Wed 20 Oct 2010
The Riverfront, Newport
words: Stephen Nottingham
The stage was set: a string quintet, a torture table and a ladder, The Officer, The Condemned Man and The Visitor. Thus began Music Theatre Wales’ bold adaptation of Philip Glass’s chamber opera In the Penal Colony, based on the short story by Franz Kafka.
Rows of audience members on the stage made explicit the connection between us and The Visitor, invited to observe and report on a brutal execution. Over 80 intense minutes the true horror of the isolated colony’s penal system is revealed and The Visitor must decide whether it is enough merely to bear witness.
Philip Glass composed In the Penal Colony with librettist Rudolph Wurlitzer (grandson of the organ inventor) for A Contemporary Theater in Seattle in 2000. Music Theatre Wales gave the UK premiere in September 2010; subsequently playing Newport as part of a nine-venue tour. Back in 1989, the company gave the first performances outside the USA of Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher. They clearly have an affinity with the composer.
The director Michael McCarthy said before the show that it would be intimate opera with a big kick. He described how Glass’s music provides a perfect mood-inducing framework within which theatre, dance or film can work. A key decision was made early on, with designer Simon Banham, to not put the torture machine literally on stage, but to leave its method to the audience’s imagination.
The performers commendably flesh-out Kafka’s cipher-like characters. Omar Ebrahim was particularly good singing the role of The Officer, and with perfect diction he convincingly portrayed the character’s zealous devotion to his machine. Michael Bennett, singing the role of The Visitor, effectively conveyed the character’s disgust at what he witnesses and his turmoil leading up to his decision. Actor Gerald Tyler brought a great physical presence to his role of The Condemned Man, a man out of his wits who does not understand the language of the colony and is unaware of his crime.
Conductor Michael Rafferty expertly guided the Music Theatre Wales Ensemble through the demanding score, which was augmented with some electronic effects. Great physical effort is required to play Glass’s repetitive musical structures, accompanied by prolonged concentration to bring out the emotions inherent in the score. The ensemble, comprising two violins (Mirada Fulleylove and Philippa Mo), viola (Gustav Clarkson), cello (Chris Allan) and double bass (Kenneth Knussen), played admirably. This is music that serves the drama, without an aria in sight. In the Penal Colony has not yet been recorded on CD.
The chamber opera stays faithful to Kafka’s viscerally repellent text. The omission of The Soldier enables the stage version to become more focused, although the addition of a short prologue with The Visitor looking back in time adds little. As in Kafka, the giving of details concerning the 12-hour execution, involving tiny needles inscribing the offense on the condemned man’s body, is effectively paced. The Officer believes that this process invokes an epiphany in the victim. The big kick in this production is delivered when the blood eventually starts to flow.
In the Penal Colony made for uncomfortable viewing, but it proved to be a thought-provoking and rewarding experience.
