Grimeborn: Pelleas et Melisande, Arcola Theatre - opera review

Debussy’s only finished opera is not a simple work but you won’t see it done more persuasively than in Aylin Bozok’s production, which follows the opera’s dreamlike nature and delivers an unreal, minimalist, black-box world where a circle of salt is a pool

Pelleas et Melisande performed by Grimeborn Opera at the Arcola Theatre Ilona Domnich as Melisande, Simon Wallfisch as Pelleas

Alastair Muir

22 August 2013

It's been a great August for Fringe Opera in London. But in terms of punching above its weight, the pick of it is Grimeborn's coherent and superbly sung take on Debussy's only finished opera, a work that routinely eludes grander houses.

Pelléas et Mélisande is different. Its libretto, cut together by Claude himself from Maeterlinck's play, tells of the burgeoning romance between Pelléas and his step-brother Golaud’s fairytale wife, as they fret around a cursed castle.

The affair plays out in baby steps. In surreal scenes awash with symbolism, amidst talk of light and dark and truth and lies, the characters’ desires remain masked from each other. The impossibility of knowing another human being is really banged into you, while the shimmers and occasional ecstasies of Debussy’s score reassure that underneath the sad uncertainty of the action, there’s something warm and real and doomed going on.

So it’s not a simple work, nor a favourite of mine. But you won’t see it done more persuasively than in Aylin Bozok’s production, which follows the opera’s dreamlike nature and delivers an unreal, minimalist, black-box world where a circle of salt is a pool.

There are a few dull symbolist tropes (Some water is rippled. That salt is inevitably clenched in a leaking fist.) But the non-realistic action works. Most wonderful is the designer-challenging duet when ground-level Pelléas dances in the tower-bound Mélisande’s Rapunzel-like hair. Done with little more than some dangling string, it comes off as thrillingly erotic, while maintaining the separateness of the two lovers’ experiences.

Such moments come thanks to an extraordinary cast. Simon Wallfisch invests Pelléas with a wholly endearing Pierrot-like shyness. As Golaud, Alan Ewing thunders richly and betrays inner hopelessness.

Ilona Domnich’s Mélisande is as mesmerising as the other characters keep saying she is — her voice finds a place where you could confuse girlish temerity with repressed passion, her subtle performance well up to Mélisande’s moody, confusing allure.

Debussy’s music, you won’t be surprised to hear, sounds right on a solo piano, and MD Philip Voldman plays it very finely. Extremely good.

Until Saturday (020 7503 1646, arcolatheatre.com)