ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Weill’s One Touch of Venus, Opera North, Leeds
December 2004

Reviewed by Michael Eagleton
posted 11 December 2005

Three cheers for Opera North! For twenty years and more this company has been exploring those parts of the repertoire that others care not to (dare not to?) even contemplate. Way back in 1984 there was Krenek’s Jonny Spielt Auf, which received such a sniffy critical reception, not for how it was done but for supposing it worth doing at all, that would have deterred less determined folk. Then there was Schreker’s Der ferne Klang in 1992. And what about that heart-warming ShowBoat, or Nielsen’s Maskarade ? What other British company has even bothered with A Village Romeo and Juliet? As for last year’s ‘Eight Little Greats’, the mind boggled with the sheer audacity of the idea!

Kurt Weill has been central to the company’s exploratory regime. They gave us the first European production of Love Life in 1996, the show which ran on Broadway in 1948 for more than 250 performances, and, of course, Die Sieben Todsünden was one of the ‘Eight Little Greats’ in last year’s season. (The original plan to do Der Protagonist was changed, unfortunately, in favour of Die Sieben Todsünden to increase the proportion of the eight that people might actually have heard of.) And, we hear, Der Kuhhandel is pencilled in for next season, the show which, under the title A Kingdom for a Cow flopped at the Savoy Theatre in London in 1935.

On 4 December 2004 the curtain went up at the Grand, Leeds , for the first fully staged British production of Weill’s Broadway musical One Touch of Venus. We have to be careful of claims of ‘first’, so let me summarise. Venus opened on 17 September 1943 in Boston ( Mass. ), transferring to Broadway (Imperial Theatre) on 7 October. It ran for more than 500 performances. The lyrics were by Ogden Nash, book by S. J. Perelman and Ogden Nash, and starred Mary Martin as Venus (the role which Marlene Dietrich turned down as being ‘too profane’), Kenny Baker and John Boles. The conductor was Maurice Abravanel. A film was made (with Ava Gardner as Venus), but it was generally felt that ‘ Hollywood has successfully obliterated a well-loved Broadway musical’ (David Drew, in Kurt Weill: A Handbook).

The first European staging was by the Meiningen Theater in June 1994, followed by productions in Freiburg (December 1998) and the Mittelsächsisches Theater, Döbeln, in May 2003. In this country, Venus first appeared on Radio 3 in April 1995, in a recording made at the Golders Green Hippodrome with the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by John McGlinn. There was a concert performance at the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House in December 2000, given by The Lost Musicals company, and a very small-scale staging (orchestra of two!) at the King’s Head pub theatre in Islington in August 2001.

Back to Opera North at Leeds , and without further ado let me say that they did the piece proud. First plus point was that there were no cuts. Indeed, this was as full a performing version as I have yet heard, with numerous reappearances of Weill’s reprise motifs, and some unfamiliar dialogue, mostly original, I suspect. The second plus point was that there was no amplification. James Holmes conducted – a true Kurt Weill enthusiast, who has probably done as much Weill around Europe as anyone – and it showed, with an authentic ‘Broadway big band’ style yet with loving attention to all those inner parts and filigrees which mark the composer from pale imitators. The director was Tim Albery, taking a break from the more serious stuff. The production was snappy and stylish, each scene not only a spectacle in itself, but making its dramatic point. Never, for example, has it seemed so obvious that the first-act finale, ‘ Doctor Crippen’, is there to put the frighteners on poor Rodney Hatch and Venus. That it sent the audience out to its gin and tonic with one of the best tunes in the show is a bonus. Here, too, was some of the best dancing of the evening (choreographed by William Tucket), beginning with a macabre procession of skeletons and coffins.

The audience was itself kept on its toes as all sorts of visual references sped by in the designs (Antony McDonald). Taking a cue from the show’s opening number, New Art is True Art, American art of the forties inveigled its way into the settings – Edward Hopper taking his place alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein quite amicably. Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, for example, provided a highly cynical background to the final dance-sequence which persuades Venus that domestic life in Ozone Heights may not after all be quite her cup of tea, as she negotiates lawnmowers, nappy full washing lines and babies.

The cast united expertise from both sides of the Atlantic , and Opera North had obviously done their homework, for there was not the slightest weakness. Venus came from America ; Karen Coker, looking gorgeous, has a small-scale soprano, but sang her set pieces from the front of the stage with enormous style. Her compatriot Christianne Tisdale was a wonderfully sassy Molly Grant, secretary to the art collector Whitelaw Savory, a suave Ron Li-Paz, American-born but London-educated. The Kramers, mother and daughter Gloria, both larger-than-life characters but not your first choice as mother-in-law and wife, were Carole Wilson and Jessica Walker, both enjoying themselves immensely. Opera North regular Eric Roberts sang Taxi Black, the private eye, and he also took the speaking part of Dr Rook, a psychiatrist, way over the top but side-splittingly funny in trying to make sense of someone thousands of years old yet quite at home in this modern world. The ‘hero’ of the piece, Rodney Hatch the barber, was Loren Geeting, well known in the West End , a warmly sung, and suitably harried characterisation.

If ever a show could be said to be unmissable, this is it.

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