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There will be anti-elitism naysayers who question whether a play about the 1934 founding of Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an essential piece of work for the West End of 2018. This is a pointless, not to mention patronising, line of enquiry, but I do wish, as I did at the 2015 Hampstead Theatre premiere of David Hare’s drama, that a few more overarching conclusions had been reached. There’s a nudge towards one about valuing art, and indeed the value of art, but it could usefully be strengthened and expanded.
Jeremy Herrin’s production unfortunately has an inert first half, of long static scenes in which the actors seem nailed to the spot. It’s not the best introduction to a narrative that wants riff on the rhetorical question: ‘Is building an opera house in a garden near Lewes practical?’ Of course it’s not, in theory, but then John Christie (Roger Allam) doesn’t hold much truck with theory. A delightful English maverick in the PG Wodehouse mode, his love of opera and love of his wife Audrey Mildmay (Nancy Carroll), the eponymous soprano, go hand in hand. He enlists three musical refugees from the Nazi regime and Glyndebourne, a curious combination of eccentricity and professionalism, begins to take shape.
Allam is, as ever, a master of the dry one-liner and there’s lovely work from Carroll as a skilled peacemaker for her occasionally irascible spouse. One quietly poignant scene sees Carroll at her finest: Audrey suddenly realises that she will not, of right, be given a part in a Glyndebourne opera and Carroll’s face shades with vulnerability. The Germans, whose too-lengthy back-stories bog down the first half, remain frustratingly under-characterised. A moderate success.
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