Camden Fringe 2024
Hänsel und Gretel
Opera Kipling
Genre: Music, Opera and Operatic Theatre
Venue: Upstairs at the Gatehouse
Festival: Camden Fringe
Low Down
Two children are sent to pick berries in the forest. With playing and doodling they forget the time. While their parents frantically look for them they have an adventure that makes them grow up. The well-known German fairy tale gets a radically new interpretation.
Review
The program tells us this story has been moved to 1950s America. The idea being that this way parental substance abuse and neglect could be explored. I am not sure this idea really serves the work. Wette made very specific changes to the story for her libretto to counter any notion that the parent’s are neglectful. In fact in her version a loving parent is under so much mental stress that she makes unwittingly a dangerous mistake. As soon as she is made aware of this, she tries to remedy the situation. Wette took great pains to create a happy childhood for the children despite being social outsiders. By making the father a broom maker, a profession often associated with Roma and Sinti or other travelling folk the author immediately signals to the audience these people are different and live a hand to mouth existence. This just doesn’t fit with the affluence of booming 1950s America. Wette also put the focus of the story on the children and how they explore their world. The parents definitely have supporting roles and their only purpose is to drive the story along (mother) or educate the audience (father). By making the parents and their issues the main storyline the raison d’être of the opera is completely lost.
Another issue was the cavalier attitude to the text itself. The German pronunciation was bad throughout. Barely three bars were sung without a major mistake. Effectively the text became unintelligible. The surtitles often bore little resemblance to what was actually sung on stage. Even when the translation was vaguely accurate the actions on stage rarely corresponded to what was sung. While it is forgivable to have a dozen eggs instead of fourteen, onions are not tinned tomatoes. These kind of mismatches weren’t the odd exceptions, but happened consistently throughout the production. It felt extremely disrespectful towards the work performed and it’s original creators. Considering the producer lives out in Germany it should have been possible to get a dramaturg, translator and a language coach to help with these aspects. Another option would have been to just recreate an English libretto that could have reflected the new ideas the director, Guido Martin-Brandis had.
The musical direction was led by Giannis Giannopoulos and I wish he had spent more time encouraging the cast to change dynamics and sing more legato. The volume was pretty consistently just loud, at times even shrill taking away from the beauty of the music. Quite a lot of the children’s music are actually German folk tunes and it would have been nice if the contrast between those and the opera itself could have been brought out a bit more.
There are some really nice set ideas in this production that work very well. The inspired idea of turning hat stands with umbrellas into a forest was really cute. Using banner with photos of a sweet shop instead of a gingerbread house was also a lovely idea. Just a shame they were hanging in the wrong order and so we didn’t get the full effect. The balloon sweets hanging from the now repurposed hat stands added to the atmosphere. In this production the witch has been turned into a glamorous sweet shop assistant in a hot pink 50s inspired tea dress complete with stiletto heels and a cutsie apron. The outfit is completed by a pink candyfloss wig with cup cake fascinator. The girl-next-door image makes her and her plans even more devious.
Things that worked less well were that Hänsel, Gretel and their parents were all wearing cherry themed outfits. This would make sense if the children had been sent to pick cherries, but they are sent to pick strawberries. Although, in this production they actually eat raspberries, even though every other consumption of food and drink is mimed. Instead of brooms they had toothbrushes, some were small and one man sized. It isn’t obvious why toothbrushes. When father goes out with the one giant tooth brush instead of a set of brooms to be sold the audience is left wondering what is going on. It becomes more bizarre when father comes back with the giant toothbrush, telling how good his business was and how many brooms and brushes he had sold. He evens rides the giant toothbrush in the Hexenritt allusion, which looks plain weird. The opera starts and ends with a photographer taking pictures of the family and they spend their last money for this despite not having any food. Why they do that is never explained. The photographer is the Sandman/Dew Fairy/Child (instead of children’s chorus). She is also the dealer who supplies not only father with drink, but also mother with increasingly bigger tranquiliser pills. In this production Sandman became an angel, who strew confetti. While it looked nice, it made very little sense in the context of German cultural references. After the Abendgebet Sandman hung small angel wings on the hat stand trees. A nice idea, shame they were only eleven wings instead of fourteen.
Overall, this production felt like a rushed job which had been thrown together quickly. This is a great shame as some of the visual ideas are really great. If the creative team take the time to write a modern English libretto that reflects where they want to go with the story it could be a good production. However, I am not convinced that a work so entrenched in German culture, especially considering the many musical references, really lends itself to such a radical interpretation.
