Wexford Festival Opera 2024: The Critic
The Critic by Charles Villers Stanford, libretto by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Photo Patricio Cassinoni.
****
Long before The Producers, A Night at the Opera, or The Show That Went Wrong, there was Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Critic. A parody from 1779 poking fun at the vagaries, vanities and foibles involved in putting on a theatre production. Adapted in 1915 into a comic opera of sorts by Dublin born Charles V. Stanford, with Sheridan's text arranged for the opera by L. Cairns James, The Critic pokes fun at the practices, pretensions and exaggerations of operatic convention. Especially the sumptuous ostentations of Grand Opera. The dramatic, musical and vocal conventions; the unstable hierarchy between music, singing and libretti; the formulaic contrivances of mad scenes, death scenes, dramatic asides and grand finales all playfully satirised. An opera perfectly in keeping with Wexford Festival Opera’s theme of Theatre within Theatre featuring, as it does, a play within a play and a stage within a stage.
Rory Dunne, Gabriel Seawright, Meilir Jones, Henry Strutt, Cathal McCabe, Gyula Nagy, Christian Loizou, Arthur Riordan, Michael Ferguson, Oliver Johnston, Lawrence Gillians in The Critic. Photo Patricio Cassinoni
Or rather an opera within a play, leading to the alternative title An Opera Rehearsed. One set against the historical backdrop of the Spanish Armada’s invasion of England called, imaginatively, The Spanish Armada. The improbable tale of a Governor’s daughter Tiburina, a superb Ava Dodd, and her doomed love for Spaniard Don Ferolo Wiskerandos, an equally terrific Dane Suarez, portraying a passion so…passionate it’s worth dying twice for. Throw in the historical Sir Walter Raleigh (Ben McAteer) and Sir Christopher Hatton (Oliver Johnston), the Governor (Rory Dunne), a love lorn beefeater (Gyula Nagy doubling up as Earl of Leicester) and some amorous nieces (Hannah O’Brien and Carolyn Holt) and all the ingredients are set in play for the grandest of grand operas, minus the ballet. Including an underplot about a fainting family reunion and a sumptuous mise-en-scène of the Thames to ensure all’s well that ends well. Except for the lovers of course, who both die. And that’s just the opera. Though the play proves a lighter affair. In which a critic, the composer and the librettist director sit in on a dress rehearsal and comedically comment as it all unfolds.
Tony Brennan, Mark Lambert, Arthur Riordan and Jonathan White in The Critic. Photo Patricio Cassinoni
Under Conor Hanratty’s masterful direction, The Critic receives a brave and rather brilliant revival that’s hilariously funny, walking a tightrope between comic subversion and operatic excellence. Yet it suffers from it being impossible to take a joke seriously if it’s milked for too long. Or to care about the characters a joke satirises. Especially when its primary focus is parodying operatic conventions. Pompous libretti, deadly divas or the inclusion of spoken dialogue all fair game. To those who say opera should only employ singing or recitative, that spoken word doesn’t belong here, Stanford suggests music alone might be all we need as an old man moves silently with the expressive gravitas of Methuselah to a score redolent of a silent movie. Yet spoken dialogue makes its appearance. Arthur Riordan’s critic Stern, Mark Lambert’s librettist Puff and Jonathan White’s composer Dangle all spoken roles. The opening scene evoking a music hall sketch that initially feels odd. But Riordan, Lambert and White, along with Olga Conway, lure you in. Even if, once music arrives, it becomes an uphill battle to make speech heard.
Ava Dodd and Hannah O’Brien in The Critic. Photo Patricio Cassinoni
Music exercises a curious spell, being a sequence of musical tropes purposely designed to highlight and mimic an effect. Stanford, a respected music teacher, knew conventions and how to replicate them. Yet Stanford inadvertently hits on some vibrant passages, with music composed to the highest standards even if mainly for comic effect. Singing is also treated seriously, even as spectacle borders on the slapstick. It’s a smart move, leading to some glorious moments musically and vocally that might have been completely undermined by broad comedy, tempting as that might have been. A male chorus singing to Mighty Mars hilariously deflates conventions even as singing and choral arrangement is sublime. The divinely diva-ish Dodd deliciously lampoons the pastoral, Disney innocence of a young woman whilst also being vocally mesmerising. A spellbinding lovers duet again sees singing undercut by humour, but never undermined. Ciarán McAuley’s superb conducting releasing the romance and comedy in Stanford’s technically impressive score, evocative of the emotional excesses of the Hollywood silent era. By intermission you are helplessly won over. And might have remained so had it ended there. But post interval it’s rinse and repeat. This time to the obligatory mad scene, death scene and grand finale. All beautifully and cleverly done. John Comiskey’s layered set, Massimo Carlotta’s lush costumes and Daniele Naldi’s defining lights providing for a sumptuous mise-en-scène. Yet it’s hard to stay emotionally invested in a serious of sketches wherein the same joke is essentially replayed. Funny, and gorgeously entertaining as that is.
Gyula Nagy and Dane Suarez in The Critic. Photo Patricio Cassinoni
Marking the centenary of Stanford’s death, The Critic gives pause for thought about this oft forgotten composer. Given Stanford’s reputation for being behind the times, The Critic shows a subversion wildly ahead of its time and a meta-theatrical awareness that borders on the postmodern. Though you never take The Critic seriously you can’t but seriously love its singing, music and performances. Indeed, you have to be seriously good to write an opera this bad. The legendary comedian Foster Brooks, renowned for playing drunks, once said he never played a man trying to be drunk but a man trying to be sober. In a similar vein Stanford, and Hanratty, never play The Critic for easy laughs but as a highly serious affair. A comedy about a tragedy, The Critic might overplay its hand, but it makes for terrific entertainment executed to the highest standards.
The Critic by Charles Villers Stanford, libretto by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, arranged for the opera by L. Cairns James, runs at Wexford Festival Opera 2024 on October 24, October 27, and November 1.
For more information, visit Wexford Festival Opera 2024
