On a sweltering June day – yet another when temperature records tumbled – transporting a rapt audience back to a Victorian Dorset Christmas is no mean feat. But not a soul in the audience cared about the incongruity. This superb production, blending words and music, had to be moved from the Art Centre’s Towngate theatre to the cooler Wessex Hall for comfort and safety. I thought there’d be less intimacy, a shortfall of nuance – but not a bit of it.
Two actors, the renowned Anton Lesser and hugely talented relative newcomer Lucia Bonbright, created characters, relationships and moods with inflection, pause and subtle intonation. They had great material to work with, as writer Deirdre Shields predominately uses Hardy’s own words – with a few other contemporary sources – to present an impression of the great man’s life and loves.
Enhancing the verbal pictures, exploring the images, is the wonderful Orchestra of the Swan, whose leader and artistic director, David Le Page, wrote or adapted much of the score. It’s an all English musical feast, with traditional airs and attributed pieces from Purcell to Holst being given fresh vibrancy. Le Page’s style is brilliantly eclectic: shades of Penguin Café Orchestra and Philip Glass blending seamlessly with Victorian styles. The orchestra is a joy, full of enthusiasm and vigour. These accomplished players somehow managed to transform themselves into Melstock Quire, Hardy’s fathers’ travelling band, by adding amateur rusticity to the music. And in the next moment they were all polished sophistication.
Quite wonderful.
The show is by no means centred on Christmas. We meet Hardy’s redoubtable mother, a lady of radical views on relationships. And characters from his novels, particularly Far From the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, are brought to life in just a few short exchanges between the actors.
Episodes from his life are succinctly captured, such as the effect of an execution, along with his rise through the levels of literary society. Famously ‘unkind to his women’, Hardy spent his later years seemingly writing love poems to Emma, his poorly-treated dead first wife, much to the chagrin of second wife Florence. Rejecting the novel form after Jude the Obscure received a polarised reaction, Hardy turned to solely to poetry, becoming one of England’s best loved and most influential poets. The Oxen and The Darkling Thrush, arguably his best known poems, receive pride of place and Anton Lesser delivers them beautifully. In this production they are not isolated landmarks but illustrate the searching wistfulness so thematic to Hardy’s work.
The essence of Hardy is captured: his contradictions, brilliance and conflicts. With his ashes in Westminster Abby and his heart buried between his wives in Dorset, Hardy’s intellect and emotions are as complex as ever. This occasional touring production is a treasure. Explore the website for new venues – it ‘shall astonish you all.’
orchestraoftheswan.org
