culture seemed a retrograde step.
The set design by Bronwen Casson and the use of lighting, followed Yeats's directions, in that they did not represent, but symbolised or suggested. This gave great importance to the movements of the actors, which took on the grace of ballet, as they passed from one ray of light to another or loomed through banks of fog. This last effect was rather overdone.
The singing did not always satisfactorily resolve the dichotomy between words and music. Kathleen Tynan was the most lyrical in her approach as Dervogilla and Nicholas Folwell had a Wagnerian dignity as Dermot, but one had often to guess at the words. Anthony Norton as the Young Man was suitably gauche but did not find Yeats's blank verse very singable. The musicians, Cynthia Buchan and John Matthews, who comment on the action with Yeatsian obliquity, made the most dramatic contribution to The Machine's production.
Runs tonight at the SFX Centre. To book phone 01-8554673