How well do you remember the beginning of the end? Make sure to do your homework before attending this production of The Handmaid’s Tale where the London Coliseum transforms into the venue of a future-set historical conference where a stunning and severe white-pantsuited Professor Piexoto (Juliet Stevenson) directly addresses audience members in her introduction to the overtaped cassettes which comprise the narrative bulk of The Handmaid’s Tale. Eliciting a few laughs in her pithy introduction but primarily conveying static gravitas and the restrained sensitivity of an academic among peers, Stevenson commands the stage at the opera’s bookends. However, her forceful presence is at times an unfortunate distraction as she every so often, ever so covertly interrupts the action to change the tape that plays from an ever-present plinth on one corner of the stage. These intrusions never quite rise to the level of interlocution, give the very competent Stevenson appallingly little to do over the course of the performance’s runtime, and distract from more than they enhance the action playing out on stage. This production suffers the same issues as a child with jam, Nutella, butter, and marmalade at her disposal but only one slice of bread.
There are too many good things. The set is astonishing, particularly in its opening tableau, which is so haunting a visual that it overshadows much of the actual action. Set and Costume Designer Annemarie Woods’ costumes also accomplish a great deal of visual storytelling and the attention paid to each actor’s relationship with their clothing and infrequently displayed hair showcases the ingenuity of the female-led original creative team. Paule Constable and Marc Rosette’s lighting design is less dynamic than one might hope for given the script, which takes light and shadow as one of its central metaphors, but in moments of tableau it is perfectly sufficient. Static moments abound despite Imogen Knight’s terrific and terrifying movement direction. There is a good deal of “park and bark” singing as is to be expected of an opera adaptation of a novel structured almost entirely around one woman’s inner monologue, but this just makes the major moments of startling dynamism all the more effective. Despite the heavy subject matter and pervasive sense of horror endemic to the plot, there are only a few moments of graphic violence, and viewers should be warned that they are extremely moving and difficult to stomach.
Joana Carneiro conducts beautifully and severely. The show is consistently sonically rich and rarely visually underwhelming. The combination of all these well-executed elements, however, is more headache-inducing than it is enlightening. Many fine performers are underutilized by the awkwardly compressed script, and the impact of the bold projection design is muddied by the inclusion of flashbacks in the actual staging at seemingly random intervals. The experience is disorienting, harrowing, and absolutely sobering, but somewhere in the chaos its lessons get lost.
Reviewer: Kira Daniels
Reviewed: 2nd February 2024
North West End UK Rating: