Reviews of Owen Wingrave, RNCM 2025
Orpha Phelan brings on the big guns for Britten’s charge against war.
It’s quite ironic that the Royal Northern College of Music should have invited, as director of this, Britten's avowedly pacifist opera, Orpha Phelan – whose version of his Billy Budd for Opera North nearly 10 years ago contained one of the most thrilling battle scenes ever staged. And, in her presentation of Owen Wingrave, war is not merely talked about, but seen. That’s very much to the good, as Myfanwy Piper’s libretto makes the adaptation of Henry James’ story very talkative: until very near the end, you might say all the action is in the dialogue..
Phelan’s production shows the ancestors of the military Wingrave family (who are ever-present in the family seat, Paramore, where most of the story is set) as real soldiers in uniforms of each of their times: probably beginning with Waterloo and including India, the Sudan, the Boer War, and so on. The opera itself is left in its own period, the late 19th century. During the overture we see them in mime of what soldiering is really about – a desperate attempt to stay alive in hellish circumstances – and they re-appear later in a composite set (by Madeleine Boyd) which shows both outside and inside the grandiose country house, plus the family tomb, with names – all Wingraves – carved on it like a school honours board. Imagined locations switch seamlessly from scene to scene, as the TV scenario no doubt demanded. There’s a kind of battery of circular lights aiming their broadside directly at the audience, as the opening sequence, set in a military academy, changes to the main location – are they the weapons of tradition and “honour” being ranged against young Owen, the pacifist soldier, as he takes his stand (“Charge for the guns, he said” – Tennyson)?
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What is notable is that the soldiering ancestors’ portraits in the family country house become the ghosts of people in Orpha Phelan’s vision – dressed in uniforms of differing historical periods. We see them, in mime, as real soldiers in the mud and terror of real battle. That’s a striking idea, and lifts the first Act considerably. There’s a single set (design by Madeleine Boyd) with differing elements of the grand old house, inside and out, including the family tomb, which enables the focus to switch seamlessly from place to place as the television original would have required.
Theatre Reviews North read more here