The Stage

Icarus

Published Friday 12 August 2011 at 13:06 by David Gutman

With unrest on the streets and fewer bums on seats, summer 2011 has not been kind to London’s fringe opera scene. Illness put pay to Grimeborn’s Philip Glass premiere at the Arcola and not everything in Tete a Tete’s bittier creative seedbed for new work has emerged unscathed. The range of material on offer in almost three weeks of loosely ‘operatic’ performance is nevertheless dazzling, from risque cabaret that turns to al fresco song cycles to events designed to introduce toddlers to live music theatre. More serious high art projects also feature - some bite-size, some bigger, all at £6 a throw.

A scene from Icarus at Riverside Studios, London Photo: Claire Shovelton

In this context the sheer coherence of Michael Zev Gordon’s work-in-progress, a concise modern-dress Icarus, appears almost anachronistic. Written to a libretto by Stephen Plaice, who has performed similar services for Harrison Birtwistle, the one act presented finds master craftsman Daedalus struggling to teach Icarus the art of the smithy while his nephew Talus presses ahead with risky man-powered flight. Gordon’s perky, lyrical score deploys accordion and marimba within Chroma’s small ensemble of eight. Don’t expect Birtwistle’s high modernism - nor, incidentally, should the London-born composer be confused with a noisier American post-Andriessen minimalist similarly named. The staging, punningly taking the protagonists back to the drawing board, is devised by the festival’s artistic director Bill Bankes-Jones. The quartet of young singers strikes sparks.

In place of a promised Conor Mitchell/Mark Ravenhill collaboration, New World (music by Samuel Bordoli to a Ravenhill text), satirises Apocalyptism, while Mitchell’s own Songs for Jean McConville, dedicated to the memory of a victim of IRA violence, turns out to be an unorchestrated requiem mass. That its performers (soprano Rebecca Caine and pianist James Longford) appear without shoes would seem the sole concession to theatricality. First off a free event in the foyer - an Aesopian Lite Bite from Charlotte Bray melding basic puppetry, allusions to Mozart and insistent references to cheese. The season runs until August 21.