‘I touched the head of a bald man by mistake,” exclaims bass singer Georgios Papaefstratiou.
“And during the fight scene we nearly fell into the audience,” adds baritone Matthew Duncan. The two singers were responding to my question about the pitfalls of putting on a grand opera in the cramped setting of Kilburn’s Cock Tavern.
So, La Bohème in a fringe venue — who could have imagined it? I certainly wanted to, which is why I got involved with the OperaUpClose’s production of Puccini’s gypsy love story.
Initially taking on the role of assistant stage manager, and now that of company manager, I have watched this young cast and crew create a captivating spectacle that has proved more popular, and earned better reviews, than the production of the same work which has just finished its run at the Royal Opera House.
True to the name of the company, up close this opera certainly is, for everyone involved — the audience, the singers, and for myself and the rest of the crew. The action takes place in the pub’s upstairs room, and downstairs in the bar itself. There is no orchestra pit to provide an invisible barrier between the audience and the cast — actually there is no orchestra, just a brilliant pianist, whose mastery over the score helps clear the way for a successful show.
So, the singers are virtually sitting on the audience’s lap, which is no different from most fringe theatre, but highly unusual for opera.
And Jewish tenor Anthony Flaum, who comes from a fringe background, applauds the immediacy of the space.
“You’re not up with the gods where you can hardly see anything; it’s a different atmosphere to a larger venue. Here you’re intimately in the scene.”
And certainly Puccini’s La Bohème is mostly a simple, small-scale story that is ideal for somewhere like the Cock.
The space is so intimate that nothing escapes the eye of the audience, which is why we have to make the set immaculate and why the performers have to immerse themselves fully in the role. Every wince on the face, every small hand gesture must be just right.
Working on the show, I rub alongside the cast in the shared-by-all dressing room, sort their props, cue them on stage and even wipe their brows. I see how hard they work, how they come off stage crying from the rollercoaster of emotions they are forced to feel in the depiction of Rodolfo’s and Mimi’s love story.
It is an intense experience, which I certainly believe is aided by the space. And to make the most of it, director Robin Norton-Hale has made a few adjustments.
For one thing, the opera’s no longer in Italian. She has sympathetically translated the script into English and moved it to modern-day Kilburn, which gets a mention, as does nearby Maida Vale. Add a few contemporary swear words for authenticity and the young couple are transferred from 1830s Paris into 21st-century London.
The story in short: four friends in their twenties, Rodolfo, Marcello, Schaunard and Colline, are living in relative poverty. One day, a neighbour, Mimi, stumbles into their flat, meets Rod and the love story begins.
Acts 1, 3 and 4, are set in Rod’s flat. As the auditorium is in the upstairs of a Victorian house, with its bay window and high ceiling, the space conveniently has the features of a flat they might actually live in.
Act 2 is guerrilla theatre. In the original script it is set in Café Momus in the Paris Latin Quarter. At the Cock it is set in the real pub downstairs in the “Irish Quarter” — Kilburn is home to a large Irish community — and it begins when I cue the pianist, and the chorus, who are drinking at tables near the stage, to begin singing.
“We had no idea what would happen before the dress rehearsal. But the singers love the scene. In the pub we have the literal chorus and the unemployed chorus — the pub-goers who heckle during the performance,” explains Robin Norton-Hale, who wanted to keep the Cock’s regulars involved.
Acoustically, it is not ideal. “With the background noise and the occasional heckler you have to make sure you’re projecting your voice while not overreaching,” says Clare Presland, who plays the seductress Musetta.
Her sugar daddy, Alcindoro, played by David Freedman, expands. “Young voices need to be careful in these roles, especially when they’re singing four or five times a week.” Which is one of the reasons for double casting.
Forty-year-olds with richer voices tend to play 20-year-olds in grand opera. This small 40-seater venue, soon to be an 80-seater, gives younger performers the opportunity to play characters they would usually have to wait years to play.
“And that,” explains Adam Spreadbury-Maher, creative director of OperaUpClose, was one of the aims of the production.
“There are many barriers to opera: the price, where it is, how you behave. We get rid of that by putting it in the fringe,” he says.
Well worth a close encounter with a bald man’s head, I would say.
