8 1GT Monday August 3 2020 | the times
arts
P
urists beware. You don’t need
a magnifying glass to notice
that, while this incarnation of
Sherlock Holmes is equipped
with a deerstalker, he has
undergone a sex change. So has Dr
Watson. Yet Abigail Pickard Price’s
production is delivered with so much
tongue-in-cheek energy that you can’t
object. Besides, after months of
lockdown, part of the pleasure of this
show is simply being able to behave
like normal theatregoers.
Well, almost. The Watermill’s
auditorium remains out of bounds, so
for this version of the Arthur Conan
Doyle tale we were sitting at socially
distanced tables outside on the lawn.
The atmosphere wasn’t so far away
from a summer version of panto, with
the script devised by the company.
Most of the jokes were broad, the
acting even broader and, as Holmes
and his companion, Rosalind Lailey
and Victoria Blunt took great pleasure
in poking fun at the improbable
twists and turns. With James Mac
completing the compact, multitasking
cast, they swapped costumes and false
beards and even managed to add an
utterly redundant but enjoyable
karaoke rendition of Stand By Me.
The story hustled along on a small
stage adorned with only a few items of
furniture and some wooden boxes (one
of which functioned as a cajon drum
to add sound effects). Sometimes the
actors roamed around the tables.
Naturally enough, there were gags
about the 2m rule. Every now and
then Blunt’s eminently level-headed
doctor would take a sledgehammer to
the fourth wall as she added scraps of
narration and gothic nonsense. I’m
pretty sure that the line “stuffed full of
Jaffa cakes and self-loathing” doesn’t
appear in the original text.
True, the entry of the hound itself
was a mild anticlimax. It didn’t really
matter, though. Perhaps they should
audition one of the swans.
Clive Davis
Box office: 01635 46044, to August 8Opera
Elektra
Salzburg Festival
{{{{(Tanja Ariane Baumgartner’s
Klytämnestra — ripely sung, far from
an old harridan — was practically
tender (she also had a rage-filled
monologue added as a prologue to
justify her actions). Stundyte’s Elektra
seemed a diminished heroine; while
she has a lovely warm timbre, her
intonation wavered and her soprano
lacked that extra ounce of steel.
Grigorian’s conflicted Chrysothemis,
though, was thrillingly realised, vocally
dominant and dramatically magnetic.
To Aug 24 and at arte.tv/salzburgAn electrifying full-blooded tale
At the Salzburg Festival,
Elektra proves that live
opera can flourish in a
crisis, says Neil Fisher
T
he Salzburg Festival was
founded in 1920 as an
attempt to rethink what
European and Austrian
culture might mean after the
First World War and the flu pandemic
that followed. This centenary festival
was planned as a triumphant
celebration. Now it’s a triumph simply
because it managed to happen at all.
Behind the apparent normalcy is
a tight regimen of Covid testing and
“zoning” of festival artists and
employees. Essentially, to avoid
impossible distancing, Austria is
presenting the Vienna Philharmonic
as carefully as the UK does Premier
League footballers. They have their
priorities and we have ours.
Perhaps Strauss’s blood-soaked
Elektra made a strange choice to open
the trimmed festival, yet to a reduced
audience wearing the masks of
tragedy it was the perfect catharsis.
It’s been months since I’ve heard
anything like the weight of Strauss’s
orchestration in the flesh. Without
drinking a drop of sekt, it went right to
my head. Conducted by Franz Welser-
Möst, the Vienna Philharmonic played
sensationally well.
Yes, there were the discordant
climaxes with howling Wagner tubas
and throbbing strings. But this was a
fastidious performance that respected
Strauss’s quip that this beast of a score
should be played “like fairy music”.
When Ausrine Stundyte’s Elektra
tried to turn nice big sis and recruit
Asmik Grigorian’s Chrysothemis to
murder their mother, the buttery
strings and milky woodwind were
indecently charming.
What was missing in this reading
was the white heat of rage and
madness. Perhaps this was a reflection
of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s staging
which, ironically, may have looked
better on the internet than it did in thetheatre. Malgorzata Szczesniak’s cool
designs gave us a swimming pool and
a Perspex box. In the box we saw
flashbacks to the family’s previous
tragedies, and in the pool a boy and
girl, who may have been the young
Elektra and Orest, briefly frolicked.
Warlikowski’s staging had a
thread: history repeats, neurosis
is inherited, and blame is difficult.
However, it was short on atmosphere
and not always coherent, while
the costumes were a jumble sale
mish-mash.BERND-UHLIGTheatre
The Hound of the
Baskervilles
Watermill, Newbury
Asmik Grigorian, {{{{(
left, and Ausrine
Stundyte in
Elektra at the
Salzburg Festival