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Persephone’s Dream

The Cockpit Theatre

Reviewed – 22nd September 2020

★★★

“thirty minutes of appreciation of all the odd, disjunctive tricks that dreams, good and bad, can play on us”

Persephone’s Dream, put together from a concept and libretto by Tania Holland Williams, has been created by a company that only began working together, and then remotely, after the beginning of the pandemic. Billed as a “digital/live hybrid opera”, this piece is part of a socially distanced live performance series at the Cockpit Theatre brought together by the Tête á Tête Opera Festival. But if you missed the September 18th performance in house, or the September 22nd interactive broadcast online, don’t worry. A recording of the interactive broadcast will be available, also online, for 28 days.

Persephone’s Dream is an intriguing work, with some inspired touches. Some touches are well realized—some don’t go far enough. Given the difficult circumstances of any act of artistic creation at the moment, this is not surprising. And thirty minutes is a sensible performance time if you are performing indoors during a pandemic. But it is also a challenge if you are tackling profound subjects (including that of the pandemic itself) that need time, space (and decent lighting) to develop into something of special significance.

Persephone’s story is well known. Holland Williams takes the Greek myth as her starting point, but instead of focusing on Persephone above ground in her Spring and Summer guise, she
introduces us to Winter Persephone. This is the Persephone who spends her time in Hades, dreaming of her return to her mother, Demeter’s, world. From the confines of the underworld, Holland Williams’ libretto encourages us to make the connection with the confines of the pandemic. Persephone spends considerable time singing of pursuits like gardening and dog walking—subjects that take on a heightened significance when you are enduring winter—or lockdown. In Persephone’s Dream, we are all encouraged to dream of the things we can’t do until the end of the pandemic. It’s a bold, and engaging, concept.

Inspired touches in Persephone’s Dream include two female performers onstage, accompanied by a “Chorus of Curious Eyes”. Anna Brathwaite sings us into an appropriate dream state as Persephone, while Clare O’Connell accompanies Brathwaite with both cello and voice. In addition to singing, Brathwaite’s Persephone spends most of her time winding and unwinding herself in her remarkable costume, which includes a chess set attached to the front of it. In fact, it’s not so much a costume as a set design. (Kudos to Sarah Jane Booth, in charge of both costume, stage and digital design.) Another inspired touch is the “Chorus of Curious Eyes” which is the digital component of this opera. The Chorus is composed a mosaic of faces, projected onto a large screen. Each face, broadcast live, accompanies the action on stage in different ways. Intriguing as this is, however, much more could have been made of the Chorus. Viewers of the broadcast version online will also feel a certain frustration at being unable to see much of the detail on this screen, since the camera doing the recording is so far away.

But Persephone’s Dream is intriguing enough to be worth a visit, even viewed online. It’s thirty minutes of appreciation of all the odd, disjunctive tricks that dreams, good and bad, can play on us. A timely reminder, when we look back on these extraordinary times, at how we might remember the dreams we had while trapped in hell.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Claire Shovelton

Persephone’s Dream

The Cockpit Theatre as part of Tête à Tête Opera Festival 2020 also available online

Previously reviewed by Dominica:

Jason Kravits – Off The Top | ★★★★★ | Live At Zédel | January 2020

Us Two | ★★★ | The Space | January 2020

Crybabies: Danger Brigade | ★★★ | The Vaults | March 2020

Fireworks | ★★★ | The Vaults | March 2020

Luna | ★★ | The Vaults | March 2020

Our Man In Havana | ★★★★ | The Vaults | March 2020

Revisor | ★★★★★ | Sadler’s Wells Theatre | March 2020

Sky In The Pie | ★★★ | The Vaults | March 2020

The Revenger’s Tragedy (La Tragedia Del Vendicatore) | ★★★★★ | Barbican | March 2020

The Tempest | ★★★★ | Jermyn Street Theatre | March 2020

Click here to see our most recent reviews

★★

“an ambitious piece that, in this version at any rate, does not live up to billing”

BIRD, with music by Loré Lixenberg, is produced by the Voice Party as part of a socially distanced live performance series at the Cockpit Theatre. But if you are in quarantine, don’t worry. The 2020 Tête à Tête Opera Festival at the Cockpit Theatre is also offering an interactive broadcasts online, with the added bonus of “meeting” with the artists afterwards to ask questions and share thoughts.

BIRD is billed as a “post-shamanic work uniting comedy, ritual, and song”. Artist Lixenberg, known for her work as a mezzo soprano specializing in experimental work, greets the audience on stage from behind a desk with a computer, and microphones. Behind her is a large screen. Apologetic because this pandemic version is unable to offer a group of dancers and musicians live on stage to complement the images of birds on screen, and describing BIRD as a work in progress, Lixenberg begins the performance. A video flickers on screen. With a whispered voice over, Lixenberg informs us that we are on a hunt for birds in a forest. The camera is hand held and shaky, and it shakes more as the camera person encounters the first “bird”. The bird, is of course, a human imitating bird calls, and later, bird movements. The comic elements of BIRD become apparent as the bird notices the camera, and instead of being frightened away, picks up a stick and rushes aggressively towards it.

The rest of this forty minute show is a mashup of more actor dancers imitating birds in a variety of environments, spliced with film of real birds. Robins, ostriches, blackbirds, starlings—all doing their thing accompanied by Lixenberg’s whispered commentary. For Lixenberg, the attraction to her subject matter is more than just an ability to sing. Claiming that birds actually have more in common with humans than apes, she lays out her thesis with some compelling evidence. But for all this academic seriousness, Lixenberg’s sense of irony and playfulness is never far away. We get hints of this with the cartoon images of birds that flash on screen between the videos of birds and humans acting as birds. But the irony blossoms into full blown awareness as Lixenberg herself begins to sing birdsong. In the resultant cacophonous competition with a robin redbreast, it is hard to tell who wins, as the screen freezes and distorts, and the noise on and off stage intensifies. In the final moments of BIRD, we see a dancer running and swooping off in the distance, accompanied by silence.

BIRD is an ambitious piece that, in this version at any rate, does not live up to billing, sadly. Nevertheless, Lixenberg’s work is thought provoking, and hopefully she will continue to work on this piece in less challenging circumstances.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Claire Shovelton

The Cockpit Theatre

Reviewed – 22nd September 2020

★★★

“thirty minutes of appreciation of all the odd, disjunctive tricks that dreams, good and bad, can play on us”

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Claire Shovelton

Persephone’s Dream

The Cockpit Theatre as part of Tête à Tête Opera Festival 2020 also available online

Previously reviewed by Dominica:

The Cockpit Theatre

Reviewed – 14th September 2020

★★

“an ambitious piece that, in this version at any rate, does not live up to billing”

BIRD is an ambitious piece that, in this version at any rate, does not live up to billing, sadly. Nevertheless, Lixenberg’s work is thought provoking, and hopefully she will continue to work on this piece in less challenging circumstances.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Claire Shovelton

Bird

The Cockpit Theatre as part of Tête à Tête Opera Festival 2020 also available online

Previously reviewed by Dominica: