Theatre
Making a song and dance about it
Published 16 August 2007
Royal Festival Hall reopens with a breathtaking version of Carmen Jones
Carmen Jones Royal Festival Hall, London SE1
There are some shows where the central performer is so mesmerising, so hypnotically arresting that, for once, the weary description "star" is rightfully earned. He or she literally eclipses the rest of the company, shining so brightly that they can only be defined as passing silhouettes. Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi is one such performer, and it is just as well that she has been given a suitably singular role as Carmen Jones in Hammerstein and Bizet's eponymous opera. It is a part that fits her like a Jimmy Choo stiletto.
The Soweto-born opera singer is utterly beautiful, but that's only a start. Anyone taking on the role of Carmen must be gorgeous, but she also has to be dangerously sexy, a Venus flytrap who snaps hapless men in her jaws and has them for breakfast. Indeed, from the moment Maswanganyi appears on stage, barefoot and imperious, draped in a thin red strip of a dress, singing "Dat's Love" (the Habanera) in a creamy, controlled voice, it is clear that this is a woman who knows what her power is, and where it resides. Maswanganyi brandishes Carmen's terrifying eroticism like a torch, and it is only a few seconds before we, the audience, fall helplessly into her orbit, where we stay for the rest of the night.
Presumably Jude Kelly plumped for Carmen Jones as her first production in the newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall because, like the venue itself, it blurs boundaries rather superbly. The work is a triumphant 1943 updating of Bizet's original opera; Oscar Hammerstein sensibly kept the entire score intact, but modernised the story, moving the location from a cigarette factory in Spain to an American army base in the Deep South during the 1950s. Don José becomes Joe, and the celebrated toreador Escamillo is transformed into the prizefighter Husky Miller.
All this aside, the Festival Hall is something of a challenge for Kelly, as it is first and foremost a concert venue. She makes the bravura decision of placing the orchestra (which alternates between the London Philharmonic and the Philharmonia) right in the middle of the set. The stage wraps around the band, who are dressed in mufti, and simply get on with knocking out the music. It just about works, largely because everything - even the orchestra - is amplified by microphones, and also because Kelly has total command over her huge ensemble of performers.
Thanks to Rafael Bonachela's sexy, quasi-balletic choreography, the huge cast whirls, stamps and dances around the orchestra with almost careless abandon. Michael Vale's set is similarly striking, bristling with abandoned trolleys, packing cases, old cars, TV aerials and oil drums, which all help to convey the lived-in, sweaty mood of somewhere hot and human.
Of all opera's divas, Carmen is surely the most down-to-earth - a working woman who takes her chances, but whose tragedy is that she is somehow unable to use her potential to escape the confines of her situation. Maswanganyi's Carmen is a woman whose every move is infused with aristocratic grace. She even manages to look good when putting her knickers on (and we know that's not easy). An elegant life as a boxer's moll in Chicago - a world beautifully conveyed by white towelling robes in the Country Club scene - awaits her, but things aren't quite so simple.
Even though it could quite easily turn into My Fair Lady, and although the lyrics are by Oscar Hammerstein, Carmen Jones has no American-style happy ending. This is a good old French tear-jerking tragedy, and so Carmen's story must end badly, which it does, in breathtaking fashion.
Honourable mentions should go to Brenda Edwards, whose spine-tingling rendition of "Beat Out Dat Rhythm on a Drum" justifies her ascent from The X Factor to opera, and Andrew Clarke, whose homely Joe conceals furious passion beneath a tender coating. Actually, they were all great. But Maswanganyi was in another league.
For further information log on to: www.southbankcentre.co.uk
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Neil Bartlett's production of this gender-bending comedy should be worth a punt.
Grease
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Sweetly pleasing rendition of the high-school musical, with TV reality stars stepping up to play the leads.
Pygmalion
Cambridge Arts Theatre
Tim Pigott-Smith as Henry Higgins in Peter Hall revival. Ends 18 August.
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