{"id":1180,"date":"2015-11-13T15:31:23","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T15:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1180"},"modified":"2015-11-13T15:31:23","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T15:31:23","slug":"stop-all-the-clocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2015\/11\/stop-all-the-clocks.html","title":{"rendered":"Stop all the clocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Boheme<\/a><\/p>\n

Directors have been shuttling between theatre and opera for decades now. Makes sense. Both forms tell stories, establish tension, explore characters and ideas. Ten years after Peter Gelb <\/a>took charge at the Met, directors with stage cred (Bartlett Sher, Richard Eyre) have become recurring guests, while John Berry, ENO\u2019s departed chief, hired Complicite\u2019s Simon McBurney<\/a> and Improbable\u2019s Phelim McDermott.<\/p>\n

Opera often attracts the control-freak end of the spectrum: Robert Wilson\u2019s abstraction or Katie Mitchell\u2019s choreographic naturalism. Both artists can extend a scene far past stage convention, yet a defining element of opera lies beyond a director\u2019s control. In opera, time belongs to the score, not the stage. When music starts, time stops. Or speeds, or bends, or warps. Opera disdains the clock \u2013 it sinks into the past, soars into the future, suspends moments of bliss or torment.<\/p>\n

In the theatre, Australian director Benedict Andrews<\/a> plays time like a virtuoso. His production of Puccini\u2019s La boh\u00e8me<\/em><\/a>, originally staged in Amsterdam, is now at English National Opera: can he make time stand still, or make it run?<\/p>\n

Complex nostalgia<\/strong><\/p>\n

Time is vital to La boh\u00e8me<\/em>, which from its conception was a project of complex nostalgia. It is based on Henri Murger<\/a>\u2019s fragments from his misspent youth in 1840s Paris \u2013 consecrated at the comfortable distance of middle age. In Andrews\u2019 1990s-set production, designed by Johannes Sch\u00fctz, aspirant writer Rodolfo and his artist bros share a big-windowed, white-walled space: pre-gentrifying hipsters or trustfund tossers? Lisa Carroll<\/a>, the generation rent reviewer on A Younger Theatre, describes it as \u2018on point in how it nods to what bohemia really is today in London: it\u2019s the kind where \u201cstruggling artists\u201d actually live in expansive converted warehouse loft apartments paid for by their parents \u2013 which is to say, not a bohemian lifestyle at all. Indeed, I wouldn\u2019t feel too hard done by living in the spacious, lofty apartment.\u2019<\/p>\n

Complex nostalgia is very much Andrews\u2019 bag. Characters in his productions for London\u2019s Young Vic are lost in thrall to the siren of times past. The three stuck-rut sisters<\/a>, fixated on their Moscow childhood; or Blanche du Bois <\/a>unravelling on a continual slow revolve, the Belle Reve of her past an ever-receding dream. These harsh plays dramatise the cruel passage of time; in the Chekhov, Andrews showed characters trying in vain to stop the clocks \u2013 gazing as a tiny spinning top declined at the front of the stage, or frantically enjoying a still-young holler of Nirvana, too quickly snuffed out.<\/p>\n

\"Corrine<\/a>

Corrine Winters in La boheme. Photo: Tristram Kenton<\/p><\/div>\n

If these characters sigh for their youth, Puccini\u2019s hipsters and heartbreakers are living it, with mixed success. For all its consumptive trajectory, La boh\u00e8me<\/em> is about grabbing at life, not lamenting it. Most Mimis might as well trail a shroud for all the vitality they exhibit \u2013 delicate is the default setting \u2013 but Corinne Winters<\/a> gave her a welcome sense of agency. Long before her entrance, we see her hovering outside Rodolfo\u2019s door \u2013 she\u2019s waiting till he\u2019s alone to tap him for a fix. She knows her mind \u2013 she even makes jokes, almost unheard of in the soulful seamstress.<\/p>\n

Trying not to pun about a heroine or heroin here, but shooting up enhances the score\u2019s time-warp. Mimi and Rodolfo\u2019s coup de foudre \u2013 tiny frozen hand, melting duet \u2013 becomes post-hit languor, the pair lying on the floor, semi-tangled in delighted exhalation. As the boozy bohemians are always hunting to get off their heads, it\u2019s no big step, though some reviewers have been jolted into nostalgia for period stagings past (tellingly, some favourite versions last for decades \u2013 John Copley\u2019s Royal Opera staging bowed this spring after 41 years; Zeffirelli\u2019s sumptuous Met Opera show has been in the rep since 1981).<\/p>\n

Holding back time<\/strong><\/p>\n

I may be reading too much into Andrews\u2019 show, but it feels as if the lushly-determined score (often given a furious momentum by conductor Xian Zhang) means that time\u2019s work is done for him. The lads<\/a> can snatch at work and fun, squander hours and wallow in bad relationships, because they think they\u2019ve all the time in the world. Andrews\u2019 hipsters are louche and geeky, self-absorbed and silly \u2013 food fight! paint fight! \u2013 they\u2019re not listening to the music ticking down. I\u2019ve never been more conscious of how the opera\u2019s plot arcs over just a few months. Mimi and Rodolfo meet on Christmas Eve; they split in the new year; and Mimi dies as spring arrives. There was something so small and desolate about Mimi\u2019s death \u2013 the japesters are jolted into seriousness, but don\u2019t know what to do. They go out to score some \u2018medicine\u2019 or stand about, paint-smeared; Rodolfo eases away from her because he thinks she\u2019s just sleeping. Music resets the clocks, or stops them altogether. Holding back time, just after it\u2019s gone, they barely have time to assemble memories \u2013 assessing the fragments is work for middle age, if they make it.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Directors have been shuttling between theatre and opera for decades now. Makes sense. Both forms tell stories, establish tension, explore characters and ideas. Ten years after Peter Gelb took charge at the Met, directors with stage cred (Bartlett Sher, Richard Eyre) have become recurring guests, while John Berry, ENO\u2019s departed chief, hired Complicite\u2019s Simon McBurney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[127,86,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-chekhov","9":"tag-opera","10":"tag-theatre","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1184,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions\/1184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}